Whatever happened to vampires, anyway? When we were kids, Dracula and his boys were the terrors of the midway, swooping down in the dead of night to attack their prey and suck them dry before rushing back to their crypts to beat the morning sunrise. Vampires had their rules and they stuck to them. Now they go to high school, date pretty girls and play left wing on the hockey team. It’s unacceptable. No wonder the zombies are taking over.
And get this. Just the other day, a vampire cult leader with the applesauce name of Rod Ferrell went to court in Tavares, Florida to get his life sentence for murder overturned. His grounds for reversal? Teens are impulsive, subject to peer pressure and cannot always appreciate the consequences of their actions. Ferrell was merely 16 when he and his band of merry vampires offed Richard Wendorf and Ruth Queen of Eustis. A witness for the defense testified that Ferrell had experienced “a tough home life growing up.” Then again, what vampire doesn’t? Is this the Age of Vampire Sissification?
Speaking of zombies, who’s in charge over there? Where once you had perfectly good zombies in movies like Night of the Living Dead, Hollywood felt that wasn’t juicy enough and decided to alter the basic construction of the traditional zombie. It’s appalling. A person used to be able to count on a zombie to be dazed and slow, which is why they named the drink after them. A person with reasonable shoes could outwalk a zombie any day of the week. The only guy they could keep up with was Frankenstein, who was slower than the 9:00 a.m. coffee line at Starbucks. NOW, for no explainable reason, zombies are zipping around like Pacman, gobbling up your average citizens like they were standing still. Is nothing sacred?
The lives of kids today are woefully diminished by a dearth of consistent monsters. If it wasn’t for Donald (the Impaler) Trump, there would be nothing at all to be terrified about. It seems to us that the time has come to introduce new players to the game, fearsome but dependable critters in their own right who never got a chance to play on the big stage. Welcome to the party, fellas.
The Mongolian Death Worm: Elusive Legend Of The Gobi Desert
Now you see it, now you don’t. Mostly, you don’t. But British biologist Karl Shuker assures you it’s there. “It is said to resemble a large fat worm, up to three feet long and dark red in color with spike-like projections at both ends. It spends much of its time hidden beneath the desert sands, but whenever one is spotted lying on the surface, it is scrupulously avoided by the locals.”
According to legend, the Mongolian Death Worm—olgoi-kharkhoi to you—can kill in several ways, including spitting a stream of corrosive venom that will peel the paint off your Studebaker. The venom is lethal to anything it hits, including vampires and zombies. It can also electrocute its victims from a distance, like Thor, and much better than a cop with a puny taser.
Trouble is, nobody can seem to find one. Many intrepid explorers have negotiated the Gobi in search of these wee beasties, all to no avail. The creatures are too clever to be caught in traps and they have an innate ability to spot scientists miles away. You can best recognize them by heeding this poem by Flying Pie correspondent Lieuen Adkins, written long ago.
“The Death worm is an animal exotic, strange and rare,
And except for those who have none, has quite a lot of hair;
Their habitat is Africa, their only food is ants,
Though some prefer to dine on cheese and live in southern France.”
Happy hunting!
El Chupacabra, The Goat Sucker (But Little Kids Will Do In A Pinch)
Said to creep up in the dead of night and feed on the blood of livestock like some alien vampire, El C. was first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995. Farmers there began to report animals dead in their fields with puncture wounds in their necks and drained of all blood. Witnesses have testified to strange creatures with large eyes, sharp claws and fangs, with spikes down the middle of the back. After terrorizing Puerto Rico, the beast took its talents to other Latin American countries.
In 2008, Texas police thought they’d spotted El Chupacabra running down a dirt road; others thought it a diseased coyote or some other form of deranged canid. It was never accurately identified. If, as some suspect, it doesn’t exist, what has been killing livestock and leaving the flesh of the animals while taking the blood?
Meanwhile, Siobhan Ellison has been fortifying her goat pen with wall-to-wall night-operable cameras which can set off alarm sirens rousing her security detail (and the rest of the neighborhood). This is after Lila the Rottweiler turned down the job due to insufficient snacking opportunities and the possibility of night sweats. We’ll keep you posted.
Close The Door, They're Coming In The Windows!
In the jungles of South America, there resides a bizarre and ferocious creature which terrifies the local tribes. The massive beast is reputed to have long claws, backward-facing feet and a mouth in the middle of its stomach. Oh, come on, Bill, this is really a reach. Maybe so, but cryptozoologists believe there is a real creature behind these Mapingauri sightings.
Maybe it’s a latter-day Megatharium, a giant ground sloth thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago. The Megathariums had long claws, probably for grasping vegetation or digging, but also for defense. Their oddly shaped feet might be seen as backward, while glands on their stomachs could appear to be mouths. The famous poet, Ogden Nash, was absolutely certain the beasts existed. Of them, he versed:
“I love the baby Mapinguari,
I’d welcome one to my safari.”
He did so. And, just in case, he continued:
“I prize the fearsome Megatharium,
I’d welcome one to my solarium.”
Okay, that’s enough of that.
Has Anyone Here Seen Mokele?
Mokele-mbembe, to be precise. Herman Regusters hasn’t, but not for a lack of trying. In 1981, a flurry of reports of a lake-dwelling monster in the area now known as the Republic of Congo sent Herman packing off to Africa for a look. Regusters was no flaky ogre-chaser, but rather a sober aerospace engineer at the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a place not known for hiring goobers.
Mokele-mbembe, by the way, means “one who stops the flow of rivers” in the Lingala language. Mokey was thought to be much like a sauropod, a long-necked dinosaur. Unfortunately, the critter was said to be located in a poorly-mapped area of Africa, complicating Reguster’s hunt. Herman tried to get his employer and even the Department of Defense to pay for the trip, arguing that useful maps could be made of the region. Uh-uh, they said, there’s nothing there but jungles, quicksand and maybe the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. Herman was forced to rely on his own resources, with a little help from his friends.
Along with his faithful wife, Kia, who had yet to enter the automobile business, Reguster led a team of locals to the remote freshwater Lake Tele. He claimed several sightings, including one which was witnessed by the entire team “except the photographer.” Don’t scoff, we at The Flying Pie have experienced these photographer deficiencies ourselves. We used to have a lensman named Gerald Jones, who, alas, was afflicted with narcolepsy. Gerald could fall asleep in the middle of an elephant stampede. He was like one of those fainting goats which can fall over at the slightest provocation or maybe no provocation at all.
Sad to say, Herman Reguster’s expedition did not go swimmingly. The explorers were often beset by sweat bees, which like to land on people and collect sweat droplets. If you get grouchy about it, they sting you. Reguster and company also trudged through miles of swamp, endured sweltering days and uncomfortably cold, wet nights, surviving on monkey meat and fennel, whatever that is, all to no avail. The Mokele-mbembe snickered from the bushes, delighted by his own guile.
Later expeditions were just as futile, but reports of gigantic lake monsters will not go away. Scotland has its Loch Ness Monster, Lake Erie has its Bessie, Lake Tahoe talks about its Tessie and even Japan, home of Godzilla, has good old Kussie. We haven’t seen anything in nearby Orange Lake yet, but you never know. The lake is covered with the fast-growing hydrilla weed, enough to disguise the comings and goings of wandering sauropods, otherwise protected by a security crew of thousands of red-eyed alligators with an attitude. Maybe we’ll go over there tonight and take a better look. Probably not.
Whatever Happened To The Blob? We May Find Out Soon.
“Beware of The Blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall,
A splotch, a blotch,
Be careful of The Blob”
Except for The Werewolves of London, not many monsters have their own song. But The Blob did, and it was a cheery little ditty at that. Of course, The Blob was not your everyday supermarket monster with fangs, claws and a surly disposition. Matter of fact, nobody’s real sure just what The Blob was. It started out small, inoffensive, a virtual bug on the windshield. Then one day, it wound up on some poor old septuagenarian, encompassed him before you could say “pass the oleomargarine, please,”and immediately grew to a hundred times its previous size. If you don’t believe us, ask Steve McQueen, he was there. Those always-dubious cops didn’t believe him, of course, because….well, would you?
Eventually, it was determined that The Blob arrived on one of those pesky meteorites which keep bringing illegal aliens to Earth. The Blob was an amoeba-like entity which consolidated its prey, growing ever larger with each popover. You can imagine what the thing would look like if it ever got into a moviehouse, say, and gobbled up the whole audience. This almost happened, but fortunately for their grandchildren most of the theatergoers escaped from the Colonial Theater in a blind panic, running wild through the streets of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. The cops stood thunderstruck. “That Steve feller was right!” one of them alerted the other, a true no-shit-Sherlock moment. Armed with eight million fire extinguishers, the townies froze The Blob and the U.S. Air Force transported the leftovers to the Arctic, where it was softly parachuted down to the frigid ice pack.
The people back in Phoenixville were thrilled at this rosy result. While the creature cannot be killed, at least it is immobilized, surrounded by hundreds of miles of snow and ice. One of the locals moseyed up to Steve and told him the monster had finally been stopped. Steve looked back with the wistful smile of one who doesn’t presume too much. “Yeah,” he says, wisely, “as long as the Arctic stays cold.” The film concludes with the words “The End,” which then morph into a question mark. And you weren’t worried about global warming.
That’s all folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
Event
