Greegs & Ladders by Zack Mitchell, Danny Mendlow (top 10 ebook reader txt) 📕

Wilx was the first to confront Rip.

“You selfish frazzleplork!” he yelled. “You left us there without a word!”

“I did leave a note.”

“You shouldn't have ditched us. You wouldn't believe what we went through... there was these robots, and--”

“Does it matter? We're all here now, so it worked out. Let's just carry on with our mission... what was our mission again?”

“We're here to collect Crabbits,” said Wilx. “So we can use them to kill Reg, who is ridiculously undeserving of being the king of Lincra.”

“Oh yeah,” said Rip. “I knew we were on a good mission. Why don't we send out some pods with vacuum function to collect the Crabbits? That way we don't have to go to the surface and risk the planet shifting into a slide or something that sends us drifting into open space. Either way, I need a rest. We seem to only be capable of visiting the most grueling planets.”

No one spoke of the events we had just seen on Hroon. Instead Wilx programmed some pods to scour the surface of Grebular for at least a dozen or so of only the hungriest looking Crabbits. The planet shifted into a swinging pendulum and dodged the arrival of the pods.

“Did you see that?” said Rip. “This planet is cursed.”

“We'll try again,” said Wilx.

The pods once again attempted to land but the planet chose that moment to randomly morph into a stale tortilla shell laden with the visage of Jesus.

“It's one of those Jesus tortillas I always heard about on Earth!” I said excitedly. “You can sell them for a lot of money.”

“Maybe you could have sold them for a lot of money on Earth a million years ago,” said Rip. “But here in present time, in the rest of the universe, everybody has seen a Jesus tortilla on more than one occasion. That same face has been appearing on tortillas ever since their invention. Nobody can figure out why, or who the face truly belongs to.”

The planet shifted into a blueish spherical shape.

“Look!” yelled Wilx. “The planet has shifted back to its original state! Quick! We only have a short window of time before it changes into something incomprehensible!”

Wilx sent the specimen-collecting pods to the momentarily normal surface of Grebular. The overly efficient pods collected up a baker's dozen of the most aggressively hostile Crabbits on the entire planet. We spent no more time at one of the many planets Rip still believes to be cursed.

How to Kill Your Former Greeg-Keeper

(and Unsuccessfully Raid His Refrigerator)

We put the Crabbits in an indestructible cell. I gazed at them through the 12 feet of mega-Jardian glass.

Despite what you may imagine based on the names of particular animals from

Earth, Crabbits are not named as they are because they resemble a hybrid cross between Crabs and Rabbits. They look nothing like either of these animals. Crabbits are a slithery type of creature, a horrid land-eel that looks like an inside-out stained sock-puppet harvested from the depths of Garbotron, complete with cracked googly eyes and burnt orange troll-doll hair.

They also have a row of sharp carnivorous-like teeth.

“Back to Lincra!” shouted Rip. “If there's anything left!”

The state of things on Lincra had gotten far more intense during our quick Crabbit Collecting/Current Events mission. By now the bonfires had started to spread beyond the desired perimeter of burning. Much of the planet was to be engulfed in the hasty flames. Some of the more perceptive peasants had tried to stop the initial lighting of the fires, for they realized not only was the atmosphere of Lincra already being pushed to the brink of destruction by the daily influx of Investment Banker-guzzling space cruisers, but also the valuable wood the ladders were made from could be broken down and turned into useful, entirely non-ladder related stuff. Everyone else agreed the ritualistic cleansing of the bonfires was a more appealing thing to do. The fires were lit and the dancing and the chanting began. Reg's parking dome compound was the only safe haven from the wild blaze. We found the old goblin drunkenly passed out beside a half-eaten plate of Crabbits. He must have been fairly wasted to have not finished the meal.

A multitude of surveillance technology encircled Reg's compound, and yet our ship, being one that does impossible things, went completely unnoticed as we hovered silently outside Reg's window plotting our revenge.

“How do we get the Crabbits from the ship to the room?” asked Rip.

“Someone takes them over,” replied Wilx.

“Who?”

“I don't know. You?”

“But how?”

“Just knock them out and put them in a bag. Then dump the bag into the window. The Crabbits will probably reawaken before Reg does.”

“How do I knock them out?”

“Hit them with a bottle or whatever you find lying around.”

“I don't think it'll be that easy,” said Rip. He was noticeably scared of the Crabbits. “Have you seen how quick they are? They'll just slither up and gnaw my legs off. I won't have a chance.”

“Reg has been hunting these creatures all by himself for years and he's still alive.”

“Yeah, but Reg is tough. He's a seven foot tall goblin with fangs and claws and red eyes. I can't do the things that a seven foot tall goblin can do!”

“That's not true!” said Wilx. “Think of all the impossible things you've done in your many lifetimes! Aren't you the guy who successfully orchestrated the orbital direction of eight different proto-stars just so you could line them up in a row? And then didn't you jump through all of them simultaneously? You set the new universal record for Least Amount of Severe Burns After Leaping Through the Most Amount of Proto-Stars.”

“Maybe.”

“And aren't you the guy who successfully impregnated the Virgin Mary?”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“Can't forget about when you slayed a Galactic Gobbling Groobin, armed only with your conversational routine of droll witticisms.”

“True.”

“What about the time you found that mildly interesting fossil?”

“What's your point?” asked Rip.

“It had part of a shell.”

“I didn't mean about the fossil. What's your point to all of this?”

“My point is that you're better than Reg! If he can survive hunting these creatures then you can do the same. Now go collect those Crabbits... and don't let them gnaw your legs off!”

“Why can't we have the specimen pod deliver the Crabbits the same way we collected them on Grebular?”

“All the pods are broken.”

“I see.”

Rip took a moment to muster up the courage to face the deadly Crabbits. Just as he opened the door and ran in screaming and flailing his arms, all the Crabbits mysteriously dropped to the floor.

“Hah!” laughed Wilx. “I already drugged them to pass out for the next hour! You never would have stood a chance against their speed. Only someone like Reg could do that!”

“You mean, I'm not as tough as Reg?” asked Rip.

“No. But I give a pretty good morale-boosting speech, don't I? Plus there's still time in the story for you to prove otherwise. Let's get these Crabbits out of here.”

We delivered the momentarily unconscious Crabbits into the window, which had been foolishly left open.

Reg had hunted Crabbits from nearly every world they inhabited. Except for Grebular. Yet when these Grebularian Crabbits woke up, they immediately desired revenge against the stranger. With all of his endless hunting expeditions and plans for general extermination, Reg had done so much damage to the Crabbit species that the image of his face had been naturally downloaded into their collective consciousness and transmitted across distant galaxies to all other living Crabbits. That way should any of them be unfortunate enough to cross paths with Reg they will at least be given a heads-up about the whole matter. This particular baker's dozen of lethal abominations were the Chosen Crabbits. They were the summation of everything their species had lived (but mostly died) for.

The first thing they saw was Reg's furniture, crafted from the skeletons of their universal kin. Other Crabbit bones swung from the ceiling, hanging on thread made of Crabbit-sinew and waiting to be turned into easily breakable tools. Through the immensely powerful collective consciousness of the Crabbit, they vividly remembered every detail of the lives of each of the Crabbits who now swung in pieces in the compound of an insane goblin on a half-destroyed world. This only sent them into a greater rage.

The first Crabbit gnarled a leg. Reg was so knocked out that it took him a moment to wake up and feel the pain.

“Hey, what's going on?” he finally asked the darkness.

Reg clicked on a light and saw that many Crabbits had gnarled away his limbs.

“Is the age of Reg over?” he asked. “But I only just became a god a few days ago.”

The vitamin A factor might have saved him, for once the Crabbits had chewed to the bone they conveniently broke all their weak teeth and were unable to continue attacking. This proved to not matter whatsoever, for the gnarling required to reach the bone was more than sufficient enough to kill Reg in less than a minute.

We raided his refrigerator, but only found a foul type of fermented Crabbit liqueur. Against our warnings, Rip drank it anyway. He was sick for awhile. Wilx chartered the ship toward the next crazy venture.

Overdue Intentions

Meanwhile... something was happening amongst a group of aforementioned creatures. Something within the cave systems of the Planetglomerate.

The Klaxworms were stirring, having unfrozen from their nightly freezing, prepared to begin another day of overpopulation-induced heatwaves and boiled organs. Yet this was a day unlike any other in the history of the Klaxworm.

Conversation in the Klaxworm cave is usually about the idea of exploring the rest of the planet.

“Who's sick of this cave?” yelled someone from the population. “Who doesn't want their organs to boil this afternoon?”

The crowd was in agreement.

“Who has ever wondered what's out there? You've all heard the stories of the Grimbat messengers. You've seen their episodic shadow-puppet re-enactments of the exciting bits.”

“My favorite episode is the one where the Glurj child fell into a schmold pit.”

“They were all good, but the point is, why don't we go watch some of these Greegs fall into schmold pits on our own time? Have you heard of this schmold television thing? You don't need to do shadow-puppets at all.”

This was one of the hottest days in the history of the Planetglomerate. The risk of boiled organs within the oven-like Klaxworm home was at a record high. Some rudimentary