Pulp Adventures 3: Gorzog vs Smith
Scene: a US courtroom. Behind one desk sits a humanoid lizard with the slightly oily looking young woman who is his attorney. Behind the other sits a red-headed man dressed in green. His lawyer is a portly gentleman in a white three-piece suit.
Bailiff: All rise. The honorable Judge Fred Filo-Pfeffer presiding.
Judge: (bangs gavel) The court will come to order! What do we have today?
Clerk: Gorzog v Smith, your honour.
Lawyer 1: May it please the court…
J: Shut up, I’m judge. What’s with the lizard?
C: It’s the plaintiff, your honour. A… (checks notes) lizardman from the interior of the Earth.
J: Aha! So not a citizen?
L1: Your honour, the US, as a sovereign nation, lays claim to all the space between the surface and the centre of the Earth. If you consider the 14th Amendment…
J: Ugh, amendments! You start with that crap, next thing you know it’s precedents this and objection that. Makes me sick, I’m trying to judge and all this legal crap going on. Okay, the lizard is a plaintiff. Who’s the respondent?
Lawyer 2: (Southern drawl) My client, your honour, is Dr Archimedes Smith. He’s a scientist. And, if I may, he isa human being.
L1: Objection! Prejudicial.
J: Shut up. What’s your case?
L1: You just told me to shut…
J: Get on with it!
L1: Your honour, my client—Mr Gorzog of Clan Gruldap—was minding his own business when Dr Smith ran him down in a quote ‘crazy sci-fi vehicle for exploring underground’ unquote. As a result of this, both of his legs were crushed and had to be amputated.
Court: (gasp of horror)
L1: Because of this double amputation, Mr Gorzog lost three weeks wages while his legs regenerated, and he is suing for lost income and punitive damages.
Court: (sigh of relief)
L2: Your honour, my client would like to countersue! This… this reptile was not ‘minding his own business,’ no suh! He was armed with—and I quote!—‘a sort of thing like a long knobbly sex toy.’ This naturally caused my client a degree of surprise and shock, which directly—I say, directly—leading to a loss of concentration which I submit was the proximate cause of this here accident.
L1: No one’s impressed with the accent, Dave. We all know you’re Canadian.
L2: Go to Hell, eh?
Judge: Shuddup the both of youse. You, Lizard: did you have a sex toy? ‘Cause those are illegal in this state. Under this state. Whatever.
Gorzog: I don’t know what this guy was thinking, but of course it wasn’t a sex toy. I’m a lizard. I have a flippin’ cloaca, what do I need a human sex toy for? It was a spear. Alright? I wasn’t doing anything sexual, okay? I was trying to stab him to death.
J: Good point.
Smith: It’s not a good point, your honour. He was trying to murder me!
J: Also a good point.
S: All I did was invade the underground kingdom of his people and take a bunch of their eggs as souveniers. Oops, I mean specimens. Ooops, I mean I didn’t steal the eggs, your grace.
J: Okay. I’m bored of evidence. Time to deliberate.
(Pause)
(Longer pause)
(Extremely long pause)
L1: Your honour?
J: I’m deliberating.
L1: Could you… uh… could you deliberate any faster?
J: Sure. Smith, was your crazy SF exploring vehicle equipped with one of those sweet corkscrew-drill deallies?
S: No, your honour.
J: Pfft! Bush-league. I find for the lizard.
S: I’ll appeal!
G: You don’t appeal to me!
J: Ha! Classic.
S: This court sucks.
G: It kind of does.
J: Kids, kids… You’re both right. Okay, run along you scamps, before I hold you in contempt. What’s next?
Clerk: Case of Godzilla v Gigan.
J: Now you’re talking!
