Jul 18th 2011, 14:08 by E O Hatterpol | 1228 AU FROM SUN
I WOKE up under a mountain of confetti. Some janitor's broom must have swept the celebration's leftovers over me, because it was in my eardrums, my nostrils and between gum and cheek. I felt disgusting, and my tongue was thickly swollen. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn I had a raging hangover to make the Dryheave Lounge proud.
The Squid's Beak was deserted; I had no doubt the entire Starbase was celebrating at one of Colonel Condor's galaxy-famous after-parties. Those cherry-picking Left Hemispheres were probably fluffing themselves up and droning on academically to anyone who would listen about how the capture of Captain Makemake was all because of them, the dishonest power-grabbers.
I dug some multi-coloured crust out of my eyes and stood up too quickly; my head pounded like a sledgehammer banging golden gongs inside a steel drum.
“What the shell happened to me?” I wondered, looking at the pile of trash I had been knocked out under for who knows how long. “At least that was a good place to hide from those policemen.”
Mentioning the policemen reminded me of the dead zonbi, which reminded me of Nixie, which reminded me I was still trying to win her back with $$B (Salty Space Booty), which brought me finally back to the present moment:
“Motherflounder - the fight club!!”
I dug frantically in the pile of confetti until I found my bookshield and broken beer bottle sword, then whipped around and dashed across the main square towards Tentacle Six.
There weren't many people down this Tentacle. The stores looked old and no longer relevant, like a Radio Shack at that dying 1970s-era mall that just got upstaged by the new one across town with a stadium-seating theatre. After a while, the stores just quit altogether and became empty hulls with closed glass doors protecting ladders, exposed wiring and drop cloths from the mischief of bored young boys.
I kept running. Pumping blood to my head hurt at first, but eventually the additional oxygen went a long way to clearing up the pain. I thought all the exercise would be a good way to loosen up before the fight, too. Maybe they'd even let me have a stretch before I stepped in.
I cleared the construction workhorses and yellow DO NOT CROSS tape like an Olympic hurdler crossing the finish line. I was rushing because I knew that if I missed the fight club, I'd be up deuce creek in a wire canoe with no paddle, and I didn't want that. I needed loot to solve all my problems.
If I wasn't hauling seabass down that corridor, I would've stopped to comment on how frickin' icky it was. There was trash along the floor seams – is that used toilet paper?! – and bugs flitted from my footsteps in fear. But I'd go anywhere if it meant turning the pickle I had gotten myself into back into a sea cucumber.
The tentacle narrowed to no more than ten feet in diameter. That meant I had reached the end. I looked around and found a rusty door made of thick metal. I banged on it as hard as I could.
“Oy!”
A small slot near waist level slid open. Two eyeballs appeared, staring straight into my crotch.
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