Fifty Shades of MODOK

The elevator arrives, and we step in. We’re alone. Suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, possibly our proximity in such an enclosed space, the atmosphere between us changes, charging with an electric, exhilarating anticipation, and also humming with the nanobots that I have been assured will unmake the molecular structure of any who oppose MODOK’s will. My breathing alters as my heart races. His head rotates fractionally toward me, his eyes completely featureless and blank. I bite my lip.

"Oh, fuck the paperwork, I WILL NOT BE A PRISONER OF MY OWN RED TAPE, WOMAN," he howls. He floats toward me, the metal carapace necessary to prevent his enormous head from crushing the rest of his tiny little skeleton pushing me against the wall of the elevator. Before I know it, he’s got both of my hands in a vice-like grip above my head with a retractable clamp I didn’t see him deploy and he’s pinning me to the wall using his shriveled legs. Holy shit. Another appendage - it is becoming apparent that his suit contains many - grabs my ponytail and yanks down, bringing my face up, and his gigantic lips are on mine. It’s only just not painful. I moan into his mouth, which encompasses most of my head now, giving his tongue an opening. He takes full advantage, the very tip of his skateboard-sized tongue swiping back and forth across my mouth. I have never been kissed like this.

My tongue tentatively strokes his and joins his in a slow erotic dance that’s all about touch and sensation, all bump and grind, like I’m vainly licking a damp comforter that someone is swirling around my entire head. He brings a many-segmented exoskeletal appendage up to grasp my chin and holds me in place. I am helpless, my hands pinned, my face held, and his little bitty legs bracketing my hips. I feel the industrial-grade titanium of his armor against my belly. Oh my… He wants me. MODOK, howling-mad super-genius, wants me, and I want him, here… now, in the elevator, if it is even possible to access his erogenous zones while he is encased in metal and bristling with weaponry.

"You. Are. So. Sweet. You. Inferior. Mental. Gnat," he shouts in my face, each word a staccato.

The elevator stops, the doors open, and he bobs away from me in the blink of an eye, leaving me hanging and coated from my shoulders to the top of my head in saliva. Three men in business suits look at both of us and smirk as they climb on board. MODOK interprets this as an insult, and the gentleman in the center doesn’t quite have time to scream before each one of his cells is unraveled by MODOK’s murderous nanobot army. The men on either side snap to attention as their former coworker’s component molecules splash against their pant legs in a reddish slurry. My heart rate is through the roof, I feel like I’ve run an uphill race. I want to lean over and grasp my knees… but that’s just too obvious. Also I’m trying to keep my face as far as possible from the floor, which is slick with gore.

***

I push open the door and stumble through, tripping over my own feet, and falling head first into the Lair of Mad Science.

Double crap - me and my two left feet! I am on my hands and knees in the doorway to MODOK’s Lair, and gentle, purple hands are around me helping me to stand. I am so embarrassed, damn my clumsiness. I have to steel myself to glance up. Holy cow - he’s so…unusual.

"Miss Kavanagh." He extends an armored hand to me once I’m upright. "You find yourself before MODOK. BEHOLD MODOK! Are you all right? Would you like to sit in a chair that is probably not designed for efficient electrocution?"

So unusual - and attractive, very attractive. He’s not tall, dressed in a fine yellow exoskeleton, with a truly enormous head and intense, pure white eyes that regard me shrewdly. It takes a moment for me to find my voice.

"Um. Actually - " I mutter. If this guy is over thirty then I’m a monkey’s uncle. In a daze, I place my hand in his and we shake. As our fingers touch, I feel an odd exhilarating shiver run through me. I withdraw my hand hastily, embarrassed. Must be static, or perhaps he has subtly restructured my DNA, bombarding my ordinary cells with all manner of mutagenic agents. I blink rapidly, my eyelids matching my heart rate.

"Miss Kavanagh is indisposed, so she sent me. I hope you don’t mind, Mr. MODOK."

"And you are?" His voice is warm, possibly amused, but it’s difficult to tell from his impassive expression, pupil-less eyes and bared teeth. He looks mildly interested, but above all, completely out of his mind with power.

"Anastasia Steele. I’m studying English Literature with Kate, um… Katherine…um… Miss Kavanagh at Washington State."

"I see," he says simply. I think I see the ghost of a smile in his expression, but I’m not sure. His mouth is literally an entire foot wide. "TO REPEAT MY PREVIOUS INTERROGATORY, would you like to sit?" He waves me toward a white leather buttoned L-shaped couch.

His lair is way too big for just one man, if he can even technically be called a man. In front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, there’s a huge modern dark-wood desk that six people could comfortably eat around if it weren’t strewn with the refuse from probably a hundred different highly illegal biological experiments. It matches the coffee table by the couch. Everything else is white with subtle red flecks - ceiling, floors, and walls except, on the wall by the door, where a mosaic of small paintings hang, thirty-six of them arranged in a square. They are exquisite - a series of images of Captain America suffering intense humiliation at the hands of MODOK himself, rendered in such precise detail they look like photographs. Displayed together, they are breathtaking.

"A local artist! Red Skull! HE IS INFERIOR BUT WILL PROVIDE ME WITH SERVICES IN EXCHANGE FOR CURRENCY," shouts MODOK when he catches my gaze.

"They’re lovely. Raising the ordinary to extraordinary," I murmur, distracted both by him and the paintings. He cocks his head – his whole body, really – to one side by tilting his hoverchair and shifting the tremendous weight of his grossly enlarged cranium and regards me intently.

"I couldn’t agree more, Miss Steele," he replies, his voice intense and alarming, and for some inexplicable reason I find myself blushing.

Apart from the paintings, the rest of the office is cold, clean, clinical, and devoted to the pursuit of world domination. I wonder if it reflects the personality of the misshapen Adonis who gracefully steers his magnetically-levitating chair until he is facing my own. I shake my head, disturbed at the direction of my thoughts, and retrieve Kate’s questions from my satchel. Next, I set up the mini-disc recorder and am all fingers and thumbs, dropping it twice on the coffee table in front of me. MODOK says nothing, waiting patiently - I hope - as I become increasingly embarrassed and flustered. When I pluck up the courage to look at him, he’s watching me, one metal-encased hand relaxed in his lap and the other idly shuffling through schematics for a ray gun that can liquefy intestines. I think he’s trying to suppress a smile.