VENUS CALLING MARS
By Intrepid Warriors
"Another disappointing day! No, make that a disappointing week!" Charlie muttered to herself, as she started putting her tools away and cleaning up the Last Chance. She barely had any customers all day, and the last job hadn't been worth the time she put in for the pay she received. It was nearly nightfall, and what had started out sounding like a dream job soon turned into a nightmare.
But that was how it was at the moment. She needed every job she could scrounge, no matter how little it brought in.
First, business was down.
A new gang had setup camp in the area and was wrecking considerable, and consistent, havoc. So badly that most of the families and businesses in the area did not hesitate to accept the below value offers from a greedy property tycoon called Lawrence Limburger. As Limburger's men rolled in, most of the neighbourhood rolled out. The area was soon reduced to a scene befitting a major earthquake, or war zone.
Charlie refused to budge. Despite constant hassling and threats of property damage and/or bodily harm, she wasn't selling the Last Chance. And she wasn't moving either. It was all she had left. Her entire life savings and inheritance had gone into buying this place, and she wasn't about to give up on her dream just to satisfy a suit‑wearing egomaniac.
On top of all this stress, her love life was in shambles too.
Four years ago, Jack McCyber, her high-school sweetheart and long-term boyfriend had returned from University, and proposed to her. She'd been really excited, until she found out what the catch was. Moving...to California...practically to the other side of the country. Away from her family, her friends, and her dream of owning her own mechanical shop. Something she had been working towards since high school.
There was no job too small or too menial for Charlie when it came to financing her dream. She scrimped and saved every penny she could. While her friends were out partying every weekend and making impromptu road-trips, she was serving drinks, cleaning tables and mopping up vomit in all-night bars. She had even worked out which mechanics shop she was going to purchase. It was only a small place, badly run down but she was going to purchase it, fix it up and make a fresh start, both for the business and herself.
It was just too early for her to quit her dream, and Jack wasn't prepared to wait as he had a major funding proposition brewing, so they regretfully agreed to disagree and parted ways. Promising to keep in touch, both of them turned to their respective futures and got down to business.
Since then, she had dated without success. She allowed herself to be set up on blind dates when conventional methods didn't produce any results. But along with the internet and speed dating, the results from that experiment had been scary at best.
One day at her lowest point, she returned from another unsuccessful stab at the dating scene, tossed her leather jacket on the floor in frustration and curled up on the sofa with a cushion crushed between her arms and began sobbing.
Just another leering asshole interested in how quickly he could get laid.
From the intellectuals to the jocks, it had been one bad experience after another of lewd comments, being eyeballed and attempted groping. Never before had she employed her self-defence skills so much in such a short span of time.
In desperation, she rang her mother and let all the sadness and frustration pour into the older woman's caring ear. When her daughter finally finished blubbering over the phone and sniffling into the earpiece, Mrs Davidson gave her daughter the best of her motherly wisdom.
"Charlie-love, stop trying so hard. Let the right guy come to you. Guaranteed, he's going to be from out of this world!" she said soothingly.
Wiping the snotty tears from her face, Charlie decided to listen to her mother's advice and concentrated on developing her small, but flourishing business.
Sighing at the memory, Charlie picked up the last wrench and was about to put it in the rack with the rest of the hand-tools, when she heard heavy footsteps enter the garage.
Her fists clenched in anger when they got closer. She knew exactly who they belonged too. A big, hairy, mutated oil-spill on legs called Greasepit.
Whirling round, she confronted the seven foot looming hulk with the wrench in hand, the urge to imbed it in his skull roaring through her blood.
"Get out now!" she ordered him coolly. The control in her voice belied the rage emanating off her body like zinging electricity.
Thankfully for Greasepit, he was either too well-paid, or too stupid to acknowledge how close he was to a manual lobotomy.
"Sign the contract lady. There ain't room in Mr Limburger's dictionary for no!" Greasepit said, moving closer to his target, brandishing the contract in one hand.
"Last time oil-slick, get out!" she warned him, swinging the wrench into the contract and sending it flying.
"Mr Limburger is a rich man. He don't take kindly to small-fry like you messing up his plans" Greasepit replied, his eyes lighting with fury.
Her patience worn thin, Charlie finally lost her cool.
"Tell your slimy boss that I don't care how much money he has. The Last Chance Garage is mine and it's not for sale!" Charlie said heatedly, thrusting her wrench into Greasepit's chest. Oil leapt from his body and landed on her shirt, causing her to pause momentarily as she cleaned it off with a rag.
"Youse is not being wise lady. Mr Limburger wants this land. And what Lawrence Limburger wants, Lawrence Limburger GETS!" he bellowed as he lunged at her.
Charlie nimbly hopped over the hydraulic lift to the other side, still clutching the wrench.
"Listen you over-grown grease-monkey, you've got ten seconds to vacate this place or I'm gonna vacate your face!" Charlie warned, brandishing the wrench threateningly.
Greasepit laughed scornfully and shook himself like he was terrified of her, oil spilling in all directions from his shoulders.
"Oh! I'm shaking lady! You see me shaking?!" he mocked.
Charlie dropped the wrench as she threw her arms up to protect her eyes from the oil flying dangerously close to her face.
Fed up, Charlie decided enough was enough. Grabbing one of the levers on the control panel, she yanked downwards.
"Why don't you just ooze off!" she yelled as the lift shot upwards, dragging Greasepit with it and sending him crashing into the roof.
"What the heck, my lift needed a grease job anyway!" Charlie said, kicking the oil catcher so it rested underneath Greasepit.
Crushed against the roof, oil dripping in bigger and faster quantities than before, Greasepit glared down at her.
"Youse is starting to annoys me big time!" he grunted as he reached up and pushed himself away from the roof.
His foot slammed into the lift shaft, crushing it on one side. He wrenched parts of the lift prongs with his hands, twisting upwards and downwards as he used his heavy body to force the lift back down. As he approached closer to the ground, Greasepit snapped two of the metal prongs off and began hurling them at Charlie.
A feeling of dread hit Charlie's belly as she realised this was no ordinary man she was dealing with. His display of strength confirmed she was in over her head. Dodging the flying metal, she turned to flee out the garage door, deciding this wasn't the time to be stupidly heroic.
Unfortunately for Charlie, the oil from Greasepit's oozing had gotten all over the floor and her boot slipped as she tried to make a getaway, sending her crashing back toward the bent lift shaft, and back toward Greasepit.
Greasepit dropped down behind her and approached menacingly.
"Maybe now you will see Mr Limburger's generous offer in a new light" Greasepit said, pausing to retrieve another contract and pen he had stashed in his overalls.
Charlie sat up, her eyes wide as she realised there was no escape possible. The walking steroid was only going to exit the Last Chance with one thing. A contract, or her badly beaten body.
'Where's my knight in shining armour when I need him?!" she thought, her heart sinking as Greasepit shoved the paperwork at her.
Oil dripping off his lavish calligraphy pen and on to the contract, Greasepit held them in front of Charlie expectantly.
A male voiced caused him to turn.
"Say there citizen, why don't you leave the lady alone?" a helmet clad biker said, leaning nonchalantly against the garage door.
"Ha?!" Greasepit exclaimed in confusion. Realising in some part of his primitive brain that he was being challenged, he waved the pen threateningly.
"And who's gonna make me wrench-face?!" he demanded.
The biker instantly became alert, unfolding his arms.
"Who's gonna make me? Hey, who's gonna make me is my middle name. I'm gonna make you!" he retorted, jabbing his finger in Greasepit's direction.
Amazed that a total stranger was coming to her rescue, Charlie could only remain silent, in awe of this modern-day Sir Lancelot.
Greasepit growled threateningly, grinding his teeth in irritation at this insolent intruder.
The biker pulled a small device from the bandoleers crossing his chest. It expanded to five times its original size and the biker swung it downwards against his denim-clad thigh, causing it to spark at one end. He hurled it upwards toward a bundle of ropes hanging from the ceiling and the flare passed through one of the ropes, slicing it free.
Charlie used the distraction to slide forwards on her knees, moving out of range of Greasepit's while the biker grabbed the rope.
Swinging across the floor toward Greasepit, the biker clenched his fist, ready to smash it into the bully's face.
But once again, the oil from the hulking menace worked in Greasepit's favour and the biker slipped at a crucial moment, causing him to land on his butt and slide ungracefully across the rest of the garage floor.
"Oh man!" he exclaimed as he slid feet first into the wall.
Greasepit laughed and loomed over the fallen would-be-hero.
"Aw, what's the matter? The little bitty baby biker hurt himself? Get up and fight you loser!" he demanded.
As the fallen biker lay on the floor, too dazed yet to make a move, Greasepit grew impatient.
"What are ya? A man or a mouse?" he growled.
Glass cracked and spilt as two more bikers suddenly entered the garage through the window. They landed on their feet and took off their helmets.
"Mouse" the gray one replied, his unruffled tone shadowed by unspoken threat.
The tan one snapped his fingers. "You got a problem with that?" he demanded.
Greasepit made the biggest mistake of his life that day. He said the "R" word and suffered the first of many humiliating defeats at the hands of Earth's newest guests, the Biker Mice from Mars He literally rolled out of there, bemoaning having to tell his employer what had happened.
When the commotion died down, Charlie managed the awkward introductions that followed with an even larger wrench clutched in her hands.
Once she was sure the new arrivals posed no threat to her well-being or her beloved garage, she took the opportunity to get a closer peek at them.
"Mice...with antennas...and biker clothes...and motorcycles!" she said in disbelief as she pulled, poked and prodded the white-furred visitor in various parts of his anatomy.
"Don't forget your basic studly bod!" he reminded her, bringing his arms forward in a classic muscle pose.
"I've seen better!" she quipped, refusing to play along, even though she secretly agreed they definitely were in the top percentile.
"Maybe, but not with this much charm!" the biker replied, folding his arms as if to say end of discussion, case closed.
Despite the display of over-inflated ego, Charlie wasn't repelled by the white-furred biker like she pretended to be. In fact, if she was honest with herself, she was more than a little intrigued by him. She could have picked any one of them to touch to confirm what she was seeing, but she'd instinctively been drawn to him.
And he had tried to help her. Just because he wanted too. No expectations, no conditions.
That was the first side she had seen of the biker she would come to know as Vinnie, and it was the side that she would eventually fall in love with. Sure he was arrogant at times, hot-headed, didn't always think things through and rushed into danger with an adrenalin addiction befitting a daredevil. But he was hers. And where he lacked, she more than made up for. And vice versa.
Her mother had been right. When Venus called, Mars would answer...eventually...after the end of this James Bomb movie...and scoffing the rest of these hotdogs...and sculling the root-beer from the fridge and belching his name...and preening in the bathroom mirror.
"Vinnie! Get your arse up here now, or you can forget about any nookie!" Charlie bellowed from the warmth of their bed.
Hearing her husband hurriedly rushing up the steps, Charlie threw the quilt up and he landed in beside her. She pulled the cover over both of them and sighed as he started nuzzling her neck.
"Out of this world indeed mum, if only you knew!" Charlie grinned to herself, stroking her husband's neck affectionately in the dark.
Encouraged by her actions, Vinnie set to work showing his beloved Venus that she was the only planet in the solar system for him.
The End of this Little Bit of Writing.