Universal Remote Control

An old-timey red telephone sitting alone on a small wooden stand began to ring, echoing throughout the dark laboratory. It'd been quite some time since it'd last gone off, but there was usually only one thing that anyone on the other end of the line wanted. And that, our dear Readers, is the business of the greatest scientist that's ever lived.

Zoey, the scientist's lovely gothic intern, swiftly snatched up the receiver after the first ring.

"Thank you for calling Edward's Laboratory, where your fetish is our science project! May I ask who's calling?"

The young woman was greeted by what sounded like a small group of giggling teenagers.

“Hello-ooo?” She sang.

“Er, yeah. Sorry ma’am.” One of them said, clearing their throat and trying to make his voice sound an octave deeper than it naturally was, for whatever reason. “I’d like one large pepperoni pizza, aaand-”

She sighed, already resigning herself to the fact that this would be just another fruitless prank-call. Why her boss only ever advertised using email spammers and cheap, fake-looking ads on porn sites was beyond her comprehension, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been able to drum up fairly steady business over the course of the last two decades. Heck, in the last week alone, she managed to take five paid orders over the phone amidst the many lonely men calling to ask if there were any dick pills on the market that actually worked.

Very few of them actually started being flirty or vulgar towards the sweet goth, but Edward’s keen hearing would instantly identify key words said through the receiver from all the way across the room and walk over to deal with them himself. Zoey was never quite sure what became of them after the scientist happily them into buying something from him and said item was sent off, but those seemed to be the only calls that Edward enjoyed personally taking. She always noted the malicious intent burning in his eyes, and that unsettling chuckle he occasionally made when throwing their device together kept her from inquiring about its ultimate functionality out of fear.

“-with extra pickles.” The voice finished, then he and his two buddies broke out into immature fits of laughter.

“Will that be for delivery, or carry-out?” Zoey asked, her voice flat and unenthused.

“Uh… Delivery?” The childish giggling slowed to a stop.

“Okay. So that’s one large pepperoni pizza, fourteen ten-liters of soda, a shaved orangutan, exactly six grains of sand, a puddle of AIDS, and a six-meat cheeseburger made from ground human flesh… with extra pickles. Your total is coming up to be twenty-dollars even. Will you be paying with cash, or a card?”

Once again, they exploded into laughter.

“Y’know, we can actually make your dreams come true here.” Zoey said, then smirked as she crumpled up the small note she’d written their order on and tossed it aimlessly behind her. “What do you three want most in the world? Bigger dicks? We can make it happen. Lusting after rich MILFs? We’ve got you covered. Wanna’ turn the cheerleading squad into your own personal harem? We are the ones to call. This is Edward’s Laboratory, where almost no perversion is unattainable!”

“Good improv.” Edward said from his corner in the room, glancing at her with a raise of his beer. His other hand was holding a thin glass rod and stirring some sort of glittery, glowing red liquid in a beaker. “Either way, I’m in the mood for pizza now. Order some when you’re done with those idiots.”

“With pineapple.” Zoey silently mouthed at him from across the lab.

Edward flipped her off as he looked back towards the unstable solution.

She frowned, taking that as a firm 'no'.

“Like, for real?” One of the boys, who all had been chatting amongst themselves for a moment, finally spoke up in his slight Hispanic accent. “How?”

“Tell me a little about yourselves, and we’ll go from there…” Zoey said, her eyes sparkling with promise. “Good job, me.” Zoey thought to herself, internally praising herself for turning the prank-call into an actual sale. "Firstly, what are your Driver's license numbers? I need to verify your ages before we can proceed."

The three nineteen-year-old boys quickly began listing off every cliche idea that their hormone-riddled minds could muster up on the spot. Ultimately, Zoey just filled an order for a “universal” remote control. Y’know, something like that the one from one movie that came out fifteen-ish years ago, but for the purpose of sexy transformation-like stuff instead of time manipulation. Having taken so many prank calls like how the current one had started out, Zoey figured it’d be alright if she had a bit of light fun with a few immature customers herself, right? Edward was devious at times, she thought, so he surely wouldn’t see any harm in it, and that’s if he somehow managed to find out or even care enough that she ever made an innocent little embellishment with their instructions in the first place.

Upon taking the order, she added an extra bullet-point at the bottom of the note that insisted upon a virtually harmless feature that none of them had suggested.

“Alright, and you said the security code is ‘three-two-three’?” Zoey asked.

“Right.” The one named Harvey said.

“Dude, your mom’s gonna’ be pissed!” Another who went by Jerry said, laughing.

“I’ll just blame it on Harley. She deserves-”

“No, I’ll take the blame for my queen.” Jerry said, his tone now as serious as can be.

Zoey heard the other two of them sigh at that.

“When’s it getting here?” Adam, the rude one, asked Zoey in his unkind, impatient manner of speaking.

Zoey looked to Edward, who was putting a couple of double-A batteries into the basic-looking, square-shaped, black television remote control he’d thrown together in the course of a few seconds. His eyes were glowing with an intense, bright red and a small trail of similarly-colored ooze was leaking down from the corner of his mouth, all while his arms and hands were moving faster than her eyes could perceive. After the nano-second it took him to apply the power source and slap on its removable cover, he set the device down on the empty space on the table in front of him and then slapped a bell-timer sitting next to it.

With his hands firmly placed against the table and his entire body vibrating, only his eyes moved as they flicked towards the timer.

“Five seconds. New record.” Edward stated, slowly, and with an unnerving calmness to his wide-eyed facial expression. “Please, let them know that I will have it out to them in about an hour or two.”

Zoey blinked in horror, glancing between him and the now-empty beaker he had been stirring only moments ago.

“A-About an hour or two.”

“About an-? Hah! I told you this was a scam, stupid.”

“Oh shut up, you fat fu-!”

The line disconnected.

“A-Are you okay?” Zoey cautiously asked the scientist.

Edward instantly grinned a toothy grin for a split-second, and then it was as if a hurricane had gone off in the laboratory, sending all of the trash and scrap scattered throughout the place into a frenzy with the powerful winds that raged around Zoey for just a few moments afterward.

The next thing Zoey knew, she was alone in the lab, her ponytail undone and hair a mess while the note in her hand with all of the boys’ personal information was missing. It didn’t take her long to realize what’d just happened. Looking around the messy lab, nothing seemed any more or less out of place or disastrous than it had before the brief storm, but the next thing she noticed sent chills up her spine and ignited a fiery rage deep in her soul. The tall and pale girl quickly shivered and covered her pert chest. While all of her dark clothes and lab coat were still on and in place, Zoey found that her bra had vanished along with Edward and the note.

This would not go unpunished, she bitterly promised herself.

… And the pizza she was about to order was definitely getting pineapple put on it now.