Welcome to Spec Script, where author Michael B. Tager delves into the unexplored from your (or his) favorite television shows.
By Michael B. Tager
Trey MacDougal played tennis alone in the cold moonlight, streaks of grey and streaks of sweat fire in his hair. He played against a machine that every few seconds fired bright green at him to be swatted into oblivion. Trey MacDougal breathed, his strong chin quivering with his strong breath. Trey MacDougal was strong. In the sky, the moon twinkled its light onto his shoulders. Trey liked the moon. Sometimes he fancied he saw a man up there winking at him. The man sometimes resembled him. Strong, in other words.
The machine quieted and Trey MacDougal waited on the balls of his feet. There were no more. He was disappointed. Ever since his divorce, he’d played a lot of tennis. Tennis was no substitute for his small, raven-haired WASP of a wife. Tennis didn’t jerk him off or whisper delicious nothing in his ear when he pounded its soft form. Tennis didn’t love him back.
“Ah, the mistakes we make,” Trey MacDougal said to the sky. The sky said nothing, failed to break open and deliver God’s benediction. “I’ve made so many mistakes.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” a voice said from behind him.
Trey MacDougal whirled, his shirtless torso flinging sweat onto the clay court of the MacDougal family home. He couldn’t see the sweat, but the sweat was there.
In the northeastern corner of the tennis court, draped in the shadows of a weeping willow, was a form. Only the form’s hands could be seen. They were strong hands, pale. They clapped together, slowly. The form walked into the moon’s illuminatory love letter, still slow-clapping. “Do you have any Joe?” the form asked as it emerged in the moonlight. It wore a sober grey suit. It had a strong chin and very well-coiffed hair. Trey MacDougal gaped. “I could use a good cup of joe,” Agent Dale Cooper said.
Trey MacDougal took a step back, his heel slipping on sweat. Trey MacDougal fell, his incredibly muscled back falling on two tennis balls. He grunted, though not in pain. The tennis balls felt like they loved him.
“Let me help you, friend,” said Agent Dale Cooper. He approached Trey MacDougal, his hard, inky black shoes ringing on the dull, sweaty clay. He reached out a strong wrist and with a strong grasp, aided by strong fingers, helped Trey MacDougal to his feet. “Now about that joe?”
“I don’t have any,” said Trey MacDougal. “If I did, I don’t know if you’d get it.”
“Oh, I’d get it. And so would you.” Agent Dale Cooper laughed a gorgeous melodic laugh: Tinkerbelle in a throat. His beautiful fingers reached inside his suit pocket, returning with a pen and a pad of paper. Agent Dale Cooper smiled. It was a beautiful smile. His penmanship on the page? Also beautiful.
“What are you doing on my tennis court?” Trey MacDougal’s beautiful heart wouldn’t stop beating in his beautifully sculpted chest. He had been quite surprised. Now he felt something else, along with surprise. The surprise wasn’t going anywhere.
Agent Dale Cooper’s beautiful lips quivered with laughter. “That is not the question you should be asking.”
“And what question is that?” a deep, delightful voice intoned.
The booming voice interrupted Agent Dale Cooper, whatever he’d say lost in the sands of interruption. They whirled, their floppy, beautiful brown hair whipping. Agent Dale Cooper’s hair had tinges of gray and whipped a bit of dandruff; Trey MacDougal’s only had a strand or two of grey, still some sweat, which whipped as well. They trained their eyes on another dark corner, this one by the pool house. A form strode from the darkness.
Paul Atreides stood in the bonelight, his hair wild and fearless, his chin strong and beautiful, skin tight stillsuit bulging from his peerless muscles. He was brave, young, beautiful. He was the savior of Dune. He said, “You want to know why Agent Dale Cooper frightened you. I might ask the same question, but I won’t because I have something to say.”
Agent Dale Cooper sighed and wrote in his little notebook. He muttered that he hadn’t intended to frighten anyone, but he couldn’t avoid a cinematic entrance. No one heard him besides the trees and a silent beetle, trying to discern if one of the tennis balls was food. It was not. The beetle would die soon. The three beautiful men, standing in détente didn’t care about a beetle. Paul Atreides took a beautiful step forward (killing the beetle, which he didn’t notice), his leather shoes otherwise sure on the dandruff-and-sweat soaked court. “I am here on a mission.” His voice was beautiful.
Agent Dale Cooper said, “I am also here on a mission.” His pen stopped in its motion, oddly beautiful. “Not just for Joe.”
Trey MacDougal said, “I want to go to sleep because I am quite frightened.”
“I am seeking my lost bride,” the Captain suddenly intoned like a chant, and the three beautiful men of equal height and equal strong chins all turned to the newest shadowy corner, the southwestern corner, the corner closest to the south west for orientation purposes, and to the tall, briny man walking into the moon’s motherlight. His hair was full of gray, face full of wrinkles. He was still beautiful, in an old, briny sort of way. He could get it. He probably did, in like, the proper setting. Maybe nautical. Who knows, besides the Captain? And the Captain ain’t telling.
Now they were four at the baseline and they did not know what to say to one another. Paul Atreides drank from a tube on his back, his stillsuit feeding him spice-infused water, offered a sip to Agent Dale Cooper, his dark, beautiful eyebrow raised. Agent Dale Cooper declined and thanked him kindly and said he still wished for a cup of joe. He continued to write in his notebook as the Captain shook hands with Trey MacDougal. He said hello and distant laughter was heard by all. Trey MacDougal squinted at the laughter and wondered at its source. It sounded like sitcom laughter, the laughter of the dead, of dust and decay and of God’s scorn. He did not watch sitcoms. They were gauche. Tray MacDougal put his pale hand to his beautiful temple for signs of a fever. He feared he was going mad.
“You aren’t going mad,” said Jeffrey Beaumont as he strode from the fourth and last shadowy corner, probably the southeastern corner. He was young, his chin strong, his hair moussed with a poof in the front, his cheeks unlined. God, he was beautiful. “We’re all here for the same thing,” he said, his palm spread.
“What’s that?” asked Paul Atreides, a quaver of excitement in his voice that Trey MacDougal recognized as the quaver in his own voice.
Jeffrey Beaumont said nothing, but strode to Paul Atreides and slapped him hard. Paul Atreides gasped, then his lip curled and a grin broke out on his face. He reached for Jeffrey Beaumont’s hair and yanked it from behind. They kissed.
“Oh my,” said Agent Dale Cooper, his pen furiously rushing. Trey MacDougal peeked over Agent Dale Cooper’s shoulder. There were no notes on the notepad: just cocks and cocks fucking holes. All the cocks looked the same: strong, beautiful, slightly hooked to the left. They looked like his own cock.
Trey MacDougal reached for the elastic waistband of his athletic shorts, but a gnarled and briny hand reached them first. The Captain grinned at Trey MacDougal and yanked his pants down. Then they embraced. The two of them rolled on the ground, their lips locking and their hips thrusting. They rolled into Paul Atreides and Jeffrey Beaumont. They stripped Jeffrey Beaumont of his sober, youthful clothes and Paul Atreides of his sand-encrusted stillsuit. The four of them were naked and happy and their cocks found each other. They groaned as one.
Agent Dale Cooper wrote in his notebook and watched them and kind of wished for a cup of Joe, even as he touched himself down below, and groaned, his seed spurting and covering the four beautiful writhing men. The moon rose high, casting them all in silver light. And the man in the moon, Kyle MacLachlan, winked at the earth. He was the loving moon and he was beautiful, his chin strong, his hair perfect.
Michael B Tager is a Baltimore-based writer and editor. More of his work can be found at michaelbtager.com. Likes include garden gnomes, cats, tacos and Prince.