Free For the Love of Temperance (The Adventures of Ichabod Temperance Book 3) by Ichabod Temperance Page B

euphoric madness of this furnace’s binge. ‘Big Alice’ is not very ladylike. Spitting flaming slag into the sky, and with molten drool at her lips, she gorges herself on the Martian’s metallurgical smörgåsbord.
    “Nobody plays around with ‘Big Alice’s’ feedstock. I control that inlet! So says Daniel Slagwood! Feeding time’s over, big girl.”
    The burly bossman pulls the lever that stops the intake conveyor.
    “Uh, oh, Mr. Slagwood, here comes that big old Granddaddy Long-Legs spider walker. He didn’t like you turning off that conveyor.”
    “That’s too bad, Sticky.”
    “Icky.”
    “Shut up, here he comes! He is trying to get us; run around to the other side.”
    “Uh, oh, now that three legged spider walker is scrambling around again. He is really mad! I think he is really after us, bad!”
    “He’s reaching up and pawing at us, but we are too far up in the air for him to reach.”
    “Ha, too bad! He can’t get to us in that mechanical arachno-walker, and if that booger comes up here I’ll clobber him, but good.”
    “Look out, Mr. Slagwood, here he comes again! Run!”
    “I’m done with running! Hey, you in there, come on out and face me! You want me? Come get me!”
    “Zoinks! I think he heard you! That mechanical monster is trying to climb the furnace!”
    “Get off of Alice, you tin trespasser! That’s no way to treat a lady!”
    “That monster is  climbing up after us! He’s tearing her steel steps and walkways down, Mr. Slagwood! How are we going to get down?”
    “How do I know? Shutup, Stinky!”
    “Icky.”
    “What is that three-legged contraption doing now, hugging the furnace?”
    “Nossir, he is shinnying up after us.”
    “Augh, he is tugging at this, the last platform! That stupid monster is going to make me fall!”
    “Me too, sir!”
    “Who cares about you; it’s me I’m worried about!”
    “The monster almost has us, sir!”
    “Molten Mermaids, I’m going to get a shot in on you before you do me in, you vandal!”
    The big man, Daniel Slagwood, takes a moment to heft the balance of the huge wrench he is armed with. Anger and determination grip his fearful visage. Sinews pop from the swollen sausage-like arms that protrude from his rolled up sleeves. Charging around the walkway, and with all of his considerable strength, the fearsome foreman heaves the thirty pound wrench at the pie-lidded predator.
    “Suck on that! Nobody plays around with my sweet Alice!”
    The weighty missile catches the monstrosity square and solid.
    The Martian vehicle is stunned as the massive wrench bounces off its lid with a loud clang and loses its grip with one of its three legs on the furnace. After a woozy moment or two, it shakes off the effects of the strike to rally its senses.
    Three sets of thick roots drop out of the craft’s underbelly. These metallic but strangely fluid extensions curl and feel about themselves as the operator develops a sense for their use. These ‘tentacles’ immediately put me in mind of something one might see as a part of a squid, or an octopus. These odd limbs are able to reach out from under and over the Martian war machine’s flattened ‘head’.
    Multiple-fingered claws at the tentacles’ ends snap at Mr. Slagwood. He fights them like a rabies maddened dog, but two of the horrifying appendages seize his arms and stretch him out. Another one of these serpents quickly envelops Daniel Slagwood like a monster snake from the Amazon Jungle. He is lifted high in the air, roaring and struggling in vain. It looks as if the big boss bully shall be dashed to the ground, a hundred feet below. Then, it appears that the creature will cast Slagwood into the mouth of the furnace. The horrible tentacle holds the struggling supervisor high in the air above the roaring flames. The man who was so fearsomely large to me a moment ago, is now like a child’s toy in the grip of this terrifying creation.
    Instead of Daniel Slagwood being dashed to his demise,