Master of Plagues by D. B. Reynolds (reading rainbow books .TXT) 📕

Anthony dropped his gray wool slacks to the ground. Elaine became more surprised when he pulled down his boxer shorts. She was a woman who valued more than the size of a man’s wallet.
“Ready for some fun, daddy?” she asked, pulling him closer for a succulent kiss.
“Our times together speak for itself.”
“Maybe you can teach me some new things.”
“Or we can teach each other some new things.”
Anthony reached back to unloosen her black silk bra. Suddenly, he felt coarse animal hairs gliding across his palms. The odor of days old sewage rushed up his nose. The paws of a familiar creature scratched up and down his back.
What he thought was the mouth of Elaine, was the surface of a rat’s incisors. Whiskers poked him on the side of his face.
“Nooooooooo!” Anthony yelled from great terror, not believing what materialized before his very eyes.
What he once believed to be Elaine, was now a bulky-sized rat with a bright glow around its body frame. General Rahmaanteen unexpectedly appeared before Anthony.
“You’re that rat from the motel in the Bronx!” he recalled, jumping backwards with his entire lower half unclothed.
With powers invested in Stuart from the Universe, General Rahmaanteen transfigured himself into the body of Elaine.
“This must be whacked-out witchcraft or some voodoo hoodoo crap!” he accused, shaking from intense fright.
Elaine was transformed back into her old self before his very eyes. Anthony jerked his head side-to-side and studied her for a moment.
“Anthony, what the hell’s wrong with you?” Elaine wanted to know, slipping back on her clothes and fluffing her hair back in place.
“Elaine, you turned into a great big rat when we started kissing and caressing.”
“Man, you’re one sick puppy. How dare you call me a rat.”
“Elaine, I’m not calling you a rat. All of a sudden, I started feeling rat fur through my fingers. You started smelling like a sewer. When I pressed my lips to yours, it felt like the teeth of a rat.”
“I don’t smell like no sewer. When’s the last time you went to see a shrink?”
“Honey, I don’t need to see a shrink. I’m telling you, I almost made love to a huge rat.”
“You mentioned a motel in the Bronx. A guy of your stature shouldn’t be caught in that rathole-of-a-borough.”
“And a rathole it is.”
“What part of the Bronx?”
“The South Bronx.”
“What!” Elaine rejected. “What were you doing over there in the first place?”
Anthony snickered before he spoke. “Some classmates from NYU and myself pulled a prank on this goofy, nerdy guy.”
“What kinda prank?”
“We put a mechanical sex doll inside a bed in a slum motel in the South Bronx. We had him believing that he was going to get laid. Instead, he got nothing but a buncha hard plastic, some maggots dumped on his head, and some slimy gook that made him fall flat on the ground.”
“Oh Anthony!” Elaine rejected. “How cruel of you.”
“That nerd deserved it.”
Elaine pulled her makeup compact out of her purse and checked her face. “Anthony, the next time you mistake me for some big rat, you’re going to have’ta find another woman to have rendezvous’ with during after hours.”
“Elaine, I’m telling you what happened. You turned into a rat like out’a one of those creature feature movies. Around this thing was like a bright yellow glow.”
“You better go and get your eyes checked. You might wanna get a mental evaluation while you’re at it. Maybe you’re spending too many hours at Greenstein Towers.”
Elaine grabbed her purse and left A.G.E. until tomorrow morning.


CHAPTER—14

VENGEFUL DEBTS

Stuart stood quietly in the hallway of the thirty-second floor. Listening to Anthony mock him by explaining to Elaine how he’d disgraced him at the motel in the Bronx, only spurred him into further action. The jokester refused to let it go. Years after the prank took place, Anthony still found amusement by telling others.
“You played a prank on me,” Stuart chanted to himself in the dim-lit hallway. “Now, you’re going to be plagued by me.”
General Rahmaanteen received further orders from Stuart. Anthony decided to stay after Elaine left for the night. Only he remained on the dead silent floor. So he thought. A rattling noise echoed down the hall from his office.
“Who’s there?” Anthony said, nervous from fright.
More pronounced rattling noises came from the opposite end of the hall.
“Alright, who’s in here?” he asked again, tip toeing to the middle of the hallway.
Papers went flying out one of the doors. They were scattered all over the floor. One of the large copying machines was pushed into the hallway. The machine seemed to have a mind of its own. Anthony moved one scary step at a time. Packets of white copying paper shot out of two opposite doors like rectangular snowflake chunks.
General Rahmaanteen stepped into the hallway with the blinding cosmic glow surrounding his body. “Hey, Anthony, good to see you again, buddy.”
“Yeeeeeeek!” Anthony trembled, not believing what stood before his very eyes.
“That’s right, just came back to visit an old friend.”
“This can’t be real. This has gotta be a nightmare.”
“No, Anthony, it’s really happening.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Wanted to see how an old buddy was doing.”
“But rats don’t talk. Rats don’t grow to be that size.”
“Oh, but we do.”
“Just tell me what you want with me.”
“You had your fun at that motel in the South Bronx. Now, we’ve got to have our fun.”
“So, you were that big rat we saw in the room that night,” Anthony retained, his nerves shot into oblivion.
“How’s the wife?”
“My wife’s fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Don’t you know anything about being faithful?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Cheating on your wife with your secretary Elaine.”
“Look, that’s none of your business, you stinking rat.”
“Wrong, Anthony. It is my business. And if I have my way, I’m going to tell your wife about you and Elaine.”
“You smelly, rotten, disgusting rat, you don’t even know where I live.”
“I can always find out.”
Anthony reached into one of the adjoining offices and grabbed a long silver golf club. “Let me tell ya something, if you think you’re going to come into Greenstein Towers and take over, then you’re dead wrong.”
“Let’s see what’cha got, Anthony,” General Rahmaanteen challenged, yearning for a fight.
Anthony swung the golf club at the general. The club went straight through him as though he were thin air. He took several more swings and his attempts were useless.
“Little do you know, I’ve got security all over Greenstein Towers.”
“Security is out of your reach.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Anthony rushed into one of the offices and two of the general’s soldiers met him in there. Two rats standing at heights of NBA players were over by the windows jerking the blinds up and down. He sprinted across the hall and into the supply room. Two more soldiers had a jolly good time throwing around copying paper, ink cartridges, pens, pencils, sticky notes, paper clips, and highlighters all across the room and into the hallway. They made a complete mess.
“You’re screwing up my damn office!” Anthony grumbled, sweating heavily from all the running.
Anthony bolted down the opposite end of the hallway. There to accost him was a Rahmaanteen soldier holding a large can of compressed gas duster. The soldier sprayed the duster into the eyes and nose and mouth of Anthony. The pressure caused him to fall straight on his face. He trampled inside an office at the end of the hallway. Yet another solider met him with an aerosol bottle filled with black ink. Several squirts of the ink stained his $2,000 dollar Armani Suit tailor-made from Saks Fifth Avenue.
“You’ve ruined one of my best suits!” Anthony cried out, black ink dripping all over him.
General Rahmaanteen and his soldiers weren’t hardly finished. Anthony ran to the very end of the hallway to find refuge from the enormous rats that had taken over the entire thirty-second floor of Greenstein Towers. Four soldiers lifted him by his arms and legs and threw him into an office where four other soldiers waited with big buckets of spoiled toilet water and open trashbags filled with smelly garbage from the filthy streets of Manhattan. The toilet water and trash went splashing and tumbling down on his head. The embarrassment would have a lifetime effect.
“You’ll pay for this!” Anthony assured the rats, the ones with unexplainable Universal powers. “If it takes me until I’m on my deathbed, you’ll pay for this!”
The fun hadn’t even begun. With clothes stained with ink, a body soaked with sewage smell, and garbage scattered over his face, Anthony felt like the biggest fool in the world. Never had anyone embarrassed him to such magnitude.
In an office next to the one he’d come from, he spared enough expense to call downstairs. “Security! Security! I need you up here on the thirty-second floor right now! There’re some big rats up here tearing my office up. Come as quickly as possible.”
“We’ll be up there as soon as possible, Mr. Greenstein,” replied the head of security.
“Hurry, before these menacing creatures throw me out the window.”
A knock faltered from out in the hallway. Anthony ducked to keep from being hit by the office supplies that were still being thrown from every direction.
“Thank goodness you’ve