‘Lissen, Mick, bud. I’m gonna learn you something good, today. I’m gonna blast you with knowledge. It’s gonna be like a tidal wave in here. It’s gonna be like… a mallet. On your head. Heads. You get me?’
‘I thought we were just going to drink alcohol and be embarrassing in public,’ Mickey said, disconcerted. He shifted into a slightly more comfortable position and sent a wave of muttering awkward bumps and shoves throughout the entire shuttle.
The shuttle smelt like sweat and oily metal. It was a wide, flat, grey space with dark poles interspersed regularly along that the assorted graspers, holders, claspers, grabbers, and such held tightly onto. Staphas gleamed loudly through the window to Mickey’s side. Colourful civilian transports cut straight lines across space. A fat, steaming barge rolled along in the distance, a black silhouette against Staphas. The anti-inertial engines hummed and sang.
Steve was curled up comfortably atop Mickey’s head. He was smugly peaceful, draped by Mickey’s earholes, free from the uncomfortable public shuffling everybody else on the shuttle underwent. ‘That’s one of the central steps to our plan, Mick, don’t even worry about it. That comes later. Mick: I’m gonna teach you how to pick up chicks.’
‘How to pick up chicks?’ Mickey repeated.
‘How to pick up chicks,’ Steve confirmed.
Mickey didn’t have much of an opinion on chicks. He never thought much of them, in specific. He was ambivalent towards them. They seemed nice, in general, at least, which was the most he could ever ask for.
‘Isn’t this sort of sexist, Steve? No offence to your plan. But, well, it just seems somewhat objectifying towards women.’
‘Women?’ Steve paced across Mickey’s head to his earhole. ‘Who said anything about women, bud? A chick, Mick, is anybody you pick. Up.’ He paused for an awkwardly long time. ‘You dig?’
Mickey tried to dig it. He scratched his face. ‘So if I picked you up, right now, you’d be my chick?’
‘Of course! And you’d be mine. That’s how the chick-to-picker relationship works. It’s all relative, Mick. It’s got its basis in mutual respect and thoughtful decision making. Now, look, we’re nearly at the bar! I’ve been saving up, bud, I’m gonna destroy myself.’
Santa Buphowski-11S was one of the many Staphasian City-Stations. They had been developed as a kind of interstellar suburbanisation product. Santa Buphowski-11S looked like a huge tangled mass of welded together middle class housing. Red brickwork and ugly green garage doors and clothes drying on balconies. Grocery stores next to the sort of cafes that had fairy lights and sold drinks in jars. The atmosphere around it was thin and fizzy–faintly blue and tasting somewhat of metal. The shuttle fitted itself into an amorphic, shifting mass of ships. There was a grinding, a thrumming of engines, a shrieking of wind. Buildings loomed up around them. A speeder zipped right past the window and Mickey yelped.
They came to their stop. The shuttle heaved quietly to itself for a moment and then, suddenly, BANG, it fell to the ground.
‘Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry. Pardon me. Sorry. Pardon me,’ Mickey chanted, like a ritual, as he made his way towards the doors.
They exited the shuttle in a faint cloud of passersby who dispersed hastily and distractedly on their own paths along the roads. They were at a corner, a noisy one, wind-blasted and smelling like urine and smoke. Contrails filled the air. Chemical vapours drifted down from the blaring ships above, dripped, uncomfortably cold and wet. Fat hivebuildings loomed above them. Ominous glowing eyes peered out of the dark holes that dotted them, gazed over Mickey and Steve. One of them wiggled and said:
‘Mickeyyyy baby! How’re ya?’
‘I’m doing good!’ Mickey yelled back.
‘Y’know that guy Mick?’ Steve whispered.
‘I think!’ Mickey said.
The bar wasn’t a far walk. It was a tired, slumping kind of building. A neon sign flickered from its ceiling: THE GROANING SKINSHEET. The windows were smoky and grimy and one suddenly exploded. A rough, bedraggled form tumbled to the ground, covered in glass shards. They stood up, brushed themself off, adjusted an eyepatch, and glared horribly at them.
‘Terrible glass. Very fragile. Papery texture. Three out of ten, would not recommend,’ they explained, before huffing, stretching, and walking away.
Mickey stood at the door, terrified, until Steve explained gently to him that the amount of barfights a bar had actually reflected an increased quality in the bar itself. Mickey could do nothing but agree with that and was practically forced to enter.
‘Put me on the counter, Mick.’
Mickey’s eyes were glued to the counter. It was his respite. It was a gentle island of gnarled, stained wood and the remnants of salted peanuts. He swam for it for safety. He felt eyes boring holes in him. It was so dark in there. Everybody seemed to have huge, sharp teeth. He wanted to run but everytime he increased his pace the eyes seemed to bore even harder. He bumped the back of someone’s chair and wanted to die.
He reached the counter, inhaled loudly, and let Steve down onto it.
‘Good stuff, bud. Say, are you alright?’
‘I’m good,’ said Mickey, saltwater sublimating from his scentskin. ‘I am so good. I want to be drunk.’
‘That’s the spirit! That’s the good stuff!’
So the chick-picking commenced.
Steve was a machine. He honed in with trained eyes, plotted like a tactical war-computer, and struck with brutal and efficient force. He knew what he wanted, and he knew exactly how to get it.
‘So! Ah. You like movies?’ he asked to a bleary-eyed Suptutian. The Suptutian shook his heads morosely.
‘No, sorry.’
‘Have you seen the Braffield movie?’ Steve was sweating. He looked back to Mickey for support. Mickey looked back at him for support. He gave Steve a faint thumbs up.
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Of course!’ said Steve, subtly retreating back to Mickey’s side.
He drank a small drop of Finurgian half-gin to recover.
‘Hey there b-, uh, baby. You ever… jog?’
The Corpid-Hattian shook her feelers. ‘What is jogging. I do not understand.’
Steve began sweating again. ‘It’s–ah–it’s this thing, in Braffield–’
‘I do not know what Braffield is. I do not understand you. I am sorry.’
Steve retreated back to Mickey’s side and drank a small drop of Talahovan thundersqueezings to recover.
‘Hhhhey. Do you like. Have you seen. Braffield in real life?’ he asked a Squinchian.
The Squinchian pulsated no. Braffield is a fictional character, she added. She was sorry that Steve was unable to understand that.
Steve fled hastily back to Mickey.
‘Mick. Mick. Miiick. Bud. You gotta wingman me here Micko. You gotta wing me up bud.’
‘I’m really sorry, Steve,’ Mickey said, scratching his head. He had bought a megafauna-sized barrel of Angle-Berry wine and had been slowly pouring it down his throat through a huge pipe the whole night. He had two tendrils tightly clasping it. He had drunk enough pure alcohol to sterilise a small city. Everywhere he burped was utterly emptied of any microbial life for years to come. His blood could melt steel. ‘I just don’t know how to. Why do all your pickup lines come back to Braffield? I don’t know if that kind of thing works. Maybe you should mix it up a little.’
‘I retreat to thingsss comforting, Mick. Okayyy? This works better usually. Braffield works better.’ Steve slumped forwards and rested his head on the droplet of Bistiff particle-beer he had just bought. ‘I miss friends. I don’t know these people. Sophie… Beth… Robyn… Bethhh.’ He hiccupped, which rattled his whole body. ‘Who are anyone here? Right?’
Mickey grinned. ‘Well, I’ve met lots of nice people here! Here they are–’ he spread out his graspers and leant away and revealed, sitting behind him in a row, the Suptutian, the Corpid-Hattian, and the Squinchian. He turned to them and said: ‘This is my friend, Steve, everyone. He’s the best pilot I’ve ever worked with. Actually, he dragged me here.’
‘It is good that he brought you here,’ said the Corpid-Hattian.
The Squinchian rippled in such a way to suggest that, while she was uncertain about Steve himself, she ultimately agreed.
‘Who’s that?’ asked the Suptutian.
Between everybody’s gaze falling on him and the sensation of cold, buzzing alcohol floating through his body, Steve blacked out.
Steve awoke feeling like he had been turned inside out. He felt all shrivelled up. He was in a warm, soft place. He shifted and realised he was feeling fabric–clean, smooth fabric.
‘Steve! Are you okay?’ Mickey said, suddenly looming over him.
Steve shrivelled away slightly more. Mickey’s voice was deafening. He felt it rattle his entire body.
‘I’m good, Mick,’ he said, holding back vomit. He recognised the alliance bedroom ceiling–white plastic, with rows and rows of cheap and brutal ceiling lights that were, fortunately, off. The only light that entered the room filtered gently in from the hallway. Dust motes hovered quietly. He glanced carefully around, making sure to not look too fast. He felt a little like his eyes were going to fly out of his head.
It was Mickey’s room, for sure. The piles of crap everywhere–bottles, scrolls, wrappers, mismatched miscellaneous crap collected on missions. He recognised Mickey’s table–Mickey’s kids, gormlessly floating around in a jar.
It was horrible, he realised–horrible for them to see him in this state. What kind of a role model was he? What kind of a godfather?
‘Oh, good, that’s good. You were losing a lot of water out there. It might have been really bad, but it’s a good thing that Threetwooh just happened to have brought some moisture strips.’
‘Threetwooh?’ Steve asked.
‘My friend! From the bar!’ Mickey exclaimed.
‘Yeah, uh, friend,’ said Threetwoo. His eyes weren’t so bleary anymore but his heads were slumping. He scratched his chins. His other arms were folded, and he leant against a wall. ‘We good?’
‘Yeah! Thriftites recover from these sorts of things quickly–if he’s conscious, he is almost definitely fine. Thanks, Threetwooh.’
Threetwooh shrugged. He glanced around the room, glanced at Steve (his frown widened), at the bed, at Mickey, up and down.
Mickey suddenly wrapped him in a huge hug. ‘I really appreciate it. We should meet again some other time.’
Threetwooh went rigid for a moment, and then relaxed into the hug. He leant his heads on Mickey’s body and swayed. Smiles crept onto his faces. ‘We should.’
‘Yeah. All of us. Maybe we could go back to that bar!’
Threetwooh went rigid again. The frowns returned. ‘Uhm. Sure.’ He untangled himself from Mickey’s hug and glanced at Steve one more time. Steve glanced right back at him. He left the room, awkwardly.
Mickey smiled widely, job done. He sank down to the floor, out of Steve’s view. Steve felt a the bed shift slightly, and figured that Mickey was leaning against it, sitting on the floor.
‘Did you get any chicks, by the way?’ Mickey asked. ‘Sorry–I was distracted the whole time.’
Steve squirmed and grumbled to himself. ‘Naw.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Wow–I should have been–maybe I should have been more attentive. I’m sorry.’
‘Gah, Mick, bud, don’t even apologise. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.’ He paused for a moment. His head was swimming and talking made his throat feel like it was filled with spikes. ‘Some nights, bud, the chicks just don’t bite.’
‘I feel that. I didn’t get a single chick myself!’ Mickey exclaimed.
Steve heard the sound of Threetwooh coughing loudly from outside.
‘Well, we always have next time, right?’
Steve thought about that for a bit.
‘I gotta take a break from chick picking for a bit, Mick. A hiatus. Just so I can recharge my… chick engines. You dig?’
‘I dig, Steve,’ Mickey said.
Meat Girls Dot Org 