The Chronicles of Smith & Jones

Chapter Forty - Galactic Empire

Prince Jackson Armando Chancel Abrams Saint-Bernardo the Eleventh sat in a throne much too big for his skinny ass. He yawned daintily with one hand, popping it back and forth over his open mouth, pinkie finger extended because he'd seen old women do it while they sipped their tea and had thought it looked pretty cool. Perhaps not surprisingly, Grandma Saint-Bernardo was his hero in life. Prince Jackson didn't have a girlfriend, and there wasn't much room for women in his life—not with Grandma still alive and kicking, bless her wrinkled soul.

A man had just been devoured before him by starved robots, his organs hung from the rafters, his stomach baked into a pie—which had been pre-chewed by an assistant and transferred down Prince Jackson's throat—and Prince Jackson was dreadfully bored by the sheer unimportance of it. The man had begged and pleaded, as those in the throes of death are wont to do, and then the man had crapped and pissed all over the floor while the robots descended on him. It was all so trivial, so cliché. Where was the spontaneity? Just once he'd love to see a Deadsoon come in with an attitude, give him some lip, maybe fight back. It would be a good change.

Prince Jackson didn't know it yet, but that was exactly what he was about to receive.

***

Her name was Kris. She didn't remember much, but she knew her name. All she remembered aside from her name was a man by the name of Armitage, cute but a bit of a wuss. And for some reason her foot had been lodged in a toilet.

"Sloyve," the clean-cut brute in the grey suit said to her. He had a high-tech pistol at his hip, and many stars and stripes across his chest. "It's toyme f' you t' doy. Come awn now."

She stood, lifting the heavy, charge-emitting handcuffs, and followed the brute through the pristine, astoundingly shiny halls. Helmeted men—and she presumed women, given this modern age of feminism—goose-stepped in formation, blasters held at the ready across their chests. Kris caught a glimpse outside through a floor-to-ceiling window in one of the passing rooms and marvelled at the towering spires, the freighters rolling slowly across the sky, the attack fighters doing loops around everything like insects.

"Is this Galactic fuckin' Empire?" she asked. "It is, ain't it!"

The brute growled over his shoulder, "You watch y' bloody mouth, sloyve. Nobody sullies the noyme o' the Galawctic Empiya, y' go' tha'?"

Kris nodded to herself, satisfied in her knowledge of the Genreverse, but said nothing. She could do without hearing another word of the brute's awful, low-rent accent.

She was led into an enormous chamber. At the other end, looking quite small from the distance, was a man slouching on a throne, his chin resting on one raised palm. A pair of attractive young women stood on each side of him with their hands primly at their backs.

"Prince Jawkson, siya," the brute said, bowing low enough to sniff his own balls. His voice echoed in the chamber.

Tempted by such a possibility, Kris drew back her boot and let fly a kick straight between the brute's legs. She rushed forward and wrapped the charged handcuffs around his neck and jerked backward, strangling him. She dropped the brute's corpse at her feet and, always keeping her eyes on this "Prince Jawkson" character, rooted around the brute's pockets for the key to her cuffs. After she released herself, she stepped forward.

The prince clapped like an old lady, gently slapping one hand against the other as if he didn't wish to disturb his abusive parents from their loud, rage-fuelled sex. "Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. You're pretty good, for a Deadsoon."

"Where're my fuckin' friends?" Kris found herself asking. And then she remembered Smith & Jones, and even the other ones nobody seemed to care about anymore—H'ver and Boogaloo... oh, and Rick, the forgotten member of the Smith & Jones crew, a gay screen-door salesman from Habanero, Wisconsin.

"Your friends are dead, Deadsoon. Like you will be. Soon."

"I don't fuckin' believe ya."

The prince shrugged. "Fine, don't believe me. Besides, it's time for you to pleasure me. I'm the prince of the Galactic Empire. I deserve to be pleasured."

Kris retorted: "Ya got two hands 'n' an anus, don'tcha?"

The prince's jaw clenched. He stared down at his feet, his greasy hair hanging down from his forehead. "YOU WILL PLEASURE ME!"

"Show me my fuckin' friends and, sure, I'll give ya a blumpkin."

The prince visibly shook with fury. Clearly he wasn't used to people standing up to him. "Fine," he said in a whine. "Bring in Rick." He said the man's name with a forced smile.

One of the assistants turned on her heels and sped off out of view. She came back moments later with a man in tow. He had a big gay beard and wore a rather gay-looking sparkly vest. His hair was gay, his grin was gay, and the way he let rip a fart before running to hug Kris was quite gay, too.

"Rick!" she said, rubbing her cheeks in his beard.

"Wassup, gurrrrrrl," Rick, the screen-door salesman and one of Smith & Jones (& Kris)'s oldest friends, said. He kissed the air beside each of her cheeks. "How you been doin'?" He bobbed his head from side to side with each and every syllable. He was quite fun to watch, if not listen to.

"I'm fine, Rick. How're ya yerself?"

"Oh, y'know, gettin' beaten on by big closeted boys. But what else is new!" He cackled in quite a gay manner.

"PLEASUUUUUUUUUUUURE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" the prince screamed from across the room.

"Um, do you mind?" Rick asked him, one hand on his jutted-out hip. "Tryin' to have a conversation here. Gurrrrrrl, please." He snapped his fingers three times, in the shape of a triangle (something he'd seen on TV before).

"Wanna get outta here?" Kris glanced at her watch. "White fuckin' light should be comin' in about ten secs."

"Gurrrl, it's been a while since I've done ten sex!" He giggled and gave Kris a weak high-five.

The white light came on cue, and Kris and her oldest friend Rick disappeared from the Galactic Empire forever.

"PLEASUUUUUUUURE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Prince Jackson Armando Chancel Abrams Saint-Bernardo the Eleventh continued to scream at the now-emptier room.