Section 52
But 258 times?
That’s not funny at all. It got
tiresome very quickly. You decide that
the best way to put a stop to this nonsense would be to let the old
codger in.
“Thanks, buddy,” says the old codger. You
grunt in a not entirely unfriendly
manner and accelerate in a spray of gravel.
You drive in silence, trying to ignore the old man’s penetrating
glare,
which he has not averted from your face since he got in.
“I’m going to kill you,” the old bastard informs
you. Calmly, you pull over to the
shoulder.
“That being the case, I think you should get out.”
“Oh, no, no, no.
I don’t think I’ll be doing that.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
**Now, see, this could go on for quite some time,
say, oh…258 times. But that wouldn’t
be funny, so…
“Fine,” you say.
“Look. See this?
This is a Maglight. Do you know
what a Maglight is?”
The old fogey admits that he does not, in fact, know what
a Maglight is. He hazards a guess,
though: “Look like a flashlight to me,” he says. “But
I could be wrong.
Not that it matters, since I’m going to kill you and take it
anywAAAARGH!!! AAAAARGGHHHH!”
As you are beating the old man’s head in, you explain
what, exactly, a Maglight is. “A
Maglight (whack! Aaaarrrrgh!) is a tool (whap! Aargh!) for beating the
shit
(crunch! Aa-a-aaa-aa…) out of creepy (*wet noise*! Eeeee..) old (*noise
like
tapioca hurled against a wall* grrggglllgggrlllll….) men!
And it has a light so you can see what
you’re doing if it’s dark!”
The old codger says (approximately),
“Spthfthppthttll.” He does not say
anything else after this, so you push him out of the car.
“So there!” You
scream, because you always have to get in the last word.
You light a cigarette and drive
away, hoping that this
little adventure hasn’t thrown off your schedule too much.
“You handled that well.”
The radio voice’s sudden declaration startles you, but you
regain your
composure quickly. You wouldn’t want to
lose face in front of supernatural forces, would you?
“Thanks,” you say casually. “Being
murdered and skullfucked - not necessarily in that order--
by a crazy hitchhiker wasn’t on my list of things to do today.”
“He never said he was going to--what was it?
‘skullfuck’ you.”
“Oh, you know how it is.
No decency among drifters. They
all want to skullfuck you these days.”
“I like the phrase ‘skullfuck.’ Mind
if I use that?”
“Not at all. But
if you use Microsoft Works, you’re going to get a lot of those squiggly
red
underlines. The program doesn’t
recognize ‘skullfuck.’”
“What an odd oversight.
I guess all the hip programmers work for Apple.”
“Hey, now.”
“Sorry. Anyway,
my name is Grrrnaorth. Grr to my
friends.”
And so it is that you and Grrrnaorth are introduced
formally. As you drive, you have a
pleasant conversation about a variety of subjects from film and
literature, to
philosophy, to the ins and outs of skullfucking. Then,
abruptly, Grrrnaorth drops a bit of a bombshell on you.
“So, I think I should tell you that I’ve been sent to be
the mysterious bearer of some crummy news.
You and all your friends are going to most likely die tonight.”
“Um.”
“Yeah. Thing is,
Lake Doomhole is a…well, do you ever watch ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Well, think of that Hellmouth thing that Sunnydale is
built on.”
“Aw, man. Don’t
tell me--”
“No, no. It’s not
a Hellmouth. That’s just a fictional
creation brewed in the mind of Joss Whedon.”
“Well, thank God.
Why bring it up, then?”
“To give you a frame of reference. Now,
imagine a tomato. Got that?”
“Yeeaahhh…” You
are not having a warm and fuzzy feeling about this.
“Okay, now imagine something bigger.”
“Like what, a Volkswagon?”
“Bigger than a Volkswagon.”
“Cincinnati?”
“No, no…umm.
Bigger. Like the Universe or
something.”
“Okay, I’m imagining the Universe. It
is bigger than a tomato.”
“Now, imagine the Universe’s size relative to the
tomato.”
“So, the Hellmouth is to Lake Doomhole as the tomato is
to the Universe? That’s bad.”
“Actually, I was going to say that if you take the size
difference of the tomato and the universe, and then you apply that
again to the
universe itself, then you kind of have a good idea of what Lake
Doomhole
is. There are only so many levels of
‘worse’ that a human mind can grasp before they descend into screaming
insanity
for the rest of their natural lives.”
You drive in silence for a while.
“Of course that’s just an analogy,” says Grrnaorth.
“Your feeble mortal mind just isn’t able to
comprehend the actual reality of it.”
“Well. Fuck,” you
say, not knowing how else to verbalize your feelings on this revelation.
“Why don’t you just have a beer and relax?”
“Or, here’s an idea.
How about I just turn the hell around and huddle under my bed in
the
fetal position and try to forget that I know about this?”
“Oh, It’s much too late for that now. Sorry….oh,
hey, don’t miss your turn!”
Grrrnaorth warns you just in time, and reflexively, you
whip the wheel around and fishtail down the gravel road that leads to
the
cabins where you and your friends will be partying.
“Why can’t I leave?” You ask.
“You just can’t.
Look, just go have fun and try not to think about this, okay? I feel bad for telling you now.
Go enjoy the last few hours of your life,
and try not to dwell on the fact that your soul will be ripped apart
before the
sun rises.”
“Oh, thanks a fuck of a lot, Grrnaorth.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, man.”
Grumbling, you get out of the car and hike down to the
lakeshore, where you find your friends frolicking obliviously in the
waning
light of late evening. You try to join
in on the festivities, but no matter how much you drink you can’t seem
to shake
the deep sense of foreboding that your conversation with Grrrnaorth has
left
you with. Your friends notice your glum
mood.
“Why so glum, chum?”
Asks Dave, one of your best friends in the whole wide world (as
long as
he doesn’t figure out what you’ve been doing with his girlfriend three
nights a
week for the last four months).
“My radio told me that, before the sun rises, we are all
to be devoured by an Evil beyond our ability to comprehend,” you say
sadly.
“Ha! That’s
great! Can I get some of what you’ve
been smoking? Seriously, don’t bogart
the shit, man.”
“No, really. I’m
not wasted… Well, okay, I am,” you
finish after Dave has stopped laughing.
“But I’m not hallucinating. Not
about the radio thing, anyway.”
You are about to tell Dave to go talk to the radio
himself if he doesn’t believe you, but you both become a bit distracted
when,
over by the campfire, a girl’s shadow leaps from the ground and tears
her head
off her shoulders. You and Dave stare
in mute horror for a handful of seconds.
“Well,” says your friend. “I
really wish I hadn’t seen that.”
Chaos, meanwhile, has ensued in the immediate vicinity of
the decapitated girl. Her shadow,
cackling with sinister shadow glee, has begun beating somebody with the
girl’s
head. Squinting against the glare of
the fire, you see that the unfortunate victim is your other best buddy,
Chris. Some sick part of you is
relieved. I mean, Chris is your dawg
and all, but things have been a little tense between the two of you
since the
day his dad walked in on you and his mom doing something a lot less
innocent
than having some milk and cookies. Hey,
you’re only human, right? You make
mistakes. Sure, Chris could have been
more reasonable about the situation, but he doesn’t deserve to be
beaten to
death by a head-wielding shadow.
Things degenerate rapidly after that. The
shadow is quick and clever, and racks up
quite a body count before it gets its comeuppance.
Comeuppance comes, in this case, in the form of
approximately seventy three billion thumbnail-sized demon-monkeys. They swarm in from the lake, devouring
everything in their path, including a very angry autonomous shadow. Luckily, you and Dave, and Dave’s
girlfriend, and a few other friends of yours have made it to the safety
(snicker) of the caves overlooking Lake Doomhole. It’s
quite a view. Your
little group of survivors stares dumbfounded at the deadly chaos below. Such is your distraction that none of you
notice what is behind you.
Behind you, gleeful that you haven’t noticed him, and
covered in blood, is the hitchhiker that you murdered and left for dead
by the
side of the road. Screaming, he flings
himself through the air and tackles one of the traumatized survivors.
Finally noticing him, you turn and see that he is beating
his victim’s head in with--”HEY! That’s
my Maglight, you jerk!”
“REVENGE!” Screams the zombie drifter, right before he is
swooped into the air in the talons of a bluebird the size of a city
block. The bluebird perches on a cliff
above you
and is in the process of tearing apart its prey when, for no evident
reason,
several hundred razor-sharp knives of granite stab at lightning speed
out of
the rock and impale the hapless avian menace.
The lake begins to bubble and steam. You
don’t bother to wonder why, because
considering everything else that is going on, this is fairly tame. Slightly more troublesome is the fact that
Dave is now spewing blood from every orifice in his body.
Rocks catch fire. Below, you can
see a group of monkeys doing donuts in the beach
in your car. Giant eruptions of earth
blow high into the air, and hot lava spews from, oddly enough, the
trees
themselves.
Dave’s girlfriend clings to you now, weeping.
You pat her on the back and say, “There
there,” because you can’t think of anything else to say.
Then she bites you. “Hey!”
You scream, pulling away. She
looks at you, and you see that her eyes are entirely white except for
two
little pinpricks of black. It’s creepy,
but you don’t have time to think about it before she bites you again. You try punching her, but that only makes
her angry. She takes a big hunk out of
your arm. Frustrated, you shove her off
the edge of the cliff, and retreat into the cave, having finally
decided that
fleeing is the only option you have left.
At first, it seems that everything wil work out.
You’re gonna get out alive! Yippee!
WILL OUR HERO (YOU) SURVIVE?
WHAT IS THE MYSTERIOUS AND WONDERFUL SOUND?
IS THIS BATMAN’S DEFEAT?
WILL THE JOKER GET THE LAST LAUGH?
TUNE IN TO SECTION 90 TO FIND OUT!
Well, except for those last
two. Answers to Non-Batman cliffhangers in
Section 90!