Read Online Dreams That Burn In The Night by Craig Strete - Free Book Online Page B

Perhaps.
    Rappi crouched flat
against the ground in terror, his primitive mind filled with childish fears and superstitions. A
gray-and-white thing with a sunburn and a peeling nose smashed through the bushes and onto the
trail right in front of Rappi. Rappi allowed himself to relax a little. It was only the
master.
    And the master was
being very much ugly from his feet on up. He was yelling like he had needles through his
shirttails and he looked like he had been dragged across the jungle by a slow snake. His shirt
was three colors, two of them dirty, and his pants were dirty here and there, being clean mostly
in the places where they had holes. The holes were very clean.
    It was not a good
day for the jungle. He was tearing it up left and right and scorching the air with his language. Rappi decided he would stay in the
bush and not bother the master today. Rappi could not think of any saying in the village that
covered hiding in the bushes when the master was like he was, but he thought to himself that
there sure ought to be one.
    Ideas went through
the master like a hiss in his brain. There was a ringing in his ears and a constant pounding at
his temples. He smashed through some reeds near the riverbank and his shirt caught on a thornbush
and came off in two big hunks, an armhole for each hunk.
    He swore and swung
at the bush with his fist. The blood that started flowing out of his hand sobered him a little.
It hurt like hell and that brought him a little closer to rationality than he had been all
day.
    It reminded him why
he was mad. It was that damn Rappi who had used the last of his shirts to clean out the lizard
cages. Or was it Bappi? All those damn aliens looked alike. They even had the same sort of name.
Whoever it was, if he ever caught him, he'd flay him to the bone.
    Of course, that
wasn't the real reason he was upset. No, it went deeper than that. It was rain and the legs of a
stripper named Candy Boxes.
    It hadn't rained in
seven months. He would have sold his mother for a cup of water. How long had he been drinking the
muck the natives of Mintfrappe siphoned out of trees? Had it re­ally been seven months? Seven
months of virpa sap, which tasted like something the dog brought home instead of depositing with
upraised leg on the fire hydrant.
    And one of those
crotty aliens, how the hell did he know which one, had tried to take the tacks out of the picture
of her he had nailed over his bed. Enrico Fermi! Those idiots would eat any­thing with metal in
it! One night he woke up and two of them were under the bed, chewing on his bedsprings. It was
one hell of a life.
    And Candy Boxes,
did she care about him? If he wrote her a letter, saying, "dear candy, the
dog ate the top half of your picture but I still have your legs on my Wall,” would she
care? No, she wouldn't care. She'd just laugh and jump on top of an astronaut. It was depressing.
He knew she was laughing at him and running around jumping on astronauts. That was what sent him in desperation into the Planetary
Foreign Legion and to this godforsaken planet. She had an uncontrollable urge for astronauts,
planetary explorers, and spacemen of all types. He could never quite reconcile himself to it
somehow. He was always tripping over a spacer's tote bag in the bathroom. There was always
somebody shaving in the mirror be­fore he got up in the morning. And they all had tattoos on
their arms that said in old English script: mother.
    He would have had
himself tattooed too if he thought it would have made any difference to her. It wouldn't have.
Candy Boxes liked only what was fashionable and what was fashionable was the brave men who
explored space, roaming the galaxy to come back to earth after months of celibacy, hornier than
hot rabbits with socks on. The in thing to do was relieve these brave men, to comfort them after
their prolonged abstinence. After all, said Women's Bare Daily, what greater reward could
the