‘Aw.’ Lucy felt like a large foot had dropped from the sky and squashed her life.
‘Is something concerning you, Lucille?’
Stood in the dark, in the middle of the road, freezing from the night air, half wanting to cry, half wanting to lash out, she glared at the big idiot and demanded, ‘Are you for real?’
Stood at the roadside, antennae waving. Destructor felt at his armoured chest. He looked across at her. ‘I believe I am real, Lucille.’
Grumbling curses, she returned her attention to the wreckage surrounding her on all sides. She did a complete turn to take in its full extent. Once, it had been a cab, her very own cab that no one else in the world had had one quite like. Now it was wreckage spread thinly and evenly across the road, the sort of wreckage any loser could have if they saved up long enough.
And the creature that had done the damage was further up that road, stomping off into the distance, casual swipes of its backhand demolishing telephone poles. She considered running after it and thumping its head. No one got away with wrecking Lucy Jane Smith’s cab, not drunks, not criminals, and certainly not monsters that didn’t even look like proper monsters. She decided against direct action as a final pole creaked like a falling giraffe and thrashed to the ground. Its wires snapped and pinged like overwrought banjos.
And the monster departed, muttering some gravel-voiced rubbish about a, ‘Big gun,’ and about finding a, ‘Pretty girl. Hurh hurh hurh.’
She returned her attention to Destructor, an exhaust pipe in her hand, tempted to run across and crown him one with it. ‘How could you not know whether there’s something wrong?’ she asked. ‘Look at it, for God’s sake.’ She threw exhaust pipe at tarmac. ‘You think my car’s supposed to look like this?’
‘I do not know, Lucille. I am a stranger to your world’s delightful customs.’
‘And where were you when he was smashing the thing up?’ she demanded. ‘All that bragging about how unstoppable you are and, “Tremble, Human,” this and, “Tremble, Human,” that. The moment I need you to slap some overgrown duster, you just sit there watching.’
He folded his arms across his chest, head tilted back haughtily. ‘I have never before been in this thing females call a taxi. I thought perhaps this was how its days were meant to end. In my world, the unprovoked destruction of inanimate objects is quite acceptable, often admirable, though the harming of the animate is considered bad manners and to be avoided unless dramatically valid.’
‘Then how are you planning on conquering the Earth?’ she challenged.
‘I have not yet decided. But when I do,’ his eyes narrowed to smouldering, yellow slits as he schemed.
‘Why, thank you, Lucille.’
‘Just look at this mess.’ Half-hearted, she kicked debris away from her. It rolled, clattered and clink clink clinked down the camber before stopping near Destructor’s feet. She asked, ‘So how am I supposed to make a living now?’
‘Do not despair, Lucille. Perhaps you may yet reassemble its many parts, creating a new multi-splendoured carriage even more suited to your needs than before.’
Pulling breeze-blown hair away from her face, tucking it behind one ear, she looked again at the bits of car surrounding her. Apart from the exhaust, none was more than a centimetre square. Hoping against hope, she said, ‘You reckon?’