Trophy Grove

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  Brian S. Wheeler

  Trophy Grove

  Brian S. Wheeler

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2015 by Brian S. Wheeler

  Trophy Grove

  Brian S. Wheeler

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Deadline

  Chapter 2 - The Law of Extermination

  Chapter 3 – Lightcraft

  Chapter 4 – Bringing Out the Big Guns

  Chapter 5 – Scalping Faces

  Chapter 6 – A Mudder’s Price

  Chapter 7 – Bruised but Beautiful

  Chapter 8 – To Rebuild Paradise

  Chapter 9 – The Terms of Titans

  Chapter 10 – A Trophy Case of Aliens

  Chapter 11 – Shadow Monster

  Chapter 12 – Plastic Faces

  Chapter 13 – The Doctor and the Archivist

  Chapter 14 – No Appetite for Pageant Queens

  About the Writer

  Chapter 1 – Deadline

  “I just can’t believe this is the story you want to give me, Zane. I thought we had an understanding on how we wanted to write this thing before you ever left my office and jumped to Tybalt. Frankly, I’m speechless. I’ve never felt so disappointed in any of my star-jumping essayists.”

  I’m pacing back and forth in the swank office of my editor, Harold Higgins, and it’s not going to take much longer until even my featherweight body starts wearing down a path in Harold’s shag carpeting. I know the story Harold wants. He wants the story all those poor, desperate and dingy people hunkered down on our dying planet - all of whom subscribe to a dozen other electronic tabloids other than our own – so intently crave. He wants the kind of story that made me famous. Harold and all his subscribers want a story oozing with sex, drugs, rock n’ roll and cosmic strangeness. Harold wants the story I’ve never before failed to give him.

  “Look at me, Higgy-Baby. Look at me.” I remove my red sunglasses so Harold can get a good, hard look at how insomnia’s swollen my eyes and drawn the color out of my skin. “Can’t you see I’m terrified? How can you ask me to rewrite that story when it’s so evident I’m scared out of my wits?”

  Harold scoffs. “Let me tell you about fear, Zane Thomas. Fear is a deadline. Fear is answering the boardroom’s summons when you lose thirty-percent of your subscribers and fifty-percent of your sponsors because your most popular essayist suddenly decides he wants to write monster stories. This electronic tabloid made you, Zane, and I’m not going to let you repay the favor by letting us down now. Not when a story like this drops into your hand. Not when Teddy Jackson returns to safari and requests you to cover the story. The story’s too big. We can’t afford to disappoint anyone with it.”

  Among all the editors stinking of cologne and sweating of gin, my career gets hitched to Harold Higgins, the biggest health nut remaining on the smog-choked Earth. Harold will drink any pharmaceutical cocktail if two people amid all the colonized stars swear the drink’s added an extra month to their lifetimes. He’ll sweat through any exercise regimen if some house-husband claims such gyrations and flexes have taken even an inch from his waistline. I’ve never wanted a mudder’s toxic cigarette as badly as I want one as I’m pacing back and forth in Harold’s office. I’ve never so desperately wanted to escape reality by tossing a handful of Levant hallucinogenic powder into my eyes. But Harold Higgins is too much of a health fanatic, and I’m just going to further jeopardize any chance of coercing a paycheck out of my editor’s hand by pulling any kind of drug or drink out of one of my Bermuda shorts’ pockets.

  I’ve got to get hold of that paycheck. I know the grove has somehow followed me. I feel the grove hiding beneath the most sensitive and pink folds of my brain matter. I feel the grove peeking through my eyes. I’ve got to get off this old rock before the grove plants its roots into Earthen soil. I hate to think about dooming all those tired faces currently sheltered on our dingy homeworld to that alien intelligence, but I’ll do just that if that’s what it takes for me to get that last paycheck from my editor that’ll let me afford my rocket ride off this marble.

  “I tell you what I’ll do, Higgy-Baby.” I slam my palms upon Harold’s oversize desk. “I’ll rewrite the story. I’ll throw out the old and start the new story from scratch. I’ll write it just the way you want it. I don’t care how it really went down on Tybalt anymore. I’ll have Teddy Jackson mowing down imaginary, alien rhinos made of rock with a laser machine gun. I’ll have Teddy Jackson baiting the most horrible predator you can imagine with poor, dumb mudders.”

  Harold’s fingertips tap together. “What about Marlena Jackson? What kind of ending can you give me with her?”

  I slump into the chair in front of Harold’s desk. “We can’t change that, Higgy-Baby. We have to at least try to warn everybody.”

  Harold shakes his head. “Oh, no we don’t. The only thing we have to do is make people happy. The ending you’ve got here is going to terrify all our subscribers. Hell, Zane, no one’s going to want to take a step off of Earth at all if they think there’s such monsters out there in the stars waiting to clutch them. The entire reason the League’s invested so many marketing dollars in your story is because they’re hoping your writing is going to encourage people to settle new worlds. They’re going to want all that money if they read the pages you’ve delivered me, filled with writing that’s only going to hold people back.”

  “Alright,” I swallow. To hell with the human race. “I’ll come up with a new ending. Marlena Jackson remains unharmed. She’s shaping new light sculptures in a quiet, stone cottage on some quiet, stone countryside. She’s got two dogs and three cats. And she’ll be madly in love with me.”

  Harold nods. “Now, that sounds like the Zane Thomas my readers love. We also need steamy love scenes, like the chapters you gave me after you returned from your stay in the Xanadu resort tower.”

  My nerves are frazzled, and my forehead glistens in sweat. I feel my Tiki shirt dampen because of my fear.

  “Alright. I’ll write sex scenes fueled with more drugs than ever before, Higgy-Baby. Just give me a rocket ticket to Alpine Eleven or to New Venice. Just jump me through the stars to someplace where I can concentrate to give you a new story. Send me to someplace that doesn’t stink with all of Earth’s distractions.”

  My heart drops into my stomach when Harold shakes his head.

  “No way, Zane. We don’t have the time to give you that luxury. I have a deadline, and I needed that story yesterday. The board members and the League are too anxious to see a first draft of the upcoming issue. You’re going to sit down in that chair, and you’re going to hammer out a new story on my ancient typewriter, just so I can hear the words clicking along, so that I can know if you’re going to need any help punching through any writer’s block.”

  I toss my green dealer’s visor onto the floor out of despair. “Listen, Higgy-Baby. You’ve read all the original pages. You know that terrible monster’s brea
thing on the back of my neck. You know the grove is on my heels. Don’t you know I have to flee this planet while I still can? Don’t you understand I’m going to attract the grove to come here?”

  Harold laughs. “Then I suggest you start writing.”

  * * * * *