SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge!

Round 2, Hermaphrodeity: The Enlightenment Project - @H-A-Spade

The Enlightenment Project

by H-A-Spade

Night. Always a time to be alive. The stars twinkling. The crickets chirping. Every man, woman and child tucked away in bed, fast asleep.

The perfect time to work the boneyards.

She had a system. It was efficient. Perfect, really. Because no one expected a woman to go pilfering through piles of bones. A man, maybe—men were sick; it was expected of them. But women? No. And if they caught her, she could easily play all innocent. Bat her eyelashes and shoot them a smile. It always worked. She'd done it before. She'd do it again.

Her bag was full of femurs, skulls, shoulder blades. And all kinds of little ones, too: full toes and fingers, individual knuckles.

If someone were to take a peek inside they'd be horrified by what they saw. Because there was something else in there. Something nobody would want to see.

And she'd have to take care of them if they caught on. She'd done that before, too.

She was digging out a sweet-looking pelvis when a spotlight lit her up. She hissed through her teeth and turned to see someone headed her way—couldn't tell much, because the light had them backlit. They were just a shadow.

She realized what had happened here. She'd gotten too cocky. "Fuck you, Mad Mike Marsbergen," she muttered to herself and prepared for war.

War meaning irrepressible disappointment.

"Ha!" came a voice, over a loudspeaker. "You should have seen your face!"

"I've seen it," Rain snapped. "Several times as a matter of fact."

"Well, you didn't do much about it."

"Fuck you," she reiterated.

The lights cut off as Mike swung out of the crawly and landed deftly by one of its six-foot wheels. His partner, Jackass Number Two, had evidently jumped the gun on this one and was already standing before her like a haggard Totem pole.

"All right, let's just cut to the chase," Jackass Number Two chimed in. "What are you doing in our yard?"

"Your yard?" Rain tossed her hair. "I threw your asses into the outlands, remember? You're both legally dead. It's mine now." She smiled. The effect was not, overall, good.

"Yeah, legally dead. Which means we can legally do anything we want. Now's a pretty good time to thank you." The tall, scraggly man who had once been Rain's husband raised a clawed hand and swung it hard.

Rain lurched out of the way.

"Hold on a sec, Ike," Mike warned, grabbing his research partner and pulling him back. "First we need the eyes."

Shriveled leaves scraped the graves around them like fingernails. Rain did not acknowledge the request.

"Come on, sunshine. You wouldn't have come all the way back to Earth without them. You wouldn't have come to this spot, on this day, without them. I wish we could kill you first, I really do—" Ike took a step toward her. He was holding out his hands. "—but you know we can't."

"Do you think this is a truce?" Rain whispered.

They said nothing.

"Well, if you want your eyes, your precious research, instead of scavenging for spare parts before you disintegrate to a pile of shit like you should be doing, then fine. Come and get them!" Without warning, she hurled the bag up into the air and kicked it, hard. The contents exploded in a cloud of bone dust and brain matter. Then, to put the cherry on top, she stomped on it and ground her foot.