His life, his world, his marbles -- all were gone, vanished down the swirling drain of yesterday-glutted eternity. Disowned by civilization, branded an outlaw by the Galactic FFF, he flew alone to meet the blaster-bristling armada of the whip-wielding warlords -- in a Italian racing red Sopwith Camel???
CHAPTER ONE
Sex-Goddess of the Slug Invaders
I struck without warning!
"Aaaaaarghhh!" he aaaaaaarghhhed, falling amidst his own blood and gore. I couldn't watch it. He'd been a traitor and a murderer, a rapist and a vandal, a mud-and-blood spattered remnant of Delpheron's rabble-horde, but I couldn't stand seeing all that blood and gore going to waste.
I ran to get my spoon.
CHAPTER TWO
Death's Horny Alabaster Hands *
* !!! optional
She sinuoued toward me sinuously. Her white belly with the emerald stuck in the valley of her navel (screwed counter-clockwise, I was perceptive enough to notice) undulating at me undulatingly. I was enthralled. She was death, death incarnate and her hands were filled with the plague-spore of Zathutapek, but I had to have her. She was just what I needed. She was tall, and lithe, long-legged and huge-breasted, ripe-mouthed and hip-switching. She was everything I needed, incarnate. She was the woman they wanted for the cover illustration.
But I knew she had lured Curla, Shempp and Mohwah to their deaths, and the hate surged up in me like a sinkful of Joy. I wanted to kill her. She came toward me, huskily whispering love-words of the Cootsalings mating ceremony.
Then, just at the last possible second before her lips met mine, she whipped out a vicious little deeler and thrust the beast at my throat. The fangs and claws of the Mercurian devil-beast raked my face, and I felt the poison surging through me.
Damn, screwed up again!
CHAPTER THREE
Aiee, for the Horror-Horde's Lust
They came streaming across the blood-red plain. Their battle flags massed and messed. Massed against the mess of moss that milled and flossed underfoot. But the mess of moss mockingly melted before their might as the moss messed itself into a mass of miserly messed massed mosses moss.
I was clearly too late for me to do anything but save Rappy. I looked up at the dark tower behind me. I shifted my electro-sword to my free hand -- my one good, remaining hand, and called out the code phrase.
"Rappy! Rappy, let loose! Let fly, Baby!"
But they were the wrong words. That was not the code phrase. No one came to the high, long window of the dark tower. No one, not the face of my beloved.
Just as the armada of Belthagor-Schwartz overwhelmed me, I remembered ... remembered, and even under the onslaught of that messed and massed miserable melting misting moss massed undermined and molded mosses mastered and malignant moss, I remembered, and screamed out, brandishing my Marlon.
My Marlon Brandishing.
I screamed it again, this time the proper code-phrase:
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your fraykin' top-knot, I'm gettin' the hell beat outts me!"
But it was too late. They were upon me. Miss mass moss moose meese mice miss mass mee mi ...
Glub!
CHAPTER FOUR
Incident on a Country Road
Where had they gone in the darkness? Where had they gone with the square of light and the flickering words? Where had they gone with the faces and the legs of the silent and the spoken? What had happened to the massed moose of the ... no, that was the last chapter ... where had the man with the strange hat and the cry of, "Wanna theese dayz ... powah! Right inna kizzr!" gone? Where had everything gone? Why was it so dark, with a darkling dark darkness that superseded mere darkness? Why had my enjoyment and my Reality been taken from me this way? Why had the darkness encroached, and for Christ's sake awreddy, where had everything gone?
Why was it dark?
Simple: I'd switched off the TV.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Devil Bat's Mother-In-Law
I knew she was an esper the moment I saw her tennae quivering in the evening breeze. She stood high on the hill, overlooking the spaceport, watching the evening sky from the hill overlooking the spaceport as the evening closed down like a lid on the hill overlooking the spaceport. That evening. The hill, that is. The one that overlooks the, uh, yeah, the spaceport. The hill. Overlooks. Port. She was looking see. Over the spaceport that evening, while the lid of the evening evened the lid that closed down across the ... oh hell!
She was an esper, because I heard her thoughts running to and fro in my head ...
Why be half-safe? Be completely safe! Protect yourself from fallout, remain dainty, retain your hair, stave off those annoying extra limbs and twin heads ...
Smoke Zygote! Tastes good ... like a spermatozoa should!
I hated to do it, but I planted the shell just at the lip of the hill, right at her feet. It blew the goddamned lid off the evening.
Overlooking the you-know-what.
to be continued
Part Two: The Onslaught from Yog-sothoth-on-the-Thames-By-The-Stream. DON'T MISS IT!
-- Harlan Ellison Oct 56
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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