A TINY WAR

Ash Lomen

Two men faced each other in the center of an ornate metal ring.

One was big, white, dumb and bald.

The other was short, stocky, brilliant and black with long dreadlocks that hung past his knees.

Despite all outside appearances, the two men were brothers. They had both watched in chains as the big blue eyed mother they shared was torn apart in the cruel gears of some Valdrott steam machine just days before their minds were sufficiently warped, pumped, and prepared for the gas.

Hundreds of cramped and creeping spectators surrounded the ring in a living, purple-black mass of phallic eyes, malformed tentacles, and other writhing, groping, oddly malformed limbs. A musky chemical smell like stale semen seeped through their alien pores as the tension built.

The big white man looked down to his brother, “I love you, Charlie.”

Charlie never had the time to respond. The gas was soundlessly released.

The white man dove into his brother before he could even think about his first move. He picked Charlie up and slammed him down upon the cold metal floor with a sound like a sledgehammer meeting a side of frozen beef. Charlie attempted to roll and minimize the assault to his spine while simultaneously locking his ankles around his brother’s midsection, taking the giant down with him, on top of him.

The big man continued his assault, pummeling Charlie’s head against the floor. As Charlie’s face slowly begin to dissolve into pulp beneath his brother’s heavy fists, the smaller, beaten man shifted his mass, and in a flurry of unseen movement it was now Charlie atop and then behind his brother…..ebony arms locked around his thick neck, bleeding crimson upon his pale face.

And just like that..it was over, the snapping of the bigger man’s neck punctuating the lustful hiss of the Valdrott mob.

Charlie dropped to his knees and draped himself across his brother’s naked, lifeless body.

It was then that the assembled Valdrott were informed over the mothership’s telepathic communication system that males with darker skin pigmentation, such as those descended from Middle Eastern, Latin, Asian, or African stock, had become resistant to the effects of the Valdrott gas due to an unknown genetic anomaly.

The circle of Valdrott erupted in a burst of maniacal, alien laughter.

Charlie, now prone over his dead brother, let loose a bloody sob.