Chuck Schading

This piece was written for the first round of NYC Midnight’s 2024 Flash Fiction content. It had to be a sci-fi story that took place in a barroom. There also needed to be a coffin in the story.

“Well if it ain’t Officer Dinkus!” Overton Shanks yelled across the filthy and crowded barroom, his long and dangly gray nose swaying as he plodded toward the end of the crystal bar on his stump-like padded feet. “What, you chasing down another kid all hepped up on the goofy gas?”

“Seen any Pagonians slithering around here lately?” Lt. Deke Panazer asked as he elbowed his way up to the bar and squeezed in between a couple of sinister-looking Alabacks arguing over directions and a massive, half-conscious Talion with its spiked back and unmistakable musk. 

“Pagonians?” Shanks asked. “What’s that? A new kind of ship or something?”

“Don’t be cute, Shanks. Not that you ever could be,” Deke growled. “We both know who I’m looking for and why. Ka’mara Dodds. The so-called Queen of Happiness. All those kids dying. Probably trillions now across a thousand planets. The gas is coming from her network.”

Command wanted the elusive Dodds at all costs. And when they said at all costs, they meant at all costs.

“We think you’re the only slob left alive who knows where she is,” Deke added, hand resting on his holster. “Now where is she?”

Shanks’ exposed belly jiggled as he laughed, and he spoke loudly to make sure he could be heard over the din in The Hole, this notorious waystation anchored in the doldrums between Quasar 97633 and the Parsus Black Hole. 

“It all depends on what you’re willing to do to get that information,” Shanks boomed as he slipped a hand into his black leather vest — his only item of clothing — and pulled out a small glass bottle.

A hush came over the crowd, even the bickering Alabacks, and Deke knew what it meant too.

The indigo swill, a liquified form of the already deadly gas, went by as many names as there were planets on which people had died from it. But they all meant the same thing.

Blue Death.

Deke’s eyes involuntarily went to the sleek metal coffin hanging on the wall above the bar. He was well aware that Shanks kept it for occasions just like this.

Blue Death affected everyone and every species differently. For some it was euphoric. For others orgasmic. For others still, well, you ended up in the coffin until you became too ripe for the customers to stand it. 

For humans, it was usually fifty-fifty. 

Pure bliss or pure death.

And Shanks loved it. Lived for it actually.

“Whattya say, Dinkus?” Shanks snarled, tapping the bottle on the bar. “How badly do you wanna know where ol’ Ka’mara Dodds is?”

“Do it!” someone shouted.

“Hell yes!” shouted another. “Here we go, baby!”

Command had said at all costs. But what they really meant was succeed or die. Deke knew the stakes, of course, but the reward for a life in the patrol meant a life of leisure and excess once it was over. All you had to do was survive.

Shanks tapped the bottle on the bar impatiently.

“Well?” he asked.

Deke took a deep breath and another long look at the coffin.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

Shanks slid two shot glasses onto the bar, popped the cork and slowly poured a sizzling thimbleful into each. 

“Hey Shanks, how many times you survive this?” someone shouted from the crowd.

Shanks laughed again, a sliver of brackish saliva slowly dripping from the corner of his disgusting grin.

“Every time!” Shanks boasted. “Plenty of nosy bastards been in that coffin though. This guy’s about to be number 156.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll just tell me where she is then?” Deke said. 

“Nah, you survive, you win. Then I’ll tell ya what you wanna know,” Shanks snarled. “One, two, three, drink … then I put your ass up on the wall.”

The crowd counted with him.

“One!”

Deke thought of his first day at the academy, the time he fucked up a drill and Commander Flux told him he’d end up dead before he finished his first tour.

“Two!”

He thought of his second wife. The one who left him after he ignored her pleas and signed up for a third tour anyway. All the girlfriends probably didn’t help either. 

“Three!”

Deke closed his eyes and thought of a retirement on Cellus, living out the rest of his days with a drink in his hand and a woman on his lap.

The crowd cheered as the two knocked back Blue Death in a single ballsy gulp.

The first thing Deke noticed was the heat. His mouth, throat and belly were on fire. And it was spreading through his body, from the crown of his head straight through to his ass and toes. The pain was excruciating. Deke’s body seized up as the pressure built, and he literally felt like he was going to explode. 

Shanks simply grinned and held both hands up in triumph, encouraging the cheers from the crowd.

The next sensation Deke felt was entirely unexpected. 

A sudden bliss. Like a million happy thoughts all at once. Women. Riches. Power. Everything he always wanted right there in front of him. If this was the end, it was a hell of a way to go. 

Suddenly there was a collective gasp from the crowd, and Deke’s euphoria quickly dissipated.

There before him stood Shanks, his huge body rigid, thin streaks of mustard yellow blood dripping from his long nose, droopy eyes and festering hellhole of a mouth. Yet somehow he looked happy. Blissful even.

Then Shanks dropped, facedown behind the bar, his giant elephantine backside exposed for all to see.

The crowd gasped. Relieved to be alive, Deke smiled. 

Then he remembered the mission. 

Shanks was dead. And without the info he needed, Deke soon would be too. High command would make sure of it.

So with the sweet taste of Blue Death still in his mouth, he reached over, grabbed the bottle and poured himself another glass.

“Bottoms up, Shanks,” he said. “See you on the wall.”