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Stuck with this pos tablet so I can't really share anything new. Its all awful private anyway, real mad shit. I haven't been able to write anything of a nature id like to share in months :/

 

The latest story I've written. A prologue to a story never to come.

 
 

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
by Kevin Edenberg​

 

PROLOGUE​

 

-

        My name... is Dudeiron. Dudeiron Peepstood. No, the latter isn't my last name but merely my second first name. I don't have a last name, nor do I have a middle name. Sucks, eh? Story of my life, friends.
        And, boy, gee, golly, do I have a story to tell you!
        Be warned... it gets a little weird.
        Oh, but only a little.

        And
        Maybe
        You'll
        Hate me
        And that's
        Just
        Prime


1

        The black pickup truck sat idle down by the docks, in former Soviet Russia. He was waiting for his date, a stunning sleek and quite sexy Soviet submarine. The two hadn't yet consummated their love for one another. But they would.
        Tonight would be the night-- for the time was right, you see.
        As the moon and the stars watched with morbid fascination, the pickup brayed its horn in lusty anticipation. Once. Twice. Where was she? She was late. A third honk would suffice.
        And as if the Gods of some sort of weird Broth had beckoned it themselves, a fin was seen emerging from the south seas, cutting out of the frigid waters. Rising up higher and higher, revealing more of that sultry grey hull that the pickup had grown oh! so fond of. He revved his engine. The sight of her-- so close, yet so far away-- was truly maddening. He could barely contain himself and his lubricated parts. But he did. Somehow... he did.
        The submarine slowed her course, carefully twisting through the icy arctic waters so that she could come to an easy stop where the wooden dock met the sea. Copulation could only be pain-free and easy if she came at him at just the right angle. To err in her approach would be an utter mistake. Their nether-parts weren't the most compatible, truthfully.
        At best, the jaunt would be over and done with in less than thirty seconds, and a baby would be made. At worst-- well, let's leave that to the imagination... shall we? No? Then think of a grinding discord, and throw in the sounds of Bohemian Elepharts trumpeting their sad songs of sorrow as the two lovers electrocute each other to death.
        I warned you.
        The pickup truck watched with ravenous excitement as his darling angel, the submarine, came to a stop at the edge of the dock. Her body must have been crafted by the Gods, for he felt himself growing down there. Muffler-holes widening with sexual greed, as exhaust fumes laden with excrement-scented winds puffed and choked their way out into the cruel and cold atmosphere.
        Her periscope extended until it was fully-erect, throbbing and bobbing and waiting for a good robbing of her life-jelly.
        He maneuvered himself until his gaping chrome-plated muffler-tips were mere inches from his lady's rock-hard and über-long periscope. Waiting for the pleasure to start. For the fun to begin. He farted out a cloud of smog, and-- obviously embarrassed with himself-- revved his engine again to cover it up.
        She didn't mind. She actually found it kind of cute. She picked a hole and inserted her penetrating part, slowly but surely. She didn't wish to hurt him. Only to love him.
        In and out. In and out.
        His engine grew louder, and her nuclear power went molten-hot. As the pair progressed through their intense and passionate love-making, it went from calm and curious to dirty and debaucherous.
        The act continued for just under thirty seconds, until the pair climaxed in sync. He roared and exploded in pure carnal pleasure, accepting her shooting-seed into his rear.
        She pulled out, gratified and satisfied, before beginning the arduous process that was turning herself around and fleeing from her first (and last) encounter with love.
        It would take just over seven weeks for the baby to grow within his womb-- which wasn't even a womb, but a catalytic converter. The birthing would be painful. But he was well-aware of what he'd gotten himself into. It was love, after all. And he wanted a child he could raise and call his own.
        The black pickup truck gave his horn another toot as he watched the love of his life-- the Soviet submarine-- speed off back into the south seas. As she submerged herself once more, he couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness and longing for her. She was gone into the water, where she was free and made to be. And he was there. On land and alone.

        And that's
        How I was made
        How I was born​

2

        Years later, Dudeiron woke up on a moody Matterday morning, in a sort of mental-fog. His bright blue orbs scoped his surroundings-- wait, why am I telling you this? It's entirely irrelevant to the plot and it totally destroyed the wicked pace I was keeping. Moving on, shall we? Good.
        I crawled out from under the bleachers, cracked my spine, and stumbled about. I found my father weeping out on the baseball-diamond-- where we were living at the time-- on the home-plate. All his friends-- and fellow gangbangers-- were doing their best to comfort and console him, patting him on the back and blowing smoke up his tail-pipes. You see, Dad's a Transchanger-- a robot in disguise-- and so are all of his friends.
        It's totally Normal. Really.
        I asked Mumbleme-- a real loner type who can Transchange into a black 'n' yellow retainer-- what was up with dad.
        "Mmumumhmuhm..." Mumbleme said.
        "What? I didn't quite get that."
        Mumbleme's lover, Brain-- an intellectual who doubles as an olive-green calculator-- often served as Mumbleme's interpreter. He translated: "Optimist received a letter just now. It has caused him much distress."
        "Oh, what about?"
        "Mmuhmhmhm..."
        "What was that?"
        "Your mother's spark has ascended," Brain translated with sadness somehow pervading his robotic drone of a voice.
        "Oh..." I had never met my mum. Dad had raised me from birth, so the impact of losing her wasn't nearly as profound as it could-- or should-- have been.
        Dad shook off the others and looked at me, black motor-oil running down his cheeks. "Dudeiron. It-- it's mummy! She-- she's... g-g-gone!" He degenerated to wails and howls, and I tried not to think less of him for not even having the decency to rhyme. He Transchanged to a black pickup truck and did a few dozen laps around the mound.

        Respect
        The father
        The son
        And the hole-y spirit
        Of my mum

        Dudeiron picked up the letter left in his father's stead, and read what it said:

"Dear Sir Optimist Allen Rhyme,

We at the Russian Polytechnic School Of The Formerly Gifted And Blind regret to inform you that your wife, lover, and sparkmate-- Sosi Big Ballznevskaya-- was found frozen to an iceberg in the Arctic Wastelands.

Needless to say-- but we will anyway, for matters of legal counsel bind us-- she is, of course, quite dead.

Funeral arrangements will not be made, seeing as her magnificent hull had been raided by snow-sharks, and all her remaining parts were dissected and donated to the various street-urchins-- and other sorts of social-scum-- in and around the immediate area.

We do hope you have a very pleasant day!

Always blindly informing,
And tragically yours in gift and gamble,
- Goldberg, Gerber, Gunn, and Gorn

P.S. Sosi suffered supremely.
G, G, G & G"​

 ​

        Dudeiron-- always the sensitive soul-- felt the tears seep from his ducts and out his eyeballs. He wiped away the salty drops and sent them spattering down onto the sad letter, smudging the sadistic sepia-coloured ink. I snivelled, snotted, and sniffed as dad rolled up beside me-- still in his pickup truck form-- ready to drive me off to school. I didn't feel like going, but I had a huge history test on the horrors of the Hungarian Hornet Holocaust of 711.
        So I climbed into dad's bed, and gripped the side of him as we sped off out of the baseball park. Wind in my hair. Tears still streaming. We didn't make it very far before the Wage-Ants came crawling out of their holes to harass us in the middle of the street.
        "Buckle up, pup," dad said in his mechanical voice. At least he was rhyming again. That was always a good sign.
        There was nothing to buckle, but I understood what he meant. The Wage-Ants were tyrannical suit-wearing arthropods who policed the world and communicated with one another via their hive-mind. There was nothing they loved more than hassling citizens and robbing us of any and all cash-money, so they could deliver it to their Queen (who made love to money... it's sort of sick).
        "PLEASE STOP. CITIZEN," one Wage-Ant said, clicking its mandibles as it spoke. It was a Capital-Carrier-- the leader of this group-- which I could tell based off the vast sums of green paper overflowing from its suit-pockets.
        Dad stayed silent. Best not to give them a reason to trouble us further.
        The other Wage-Ants gathered around us in a circle, their black suits bursting at the seams as they each flexed their four forearms.
        "CITIZEN. PLEASE TURN OVER ANY AND ALL LOOSE LEAVES OF LOOT. THANK YOU."
        "Dudeiron, son," dad started, "do as the kind Capital-Carrier says, and let them have their fun."
        I didn't argue. The Wage-Ants stared at me with their soulless black compound eyes, antennae twisting in all directions to pick up any subtle changes in my mood. I emptied my pockets of the few dollars I had to my name and held my hand out to the Capital-Carrier.
        It picked up the bills with its mandibles and dropped them into its pockets. "PLEASE MOVE ALONG. CITIZEN."
        Dad sped off like a bat out of hell.


 

3

        You've got worms
        Worms have germs
        Let me right you
        Or I'll fight you

        The lunchbell sounded at the exact moment Optimist-- carrying Dudeiron in his bed-- arrived outside of the Oliver Orpheus O'Neil Observatory Of Oppressive Order And Originality (or 'OOOOOOO' for short).
        The students came bursting out of the front entrance, screaming with maddening glee about all the hairless kitty-cats they were going to eat. Kitty-cats were considered a very common delicacy-- the less hair the better.
        Dudeiron hopped off his dad's back and was almost able to wave goodbye, when a silver-skinned cyborg from future's past (the present) leapt off the domed roof of the Observatory and came crashing to the ground with frightening bravado. The cyborg brandished a black Beretta and uttered the catchphrase, "Hasta luego, homie!"
        Optimist had enough time to rhyme, "Run, my son!"
        Dudeiron took a leap to the left, at precisely the same time that the cyborg popped two shots-- in speedy succession-- straight into the gas-tank of the black pickup truck.
*POP* *POP*
*BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*
        The inferno that was his father singed off what little fuzz there had been on Dudeiron's upper-lip. The boy went down to his knees, ripping out handfuls of honeydew hair from his head, screaming a drawn-out and not-so-melodramatic, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
        Dudeiron's dad was dead. A flaming heap of scrap-metal.
        One observant onlooker-- acne-scarred and ugly-- even stated as much: "Haha! Your dad died!"
        Dudeiron had no retort. He only let out tears in return.
        Thankfully, the cyborg turned the gun on Ugly next and blew his head to smithereens, sending skull fragments shooting every which way, and spraying blood and guts into the air like a celebratory confetti.
        Ugly never saw it coming, probably because he had been too busy picking scabs off his forehead.
        The cyborg was about to unload on Dudeiron next, aim true and gun at the ready. The boy didn't stand a chance-- shouldn't have survived such a sinister shitestorm. But, evidently, the Gods had a different game in mind.
        Before the cyborg pulled the trigger, two teenagers came crawling out of a car in the nearby parking lot.
        One was a boy wearing a red hat and dragging a chubby yellow rodent on a chain.
        The other was a girl with bloodshot eyes, and incredibly dated brown robes, who carried some sort of shining phallic-object-- possibly a vibrator.
        The cyborg raised its pistol at the two newcomers. It didn't know which kid to kill first, aiming at the boy's head, and then girl's developing bosom. It should have shot first and thought nasty thoughts later. Such nasty thoughts proved to be its demise.
        "Let's kill him, Rash!" the girl roared her blood-lust (or is it motor-oil-lust?) as she clicked on her vibrator-- er, I mean lifesaber. A vibrant blue energy-beam shot out one end of the device, appearing like a futuristic sword. She waved the thing left and right as it *whirred* and *hummed*.​

        "Sure thing, Princess Raya!" The boy obeyed his girlfriend and choked his yellow rat-on-a-chain. "Get him, Peekatyou!"
        "Peekah!" the ugly creature cried cutely. It squeezed itself silly, puffing its cheeks out and growing red in the face until it looked severely constipated. Then it sent out a bolt of lightning arcing from car to car, before the electricity struck the cyborg in the metal-plate where its nondescript genitals should have been.
        The cyborg shook and smoked as the surge passed through it on a neverending circuit. It dropped the pistol, and began to jerk around violently.
        Dudeiron finally clued in that he had nearly been murdered, rolling away from the scene of the attack.
        Princess Raya jumped forty-three feet into the air and landed on top of the cyborg's head, jamming her lifesaber into the bastard's burnt computer-chip brains.
        The cyborg collapsed to the concrete, speaking gibberish from what remained of its metal mouth: "LeTwerp... Kill... Me..."
        "You're already dead, robo-punk," Princess Raya said as she lopped off the cyborg's head in one fell swoop of the lifesaber. The head landed in a ditch seven feet away.
        Black liquid glugged out of the dead cyborg's neck like an expired bottle of Drano (copyright effectively infringed).
        Rash ran over to Dudeiron's side, yanking his Jokémon along by its choke-chain. "You okay, Dude?"
        "Yeah, I'm alright. But my dad's d-d-dead..." Dudeiron felt the tears come on. He gave a quick scan of the Observatory for any bullies, and-- not seeing any around (except for the corpse of Ugly)-- promptly let the tears flow like a waterfall.
        Princess Raya gave Dudeiron an awkward pat on the back. The only experiences she had had with death were by her own swift manicured hands.
        While Rash examined the cyborg's oozing corpse, the Observatory's Orator, owner, and namesake-- Oliver Orpheus O'Neil-- came sprinting out of the building, screaming bloody murder: "Murder! Murder! Someone alert the Wage-Ants!"
        Upon hearing that last word-- 'Wage-Ants'-- Dudeiron felt a renewed strength flow through his veins. He didn't know how... he just did. He stood up, gave his back another healthy crack, and shook off the negativity. Yes, his father had just been murdered by a robot; and yes, his mother had been found frozen to an iceberg-- but life went on. It had to.
        "Oh, dear Dark Lord!" O'Neil made the sign of the upside-down cross and began to rock himself back and forth. "You've slayed the De-Worminator! Oh, Hell. Oh, my Black God. Ebony Satan. Nocturnal Jesus. LeTwerp is going to be pissed!"
        "Who's LeTwerp, sir?" Dudeiron asked. It was the second time today he'd heard that name. It must have meant something.
        "Nobody! Shut it! Don't ask questions! Detention!" O'Neil spat such nonsense, veins popping from his forehead and neck. He looked about ready to have a heart-attack or a stroke. Both potentially lethal.
        "Come on," Rash said, waving his friends to follow him to his car: a suped-up brown Ford Escort, fully equipped with brown neon, an ugly roof-scoop, a useless hood-scoop and an obnoxious carbon-wing. It was the type of car that only an asshole would drive with pride.
        "Mister Ketchup!" O'Neil shook his head with fury. "You will not leave the premises, do you hear me, young man?"
        "Screw you, man," Rash replied, flicking the Orator the finger. He gave his Peekatyou a good yank.
        And the three friends hopped into Rash's car, before driving off into the sunset.
        Wait. No, they didn't. It was still noon.


 

4

        Dwarves are people, too
        I'm telling you
        Because it's true
        Except when they're evil

        While Dudeiron and his gang of misfits were off gallivanting, the evil zombie-dwarf-pirate LeTwerp was sitting in his throne-room-- under the mountainous wasteland of Weird Place-- contemplating murder, as he picked horse-meat from his sharpened teeth with the bones of small children.
        Life for a maniacal midget hellbent on world domination was good, especially these days. LeTwerp had only recently overthrown the leader of the old regime-- a megalomaniac and sex-fiend by the name of Caesar-- and just yesterday he had discovered a very ancient book that would help him achieve his utmost desires. He had found the book while raiding the ruins of Magik's Magikal Memoriam, the mansion that belonged to one of the town's former residents.
        The book was called 'Dagvaarden De Slang Heer'-- which translates to... <span style="font-style:italic;">'Summoning The Serpent Lords', though LeTwerp didn't know that. He can't read his own language, let alone a language for foreigners.</span>
        Said book was sitting on his lap, gathering a thicker layer of grease and A1 steak sauce with every passing moment. He flipped through its pages carelessly, waiting for colourful pictures to catch his eye-- and he only had one eye; the other he had accidentally pried from its orbit while trying to pick his scarred nose. Don't blame him. Accidents happen. In his opinion, he came out of the bout as the clear victor; after all, now he got to wear a snazzy eye-patch!
        He reached the very last page of the book of mad magik and finally found something interesting. It was the chapter devoted to the title of the book-- even he, in all his brain-rotted glory, could see that. And the spooky pictures intrigued him. There were winged faceless monstrosities, eldritch and gargantuan and most certainly extra-dimensional, with an uncountable number of tentacles and eyes-- yes, eyes without faces upon which they can rest when they are tired. Spooky and bizarre. Truly horrific stuff. Like something out of a Wilmer von Hammerstam novel or HP Lovecraft, which LeTwerp knows nothing about. He thinks reading is for losers. Who's the loser now, eh?
        Upset at not knowing how to interpret the weird words that went along with the wicked pictures, LeTwerp tossed the femur of a four-year-old into a nearby firepit and cried for his two remaining apprentices: "Count Chalkula! Werenstein! I be needing ye two imbeciles! Now!"
        A wolf was heard howling from the next room over, and the sobs of somebody very sad and depressed were heard from the next next room over. It is quite roomy under mountains.
        Fuming at being ignored, LeTwerp sighed and exhaled vast quantities of corpsebreath. One thing he hated were servants who couldn't tend to his every whim. So unthoughtful. Another thing he hated were pants-- don't ask.
        "COME HERE RIGHT NOW, I SAY!" the zombie-dwarf-pirate 'roared'-- and it really is rather hard to effectively roar when you're under four-feet-tall and your vocal chords stopped growing once you hit age seven. In actuality, it would have been far more accurate to say that LeTwerp squeaked like one of those squeezable rubber toys they make for children and dogs.
        But don't tell him I said that.
        Please don't.
        Suddenly, a bat flew through the throne-room and crashed into a wall, falling down into the firepit and catching itself alight. The flaming bat began to make awful noises that were so high-pitched they were nearly inaudible. As it burned, it began to metamorphose to a very pale man whiter than chalk, who wore all black and a cape. He was sobbing like a baby, or a preteen who had just been dumped by his first 'girlfriend'-- she had never considered them to be a real couple, however.
        Eventually the fires waned and it was then that LeTwerp spoke: "Count Chalkula, me favourite apprentice." In reality, the De-Worminator was his favourite apprentice, but he was dead now, so...
        Count Chalkula wiped his tears and snotty nose with his cape. "Yes, my master? What do you humbly request?" He started to bite his own arms, not drawing any blood of course, since vampires don't have blood. It was more obsessive-compulsive than anything. It soothed him. Relieved stress to inflict self-pain.
        "I need ye to track down a landlubber by the name o' O'Neil. Bring him to me." Seeing his 'favourite' apprentice's reaction to having to do real work, LeTwerp added, "And take Werenstein with ye. He be needing some fresh air, yarr."
        Count Chalkula sighed and nodded, then tried to do a clumsy little bow but his cape tripped him up and he landed on his skinny white arse. "Yes, my master. Anything for you, master."
        "Good. Now get lost."
        And the Count became a bat once more, flapping his batty wings through the throne-room, but crashing into the overhang near the exit. He flopped to the floor, and after a few barely perceptible ear-piercing shrieks, then returned to flying.
        LeTwerp groaned. "And they wonder why I keep needing new apprentices. Yarr."


5

        Take a hit off this shit, bro
        It'll get you so damn
        High
        You'll be up
        In the
        Sky
        And then
        You might
        Die
        But it's good for you, I promise
        Would I
        Lie?

        Dudeiron and friends were back at Rash's place, sitting in his dad's garage with the Ford Escort idling, and a long plastic hose connected to the Escort's muffler.
        Rash's older brother, Street-Legal (a pseudonym if I ever heard one), had gotten into the deadly habit of tripping on carbon-monoxide fumes, and he was keen on getting his kid-brother-- and all his kid-brother's friends-- hooked, too.
        This was why I found myself breathing in the noxious fumes of my best-buddy's crappy car. At first, it tasted like pure heaven going down. Then I started getting dizzy and nauseous and my head really really hurt. And I was having trouble breathing, but Street-Legal said it was totally normal and that I should just keep hitting the hose.
        So I did. It seemed like a great idea at the time, though now I can't really understand why. I was getting chest pains and I could hardly remember my own name, let alone why I had a hose jammed in my mouth. I'm pretty sure I puked all over my shirt, and Street-Legal recommended I just take more exhaust fumes.
        So I did. It was at that point that the hallucinations began. I felt the tug and pull of my consciousness leaving the shackles of my body behind, and I remember drifting up out of myself, like I was a ghost or something equally unordinary. Staring down on my limp and seemingly lifeless form, I just kept rising higher and higher until I passed through the ceiling of Rash's dad's garage and through the roof of the whole house!
        I was in the sky! So high! Flying up in the clouds! Feeling the water vapour mist across my brow that wasn't really there, I wiped it away with a hand that had no real presence.
        It was then that I met Larry Taffer-- The Kid Who Would Not Die. The world-famous Wandwalker of lore and legend. He came to me on a cloud, floating along, his black robes fluttering at his heels. He grasped my ghostly hand-- equally ethereal he obviously was. His wand was in his hand, his lightning-bolt scar was on his head, and he spoke to me.
        This is what he said:
        "Dudeiron Peepstood, son of Optimist Allen Rhyme and Sosi Big Ballznevskaya, you have a destiny that lays before you. You must travel to Mars Mountain and confront a terrible man named LeTwerp. He is not currently there, but he will be there... very soon. In about a hundred more chapters, spread out across three books, in fact. Do not fret. This is only a prologue. You cannot die. Not yet. If you do not put a stop to LeTwerp's reign of terror, the zombie-dwarf-pirate will summon the Serpent Lords, a foul band of extra-dimensional cosmic entities, kin of Cthulhu itself. And if he is successful, then they will destroy the entire world as we know it. And the universe, too, which would suck. So don't let it happen, okay?"
        I wanted to ask Larry Taffer how I'd go about my mission. What the hell was Mars Mountain? How was I supposed to get there? Did a plane go that way? What the hell, man?
        But before I could ask him anything, the greatest Wandwalker that ever lived dissipated like smoke from a fire.
        The next thing I knew-- I was on the floor of Rash's dad's garage, hose in hand and puke all over me. My guts hurt like hell, I was really tired, and I could hardly stand up.
        "So, how was it?" Street-Legal asked me, stupid grin plastered on his lazy face. "Did you trip? Oh, hell yeah. You tripped. I can tell, man. Buddy tripped! Dudeiron totally tripped, man! What happened?"
        I felt very sluggish and I couldn't focus on anything. "I-- IuhIdunnononoomaaaaan."
        "Ooooh, snap!" Street-Legal snapped his fingers. "Dudeiron is sooo totally wasted!"
        I couldn't recall anything at the time.
        Only now-- when I look back with all that I've learned, all that I've experienced-- can I recall the carbon-monoxide trip in its entirety.
        Back then, though-- the only thought being repeated over and over and over again in my mind was:
        'Only a prologue...'
        'Only a prologue...'
        'Only a prologue...'​

6

        Every rat will have its cheese
        And every crook will have to squeeze
        Like every bat will be forced to bleed
        As every book will one day read
        Itself to another
        If it's so pleased

        Count Chalkula worked best alone. He was a loner at heart. A depressed lonely loner. Sure, he wanted a girl, but how was a vampire supposed to get a lady, anyway? They all seemed to run away from him. Didn't want to give him any blood, they said. All he wanted to do was latch onto their carotid artery and suck the damned delightful thing dry. How was that so bad? They said his fangs were 'carnivorous' and that his wan skin was 'sickly'. Wasn't that all sort of the point? There just wasn't any winning with those women!
        Yes, he was a loner. And he certainly didn't need a rugged bit of hand-crafted divine masculinity to follow him around and steal all his thunder!
        That was why he had sent Werenstein off on his own little 'mission'-- which wasn't even a mission, really, but a complete waste of time.
        Or so he had thought... But more on that later.
        Back to Count Chalkula, eh?
        The Count was on direct orders from his master-- LeTwerp: the greatest zombie-dwarf-pirate since Deadbeard the Tiny (and they weren't referring to his small stature)-- to track down Oliver Orpheus O'Neil, a dark Psychomage.
        Apparently, LeTwerp needed O'Neil to read that stupid old tome he'd gotten his hands on. 'Dagvaarden De Whatever'. Why his master couldn't read the thing himself, the Count would never know.
        So finding O'Neil was Count Chalkula's mission. And he was wont to succeed with flying colours-- well, more like depressing shades of black and self-pity.
        He was standing outside of the Oliver Orpheus O'Neil Observatory Of Oppressive Order And Originality (remember, 'OOOOOOO' for short!), and he saw that there was a scrapheap burning away. Bit of an odd monument to have outside of a school, he felt, but it had been a very long while since he had attended. Times had surely changed some since the fifth century.
        Stepping up to the doors, he peered inside through the windows, but didn't see any life or any activity. "School must be out, then."
        "No," the voice of a sadist said from behind. "The students work best in darkness."
        The Count spun around-- with a wee too much zest-- and tripped on his cape again. He fell to the ground and sprained his ankle. "Oweee! Ow! The pain! It hurts!"
        The sadist-- O'Neil-- chuckled merrily. "Haahahaha! I've heard that you embrace pain! What's the matter? Too real for you?"
        "No..." The Count rubbed his already-swelling ankle and grimaced. "I enjoy it, I really do." He vindicated himself by sinking his fangs into his own arm, glancing up into O'Neil's dark eyes to see the man's reaction.
        O'Neil seemed quite turned-on by the act: eyes hungry, pupils fully dilated, and a dribble of sweat ran down from his temple as he licked his lips.
        Now, I don't pretend to understand the minds of sadists and masochists, but I believe we had ourselves a match made in Hell with these two.
        "Did LeTwerp send you?" O'Neil asked as his pants seemed to shrink and tighten, right around the crotch. "Did he find the book?"
        "Yes, and, uh, yes," the Count replied, distracted by the change taking place in and around O'Neil's groin. "He needs help reading it. Told me to get you."
        "Then let us not waste any time!" O'Neil thought for a moment, reconsidered, then spoke his mind, "Unless... you would like to waste some time? With me?"
        The Count, always hungry for a good romp (since it had been over fifteen centuries since his last), obliged almost too quickly. "Yes! Yes!"
        "Meet me behind the Observatory. Now!"
        And O'Neil teleported away in the wink of a brown eye.
        "Sssssscore!" Count Chalkula fist-pumped. His luck with love seemed to be changing. Yes, O'Neil wasn't a lady, but the Chalk-Master (as he was called in high school) was at the point in his lonely life where he'd be content with nailing a bag of potatoes. And he fully intended to pass along his gift to O'Neil.

        The forest is silent
        The forest is deadly
        Do you hear that?
        It's the sound of
        Organs
        Rubbing
        Together
        Are you
        Turned-on
        Yet?

        Within the Woods of Weird.
        Dudeiron Peepstood, Rash Ketchup (Peekatyou on a chain), and Princess Raya were walking through the forest, searching for Weird Place's Mount Pebusa.
        I had started to remember bits and pieces of my vision, the one with Larry Taffer telling me of my destiny, and the terrible prophecy I had to do my damnedest to postpone. The Serpent Lords-- whoever they really were-- were going to be summoned... supposedly. Some evil guy named... what was it? LeTwang? LeTwat? LeTwerp? Yes! That last one. Some evil guy named LeTwerp was going to destroy the universe. Not on my watch, he wasn't.
        "Why are we going to Mount Pebusa?" Rash asked me.
        "Well, Larry Taffer told me to find Mars Mountain," I said. "I don't know where that is, so maybe it's another name for Mount Pebusa."
        "Maybe it's on Mars..." Princess Raya said sarcastically. Or at least I think she was being sarcastic.
        "And how do we get to Mars?" Rash asked. "Can we drive, do you think?"
        I stopped walking and pointed across a murky and muck-filled swamp, at a yellow rat nibbling on some bright-red poison-berries. It hadn't yet noticed us. "It's a Peekatyou, Rash!"
        "Shhh! You'll disturb him!" Rash pulled out another choke-chain from his pocket.
        Princess Raya had her hands on her robed hips. "You want to catch it?"
        "Yeah, babe."
        "Why? You already have one."
        "I've got a female. That one's a male," he said, as though it was obvious what his intentions were.
        I glanced at his apparent female, then back at the supposed male across the swamp. They looked the same to me. "How can you tell?"
        "See those big fuzzy blue balls dangling between its legs?"
        "Oh, yeah. Right."
        "Wanna watch them mate?"
        "No. Not at all. Like, not even remotely."
        "What about you, Princess Raya?"
        "Okay!" she cheered.
        "My kind of girl! Then I can get a baby Peekatyou and kill the two parents." He noticed my horrified expression and added, "Or at least dump them off at an adoption facility. I screwed up with my Peekatyou's moveset, and I'm too lazy to visit a registered change-artist."
        The free choke-chain in his left hand, Rash gave his orders to his Jokémon: "Beat his ass, Peekatyou!" He let go of the rat-on-a-chain and let it run toward the male Peekatyou still munching on poison-berries.
        But, as the Gods would have it, the way Rash treated his pet came back to bite him. I watched as the female Peekatyou swam across the swamp and met with the male. The two touched noses and then they touched tails. The male then hopped on the female's back and started to hump her like a jackrabbit. The female took off running-- male still going at it with no end in sight-- choke-chain trailing the pair. They were off making babies somewhere else, never to be seen or heard from again.
        "Shit!" Rash barked. "She was my only Jokémon!"
        Princess Raya joined me as we both slapped our foreheads in embarrassment.

        Howl at the sun
        And let's have some
        Fun

        Werenstein heard the din of kids. His ears perked up. His fur stood on end. He felt a thirst for blood touch the tip of his tongue.
        It had been too many years since he had tasted the flesh of children. Far too many. Not since he'd been savagely torn to pieces by a village of angry adult Germans, after he'd eaten all their babies and spat the bones in their faces. The villagers had managed to track him, and they had caught him by surprise-- in human form, even-- as he slept off the transformation.
        As previously stated, the angry Germans ripped him to shreds, piece-by-piece, and then scattered the remains of him across the lands.
        Then LeTwerp saved him. Many moons later. By chance, the zombie-dwarf-pirate had discovered Werenstein's skull on the hull of a great ship, down in the cargo-hold, after he had finished mopping the poop-deck. For reasons still unknown to Werenstein-- sexual reasons-- LeTwerp had held onto his skull and saved it for many years, using it to pleasure himself in sick and obscene ways.
        Later, LeTwerp had then ordered a dark Psychomage to magikally-bind Werenstein's skull to the sliced-and-diced bodies of at least forty-three different werewolves.
        Though he could no longer transform to a man, Werenstein was thankful for his new form. He felt stronger. Faster. Harder. Better.
        And now, like the old times, the kids would die and he would suck down their plump intestines, slurp up their intelligent little minds, and indulge in their still-beating hearts after ripping them from their chests.
        Today was to be a day of celebration.
        He sped off through the Woods of Weird, using his sensitive ears and nose to locate his would-be victims. He knew there were three of them-- and he knew that one was female. He ran his tongue across his mouth of canines, a thick string of saliva depending from his lower jaw.
        It took only three minutes of frantic running and leaping to find them. The kids were standing by a swamp and they only noticed him after he had sunk his claws into a red-hatted boy's back.
        "GAAAAAAAAAH!" the red-hatted boy screamed like a girl, as his colon and bladder relieved themselves of all dignity onto his matching red Velcro shoes.
        "RAAAAAAASH!" the girl cried, a look of horror etched on her face: mouth 'O'ed.
        Werenstein tore his clawed-hand from the red-hatted boy's back, gripping a kidney and removing it with not-so-surgical precision.
        Blood sprayed and squirted from the red-hatted boy's flayed-flesh as he fell to the grass and started the slow lonely journey toward Death's clammy-handed embrace.
        Werenstein popped the organ into his mouth and chewed it up, savouring the rich blood and urine-particulates.
        The girl removed a phallic-shaped object and pushed a button, sending a vibrant blue beam shooting out of one end. She waved it menacingly.
        The other boy-- who Werenstein found to be totally not-threatening, utterly boring and not at all worth describing-- cowered behind a tree, like a little bitch. Whoops, description!
        The girl-- wielding the energy-blade-- raised her right hand and sent a blast of something at Werenstein. He was pushed backward and had to dig his clawed-feet into the ground to keep himself from being blown away by the immense 'wind' (for lack of a better term).
        He fought the 'wind' until it died out, but by that point the girl had gotten closer to him, and he was able to feel the heat being emitted from that blue blade of hers. He snapped his jaws at her, trying to intimidate her. She didn't budge. Kept her eyes locked on his own, piercing into them, as if she were daring him to make the first move.
        The girl swung the blade at him. He ducked low-- but not low enough-- and felt the damned energy-sword nip the tip of his right ear. The heat of it seemed to instantly cauterize the wounded flesh.
        Werenstein growled at the girl, and she smirked at him-- smirked at him! <span style="font-style:italic;">Him! The Werewolf of Wichtenstein! She would pay bi-quarterly... with interest. He would make her suffer. And he would enjoy every second of it.</span>
        And in the time it took for Werenstein to get over his bruised-ego, the girl blasted him with another wave of that 'wind', taking him by surprise. He fell back, landing on his stub of a tail, and yowled in pain.
        Then the girl swung at him again, and lopped off his head.
        Death came quick for Werenstein, and He was quite pleased to finally have the wolf-man back in His collection.​

7

        Summon the Serpent Lords
        Go on
        Do it
        I dare you

        Dudeiron and Princess Raya didn't want to leave Rash's body behind, but they also didn't want to lug it around, either. Have you ever carried a corpse on your back? There's a reason some genius invented the phrase 'dead weight'.
        So the two said their goodbyes to Rash's body-- Dudeiron gave it a little wave of his hand; while Princess Raya planted one last kiss on her (now ex-) boyfriend's pale and waxy lips, much to Dudeiron's disgust.
        And then the pair set off to find Mount Pebusa.
        The journey actually proved to be quite easy-- seeing as LeTwerp had come out of his cave and trekked to the very peak of said mountain, deciding to start a very large bonfire which acted as a huge signal to anyone who might've been watching.
        "Look!" Dudeiron said, pointing up at something which definitely didn't need pointing out.
        "I know. I'm not blind, y'know?" Princess Raya snapped, still saddened by the sudden loss of Rash.
        "Sorry."
        She fought back the sting of tears. "It's okay. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you."
        "No, I'm sorry, too."
        She was getting pissed now. "Look, we can keep being sorry to each other or we can go check out that fucking fire, okay?"
        Dudeiron's eyebrows raised comically. "As you wish, Princess."
        The pair made the trek to Mount Pebusa. I won't bore you with the details of it. Let's get this show on the road, shall we?
        When they arrived at the summit, they found a green-skinned dwarf with a black eye-patch-- and no pants on-- reading from an old dusty tome by the light of the massive bonfire. He was slowly sounding out words that were quite clearly foreign.
        "M-met dit bo-- boek en met deze w-w-woorden..."
        Dudeiron felt some courage emerge from somewhere-- maybe his groin. He said, "A-are you the one they call... LeTwerp?"
        The one they call LeTwerp snapped the book shut and stared at Dudeiron. "Yarr... And ye must be Dudeiron, the one from me vision."
        A look of confusion swirled around on Dudeiron's face. "Vision? You had a vision, too?"
        LeTwerp laughed and shuffled over to Dudeiron, who took two steps backward. "O' course! Larry Taffer came ter me and said that I had ter kill ye! That ye were going ter try and stop me from destroying the universe!"
        Dudeiron looked down at the awful-smelling little man, who stunk like rotting onions and was only tall enough to reach his crotch. "Did you also huff exhaust fumes through a hose?"
        Now it was LeTwerp's turn to appear confused. "No! What?-- Why?-- No! I ate some mushrooms that looked kind o' lethal..."
        "Oh."
        "Yarr."
        "So... What do we do now?"
        "Well, I sort o' hoped ye would have some ideas."
        Dudeiron said something he shouldn't have to a man with an obvious Napoleon-complex: "Man, are you really short!"
        LeTwerp's demeanor changed in an instant. Smoke came out of his ears and he gave Dudeiron a good wallop to the genitals, sending the poor soul flying back at least eleven feet.
        Princess Raya was about to whip out her lifesaber, when O'Neil came teleporting up to the mountain-top with the Count in his arms, a stake firmly wedged in the vampire's chest.
        "Master! Dark Lord!" O'Neil cried, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Your apprentice is dying! He... er... now, how do I explain this..." He noticed his two former-students were present, and dropped the Count with a sickening *crunch* that was a neck snapping.
        "O'Neil! Glad ye could join us!" LeTwerp cheered, clapping his hands together. "Now what this be... about Count Chalkula dying?"
        O'Neil waved the issue away. "Oh, he's dead now. No matter. What are they doing here?"
        "They dropped in on me!" LeTwerp was feeling jolly. He never thought it'd be so easy. Kill Dudeiron and his girl, and summon the Serpent Lords. All at once. Good show, matey.
        "Excellent!" O'Neil whipped out a rock of pure obsidian, black as night. His Psych Stone. "Ontwapenen!"
        Princess Raya's lifesaber was torn from her increasingly sweaty grasp and thrown off the side of the mountain. She looked on helplessly as it tumbled down, hit a rock, and shattered into more than a million pieces.
        O'Neil was impressed with himself. He had just disarmed a Redeye Master. "Now, my Dark Lord, shall we?"
        "Aye," LeTwerp said, walking back to the bonfire, book in hand. "Help me read it."
        "Of course."
        Dudeiron and Princess Raya felt hopeless. What were they to do? Why had Larry Taffer delivered two exact opposite visions? Nothing made sense. The two stood side-by-side and watched with wonder and terror at what was about to occur.
        O'Neil took the tome in his own hands, flipped to the very last page, and read:
        "Met dit boek en met deze woorden, ik ben van plan om de oude te brengen. Ik ben het dagvaarden de Slang Heer. Zij zullen komen uit de kosmische leegte en ze komt opdeze aarde, en zij zullen terroriseren en vernietigen alles wat leeft. Dood ons allemaal. Dood mij. Gebruik mij als een offer en mij belonen met pijn en straf. Komen."
        As the last word was spoken, a swirling vortex opened up directly above the bonfire. A *crack* of thunder-- louder than any ever heard before-- *boomed* on and on. The sky turned black and the vortex grew larger. The air went frigid and it hurt the lungs to simply breathe. Then the beings came. The Serpent Lords.
        There were three of them. Faceless monsters. Wings and tentacles galore. More eyes than any savant or mathematician could ever dream of counting. Descriptions do these creatures no justice. They were larger than life itself, and brought death with their every breath. The three beings, kin of Cthulhu, landed on the mountain-top, and one of them crushed O'Neil before devouring him and his soul. Blood painted the peak, and bones *crunched* and *clattered*. The Old Ones were like giant winged octopi, and yet, they were not. They were something far more sinister and unreal. Far beyond the terrors of the mind manifested.
        LeTwerp stared up at the monstrosities he'd summoned-- the Serpent Lords, kin of Cthulhu itself-- and said absent-mindedly, "Shiver... me... timbers..."
        "No!" Dudeiron sobbed unbelievingly, a runner of snot depending from his right nostril. "It's only a prologue! Damnit! It's only a prologue!"
        "Shut yer stinkin' trap, ye ugly little rat," LeTwerp ordered. Funny, a dwarf calling someone else 'little'. And funny, LeTwerp calling someone else 'ugly'.
        "It's only a prologue!"​

 ​

-​

        That was only the beginning, my friends. So sit down by the fire. Over here. Beside me, silly. And listen to the greatest story never told...