Image by Microsoft CoPilot AI

Drinks on Trog! — Chapter 42—Scott Alten’s Raiders of Trog

Leaving shop on a quiet evening, the sky’s a weird color. Tornado? Better to drink his way through that calamity.

[embed]List: Scott Alten, Raiders of Trog | Curated by Evelyn Gaede | Medium Scott Alten, Raiders of Trog · Trog is a planet far from Earth and those abducted from other planets struggle to…medium.com

Chapter 42

Planet Earth: Quitting Time 5:15pm CTZ

Berto walked into the main door of his favorite after-work bar H-ton’s Alamo Pub directly across the road from Berto’s Harley Franchise. Inside, the young woman behind the counter grinned, mentally added to her tips the large sum this hunk of man would drop on the counter when he’d had enough beer and noise.

But that was only a fraction of it.

Her favorite part was watching him slip off his stool then lean his elbows and forearms on the counter to stretch his legs before carefully signing his name so slowly she could say each letter as it formed. A. Berto Kahmacho to the charge slip. She watched the top of the pen slowly inch through each letter of his signature, add 35% on top of the fifty or hundred he’d already dropped as she brought each beer.

He was late twenties-early thirties if she judged correctly. A little older than she, nothing that put her off.

Of medium height he stood 5’9, a bit hefty through the middle but not fat. Had a demeanor about him that told all who crossed his path, ‘Don’t FUCK with me’. But Urdi did. Just not, so far, in the REAL physical sense. She always went for the bad boys and Berto stood at the TOP of the BAD-BOY Pinnacle, cream of the bad boy cup.

The other two coming through the door right behind him were Rick & Manni. Also good looking, tippers, but not as good as Berto. They didn’t make the bucks that he did. Berto was their boss. They were peons on the shop’s totem pole.

“Not true,” the owner would often say when they’d slough of any form of responsibility. “The three of you together are rock stars. Take any one of them out? I’m in a world of hurt.” An assertion that would gain the shop’s owner a wide grin but nothing else.

Never would any one of the three mechanics commit to any job or even a definite location. Spending one’s entire life in one shop or even one town was nothing they would commit too.

Walking into the bar Berto shivered. It was pouring rain outside which made the walk over cold and wet. Now the air conditioning blasted a shot of even colder air the moment he stepped inside.

“Don’t even think about walking out!” A female voice sent the threat from behind the bar counter. Berto recognized that voice and as his eyes adjusted he found her, standing in front of three old men each with a full can of beer in front of him.

Sliding onto his favorite barstool, putting five empties between them and himself, Berto sent his favorite grin. “How’s it going, Ursella?”

“Urdie. And it’s going just fine, now that you’re here.” “Let’s see if we can’t make it even better, URRR-SAAA-LA!”

“Now why do you do that? I hate that fucking name and you KNOW I hate it. ALLL-BERRR-TOHH! Get it right or I’ll call you Albert…” She paused to reach deeper into the cooler for the coldest can of beer, “…Einstein!” Finished that insult with a grin he knew meant to keep pushing, she was loving the conversation.

“You know what I do to insubordinate bartenders?” “I’m sure you’re about to tell me!”

“I tie them tight to my fireman’s pole. Fuck them standing up.” The last he said low, just above a whisper, aware of other customers not that far away. It was OK to flirt with her. Both knew it was not meant as threat, but those around them might not see it as playful banter.

She glanced down, her penetrating gaze lasered in on his lap, kept her gaze locked on the bulge that was growing, more visible then when he first approached the bar. “That! Right there!” She nodded toward his lap “That pole?” A slight smile teased her lips. “Hardly seems big enough.”

“Oh, it is. This one and the metal pole in my living room.” It was a glorious sight, watching her blush when she had mentioned his cock, then a deeper red when he ended the tease with a quick quip.

Neither one got the chance to say more because for that particular degree of longitude and latitude of Earth’s land surface, the world suddenly stopped.

Major Stallion slowed the spaceship, hovered in direct path of the sun blocking whatever natural light the clouds over Houston did manage to break through.

It blocked the natural light and those on earth would sense an ominous warning of storm. It was late November so this part of Earth was almost dark at this hour anyway, but Major Stallion believed those extra sahns waiting for deeper shadow wouldn’t hurt.

When he felt twilight had finally taken the shaded violet of impending dark, he pushed one button. A fast drop straight down and they skimmed the surface of water in the Gulf of Mexico, mere yards from H-ton’s Alamo Pub.

When six Kurii men stepped off the ship Gruff covered the immediate environs with Trog’s Golden Cloak, locking their target destination in a temporary deep silence, freezing time, blood and bodies caught beneath that invisible cloak. For a three-mile radius everything had stopped. Stoplights didn’t flash yellow or move to red from green. Autos stopped in half rotation of a wheel, pedestrians stalled their hurried gaits or sprints for shelter.

Inside H-ton’s Alamo bar, nothing at all could move, not even the mouse scurrying in search of a crack in the frame of one wall. All frozen inside, while all outside remained still, assuring no one would enter the tavern.

Not one person ANYWHERE… not inside the umbrella created by lazer over this quadrant of the city, no one outside that quadrant… would remember the glitch at 5:23 pm CTZ that an hour later would slip quite easily into 5:24 pm without so much as a hitch of disturbed breath.

However. Inside the one bar beneath that umbrella a handful of people would in that one frozen minute reduce the bar’s body count to three retired old men nursing their beers arguing over rumors of UFO’s with one very confused janitor who in less than one blink of his eye was no longer talking to his boss about missing overtime on his last check.

Jim Bradly hadn’t walked away. Dake would have seen that. He wasn’t seated at the bar with Dake standing directly across from him clearly upset about a paycheck hours too short.

Looking around, Dake counted those he believed should still be there: Urdi the bartender. Berto from Hog Heaven, the Harley’s repair shop. Also Rick & Manni, close friends with Berto. Housemates, job-mates, all three employed at Houston’s newest Harley store.

Gone were the two lesbian chicks that had tied up the bar’s billiard table the last hour over in the corner. The balls were there. So were the pool sticks. Just the girls were gone. Even more puzzling? Three coach purses still scattered over a table a few feet away, exactly where and how they had been left since first landing there.

Also gone? The five-member band.

Four men, one woman. The band, Texas Sweet. They’d been right there! On stage! Tuning their instruments! Dake planned on going home, eating dinner, running through the shower, then returning here, bringing the wife to share a night out.

He always looked forward to Texas Sweet dates. Dusti had a voice that brought his cock to full attention. His wife would wait until his hard-on forced his jeans to strain his zipper then drag him to the dance floor so anyone near enough to see the hard-on this old fifty-eight-year-old man could still muster up when a sweet young cunt in a tight, barely-there skirt came around.

‘Where the fuck did Dusti go? Where did Urdi go? The lezzie chicks? Berto? Rick? Manni?’

Turning to the three old coots left behind… ‘Why phrase it that way? What did I see that I’m not recalling? I remember a monkey face! I saw a fucking Sasquatch but who the HELL is going to believe that?’

“Where the hell did everybody go?” Finally, the janitor found words to ask what tortured. Finally, his mouth remembered how to produce words not guttural sounds grunts or tongue clicks.

‘Guttural! Another clue I’m gonna never account for. Dusti! Where the hell are you? Mama won’t allow me to cum if she can’t eye your sweet pussy! Or meet you in the bathroom so mama can clean your sweet cunt after you pee? Damn this day all to hell. I bet it was them. Those Sasquatch monkey butts.

‘Invasion of the Sasquatch prehistoric freeze-dried cavemen from the frozen Arctic.’ Then aloud, “Betcha anything you care to wager. It was them. The monkey-butts.’

“What?” Asked One of the old men. “What was who?” Asked another. Then the third man, no longer afraid of drawing scrutiny concerning his confusion, knew how to express it. “What the hell you grumbling about, Lester? Grab me another beer while you’re back there.”

Lester dumbly nodded, glad his body had something to do, a task so familiar it was robotic motion that he reached into the cooler and brought up three fresh beers, one Michelob, one Bud Light, one Coors. After using the pick to pull the metal tabs on each can he reached back in the cooler for a Miller, still his favorite of all beer.

His body had thoughtlessly obeyed the command to fetch them beers (mama had trained him well) and as he worked to complete that chore his brain had set each item as closed until even fragments of barely remembered color could not be accurately recalled.

Somewhat harder was memory of a nightmare It was nightmare… images of giant monkey heads, sewn to men on six-foot stilts. Almost.

A denial that may have succeeded had he not bent to pick up a piece of paper written in a language he couldn’t comprehend… didn’t look like any language he could thing of… but three words were Spanish and those he could read for this bar had a sister establishment south, just over the U.S. Mexican border: Berto: H-ton Pub or State Street Dance Hall.

And next to the printed words was the picture of a very tall apeman in full metal armor…

[embed]List: Scott Alten, Raiders of Trog | Curated by Evelyn Gaede | Medium Scott Alten, Raiders of Trog · Trog is a planet far from Earth and those abducted from other planets struggle to…medium.com

[embed]List: Scott Alten, Raiders of Trog | Curated by Evelyn Gaede | Medium Scott Alten, Raiders of Trog · Trog is a planet far from Earth and those abducted from other planets struggle to…medium.com

Thank you for supporting us by reading our story. I’d love you to 👏 clap up to 50 times, highlight your favorite lines or words, leave us a comment, and share. Support me and other medium writers by reading to the end of our stories or at least reading for 30 seconds. #HelpSupportMediumWriters You can follow us here: medium.com/@toddhammerrick 14/30 or my partner My Medium//@evelyng.com