5 — Brita Graham

…. a sound that com­bined the mewl­ing of a thou­sand stran­gled kit­tens with the groan­ing of a mechan­i­cal beached whale shook the Plen­ty­wood. This was fol­lowed in short order by a claxon of bells, and the famil­iar chirp of the loud­speaker before the captain’s voice pro­claimed, “This is your cap­tain speak­ing. Please do not panic. We’ll be set­ting down for just a wee bit, folks, and then we’ll be on our way. Please fas­ten your seat­belts, and have a nice day!”

The Plen­ty­wood then lurched hard to star­board and began to descend rapidly, too rapidly.

Mar­vin swore in a fash­ion that would have made his dearly departed sailor mother proud, then sat down next to She­lia as the peo­ple in the cabin started scream­ing things like “Oh god oh god we’re all gonna die!” He glanced up a few aisles at where he’d left Peace­AndLove shack­led to the seat, which didn’t seem to dimin­ish her exu­ber­ance as she pressed her face to the port­hole glass yelling glee­fully, “Bunnies!”

“So I see you’re still dop­ing her with that memory-suppressing pre­scrip­tion cock­tail,” She­lia said with absolute dead­pan ambiva­lence, unfazed by the shoe that flew past her head. “She was always a bit of a loon, but I bet you didn’t imag­ine you’d end up with a lap dog when you did the brains for boobs trade-in.”

Mar­vin ducked a fly­ing water bot­tle and glow­ered at her. “You’re not still blam­ing the mon­keys on the fact I left you for her, are you?”

She­lia casu­ally deflected an air-born jock strap with her folder. “Well I sup­pose it would be hubris to imag­ine that your betrayal of moi had any­thing to do with almost end­ing the world.” A shriek­ing pas­sen­ger slid past them on the floor and they watched in tan­dem as he passed by PeaceAndLove’s seat. The buxom woman was now bounc­ing up and down mak­ing mon­key sounds. “You’re enjoy­ing this, aren’t you, Shel,” Mar­vin observed.

She­lia raised her eye­brows and pon­dered, “Mmmm… lit­tle bit.”

Mar­vin couldn’t decide whether to facepalm or scratch his head so he did nei­ther. “Don’t sup­pose you still have the pass­words,” he won­dered aloud to the woman next to him.

“That depends….”

“On?”

“Whether or not you have the balls to say some­thing like sorry.”

“Okay, sure. I suck. Shoot me now. Just tell me you still know the passwords.”

“Yes,” said a deep and men­ac­ing voice behind them, a sound accom­pa­nied by the click of a ceramic 9mm. “Tell the man the passwords.”

Mar­vin turned. “Seri­ously, dude, a gun? We’re going down over the crater and you brought a gun?”….