This week, I’m taking nother Mike’s provided prompt and walking through a few mini-drafts. This is what happens when I can’t make up my mind. And do check out what Leigh Kimmel does with the daytime monsters…but in the meantime, here we go!
There was a snake in the trunk of the car.
“Did you know your trunk is rattling?” Gina asked lazily, banging the bottom of her beer bottle on the dusty metal. The rattle grew in response.
Jimmy kicked the tire and tilted his ear. “Y’don’t think…lemme grab my keys.”
Gina took two quick steps away, faster than he’d ever seen her move since the heatwave rolled in.
He shrugged and wriggled his shoulders through the old Pontiac’s open window to snag the keys. By the time he’d turned back around from where he’d left them in the ignition, she was already on the truckbed, cowboy boots planted, sundress plastered by sweat desperately hoping for a breeze. He bounced the keys on his palm with a jingle. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Not unless you’ve started trafficking in baby rattles, and I ain’t let you not use protection yet.”
He grunted, and stuck the key in the lock with a scrape. The trunk yawned open, revealing darkness. And then a shout, with Jimmy curled up on the ground. Under the continued rattling, a relieved slither was inching away, careless of the destruction she’d caused.
There was a snake in the trunk of the car.
“Will you stop it with the hijacking? Homeland’s getting suspicious.” Erik smacked his brother’s arm. “I know that look. It can’t possibly be worth it.”
His brother gave a shaky sneer and popped the trunk. It stuck at about a centimeter’s gap. “Collectors will pay millions. Especially if we can keep it alive.”
Erik felt the blood run out of his face as he contemplated the gap between car and trunk lid. “Tobias, what did you do?”
A thump, and booted feet were in the air, slamming into first the trunk lid, then into Tobias. A serpentine body wiggled to a vertical position as Erik caught the remnants of his brother.
He eased to his knees, holding his sibling’s headless corpse, and looked up at the hissing creature – woman? – standing – no, coiled – in front of him.
“I swear, I told him to leave the UFOs alone!”
There was a snake in the trunk of the car.
Greaves spoke urgently in Izz’s ear. “Get that one for me. I can use it.”
Izz reached back to the metal links she’d just set back on the vendor’s table, which was really the trunk of a station speeder. The links formed a loose cable that resembled a shining snake. Now that she was studying them more closely, she could see electrical wiring hidden inside the linked rings.
“Hmm.” It was all she could say in front of the vendor, so she tried to infuse heavy doubt into her apparent evaluation of salvaged tech that did who-knows-what. It had the added bonus of sparking the vendor into dramatic body weaves and arm waves of bargaining, clutching his synthwool blanket to his chest as he swore she was impoverishing him.
“That data chip, too.”
This time, Izz gave her AI a grunt. At least chips were multipurpose if this grand idea didn’t work out. Which it might not, since Izz had to function as Greaves’ hands, and they’d discovered she lacked a knack for soldering fine details.
Hours later, she strode up the ramp of the Seven Seas and tossed off her camo-cape. “Talk to me. Finally. You know, you could have explained before I got back. I just can’t respond without sounding nuts.”
“You’re the one who requires sustenance and stopped for noodles,” Greaves said primly. “It wouldn’t do to spoil the surprise before you finish your meal.”
“Jerk. You know I was working all day.” She grabbed electric chopsticks and began stuffing her face, barely tasting the pea-na sauce this station was famous for. “I wan’ know.”
“Manners!”
Izz swallowed and let out a sigh that turned into a cough as she choked on unchewed noodles. “Oh – ack – okay. Fine.”
“In that case, here are the schematics for tonight’s project.” A blueprint displayed on the wall, zoomed into on the links she’d purchased. It scanned outward, showing a woman wearing a piece of jewelry. “Get this right, and you have what looks like a piece of jewelry.”
“And what does it do instead?”
“Protect you when I can’t be there.” The words fell boldly into the galley.
She shoved the noodles to the edge of the counter, pea-na sauce forgotten. “Where’s the soldering iron?”
There was a snake in the trunk of the car.
“I call the planet Snake,” Glen offered. His crooked teeth and greasy hair didn’t support his trustworthiness, nor did his travel-stained overcoat. “Little people. I can’t hear but the hissing. So I call ’em Snake.”
“Sure you do,” said Annie, and pulled her skirts toward her knees in case they poofed out too far and caught whatever bugs Glen might have from sleeping on the road. If only his vehicle wasn’t right in the most direct path, and traffic was terrible this time of day. “I’ll just be going now. My friend is right up there, and…”
He opened the trunk of his car. Inside was a floating sphere, blue water surrounded by purple and grey mountains, clouds swirling around the darkness with wisps of white mist.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“Ain’t it just?”
She thought he might be smiling, but couldn’t take her eyes off the planet as it grew closer, her head suddenly a riot of pain, and into the darkness she flew, the trunk slamming closed with a whump, until she landed on hands and knees on the grassy surface.
