A little flash fiction:
Doctor Xombie
and the
Boots Of Baltar
By
Roger L. Boyes
The “Boots of Baltar’ were stored in the deepest caverns of the planet Shalock. The people of the Great House Atros set a challenge that said anyone who could reach the center of the labyrinth and claim the boots would, in addition to the boots, gain a wondrous treasure and a title befitting a lord of the land.
Many natives of the surrounding cities and quite a few off-worlders had tried, but all had either returned in a crazed state or not returned at all. There were said to be monsters and treacherous traps of all kinds, but that didn’t stop the brave and the foolish from testing their skills and their lives so that they, the lowly everyman, could be bestowed with such honor.
Doctor Xombie heard the legend from a wandering robot monk he had met on Diom Four. He needed some new boots, so he jumped in his coffin ship, the Toe Pincher, and swooped over to the planet, scanned the underground terrain, and rematerialized his ship to the labyrinth’s center. He jumped out, took a look at the metal decorated leather boots, and tried them on.
He jumped up and down a couple of times to test them out. “Perfect fit!” he cried as his voice echoed around the chamber. He started to leave but then remembered something.
He grabbed his old dusty worn out Xombie Stomper boots and placed them upon the pedestal where the new ones had, just moments before, been displayed in all their shiny splendor.
His ship took off with him and his new boots inside, never to be seen on the planet again.