current

Lampreyhead Meets the Saucers of Hell

by Tim W. Burke

All mortal cities are like our capital Borborygmus, except mortal cities aren’t being crushed through the colossal intestinal tract of Hell. And like mortals, after a hard week of iniquity and degradation, everyone likes to kick back and enjoy Movie Night. Damned souls lay atop the whale-sized cilia for acres in Ileo Park, creating a platform for enjoying a movie al fresco in the nose-burning stench of the great outdoors.

I had put on my best tweed blazer and bowtie, and polished up my scales to enjoy the night on the town. Now, crowded elbow-to-elbow on a blanket at the park with my binoculars, a drunken imp vomited on my sleeve. Fiends played catch with souls they had torn from the floor. A demon sat down just to my left, its plumage of fanged peacock feathers obscuring that part of my view. Hell’s royalty strolled, shaking hands and being glamorous. In the skybox far behind sat the comptrollers, blood and ichors spattering against the inside of the windows. My super-size cup of gore firmly in hand, I waited for the movie to begin.

The imps beside me cleared for a dark stranger with aquiline features and black mustache.

“Ah! Greetings!” I blurted. “Long time no see.”

“You have mistaken me for... Oh, Lampreyhead!” said a voice rich and deep. “Is that truly you? It has been ages.”

Those seated near made way for Dracula, the Prince of Vampires.

Four hundred years ago, in the vampire prototype competitions, I was runner-up to Dracula to become Prince and progenitor of vampires. I can’t prove it, but his design-and-support team cheated. That’s how I ended up a workaday bloodsucking fiend instead.

He spoke, too loudly. “I was enjoying the company of Princess Circe and Prince Mammon. I thought it would be diverting to sit with the regular folk. Circe-licious said they would catch up with me at the skybox. Such an amusing couple, but they lack the common touch.”

“That’s...generous of you?”

“Mamms joked that I would need a native guide, and here you are. Of course, I have been on the movie selection committee for years. Last week’s were mine. My choices were enlightening and intimate, almost sacred.”

It was all three versions based on his novel. Again.

I had heard a rumor about Dracula. I decided to test and verify.

“Been to the Mortal World lately?” I asked.

“Mortals are so last year. But your tastes are generous.”

“I saw a revival of old Abbot and Costello films.”

At that, the Prince paled. His dark eyes gazed into the distance. “I do not seek amusement.”

“They were rather daffy, I thought.”

He trembled. “Fools laugh at them, do you hear? Fools! Laughing at that Abbot and Costello Meets Frankenstein with Bela Lugosi playing me! Laughing at me! I turned to the crowd and said ‘Where is there horror? Where—’”

Dracula froze and glanced around at everyone staring at his outburst. Even the damned soul beneath us was peeking.

Conclusion: there is truth to the rumor that Dracula has a syndrome from decades of emotional abuse from the mortals. Mortals had made so many movies spoofing him; they just weren’t scared of Dracula, or even vampires anymore. He was taking it hard.

“The movie,” said the Prince, “will start soon. I wonder if Asmodeus got to sneak his choice in.”

A voice bellowed. “This week’s feature movie is Beaches with Bette Midler.”

The crowd groaned. I raised my binoculars because, frankly, I had nothing else planned for the evening.

Above the screen, among the dangling, shadowed villi a round dark hole had opened. The hole hung in mid-air; an extra-dimensional portal from unknown space.

A chrome saucer zipped out. Others in the audience in front of me saw and pointed.

“A UFO!” I said. I looked behind me. Dracula seemed merely amused.

The spacecraft advanced over us. A real live UFO! I’d been an aficionado of the extraterrestrial for as long as I can remember. Magazines, books, movies, I consumed anything about aliens. To actually see one was a thrill!

Everyone cheered at the distraction. The saucer hovered just above the flayed skin movie screen. Fiends dashed under the saucer. Royalty laughed and pondered it. Gargoyles flit from their seats and flew close to maul the intruder.

I protested. “See, they’re just observing...so why the attacking and...”

The saucer emitted a yellow cloud. The gargoyles flew into the fumes. For a moment, the demons struggled and flapped. They exploded. Ichors rained onto the crowd.

Demons shrieked. “Garlic! Garlic!”

Searing garlic cut through the stench of Hell.

Lightning bolts were conjured and struck the saucer to no effect. Hellfire sprayed over the spacecraft but did not even scorch it. The garlic cloud drifted down. Shrieks rang as the demons trampled each other to flee the park.

“Wait!” I said, “They must be attacking us because we attacked them! They are advanced life forms! We can learn so much from them!”

On the screen, the movie began. A sweet, sentimental tune tinkled from the speakers and—

The saucer shot a barrage of darts. The projector exploded into streamers of flaming celluloid.

After torching Beaches with Bette Midler, I was convinced. These aliens were smarter than us, and they surely had much to share. Filled with the spirit of scientific endeavor, I pushed through the stragglers toward the hovering spacecraft.

Dracula stood before me, jaw dropping in surprise.

I called to him, elated, “This saucer resembles the photos of the one from the Mexico City sighting last year! Or the ones over Sandoval in ’92! It even looks somewhat like the one from Plan Nine From Outer Space!”

“Yes, I suppose,” he said. “Perhaps you should flee.”

“Rubbish! We could learn so much from—”

A beam of light blinded me. The ground fell away and the spaceship swallowed everything.

The brightness dimmed. I had been fastened to a chrome medical table. Peering down upon me were small gray humanoids with big heads and enormous black eyes.

Classic Gray aliens! Just as had been described by folks who had close encounters. What marvels they could teach! Then I smelled sweet blood and heard the screams.

Around me was an abattoir. A cow fastened to a chrome table screamed as these Grays carved away the cow’s udder and anus. The flesh was lifted by conveyor belt to stainless vats where the Grays slavered and sucked at metal nipples dripping with gore.

I had read about this in the UFO magazines. Some had theorized aliens had mutilated the cattle, but like many I thought it was hooey. Why would aliens need to feed in such a morbid manner?

Mechanical arms flipped me over onto my stomach and pulled at the waist of my sans-a-belt slacks.

“Say, chaps! I believe in sharing knowledge, but I did not sign a release...”

The metal bands around my wrists and ankles were a strong alloy and I strained against them. I looked behind me.

A metal probe descended. Its length and appendages reminded me of a chrome prehistoric centipede. The probe vectored toward my upturned scaly posterior.

Oh dear.

The next thing I knew, I had busted loose and was running down a hallway. Grays hissed and scuttled behind. Round doors flashed by. Desperate to find that beaming room that sucked me into this ship, I pounded the doors as I passed them. Each opened at my touch, revealing more startled Grays. I slapped the last door.

Out ran a dozen little Green men with antennae on their heads. The Greens shrieked and ran willy-nilly as the Grays salivated and ran to capture them. I followed a group of Greens into a bright room. One threw a lever and there was a flash. Back on the solid, safe ground of Hell, we ran from the ships and escaped into the city.

Flying saucers attacked Borborygmus. Lightning rays knocked demons flat while saucers sprouted claws and tore buildings apart. Imps and the damned screamed and fled everywhere. More saucers flew from the portal and joined the destruction.

Fortunately, the saucers had started on the trendier parts of town, and my place was far from threatened.

I led the six Greens through the hysterical crowds up to my modest one-bedroom flat. Locking the door, I rummaged in my fridge to find them some food, but it was empty. The six of them puttered around in my lab and examined my Commodore PC. They seemed to know what they were doing, and I was glad to have them occupied.

Locking the door behind me, I dashed to City Hall.

The Demon Prince of Government Emergency Management stood sloughing pay vouchers from his skin. “But there’s nothing to worry about, Lampreyhead. There is no panic.”

Government Emergency Management resembled a well-groomed mortal in a tailored button-down, except that his blinding smile was a meter high, and his piercing blue eyes darted with each passing thought. He shed forms-in-triplicate all over the floor.

A passing damned soul ran by the doorway and cried, “Flying saucers!”

With one gulp, the Prince swallowed the interloper.

“There!” said Emergency Management. “See? No panic at all. All is well. Let’s go home. Job well done!”

“But the saucers!” I pointed.

Another silver craft zipped past the window.

“Hm? Oh yes! You know about this weird stuff, Lampreyhead. Carry on!”

On the way home, I stopped at a grocery store and found some food.

I got up to my apartment. “Hello? I found some burritos!”

The six of them approached me carrying a tiny device of wires and computer chips. The lead Green opened his mouth and twittered.

Said the device, “Thank you for rescuing us. We are very glad to be safe! Where are we?”

They created a translator from my Commodore.

I cleared my throat. “You are very welcome. You are in Hell.”

The translator buzzed.

“What is ‘Hell’?” said this fellow. “We do not have a word for that place.”

“Where some mortals go in the afterlife.”

Another buzz.

“We do not have a word for ‘afterlife.’”

“How about ‘evil’? No? ‘Illegal’? ‘Mean’? ‘Snippy’?”

Eventually, I deduced that the Greens had no concept of good or evil; cooperation and compassion were as much a reflex as breathing. And their science had made them immortal with no benefit of any magic! Fascinating!

“Who are those Grays?” I asked.

The Chief Green explained: The Greens had been a happy, advanced civilization. They were getting along just fine for millennia just zipping around and picking up soil samples and showing the occasional earthling around their ships. But a few decades ago, the Grays appeared, flying in on hijacked craft. No weapon stopped the Grays and they could hypnotize at a glance. All the Grays cared about was mutilating and feeding on Earth bovines, and torturing and feeding on the Greens or any intelligent life they could find. The Greens were on the ropes and about to be wiped out.

I thanked the Chief Green and the others graciously with the economically-priced microwave burritos I brought, which they accepted with bowing and smiles. Outside, the rumbling of battle grew louder. I stepped outside to the street to get a better look-see.

Between the peaks of the city, gargoyles swarmed the saucers. The saucers blew out clouds of pale gas. The gargoyles spiraled down. I sniffed and gagged. Garlic again! How did the Grays know about garlic?

A limo passed.

“Everything is just fine,” said the voice of Emergency Management. “There is no need to panic.”

A saucer slipped over the other end of my block, spraying my street with darts. I leaped inside a doorway as the sidewalk cracked in a rain of metal. The limo’s windows shattered. Its body and roof bristled with shining quills.

“Everything-g-g-g is just fi-i-i-ine-fi-i-i-ne,” the limo said as it continued down the street. A recording.

Covering my mouth against the garlic fumes, I picked up a dart. My finger seared and smoked. The dart was made of silver! How did the Grays know to use garlic and silver in Hell? I ran back upstairs.

There was so much to learn from these fellows and they seemed like decent sorts. I had to save them and I had to save Hell.

But who were the Grays? Where had they come from? What did the Greens say?

Feeding on gore? Invulnerable to weapons? If I didn’t know better...

Oh dear.

I tucked the exhausted Greens away to sleep and gave the problem a ponder. I decided there was only one course of action.

In my lab, I rummaged through my cabinet of magic potions and dusted off a potion of glamour. When consumed, the potion would cloud the beholders’ minds so that I would resemble what most fulfilled them, and allow me to speak to them in their language.

I slipped into my bedroom, where they slept like gassy little foil-wrapped children.

“Behold and rejoice,” I said, hearing but beeps and popping. So far, so good.

The Greens awoke and looked at me in bewilderment.

I looked down and found that I was wrapped in a huge flour tortilla. I was a glowing, speaking burrito.

The burritos were the last things to satisfy them, or the magic worked differently on aliens; I would have to study it under controlled conditions.

I had the burrito declare in a beeping like many trumpets. “I am angel of the Creator of the Universe sent to give great tidings of joy. Ponder the stars. They are bright and beautiful just because they are. So the Creator of all things adores you and all living things.”

Continuing for some time in the similar theme, I worked in the mechanics of the vulnerabilities of demons.

The Greens looked to their translator, to each other, to me, and were in awe. They saw the burrito and heeded its message.

I exited stage left just as the potion wore off, then leapt onto the sofa and pretended sleep.

The Greens beeped and twittered for hours, overwhelmed by the experience. The results were promising.

As dawn lit the peritoneum, the room shook from the demolition. My little aliens still chattered and buzzed, with no thought to the surroundings.

The translator grew hot. “—positive (buzz) discrete degrees to the previously (buzz) base-value of (buzz) prime observer (buzz) isometrical (buzz) generative causation—”

I yearned for explanations. “Could you...would you...?”

They were too engrossed, which was understandable. New discoveries make me all tingly and chatty, too.

The Chief said nothing but seemed lit by a deep realization.

My apartment shook, the ceiling tore away, and a light pulled us into a saucer.

The light dimmed. The abattoir was now wrapped in gloom. It stank of brimstone and rotted demon-flesh. All the tables squirmed with eviscerated imps and gargoyles. The tanks scummed with the entrails from citizens of Borborygmus. In the midst of the carnage, a dark figure stood as if admiring the work. The Greens cowered.

“Welcome to my house,” said a voice with strange intonations.

I cried, “There you are, Dracula! About time you showed up!” The figure turned and it was like seeing the Count of old; blood-limned eyes, aquiline features, and arrogance aged for centuries.

“I am glad you are found at last,” the Count smiled. “But how did you discern I was the brain behind these events?”

“It struck me odd that a movie like Abbot and Costello Meet The Monster would give you jitters --”

Dracula drew a shuddering breath.

I continued. “—while Bela Lugosi’s Plan Nine from Outer Space didn’t make you go catatonic.”

“Yes,” the Count recovered. “I have become fond of my children of eternal night and their spaceships. Forty years ago, before everything...became bad for me, I was in a field in Ohio. This very spaceship landed and the crew of green peasants brought me aboard. They were my wine-press for a vintage from beyond the heavens! They became the first of my starblown children and flew away in their spaceship. I thought of them rarely. But—”

He stroked a cooing Gray under its chin. “—last month, they found me and told me that I had spawned an empire that spans the stars. They asked me to be their ruler.”

“You cur! Their culture will collapse and their science will vanish!”

“That is of no importance. These green people have no concept of horror. I have aeons to teach the universe to dread its darkness. Their cunning devices shall even assist me in the conquest of Hell itself!”

The Chief Green held the translator to his head and gasped.

He wrenched himself from the grips of the other Greens. The Chief Green went to the Grays, noising low and holding out his hands in friendship.

The translator said, simply, “Take me, not them.”

They ran him up a probe and left him hang. The Chief looked once up to the skies then died.

The Grays laughed.

From the knot of Greens, one of the number pulled away. The alien seized a tiny probe from a table, no more than a novelty gag probe. And weeping, the Green held the probe out as—not really a weapon, but proudly, defiantly.

The probe glowed.

The Grays gaped. As the probe brightened, the Grays flinched. Spidery fingers rose to cover their eyes. They cringed from the light.

Awed, the other Greens touched the other probes in the chamber. All glowed with the holy light. The Grays peeped and squeaked and cowered against the walls.

It’s working! I thought with some disappointment.

Despair, jealousy, anguish, bright white owie—light, owie—ow.

The Green walked to a cringing Gray. The probe’s light enveloped them both. It dimmed. Two Greens, one rose from its cringe, touching its hands and face in wonder.

Oh my. This experiment has exceeded its parameters, I decided, I should be on my way.

Dracula howled. “What? This is impossible!”

The Greens walked fearlessly among the alien vampires. The chamber swelled with light.

In the chaos, I sprinted to the beam room and threw the switch.

“Wait!” screamed Dracula and leapt in with me. The light flashed and we slammed into the ground.

Above us, the saucer jerked this way and that as the battle roiled within. The other saucers filled with Grays gathered around, waiting on the outcome. The saucer steadied and hovered, glowing with a light that was owie—very—owie—painful to look at.

How did they transfer their state—the state of which pains me even to describe—to the very metals and material of their craft? What had they and deduced and realized? What did this advanced civilization now know about Good and Evil?

The other saucers rose in sudden realization of the rebellion. They fled back through the void, with the glowing saucer in hot pursuit. The portal popped and vanished.

Behind me, Dracula bawled.

“So that’s that, my prince,” I explained outside the ruined limo. “A few saucers may pop up here and there, but now you know how to handle them.”

“Terrific job!” Emergency Management leaned from the shattered window and slapped my forearm. “Handle who?”

“The saucers.”

The Count glowered. Emergency Management’s henchdemons loomed over him.

I pointed up past the wreckage of Boborgamus. “I had to encourage the idea of sacrifice and redemption, so that they would realize there was another place they could go. They will be flooding through the Pearly Gates eventually.”

Emergency Management clapped my forearm again, absently. “The Opposition’s bounty is infinite, let them handle the illegals. Terrific!”

The Count leaned to me and hissed. “I’ll get you, Lampreyhead.”

“Van Helsing starring Hugh Jackman,” I replied.

Dracula shrieked and the burly henchmen dragged him weeping into a waiting van.

“But,” I said to the Prince, “this raises some serious questions! How did the Greens sanctify their saucer so quickly? Did they discover something about matter itself? Could this mean Hell is actually alien space and therefore has no original legal claim to Mortal Earth?”

The Prince thought for a moment, then asked, “That wouldn’t be an emergency, would it?”

“Well, no—”

The limo drove away.

I gave a single, mirthless laugh. There was extraterrestrial life! And the next time it sees me, it will want to kill me. Oh well, my needs were small compared to keeping an interstellar civilization alive.

It would have to stand in line behind Dracula anyway, because there was no keeping him down for long.

So I toddled home to fill out many piles of forms-in-triplicate.

Above gargoyle towed a glowing banner: “Special Movie Night! Brigitte Nielson Film Festival!”

Seemed my evening was already planned. Maybe I would regret putting Dracula away sooner than I thought.

Tim W. Burke produced the movies "The Kibbles and Bits of 'Hellorama'", and "Comic Book Pajama Party", available through Netflix and Blockbuster. A previous Lampreyhead story was published this March at thetowndrunk.org.   Find the other six stories Tim has had published this year at Timwburke.com.