The Poorly Named Mafia was an interstellar crime syndicate renowned for their illegal shenanigans and moderately successful get rich quick schemes. They have been blamed for such crimes as stealing the Space Pope’s Space Miter, which temporarily made the universe vulnerable to the forces of Heck and allowed the Space Vatican to be commandeered by Robo-Hitler and the Power Nazis of Ultra Doom. The Poorly Named Mafia was also responsible for introducing Amway to the Juprecians and for supplying the Sombrero Galaxy with moonshine.
The organization, however, was experiencing a decline in its notorious reputation. The rapid diminishment of their evil quota began when Shnooby The Groin rescued a kitten from a tree. From that point on, whether intentional or not, good deeds were being committed by members everywhere. An attempt to rob the elderly turned into a memorable bingo night; stealing candies from babies resulted in the saving of thousands of lives from contaminated sweets; and a large-scale robbery thwarted a robbery of an even larger scale.
The majority of the Poorly Named Mafia were Pleftonians, or Pleffts for short, inhabitants of the planet Plefft. These creatures resemble humans in everyway, except for their bluish skin.
Huggy was a good-looking son of a Plefft who had never actually been on Plefft. He sat inside of a space diner, drinking some mediocre astro coffee, while reading an edition of Out of This World, a popular newspaper. He was awaiting the arrival of his associate, Robert, while eating a Space burger deluxe, which consisted of a chicken patty sandwiched between two beef patties and several slices of whole turkeys.
“Huggy, I’m glad I found you,” shouted Robert after entering the room. “I have amazing news!”
“Great,” said Huggy with a mouthful of food. It was considered impolite for a Plefft to speak with an empty mouth while eating because otherwise he or she may be forced to invite other Pleffts to join them in their feast.
“Great? You must have misheard me because I was so far away. I said, `Huggy, I found you. I have some amazingly bad news.’” To this Huggy responded by hurling his fork at his companion’s face. It was customary for a Plefft to blame the bringer of bad news.
Robert now sat opposite Huggy. If there were Irish Pleffts, then Robert would be a perfect example of one. “Owen,” he said, “has run away. I was walking to meet you, turned around, and he was gone and so was my Space Mercedes.”
“Jesus Space Christ. The contest starts in less then six hours and we have to find ourselves a planet full of morons.” The aforementioned contest to which Huggy referred was going to be the Poorly Named Mafia’s big comeback into evil. They were planning on winning by cheating.
The contest was a form of gambling that involved abducting an inhabitant of a planet whose domineering species had yet to reach at least three high points on the scales of technological evolution, which was divided into six categories: food, transportation, architecture, fashion, entertainment, and odor. Such criteria were set by the Trans-Universe Tourism Board because, face it, no one wants to visit a boring, ugly, smelly planet.
Once an individual was abducted, it was trained for a pre-decided period of time and was let loose into space. This was done with many creatures at the same time, and whichever one of them got the farthest won.
All was going well until Owen, the Poorly Named Mafia’s well-trained Duckoid, a creature that was duck-like in appearance and taste, escaped.
Huggy and Robert were now traveling eight times faster than the speed of smell, sound, and light in Huggy’s green anterior and astro leather interior Space Saab, imported from the planet Sweden.
“What do we do?” asked Robert. “We’re at least twelve light years from a low-level planet.”
“Stop panicking and pay attention to that radar screen,” ordered Huggy. Space ships were in reality the same as they were in fiction: with many blinking buttons, shiny levers, and red-handled pulleys. Although each operation corresponded to a minimum of one switch, some switches had no purpose and were painted onto the panels purely for show, while others were labeled as one thing but did another.
“I think I see a planet.” Huggy approached the display. “It’s the third planet from the sun. You see it; the blue and purple one?”
Robert toyed with the landing gears and pressed a blue button, the wrong button, and launched the ship two hundred light years to the left.
“What have you done?” asked Huggy while hitting Robert.
“Nothing,” he answered while blocking the blows with his hands. “I just hit the blue button.”
“Do you know what you just did?” screamed Huggy, his cries interrupted by a beeping, which informed the two that they were nearing another planet with foolish inhabitants. This time, with Huggy in control, the craft landed neatly behind an apartment complex.
A young man walking down the street was approached by two blue tinted fellows.
“Hello, my name is Huggy and this is my associate Robert Robert Robert.” Each of the three shook hands with the other.
“Your first, middle, and last name are all Robert?” He asked while examining the two peculiar gentlemen.
“No, Robert Robert Robert is my first name; my last name is Stephanie.”
“And how are you called?” asked Huggy.
He wouldn’t give his real name to these two charlatans, but he had to say something. “My name is Atlas Erection Cunningham.”
“Well, Mr. Cunningham, you’re lucky because Huggy and I are aliens and we’re taking you onto our spaceship.”
A pause followed to allow what was just said to be completely understood, but Atlas misconstrued nonetheless. “Oh, I’m sorry boys. I don’t play that game. If that floats your boat, good for you, but I’m just not interested.”
Both parties were confused, which was acceptable; encountering a new species was always a challenging experience. Huggy was not a fan of violence, so he gave Atlas a nice jolt with a space cattle prod rather than bludgeoning him into unconsciousness with it.
Atlas awoke and was relieved to discover that he was clothed. He pawed through his pockets and felt that his belongings were in place. His uncertainty caused him to panic; were his organs to be harvested, his person sold into prostitution in a South Asian brothel, was he being held while a large pot boiled for him to be cooked in, or wait: there were voices.
“He’s in the closet.” Was he hiding?
“Are you sure?” Had he been hiding for so long that he fell asleep and forgot?
“I can hear him breathing.” Who was on the other side? He remembered something about blue perverts.
“Do you think he can hear us?”
“No,” said Atlas. “Move along. Nothing to see here.” The door opened and there stood Robert Robert Robert and Huggy. Those were their names, he remembered. “Keep your distance, or I’ll–”
“What?” interrupted Huggy, “Hand us our coats?” Atlas lunged at them, but they were strong from the tri-weekly workouts at the Space Gym and easily restrained him.
“Settle down now,” Robert instructed. “We don’t want to hurt you. You were only in the closet because we wanted you to wake up in a dark place and we need the lights on out here so we know where we’re going.” Atlas looked around. He was in a small metallic vessel with many buttons, buttons that beckoned to him with their siren song, “Come press us and see what happens.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Huggy commanded, sitting Atlas down in a space leather upholstered seat. “Now, I’m about to explain why we brought you here.”
“Where’s here?” asked Atlas.
“We’re in space.”
“Where in space?”
“It doesn’t matter. Your space maps don’t even have this part on it so I’m just going to make something up. We’re at thirty one Spooner Street.” Atlas seemed satisfied, so Huggy continued. “Anyway, have you seen Rat Race?” Atlas shook his head. “How about It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World?” Same answer. “Cannonball Run?” Also a no. “Wacky Races? No? Fine. We’re entering you in an intergalactic race.”
“Oh, you mean like Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies?”
“That you know, but not the Burt Reynolds?”
“How do you know about him?”
“His mustache is an alien,” explained Huggy. “All really thick mustaches like that are just retired Slurps. It’s like going down to Florida for them.”
“What about Tom Selleck?”
“Yep.”
“And Geraldo Rivera?”
“Yeah, but his stache is a criminal and being on his face is its punishment.” Atlas remained incredulous, but Huggy maintained that all mustaches of such fullness were aliens. “Ever try to grow one like that?” Atlas admitted that he was unable to, which Huggy stated was all the proof needed to support his claim.
Robert interrupted. “Listen: we have less than three hours to get you to the starting line of this thing, so shut up and let us drive.”
“But I don’t know anything about space.”
“That’s okay,” said Huggy. “We’re going to cheat.”
Atlas, Huggy, and Robert Robert Robert approached the registration station.
“That doesn’t look like a duckoid,” said the Plefft in charge of sign-ups.
“It’s not. We lost it. We want to register this one.”
“What is it? Looks like a beige Plefft.”
“It’s a human,” assured Huggy. “From Earth.” The Plefft agreed and soon Atlas was being escorted to the pen where the other competitors were being kept.
“We have to leave you alone with the other competitors for now,” began Robert Robert Robert. “Don’t make any eye contact, noise, or gesticulations. If you keep absolutely still, then you should be okay,
At this point, Atlas realized that it didn’t matter if you were a physicist or a farm animal on your home planet; in space everyone was on the same level. Thumbs were hardly an advantage for Atlas in an event where he would be competing against beings made entirely of them.
Not looking at any of the creatures that surrounded him was quite a challenge, especially since it looked like many of them were waving. Atlas, however, survived the ordeal and was soon escorted onto a small ship.
“Don’t worry, Atlas. We’ve got someone on the ship waiting to help you out,” said Huggy, closing the door.
Atlas stared through the circular window and watched Huggy and Robert Robert Robert walk away. Then something introduced itself to him.
“Who said that?”
“Me.”
Atlas looked around the small ship, which was no bigger than a mini van. He whimpered and walked over to a bar stool to sit down.
“I don’t appreciate that,” the chair declared.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Atlas as he jumped into the air. “Who are you?”
“I’m the robotic chair that’s going to help you win this race.” It was a very logical chair. Knowing that the judges expected Atlas not to know how to fly a spacecraft, the chair suggested that they wait for half an hour before making any movement. During that time, most of the ships stayed in place, while a few exploded, which was the result of mashing all of the buttons at once.
Soon, however, Atlas was demonstrating his incompetence by driving through a crowd of observers before making his way, in reverse with his right blinker on, into space. He was pleased with how easy piloting the craft was. It seemed that he was certain to win, which is why the chair suggested that he crash the ship into a large orange planet.
“Why?” demanded Atlas.
“If we go too long without messing up, they’ll know that we’re cheating.” It made sense, but Atlas still didn’t want to do it. So the chair did. It rammed the controls with its seat and soon the two were careening toward a sandy surface.
Somehow, Atlas and his accomplice survived the landing. Whether they survived the next several hours depended on their ability to dupe their captors, which were shape shifting gummy creatures. A simple act of misdirection would suffice. Atlas hurled a rock and the chair suggested that he sit on it and firmly hold on to its seat.
Voosh! Soon Atlas and his stool were hundreds of feet away. “I didn’t know you could fly.”
“I can’t. I can only take off and crash.” Atlas screamed and, even though it wasn’t programmed to fear, so did the chair.
Atlas wanted to know what they were going to do next, to which the chair replied, “Nothing. No one else in that race can get as far as we did.”
“But how are we going to get off this planet?”
“Who cares? All that matters is that we won.” Atlas concluded that he would die on that planet. Probably he’d be eaten by one of those fun looking Jell-O things. So he decided to walk quickly toward the horizon.
“Carry me,” demanded the chair, retracting its legs into itself. Atlas made his way through the foreign terrain, which, as far as he could see, was dessert. The ground consisted solely of peppermint lozenge.
“On my planet, we would suck on this stuff.”
“On dirt?” asked the chair.
“Well, it’s dirt here, but back home it’s candy.”
“That’s some shitty candy.”
“Well, at least on my planet we don’t abandon people on some planet to die.”
“They wouldn’t abandon me! I cost over a crabillion space bucks.” Before the chair could elaborate anymore, it and Atlas were met by triple Robert.
Once inside the Space Saab, Huggy explained their current situation. Somehow, a salmon like being had managed to out do Atlas’s distance and they had less than a day to beat it. They told Atlas to make sure he didn’t lose the chair because it contained the device that was monitoring his progress. Then they dropped him off at the nearest space train station, bought him a one-way ticket to victory, and left to have a fish fry.
“What do I do if someone tries to talk to me? Is there some sort of universal language?”
“Yeah, just say, ‘voody voop.’ That means, ‘just visiting.’ And if they keep talking, say, ‘schmook schmook pook pook.’ That means, ‘I don’t know how to say anything else.’ If, even after that, they keep talking, say it again but in a sad voice. ”
Atlas sat next to a window, but looking out of it was just like looking at the sky at night. Bored, Atlas tried to sleep, but was being nudged awake before even beginning his slumber.
“My sensors are picking up on an odor. You smell anything?”
“Just mint.”
The powerful scent of mint meant only one thing: space cops. Traveling in hordes, most space cops hail from the planet Svenya. Known for their terrible body odor, Svenyee bathed themselves in mint in an attempt to mask their stench. The Chair ordered Atlas to get off at the next stop and run. Run as fast as he could in whichever direction was farthest away from the astro fuzz.
Atlas looked cool when he ran. He was about to say just that, but instead exclaimed, “Oh shit, stretchy arms!” The long arm of the law had gripped Atlas by the shoulder and forced him to the ground.
“Why are they murdering me?” Atlas asked in-between pummelings.
“Because you were harboring a known criminal: me.”
Atlas could only cover his face and hope that his beating would soon be over, which it was.
“Suck it!” yelled Huggy as he brandished a bat with a nail in it. The space police left, knowing better than to antagonize a Plefft with such a weapon.
Once on the ship, Atlas demanded to know why it was that he had to endure such treatment. “They would have killed you if we hadn’t have showed up conveniently like we did,” said Huggy.
“Convenient? They broke my arm.”
“Hey, now, we’re in space. Fixing a broken arm is nothing. You got space insurance?” Of course Atlas didn’t have space insurance, what a ridiculous question. “Well, then you can’t afford the procedure.”
“What about all of that prize money?”
“We can’t afford to waste any of that. We have a criminal empire to fund.”
Atlas mentioned the crabillion dollar robotic barstool. “A crabillion space gozangas? For that thing?” The chair changed the subject quickly to defend its dignity by noting that gozangas was slang for breasts, not money.
The discussion that ensued was so lively that Atlas didn’t notice that they had landed on Earth.
“So you’re just going to drop me off and let me keep my memory?”
“No one’s going to believe you,” said Robert Robert Robert.
“Well, then I’ll write a story about it.”
“Yeah, and how will you end it?”
“Abruptly.”
