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bananxious · 2 years ago

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Sam and Max story dump numero uno

I call this “Untitled Sam and Max Mole Adventure #1, [funny joke tba]”

Sam and Max get a call to the semi-renovated Museum of Mostly Natural History. A Mole Mystery ensues. I’d give this a Teen for mild peril, or something. About 4,400 words.

I started daydreaming about this little Sam n Max adventure aftering chewing over the implications of the mole people, maybe tying in some post-305 stuff for a laugh, something to do with Internet 2.0, and then forgetting about it for a year. I figured if I didn’t post something it’d never see the light of day, and I would just sit editing the same 4000 words forever. Apologies for any chunks missing, this is essentially a first draft, I’ll probably rework a lot of the dialogue and everything else, but the framework is there? Any feedback, criticism, or ideas are much appreciated, and if you fancy chatting to me about please feel free to send me a message !

Anyway, the story:

"Well, would you look at that!" Sam declared cheerfully to the visibly rattled night guard of the half-destroyed and semi-renovated Museum of Mostly Natural History, "Your midnight disturbances were nothing more than a defenceless, pathetic little mole man. The most this minor miscreant will committ is some reckless property damage, maybe chew through a few electrical cables, deface a couple of bathroom signs, or maybe swipe your car stereo if you're really unlucky.

"They're a bit like termites, but usually better dressed," Max added. "And they usually move in the same circles. Underground, wet damp caves, anywhere with plenty of savory plywood goin' spare!"

Their caught culprit spat and chittered like furious little tornado inside the white wire crate he'd been trapped in, an enclosure big enough for him to stand and scuttle around in indignant circles squawking noisily in protest while occasionally stopping to angrily spit, snort, or strain his eyes glaring cavernous entrance lobby of the museum. Not only was this big-eared, tiny-eyed, snub-nosed, rarely-employed grey fuzzball a complete non-threat, but he was already well-known to the Freelance Police. If there was anything that bored Max it was repeat offenders, and Harry Moleman was no novelty, but trying to jab him with a plastic fork tied to the end of a jumbo pencil from the gift shop soothed his restless spirit while Sam liasoned with their client.

Meanwhile, the shaking "night guard" turned out to be little more than a silver-haired senior hippie in a loudly-patterned wool poncho and eclectic acetate jewelry, a day volunteer at the Museum of Mostly Natural History now turned night squatter left shaking at the sight of a "some screeching beast with shovel-like claws". Sam glanced at her (and shared a brief confirmatory nose wrinkle and nod with Max) for a brief moment and concluded that no whiff of fire and brimstone-esque Yog-Soggothiness was to be found: she was the equivalent friendly neighbourhood witch who had traded in her broomstick for a herbal-scented Volkswagen Campervan, though by the nervous rattling a prescription for diazepam wouldn't go amiss either. He imagined this was just one of the many weirdos the old proprietor Papierweite must have swapped apocalyptic conspiracy theories with years ago in yoga coffee shops and seldom-visited bulletin boards in the deep, dank corners that Sam assumed the internet had.

Sam gave that information a patient moment to sink in before he continued, "I imagine he just gave you a spook when his monstrous silhouette was amplified by a floor light." He placed the chunky 12 volt torch facing their interloper and watched his spherical two-and-a-half foot shadow grow into the outlined of what could conceviably be construed by a mind still possessed by the free spirit of the 60s as a drooling, teeth-gnashing, bone-breaking harbinger of horror.

Their prisoner scowled and hissed at the sharp white light before rattling the grate of the chinchilla cage at their feet with admirable gusto. "You jerks! What's the big idea, here?! You let me out of here, right this second! I've done absolutely nothing wrong!"

"Oh sure, sure - except the wanton property destruction, late-night trespassing, terrifying a poor innocent museum volunteer-slash-squatter, and not to mention getting caught by us, again! That last one isn't illegal, but it IS poor form, Harry. And all this at - what's the time, Sam?"

Sam pushed up his sleeve and checked his watch. "I'd call that two forty-five AM."

"Two forty-!" Max threw his head back and wailed in frustration. "We should be tucked up in bed with our marathon of America's Greatest Sports Injuries at this time of night. Let's scram, Sam - this case is a real dud. Thanks for nothin', Harry!"

"Couldn't agree more, little buddy. Come on, let's give our culprit here the ol' catch and release, like they do with opossums and intoxicated teens. I'm sure the nearest sewer manhole will do just fine, like it did for that spotty Jenkins kid." Sam leaned down to grab the handle of the crate to cart off the little trespasser, only to pause. Something seemed off: sitting passively inside the wire cage, Harry seemed unusually calm. Instead of clawing at the bars like the desperate little miscreant he was, he had planted his rear end on the floor of his cage while he rubbed his little six-fingered hands together, like a housefly who’d just spotted a particularly delicious beverage to drown in. To Sam, he looked more like he was scheming than panicking.

"But since your escapades dragged us all the way out of our pyjamas and into the bowels of the Museum of Mostly Natural History in the wee hours of the morn, do you mind filling us in on exactly what you were doing this far above ground?" Sam watched the captive mole's eyes, ears, and whiskers twitch nervously.

"... I was just trespassing! Just like you said! What with traffic 'round the Burrows these days, sometimes it's easier to just take a shortcut here and there, y'know? And ah, maybe I just fancied a scenic route? But you know what boys, I've learned my lesson here, so if you'd just go on and open this hatch by the nearest air vent or patch of soft diggable soil, I'll be out of your hair in no time!" Sam lifted the crate up and peered directly into Harry's narrow eyes, pushing his nose up to the bars and sniffing. The little mole chittered nervously.

"You know you're a terrible liar, right, Harry? You've gone from smelling like an abandoned garden centre to an incredibly anxious salt-lick. Spill the beans!"

Max rolled his eyes. "C'mon Sam, put that mole man back where he came from, already!" The older woman was still watching, and harrumphed to catch their attention.

"Well, I, ah, I thank you boys for coming out here on such short notice at such a ridiculous hour, but," the old curator rattled her colorful acetate necklace nervously while pointing with her other hand, "that doesn't much look like what I saw on the way to the Exhibit of Unnatural Disasters. Or sound like. Or smell like."

The sound of something clattering caught the attention of the group, who hung in pensive silence for a few moments.

"...Say, Sam? You did set the VCR to record the rest of our marathon, right?"

"It's cute when you think VCR machines are comprehensible by the sane mind, Max, but we'll be lucky if we end up with another re-run of The Curmudgeonly Connoisseur, or maybe one of those late night shopping channels viewed only by shift workers and resentful insomniacs." He ignored Max's sour little groan. "Keep an eye on this irritating little interloper, would you, Ms. M? And uh, you wouldn't mind if we borrowed this 12 volt flashlight, would you?"

-----

[MIND THE GAP]

Sam's stomach for adventure curdled like spilt milk on a hot sidewalk when he realised the form at the end of the corridor wasn't just a misplaced mannequin or anomalous animatronic. At the end of the trail of shattered femurs and miscellanous vertebrae was something heaving, pale and sagging, some mighty fleshy mass with very little headspace below the ceiling that had just rendered Papierwaite’s distasteful collection of display skeletons down into a less-than-satisfying midnight snack.

[Apologies for the severe jump here, there was a longer chunk involving a monster chase but it wasn’t working so I just removed the 800 word slog for now. Or I’ll just lampshade it in dialogue later. meh!]

Sam and Max took a precious few moments to catch their breath while their now firmly stuck pursuer thrashed wildly like live fish in a wet sack, it's grim flesh wobbling blancmange-like as it tried to fling itself forward open-mouthed with cut-glass wailing, before being yanked back by the knot of cables around its neck with enough force to send it's slimy spittle flying across the room. With it's maw fully open Max could now peer into the grim chasm of their monster: behind the beak-like teeth were multiple sets of wide, flat teeth, with a slimy tongue that would whip round and slap the walls of it's new enclosure like wet tripe stuffed in a blender.

"I Wish I had three sets of internal teeth and jaws," Max opined from a safe distance. "This show-off has enough gnashers to set the tooth fairy up for life!"

"You said it, little buddy," Sam responded as he began to admire the sheer tenacity of the beast now that the fear of a being shredded to ribbons by this mammoth mole was ebbing away. "Looking at the sheer dental capacity of this barbarous fiend, I'd say this thing has evolved to grind down the most resilient of bones and igneous rock into a friable and nutritious powder."

"Is that why this big fella's breath stinks like deep-fried landfill?"

A congealed puddle of the monster's drool was beginning to form on the linoluem floor below as it slowly wound down it's nerve-grating noisy screeches to a low-level snorting and grunting.

I'm beginning to think our dear Harry was ommitting some very important truths."

Max’s ears, fingers and toes seemed to curl inwards as a hot guff of foul breath wafted into his sinuses. "And to think that honourable and upstanding Harry Moleman was happy to lead us down the gullet of this big ugly goon. Perhaps we could omit a few of his teeth to extract some of that essential information?"

"Couldn't agree more, little buddy, I've had just about my fill of seeing, hearing, and smelling this ugly customer. How about we go shakedown our little mis-acheiver and see what’s rattled loose?”

----

Harry winced and sheilded his eyes from the sharp shaft of twelve-volt light aimed directly at his face. "I'm keeping shtum! You mooks can do your worst!"

"Don't worry ma'am, we're professionals," Sam assured the startled curator as Max shook the captive Harry. By the time he'd turn round to glance back, the frazzled hippie had slammed the office door shut and wrenched the lock tight with a noisy clatter of her plastic bead bracelets before anxiously tracking them on the CCTV as they descended down into the dark basement levels with their cage in hand towards the distant staff room.

"Oh Harry," Max tutted as he peered in, beady eyes to beady eyes. "We didn’t need the invitation!" Gleefully the lagomorph was already carting away Harry's little cell like a birthday present. "C'mon Sam! I've got an idea!"

"Can’t wait to see it, Max,” Sam replied in tone jovial enough to set the little mole man on edge, before his brow fell stern like he was suddenly channeling the wandering spirit of a 1940s private investigator. “Alright, Harry! Playtime’s over - from this moment on, you tell us everything!" Max took Sam’s snarl as the cue to shove Harry’s cage directly in the sights of the stuck beast in the maintenance corridor.

Harry shrieked and pasted himself to the back wall of his crate as the megamole lunged forward, only to be violently yanked back by the light fitting and cable tangled around it's neck as a makeshift tether. "Ooh! A hungry fella, isn't he?" Max teased as he shook the mole man's cage like an enticing box of megamole treats, prompting the trapped monster to open it's cavernous maw for another round of ear-shredding wails and teeth gnashing, and the claws scraping against ground had shredded and curled the plastic flooring like butter.

"Alright! Alright! I'll tell you everything I know, just get me AWAY from that thing!" Harry wheezed as Max finally kicked the door shut. "Geez, you lunatic! I'm about ready to go into freakin' cardiac arrest!"

"Great! Now you know share the feeling we had about fifteen minutes ago! Maybe if you had just 'fessed up in the first place instead of trying to cover your own keister we could have done this the easy way!"

"Now there's the truth if ever I heard it," Sam concurred as he busied himself with the staff vending machine. "I may appear as cool as a hydroponics-grown cucumber, but my heart still feels like it's breakdancing backwards in high heels after that close-quarters melee in the maintenance corridor." He cracked open a cold can of Spuzz and savored the foul yet refreshing sour effervescence for a few moments. "Max, although I crave sweet justice as much as the next red-blooded American, I think we've sweated this poor mole man enough. " He turned his attention to the other machine which whirred and clanked in protest before spitting out a nougat bar, while Max placed Harry's cage on the coffee-stained white table in the middle of the staff room.

Sam patted Max's head with an open hand and heard a sound akin to a gourd half-full of water being slapped with a wooden spoon. "Good job on the interrogation! Torquemada would be proud." He offered up the last chunk of chocolate-covered nougat, which quickly gummed up Max's shark-like gullet. "So what's the deal, Harry? Is this a cousin of yours? Maybe an old college buddy?" The mole man said nothing but instead rattled the closed hatch of his cage yet again, though the sight of Max's gnashing jaws only a few feet away had him second-guessing his current escape attempt.

"Oh, knock it off, Harry, you're now in the custody of the Freelance Police. We don't have any kiddy-sized handcuffs that'll fit round your sneaky little hands though, so you'll have to stay in there for now." The mole man huffed and wrinkled his pointed nose in frustration. "Oh, don't look so put-upon, lil guy! Look - Ms. Marcieski even gave you a cushion, and a PB&J!" A small floral print cushion and a cellophane-wrapped sandwich, only slightly dented from the bashing and swinging this incident entailed, were lying untouched in the corner of the cage.

"Yeah! That's a real step up from the regular knuckle sandwich we usually serve!"

"It's a house specialty, Harry. Now, you mind telling us what you're doing skulking around here in the dead of night

"Okay. Okay. So- so that is, that's a mole man, okay?"

"Well why does that one look like the mole equivalent average patron of Muscle Beach?” Max interjected as he jerked his thumb back to the rattling maintenance door, while the megamole snarled behind the tiny square window like the world’s most offputting postcard.

Sam rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he straightened out the now empty candy wrapper. "You understand why I'm not about to stand in line to buy this particular story, right? I mean, why would you of all mole kind be sent above ground to catch -" he turned his head to glance and the toothy death-beast snarling and spitting behind the glass door like the drunks trying to claw their way onto the last train home. "This handsome brute?"

Sam couldn't tell if Harry was frowning or just squinting from the bright fluorescent light of the museum staff room. Their captive huffed through his snout and took a bite from the sandwich, his cheek now bulging with bread, peanut butter, and raspberry jelly. "Y'know pal, for apparent detectives you don't really seem that bright. You ever wonder why you've only seen what, two, three other mole people? Tops?" The wet chewing sounds were starting to make Sam nauseous.

"Not for a second, Harry. We've got better things to think about, like where our next meal is coming from," Max rattled his cage before politely being told to stop Sam’s hand smothering his face.

"Hush, bonehead," Sam muttered. "I assumed budgetary restrictions."

Harry snorted and took another bite before speaking with his mouth full. Sam did his best to resist peering into the nightmare hole of spindly mole teeth and mashed up peanut butter when he spoke again. "That'sh real funny, Sham!" He swallowed his mouthful. "Because it's not very nice for us here! There's too much oxygen, too much light, the parking is terrible, and you surface-dwellers really don't consider accessibility when it comes to town planning and overall street clutter!"

"So... What are you doing here?"

"Well, isn't it obvious?" Harry's face stretched into a rare grin. "This is how I make ends meet! Sure it's not much, but when no one else is willing to crawl any higher than the R Line, I can charge an arm and a leg to fetch oddities, deliver goods, and-"

"And hunt down bone-crunching death machines?" Said Max, as the murder-beast behind the door bellowed and spat again like a bull stuck in a phone booth.

"Ah, shut yer yap!" Max barked as he bounced up the staff kitchenette, grabbed the TV remote and turned on the chunky cathode ray television set wedged in the corner above the door. "Maybe a bit of Hockey's Finest Hospitalizations will keep you busy." The bellowing ceased once the shreiking of Canadians on ice could be heard, and the beady little eyes of the gurning fleshbeast were undeniably focused on the image of a goaltender’s jugular spraying red like a shattered fire hydrant. "See, that's all he needed! Indiscriminate violence and gore."

Sam nodded in agreement. "Maslow truly misunderstood human nature when he proposed his Hierarchy of Needs."

Harry scratched the back of his neck nervously as he eyed the drooling monster behind the glass - in the harsh lighting he could, miserably, make out far too much detail than he was comfortable with, and this beast looked to him like excess skin thrown over a modern art piece made from eldritch bones and teeth, one that considered him to a perfect morsel of savory organs and satisfyingly crunchy bones. But for now, it drooled peacefully at the sight of a Canadian being flung like a chew toy on the TV screen. "I may have oversold my skills in this sector."

"Mhmrmwrwm!" Max declared, his jaw now locked by solid confection.

"You said it, little buddy. Looks like our little half-pint here really has bitten off more than he can chew! Not to worry, Harry, the Freelance Police will take the case! Now uh, what exactly were you planning on doing once you'd caught this calcium-craving colossus?"

"I never gave you it," Harry grumbled before accepting his lot. "I was SUPPOSED to lead it back to the nearest tunnel, yknow, for uh, like... Research. Hey, I don’t ask questions!" The more he spoke, the more he fidgeted and fiddled, his suspicious little claws crocheting empty air. "But when I saw the bleedin' size of the thing, well, I got a bit spooked, dropped my weapon and uh- well. Here we are." He scratched at one nostril and averted his eyes with a pathetic groan. "I'm gonna be honest, guys - I didn't really think this through. I guess my best move would be letting the doc know the sitch, and getting her extraction team in here to clean up this sorry mess."

"Oh, like we're going to just let you scarper Scot-free like that. Once Molish concerns crossed into the physical endagerment of one of New York City's most beloved semi-minor cultural landmark, you entered our jurisprudence. We're coming down there to sort this out. After all, it looks like leaving Mole business to the Mole people hasn't really worked out, has it?"

Max groaned - unlike Sam, his sense of justice was satiated the moment Harry looked like he was about to hit "Oh, Sam, do we have to? Mole people are gross, weird, and smell like my cousin's dank illicit greenhouse. Can't we just go back to our injurious sports marathon?"

"Oh come on, Max! I'm going to need someone to beat the stuffing out of whatever esoteric cabal is withholding pertitent information about these ravenous behemoths, and it sounds like they might be out of our weight category for a fair fight."

"When have we ever cared about a fair fight, Sam? Can’t we just feed this big ol’ mother-slugger some lit fireworks and let physics take care of the rest?"

"Well Max, while your manner of cleaning up the foul detritus of this city is as creative as it would be visually dazzling, I’d wager the stockpile of contraband pyrotechnics we siezed this July would be little more than a pre-dinner snack to this bottomless feeder. Also, we already missed the hockey segment," said Sam, watching the final Canadian pirouette and gracefully tie himself into a pretzel knot to the delight of the megamole now huffing and laughing behind the tiny glass window. "So, it's not like we've got anything better to do."

Harry spluttered indignantly, "good luck with getting anywhere near the Seven Borrows! No offense big guy, but you might have a bit of trouble fitting in, down there, if you catch my drift. And not to mention the lack of oxygen, light, and fire hydrants for you to relieve yourself behind!"

Sam narrowed his eyes at the "fire hydrant" dig. "Well, how were you going to fit Big Nelly down there? In bite-size mole chunks?"

"Through the service tunnels, you dolt!" Harry clamped his claws over his mouth and his reflective pupils swirled around anxiously. "I mean-"

"A-ha!" Sam grabbed the cage triumphantly while striding out the door, sending Harry knocking around like a teddy bear in a washing machine. "Just lead the way, Harry! I look forward to meeting your client and filling them in on your progress."

Harry grimaced in pain, shame, and plain exhaustion. "Wait! You can't go down there! It's secret! It's dark! And not to mention, once you get any deeper than 191st Street Station, you'll suffocate!"

"Well, that's never stopped us sticking our noses in unwanted place before! Besides, we've got a helping hand to get us around the physical limitations of these meat-vehicles. and I think she'll just love you!"

_____

"This is your helping hand? Really?" Harry gave a derisive side-eye look from inside his wire cage as they stood before a roller shutter in the early morning sun, moments before Max shook the cage like a snowglobe and gleefully watched Harry bounce around inside like a ping-pong ball.

"You will refer to her as Ms. Gugenheek, you will be polite and corteous, and you will chew with your mouth closed!" he stated as he peered down patronisingly between the bars.

"Well, could you at least let me out of this crate? I'm pretty sure this constitutes "cruel and unusual", even by your rock-bottom standards!" Max shook him again, just for fun, and Harry made a satisfying noise similar to a squeaky toy falling down the “up” escalator.

"And have you burrowing away like the felonious little fuzzball you are? Methinks not!" Max exclaimed as he poked an accusatory finger at him.

Sam let Max continue his good-natured baiting of their Molish captive while he pressed the buzzer on the intercom. "Mornin' Darla! It's us!" No response. He buzzed again. "Darla! It's Sam and Max! We've got something to show you! You'll never believe it!" Again, silence. He sighed, glanced back to Max and the cage, "Two ticks," before striding down the dim alley to the right and crouching in front of a low window. "Hey! GEEK!" he bellowe and heard a sudden panicked fumbling and clattering in the darkness below. He looked up, proudly. "Just give her a second." Finnaly, the roller shutter rattled and rose to reveal a staircase vanishing down into darkness. "Ah, she's not up yet." Sam explained quietly, before bellowing down into the darkness again. "Just lemme know when you're decent, sweetie! We got a guest!" He nodded in reponse to the belligerent groan below as they descended.

"Yeah not bad, guys, just gimme a few minutes to- woah hold the phone excuse me what is THAT?" Darla blurted out in half-awake confusion as she pointed dramatically at the grumpy little captive in a pet crate.

"Oh, this little creeper? It's a mole man!" Max exclaimed excitedly, holding up the crate to show off the panicked and indignant critter inside. "He's harmless! Look at his little waistcoat, and omni-directional fur!"

"I have a name, y'know!" Harry hissed angrily.

Darla stepped back again. "And he speaks, too?"

"Yeah, lady! And I'm ready to give your pals here a real earful!" Max rattled his cage as a reminder and Harry was sent bouncing up and down again like baby’s rattle. " Ugh! Jeez! I mean. Yes," he grumbled bitterly, "Ms. Gugenheek. Me speak. Me speak English real good, as well as some basic Spanish, a few words of Dutch and enough Middle Molish to get me through high school."

("Drop the attitude," Max growled into his cage.)

"Sorry," Darla said, in one of the few apologies ever given to Harry as she topped up Sam's coffee. "I've just never heard of Mole people speaking before."

"Maybe they just didn't have anything worth saying?" Max offered helpfully, earning another ticked-off "hey!" from their ward.

"Say, Geek, do you know happen to know anything about Mole People?" Darla frowned for a moment and took a sip of jet-black coffee.

"The topsoil variety, core-dwellers, or just urban myths thereof?" Harry shrieked in surprise, leaping to his feet and sending the floral cushion flying.

"What! Where did you hear about those?" Harry squawked. Darla shrugged and sipped from her mug.

"Internet discussion forums. Crusty old half-abandoned message boards. The David Icke Internet Discussion Forum. The majority is unsubstatiated bunkum but your response is making me think: maybe it's not all brain-liquifying keysmashed nonsense." Another glug of coffee and Darla could feel her brain crackling awake again like popcorn in a microwave. "So, what's the cause celebre for all this? Or did you just wanna show off your new pet?" Harry shook his bars again.

"Well, thanks to this little blighter we almost lost an extremity or three to his bigger and badder sibling. And he's not being too forthcoming about the deets-" Harry screeched again.

"I already told you everything I know! Will you jerks just let me go already?! I promise I won't bolt!"

Max ignored him. "So we figured let's just cut out the middle man and go straight to the source! The earthy, dirty, garbage-filled source. Say, Geek, you wouldn't happen to have any equipment suitable for, ooh I dunno, making the journey through a low-oxygen, low light environment miles below the earth's surface a smidge more tolerable?"

Sam nodded in agreement. “Yeah, anything that’d block out the stench of mole man sweat and sewer gas would be sorely appreciated in our investigation.

"Now that you mention it, guys..." Darla trailed off as she paced around her workbench and began digging through overflowing drawers. "Since my talks with the climate change summit fell through after Prime Minister Macieski's punch-up with our Secretary of State, I figured I should start working on a fall-back for when our major cities are inveitably clogged with car fumes, and our atmosphere so dense with pollution that not even the harsh unyielding glare of our nearest star can penetrate it. Considering the lacklustre pace of global co-operation, this seemed like the next-best option."

"Neat, Geek! You always were a step ahead. And that Macieski has a solid right hook, I don't fault the Secretary for her actions - that suplex was in self-defense."

Sam gave an appreciative sigh as he cradled his hot, sludgy morning coffee, "Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it, Max?"

____________________________________________

On the next time on Sam and Max, Untitled Mole Adventure #1: Sam and Max descend into the Seven Burrows and discover their reputation precedes them, before suffering the mystical art of wormhole-mediated Molish travel, and then experiencing ego death for the first time - together !

#bananxious babbling #finally got the guts to post something instead of letting it rot in a text file

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