The Gods Hate Kansas!

 My friend Lisa,also known as Ms. A, sent me a book this week I've known only from its cover being used as a snarky post card.

The description sounds like something by my friend and protegé Troy Cutcross:

 The Astrophysicist's enslaved Girl Friend ! Temple gasped aloud! Whither Joseph Millard?
I have to say I really love the fact that some long-ago owner of this copy (presumably not Lisa) used the cover to practice his or her paper punching skills.

More Conundrum Enigma!

Here's another section from my friend and protegé Troy Cutcross's Masterpiece of Modern Suspense, The Conundrum Enigma, a Colonel Charlie "Doughnuts" Duncan Sexy Thriller by Troy Cutcross: A Novel. This is the thrilling end of Chapter Fifteen and the gripping start of Chapter Sixteen.

        Charlie had always wondered about the center of the Earth, because he had read as a little boy that it was full of molten lava that would burn you up instantly if you ever went there, just like the sun. He took that seriously, especially since a crew of his astronaut buddies had been burned to a crisp when the space agency made a terrible miscalculation about “how close was too close” on a risky solar mission to the sun a couple of years earlier. If “Doughnuts” hadn’t tranfered from the Astronaut Corps to the Agency to be a spy instead, he might have caught the miscalculation, because in addition to his other qualities he was an expert in math.
         But he had his own theories about the center of the earth, because frankly how did anyone know what was there if we’d never gone there? Just another bunch of pointy-headed scientist types sitting in their “ivory tower” and making educated guesses. Charlie’s hunch was that the earth was actually hollow, and that there was life down there. Not human life but some sort of giant insect, possibly, because insects are the only animals that live on all the continents except for birds, crabs and fish. The notion that they might have developed some sort of civilization seemed unlikely, but a hundred years ago so had the idea of radio or the internet, and two hundred years before that no one had even heard of a dumbwaiter or bifocals, which were invented by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin!

         Charlie was listening to a tech guy explain how the machine worked that he’d be using to go down to the earth’s core. It was boring because he knew most of it already and was smarter than the guy explaining it, but he paid attention anyway, a habit he’d learned as a student at Eton, a fancy school in England where James Bond went.

         “We’ve adapted the ion technology that you developed for the spaceship and combined it with the new science we learned from the Russian’s spaceship that you so bravely commandeered, or stole,” the old technology chief said, his glasses slipping down over his egghead nose. “This will allow you to drill to the center of the earth in a relatively short time and prevent that bomb from detonating, or going off.”
         “Understood, Major Mallard,” said “Doughnuts,” because his name was Major Mallard. “Did you use the thrillium casing for the hull?”

         “Exactly!” the old codger spat, because his dentures didn’t fit exactly right and he was too busy with his experiments and such to get some new ones fitted. “Thrillium/Pentonium alloy, just as you suggested in your recent scientific paper to the International Conference of Vehicular Metalurgy!”

         It was funny but Charlie had forgotten he’d even written that paper, because so many things had happened since, and not just his makeout sessions with Tammi and Svetlana plus his temporary sex change. “I’m glad to know it served a purpose.”

         A large ribbon of snot started seeping out of the old man’s nostril, the result no doubt of a cold or some allergies, but Charlie was too respectful of his elders to laugh at it. Instead he ignored it and thought about the team they were putting together.

         “Besides myself, we’ll need someone young and plucky,” he opined thoughtfully, “someone who understands all the different layers of the earth before we get to the fiery center where Toborsky intends to plant his bomb.”

         “Yes,” replied Mallard. “Ideally a geologist, which is someone who studies that very subject. We have a very good one in the science department––Dr. Petulia Drake, Ph. D.”

         “Hold on––a lady scientist?”

         “She’s very good, ‘Doughnuts,’” countered the older man.

         “It’s not that, I’m sure she is,” because Charlie wasn’t the kind of spy who thought women were just playthings or “eye candy,” but rather competent specimens of spycraft who were every bit as capable as their man counterparts of killing with their bare hands. “It’s just––is she stacked?”
         “And how,” chuckled the Major devilishly while making the outline of a woman’s sexy body in the air with his hands in the universal man-code for “woman’s sexy body.” “Wait until you get a load of her….”

         “That’s the problem. Tammi’s out of commission, sex-wise. And I nearly got into a whole lot of trouble with Svetlana when we were in outer space. I just don’t want to get in any deeper than I already am.”

         “I’m sure she’ll be a consummate, or total, professional. Now you’ll also need a doctor along to treat the burns that come from the extreme heat of the earth’s core, and that doctor must also be a spy or else she wouldn’t have ‘clearance.’ Unfortunately for you, the only one available is also a very sexy woman.”

         Another string of snot was coming out of the Major’s other nostril and he looked so much like a walrus that this time Charlie had to laugh. Mallard was upset until Charlie explained it and then they had a good laugh.

         That night over a romantic candlelight dinner Duncan explained to Tammi that two of the crew to the center of the Earth would be sexy ladies, and she pouted but she already knew because she was the acting head of the agency and got “briefed” all the time about stuff. “Anyway this mission is super important now, because all the governments in the world today received blackmail threats from Toborsky warning them that unless they paid up the world would end.”

         “Good Lord,” Charlie said, so shocked that he blasphemed for the first time in a long time. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
         She shrugged as though it wasn’t important. “I’m telling you now. Oh, there’s one more thing. He made one extra demand of the US government besides money.”

         “What’s that?”
         “He wants us to turn you over to him, unarmed!”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

         Luckily for Colonel Charlie “Doughnuts” Duncan the President of the United States had rejected that as a stupid idea, although he didn’t tell the Cosmonaut that. Instead he told him he’d think about it.

         “Thank you, Mr. President,” Charlie said over the video phone on his wrist.

         “No, thank you, Colonel, for all your services to this, the greatest country in the world. We’re lucky to have a man of your caliber on our side. I recognize that, as the highest IQ ever recorded, you could have gone on and done other things, like research and the other things you do in your spare time, but you chose to devote your massive brain to national service. Did you ever hear that story about President Kennedy hosting a dinner for a bunch of smarties with Nobel Prizes and things, and he said ‘This is the greatest assembly of brain power this room has ever known, except for when Thomas Jefferson designed a time machine and had dinner with Galileo and Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin.’ That’s a classified story, by the way, Colonel.”

         “Call me ‘Doughnuts,’ Mr. President.”

         The President chuckled in his familiar way. “Then, ‘Doughnuts,’ you have to call me Newt.”

         “Roger, Newt, over and out,” he said, signifying that their conversation was over. He was a little misty-eyed at the great man’s refusal to sell him out to Toborsky just to save the world, but he shook it off and climbed aboard the Phantom Menace, which was named after another one of Charlie’s favorite movies. He met the rest of the crew, taking care not to look at their breasts except in the quickest and most polite manner, because he’d learned the hard way that breasts are not just playthings.

         “I’m Dr. Petulia Drake, Colonel,” the first sexy lady said, and as luck would have it the uniforms they were wearing were skintight and made of latex because of the incredible pressure underground which would put a terrible strain on ordinary clothing. She had long curly red hair and freckles and she reminded Duncan of his neighbor when he lived in a dorm in college and how she used to smile at him but he never got up the nerve to talk to her, which was funny now because he was so self-confident but since he had a girlfriend he couldn’t do anything about it.

         “And I’m Dr. Madge Trask, MD,” said the other gorgeous woman standing there in front of him. She was petite and also short, but her breasts were still large and round….and very attractive.

         “Damn it,” he cursed, though it was not his habit to do so in front of attractive ladies, or unattractive ones, for that matter, except that he had just realized something that might have jeopardized the very mission they were about to undertake! “I completely forgot to assign a Russian specialist to our crew. I could kick myself!”

         Dr. Madge Trask smiled a very sexy smile. “Don’t worry about it, tiger, I speak it like a native.”

         Charlie raised one eyebrow in a sardonic, or witty, way and delivered a witticism. “Funny, ‘Trask’ doesn’t sound like a Russian name.”

         Now Dr. Madge put her hands sexily on her hips and smirked in a seductive way. “It’s not! But I went to Junior Year abroad there. It’s not so hard, once you get the hang of that weird alphabet.”

         “All right. I’m going to settle into my cabin for a few minutes before we take off and look through my mail.” He held up the stack of missives and journals. “I just got my latest issue of ‘Gentleman,’ and there’s an article I want to read.”

         “Right,” Petulia chortled.

         “Sure,” Dr. Madge concurred. “You just read it for the articles, like everyone else!”

         He knew it was just good-natured ribbing but he had to “nip it in the bud,” or stop it right away, because he was the commander of the mission and they didn’t know him well enough to be making those kinds of friend-to-friend jokes yet.

         “As a matter of fact, ladies, I do read it for the articles. And the fiction, though I’ve no time now for short stories or such fripperies. And yes, the magazine is filled with pictures of ladies in their underpants and nothing else, but I skip right over those pictures because I have a girlfriend––one who happens to be head of this agency!”

         “We’re sorry, sir,” Dr. Madge apologized.

         “We were just trying to establish some of the camaraderie that goes so far toward establishing esprit de corps, or unit cohesion,” Petulia explained.

         “I know, girls,” Charlie said. “There’ll be time for that later, once we’ve defeated the evil Cosmonaut.”

         “Now that he’s at the center of the earth, isn’t Cosmonaut kind of the wrong nickname?” Petulia asked.

         “You’re right,” said Dr. Madge, “since it’s Russian for ‘Astronaut.’ How about ‘Comrade,’ which is Russian for ‘Fellow Communist?’ Or just ‘Ivan,’ which is Russian for ‘John’?”

The Temporary Sex-Change Conundrum, starring Colonel Charlie "Doughnuts" Duncan!

Another excerpt from my gifted protegé Troy Cutcross's sci-fi/espionage/erotic masterpiece, "The Conundrum Enigma: a Colonel Charlie 'Doughnuts' Duncan Sexy Thriller by Troy Cutcross." This is the end of chapter nine and the entirety of chapter ten. At this juncture "Doughnuts" learns from his superior officer (and jealous girlfriend) Tammi, that he's going in undercover in Pendarvis Correctional Penitentiary––in a very special disguise!

         “This prison—it’s in Russia?”

         “No—here in the US. But that works in our favor. You see––you’re going in undercover.”

         “Doughnuts” nodded. “I like it,” he proferred, imagining himself hitting prisoners on the head with a nightstick, like when he was a rookie spy on the streets of Des Moines, what seemed like a lifetime ago. “As a guard?” he asked, just to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood.

         “No,” she smiled. “As an inmate!”

         “I get it,” Charlie snarled. “It’s jealousy. You’re mad because you think I have more of a crush on Svetlana than on you, so you’re sending me into the general population of a penitentiary. How long do you think I’ll last in there, with a face like this?”

         She laughed, a laugh with a cruel sound in it that Duncan hadn’t heard before. It made his butthole clench a little. “It’s true, you’ve been called one of the handsomest men in the world. And guess what? Your back story is you’re halfway through one of those Swedish-type of sex-change operations!”

         “Wha-a-a?” Charlie exclaimed, so shocked he couldn’t even finish the simplest of one-syllable words.

         “That’s right. We want you to get the attention of the Cosmonaut right away, so you’ll be going in there with a surgically altered face and cleavage, to make you look like a pretty lady.”

         “That’s where I draw the line, lady! I won’t be part of your sick revenge scheme! In fact, I may even have to break up with you and resign from the agency and go back to Major League Baseball. You need to see a brain specialist and get to the bottom of your sick need to get revenge on me for a perfectly innocent space ride with a sexy spy whose advances I heroically resisted!”

         “It’s not my plan, ‘Doughnuts,’ it was Mad Dog’s.”

         “Wha-a-a-a?” Charlie said, again frustrated by his tendency to leave words unfinished when he was stupefied, or really surprised.

         “That’s right. He was killed right before he was going to tell you ‘Phase Three’ of the plan, which is if the Cosmonaut escapes you go into the prison undercover dressed as a lady so you can get close to him and kill him after finding out all about his operation.”

         Charlie thought about it. He was an extremely handsome fellow, and many people had told him he would make a beautiful lady. If it was Mad Dog’s idea, and in the best interests of the Agency and of the United States of America, who was he to say no?

         “Would they….” His voice got a little higher because of the fright, but he continued his query. “Would they cut off my little man?”

         “Your little man?”

         “My dinky.” Tammi still didn’t understand, because she had grown up in a house full of ladies with no father or brothers using vulgar “slang” terms for their male members such as “wiener” or “dinky.” “My penis,” he finally uttered, using the latin or medical term for the organ.

         “Of course not. And the boobs will come right off as soon as you terminate the mission. And your old face will be grafted back onto your skull using the same technology as when that lady the chimp tore the face off of that one time got her face back surgically.”

         “All right, then,” Charlie opined. “Let’s get this ‘show on the road.’”

CHAPTER TEN

        

         “Prisoner Number X-209907-J,” the warden bellowed. “You are hereby imprisoned in Pendarvis Maximum Federal Penitentiary for the Crimes of Armed Robbery, Mass Murder and Trafficking in Illegal Weapons such as Bombs and Ninja Swords. You will be here for ninety-nine years to life. Do you understand your sentence?”

         Colonel Charlie “Doughnuts” Duncan shrugged, an entirely different experience, he found, when lifting the shoulder also involved lifting a bra strap and a good five pounds of voluptuous bosom, in an effort to seem thuggish. “Whatever, screw,” he yawned, using prisoner slang for guard, even though technically the Warden wasn’t one of the guards.

         “I know a perfect place for you,” the warden sneered sadistically, which, Charlie thought, was probably the only way he ever shrugged. “In with the maximum security goons!”

         That was perfect, he thought. The Warden had no idea Charlie was a federal spy on an undercover mission, just in case he was “in cahoots” with Toborsky, which was prison slang for working with him on the sly. “Coolio,” Charlie said, trying to sound bored.

         “But maybe we can come to some sort of accommodation, or agreement.” The Warden came around the desk and sat on the arm of “Doughnut”’s chair and put an arm around his shoulder. “You’re very pretty, and I like your swell chest. If you’d like to stay in the Warden’s quarters, that could be arranged, along with a soft job in the prison library….”

         Just then he reached for one of Charlie’s brand-new bosoms, and with lightning reflexes the intrepid spy had grabbed the warden’s index finger and snapped it back until it broke with an unmistakeable sound of breaking!

         The Warden lay writhing, or wiggling, on the floor, and “Doughnuts” stood up.

         “Sorry, Warden Frenger, these boobs aren’t for playing with. I’ll be heading for Maximum Security now to take my chances with the goons.”

         He felt bad using his considerable martial arts skills on a wimpy guy like the Warden, but he knew that any sign of weakness on his part would be perceived as an invitation to touch his breasts without permission, and he didn’t intend to let that happen under any circumstances. These bosoms were for display only, and for Charlie’s own and only his own personal enjoyment!

         So when he first appeared with his knapsack and bedroll at the door of the Maximum Security wing, he looked around at all the chess-playing oafs in the rec room and wondered which of them would make a crack about his rack first. It was a good thing that it was a three-hundred pound guy with a broken nose and cauliflower ears like an old boxer who made a vulgar suggestion and invited “Doughnuts” to share his cell for what he clearly intended as “romantic” purposes! He also had a tattoo on his forehead of the bully character from the movie “Edward Scissorhands,” which just went to show what a big bully he was in the “yard,” or prison grounds.

         “Come and get me,” Charlie cooed seductively, and when the big ape stood up from his chess game Charlie kicked him in the face, cutting his nose with his spike heel. Then, when the goon went down, Charlie lifted him up with one hand and hurled him across the room so that everyone would know that even if Charlie was a beautiful lady on the outside, he was still a lethal killing machine!

         Everybody else went back to their chess games and Charlie strutted his way to his cell, which was about as comfortable as his barracks had been back in the army––which means not at all! He tossed his duffle bag in a manly way onto the cot and started filling the drawers of the armoire, or dresser. Top drawer was for wigs (because there had been no time to grow enough hair for lady-hairstyles), second for lingerie, third for makeup and perfume and bottom for shoes, which he had five pairs of, all high heeled. The dresses he hung from a waterpipe that ran the length of the cell and he wondered if he had overpacked, but then who knew how long this most unusual mission would last?

         A skinny little fellow approached his cell, carrying a flower. “A-hem,” he said, clearing his throat because you could tell he was nervous. “I see you’re new here.”

         “Yeah?” “Doughnuts” growled, forgetting to make his voice high like a lady’s, because unlike a real sex-change person he hadn’t had the hormone chemical treatments that would have grown real bosoms and raised his voice up and made him stop having to shave.

         “Sorry. It’s just that—well, I noticed you walking in and I thought, that must be someone with a sex-change, because why else would a…” He swallowed a big gulp of saliva because he was nervous. “A beautiful lady be assigned to a men’s prison?”

         This time Charlie remembered to raise his voice up high. “That’s correct, sir. I don’t like it one bit but here I am, little old me in here with all these brutish men, thinking of nothing but ways to fondle my breasts. I assume that’s why you’re here.”

         “Gosh, no, ma’am, I have no desire to be the consort of such a lovely lady, because my life would be in constant danger and I’d always be looking over my shoulder, worried about some tough lug stabbing me with a ‘shiv,’ which is prison slang for a homemade knife, in hopes of winning your love away. No, I just had a question.”

         “All right. What’s your question?” Charlie asked.

         The little fellow was sweating something awful. “Did they cut your little man off?”

BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT! More "Conundrum Enigma!"

More literary genius from my protegé, Troy Cutcross. Troy has generously given me permission to publish Chapter Four in its entirety! Previously, "Doughnuts's" boss at the spy agency had been assassinated by a Russian known as "The Cosmonaut." At the end of Chapter Three, Charlie arrived at the International Space Station only to find its entire crew dead, including his old friend Major Jacques LaVie.
And now.....
 

THE CONUNDRUM ENIGMA: A Charlie "Doughnuts" Duncan Sexy Thriller

by Troy Cutcross

CHAPTER FOUR

        

         Attached by a Laurel and Hardy-shaped magnet to the door of the crew refrigerator––reminding him of the nickname those jerks back at the agency had for Tammi––was a note.

       SORRY ABOUT ALL YOUR DEAD FRIENDS

       ––THE COSMONAUT

         He was a fiend, And now he had a head start to Europa! Who even knew what his plan was when he got there? A lesser man would have given up. But Colonel Charlie “Doughnuts” Duncan was not that lesser man.

         The first order of business after fixing himself a nutritious snack of Tang and Space Food Sticks was to get rid of the astronauts’ corpses. This was because the heavier the ship was the more fuel it used, even though they were in zero gravity, and if they weren’t alive, they were just “dead weight.” “Doughnuts” suddenly realized that the phrase he had just used was full of terrible irony of the sort that made him known as a great wit. This time his wit was tragic and not funny, he reflected.

         Standard protocol, or operating procedure, for removing cadavers, or dead bodies, from the International Space Station called for Duncan to wait until the Station passed over the dead astronaut’s home country and then shoving the former space hero out the hatch so that he or she would burn up in the atmosphere over his or her homeland. It so happened that just as he finished the last of his Tang he was passing over France.

         “So long, Jacques,” he said as he dragged Major LaVie by his boots across the floor to the trash expulsion hatch. “You were anything but trash, in my opinion––from now on I’m going to call this the ‘trash and heroes expulsion hatch’!” He was sniffling a little as he shot his old friend into space and toward the earth, and he didn’t even have to pretend it was allergies since there was no one to see him. Or so he thought.

         Next was a Captain Swierczinski, who came from Poland, which as near as Charlie could tell they would be passing over pretty soon. Not for the first time he wondered why the Poles, about whom jokes used to be told called Polack jokes which were anything but funny if you were one, used so many consonants in their names. Since he didn’t know the Captain he didn’t say anything, just stuck him into the hatch and blew it. There were two crew members from China, so he shot them down together, hoping that in life they’d been friends and that he wasn’t just making an assumption to save himself some time. Then there was a Korean Colonel, but since “Doughnuts” didn’t know for sure whether he was from North or South Korea he did his best to aim him toward the Demilitarized Zone between the two divided halves of the nation as a gesture toward international peace. As he watched the colonel burst into flames in contact with the earth’s atmosphere Charlie couldn’t help smiling at memories of the TV show M*A*S*H, which was set in Korea and always made him chuckle, even when there was a serious element as there often was in its best episodes, like the last one, “Goodbye Forever Amen.”

         Next there was a Lieutenant Nummelin, and since he didn’t know what kind of name that was he dropped him over the Pacific. There was only one astronaut body left, that of a beautiful woman. When he looked at her nametag he was surprised by two things: One, she was Russian, and he’d already passed over Russia! He cursed the fact that he’d have to wait until the Station got all the way over to that side of the world before he could relax and do his zero gravity exercises, which he would perform by turning off the artificial gravity. The second thing that surprised him was the size of her bosoms, which were quite large by western standards. Almost without thinking he put his hand on the left one, which is when he got his third surprise: she let out a loud gasp and slapped him in the face!

         “You’re alive,” he deduced.

         She squinted as though she were trying to place his face. “And you’re Charlie ‘Doughnuts’ Duncan!” she exclaimed, surprising Charlie, because he had no idea how she knew that.

         “How did you…” he began, intending to ask how she knew his face.

         “I recognized you from the pictures Major Jacques LaVie kept showing us all the time,” she said. “You are as handsome in person as in your photos, but that doesn’t mean you get to ‘cop a feel’ without permission!”

         “I’m very sorry. I thought you were dead.”

         “No harm done,” she said, and extended her hand. “Svetlana Skikorskova,” she said. “Where are my crewmates?”

         “All dead, I’m afraid.”

         “Murdered by that villain Toborsky! He’s a disgrace to the Cosmonaut program,” she spat.

         “I just got finished shooting them through the trash hatch toward their various native lands. I was going to do the same thing to you before I realized that you were alive.”

         “It’s a good thing you decided to get ‘fresh’ with my corpse, or I might have burned up alive! You don’t suppose…” She hesitated.

         “What?”

         “Nothing. I was just wondering if any of the others were just unconscious when you jettisoned, or shot, them out of the station.”

         “Doughnuts” thought about it really hard. No, he was pretty sure they’d all been dead, and he said so.

         “So,” she deduced. “Two questions: One, do you want a passenger on your trip to Europa, which Major LaVie told us all about?”

         “I guess I could use some company. Especially a pretty girl who speaks the Cosmonaut’s native ‘lingo,’ or language! Just in case we have to use his ship to get back and the controls are all marked in Russian, like in that one Star Trek movie whose number I can’t remember. Now what’s the second question?”

         She grabbed hold of her right bosom, the one Duncan hadn’t touched yet, and gave him a catlike smile of seduction. “Do you have a girlfriend?”