Monday, January 7, 2013

Part Forty-Three, Chapter Four - Thirty Pages In and I Already Want Out

Unabridged version here

In the last volume of Mission Earth it took 270 pages or so for the author to get to the rape scene.  But for Death Quest, Hubbard isn't wasting any time.

It's the next day, Pinch and Candy's long-awaited open house.  Gris gets dressed up for the occasion at Pinchy's request.  The former torture dungeon-apartment has been refitted into a charming salon, classical music is playing, and soon the guests arrive.

I thought I might be seeing people like the Security Chief or some fellow males from Octopus Oil. But the doorbell rang and rang and couple after couple came in, deluding me at first into believing I would see a fellow man by the slouch hats and men's topcoats. But nay, alas, they were all lesbian couples.

Gris is 100% straight, by the way.  He hates them disgusting homos.

Some of the "males" even wore tuxedos. They tried to greet me heartily with bass voices. They swatted me on the shoulder and called me "old man." But I certainly was not fooled. The bass voices broke into treble unexpectedly and the swats may very well have been intended to push me away from their "wives."

I really shouldn't have to explain this, because we live in the enlightened year of 2013, and if Hubbard is suggesting one thing it's usually safe to assume he's completely wrong, but just in case: this isn't how homosexuality works.  Being attracted to those of your own sex is not the same as wanting to dress up as the opposite sex.  Sexual orientation is not the same as gender.  Same-sex couples do not have to decide which of them is the "man" and the "woman."  Gays and lesbians can be otherwise "normal" people who just so happen to like other men/women.

Unless of course they do feel like crossdressing or assuming gender roles.  But it's not a rule all homosexuals have to follow, and it's not one exclusive to them either.

I guess we could give Hubbard the benefit of a doubt and put this down to Psychiatric Birth Control teaching its victims to behave this way.  On the other hand, Hubbard seems to enjoy writing scenes where the villain protagonist rapes lesbians straight, so (bleep) him.

Anyway.  The party lasts all of one brief paragraph before Pinchy sends Gris to the neighborhood drugstore to get some aspirin for her headache, explaining that the guests will all be sent home and she'll be in bed before he gets back.  He goes out for the aspirin, returns, and sure enough the house seems empty and the lights are out.  Candy and Pinch are apparently in bed asleep, so Gris crawls in between them.  Then someone touches him, Gris remembers that he needs money, and resolves to do his "duty."

There's some oddities, though - somehow Candy has become a virgin again, and her teeth are chattering, but Gris decides "this was no time to wonder about things like that."  After his first... client?  Has screamed and passed out, Gris rolls over the other way and is again surprised that Pinchy's virginity has been restored as well.  And again, he dismisses it as more "women's tricks.  They're full of them."

Once the screaming is over, the lights come on and Pinch and Candy lead a crowd of people in from the next room, as Gris finds himself in bed with a peroxide blonde and a "lesbian husband" with blueish hair.  See, the room was rigged with cameras and microphones, all a set-up so Candy can show her guests what "real" sex is like.  Pinch manages to wake Spike and Lover-girl, the two volunteers, who give a glowing endorsement of heterosexual sex in the missionary position. 

But the remaining lesbians are unconvinced and accuse the pair of being in on Pinchy's scam, so she challenges them to draw straws and throw the "winner" at Gris to prove that this isn't being staged.  Algernon, a "husband" in a top hat, gets the short straw, and is forcibly stripped, fed a birth control pill (which only provides effective protection after seven days of consistent use, so this is largely a pointless gesture), and thrown on the bed for Gris to "perform" with.  Poor Algernon is terrified, "trying to shrink," and held down by her "friends" for Gris to - well, this is pretty much rape.  Performance rape, to prove the dominance of male-female sex and specifically the dominance of the male over the female during sex.

Gris hesitates because Algernon is one of those stomach-turning homosexuals, but she's still a woman, so the healing (through rape) continues.  Afterward, the crowd declares that Psychiatric Birth Control is a load of crap - "After a bang like that I'll never go back to biting and scratching and calling it sex.  No SIR!"  The problem is that psychology has nonetheless turned all the men at Octopus Oil gay... except for the elevator boys, who Miss Peace has a "monopoly" on... and except for the married men, who are so "slugged up on drugs they're impotent."  But other than that, every man within the company is gay, and looking for men elsewhere would get them fired, because... uh, plot.

You can guess the solution - Miss Pinch offers to whore out Gris to the other girls during the daytime, so long as he still has energy to take care of her and Candy each night.  She of course threatens to emasculate Gris if he fails her, thereby bringing the payoff for the Aphrodite reference and Gris' concerns last chapter.

But, for his good work (raping a woman to prove a point) that night, between Pinchy and the crowd's tips, Gris raked in twelve thousand dollars, presented by Pinchy in a wastebasket.

I went into the shower singing.

TWELVE G's!

I could pay my bill to Razza.

I could buy a hit man.

COUNTESS KRAK, YOU'RE DEAD!

I'm beginning to suspect that a worrying amount of Mission Earth exists so the author can write scenes where his villainous viewpoint character deflowers lesbians and cures them of their condition through rape. 


Back to Part Forty-Three, Chapter Three

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