It was silent except for the low humming of the ship's engines on standby as they waited to see if their mission had been a success. The bridge was dimly lit, the crew ordered to conserve as much power as they could about an hour ago from Mission Command. Captain Woodson stood very rigid and erect, hands behind his back, as he studied the readouts on the computer screens below.
"Anything yet, Johnson?" the Captain asked, turning around to the First Officer.
Johnson looked down on his screen. "Nothing's popping up."
Captain Woodson began pacing around the bridge, pausing to look out the main window every thirty seconds or so. It was dark out there with the headlights off. Barely any light was leaking deep down in the belly where the ship was parked. All he could see was a vague, dark reddish blobular landscape.
"It's hard to see anything down here," Woodson mumbled.
Suddenly a loud growling sound surrounded them. The ship shook a little, something disturbing the waters they were floating in.
"Sir," said Ensign Dixon, another member of the crew, "I'm not sure how much longer our shields will hold in this acid. We should move."
"How much longer do we have?" Captain Woodson asked her, his steely blue eyes boring into her. He could look very intimidating with those eyes on his chisled and weathered face.
"Hard to tell," Dixon mumbled, "ten, maybe twenty minutes before the aft degrades completely. We'd better pull out soon."
"God dammit," Captain Woodson muttered. "Our orders were to stay here until--"
That's when the Until happened, cutting him off mid-sentence.
"Sir, I'm seeing massive growth!" Johnson said, standing up excitedly. "I think it was a success! Come here!"
Woodson rushed over to Johnson's computer. It was indeed showing the results they'd been shooting for.
"Yes!" Woodson yelled. "The mission was a success! We should all be proud of our hard work and dedication! You're a real stand-up crew!"
The entire crew began clapping and cheering. Several days after being shrunk and injected into Mr. Peter Willy to use their sophisticated equipment and anatomical know-how to cure him of his chronic, debilitating ailment, their mission was a success. They'd fought off angry white blood cells, hungry bacteria, and nasty virusus, but in the end they accomplished their mission.
"Yes, I am very pleased to announce," said Captain Woodson, the head of their operation, "that we have cured Mr. Willy's erectile dysfunction!" The crew cheered again. "It was hard, but we all came together and pulled it off! We really rose to the occasion."
"Sir, the growth is more than we'd expected," pointed out Ensign Pudman.
"Shut the fuck up, Pudman!" the Captain exclaimed. "Can't you see we're celebrating here?!"
"All right, let's move," Johnson said, "before--!"
Suddenly the ship began violently rocking back and forth. It felt like Peter's entire body was shaking.
"Oh no!" Dixon yelled. "We specifically told him to wait!"
"Patch into his visual cortex!" Woodson ordered Dixon. "Put it on the viewscreen!"
Sure enough, right in Peter's field of vision was the face of his hot girlfriend, grinning from ear to ear. Peter looked down and began unhooking her bra.
"Sometimes you just can't wait!" Pudman cried.
"Shut the fuck up, Pudman!" Johnson yelled.
"Take us out of here!" Woodson yelled.
The engine came back to full power and they began to scurry up and out of Peter's stomach. Once out, they found an opening between some cells and made it into an artery.
"Wow, it's calm in here, for an artery," Dixon observed as they shot by some red blood cells. "Blood pressure here is lower than normal."
"A lot of blood is going to his penis!" Pudman declared.
"Shut the fuck up, Pudman!" Woodson yelled. "We all know that!"
The ship did begin to shake violently again, though, despite the momentary calm in the waters. They all looked at the viewscreen. His hot girlfriend looked to be in the throes of passion.
"He has entered Jennifer!" Johnson yelled.
"We should head down there!" Pudman said.
"Shut the fuck up, Pudman!" Johnson said. "I have an idea. We should go down to his penis and make sure everything's functioning correctly!"
So Dixon programmed their navigational computer to take them down to Peter's peter. The closer they got, the more violently the ship shook.
"I don't know how much longer the ship can take this," Dixon warned as they began to enter Peter's shaft. "Forward and aft shields are down to fifty-six percent!" The ship began bouncing off the walls.
"Man she must be hot!" Pudman said, trying to hold on.
"Shut the fuck up, Pudman!" Woodson yelled.
Angrily, Pudman left his station unnoticed.
"Steady us, Johnson!" Woodson ordered. "Show me those piloting skills you're always boasting about!"
"I've been trying!" Johnson said, fooling with his controls. "They don't teach you how to keep a submarine steady while in somebody's cock!"
Woodson couldn't argue with that.
"What?!" Dixon said, looking down at her screen. "There's something out there! In front of the ship! I...I don't know what it is. These readings are so strange. It's not like any white or red blood cell or virus or bacteria we've encountered."
Woodson ran over to her computer. "What the hell?" He began to grow nervous. "We've got to get the hell out of this guy!" One of her displays showed Peter's heart rate skyrocketing. Woodson felt the same way. The ship was about to be destroyed and there was some new, unknown bodily creature out there in the blood, possibly preparing to attack them.
"Oh my god!" Johnson yelled, pointing at his computer's screen. "I know what's out there. Let me patch this into the main viewer!"
The landscape ahead lit up on the viewscreen. It showed the back of Pudman out there in his diving suit, gesticulating violently, his hands in front of him. A few wriggling sperm swam by him.
"That idiot's gone out there and something's attacking him!" yelled Dixon.
Woodson squinted his eyes, studied Pudman carefully. Then he rolled his eyes and growled. "He's not being attacked!"
"Good God, he's jerking off!" Johnson said, realizing it at the same time. "He's out in Peter's penis as he's fucking somebody, spanking his own monkey!
"And that's the most fucked up sentence I've ever said!"
"That's the most fucked up thing I've ever seen!" Captain Woodson angrily grabbed a microphone on the front-most control panel near the window. He pressed a nearby button and began yelling into it. "PUDMAN!! Quit wiggling your walrus and get your ass back in here!"
"He's about to release!" Dixon yelled.
Woodson had a quick decision to make. Peter's release could destroy the ship. If they left Pudman, he could be pulled apart, or be shot into Jennifer, totally out of their reach. If he began growing again while inside of her, alive or not...
"PUDMAN!" Woodson yelled. "I AM ORDERING YOU TO GET BACK INSIDE! NOW!"
"I think Peter is pulling out of her!" Dixon yelled.
"Pulling out?" Woodson said. He looked at the viewscreen. Jennifer was moving further away. "He's pulling out! That could be our way out! Johnson!"
"Yes sir!" Johnson replied.
"Lock the tractor beam onto Pudman out there! Then, when Peter releases, go with the flow, not against it! If you do it just right, we may survive, and leave the body, kill two birds with one stone!"
"Aye, sir!" Johnson said, pushing some buttons on his console.
"We're going to be ejaculated," Dixon said with cautious wonder.
"Today has been a very unusual day," Captain Woodson said, looking upwards at nothing in particular.
Pudman had stopped moving. He was just drifting out there aimlessly. When his head turned toward them they could see a big smile on his face. It quickly faded, though, when a blue beam from the ship enveloped him. Tractor beams were rarely used on human bodies, mostly because it really, really hurt
Just as Pudman was being pulled closer to the ship, the shaft began to rumble.
"Here we go!" Captain Woodson said. "Batton down the hatches!"
"We don't have hatches!" Woodson heard Pudman's voice yell from the air lock.
"Shut the fuck up, Pudman!" Captain Woodson yelled back.
The ship shook violently. Suddenly, they were rushing for a dim light at the end of the tunnel, Johnson doing his best to keep the ship swimming along with it like the thousands of sperm that were passing them up. Very quickly they came to the end of it and splashed into the air outside of the body.
They had escaped.
"Man, that was too close!" Johnson said.
"Do you realize," Captain Woodson began, "that we are now in a small puddle of ejaculate?"
"You mean a spunk stain?" Ensign Pudman offered as he walked back onto the bridge.
"Shut the fuck up Pudman!" the rest of the crew yelled at the same time.
For the 2006 Quest for Fear