* * *
The old man woke to find himself trapped in a stasis field in a dark room that smelled of sterile alcohol and baby powder. There was a naked bearded woman lying spread-eagle in front of him that seemed to glow with her own unnatural light, and he noticed that his floating nakedness was slowly drifting toward hers.
"Come here, lover," she said with the deep guttural voice of a hard-drinkin whiskey man. Her voice lowered to a throaty whisper. "Oh, I'm gonna take your fat cock and -- "
The old man screamed so hard blood began to drivel from his nostrils, and he awoke from his grotesque nightmare to find himself in a stasis field, in a brightly-lit white room that smelled of sterile alcohol and baby powder. A man who had the look of a recently-escaped loon, who must have been the psychologist, studied him from a small glass window in the wall facing him.
"Good morning, Mr. Ma. . ." The old man instantly tuned out the whiny voice that emanated from a static-filled speaker. I'd rather have that dream back, the old man thought sarcastically. Maybe if I screamed really loud. . .
". . .do you have anything to say about that?"
"What?"
"Do you have anything to say about what I just said to you?"
"What did you just say to me?"
"Are you being difficult, Mr. Maddington?"
"What?"
"Mr. Maddington, I asked you a perfectly reasonable question. Do you have an answer for me or what?"
"I didn't hear what you said. I wasn't paying you any attention."
"What I said, was -- "
"I don't care to hear it, whatever it was. All I have to say to you or anyone else is that I was told that I have the right to remain silent. Anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law. I have the right to an attorney. If I cannot afford one -- "
"Never mind my question, Mr. Maddington. You're sane. You'll stand trial. Get him out of there, I have. . ."
Drone drone drone. . .was all the old man could think. Drone drone as he was taken to a cell overnight, from the cell to another paddy wagon, from the wagon to the courtroom. . .At least justice is a little swifter now than it was in the old days. . .I must be mad if I think that's a good thing. . .
"All rise for the honorable Judge Vordelmor, member of the Interplanetary League of Judges, Master of Justice, Esteemed of Vordelvorian foot lore, graduate of Kilgore Texas University, and Judge by right and privilege of this court."
The judge entered his courtroom, sat and banged and banged away with his gavel, until all eyes of the courtroom were on him, eyes impatiently wondering why he did all that banging when it was already quiet when he entered the room. . .
The first case came before the Judge, and the old man watched with interest. Two young men in the traditional orange overalls stood shuffling their feet with their heads bent low. One kept looking over at the other like he wanted to kill the idiot, and the old man knew why. He'd heard their racket all the night before.
"I'm gonna kill you, Billy. I can't believe you did that shit to me. Fuck you man. Fuck you!" Said the one that now glared at the other.
"I'm sorry man, I'm sorry." The other would respond.
"Yall need to shut the fuck up! People are tryin to sleep around here," said various someone elses. And that pretty much wrapped up that whole night.
"Let me get this straight," the judge said through his bizarre mouth mandibles with his unmistakable buzzing Texan accent. "Officer Williams pulled you over for speedin," he said, gesturing with one of his large feet that poked their way from around the bench, "And you," gesturing at the other one, "had a few twenty sacks of weed stashed on ya." He laughed, a strange guttural clicking sound. "And since you knew you were gonna be searched, and you didn't wanna goda jail by yerself, you snuck some of it into yer friend here's shirt pocket." The judge watched as the one with killing eyes mouthed the words, "I'm gonna kill you, you stupid son of a bitch," and erupted into a yowling fit that sounded like a bass-voiced bumblebee.
"You two are about the stupidest motherfuckers I've ever laid eyes on in my entire life!" He couldn't stop chuckling. The old man observed the judge's color change from its natural pale red to a deep blue. He'd heard that meant something, but he was certain he didn't give a shit. Sentence was passed, and another orange-clad fellow whose nose and mouth was stained an unnatural white came to stand before the judge.
"You were picked up hitch-hikin out on 79, sniffin a can of white spray paint, am I right?"
"Uh, yeah, yer honer. But I wusn't hitch-hikin. I wus just walkin, is all."
"Just out walkin. Well, officer Tukelo says he saw your thumb out while you were sniffin that spray paint of yers, says in his report that you were sprayin away on that can of yers, flingin that thumb around like you actually expected someone to pick yer crazy ass up. Are you callin officer Tukelo a liar?. . .Well?"
"Naw, yer honer. He just musta misunnerstood what I was doin, is all. I wuz swingin my arms around, yer honer, just like the officer said I was, but it was becaws of the high I wuz gettin off th' paint, yer honer. Spray paint is legal, yer honer. I ain't done nuttin wrong." His eyes were as glazed as a jelly doughnut, focusing on nothing. He kind of swayed a bit, too.
If a look of disgust could be determined on the judge's fuzzy, insectoid, bear-like face, then that was the one he was giving the paint-sniffer. His huge head tilted a bit, and one of his oral mandibles twisted up into a snarl.
"I'm gonna let you go with time served," he said, his voice amused. "Yer free to go."
The judge had already dismissed the paint-sniffer in his mind, and was looking over his next case, when he heard the paint-sniffer mumble something that sounded like "Big yeti-footed mutherfucker thinks he can -- "
"Bailiff, grab that man!" The judge shook his head with an air of amused bafflement. "Yer not too bright, are ya, paint boy. Yer smart mouth just got you thirty days of deluxe accommodations in the county lockup. You'll probably meet a guy named Joe Bob. Tell 'im Judge Vordelmor sent ya. Take that idiot out of here!"
"Joe Bob. . .Joe Bob. . ." the paint-sniffer muttered as he left the courtroom, in a way that suggested he might actually do as the judge instructed. The judge looked like he wanted to throw his gavel at him.
A split second from one moment till the next passed, and a stout-fat fellow with grey hair and a pubic-looking beard sneezed a huge ball of phlegm onto the bald head of the man seated in front of him. The courtroom exploded in laughter, especially from a plump, long-curly-haired Hispanic fellow seated next to pubic-beard that couldn't seem to control himself. He was almost removed from the courtroom. The judge looked up once, and might have smiled. The next case, incidentally, involved that same stout fat guy, involving him and a speeding ticket and an alleged blocked road sign. That droned on for about thirty minutes, with what seemed the entire courtroom laughing every minute at the antics of the grey-haired man and his attempt at defending himself as his own lawyer.
Old man Maddington didn't pay much attention. He could only think about how much time he'd have to spend in jail this time. He was too old to go to prison for as long as he was going up for, and expect to ever see the light of day again.
The old man didn't hear the charges read against the next defendant, or the interplay between him and the judge, but when it came to the sentencing, an ominous dark cloud of a mood entered the courtroom that brought the old man out of his daze. For some reason he could not explain, his attention became focused closely on the court's proceedings.
The guy standing before the judge was short, with a deranged crop of red hair, and he wore a black duster that almost touched the black and white marble tiled floor. Beskulled earrings, steel-tipped brown boots with intricate runes, and a scar on his right cheek that made him look like he'd smiled too much on that side of his face completed his grim appearance.
". . .say again, your honor?"
"Yer sentenced to two months in the state penitentiary, are you deaf, boy? Next case!"
The bailiff began to move in.
"I don't find that acceptable, your honor." The man's voice was hard, and low pitched. "I think you should let me go free. One must not cage a Lord of Chaos. If it were possible." He calmly took off his duster, to reveal the black T-shirt he wore with a huge gold Chaos symbol embossed on it. No one seemed to think his behavior was out of the ordinary. Everyone in the courtroom except for the old man seemed spellbound, in a state that made him wonder who the old people really were from the way some of them drooled. Not that he drooled when he dozed. . .
The man rolled up the sleeve of his T-shirt, to expose a small tattoo. "You see this tattoo? he asked, his voice lowering almost to a whisper. He pointed at the tattoo, and turned his eyes to the judge. "I am a Lord of CHAOS!" Then, in a voice perfectly calm, "Blue butt-fungus in the rain only grows on Tuesday when its nighttime when it's screamed twice in the last three days. . .unless, it's a leap year, and that really FUCKS up your whole equation." He smiled warmly, his eyes seeming to dance with a merry fire. He zipped down his blue jeans and pulled a nine-millimeter pulse snub from the holster on his inner thigh. "There is a Santa Claus!" and in the blink of a gnats eye the judge had a hole a size not much smaller than a dime burned through his brain. The old man held back a chuckle.
The bailiff was next, followed by every man in uniform in the room before they had time to go for their guns. The Lord of Chaos then turned his gun to the crowd, blue bursts from the pulse snub firing on them indiscriminately. Heads, chests and limbs were reduced to their sub-particles, and they were the lucky ones, unless they lived; they weren't trampled to death by the frothing crowd trying to push its huge mass through the court's much smaller double doors.
A skinny old balding off-duty deputy sheriff came in from a side door, brandishing a sawed-off shotpulse. The man in black saw him from the corner of his eye, and turned and blasted gun and arm into atoms. The deputy whined like a little girl that had just had her little dollie stolen by her brother, and pulled a pocket knife out of his pocket with his remaining hand, and rushed at the Lord of Chaos, tiny knife held high. Again the man in black turned his gun toward the deputy.
"Hold!" said the Lord of Chaos. The deputy stopped dead in his tracks, and stared with his mouth hanging open. His almost exaggerated expression reminded the old man of the long-dead cartoons he watched as a child. The man in black tossed his pulse snub to the ground, and raised his arms high into the air, his expression supplication.
"Now you may kill me, if you wish," the Lord of Chaos said.
The deputy looked at him, at first as if he didn't understand a word the man had said, then he jumped at the man in black with a quick jerky motion, and stuck the knife into the man's jugular. The Lord of Chaos made no move to pull the knife from his neck. He stood calmly as his life's blood poured from his neck in a black flood. He slowly sank down to his knees into his bloody pool. His arms fell to his sides, and with his remaining strength he laid down on his back, and closed his eyes.
The old man felt a knot in his throat, and turned away.
He knew he'd better run for it while he still had a chance; he wouldn't get another. He ran over to the dead man and pulled the knife from his throat. He would need it to cut the bar-code from his arm later. It wouldn't be the first time.
Old man Maddington picked up the half-charged pulse snub from the floor. The deputy made no move to stop him; he was still staring at the corpse of the man he killed. "Wow," he was saying to himself, "I just killed a madman with my bare hands. I'll be a hero. . .Wow. Dale the hero. . . After all these years. . ."
The old man went out the side entrance the deputy had emerged from, which led outdoors where the deputy had parked his hovertruck. The door was wide open with the keys still in the ignition. He noticed in passing that it was one of the models capable of space flight as he shut the door and turned the key. The hovertruck grumbled into starting, but when it did start it purred like a quiet woman's orgasm.
The hovertruck had enough room for his hovercycle in the cargo area, so he stopped to pick it up on his way to. . .where? Interesting question.
He prepared the hovertruck for space-mode, looked over the controls. . .that deputy must've been a nut. How many damned weapons are one of these things supposed to have? This ain't a standard sheriff's hovertruck. . .damn! The old man's smile was slow, with every ounce of malice his old wrinkled mouth could summon. Throw me in jail, will they? Heh heh heh heh. . .
The hovertruck broke Earth's orbit, and was immediately hailed by Space Traffic Control.
"Sheriff-truck #102304978 Veil, you are on an unauthorized flight, unauthorized flight-vector. You are a hazard to the space lanes. Transmit code and respond immediately," a coarse male voice grated over the intercom.
The old man couldn't find the radio controls. By the time he did, the speakers spoke again.
"Transmit code and respond immediately, Sheriff-truck #102304978 Veil, or be destroyed. Be aware that this is your final warning. Transmit code and respond immediately!"
The old man hit the send button. "Kiss my dick," was all he said before he adjusted the heavy-duty gravity damping field that would allow him to escape into netherspace. If he'd been in a civilian craft with standard A-grav, he'd be dead or captured before he could fully escape Earth's gravity well enough to go into netherspace. He scrolled through preset courses on the netherspace console's monitor until he found one that would lead him to one of the areas of the galaxy not under the control of the Interplanetary Space League. He flipped a switch, and the ship's nethercutters sliced open a hole in space.
The next instant the old man found himself surrounded by unfamiliar stars, as the truck aligned itself for its next jump. He was in the middle of nowhere, in a dead black spot of space light-years from any stars. He canceled his jump, and smiled. He unstrapped himself from his seat, and tried to open the glove compartment. It was locked. He killed the engine, took the keys from the ignition, and fumbled around until he found the key, and opened it.
. . .see if this fucker has any tobacco on board. . .the old man's smile grew wider. It ain't tobacco, but it sure as hell will do. . .
Old man Maddington set the ship to drift, rolled himself a fat blunt from the fat sack of Happy Billy's Happy Happy Joy Joy Weed he found in the glove box, and lit it with sweet relish. I haven't been able to afford this shit ever since it became legal. . .ahh. . . The sheriff's hovertruck drifted with an easy spin through the stellar void, and the old man drifted in his own way with it.