“What are you doing here?”
“Me?” asked Trevor. “Shit man, you wouldn’t have this job without me. A good crowbar couldn’t have pried your ass out of that cow factory.”
“Mr. Milstead,” Tasha said. “Now isn’t the time, in my opinion.”
“Nobody’s asking your opinion, Willing.” Trevor hunkered down, coming eye level to the Sticker. “I thought Annette would stop talking about you… but even after visiting every damn island in Hawaii, she’s guilty over your ass drying up in some cut rate slaughter house, no offense to my good ole boy Gerald Bailey.”
The Sticker narrowed his eyes. “You got me fired.”
“You got yourself fired, from what Bailey tells me. And now you’ve got some regulators looking for you — something about toxic waste and torturing a cow with a stun gun. I don’t even care if all that stuff’s real. With that kind of heat, I can’t hire you back at the onion plant, not even to appease Annette. I have to get you out of the picture and hope she forgets your dumb ass.”
“Sir,” said Tasha diplomatically, “but is working the Princess’s ship really the answer to that?”
“It’s a slaughter ship, isn’t it? That’s what he does, isn’t it? You told the committee he wanted to go far away, didn’t you?”
Tasha looked down from his gaze and shook her head unhappily.
“Everybody on the committee signed off on it. Your father even endorsed the idea.”
“Father is only getting his information from you, and he won’t answer my calls.”
“A wise man.” Trevor stood and his knees crackled. The Sticker found comfort in that, made the asshole mortal, if only a little bit. They locked eyes for a moment. “I’d offer my hand,” said Trevor, “as your old boss, or as your new one, but I know that’s a waste.”
“You’re not as dopey as I thought.”
Trevor gave him a crooked smile. “Have a safe trip. Don’t get yourself killed out there too soon. That drug therapy is an expensive investment. Meanwhile, your wife will never go wanting.”
Trevor patted Tasha on the shoulder before leaving. The Sticker slid off the stool and nodded to the blue ramp. “Is that where I go? Can I just move on? Right now? Far away, please?”
Tasha regarded him stoically. “Milstead shouldn’t have come down here. I’m sorry for the harassment. I was hoping you’d never even know he was my supervisor.”
“It’s okay. That’s par for my life, and I have nowhere else to go now, do I?”
Tasha gestured to a pair of feet in a dashed outline on the ramp. “Stand there. That’s all you have to do. I will try to visit tomorrow. You’ll be greeted by some of our other employees once you settle.”
The Sticker pointed at the outline for further confirmation.
Tasha nodded.
He stepped into the dashed feet.
“I’m going to leave the room,” said Tasha. “You can go ahead and take off your underwear then.”
He cleared his throat. “’K.”
The transparent membrane flaps pulsed before him.
A moment later the door shut and she was gone.
The Sticker dropped his boxer shorts and kicked them to the wall. His face heated as he speculated on how many people were on the other side of the observation window. He’d never been a shy person, but the idea that Trevor might be looking on was more than unnerving.
The crystal kelp looking things waved faster before him.
Guess there’s more important things to worry about than nudity…
A cold, plastic kiss touched his neck. He turned.
Layers of those flaps stretched behind him. It went into infinity. But how—?
“Keep forward please,” said a voice piped into the room. Pieces of the command distorted and repeated in his brain and his ears. “Please forward keep.” “Keep keep keep forward forward forward please please please.” “Peep Korward Flease.” “Kuh-kuh-kuh, fuh-fuh-fuh, kee-kee-kee.” “Ease, Orward, Eep.”
He saw people before him, stretching forever. But it was him. Trillions, (zillions?) of the Stickers. He saw the back of his head, the long scar down his right flank, his bare ass, legs. He shifted and all the copies shifted. It wasn’t a reflection. They were there! They were all there, all alive. This wasn’t happening like this, right?
The membrane flaps smacked past his body, jarring him left and right. Just as he began to question whether more were coming, the process quickened tenfold. His body stung as the membranes continued their assault. It’d become so fast, they didn’t seem physical now, like the flaps moved through him, a mist, a poison, an aggressive spirit that possessed him and exorcised itself at the speed of light.
When it all stopped, the Sticker heard himself screaming incoherent things that conflicted with the thousand ill thoughts in his mind.
Three men lingered before him in a freezing cold metal room. They were younger than the Sticker, probably early twenties. Two were African American and the other Caucasian. The lighter skinned African American grinned. He had a stack of clothing under his right arm. “Yup, that’s about how I remember my trip, too.”
The other two men evenly smiled and nodded.
“That’s Harper and Timothy,” he said.
“And who are you?” asked the Sticker.
“Razz,” he replied. “Welcome aboard.”
The Sticker changed into his new clothes, which appeared to be a thin cream colored bodysuit made of long-john material. It did the trick though. This place was freezing and the inner lining of the suit sent comforting, if foreign-feeling, waves of warmth into his skin. He guessed he was onboard a spaceship, but he couldn’t see any windows showing space outside. There was a strange back-and-forth feeling in the core of his stomach, as though an imaginary fish hook tugged at his intestines; he assumed this had to do with some kind of artificial gravity imposed by the ship. He could only guess. The Sticker was more of a western type of fellow and hadn’t even sat through Star Wars.
His shoes were closer to apparel to which he was accustomed: work boots with hard, difficult to tie shoelaces and reinforced steel in the toes. He got the first on and was busy tugging on the second when the manually operated cabin door slid open.
The man named Timothy entered the room, his skin as pale as a ghost. Sporting a bald head, he indeed could have passed for one of the Casper variety.
“Yeah?” asked the Sticker.
“You have to come right away. She’s hungry again.”
“Who?”
Timothy tossed him what looked like a small firearm. It didn’t resemble a ray gun, more like a starter pistol with a bronze comb on top of it.
The Sticker followed Timothy into the hall. “Is this about the Princess?”
The other man walked so fast, the Sticker had to jog alongside him. “Sorry, you usually get a few days to acclimatize to the environment, but we are shorthanded, and didn’t expect the Princess to acquire another Fanjlion ship today. She’s already had three hundred processed today. Her appetite is getting worse.”
“What’s this weapon you gave me?”
“It’s called a Fixer Gun. It will fire bursts of fifty staple-darts and that clip holds twenty-five hundred. Target only the head. The Princess will not eat brains.”
“I’m not used to this… kind of work. Guns. I don’t do guns.”
“We were all new to this once. Don’t worry, the Fanjlions are only a passing taste. The Princess will get bored of them eventually.”
Timothy took another corner and the two other men, Razz and Harper, waited in an area where the hall expanded into a docking chamber. “Come on,” they both said, waving frantically.
The Sticker and Timothy sidled up against the wall with the other men.