Quarter Sack Chronicles

	I was on my way home from a long day of busking when the ground opened up beneath me. It was a wide, black chasm; for a brief moment I was suspended midair before plummeting. I felt some camaraderie for Wile E. Coyote, poor bastard.

	I woke up on hard packed soil with my nose broken and bloodied - miraculously, my face had broken the fall. After a quick pat down, I confirmed that both my guitar and I were intact. I looked up, expecting to see the crack that ate me - my breath caught. I saw stars, multitudes of foreign stars and constellations. I swore under my breath and felt my head, checking for any bumps. None, so I wasn’t hallucinating. I pinched my cheek. Still awake. I was perfectly lucid, and this new- dare I say world?-was almost certainly real. Was I even in the same universe? It was night where I had fallen. The stars slightly illuminated my surroundings, I was in a desert. Large dunes rose and fell in the distance. I could see the outline of a desert plateau in the distance, so I began making my way towards it.

	I stopped briefly to remove one of my socks after I heard something like a wolf howl. My busking from earlier that day had earned me a metric ton of quarters and other loose change, so I filled up the sock and tied it off midway, creating a formidable quarter sack. I finally reached the plateau after a half hour on foot. I set my back up against the rock face, trying to make myself as comfortable as possible. I belatedly remembered my phone’s LED flashlight. Fuck. After ages, I fell into a fitful sleep.

	Some time in the early hours of the morning I was woken by a scuttling above me, followed by an insect-like chittering. My hackles rose in alarm. I slowly reached for my makeshift quarter sack and pulled my phone out of my jacket’s pocket. Rising as slow as I could manage I took a few steps away from the plateau and turned to face it, pointing my phone’s flashlight towards the source of the noise. The light revealed a humanoid horror glaring at me from a large cavern partway up the cliff face. It had the body of a spider, and where the head would typically be a human female’s torso rose up. She (???) was buck naked and beautiful- I would have been aroused under different circumstances. I shuddered. It hissed at the light- in its hands I noticed was a long strand of webbing twisted into a noose- it had been trying to drag me up.

“Fuck you!”, I shouted at the spider.

	In response, the spider hopped out of its cave and landed nimbly- a lot more nimble than you’d expect from a massive spider/woman. I began swinging the sack overhead while it advanced on me. Its eyes darted to my sweaty quarter sack and back to me. It chittered again- a laugh of derision or challenge, maybe. God only knows what it would do if it got me.

	Before it could react I darted forward and swung the sack underhand, aiming for the thing’s chin. The quarter sack hit square on and the woman promptly collapsed, falling sideways and onto her back, chitinous legs slowly folding like a freshly swatted insect. Pansy-ass glass-jawed bug. I slapped her across the face once more for good measure- that was going to leave a mean shiner.

	The sun had risen by that point so I collected my things and prepared to leave. I felt a little guilty for beating the insect woman senseless, so I left her a copy of my newest CD; I had countless copies in my bag that I couldn't even give away. Inexplicably, I also opted to put a single quarter over each of her nipples- so as to protect her modesty. Modesty now intact I chose a direction and hoofed it, hoping to reach civilization before I wasted away in the desert heat.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“The fuck is this?”, growled the huge red woman, folding her muscular arms. She was quite attractive -not that that meant anything, considering all of the monster women I’d met had been attractive- and was built like a professional wrestler. I glanced at my own spaghetti limbs and frowned, feeling the sharp pangs of muscle-envy.

	I leaned over the counter to look at the object in question- a copy of my CD. The album’s cover was of myself lounging about in vintage 70’s garb while gazing offscreen with a look of wonderment. I was wearing a huge pair of tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses. I’d thought the cover was a hilarious throwback to that era- coincidentally, it made no one want to purchase the album when I was still busking in Seattle. I was having just as much difficulty getting rid of copies in this strange new world I’d fallen into.

“That’s a CD”, I replied.

“I don’t need a ‘CD’, I need you to pay for the food and water you consumed”, she slammed her fist on the counter.

“If you wait an hour or so I can get most of the water back to you; you’re out of luck as far as the food is concerned, though”, I cocked my head to the side and gave a brief ‘teehee’- that was it, I’d played my trump card. The CD had failed and chances were the quarter sack would be ineffective on such a brute. Stakes were high and everything relied on my coquettish charm.

Red Menace leaned across the counter and grabbed me, fingers digging into the flesh of my forearm with her massive, sexy man-hands. She bent until her face was directly in front of mine, and began articulating slowly. A threat, perhaps? I wasn’t entirely sure- I was fixated on her breath. She’d been boozing!

“-and so help me if you’re not going to pay I’ll have Shella over at the brothel put you to work and-”

“Yeah, cool- very nice. Hey, listen: mind sharing that booze you’ve been pulling on? Gotta say, I’m curious about this world’s al-”, her grasp on my arm painfully tightened. At that moment I began to question the decisions that had led me to that point.

Shortly after beating the arachnid senseless, I’d found my way to the town I was currently in. It was located near a large oasis, making it a popular stop for caravans and such. Turns out the town had actually been a mile away from the plateau, obscured by a large sand dune. Rather anticlimactic, honestly, I’d been prepared to trek for days. It was here that I’d learned that the monstrous women of this world were rather fixated on men (and hilariously easy to lead on), so I began to use my masculine wiles whenever possible to leach off of others. It had yet to fail me.

“The. Payment.”, she said, squeezing my arm in conjunction with each word.

It had failed me.

My guitar! I may have been a fuckup at most things in life, but music wasn’t one of them. The woman saw the change in my expression and let go of my arm, rising back to her full height and crossing her arms again. I crossed over to the front door where I’d left my guitar case leaning and returned to the counter where I set up a chair to play in.

“So,” I said, kneeling down to remove the acoustic from its case, “I don’t have any money that you’d accept, but I’ve got something much better”

“Something I can sell? If not, I’m sending you to the brothel.”

“Brothel? Fat chance, sugar tits. I’m a musician, so I’ll just pay you in song.”

She tilted her head, her interest piqued.