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[jholloway.livejournal.com]

January challenge: Biff Cantrell. With apologies to Stephen and Allison.



"Gosh, Professor," says Biff Cantrell, wide-eyed. "I never realised particle physics was so much work."

"Da! Now please to putting particle accelerator cannon in magnetic cradle -- carefully!"

"Gee whiz, Professor, I do everything carefully," Biff grumbles. "You don't gotta yell."

"Thet's what you said about my atomic robot."

"Didn't I already apologise for that?"

And for Phoenix's phone, Phoenix's coffee table, Mr Hobson's door, that guy's machete -- although he didn't feel so bad about that one -- three or four glasses from the bar where Betty worked, another three or four chairs in various places, two steak knives in a row ...

The saucer wall had buckled like it was being cut with tin snips. Submarine hull, breezeblock wall, jail cell bars. Airlock, atom smasher, ray gun, hot rod. Strips of torn and twisted metal were like the petals of strange flowers, candy-apple red on the outside, bright silver on the inside. The endless blare of his captor's voices, shrieking loud but without emotion: RELEASE SUBJECT FD047-B. ACTIVATE EXTERIOR DEPLOYMENT RAMP. PREPARE TO RECEIVE ORDERS.

The screaming was bad. Seeing the fear in a pretty girl's eyes was worse than the beatings, or the neural whips, or the radiation. He would rather have gone back into the pod than see another kid turn and run, another girl fling a vase or a lamp, another cop raising his pistol with shaking hands. He would have let them kill him rather than that. Would have.

Except, except ...

When the Professor's back turns, Biff reaches out and takes the jar of pencils on his desk in his free hand. He squeezes it in his ore-crusher grip until it's nothing but twisted metal, splinters and lovely graphite dust, dark but shiny.