The Slubes re-release comes out in just four days, so here’s one final excerpt from it featuring everyone’s favorite angry, edgy buzz saw whose name starts with S and has at least one letter in it that is more than two syllables, Sawn.
Sawn burst up from the floor. “Get them, you tools!” The construction tools charged at the slubes.
“Come on, Numer, we can handle them,” Cherry said. She sleeged at the tools and slammed them with the screeching shovel.
From one corner came a groaning roar like an old engine in need of lubrication. The floor shook. Numer turned to find a jackhammer bouncing towards him. He screamed and sleeged away as it charged. This was worse than the buzz saw.
Cherry whacked the tools with the shovel. She held it up and blocked Sawn as the saw flew towards her head. “How were you brought to life?” she asked, holding the shovel blade wedged between two of Sawn’s spikes.
“The Conqueror’s his name, and your world’s his aim,” Sawn said. It flipped the shovel up and out of Cherry’s grasp, but she dodged its strike. She grabbed the shovel as it fell and slammed Sawn through the rotting floor. It crashed into a furnace in the basement, and a huge flame roared up like a cannon blast.
A rivet gun shot at Cherry, and she sleeged from and dodged the rivet bullets.
Numer shouted for help as he sleeged from the jackhammer. “Over here!” Cherry yelled. She sleeged to Numer. They crossed paths, and the jackhammer smashed the rivet gun. It stared at the gun’s pieces as if it had trodden on an unexpected egg. Cherry leapt behind the distracted jackhammer and slammed it down with her tail into the basement.
Those karate lessons Cherry took really paid off. Numer looked down the hole the jackhammer crashed through. It was too dark to see anything.
The floor exploded behind Numer as Sawn burst up. “Oh, I’ve had it with you slubes.” The flying blade of angry death flew straight at Numer.
The shaking slube fumbled with the mallet. He had to do something. Swing! Shoot! Anything to stop that charging buzz saw. Eyes squeezed shut, Numer swung the mallet and hit the fire button.
The mallet smacked something, and Numer fell back as his eyes popped open. His arm felt as if he’d hit Sawn with an explosion on a stick. Sawn whizzed back through the cluster of crazy tools, chopping them to pieces. Dust flew up along with bits of metal and wood. Numer coughed and clenched his eyes shut again.
“Now that’s a smash hit!” Cherry said. “You even knocked the shard away from it.”
Numer opened his eyes. A crystal the size of a slube hand sat on the floor sparkling in a shaft of dusty light. Where had Sawn even kept it?
Sawn shouted and dashed at Numer. Buoyed by his success, Numer charged the mallet and swung. He stumbled sideways from the force, and Sawn flew past him.
“Hey, you missed,” Sawn said. “Let’s try that again.”
Duth Olec's Cuckoo Cosmos 