Disclaimer: I know the drill and you know the drill, I do not own anything, heck, I just did my taxes! Any resemblance to humans and extra-terrestrials, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No opera singers were harmed in the writing of this tale.

Author's Note: This tale was written at the same time as the scifi tale 'Inimicus'. I have no idea what kind of strange schizophrenia my mind was undergoing at that time, though I blame it on my passion for opera.


What's Opera, Dude?

Act I

People in glass houses shouldn't get stoned: Beck Messer ruminated on that thought as he watched his subject through the sniper scope. The penthouse windows were huge and they did not have the nice privacy curtains that decent people have when they did not want anybody spying on them. The doped up tenant was a downright sprawling savage, smoking his weed in full view and not caring about who was watching him from the surrounding buildings.

It was well past three in the morning by Messer's reckoning, and a good time to kill. Wiping the light sheen of sweat from his forehead, he looked through the scope again to check on his target. He had all the time in the world for this hit since one of the shadowy fronts of the client who hired him leased the room he was using. His employer instructed him to get in and out without anybody noticing, so they issued Messer a key and a custodial uniform in order to make him inconspicuous.

Fortunately, his building was practically empty by now. Either the employees were at home asleep or drowning their sorrows in whatever choice of brew they had on tap. The few security guards lounging at their video screens were oblivious to everything happening outside of the camera's frame, and they would not care about the lone custodian working in the building.

Earlier, Messer spent nearly two hours watching Dopey's little sex act with an all too acrobatic and rubbery prostitute. The whole thing looked like the love child of a freak show and a gymnastics competition on psychedelic 'shrooms. He did find it fascinating though, and he caught himself mesmerized by certain body configurations he thought were impossible between two human beings, but possible between certain invertebrate animals. That was probably the main reason it took him a while to assemble his rifle. There was something not quite right with the barrel and he kept pushing it and pulling it, trying to adjust it. He realized he was doing something quite naughty when he noticed his rhythmic action was matching the escapades occurring in the penthouse.

At the end of the coital Olympics, the prostitute left Dopey on the penthouse floor and walked out the door with her payment; she was probably heading to her next performance of Wanda the Wraparound Whore. Messer was craving for a cigarette, but he contained the urge. However, he saw the neighbors watching from the surrounding buildings light up their own cancer sticks as a salute to the free show.

xXx

There were other eyes watching though. A silent leap and the soft scuffling sound of clawed feet shifted the shallow drifts of roof gravel on another building adjacent to Dopey's penthouse. The owners of those feet were nearly invisible and they growled and clicked to each other in an unearthly language.

"This species just got uglier," said Ny'rath as he shook his head in disbelief. "I thought the female was killing the male in order to eat him."

"I never knew they were that flexible," answered Ghiz.

The two hunters had made their way closer shortly after the end of the bizarre mating ritual and now they were ready to pay the oblivious Dopey a visit.

The strange circumstances surrounding how the two yautja found Dopey were very strange indeed. It all began in Death Valley, upon a golf course, of all places, on a clear moonless night with the stars dominating the black velvet of space with their cold diamond brilliance.

Dopey had an appointment on the 11th Hole with a person of unwholesome connections. His job that night was to dispatch Mr. Unwholesome quickly. There were to be no witnesses, but as it always happens to people with extremely bad luck, there were witnesses to the whole golf course hit, except they were not human. A roadrunner nearby heard the nearly silent cough of a pistol with a noise suppressor and cocked its head warily, wondering if it was the coyote it escaped from earlier; the coyote in question had slunk off for a rendezvous with a lovely female, avoiding the noisy humans altogether. Another pair of witnesses was also in the vicinity, but in a spacecraft hovering silently high above Dopey and his victim.

The gkinmara on their ship recorded it all. Ghiz and Ny'rath watched as Dopey dragged his victim to a nearby pit and buried it with the implements he had placed there earlier.

"This ooman talks to his prey before killing them," Ny'rath said. "It's probably part of his ritual or he's a very loquacious hunter and likes talking to his prey. Or maybe he's out of his mind."

Ghiz just shrugged as he looked over the scans of the surrounding area.

This was the third time in a row they had seen this particular ooman with his prey. The two hunters had been following Dopey, gauging to see if he would make a fitting trophy for either of them to add to their trophy collection. They were tempted to stalk and kill him countless of times, but they decided to wait instead for the right time and place. Ny'rath had Ghiz send down a small tracking device that immediately hitched a ride on the unsuspecting prey's vehicle. Unfortunately, the two yautjas did not account for the distances he traveled; soon after burying his victim, Dopey hopped into his car and drove off. The tracking device soon developed problems when Dopey, after taking a wrong turn, backed into a boulder. From then on, Ny'rath, piloting the ship, had to stay close to the speeding vehicle.

It was an eventful trip with their ship narrowly avoiding collisions with low-flying aircraft and nearly invisible electrical wires. At one point during the trip, Dopey stopped near a military airbase where he stayed for a while in a building of rental females. Ghiz got bored and could not resist playing with the nearby airbase, so he turned off the ship's cloaking mechanism; immediately, the military radar detected their ship and pilots scrambled into their fighter jets to intercept the unknown aircraft.

Ny'rath avoided near hits and heat-seeking missiles, dodging and buzzing the jets beautifully. During the merry chase, the two hunters lost their prey's signal. With a snarling curse, Ny'rath stopped playing and sped away at speeds that made it impossible for the missiles and jets to keep up with them. Ghiz managed to record the last place the tracking signal was received and by triangulation and extrapolation (these two words sound a bit violent, don't they?) he managed to find Dopey's destination.

A large city loomed before them and the pair chattered in excitement; they were headed towards a favorite hunting ground. The tracking device's signal soon became too erratic to use, so they landed their ship in a secure location far from ooman eyes and traveled on foot; sometimes they picked up the signal, but most of the time it was a guessing game. The two picked up their prey's trail again when they found his vehicle abandoned in a desolate part of the city. From there, they had to sift through a multitude of spoor to find Dopey and after one earth day, they managed to find his lair and bear witness to his outlandish intercourse.

xXx

"Okay, I guess it's time to reach out and touch someone. Sorry Dopey, I hardly knew you, but business is business and I guess I'm handing you your pink slip tonight," Messer said as he sighted the rifle once more. He made minute changes to his stance and gauged the wind speed one more time to compensate for crosswinds and heat updrafts. Now, he was ready for the final step. As he was about to pull back gently on the trigger, something caught his eye

"You gotta be kidding me!" whispered Messer. Did they send a couple of hitmen to do his job? What the fawk? He had seen the figures emerge from the darkness of an adjacent building. He thought he was imagining things when he saw one of them disappear from view. The other quickly leapt to the penthouse roof and made his way to the large skylight.

xXx

Dopey jumped up at the noise on the roof. He was now scared out of his wits and stone cold sober, the pleasant fog of the drug having dissipated a while ago. He knew they were going to tie up his loose end. They could at least given him more time. He had been planning to leave town on the earliest flight so he could escape the assassin they would be sending after him, but he wanted one last good-bye and one last bang.

He grabbed a gun tucked beneath the large cushion of a nearby sofa, frantically looking up at the ceiling and wondering who was up there, but the tapping on the windows soon won Dopey's complete and unwavering attention. As he inched his way towards the windows, he held his gun out in front of him. The ominous darkness pushing against the windows was giving him the strangest sensation. A rattling gurgle came from somewhere outside; it sounded like somebody was choking on a rattlesnake.

Suddenly, the whole skylight fell in with a resounding crash behind Dopey. He whirled around in time to see the guy they sent to kill him. What he saw made him wonder if this whole thing was some kind of sick joke. His would-be killer did not look human and it was friggin' huge. Screaming and yelling, Dopey brought the revolver up and fired at the thing looming over him. Deflected by the mask the creature wore, the bullet ricocheted harmlessly away. With a menacing growl, the thing lunged forward and raised its oddly speckled arm. The twin blades that shot out from the large wristband gleamed with malevolence. Dopey could see his wide eyes reflected briefly on the shining blades before they plunged into his throat and ripped out his larynx, windpipe, assorted muscles, and important blood vessels.

As he felt his blood cascading down his shirtfront, Dopey's final thoughts flashed across his dying brain, I wanted to die in my sleep like my grandfather... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

Thus passes Dopey from this tale…