CHIX ON SPEED (CHAPTER 4)

Colleen awoke with a burst of energy. Looking around now she saw an IV, an EKG machine, and other fancy equipment with abbreviated names that you'd expect to find in a hospital. Peeking down she saw that gone were her leather jacket and ripped jeans, replaced instead with a blue medical gown. She moved her head to the right and glanced into the mirror. She saw the damage done to her beautiful face (Wasn't that what he had called it? "Beautiful"? What if he saw her now? What if he saw this mess that was soon to become her new identity? No one, including he, would be able to get passed the horrible scarring and it was all his fault. That stupid smug son of a bitch.) Then Colleen realized one more startling thing:

Muffins.

Colleen tried to scream for him but nothing came out of her throat. What did you fucks do to him? Where the fuck is he?
--



I'd like to pause here to check in with our friend Mr. Muffins. Since the explosion and subsequent drowning Muffins is down one life out of his remaining five (he had lost one on his first overdose, one after hanging himself while high on crack-cocaine in a Madison Square Garden bathroom after an Elton John concert, one after being hit by a car driven by David Letterman, and one from old age). It gets to a point in a cat's tenure (they call their existance a "tenure" rather than a life; they have nine lives, you see, all of which make up a tenure) where he starts thinking of his own mortality. This was to pose a problem for our poor Colleen, of course, because no one else knows about the dastardly plan of Phantom Mannix, or how he has her trapped in his lair, the Phantom Annex. Now clearly no matter how much affection poor muffins feels toward the lovely miss Colleen he's not going to waste one of his lives just to save hers. But don't fret, dear reader! As we're about to see, the ever-resourceful Jonathan Muffins always has a trick up his sleeve!


--

The door to Colleen's room opened, and two of Mannix's henchman walked in. It was the girl, Liza, and the green skinned fellow from the aircraft carrier, whose name Colleen hadn't caught earlier.

"Alright, up with ya", the former croaked. "PhanMann's got a lot in store for you."

Colleen cocked her eyebrow. "Did you just shorten his name to PhanMann? What is he a professional athlete?"

Then the room exploded and everyone died because Paul got tired of writing this stupid story. The end!

Chix On Speed (PROLOGUE)

Running through time now all she could hear was her own footsteps reverberating through her body and the deep rhythmic inhalations of oxygen into her lungs. How long had it been now? Ten minutes? Twenty? It was impossible to tell; the peyote made her concept of time a little fuzzy. All she knew was she couldn't stop until she felt ready. And so now, miles from her original location, across the alkali flats of Salar de Uyuni, she saw the first signs of life in the region rise from the water; she saw the first man slicing a freshly caught fish; she saw Lake Minchin drying out, leaving that desert of salt; she saw the first salt miners, and she saw the first scientists. She saw all of this at once.

Turning northeast now, hitting the water within seconds, still running. The Netherlands Antilles looks like a Jackson Pollack painting. She can hardly make out a slave ship before losing it in the void.

And now where? France? No. Italy. What feels like inches translates to miles, and by the time she's tired she's already circumnavigated the globe twice. She stops and looks around.

And she's in Atlanta. And she thinks to herself, fuck. I hate the Braves.

Picking a vacation spot is hard for someone with super-speed, especially when they're high. Luckily for Colleen her sponsor was already abreast of the situation.

(*Spoiler: Colleen's NA sponsor is an anthropomorphic cat who finally kicked the habit after overdosing on heroin in 1994.)

At the speed of light Mr. Muffins was on his way.