Path: usenet.ins.cwru.edu!news.ecn.bgu.edu!willis.cis.uab.edu!gatech!howland.reston. ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!caen!news.tc.cornell.edu!newsserver.sdsc.e du!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!xmission!xmission!not-for-mail From: Andrew Weitzman Newsgroups: alt.devilbunnies Subject: Re: Kralk Emerges Followup-To: alt.devilbunnies Date: 6 Dec 1994 10:16:18 -0700 Organization: DevilBunnies News<->Mail Gateway Lines: 130 Sender: snowhare@xmission.com Distribution: world Message-ID: <3c2692$d5e@xmission.xmission.com> References: Reply-To: Andrew Weitzman NNTP-Posting-Host: xmission On Mon, 5 Dec 1994, Teral Acorn wrote: > The dustbunny stuck to the nozzle with a thump, and hung there struggling, > pinned by the suction. Teral bashed it against the wall to try to break up > its structure. The dustbusters attacked, sucking at its fur. > > Fur? Yep, the bunny had brown and chrome fur... oops! > > "Hey, that's Kralk's bunny," one of the techs said, turning off his > dustbuster. [nibble] > > > Kralk looked up as they entered his chamber. Teral was amazed -- he'd heard > Kralk's report on his condition, and the report from the squirrels on the > burrowing team, but it was still hard to believe that the former half-bunny > was now fully human. > > "I see you found my experimental subject," he said. > > "Well... yes, we did," Teral answered, indicating the sack. Kralk took it > and transferred the bunny inside to a waiting cage. "Where'd you get the > cage?" > > "I knew you'd find him sooner or later," Kralk replied. "I can't tell you > how much this means to me." > > Kralk kept a smile of gratitude on his puppet's face until he was sure Teral was out of earshot. Then throats both human and devilbunny erupted into a cathartic round of invectice. Those...those *rodents*! Pursuing him like the object of a fox hunt through the air ducts! He moaned as he saw his reflection in the room's mirror. The squirrel-sized piece of glass showed a growing lump on his head, the result of Teral's tag-team method of bunny-hunting. His fur was a horror--deformed into a spiky mass of tangles and knots from those horrible vacuum cleaners. Bloody hell, how does one clean-- Oh, right. Grimacing, Kralk tenatively licked his right flank. Blech! Concrete dust solidified on his tongue into a gritty paste; spitting only left a persistent film coating his mouth. Nothing for it, then. He gingerly set to work, nibbling and licking each knot until it was smoothed down. Bit by bit, his furry form was washed clean of the dirt; he even mastered the trick of dampening his paws and scrubbing his muzzle. Not between his hind legs, though. Some things were best left for later, if at all. ****** Sucking, sucking sounds. He was in the tunnels against, the jagged metal seams drawing blood. Heart pounding in his ears, he tried to escape them by crawling ever deeper into the labyrinth. But they followed. Their ropy necks navigated the ducts with ease; he was being herded to a killing ground, and they knew he was horribly aware of the fact. Finally, his fear-maddened mind crumbled as the suction drew him closer to its plastic maw. Closer. Closer. Closer still, until he tumbled shrieking down its gullet into the whirling fan... Wood chips flew about as Kralk jerked awake from the nightmare. By now, the cage was a comfort. The heavy cast-iron mesh of the bars guaranteed his safety from attack without; the room was always kept warm to accomodate his puppet's needs; and the food pellets were filling, if banal. He hopped over to his water bottle. Tonguing the spout, he let a trickle of water wash away the last of the night terrors. Damned vacuum cleaners. Kralk had laughed in silence upon hearing the absurd reason for Teral's duct-crawls. Dustbunnies! Even he knew that old saw was a discredited myth. But the image of the sucking horrors had taken firm residence in a corner of his mind. Sleep was dominated by the thought of them. Attempts to revive his experiments degenerated into morbid fantasies of rushing air and horrible death. Nothing wrong with the latter, actually. But, dammit, it wasn't supposed to be his death... Hullo-- Perhaps his subconscious wasn't rebelling against him. Rather, it was giving him a coded message. That last part of the nightmare. Tumbling into the fan. What could that-- Kralk would have been quite pleased to see what fangs did to his traditional demented smile. ****** He whistled as he welded the last piece into place. Dowsing the torch, he flipped up the mask to gaze with unshielded eyes at his creation. Kralk's bunny lips curled back to show a bit of fang as his human puppet's eyes inspected his masterpiece. The bright blue cylinder, knee-high, lay cooling on the Ucirc machine-shop floor; the beige plastic of the corrugated-plastic hose was coiled about its width. Now for the test. The Kralk-puppet withdrew a Barney doll from its stained labcoat. Placing it on the target pedestal, Kralk had his puppet shrug its arms through the backpack harness of the device. It took a burst of will to ignore the sensation his devilbunny self was about to pitch forward and be crushed. He instead focused on the straps biting into his--human!--shoulders. The blunderbuss opening of his invention wavered; he used the crude sights glued to it to get an accurate aim on the doll. Reaching back, he pressed the rocker switch. The roar defeaned him--he had to ease off the mindlink to save his hearing. The link, however, was not so weak that he missed the incredible suction of the vacuum cleaner grab the Barney doll. Saling through the air, it disappeared down the hose. Kralk switched off the vacuum cleaner. Hefting it in both arms, he popped open the compartment. Excellent! The Barney doll was now a mass of shredded stuffing and plush. A few pieces dangled off the five fireaxe heads bolted penpendicular to a rotating axle; a belt connected the aseembly to the suction fan, allowing it to turn at an extremely high rate. The BunnySucker was officially a success. ************ Local transmission Ucirc Warren: Teral Acorn Private Frequency Teral: I have something to show you, my friend... TBC! (over to you, Teral)