Overpump the Volume

Aaron Nickleback was the best of the best hit men, of the few that were left in the world. Why was he able to find work after so many others had been hunted down by advanced forensic pathology? Simply put, Nickleback was an extremely subtle assasian who understood that he needed to cause deaths in ways so indirect and subtle that they were not even recognizable as hits. When he had taken down Michael Nembith, son of a renowned politician who was getting too moral and needed to be reminded that there was a reason all was not rainbows and smiles, he had done so by surrounding him, everywhere he went, with negative imagery and playing Acid Rock music at him until Nembith did the job himself. When he needed to end the career of Patsy Gorman, he had hired her chef to make her all kids of fatty foods that were completely irresistable until the inevitable clogged arteries of the heart did her in for him.

And now, Nickleback had a new and quite interesting challenge from a brand new client.

They meet outside the Client’s high school, with her sitting in her dad’s limosiune, leaving Nickleback to stand out in the cold.

She was a pretty young thing, Nickleback noted, unlike all the jilted wives, old men or weak young men he had to generally deal with. Nice blond hair down past her shoulders, perfect complexion, wonderful tits that he could make the outline of even through her coat, but he probably shouldn’t stare at a client.

“You’re the best, I know,” she said flatly, “but I’m not sure even you can handle something like this.”

“Maybe not.” Nickleback said with a shrug. “ Won’t know until the body count.” She nodded, and then took out her checkbook.

“The prom’s in two days.” She said as she filled out that it would be worth nine thousand to him just to listen to her instructions. “I want everyone of those fuckers dead. No exceptions.”

“What?” Nickleback couldn’t believe it. “You want me to kill, what, maybe one thousand people?”

“Okay, I see you’ll need a bit more persuasion.” She added a zero to the check. Nickleback was stunned, but he regained his composure.

“I assume, when you’ve made an order like this, and will pay like such, you don’t want any questions.”

“Fuck no.” She removed her sun glasses. One of her eyes was lazy, but the other looked dead at him. It seemed to look deep into his soul, it did. Nickleback did not like crazy women looking deep into his soul, but he looked back into hers, and saw more pain and anger than he would like to look at. The sort that could make anyone into Adolf Eichmann or Genghis Kahn. “I want corpses, not questions. And if you aren’t strong enough to get me them, I’ll find someone who can.”

“Oh no, I’m strong enough. I’m strong enough.” Nickleback wanted to gulp down his bile. In his entire career, he had killed thirty people. But a thousand? That was an absurd number.

But he’d do it.

It was prom night.

Expensive dresses and tuxes: bright lights, a walkway things designed to look like a paper-mache recreation of Paris, or at least the famous landmarks. Men trying desperately to not get caught looking at cleavages, people spending seventy dollars on eight dollar photographs...

And there was Aaron Nickleback, dressed as a DJ, perched with an elaborate sound set up, looked over it all in grim amusement. He had spent the previous day interogatting the DJ as to how to use the sound setup, and then killed him. When you’re going to kill a thousand people, you don’t worry about the one person you have to take out to do that.

And it was time to dance.

Aaron cooed into the speaker system, sounding as sexy as he could, which was not much. He mentioned how it was time to slow dance. He knew there were dozens of virgin boys out there women might feel sorry for, so he’d give those guys a chance to come to closest they would ever get to being laid in their lifetimes. Eric Clapton poured out of deafening volume, and people groped each other to it. Nickleback listened as a few kids mentioned their little requests to him, and ignored them. HE knew what would work for this little occasion, and as Clapton died down, he spoke again.

“Okay, people,” he said, sounding more like Steve Wright in Reservoir Dogs than any real DJ, “A little something to wake you up and get you grooving, baby ” With that, the speakers began to shake to the beat of a neat little techno number just as the wall flowers were getting ready to leave. The music touched the inner rhythm of every person in attendance, and many of them began to dance, or at least gyrate in some way that could be interpreted as dancing.

Nickleback nodded. Everything going according to plan.

“Woo, yeah, Ridgemont High School, everybody ” Everyone repeated the cheer, even though 98% of them hated being in the school. “Now, let’s take it up another notch ” And now, a more stylish, jamming beat started to hit the audience, and even those who hadn’t wanted to move started to get down, even the elderly began to twitch a bit. The room was not very well lit, but Nickleback could see the rapid, spastic movements, people shakin’ their groove thangs, and a lot of people feelin’ the rhythm. He smiled, his fiendish teeth showing, catching a gleam in the light.

“Sir?” A small voice to the side of him, which he whirled towards. It was a girl, no more than maybe five foot two, standing very timid in a plain dress. Nickleback was stunned at how hot she was: there was no better word. You couldn’t look at a woman like this and appreciate her as a beautiful being, the brain would naturally reach the lowest order of thinking and see her as someone you wanted to mate with, if you were into teenage women.

She looked slightly familiar.

“What?” He asked, barely able to keep sounding liking a DJ.

“Do you have any Tracy Chapman? My boyfriend and I want to hear ‘Fast Car.’”

“No.” Nickleback loved the song himself, but dance music it wasn’t. She shrugged.

“Ok. Just thought I’d ask.” And she went down the stairs, with Nickleback following her with her eyes. The low light managed to capture her hourglass perfectly, but Nickleback’s heart sank once he saw her make her way to some hunkish boyfriend. Of course, now he had reason to strengthen his resolve. If he couldn’t ever have a woman, at least he was making sure none of these people ever would again.

“All right, baby,” he said, amping up the reverb on his voice as he pulled out the CD he had been saving for this occasion. “We’ve had a breather, now, we’re gonna go charging into tomorrow with this next piece of ultra-rad techno dynamite!” He put on his ultra-heavy earphones, and slipped on a clip on bowtie to ensure he could not possibly be funky, and then started up the song he had known would work.

The audience was assualted with the sound of synth, and this time, even the Baptists couldn’t help but get up out of their chairs to git down. Movement seemed chaotic, but was part of a larger tech pattern that no one could grasp. They could only groove to it.

No one seemed to notice it until it was already too late, but the effects of the dancing were reaching them on a cellular level. Every cell was becoming so charged with energy, that it was soon to expand to a point where the membrane could not sustain the strain, know what I’m sayin’?

It was first noticed with a girl named Donna Redmond. She was in the middle of a circle of guys who had cleared a space for her so that they could all get a better look at her boobs shimmying and shaking beneath an unfortunately well supported dress. But the friction of cells in those manic mammaries was beginning to cause them to visibly expand. Soon, D had upgraded to DD, and the fabric strained. Donna noticed almost as quickly as all the onlooking men could, but, wouldn’t you know it, they were too involved in dancing to react in any way other than to continue dancing. Donna was equally helpless even as there was further straining, the skin going taunt.

Others began to notice. Women who were shaking their booties began to find it increasingly difficult, owing to the fact that they were beginning to expand far beyond healthy bounds. Panty Lines became even more visible through chiffon and tuxedo pants, and cummerbunds began to creak. People began to lose their wind from the exhaustive efforts, but panted at a rate so heavily their lungs expanded en masse.

And the song played on, maintaining it’s body inflating funk level. Nickleback nodded as a chaffuer attempted to overcome the need to listen to her body talk long enough to make her way outside, but the energy coursing through her body swelled her to a point where she would not have been able to set foot outside anyway. The floor far beneath him was covered in swollen bodies, people begging him to stop the music, but, of course, Can’t stop the music. Nickleback leaned into the mic.

“You all havin’ the time of your lives,” he growled in his best voice, “ and you owe it all to me.” Suddenly, the sheer energy of their bodies began to cause the dancers to begin to float into the air. Their bodies also glowed softly with a sort of magneta light, such was the energy in each and every cell of those persons arrayed before him. Nickleback ducked behind the elaborate mix board he had, which he had found was mostly for show anyway. Bodies began to bounce off the ceiling, and continue to swell.

Unfortunately for all concerned, a certain Amy Wright had decided that it would be cool to wear false fingernails. One of those happened to get embedded in Donna Redmond’s right breast, causing an explosion that, in a fibbonachi sequence manner, caused an explosion of at least one thousand persons who Nickleback really, really hoped deserved it. The very foundations of the building shook, light bulbs exploded, and the expensive sound system stopped working. All in all, it was a good lesson why fake fingernails are stupid on top of being tacky.

When the dust settled, Nickleback went back out from behind his stolen sound system, and saw what had to be an acre of organic tissue on the ground, at least enough to compose 1,000 people. He chuckled, until he saw movement at the far end of the acre of organic tissue, moving in his direction. To his considerable disbelief, it was the timid little girl who had requested he play “Fast Car.” She didn’t look very happy, but still somewhat timid.

“You killed my boyfriend,” she timidly screeched at him, “ and any guy who might date me on the rebound.”

“ You gotta do what you gotta do.” Nickleback responded with a shrug.

“Uh huh,” she responded, “and what I gotta do is this.” With that, she spoke the magic word, the ultra-secret magic world which could threaten national security if revealed. So it will be said backwards “Thgoundraedlegnahcra!”

The timid girl then expanded in height like a giantess, growing an absurd pair of hamstrings, biceps and other muscles that would have made her much more attractive to people into that kind of thing.

In her extremely large state, Timid Girl plucked Nickleback from behind his sound system, and popped him in her mouth like an olive. Nickleback barely had time to scream.

Outside, Nickleback’s client lowered her binoculars, and lit a cigarette. Her sister had survived yet another assassination attempt. What fetish would she try to appeal to so as to kill her next time?