Disclaimer: Blame this one on watching one too many Road Runner cartoons…
The last train of the night came to a squealing, lumbering stop. Its automatic doors slid open to discharge a lone figure upon the cracked concrete platform. There was no one to greet the man, and if there had, they might have been forgiven a gulp of dismay and a surreptitious boarding of the metro, before it departed.
Not because the man looked particular dangerous. Not because he looked especially ugly or deformed, but rather because he emanated an aura of pure, unadulterated weasel; a feature so instantly notable, that it once resulted in him being spray painted by outraged opponent of trapping, before she realized he wasn’t wearing a fur coat.
Car salesmen feigned heart attacks rather than talk to him. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who mistakenly knocked on his door, choked themselves to death with their own pamphlets. Defense lawyers and politicians crossed the street to avoid having to so much as nod as he passed them by. Even the IRS had a standing policy to avoid audits, because the sight of him gave their agents the screaming willies.
His name was Horatio Fendlecarp. He stood exactly five foot three inches tall, but only when perched on his tip-toes. His favorite form of attire included a trench coat that looked like something Colombo had been buried in. One might have been inclined to say that he had beady eyes like a rat, if the rats hadn’t petitioned the courts for an injunction against that sort of thing. The drip pan from an ’87 Dodge Diplomat couldn’t hold a candle to his greasy black hair. Upon seeing him, people immediately formed a mental image of flea ridden vermin. But in this they were quite mistaken. Fleas have higher standards than that.
He turned to the left, shoved open the dirty glass door and rapidly descended the stairs into the urine scented guts of the station, emerging a minute later out the front door and onto the quiet street. A black cat hissed and darted off into the night. In the other direction a lone street light flickered over a row of vending machines under the spreading branches of an old maple tree. He headed that way, fingering the loose change in his dilapidated coat.
There was a drinks machine, a snacks machine, and one other which he had never seen before. It looked similar to the snack machine, but the lit placard above it said “Pleasure”. All of its slots were empty, save one; and he leaned forward, suddenly tense with desire, his breath steaming up the glass.
There before him in the spiral rail stood a tiny woman no larger than the palm of his hand, attired in a dress of metallic purple and blue, bound with a glittering belt, and sporting a cute little pair of booties. Hair like a silver waterfall flowed from her head to her waist between a pair of bound gossamer wings, delicate as snowflakes.
She shied back from his huge leering visage as he wiped away the mist with his sleeve, the tips of her wings fluttering in alarm.
That was more than enough for Horatio. He wanted her. He lusted for her. And, by god, he was going to have her. His pulled out his handful of change, rifling through it, counting it up. There were two dollars and sixty-five cents, not including the pennies. He peered at the price next to the little fairy and chuckled unpleasantly. She cost only two dollars and fifty cents.
Horatio made a show of it, displaying each coin in turn to the helpless little woman, savoring her increasing panic with every sweet “ka-plunk” of metal striking metal. He fed the nickels first, then the dimes, and finally each fat quarter, thrusting them slowly and lusciously one by one into the ready slit in the face of the machine. Finally, he held the last quarter, and chortling with malevolent anticipation, he kissed it in front of her horrified eyes, and slipped it into the machine.
“Clank.”
The red lit number on the display read “$2.40.” Horatio held up his remaining change, stirring it around with one urgent finger, but no matter how much he poked at them, they all remained pennies. So he gave the machine a thump and fingered around inside of the coin return, but it steadfastly remained empty. He made a fist and punched the change return button so hard that it rocked the tiny woman back and forth, making her cry out in a sweet trilling voice that yanked hard at his libido.
One by one he re-fed the coins into the machine. And once more it reported “$2.40.”
The tiny woman mopped her brow in a show of relief, and Horatio snarled and pulled out his wallet, digging through it, until with a cry of triumph he produced one limp, faded dollar bill. He smoothed it against the glass, looking for tears, breathing on it to try to steam out the worst of the wrinkles. Then he fed it carefully into the bill slot.
“Wee,” it went in, and two seconds later, “woo,” it came back out. He smoothed it against the glass again, snarling as the tiny woman rested her elbows on the silver wire spiral, smirking at him.
“Wee…..woo…”
“Wee…..woo…”
“Wee……whunk…”
The dollar bill emerged halfway from the bill slot, and hung there like a protruding tongue. Horatio poked at it, and then tugged on it, pulling harder and harder, until with a little ripping sound it tore in half.
By this point the little lady was in hysterics, laughing with delight.
Horatio, on the other hand was quite pissed. The bill slot was jammed and no amount of poking was going to get it out. Worse, it was his last bit of money. He slammed one clenched fist against the machine and glared down at the tiny woman. She simpered and waggled her fingers up at him, fluttering her wing tips in a way that drove him wild with need.
Muttering under his breath he dug his finger into the return slot, but there was no joy for him there or in the other two machines. So he got down onto his hands and knees and crawled around. It was too dark to see anything, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him, as he stuffed his fingers in and around the space beneath the machines.
And then he felt it. Just at the limit of his reach, a tiny, metallic disk. With his tongue between his teeth he concentrated on securing it, lightly flicking it, until he hooked the tip of his finger around it.
With feral grin of triumph he sprang to his feet holding a dirty little dime. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he carefully cleaned it against his trench coat, until it glowed with a dull, gray sheen.
The little fairy clutched at the silver rail in trepidation as he showed her his prize. Her mounting fear stirred his primal emotions, and he gloated as he slowly, carefully fed the coin into the slot. It landed inside of the machine with a merry little “ka-plunk”, and the red lit display changed to "$2.50".
Horatio pumped the air with one fist, and he pointed his finger at the itty-bitty woman, crooking it in a salacious come hither motion. He carefully read the number beside her slot, and punched them into the keypad: one, two and seven. With bated breath he waited as the machine processed the request, his dark eyes ablaze with desire as the wire spiral slowly began to spin counter clockwise.
The little woman grasped at the metal, she dug her little booties into the black floor, arching her back as she fought against the strength of the vending machine. But despite her struggles it slowly carried her closer and closer to the edge. Horatio panted with anticipation his face pressed against the glass. The miniature woman cried out as her booted toes slid to the very edge of the platform. The gleaming wire turned, shoving her from behind, tipping her forward, until with a cry of despair she toppled and fell.
The threads binding her wings slipped onto the blunt tip of the wire, and left her dangling precariously over the long fall to the tray below.
Horatio stared with wide eyes, his face turned apoplectic, and he hammered wildly on the vending machine with both fists. But all that happened was the machine trembled, and the tiny woman slid down a little bit more securely onto the wire. To say that she looked relieved was an understatement, but she still had enough moxie to stick her tongue out at him.
That was the final straw. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he was going to get her out of that machine, and when he did; oh, the horrible, evil things he was going to do to her. He pounded on the glass, but it was clear that he wouldn’t get in that way. Stepping back he lashed out with one booted foot, but aside from making the tiny woman cover her ear against the noise, it had no effect. He tried pushing it over, but either it was too heavy or it was secured to the ground, because it didn’t even budge. With a howl of frustration he hurled himself against it, slamming into it again and again.
The diminutive woman flipped him the bird.
Shaking with rage, Horatio pushed back away from the machine, looking around for something, anything that could get him inside of it. He dashed up the sidewalk first one way and then the other, but found nothing, so he abandoned the path, kicking his feet through layers of moldy old leaves, until he stubbed his toe on something hard. Dropping to the ground he cleared a small area and crowed with laughter as he pried a heavy stone from moist soil.
He lugged it over to the vending machine, rapping it against the glass, but it was too heavy to properly batter it with any force. The eyes of the tiny woman grew wide as he took two steps back and slowly, laboriously lifted it over his head, like Atlas bench pressing the world.
His arms shook, but he held the pose just long enough to stick his tongue out at the teeny-tiny woman, before he leaned forward, heaving it with all his frustrated strength against the machine.
The rock hit high, just under the word “Pleasure”, rebounded back, and before he could so much as utter an ‘eep,’ it smacked him in the face, and the lights went out.
$ $ $ $ $
Horatio Fendlecarp awoke with a splitting headache to a metallic sound that seemed eerily familiar, but far louder than he remembered it.
“Ka-plunk! Ka-plunk! Ka-plunk!”
He opened his eyes, and blinked them several times, staring with incomprehension at the jewel toned view before him. Glancing down he saw that he was leaning against a thick, curving silver rail. He shook his head and looked back. The rail spiraled behind him. There were similar wires to his left and his right.
“Ka-plunk!”
He flinched, finally grasping the meaning of the wall of purple and blue. Higher and higher he lifted his gaze, until he met her eye-to-eye. Her unbound wings fluttered playfully at her back. She shook her hair back from her face, as she dangled a coin against the glass, before reaching to her right.
“Ka-plunk!”
She parted her lips and slowly, erotically dragged the flat of her gigantic tongue over the clear glass, leaving a long wet streak. Then she pressed the buttons on the keypad and waited expectantly as the wire spiral began to spin, slowly forcing Horatio closer and closer to the long fall waiting before him…
…end…