One thing that I've noticed over the years is that most of the girls can only really read one of my moods consistently. Take Nikki for instance, I don't have to say anything to her for her to know that I'm upset. She can tell just by the way I'm walking. Nikki is the only person in the world who would see me walking across the street and know by my shoulders that something was bothering me. She'd sneak up behind me and give me a big hug and kiss my shoulder. Sometimes she would ask what was bothering me but most of the time she knew better. She knew I wasn't going to tell her until I was ready so she wasn't going to waste energy trying to get it out of me. She just acknowledged that there was a problem. Now that she's in jail there is nobody left.
It's just me and the Three Kings. Don't get the idea that I didn't know Jim, Jack and Jose before she went away. I knew them and I even had a friendly relationship with a Russian named Smirnoff and I'd even been known to travel around the bend with my boy Jaeger if I was running low on options. The thing was without her to help me out I'd started sailing aboard the Cutty Sark. It was getting kinda ugly; even I had to admit that I had a problem.
I guess that's where the good news kicks in, at least where I expected it to kick it. Karen wasn't able to tell when I was pissed off about something. Today the problem was the rent, I should have been depressed. I wasn't though. I was pissed off because there was a stack of bills that absolutely had to come before the rent. I had to pay at least a portion of that to keep my cell phone up and gas in my car. Without my cell phone to generate leads and gas in my car I couldn't go to work to make money to pay the bills. Logically my rent simply wasn't my top priority because I couldn't hope to pay future bills if I couldn't drive to work to make money for future bills. So I was pissed off when I sat down with a double shot of vodka.
Karen obviously didn't notice that anything was wrong. That's because she notices when I'm frustrated, mostly when I'm having writer's block. If she'd noticed the glare in my eyes when I sat down at the computer she probably would have run as fast as she could, or she would have tried something, anything to get my mind on something slightly less horrific. Too bad for her.
When I found her she was out camping, I think she'd just gotten up because she was kind of half dressed. She had on a pair of boots but no socks, a pair of boxers that was just barely half way down her thighs and a plain shirt that didn't quite cover her naval. Her hair was twisted up at the back of her skull, to call it a bun is to give it too much credit, it was a knot so it didn't get in her way. "Hey Sean. How's the writing coming along?"
"Not good. I'd like to introduce you to my new friend. Broccoli." As I spoke, or typed rather, he appeared. It's hard to tell how tall he was without something nearby to gauge him by but he couldn't have been less than eight feet tall and probably five feet across at the shoulders. I'm guessing he weighed seven, maybe eight hundred pounds of pure beastly muscle. I mean his abs were about as big as Arnold's pecs were at his peak. He was wearing a pair of loose fitting white pants with a blue sash tied around his waist. "He's gonna kill you."
"What?!" The look on her face was priceless. She turned slowly to face the man I'd sent to end her and her jaw dropped. His hair was long for a man's probably about eight inches and it was bright gold and standing on end. "I hate dying! Sean stop it! Stop it right now!"
Not that I had any intention on stopping what I was doing anyway but Broccoli took that decision out of my hands when he attacked. Karen didn't even see him move, she just felt his fist slam into her chest sending her flying through the air reducing several trees to splinters before one finally stopped her flight and she sank to the ground. "Sean stop it!" Karen begged spitting up a mouthful of blood.
"Maybe you should beg me." Broccoli suggested as he appeared over her. His hand was nearly as big as her torso, it was easy for him to grab her by the back of her head and lift her up. I thought for sure he would have broken her ribs when he started driving her into his knee but other than a few mouthfuls of blood that hinted at internal injuries she was still okay when he threw her away shattering several more trees along the path.
"Hurry up and kill her. I want her dead and then we can go and kill Nikki and maybe Kelly next. We'll see how I feel after that." Broccoli ignored me and started stalking towards Karen like a monster from a horror flick. He could have ran and killed her quickly but instead he was just calmly walking giving her time to panic. Time to run and stumble. "Get it over with, there is plenty here for you to kill."
Karen forced herself back to her feet but she didn't runaway. She stood straight and tall and stared at the approaching monster. "I won't let you kill me." She spat.
"What are you going to do about it insect?"
A half smile crossed her lips. "This." Karen threw her head back and let loose a war cry. At first nothing happened but then the air around her started to crackle with energy. "Kill her now before she gets any real power!" Broccoli was still ignoring me when the small rocks around her started to levitate around her orbiting around her. "Broccoli! I order you to kill her right now!"
"I am a Spinach Warrior and I will kill her at her full power. Now shut up!" I hate it when my creations stop behaving. Usually the guys are pretty well behaved too. By this point Karen's hair was starting to stand on end occasionally flashing shades of white gold.
Karen took a breath and gave one last shout and her hair stood completely on edge and stayed the same shade of gold as Broccoli's. Unlike him Karen was standing in the center of a golden corona, the energy she'd gathered visible around her. "This'll do." She lunged forward and drove her fist into his jaw. His head moved just a few inches and he grinned.
"Is that it little bug?"
"No!" Karen shouted. A quick series of back flips put a little distance between them and she closed her eyes letting another war cry out. This one was short though but when it finished her aura crackled with lightning. Karen pressed two fingers to her forehead and smiled. "Try this on for size. BLACK SPIRAL DANCER!" She shouted pointing her fingers directly at his heart. A lance of black energy fired from her fingers and should have gone straight through him. He batted it aside like it was an everyday handball. "Holy shit." She was beginning to understand what I had put her against. This wasn't just some psychopath. This was a genuine monster, the legendary Spinach Warrior Broccoli. He couldn't be reasoned with; he couldn't be killed or trapped. Karen leapt into the air flying straight up.
"Running away?" Broccoli taunted tilting his head to watch her run.
"Just getting a better shot." Karen responded thrusting one finger over head. A small black ball of energy crackled into existence over her finger. A moment later it blossomed to double its original size, now almost as large as her body. "You want to prove your strength? Stay right there!" Karen roared as loud as her lungs would allow and the orb grew exponentially and she started to laugh hysterically.
Broccoli's eyes widened as he sensed the huge amount of energy in the attack. "I told you to kill her earlier!" I don't know if he heard me or not, Karen wasn't nearly as interested in gloating as he'd been and she unleashed that hellish attack at the same time I was shouting. There was no way for Broccoli to avoid the attack, no way to dodge or deflect it. It slammed into him and drove him down into the ground digging a crater before the orb detonated sending up a mushroom cloud like an atomic bomb.
Karen's breasts were heaving with each breath as he let herself sink back to the earth. All the trees for miles had been completely destroyed, outside that there was a ring where they'd all been knocked flat. "What the fuck was that about? You're supposed to at least rape me before you kill me! And I thought we decided the erotic horror was going to be about the survivors!"