Rubbermaid: The Origin of Rubbermaid

Detective Ronda Mord was on the night watch on the east side industrial part of town, when she spotted lights on in the Badyear rubber plant. The plant shuts down promptly at 6:00, and ordinarily is quiet as a tomb by 6:30. Investigating further, Detective Mord finds several cars illegally parked in a loading zone. She tries the side door, and finds it's been forced open. Confident that she can handle any problems herself, she does not call for backup. Entering the rubber plant, she hears voices coming from the processing area where raw materials are combined to form a variety of rubber compounds. Detective Mord climbs to a catwalk overlooking the processing area, and finds a number of known hoods prowling around the dimly lit factory floor beneath. From what she overhears, Mord learns that they are looking for a special rubber compound that will revolutionize the rubber industry. Mastery of this special compound could be worth millions. The gang below was hired by Badmoon rubber to obtain a sample, or the formula for the special compound. Having learned all she could by eavesdropping, Mord decides to end this night's thievery. "This is the Law", she shouts out. "Everyone is under arrest. Put down your weapons and surrender quietly." As soon as she finished making her demands, she is hit from behind by one of the crooks that had sneaked up behind her. Detective Mord falls from her perch, and lands in a vat full of one of the rubber compounds. Worse yet, the processing machine the vat empties into, starts up. As the vat containing the helpless detective empties into the rubber processing machine, a number of unusual changes take place in Mord's body. The rubber in the vat covers her of course, but it also is forced into her by the processing machine. Rubber is forced into every body cavity, filling her with the unknown rubber compound. As more rubber is pushed into her body, she expands to enormous proportions. Once all the rubber is forced into her, a centrifugal in the processing machinery starts to spin her at ever increasing velocities. The centrifugal pushes the rubber into every cell of her body, leaving Mord a living solid rubber doll. The centrifugal also forces the excess rubber out of her, leaving her body shape the same as it was before she had the misfortune to try taking on a gang of underworld hoods by her self.

The processing machine finally finishes it's cycle, and spits out the rubber body of Detective Mord. One of the crooks grabs her by the leg, and immediately drops it in astonishment. "What's wrong Lou?" one of the other crooks calls out. "The damn machine turned her into a rubber doll!" Lou replies. "We've turned her into a rubber maid!!. I don't feel a pulse either, I think we might be facing a murder rap." (Don't worry, she's in a coma) The gang is hard hearted, but the state they're in has the death penalty for murder, and justice is swift in this state. Every one is ready to leave rather then risk a murder rap when the boss steps up. "Boss!" Lou cries, "What do we do now?. I don't mind some theft and burglary, but murder's more then I bargained for. I DON'T WANT TO FACE A MURDER RAP!!!!!" "Shut up Lou," The boss replies. "If the body ain't here, we don't have to worry." The boss proceeds to strip Detective Mord's unmoving body of her outer clothing in order to delay identification of the body, and then throws her into a machine that makes giant rubber bouncy balls. Mord's body drops into a ball shaped mold, and after an inflation valve is glued into her mouth, her body is inflated. Her ball shaped body is then bounced into a bin of balls destined to be sold at WallyMart. The bin containing Mord is loaded onto a truck, and she is soon on her way to be price stamped and sold.

The next morning at the local WallyMart, two co-eds are checking out the balls to find the perfect ball for team volleyball. "Take a look at this one Buffy, It's perfect for us!" Sandy says to her friend Sally. "I didn't think WallyMart would sell anything like this. It looks just like a person!" The ball they refer to of course is the unfortunate Detective Mord. The girls make there purchase, and a short time later Mord is an unwilling participant in a team volley ball game. Soon, Mord is being hit across the net by the opposing teams. The constant whacks on Mord's inflated body serve a good purpose however. Mord is not dead, she's in a coma caused by everything that's happened to her. (You think it's easy being changed into a rubber ball?) The pounding she's getting from the opposing teams slowly brings her out of her coma. (bam) "What's happening to me?" Mord silently screams. as she's hit back and forth across the net. "Why's everyone (whap!) hitting me!!" She's still confused about what's happened to her. "Hit the ball over here" one of the team players calls out. "What (pow) ball?" Mord wonders. "What the hell are they talking about." She then sees a spherical shadow beneath her, moving as she moves, and comes to a startling conclusion. "I'm the ball!? This can't be happening. I got hit on the head and I must be having a delusion. All I have to do is wait for the doctor to help me!!" The consistency of the delusion soon convinces her that unbelievable though it may seem, she is indeed the ball. She also learns that the has no control over her body, and must endure whatever others may do to her, at least for now. For next two hours she is hit over the net repeatedly as she remains the ball in a team volleyball game. At last, the game ends and she is loaded into a pickup truck to be stored in Buffy's and Sally's garage. After several more hours of quietly recovering from both her transformation, and her participation in the volleyball game, she is able to gain a measure of control over her body. More importantly, she's finally able to spit out the inflation valve that was stuck in her mouth. After her body assumes more a more normal appearance, Detective Mord assesses her situation. First order of business is to borrow some clothing. The co-eds fortunately have left some sweat pants and the like in the garage. As Mord reaches for the clothing, the side door opens, and Buffy looks in. Buffy looks Detective Mord in the face, turns white as a sheet, and faints after screaming "That's the face on our ball!!!" As Buffy falls to the floor, Mord reaches out from ten feet away to catch her in her now rubbery arms. "I still think it's impossible, but as Holmes would say,' If you've ruled out everything else, whatever remains no mater how impossible, is possible.'" Buffy's screams attract the other team members from inside the house, and soon they're all demanding to know who she is, what she's doing there, how come her face is the same as the face on their ball, why does she have ten foot arms, and most important of all, what happened to their ball. Mord tries to answer there questions, but since she's as much in the dark as they are, she can't tell them much. She tells them what she remembers about the break in at the rubber plant, and how she was hit from behind. "Next thing I knew" she tells them "I was being used as a giant volleyball." The co-eds, having recovered from their shock, give her some clothes to wear and wish her luck on catching the gang that attacked her.

Mord returns to the station house and gives an abbreviated version of what happened to her. She leaves out any mention of being changed into a rubber ball, after all who would believe her, and convinces her superior, Captain Smith, that she's fit for duty. Mord returns to Badyear in the daylight to ask the plant supervisor some questions. She want's to know what happened to her and the plant is the best place to go to start putting the pieces together.

Mord is soon questioning Alice Pinky, the plant supervisor, about the burglary. "They weren't after money" Pinky whines. "If it was just money it would be all right. The money in the safe was untouched. What they took was much more important!" "What was taken?" Mord asks. "They took most of an experimental batch of a new rubber compound. We don't even know for sure what the properties of the compound are." Mord look around, and sees that the vat in question is below the catwalk where she was standing on the night of the burglary. In the daylight streaming in from the skylights overhead, she's able to examine the factory properly. Clues that were hidden in the shadows of the night are now fully revealed. She quickly spies the machine that makes large bouncy balls, and reaches the inevitable conclusion. This must be how she was changed into a ball! She asks Pinky in as casual a voice she can manage, what would happen if a person came into contact with the compound. "We don't know for sure" Pinky replies. "We were just beginning to run tests on it. This compound was created by accident during an incident at the nuclear power plant next door. My best guess is that nothing of consequence would happen, but that's only a guess. If something happens to the crooks who took it, then we'll know for sure." "I already know!" Mord says to herself. "It turns people into living rubber." Mord continues to question Pinky, but learns nothing of importance. Since the rubber compound the crooks were looking for is in her body and not in the plant, Mord knows that the crooks don't have what they were looking for. She decides to return to the plant at night in case the crooks return to the plant to continue their search for the new compound.

That night, Mord again sees lights on in the plant, and she again sees cars parked on the grounds of the supposedly empty building. All the doors and windows are locked, leaving no normal way to get in. Mord does however find a loading dock door that has a narrow opening , less then in inch wide, at the bottom of the door. Mord strips to her underwear, since her clothing is too bulky to fit in the narrow opening, and proceeds to squeeze her rubberized body through the crack between the door and the floor. Her intention is to open the door from the inside, and then retrieve her clothing, gun, and radio. As she rises from the floor, a bullet races by her head, barely missing her. With no chance to get her belongings, all she can do is try to find a place to hide. She flattens herself between two pieces of machinery as two crooks overtake her position. "What where you shooting at Dusty?" one of them demands. "Do you want to bring more cops here!" "I saw someone by the door Lou, I swear I did. She looked just like the cop we wasted the other night. Do yyou believe in ggoasts Lou?" Dusty stutters in a nervous fearful voice. "Ddid she ccome to hhaunt us for kkilling her?" "Get a hold of yourself!" Lou snaps. "There's no such thing as ghosts.! There's nothing here other then your imagination." As the thugs retreat back into the shadows, Mord emerges from her hiding place, determined to find the leader of this gang and somehow to stop them. She avoids all doors and windows, having learned the hard way that they are under careful scrutiny. There's an army of crooks ransacking the plant, with no way to avoid them all. All she can do is avoid the majority of them, and take out the ones she can't slip by. One of the gang sees her before she can knock him out. He was one of the gang that had been at the plant the other night, and he recognizes her immediately. "It's the cop we wasted!" He screams out. "It's the Rubber Maid!!" "Hey!" Mord calls out as she reaches out from across the room to grab the thug. "I like that name, mind if I use it?" The thug is silent, having been knocked out after being flung against the wall. The damage was done however. Other thugs had heard him, and knew that Mord was there. Worse yet, they saw her stretch to impossible lengths, and reasoned that the compound they were looking for was probably in her. Lou races up to the gang members that witnessed the impossible feats of Rubber Maid, and takes charge of the situation. One of the gang is dispatched to tell the boss what's happened, and the rest are ordered to find and capture the Maid of Rubber. "Where are you going Lou?" one of the gang demands. "I got something in the car that might take care of the rubber woman. Now go find her before I get mad. Rubber Maid's situation is quite desperate as the gang drops all other activities to focus their attention on her capture. Worse yet, some of the gang ignored orders to take her alive, and were trying to gun her down. The only ray of hope was that sometimes they were hitting each other by accident as well. Rubber Maid took out as many of the gang as she could, but there were too many of them for her to have any hope of success. She knew she had to remove the boss and Lou first. Once the gang's leadership was removed, the rest would be disorganized enough for her to deal with.

Rubber Maid continued to look for the boss, despite the hail of bullets that she had to keep avoiding. She found a momentary resting place among the machinery, but when Lou returned, he switched on the power for the machines. Rubber Maid now had to avoid both bullets and machines, and with the machines, she was not always successful. She paused for instance beside a pallet loaded with packages ready for loading on a truck. As she was catching her breath, a machine grabbed her by both sides, and wrapped her around the pallet. Her limbs were then pulled around her body like bunge cords. Stretched out, flattened, and helpless in full view of everyone; she was amazed that no one noticed her. She then realized that her ebony skin hid her from her pursuers. In the shadows, she looked like a rubber tarp, just like the tarps covering other pallets around the warehouse. After the gang members moved out of sight, she untangled herself from from her predictiment, being more careful of the machines around her. Despite her caution however, she later became caught in a machine that makes blow up furniture, and was turned into an inflatable chair. As the gang passed by the machine, one of them stopped and sat down on her inflated body until he was ordered to get off his ass by another crook. Rubber Maid was starting to think her best bet might be to try escaping with her life, and to hell with catching these crooks. She is a dedicated cuss however, and and the exits are all heavily guarded. After deflating her body, she therefor continues her self appointed mission . In spite of her best efforts, one more machine captured her rubbery body. Mord, hearing the boss, paused for a moment to try and determine his location. As soon as she stopped moving, a hose rams into her mouth, filling her quickly with foam rubber. Her puffed up body was then pulled into a slot in the machine for further processing. Several long minutes later, a foam filled exercise mat was ejected into a hopper for packaging. The mat of course was Rubber Maid. She was then tightly rolled up, and held in her new form with velcro and rubber bands. Her rolled up body was then stuffed into a plastic bag, her eyes looking out from her bondage in helpless fury as she found herself once more destined for a WallyMart truck where she would again be delivered to a store, priced, and sold. Just before being tossed into a truck's bin, she managed to roll herself off the conveyor belt. Several minutes later, she was finally able to escape this bizarre form of capture. Pulling foam rubber out from her mouth, she vowed that the gang of crooks would be brought to justice.

Despite all these dangers she faced, Rubber Maid continued to seek out the boss, and her efforts were finally rewarded. Passing an air vent, she hears the boss's voice coming through the vent. He's in the basement. Rubber Maid starts to climb into the vent feet first, but as she lowers herself down, a figure rushed out at her. Lou takes advantage of her awkward position and shoves a large canister down her rubbery throat. Seconds later, Rubber Maid hears a dull thud from inside her as her body rapidly inflates. "Shit!" she exclaims as her ass hits the basement air vent grate . "The bastard shoved a shark charge in me. (The shark charge is a co2 canister that inflates the body of the shark when the charge is shot into it's stomach.) In moments, Rubber Maid's inflated body fills the entire vent. Her mouth is corked to keep the gas from escaping while the boss decides what to do with her. Looking around, he spies what looks like a wringer from and old fashioned washing machine. "I'll put more then her tit through the wringer." the boss mutters to himself. He sees a machine that makes silicone rubber adhiesives, and contemplates either filling Rubber Woman with glue or turning her into glue, but decides against it. He next notices a machine that makes rubber door mats. "Perfect!" the boss exclaims. He then removes the grate from the vent shaft in the basement, and puts Rubber Maids ass up against the wringer. "Go uncork her." the boss orders one of the gang, "and get everyone down here. I want them to see what happens to Rubber Maid; and put those guns away before anyone else gets hurt by 'friendly fire'!" As the gang assembles in the basement, Rubber Maids uncorked body begins to deflate. Long before she can hope to master the situation, the boss proceeds to feed her helpless body into the wringer. The boss then takes the carpet runner that was Detective Mord, a.k.a. Rubber Maid, and feeds it into the doormat machine. Rubber Maid is folded and stamped into a rubber rectangle measuring 2 feet by 3 feet. As a final insult, the word 'welcome' and a tacky picture is pressed into her much abused form. The machine then spits her body out into a bin. The boss grabs Rubber Maid from the bin, and throws her on the floor beneath him in triumph. "You thought you could beat me!" he crows. "Well look who's on top of who. We'll cut the rubber we need from her body and wipe our feet on the rest." As his foot descends on the floor mat beneath him, the mat begins to ripple, then a hand reaches out from the mat and sends the boss crashing to the floor. Before any of the gang can so much as reach for their guns, another rubbery arm stretches out and wraps itself around the throats of many of the gang members. the few that remain are either yanked off their feet, or knocked out by Rubber Maid as she emerges from the flattened pile of rubber on the floor. In the blink of an eye, the only one standing is the bedragled yet victorious Rubber Maid. "Look who's on top now." she mutters wearily to the unconscious felons as she proceeds to wipe her feet on the prone unmoving body of the boss.

"How did you stop them Rubber Maid?" asked Buffy the next morning. "They turned you into a doormat." "I let them turn me into a doormat." Rubber Maid replies. "Thanks to those damn machines, I have better control over my rubber body now. Escaping from those machines helped me learn what I could do with this body. I could have stopped Lou and the boss earlier, but I had to get all the gang together and unarmed before I could stop them. There were just too many of them scattered through the plant shooting at me. By letting them think they had beat me, I could catch them all by surprise. It was risky I admit, but it was the only chance I had. Now who's for team volley ball!" she shouts as her rapidly inflating spherical body bounces towards the volleyball nets.