Thread: The Spectacular Spinnerette (Frost and Z.G.)

ISSUE 1 APR 2016 SPINNERETTE TEACHES TAX ETIQUETTE Do not desire to seek who once we were, Or where we did, or what, or in whose name. Those buildings have been torn down. - For City Lovers by Stephen Vincent Benet From one perspective there was a government building held hostage by someone the papers had referred to as an otherworldly nutbar, and from another it was being annexed from the invaders for the greater glory of Autochthonia. Few people were able to truly penetrate the rambling treatises Alienist regularly sent to media outlets, and those organizations had long ago lost interest in the contradictory and bizarre statements issued within. This attitude ultimately lead to the events of April 14th, the day that Alienist decided to take the IRS building. He had flown in at 10 AM on the back of a pterodactyl like creature, albeit a wet skinned, pulsing mockery possessing three wings and a mass of tentacles where its beak would have been. It skidded to a halt on the roof, a cluster of vestigial promethean limbs breaking to absorb the landing impact. The villain, clad in a green body sleeve with an obsidian disc mask hopped from its back after cooing nonsense syllables to sooth the weeping creature. He snapped a verdant green gloved hand, forcing the creature to twist in on itself with a grateful squawk before disappearing. Alienist walked over the black roof tiles and stepped up onto the ledge, looking down five stories to the milling mess below him. This is my right, he said to himself, arms akimbo. He turned that round plate mask up to the sun feeling the light warm the glassy, matte black circle. Both of his arms shot up, fingers wide open. As he pulled them down to balled fists at his sides fat wounds tore open in reality unleashing a putrid stench. And a rain of giant, starfish limbed creatures falling out like plastic monkeys being shaken from a childs toy container. The spun and flopped in mid air, their fat pseudopods bouncing when the hit the roof. Approximately half missed, silently falling to their doom on the asphalt. A select handful of pedestrians soon found themselves covered in the already putrid entrails of mottled brown-gray monsters, strange muscles twitching in thick ropy masses. Children! For Autochthonia! Alienist cried in a reedy tenor, pointing down the sides of the IRS building. They lurched to the sides, pseudopods contracting and relaxing as they whumped their way across the roof and then down the sides. More portals opened, raining yet more oversized leech skinned starfish down around the villain. The monsters punched their way through windows, throwing themselves at auditors and administrators alike without any other concern than subduing the hostages. On two legs they towered over all but the tallest office workers, revealing a puckered sphincter ringed with rows of concentric fangs steadily oozing thick yellow slime. As the invasion went on more and more starfish monsters fell through his portals until they convered the outside of the building, the only spaces uncovered by their forms the holes they had bashed into the windows. Lines of them formed around the building in waves while Alienist directed them, looked through the optical spots that covered their bodies and listened in through microscopic resonant array dimples. He dug a phablet out of his pocket, an off brand thing with a Linux based OS that, in conjunction with some common underground services, allowed for practical anonymity. The irony of that had never struck him. First he dialed 911, This is the Alienist. These are my demands First, repatriation of all Autochthonic artifacts to Autochthonia. Second, in the Pledge of Allegiance, in place of One Nation under God, etcetera, etcetera shall be a group of feeble, oppressed shitheads bent under the yoke of Autochtonia, readily subjugated, with liberty and justice for only those who know their place. Finally, I will have a statue erected in my honor. Next to a horse, he paused speculatively, then clarified, with five legs. If these are not fulfilled within the next three hours I will begin to eviscerate every IRS auditor in this misbegotten city. Demands safely left with a speechless emergency services operator Alienist closed the call and next made short calls to each of the major media organizations with stringers in the city, as he had a handful of times already, to repeat his demands and trailing threat. Once the communications were taken care of he slotted the phablet back into one of the secret pockets littering his body sleeve and closed his eyes. Someone would show in almost no time--it wasnt some vigilante it would be the military. He felt deeply ambivalent about either as potential foes some alleged heroes were pushovers and some operated with the safety off by default, much like the military. However the military was significantly less prepared to deal with the kind of danger he and his ilk brought to the fore. With that in mind he staged the starfish, creating baffles and traps throughout the building in preparation for the upcoming battle. He directed one to break through the utility door on the roof, Thank you, he muttered to the slobbering nightmare. Then someone came--a blur at first, mercilessly ending starfish after starfish. He felt faint echoes of that life ending pain ripple out along their crude psychic network, the one he facilitated serving to make them freeze and stutter and fall like so many drunken ballerinas. Alienist stopped in the stairwell. Ah, fuck me running. That was fast. He ran a hand over his blank mask, bloodshot brown eyes fluttering as a starfish he had linked his perceptions to exploded in a burst of otherworldly gore.