GUNMETAL GOTHIC #1: Pampers’ Case: The Bride of the Atom

[DLClayMongoose]

PART 1
 

 

London.



A lone flashlight pierced the inky darkness. At one point, the white ray revealed a wax caveman dragging his mate toward a cave by her hair; at another, a man trapped under a large board with iron weights and stones being placed on top by a hooded executioner. These displays could be seen with ease during the museum’s regular hours of operation, but this guest didn’t even pay the entry fee.

Finally, the stranger found a glass case, with red velvet bedding within. “Fritz,” he said into his headpiece, “I’m at the display. Cut the power.” Trip lasers had been all over the museum, poised to alert the police the instant passed through on. The infrared scope made avoiding these hazards much easier, but priority one was in the middle of a web. It took a few seconds, but the display was finally left naked. The burglar approached. A scorched skeleton lay there with unusually long upper canines and talon-like fingernails.

The silence was ended by the high-pitched whirr of a glass-cutting sawblade. A whole sheet was cut loose and set aside. “What I want to know is what Dr. Gorgolov wants to do with a vampire skeleton,” the accomplice in the security room wondered.

“I’m still not convinced that it’s real, Fritz,” the burglar remarked as her gathered the bones into a bag. “All I know is that he wants it. Radio Igor, have him bring the chopper to the roof.”

 

---

Mississippi



Two late-night hunters stumbled around through the trees as rain seemed to blow in sideways. Only electric lanterns and lightning bolts provided light; violent thunder combined with the forceful wind seemed to forbid anyone standing up straight.

“This is the worst storm yet,” said the elder of the two hunters.

“A new one almost every night for the past three months,” remarked the other.

“It ain’t natural.”

The pair just barely missed being vaporized by a beam of electricity, but a nearby tupelo wasn’t so lucky.

The older man was breathing heavily; whether it was from the trek or avoiding the bolt was anyone’s guess. “I’m… getting away from this lightning while… I still can.”

“You’d be soaked to the bone before you made ten yards!”

“I’d rather be soaked than barbecued!” He worked his way back onto his feet, using his rifle for support, adjusted his raincoat and pushed on into the driving storm.

Another jagged beam brightened the area for a second. In that fleeting moment, the faint surface of a body of water could be seen. “Mac, there’s the lake!” the junior huntsman said. “It’s impossible to make our way back up to the road. Maybe we can make it up to the old Willows place--”

“Are you out of your mind, Jake!?”

“You actually believe in the monster?”

Mac wasn’t going to admit it, but he clearly had his own misgivings. “The newspaper stories say—!”

“Act your age, Mac!”

The duo finally emerged from the swamp. Greeting them at the clearing stood a gloomy Victorian house seemingly being claimed by the very brush the two men had just escaped from. Their heads bent low against the wind, they steadily advanced toward the front porch.

“It don’t look good to me,” said Mac.

Jake could only roll his eyes. “Aw, you’re just spooked!”

“Spooked or not, this place just don’t look healthy.”

“Mac, the place is deserted. Nobody’s lived here for over fifteen years!”

The front of the building became clearer as the two got closer. With all the wear and damage on the front door, one would have assumed that it was the original. A second door was to the right, but it was completely boarded up, beyond use. A nearby window emitted a very faint, flickering light.

“I thought you said this place was deserted!” said Mac.

“It was supposed to be,” Jake responded. “I don’t get it.”

“Jake, did you hear something?” asked Mac. “There was a splash – like someone stepped in a puddle!”

“Prolly just a fish jumping down by the water. Calm down!”

Jake approached the ancient door first and gave four knocks. Mac, on his way up, stepped on a rotten board and broke a hole in the floor. He was able to pull himself out himself, however.

Nobody came to the door, so Jake gave a few more knocks.

Finally, the entryway creaked open and they were greeted by an elderly man with a grim, beardless countenance and a dark-colored smock. The sound of his Slavic accent was as icy as his glare. “What do you want?”

“Let’s get outta here!” Mac said through his teeth.

Jake wasn’t having any of it. “I’m sorry, we didn’t think anyone lived here.”

“It was all his idea!” the older man said, trying to deflect any fault for disturbing the stranger, who didn’t appear pleased at all by their presence.

“Thought we could get in out of the rain,” Jake explained, paying no attention to his timorous partner. “Looks like it’ll last all night.”

Mac nodded his head and pointed toward the swamp. “Pretty bad out there.”

“No, no,” intoned the old man. “You can’t stay!”

Jake didn’t want to be turned down. “Oh, now be reasonable!”

He didn’t budge. “You can’t stay!”

“We’ll catch pneumonia out there!” Mac complained.

“You are not welcome in my house! Go away! Now! Go, go, go!” Jake brought up his rifle. Assuming this to be a threat, the old man took a step back. “Lobo!”

“GRRRR!!”

The hunters turned around to see a hulking mountain of a creature approach the porch. A flash of lightning revealed a bit of the beast’s appearance: he was a bald man with twisted features in white pants and a leather jumper. The giant seemed to be moving in for the kill as he grabbed the two by the shoulders.

“No, no,” said the old man. “Don’t kill them, just see that they do not remain here!”

“The monster…” Jake said in disbelief.

“Now do you believe the newspaper stories?” Mac admonished.

“Lobo, you hear this?” the old man chuckled. He faced the pair with a threatening joviality. “They think you are the monster! Be patient! Perhaps one day, you will meet the monster! Go now, before Lobo gets angry!”

The grip on them was released. The hunters ran off, jumping from the porch—Jake face-first into the wet grass—and back into the stormy night.

The two men raced along the edge of the lake, toward the road. With the old house now surprisingly out of the question, the only remaining option was the truck. Mac eventually slowed down and leaned his right side against a tree, breathing heavily. “I can’t run no more, Jake…”

“We gotta keep moving! That-That was the monster!”

They kept going after a moment. Finally, Jake pulled a cloth from the right pocket of his raincoat to wipe the rain off of his face. However, when finished, changing the handkerchief from his right to his left brought his gun to his attention.

“I so scared I forgot I had a rifle,” he said, realizing this.

Mac looked around at what ground he could see. “Guess I dropped mine.”

“A rifle and a full clip of ammo… might have to walk back to the house.”

Mac took a seat on a nearby stump. “You go if you want to,” he said, “I’ll take my chances with the swamp—what I wouldn’t give to see a couple o’ cops right about now…”

“It’d sure be a feather in our caps if we took that monster ourselves,” disagreeing somewhat. “Pictures in the paper… maybe a little cash…”

“AAAAAUGH!!”

The blood-curdling scream was enough to snap Jake out of his daydreams. As bizarre as it sounds what appeared to be a large python had wrapped its body around Mac’s lower body! Two more from the right of the victim and one more crept toward him. It was then that he realized that these weren’t snakes, they were tentacles!

Illuminated by a bright flash of lightning, Jake could only watch in terror as Mac was dragged off the stump and into the water, struggling wildly to free himself from the constricting limb. Three more tentacles emerged to grab him, and he backed away, emptying his clip into the creature, which seemed unaffected by the bullets.

As he was forced to change his clip, Jake watched in disbelief as Mac disappeared beneath the lake, amid tentacles and churning water. Before he could make another effort to save his friend, a strong blow came from behind his head. He went down in the grass, remaining just conscious enough to see that horrifying human wall once more before everything went black.

 

---

Pamela Sato strapped on a colorful bib with a cartoon monkey around her neck. The storm wasn’t as bad some fifty miles to the northwest, but the rain had come down hard enough to force her to pull into a Sleep Inn and grab some chicken nuggets from the Popeye’s at the last exit. No more driving in that mess, she was calling it a night.

She sat at the round table near the front of the room and opened the bag. She faced her guest and smiled. “Been a long drive, Macho Bunny, you’re probably real hungry.”

Her guest was just a stuffed toy—a white rabbit the size of the average teddy bear. It wore a blue bandana, alongside a patch on its shoulder, mimicking a heart tattoo. It had no visible mouth, but its beady eyes denoted a “tough guy” attitude in spite of it being an adorable plushie. As you can expect, he didn’t answer.

Regardless, she stuck a Cajun fry up to his imaginary lips and pretended to feed him, before dipping it into her Mardi Gras mustard and munching it.

Halfway through her nuggets, her phone began to go off: “All you have to do is take a cup of flour, add it to the mix! Now just take a little something sweet, not sour, a bit of salt—just a p—!” She put it on speaker. “Hello? Boss?”

“Status report, Agent Pampers.”

“Just crossed over from Tennessee, but the weather forced me to stop,” she explained. “Grabbed something to eat and got a room. What’s up?”

“New intel from London,” said the caller. “The remains of Count Dracula were stolen from the Santley Museum of the Macabre less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“He stole a prop skeleton doctored to look like a vampire, you mean?”

“You may be still be somewhat green, but if the skeleton wasn’t authentic, I wouldn’t be telling you. It’s a Gorgolov job, no question.”

Pam took a swig from the cup of Barq’s which came with her order. “You said that Gorgolov and Vornoff were colleagues?”

“Yes, Kazan University back during the latter years of the Cold War. He’s the closest lead we have. We tracked him to Lafayette County.”

“Heard a bunch of monster stories coming out of there,” Pam noted.

“That’s the tip-off.”

“I’ll make for Oxford at first light,” said Pam. “Old Bessie’s ready to go.”

“Don’t get trigger-happy,” the dispatcher warned. “I don’t need another Agent Luvs.”

Pam laughed. “Keep me up to date, if you hear anything.”

“That’s all, Pampers. Goodnight.”

“Can you say night-night to Macho Bunny, too? Brought him with me!”

The boss heaved a bit of a sigh. “Night-night, Macho Bunny.”

The call ended there.

Pam looked at the toy “eating” with her, quizzically. “What’s that Macho Bunny?” Silence, but the agent answered for him, knowing what he would have brought up. “That’s right,” realizing what he was “saying”, “I went potty on the other side of Memphis and didn’t change!” She dropped her jeans, leaving—not panties—but an adult-sized, purple-and white diaper with hearts, balloons, stars, and planes printed all over. Furthermore, they had been used for their purpose.

She was always prepared for stuff like this: baby powder and baby wipes were in her toiletries bag. Spreading out a clean diaper on the bathroom floor, she sprinkled powder on the clean padding. Within a couple of minutes, she was all clean. Her old one was stuffed into a plastic grocery bag, along with the paper carryout bag and pitched in the garbage bin right outside her room.

“All better!” Pam announced. “Say, Macho Bunny, you wanna watch some…” She turned her head over to the little vestibule where the bathroom was. For a moment, a woman older than her stood there, arms crossed and scowling, but for some reason, she vanished the second she blinked. “…cartoons?”
 

---

Jake had been dragged by the human behemoth to a hidden laboratory with stone walls. The hunter remained motionless as the giant began binding the currently half-naked captive to an operating table with heavy leather belts, alongside a metallic cap on his head. Slowly, he regained consciousness, but panicked when he saw his current situation and the adjacent flesh monolith. “You! Get these straps off of me!”

The beastly man didn’t reply. He simply wheeled some kind of large device which appeared to be a cross between a desk lamp and a dentist’s x-ray over to the table.

Jake began squirming beneath his binding, trying to get an arm loose by any means. “Let me loose! Do you hear me?”

“Lobo hears,” an uncomfortably familiar voice responded from a nearby archway, “but he cannot speak.” It was the old man from earlier, but now he had on a lab coat. He approached the constricted hunter, and circled the table with a threatening smile on his face. “Lobo is a mute,” the man explained. “Because of the storm, I was afraid we weren’t going to have any guests tonight.” He chuckled, but immediately lunged at Jake’s neck. He had a large bruise on the right side and immediately slapped the massive henchman across the face, berating him for his excessive force.

All the big fella could do was let out a big “RAAAARR!!” from the blow and back off.

Jake kept trying to fight his way out of the straps. “I said let me outta here!”

“Already he tires of our humble hospitality,” the captor laughed. “At the moment, it’s quite impossible.”

“Who are you?”

“Vornoff,” said the old man, as he walked over to a large switchboard on the wall. “I am Dr. Eric Lvovich Vornoff.” He flipped one of the larger switches, prompting a loud whirring noise. “The name will mean little to you.”

Jake’s eyes widened with fear as a blinding white light glowed down on him.

Vornoff kept throwing switches. In a matter of time that dungeon was host to an invisible dance of electricity. The sound of the equipment rose higher and higher.

The trapped hunter began screaming, as unseen streams of radiation pelted him from three directions. “What are you doing to me!?” he painfully demanded.

Vornoff spoke above the shrill sounds of the lab. “You will soon be as big as a giant,” he told him, “with the strength of twenty men—or, like all the others… dead!” He turned a dial, intensifying the radiation going into his guinea pig.

Glass tubes lit up and down. Electricity arced up thin metal towers beneath a clear dome. Everything seemed to be going off.

Jake screamed as his body suddenly erupted into flames and his head went limp as he was consumed.

Vornoff, seeing the test go awry, frantically killed the power to the hardware. “Lobo! The fire extinguisher!”

Jake’s roasted body was bathed in fire-retardant foam. It didn’t budge and there was no need for Vornoff to check for a pulse after all that he’d seen. The doctor hung his head in shame. Another failure.

Vornoff passed the scorched carcass to a large, water-filled window. Turning on a light switch revealed a tank large enough to house a giant, genetically-altered octopus. Such a creature entered through an opening cut from the stone; an empty yellow raincoat could be seen dancing in its wake as if it were a ghost. “Is it not strange, Lobo?” the old man asked with a tired face. “Our friend always returns home after his long swim…”

 

---

END OF PART 1

[Kaleros]

This story looks like it is getting off to a good start. I wonder what plans Gorgolov will have for Dracula's remains.

[DLClayMongoose]

PART 2

 

 

Police Department, Oxford, Mississippi.

 

During situations like what she was about to go through, Pam as proper and professional as any woman her age could look, scarcely any clue of what she was like at the motel the night before (though she did have her Cushies on under her dress). Minutes inside the department, the ambience of a young rookie interrogating someone filled the air.

                “What’s your name?” the young rookie asked the dirty-looking tramp seated before his desk.

                “JoHN DOe…” the man mumbled, clearly full of beer so early in the morning. He held a lit cigarette in his right hand and sort of waved it around.

                “Don’t be cute,” he told him. “What’s your name?”

                “YOu fiNd ouT!”

                “Hey, watch the cigarette, you? What were you doing in the swamp?”

                “WHat’s it To ya?” From his change in tone, it sounded like a fight was about to start.

                “That’ll be enough of that!” Another voice chimed in.

                A minute later, Pam watched as a sloppily-dressed middle-aged White guy was dragged out of the room by a younger Black officer, who restrained the former in a chokehold. The tramp was shouting so hard, the young lady could smell the booze in his breath a yard away. “NO TANK TOWN JAIL CAN HOLD ME! I’LL BE OUTTA THIS RAT TRAP IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!”

                “That’s what you think,” the rookie shot back, “vagrancy’s worth seventy-two. Take him downstairs, Baker.”               

                Pam approached the young cop’s desk, turning her head once more to watch the drunkard writhe as he was dragged off and back to the clerk. “Officer, er, Kelton?” she read off of his nametag. “I am here to speak with Captain Robbins. I have an appointment with him this morning.”

                “Got an ID?” asked the officer.

                Pam held up her own badge: it had her photo and info, the latter printed over the image of a single eye, wreathed in feathered wings. “Pamela Sato, SERAPH.”

                Kelton didn’t look convinced. “Alright, let’s get this over with,” he chuckled, as he stood up and grabbed a folded newspaper nearby.

                He led her to a door with a glass window, marked “CAPTAIN TOM ROBBINS, HOMICIDE” and knocked on it.

                “Come in,” the man on the other side beckoned. He was in the same age range as that drunk from earlier, but lacked one finger and was playing with a small parakeet.

                Leading Pam in, Kelton pointed at her with a thumb. “Captain, this lady claims to be part of some organ—!”

                “I’m Pamela Sato, I work for SERAPH,” she said.

                Robbins put his little bird on the leg of his reading glasses and began to sing them gently. “Yes, I was informed by your boss that you would be coming.”

                “This has to do with the Lake Marsh case, right?” asked Pam.

                “Oh! I almost forgot,” Kelton announced suddenly, pulling a newspaper from under his armpit and putting it on his desk. “Here’s the late edition, Captain. Look, how about letting me work on this case?”

                “Get back to your desk,” said Robbins.

                “Yes, sir,” Kelton said, turning to leave with the demeanor of a scolded child.

                “Kelton.”

                The rookie turned around, spirits lifted, hoping he’d be doing something soon. “Yes, sir?”

                “I told the newsboy to bring the paper in himself,” said Robbins, sternly.

                “Y-Yes, sir, but if you ask me—!”

                “I didn’t.”

                The man’s face melted to defeat once more and he turned to leave.

                “Kelton?”

                Once more, Kelton lit up “Yes, sir?”

                “Where’s Lieutenant Craig?” the captain asked, bringing his swinging to a halt.

                “In his office, I think,” said Kelton.

                “Send him in.”

                “Yes, sir.” Kelton left, feeling stymied.

                Pam found it hard not to laugh after the barrage of “Yes, sir”s and the way the young cop was trying to scratch his way up the ladder. “Tenderfoot, I take it?”

                “Indeed,” said Robbins, standing the parakeet on his desk. Putting on his reading glasses, he moved over to the water cooler with a glass and filled it up.

                “I have to admit, I’m still kinda new at this,” she admitted. “Plus, formalism’s never been my thing."

                Robbins perched the bird on the rim of the glass and it began to drink. The captain sat down and looked at the headline and read it aloud: “Monster Takes Two!”

                “I had a feeling,” said Pam. “My boss sent me down here over this monster business, under the assumption that it would lead to our real quarry.”

                A tall young man entered the office, maybe about five years older than Kelton, based on appearance. “Hello, Captain.”

                “Hi, Dick,” Robbins greeted his subordinate. “One thing about birds,” he said, turning to his parakeet, still perched on the glass, “they never give anybody any trouble… Oh! Ms. Sato, this is Lieutenant Craig. Dick, this is Pamela Sato, she’s with, uh…”

                “SERAPH,” she said, shaking the lieutenant’s hand. “I take it you’ve seen the news lately.”

                “Is there anyone who hasn’t?” asked Craig.

                “Your girlfriend writes a good story,” said Robbins.

                “She thinks so,” said Craig. “We got anything new?”

                “No.”

                “So, you fellas had twelve disappearances in the same place and nothing to go on?” Pam asked.

                “And nothing this time, either,” Robbins replied.

                Craig shook his head and heaved a sigh. “Spent so much time in that swamp lately, I think I’m growing webbed feet…”

                Pam noticed two items on a nearby table: a camo hat and a rifle. She sniffed the breach. “This gun went off recently,” she noted.

                “Been fired a lot of times recently,” Robbins told her. “A little while ago, Betty Long identified it as belonging to her husband Jake. As for the hat, she recognized it as being that of Lafe MacCrea, his hunting buddy. Last evening, the two men went up to hunt around Lake Marsh—never returned.”

                Craig studied the hat. It had a lot of muck on it.

                “The boys found it washed up on the edge of the lake,” said Robbins.

                “And the rifle?” asked Craig.

                “Same place, about a mile from the old Willows place,” confirmed the captain.

                Craig put the hat back down. “Think there’s anything to those news stories?”

                “Your girlfriend does.”

                “What about you?” asked Pam.

                Robbins took his reading glasses off and stared his guest square in the face. “Ms. Sato,” he said, “We’re the police. The police don’t believe in monsters. Facts are our business—facts and only facts—and don’t you forget it!”

                Pam smirked. She knew better.

                The mood was snapped in two by the sound of struggle just outside. The door was thrown open, and in came a beautiful lady, perhaps two or three years older than Pam, with Kelton trying to drag her away by her right arm. “Tell this junior G-Man to let me go!”

                “I’m tellin’ ya Captain Robbins ain’t seeing nobody today!” Kelton grunted. “Be a good girl, Miss Lawton and go—!”

                “Let her go, Kelton,” Robbins ordered.

                The ever-gung-ho rookie quickly released his grip. “Just as you say captain.” He left the office sheepishly.

                “I half-expected another ‘yes, sir’!” Pam quipped under her breath.

                The woman leaned against the bookcase, with one fist on her hip. “It used to be a journo could get information around here,” she griped.

                “Why, Ms. Lawton, what ever in the world do you mean?” Robbins said, feigning surprise.

                She scoffed. “Now he makes like a comedian!” She looked at the lieutenant, eyes fixed on him. “Dick Craig, I don’t put much stock in the future success of our married life if already you’re keeping secrets from me… You’ve been dodging me all day.”

                “Where did you get an idea like that?” Craig asked.

                “You mean you haven’t been dodging me?”

                “Of course!”

                “And all those times I called today and Kelton said your line was busy—it really was?”

                Craig nodded.

                The reporter cracked a smile. “Okay, let’s have the story on Lake Marsh… and the monster.”

                No response from either man: Craig turned from her and Robbins started looking at the paper.

                “I thought so,” the journo said.

                “There’s no such thing as monsters,” said the captain. “We’re in the twen—!”

                “Don’t count on it,” said Ms. Lawton. “The monsters, I mean.”

                “Now Janet…”

                “Don’t you ‘Now Janet’ me, Dick.”

                Pam was not in the mood to pay audience to a bickering couple over the state of their engagement. Amid the back-and-forth between Craig and Janet over the ring (and Robbins chiming in from time to time), she whipped out her phone and checked her messages. Her senior, codenamed “Huggies” had fired off a DM to her: About to come down in Rome. Potential Gorgolov connection according to Baldwin. How are things in America?

                Pam acted a little coy in her reply: Gorgy lead over here, too, supposedly. Wanna trade spots? A cop and his girlfriend are squabbling over an engagement ring right now.

                Huggies just gave a LOL in response.

                Finally, Janet got to what Pam wanted: “Now what about the monster story?”

                “It’s all your story,” Robbins replied. “You wrote it and you’re stuck with it. There’s no such things as monsters.”

                Pam finally spoke up. “On the contrary, captain,” she said, “monsters are pretty much SERAPH’s bread and butter. The Lake Marsh vanishings got me assigned down here.”

                Robbins looked at Pam with a raised eyebrow. “You must be joking.”

                “SERAPH is the foremost organization in combating and documenting such things,” she explained. “Many times, these monsters tend to be artificially-created ones, sometimes from pure humans. Many times, it’s because of some madman with a lust for power and fame going Frankenstein’.”

                “Going Frankenstein?”

                “In my line of work, we use that term for scientific overreach,” Pam elaborated. “Henry Frankenstein, in the late 1790’s…”

                “Ms. Sato,” said Robbins, “Dr. Frankenstein was just a legend.”

                “You’d say the same about Dracula,” she went on. “But that didn’t stop somebody from making off with his skeleton the other night…”

                “Are you talking about the theft at that British gimmick museum?”

                “I thought the remains were fake, too,” she explained. “Mr. Baldwin assured me they were the real deal… and he’s NEVER wrong. I think we need to throw a bone to Ms. Lawton here (forgive the pun). If there’s any truth at all to these monster reports coming out of Lake Marsh, I should find the man I’m looking for.”

                “Ms. Sato,” the captain said, exasperated, “you and Ms. Lawton may not believe me, but you two got all the story there is.”

                “You’re right,” said Janet, cross, “I don’t believe it.”

                “Nevertheless, it’s the truth,” Robbins said, weary of it all. “Except for the monster—a figment of your very vivid imagination—you’ve got nothing more to go on than what’s in your paper!”

                “Twelve people went down in the same place,” Pam countered. “Haven’t you checked around that old Willows place or whatever it is?”

                “We’re doing the very best we can, Ms. Sato,” Robbins firmly told her. “We have to deal with facts—evidence! The men disappearing—there’s a lot of quicksand out there—!”

                “Not quicksand and alligators again!” Janet groaned. “Looks like I’ve hit a dead end around here—if you boys want to play a game of secrets, then all I’ve got to do is drive up to Lake Marsh myself!”

                “Over my dead body!” Craig said, threateningly.

                Janet only playfully fingered her lover’s lapel, saying “That can be arranged.”

                “I might as well go with you,” said Pam. “Not getting anywhere with these two.”

                The women left, Pam closing the door behind her.

                Robbins shook his head. “She’s just crazy enough to do what she says,” he told Craig.

                “You know what, Captain? I believe you’re right.”

 

 

Transylvania

 

An ancient castle stood atop a ridge at the Borgo Pass. For centuries, the peasants of the Carpathian Mountains refused to go near its vicinity out of a fear that it was a vampire dwelling and that the surrounding land was bewitched. The grim edifice, formerly known as Castle Dracula, had been left derelict since its namesake purchased Carfax Abbey in London and never returned. Two world wars came and went and the derelict fortress would find itself behind the Iron Curtain for nearly half a century.

                At some point, well over a century after the Count sailed to Britain aboard the Scandinavian schooner Vesta, it gained a new owner: Dr. Vsevolod Feliksovich Gorgolov.

                For the most part, the interior of the castle remained unchanged, with the exception of electricity and other modern tweaks. An oak table with six places stood in a white room, beneath a vaulted ceiling. Gorgolov was seated at the head of the table, a man in his upper-sixties, wearing a blue house robe, whose meal wasn’t as stately as the castle would have been in its heyday: vegetable soup with a side of buckwheat kasha. A remote sat next to the plate, allowing him to change the channels on the ten-foot-wide monitor mounted on the wall before him: it wasn’t for entertainment, but allowed him access to the caves beneath the castle, now a makeshift munitions plant.

                The screen showed assembling arms assembling an SU-100, a mobile anti-tank gun used on the Eastern Front during WWII which later fell into the hands of various Second World militaries. While a number of these dinosaurs were still in service, the doctor was watching the construction of a brand new one in the bowels of the mountain.

                Footsteps approached from behind. A much younger woman with short red hair came up to him. “Igor, Fritz, and Boris have returned from London, doctor,” she said.

                “Were they successful in obtaining the Count’s remains?”

                “Yes, sir,” she confirmed.

                Gorgolov changed the channel to a different part of the complex. An Mi-24 “Hind” gunship touched down onto a helipad erected just outside the castle walls. This prompted him to stand up, take his cane, and leave the table. He walked with a limp in his left foot, so the support was needed.

                The assistant left with him.

                “Do we have any status updates, Helga?” the man asked.

                The lady related the current data, though it was brief. The foundries had made half a dozen reproductions of T-55’s and work had commenced on replicating ASU-57 tankettes. About forty volunteers, partially consisting of disenfranchised college kids from the United States and Canada, were being shipped over for training—though a number had cut their teeth in various riots since 2010.

                Gorgolov scowled at the news, he knew their type. “More lunatics from a bourgeois background fantasizing that they'd be on the upper rungs of the Party,” he said coldly. “In the old days, they'd be sent to an asylum.”

                “I understand, doctor,” said Helga, “but they all firmly reject capitalism.”

                That wasn’t enough for him. “Perhaps even if they’re a waste in their current state, I can still make good use of them one way or another!”

                “But with Dr. Vornoff severing ties…!”

                “We won’t need Eric Lvovich to help build our army,” Gorgolov said, undeterred. “I’ve other methods which have already proven effective. Now that we have Dracula’s remains…”

                “Are we certain the skeleton really is Dracula’s?” Helga asked.

                “He went to London in 1895, where Professor Abraham Van Helsing hunted him down and drove a stake through his heart. Dracula’s body was stolen the same night and set on fire by an anonymous party. The skeleton was all that remained, but it was identified as being the Count’s by the ring on his left hand. There is no mistake!”

                Finally outside, they approached the Hind. A little man and a hunchback emerged from the chopper; a bald man, tall and lean came next, carrying a large black satchel.

                Gorgolov unzipped it and gazed upon its grizzly contents with a smile. “Excellent work, Boris,” he commended. “Take him to the crypt.”

               

 

Oxford, Mississippi.

 

Driving through the city, Janet couldn’t help but grin that her passenger was siding with her. “You seriously believe me?”

                “I’m dead serious,” said Pam. “Everything I told the captain back there is true. Special Duty Organization SERAPH’s all about collecting data on monsters and exterminating them if the need arises, though please don’t repeat any of this.”

                “SERAPH,” Janet mused. “Lemme guess… the Society of Extranatural Research and Preventa… tive…” She was running on fumes trying to glean what the name meant, especially since she used “and” to represent the “A” before sputtering on the “P”.

                “SERAPH doesn’t stand for anything.”

                “But you are talking real monsters here, right?”

                Pam nodded. “Captain Robbins was quick to dismiss your claims because you say one was responsible for the Lake Marsh deaths. We’ve no shortage of documented stories, past and present. Henry Frankenstein wasn’t just a legend, for one, and wait till I tell you the story of Larry Talbot!”

                “That’s a good sign,” said the journo, easing on the brake as the light ahead turned red. “Every time that thing, whatever it is, kills someone, we have to change the front page, ASAP. The original front-page story for the week was about the big stink being raised about the building code, then a pair of backwoods schmoes bit the big one.”

                Pam saw a building came up at ten o’clock: the offices of “The Daily Globe”. “Are you sure you’re going to find out who bought that joint at the lake here?”

                “Won’t be that hard,” said Janet. “If Dick and Robbins were doing their best, they would have recognized the pattern by now.”

                “All near that house,” Pam noted. “I’ll wait out here.”

                “You sure about that?”

                “I’ll check my phone and see what’s going on with my partners,” said the agent. “If you find that someone’s living there, tell me who it is. It could very well be the man I came down here to find!”

                Janet agreed and went inside the building.

                With her out of sight, Pam pulled back her dress to check her Cushies; she’d peed in them, though not heavily. Certainly not enough to warrant a change.

                “You know I don’t like you wearing those things, Pam.” The voice made the girl flinch and cover the diaper. Turning her head left, Pam found her mother Midori glaring at her from the driver’s seat.

                Pam sighed. “Mom, I told you before…”

                “Well, I told you before: I don’t want to catch you wearing diapers again!”

                “I just…” As bright as she was, Pam struggled to talk about stuff like this. “I just… just… like them.”

                “You like them?” the older woman asked, confusedly. “What you’re wearing is supposed to be for incontinent people—people who can’t use the bathroom when they need to.”

                Pam didn’t know how to respond. If she were to bring up how comfy and soft they were, her mother would just counter with “Underwear’s soft!” as she did when she first got busted by her two years ago. She closed her eyes and hung her head.

                “What you’re doing is wrong, Pamela Sato,” said Midori, “especially since they look like the ones for babies! When you go back to your motel room, you take that stupid-looking thing off.”

                She opened her eyes, still feeling shamed. The older Sato had disappeared. No door opened; no window rolled down.

                The truth was that the real Midori Sato was back home in Columbia, over five hundred miles east. Just like the night before, Pam’s own internalized guilt had manifested itself. As much as she loved her “baby fun”, she was well aware that it wasn’t for everyone and kept it on the downlow.

                Even though Pam wouldn’t be caught dead strutting down the street in her Cushies, it didn’t matter to Midori. “But who am I hurting?” was all the young woman wanted to know.

[DLClayMongoose]

PART 3

 

Police Department, Oxford, Mississippi.

 

Janet’s Mercedes pulled up alongside Pam’s Carolla in the station’s parking lot. Pam got out and walked around. “Thanks,” she said, “you really helped me out a lot with that digging you did.”

                “You were looking for that Vornoff man?” asked Janet.

                “If he’s down there,” Pam answered, “you definitely have a monster.”

                “Then up to the lake,” Janet said, resolute.

                “No,” said Pam, “not without me. You don’t have anything to defend yourself with!”

                “Ms. Sato—!”

                Pam didn’t back down. “Ms. Lawton,” she said, “some of the victims had rifles and they didn’t survive. You’re sunk if you bump into that thing, whatever it is.”

                Janet wasn’t going to give either. “I’m going to prove to Dick and all of them once and for all that I’m not crazy. I understand your concerns, but I have to do this.”

                “Don’t you see how bad it’s clouding up?” said Pam, indicating the souring sky. “What are you going to do when it starts raining? HEY!” Janet took off. Pam tried to chase the car down on foot, but it turned onto the street and accelerated. “You moron…”

 

 

Inside…

 

In the time since Janet and Pam left the office to try to prod the Lake Marsh case along, Robbins’ office found itself playing host to yet another guest, one whose appearance and accent would have made him the all-time Leon Trotsky lookalike champion. His tweed cap, gloves, and briefcase rested at the edge of the captain’s desk, easily reachable.

                Craig once again entered, after being summoned once more.

                Robbins immediately introduced the visitor. “Prof. Vladimir Strowsky, Lt. Craig.”

                The two men shook hands and Craig took a seat opposite the foreigner. “What’s it all about, captain?” the officer asked.

                “I’ll let Prof. Strowsky tell you.”

                “Lt. Craig,” Strowsky began, “have you perhaps heard of Loch Ness?”

                “It’s a lake in Scotland, isn’t it?” the cop asked.

                The professor nodded. “Then perhaps you’ve heard of the Loch Ness Monster?”

                “Vaguely.”

“A few years ago,” Strowsky explained, “I was called in by the British police to investigate the appearance of a monster in Loch Ness, with a thought this was some leftover creature of a bygone age. I am considered an authority on the subject of prehistoric monsters. I must admit my investigation failed to get the desired results. I never saw the Loch Ness Monster myself, but others have. There are sworn statements.”

“Is it your theory that, perhaps, the Loch Ness Monster crossed the ocean to the swamp?”

The professor chuckled at what Craig was thinking. “I consider that possibility extremely remote,” he said. “However, the stories bear certain similarities in that there are so many varied descriptions of this so-called monster—perhaps, with my knowledge of such things, and of course your permission, I could shed some light on this mystery. This is the reason for my presence here.”

Robbins still didn’t budge. “Well, the police don’t believe in monsters… What do you think, Dick?”

“They’re no denying that we need some kind of help,” Craig admitted.

He then faced the visitor. “Will you keep your findings quiet for the time being?” He really didn’t want to be badgered by Janet again.

Strowsky agreed.

“And you wouldn’t mind a little company?”

“What do you mean ‘company’?” asked the professor.

“Lt. Craig,” Robbins clarified. “At times, the police are quite useful.”

“I’d be most happy to have Lt. Craig’s assistance.” He turned and asked the cop “How soon can you be ready to leave for Lake Marsh?”

                “I’m ready.”

                Strowsky smiled. “I suggest we wait until morning. There seemed to be a storm brewing when I came in… and it’s so close to nightfall.”

                “It’s only at night when this so-called monster attacks,” the captain reminded them.

                “Undoubtedly true,” said Strowsky, “but the preliminary investigation should take place in daylight. The night, the monster, all in due time.”

                “Sounds logical,” said Robbins.

                “Whatever you say,” said Craig.

                “Now,” Strowsky said, clearing his throat, “since I arrived in town only this afternoon… if you’ll excuse me, I should like to return to my hotel.

                The three men made an appointment to meet again in the office at 10:00 the following morning. That way, Strowsky would have plenty of daylight. The professor took his gloves and briefcase and left.

                Craig began to leave as well.

                “Got a date?” Robbins asked, noticing the attempted exit.

                “What do you think?” asked the lieutenant.

                “I’d say you don’t.”

                “I don’t?”

                “A girl from her office called not too long ago,” Robbins explained. “Said Janet has a bad headache or something.”

                Craig could see through that excuse as if it were cellophane. “If she’s gone to Lake Marsh, I’ll take her across my knee if it’s the last thing I ever do!”

                “It probably would be,” Robbins chuckled. “Watch him, Dick,” he told the cop as the latter started out the office again.

                “Strowsky?”

                “Just a hunch. Watch him.”

 

 

Later…

 

Another evening, another storm.

                After the dismissive treatment her fiancée and his boss gave her earlier, Janet was in no mood to listen to Pam’s warnings. She was going to prove that her swamp monster was real. Rummaging through the files revealed that, contrary to the rumors that the old Willows place had been left derelict, a man by the name of Vornoff had acquired the property about seven years ago.

                A strong wind whipped up and it began to drizzle; the precipitation was far weaker than the previous night’s downpour, but the local weather was predicting it to get stronger.  Foreboding clouds gathered down the road; a bolt of lightning bounced from the summit of one mountain of vapor to another, like a snake jump tree branch to tree branch.

                A dirt road came up on her left. Janet slowed down, gave a signal, and turned. The road was rugged with potholes and the previous night’s rainfall had softened the ground significantly. This saturation eventually saw the Mercedes bogged down. Janet tried everything she could to get the car free—giving it the gas, shifting to reverse… nothing budged the vehicle.

                All the young journo could do was continue toward the old Willows place on foot. She pulled the hood of her raincoat over the angora beret she was wearing, locked the car, got out, and pushed forward.

                A good three minutes later, a stream of lighting came down on a nearby gum, splitting the trunk in two. Janet tried to dive out of the way, but to no avail. Soon, everything went from a daze, to a dark blur, and then black.

 

 

Elsewhere…

 

“You said a mouthful, Macho Bunny.” Pam had rented a room at a Super 8 after leaving the police station. She sat on her knees between the two beds—elbows on the mattress, propping her head up—carrying a conversation with her toy as she unloaded into her Cushies. “God, I hope she lasts the night.”

                Macho Bunny was allotted another chance to “talk”. Nothing was uttered, so his own filled in the blanks of him.

                Finishing up, Pam rose up and flung herself on the bed. “Macho Bunny, you know I don’t go potty in my diaper around Mom,” she said to the toy. “It’s the same reason I don’t let her see you.”

                Her eyes met the unblinking “tough guy” eyes and let him have his “turn”.

                “Yeah, I have had her on my mind a lot lately,” she admitted. “I don’t get it. There’s hundreds of miles between us, but… I don’t know. I hear her clear as day.”

                The phone went off. The ringtone that played was the one she’d assigned to Agent Huggies: “Let’s make a wish! Oo-oo-ooh! Make it come true! Singin’ along with us--!” “Hey, Big H.! Doing okay?”

                “Pretty much, kid,” said the man on the other end. “How did that soap opera you were subjected to turn out?”

                “The cops were no help and lover-girl and I had to do their job for them,” she explained. “Then she ran off to the damn lake to find that monster Baldwin notified me about.”

                “God!” exclaimed Huggies.

                “Storm’s rolling in, too,” Pam added. “Now that I know where that place is that Vornoff’s hiding is, I’ll strike out for it at first light. How are things over in Rome?”

                “Getting ready to turn in,” said Huggies. “Big day tomorrow. Data suggested a werebeast, but things aren’t adding up. Full moon’s not gonna be for another week, but there’s been another death last night.”

                “Weather’s nuts over here,” said Pam, in reference to the rolling thunder outside. “Probably something to the stories about nuke tests over by the border distorting the atmosphere.”

                “It’s not even 6:00PM yet where you are, right?”

                “Nope,” she confirmed. “Gonna send out for some Chinese before things get too nasty.”

                “Well, have fun tomorrow,” said the other agent. “You got plenty of ammo?”

                “Yep!”

                “Diapers?”

                “Mm-hmm.”

                “Then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” Huggies told her.

                “How about you?” asked Pam.

                “Big check on both counts,” he confirmed. “Whelp, I’d better go. I’ll ring you up if something comes up. See ya, Little P.!”

                “Macho Bunny says ‘Nite-nite’!”

                Huggies chuckled. “Tell him I said thanks.” He hung up.

                “Well, I’m gonna go get supper,” Pam told her toy. “We’ll eat and watch some Littl’ Bits.”

                A second of silence followed.

                “I’ll change after we eat,” she said, pulling a pair of blue jeans over her recently-stinkied diaper. “I’m sure the place has a drive-thru.”

 

END OF PART 3

[kerry]

Just catching up to this story now. It's fun! I always enjoy stories where characters just happen to be ABDL...and monsters to boot!

[DLClayMongoose]

(Now with a few bells and whistles!)

 

PART 4

 

The Old Willows Place

 

Janet’s eyes fluttered open. Coming to her senses, she found herself in a strange laboratory with stone walls and various kinds of equipment. She was lying on some kind of cot and her raincoat and jacket had been removed and hung on a coat hook near a dark archway. A huge man with a twisted face emerged from these shadows with a silver tray, two teacups, a sugar bowl, and a porcelain pitcher.

                A few comforting words came from Janet’s left. “Don’t be afraid of Lobo,” said the man. “He is as gentle as a kitten.” He then instructed the giant to put the tray on the coffee table in front of the cot.

                Janet looked at the giant. His grotesque face seemed to soften as he looked at her. Could he have been the one who found her? He was certainly big enough to make such loud footsteps.

                “That will be all, Lobo,” said the old man.

                Lobo didn’t budge. He just stood there, still watching Janet. He began to reach out to her with his massive hands, prompting the journalist to hunch up against the wall in fear

                “Lobo!” The man reached for a whip he had by the cot and gave him a biting lash.

                The titan cringed and backed away. He got whipped once more and cumbersomely hurried to the door through which his master had entered the room.

                The old man took a deep breath and took a seat on a rolling stool. “Tea, my dear?” he asked calmly.

                Janet came out of the triangle she’d curled herself into, but still didn’t feel comfortable. “What happened to me?”

                “You were knocked unconscious by a falling tree,” the host explained. “Lobo brought you here, to me.”

                “But where am I, and who are you?”

                “I am Dr. Eric Vornoff.”

                “Then this is the old Willows place.”

                “Yes,” he confirmed, taking a swig of his tea. “How did you know?”

                “I checked our real estate files,” said Janet. “A Dr. Eric L. Vornoff bought the property in November 2017.”

                “You are a local news reporter?” Vornoff inquired.

                “Yes.”

                “My name seems to mean much to you!”

                Janet shook her head lightly. “N-No, actually. It’s because of the recent deaths at Lake Marsh and the monster reports alongside them. Since the house was right on the lake, I checked the files to see what happened to it. Your name was there as the purchaser… I thought you might have heard something about the monster.”

                Vornoff chuckled. “My dear Miss Lawton, I—!”

                “When did I tell you my name?”

                “You didn’t!” said the scientist, has he pointed toward her handbag. “While you were unconscious, I took the liberty of looking into your purse.”

                “You must have seen my press card.”

                “Yes, I did.”

                “Well, if you know the answers already,” Janet said, somewhat irked, “then why the third degree? And who or what was that monster?”

                “Lobo is quite human,” Vornoff said, matter-of-factly. “I found him in the wilderness of Tibet. He has been quite useful to me… at times. But now, after your tiring experience, I believe we’ve talked too much.”

                “I’m not the least bit tired.”

                “But you are becoming tired,” Vornoff said in a sepulchral voice. He leaned forward, his demeanor softened… then suddenly grew sterner as he spoke. “Now you need to rest… rest… rest… rest…”

                “That’s… strange.” Janet’s eyelids became heavy and her vision blurry. “I do feel tired…”

                “You will sleep… sleep… sleep… for the lovely, young lady… sleep.”

                Janet reclined; her eyes barely still fixed on the old man. He had a smile one his face. It seemed warm and reassuring, but it seemed as if there were an air of sinister intent behind it.

                “Heavy… Heavy with sleep… sleep…”

                All went black.

 

Castle Dracula

 

The morning fog enveloped the mountains. Two reinforced bunkers stood on a ridge, while the barrel of the D-30 howitzer between them jutted out into the whiteness. Just behind them, a terrace loomed outward like the bow of a ship, with a Romanesque gazebo at the head.

                Gorgolov had stepped out for a bit of air, but the silence was disrupted by a fragment of the instrumental marches playing over the loudspeakers inside the castle, denoting someone was stepping out onto the platform. Helga approached the aging doctor, clutching her tablet. “We will have to cease reproduction on mobile armor until after we solve the fuel issues,” he told her.

                “Yes, comrade doctor,” she said. “Agent Karl has just left Switzerland. He found the codex.”

                “Is he sure it’s the correct one?”
                “He cannot confirm,” Helga explained, “even though the document was found in a worn-out condition, it does bear the crest of the Frankenstein family.” She showed a picture the weathered tome to the doctor on the tablet. The insignia was engraved into the lower-right corner of the cover.

                “If it really is Henry Frankenstein’s research into reanimation,” Gorgolov said, taking his cane, “it will be a boon to the working man. Otherwise…”

                They reentered castle, greeted with an instrumental of “Forward, Red Marines!” playing over the loudspeaker system that had been rigged in the days since he’d acquired the ancient citadel.

                “What are we going to do with Dracula’s skeleton?” asked Helga.

                “That depends on my conference with a certain troublemaker,” he said.

                “Troublemaker?”

                “A Canadian volunteer, Gwen Boldt,” Gorgolov explained. “Failed to specify her sex. She wasn’t the only one to do so, but I want to see to what extent the capitalist environment eroded her mind... and by extension the others who wouldn’t.”

                Helga fumbled around on the tablet, digging up the information she was looking for. “She was among the latest arrivals. We provided them lodging in Bistrița.”

                “Then I will be collecting her tonight,” he said, though unhappily.

 

 

Near Lake Marsh

 

“It’s a real shame ‘Goo-goo ga-ga goochie-goochie goo’ won’t have any effect on a real monster.”

Pam’s Camero trailed a green GMC for a while after leaving the city. Once near the lake, she pulled into the driveway of a half-collapsed brick house by an uncultivated field on the edge of the woods. The kiddy songs she’d been listening to on the road went quiet as she turned off the vehicle and popped open the trunk of the car.

Inside the trunk lay two cases. She opened the smaller case and said, “Good morning, Bessie. Wanna go help me look for a monster?” Much like Macho Bunny, who was left behind in the motel for his own safety, Pam liked to interact with her weapons in a similar manner. “You are?” she answered for her Beretta.

                As she got her things together, the corner of her eye caught that old truck she’d been tailing for some time. It had driven about 1,000 extra feet and stopped on the other side of the field. Its driver had gotten out. Even though Pam couldn’t see who it was, he seemed to be an old man with a cane and a briefcase; he was going into the brush. Who was that?

 

 

Later…

 

“I can’t believe it,” Craig grumbled as he drove his squad car toward the city limits. “That Strowsky guy came in yesterday with all these monster stories and crap, sets up an appointment to meet us at the office, we wait around forty-minutes, and he never shows up.”

                A sergeant, Bud Martin by name, road with him; he seemed to be about a few years younger than Craig. “Are you sure he came out here, Dick?” he asked, sipping his coffee.

                “Where else would he go?” Craig responded. “The dirt road to the old Willows place is up ahead on the left. That’s where we’re going to start.”

                “Been up to this swamp more times than I can count this month,” Martin griped. “If I had the chance, I’d file to transfer to a new precinct.”

                The car reached the rough, wet, boggy road. It wasn’t before long Craig and Martin came across a seashell-pink Mercedes trapped in a mud hole—Janet’s Mercedes! It came to a halt and its complement raced for the trapped vehicle.

                “Not a trace of her…” Craig groaned. Obviously, she’d been hellbent on proving she wasn’t writing for the Weekly Informer that she came out looking for her monster herself. Could she have tried to make her way back to town on foot? Not likely. He whipped out his phone and dialed her number. Nothing. He dialed her office, apartment manager, even a few friends of hers. Nobody had seen her since yesterday. Robbins hadn’t seen her either, but he made it clear that he’d look further into it.

                “What do we do now, lieutenant?”

                “Orders,” he replied. “We need to find Strowsky.”

                They started up the car again and did a three-point turn gingerly. If Janet could get stuck, so could they.

 

 

The Old Willows Place

 

Locals cut paths through the woods to grant passage for their four-wheelers, so Strowsky didn’t have too much difficulty navigating through the boggy environment. He eventually found his way to the decrepit bungalow, with its chipped paint and cracked window panes. The door creaked open and he went inside.

                The main parlor looked as ramshackle as the outside of the house: cracked paint on the walls and ceiling, dust everywhere, faded paintings degraded to whitish-green messes. There were signs that someone had been here: footprints on the dirty floor. The mantle on the fireplace, above which a dirty octagonal mirror was mounted, showed signs of finger prints. Strowsky placed his briefcase on a grimy burgundy sofa and moved closer to inspect, but came to a halt by a laugh from behind.

                “My dear Prof. Strowsky!” the man behind him said. “It’s been a very long time!”

                “Vornoff!” said Strowsky “Then it is you! In Paris, I missed you by a month; in London by a week; at Loch Ness by not more than a day! The Lake Marsh monster sounded again like you!”

                Vornoff gave his old colleague a smile and sat down in a dirty arm chair with drab gold upholstery, across from the sofa. “Why this sudden interest in me?”

                Strowsky likewise took a seat on the sofa. “Your experiments with atomic research, of course.”

                “I take it that the Ministry of Defense now believes in my work, and that it can be a success?”

                “Yes! Yes! The Kremlin wants you to return, Vornoff,” Strowsky told him, “to continue your experiments and research. You’ll have all resources you require!”

                Vornoff threw his head back and laughed.

                Strowsky felt somewhat offended. “Why do you laugh?” he asked. “Surely this is no laughing matter.”

                “My dear Prof. Strowsky,” said Vornoff, looking straight into his old friend’s eyes, “twenty years ago, I was banned from Russia, parted from my wife and son… never to see them again, because I suggested the use of the atom elements to make super beings—beings of unthinkable size and strength! I was classed as a madman—a charlatan—outlawed in the world of science which had previously honored me as a genius. Now here, in this forsaken jungle hell… I have proven that I was right after all! No, my dear Prof. Strowsky, it is no laughing matter.”

                “Yes,” Strowsky admitted, “it was indeed a tragic error, but as soon as I learned how correct your findings were—had always been—I informed Moscow. I have searched for you everywhere, and everywhere have I heard stories of monsters. Now I’m here… sent to bring you back home.”

                “Home?” Immense grief overcame Vornoff’s face as he heard this, but the longer he spoke, the more aggressive his demeanor grew, as if he was ready to hurl the shade cast at him back at those who’d first thrown it. “I have no home. Hunted. Despised. Living like an animal. The jungle is my home! But I will show the world that I can be its master! I shall perfect my own race of people—a race of atomic supermen that will conquer the world!”

                Strowsky seemed to be on the same page as Vornoff. “Yes!” he said “A really great master race. As I convinced the Ministry only you could create. One with which our country can rule the world without debate!”

                Vornoff’s eyes narrowed. “You misunderstand me Strowsky. I do not intend to return to YOUR country… my plans are for myself alone.”

                Strowsky stood up upon hearing this. “Are you mad, Vornoff?”

                “One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp!”

                He popped open his briefcase; he had a 9mm Makarov in there. “The Ministry ordered me to bring you back.”

                Vornoff watched him draw the pistol. He simply smiled. “I’m afraid you’re going to find that rather difficult.”

                “I didn’t come alone,” said Strowsky, cocking his gun.

                “Neither did I.”

                A great blow to the back Strowsky’s head caused him to drop the gun and fall onto the floor. As soon as he rebounded, he turned to see a huge man standing behind the sofa.

                Then came a click. Vornoff had the Makarov now, and it was pointed right at Strowsky’s eye. “Now, Professor Strowsky,” he said, “I want it to be perfectly clear that Lobo here is not the monster you’ve heard of. Perhaps you will live long enough to see it for yourself.”

                Bang.

 

 

After a good bit of walking and no monster in sight, Pam emerged from the brush with a sandy bank before her. The expanse of water separating her from the other side of the lake seemed to be close to three hundred yards, with a lone tree standing in between. A stump stuck out of the beach, the sand around it appearing to have been disturbed recently, as if an ambush had occurred there.

                Or a monster attack.

                Pam looked to her right to see a rundown house in the distance… and something moving. Quickly setting down her backpack, she pulled out her binoculars. A massive, bald man in an open vest was carrying somebody over his right shoulder. It seemed to be the old guy who got out of the GMC up at the field. Was he dead? Did that colossus kill him? “Bessie, you don’t think Gargantua over there’s our monster, do you?” she asked her pistol. She shook her head. “No, he may be big, but he seems human but—WHOA!” The big fella threw the limp body into the lake, as if it were a hammer. It travelled about thirty to forty feet and crashed into the water. The giant did an about-face and tramped back toward the building.

                What Pam didn’t expect next concerned the corpse. It floated on the surface for about a minute, when something that resembled a large, branchless tree trunk suddenly rocketed up to the surface and dragged it underwater. It was never seen again.

                “Holy crap…” She looked up to the sky. It was already overcast that morning, but the clouds started to look worse and worse as the morning dragged on. “Don’t think you’ll be enough, Bessie. We’re gonna have to get Mr. Uzi to help us.”
 

END OF PART 4

               

[DLClayMongoose]

UPDATE.

 

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PART 5

Bistrita, The Golden Krone

 

“Thank you, Crown.” Gorgolov emerged from the passenger’s seat of the car which brought him to town and beckoned his comrade to wait for him. The old man was modestly dressed: shirt and tie, a fedora, a black coat. He ambled inside with his trusty cane.

                The tavern was established in the late-1700’s, but fighting in the Second World War saw the original building leveled and a more modern-looking place stood on its spot. Patrons danced to lively regional music played by the band on stage, others sat at their tables, watching and eating their meals.

                It wasn’t that hard for Gorgolov to find the woman he was appointed to meet with, but he felt let down seeing her.         

Gorgolov didn’t know what to make of Miss Boldt. Structurally, she appeared female, but seemed to be trying to blur the distinction of her sex. Most of her hair had been shaved off, save for a small mohawk dyed ultramarine, and had a piercing where her nose met her forehead. He kept his thoughts to himself and extended his hand. “I am Dr. Vsevolod Gorgolov.”

                “What are your pronouns and how do you identify?” asked the guest.

                Gorgolov’s eyes widened a bit at the bizarre question. “I am obviously a man, am I not?”

                “Or so the doctors assigned you,” she responded. “Gwen Boldt, re/ris/rim.”

                “W-What?”

                “Those are my pronouns,” Gwen explained. “I do not identify as male or female.”

                “You speak nonsense,” said Gorgolov. “You are clearly a woman.”

                “Drop that Victorian mindset,” she said, growing irritated. “I did not come to be misgendered by some old White man.”

                Gorgolov frowned. Worse than I feared. “But you agreed to fight against the capitalists,” he countered.

                “Of course I did,” she answered, giving a slack-jawed expression as if to say “What are you, stupid?”

                The old man glowered. She didn’t seem to have any respect for him on account of his age, sex, and skin pigmentation. “I suppose this… identity you made for yourself is why you avoided…”

                “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” She said, acting offended. “I did not make up my identity, I discovered it.”

                Gorgolov heaved a sigh through his nostrils.

                “Your form indicates that you were I your sophomore year at the University of Toronto,” the old man said, looking over the document with the occasional raised eyebrow. “You’ve majored in… Creative Writing? Minor in Women’s Studies. It also says you never held an occupation before?”

                Boldt wasn’t really paying attention to him. She was typing in notes on her phone, little reminders for trivial things.

                “Would you be willing to fight and die for the Revolution?” asked Gorgolov.

                “Fight? Like, use a gun?” asked the woman, disgusted. “Hey, some of my friends might agree to that, but I don’t kill.”

                “Ah! Then it’s the factories for you,”

                “Uh, no? I don’t do manual labor.”

                The doctor glared. “You do know we can teach you how to build, yes?”

                She didn’t seem to want to respond to him.

He heaved a sigh through his nostrils. “So why did you decide to volunteer?”

                “To escape the capitalist hellhole I used to live in,” the activist answered.

                An awkward silence came over the table as the old man watched Gwen fiddle around more on her phone. Finally, he spoke. “I think I know what you can do now. Will you come with me outside?”

                Stashing her phone, Boldt followed Gorgolov. “So where are we going?” she asked.

                “I’m taking you to the Transylvanian Workers’ Republic,” he explained. “It’s not too far away from town.” Soon, they were walking toward the car the old man came in.”

                “So what are you going to have me d—AAUGH!!” A strong arm wrapped around the girl’s neck, while its owner’s free hand pressed a rag up to her nostrils. In a matter of seconds, the visitor was unconscious.

                “Well done, Boris,” said Gorgolov. “Let’s put Miss Boldt here to good use.”

               

 

Mississippi.

 

On their way back to the city, Craig and Martin spotted a truck of the same make, model, and color as the one that came to the station yesterday. They pulled up alongside and got out to confirm if it really was Strowsky’s. Everything seemed to check out: it was a rental and had come to the same area where these monster stories were running wild.

                “Now for that age-old old question,” Martin mused, “‘which way did he go?’”

                The two men were startled by the sudden appearance of Pam coming out of the woods.

                “Lieutenant!” she said, out of breath. “Thank God I bumped into you!”

                “What happened?”

                “I came out here this morning to try to see if there was any truth to Miss Lawton’s monster stories and worked my way toward the lake,” she explained. “I was a little ways down from this old house down there when this big fella came outside and threw a dead body into the water.”

                “Old house? You mean the old Willows place?” asked Craig.

She nodded and looked back in the direction she came in from. “I’m still not certain there really is a monster down there, but for some reason the body was abruptly dragged underwater.”

                Craig could scarcely believe it. “Did you get a good look at the body?”

                “I had my binoculars,” she told him. “An old man got out of this truck about the same time I got here. The corpse that got thrown in the lake looked like his.”

                “Strowsky!” Craig exclaimed. “You head down to the beach and I’ll go through the swamp and around by the old Willows place.”

                Martin nodded. “I didn’t think anybody lived there.”

                “I didn’t say anybody does,” said Craig. “We’ve checked it before. Nothing. Night prowlers tell stories of strange lights and noises, but we never found anything on the inside. It’s just a deserted, rundown old house.”

                “The swamp plays strange tricks on people’s imaginations,” said Martin.

                “Especially at night,” Pam added. “But what I saw go down happened in broad daylight.” She looked skyward; a mass of grey storm clouds were steadily moving in from the southwest. “Though given what the weather’s got in store for us, we won’t have much time left. I’m coming with you, but I need to grab a little extra firepower real quick.”

                It took a couple of minutes for Pam to sprint to her car and pop the trunk, but neither Craig nor Martin expected her to return with an IMI Uzi!

                Knowing they’d question her having such a weapon, she whipped out her badge. “As I said. I’m with SERAPH.”

 

 

The Daily Globe Building

 

Robbins couldn’t run in the building, but he walked at a brisk pace toward a door labeled “Morgue Files”. Behind it, he found a woman behind a desk with chestnut curls and a pencil behind her right ear. “Are you Tillie Smith?”

                “Yes,” said the lady. “How may I help you?”

                He held up his badge. “Captain Robbins, Homicide.”

                “Why, Captain,” she said with a laugh, “I haven’t murdered anyone in a month of Sundays!”

                “Did Janet Lawton stop in here late yesterday afternoon?”

                “Just like a policeman,” the clerk sighed “no sense of humor. Yes, she stopped by late in the afternoon.”

                “Do you remember the time?”

                “Not to the second, sir.” Tillie explained. “Came in around, oh, 2:00 and left about 3:30. Then again, that’s not too late, is it?”

                “What’d she want?”

                “She was looking for information.”

                “That I’m sure of,” Robbins told her. “Do you know what it was?”

                “Sure.”

                “Well?”

                “Well what?”

                “Must we play games?”

                “I-I didn’t know we were.”

                Robbins groaned. “What was Ms. Lawton looking for in the files?”

                It finally dawned on the clerk. “Oh! Why didn’t you say so in the first place and not all that chit-chat. She was looking in the real estate files of November 2017.”

                “She find what she was looking for?”

                “I guess she did, or at least the sales notice. Saw it myself after she rushed out. Left the paper open at the November 28 date. Wanna see it?”

                “Very much!” Robbins nodded.

                “There it is,” Tillie said, pointing to the document still sitting on top of a cabinet. “Haven’t had time to put it away.”

                Robbins, finding what he needed, immediately phoned headquarters, demanding all possible intel on Dr. Eric Vornoff.

 

 

The Old Willows Place, Vornoff’s Lab

 

Lobo followed his master as he checked the tables and instruments. The ambience of electric humming filled the air.

                Vornoff seemed grimly certain that the operation would succeed this time. “Strowsky was a fool,” he said. “I do not need that would-be czar Putin’s blessing to succeed.” He turned to Lobo. “We are now ready for the girl.” He looked at the door across the room and stared at it, his gaze becoming more tense, more hypnotic by the second.

                The knob turned. Out came Janet in white negligée, walking slowly toward the operating table with a zombie-like demeanor.

                Lobo could only look at the young lady, unable to make a sound. Not breaking his gaze, he pulled the angora beret she had been wearing from his pocket, gently stroking the fur with his thick fingers as if it were a small animal.

                She reclined on the table without a sound.

                “Strap her in,” Vornoff ordered.

                Lobo didn’t seem to respond. He had an air of confusion about him. He looked to Janet, then to Vornoff and back, still clutching the former’s hat.

                “Do as I command you!”

                The hulk glanced down at the beret and then fixed his eyes on the woman.

                “I will teach you to disobey!” He rushed across the room to grab his whip. Each lash forced the poor giant to follow his orders with a horrified moan. “Strap her in!” the old man commanded, swinging savagely over and over until he exhausted himself.

                The frightened Lobo didn’t dare stop, even when Vornoff’s old body made him put down the whip.

 

 

Outside…

 

“You found her car?” Pam asked, as she followed Craig through the wetlands.

“Bogged down on the dirt road in,” said the lieutenant. “I called a tow truck to move it in case I needed back up.”

Pam growled. “Does it ever not storm around here?” she complained. “It’s already 12:30 in the afternoon and it’s like it’s the end of the day.”

They finally emerged from the trees with the lake and the old house there to greet them.

                The rotting boards creaked as the pair stepped onto the porch. “If you search the second floor, I’ll check downstairs,” said Craig.

                “Sounds like a deal,” said Pam. She was the one to open the front door. “Not much better on the inside,” she remarked.

                The duo soon split up, with Pam looking for the stairwell and Craig making his way toward the parlor.

                It wasn’t long before Craig found a briefcase, hat, and cane, all looking identical to that Strowsky fellow’s from yesterday amid an area near the fireplace where a mess of footprints had been left on the dusty floor. There had been a little activity there, given the disturbed dust. Even some blood. “Ms. Sato! Come down here, quick!” he called out.

                Craig looked into the briefcase. He couldn’t read any of the documents’ Cyrillic script, but eventually came across a black-and-white photo of an old man. He didn’t know who he was, but the red stamp on the image implied that it was important. Pam, clutching her SMG, hurried up to the policeman. “This stuff belonged to Strowsky,” he said. “There was a struggle here.”

                “That’s Vornoff!” said Pam, pointing out the picture Craig had. “That’s the man I’m after!”

                “Now we’ve got to find where he is,” the lieutenant remarked.

                “Wasn’t upstairs for long,” she said, looking back in the direction of the stairs. “From what I saw it looked a little better-maintained than down...” She trailed off, her eyes catching something about the fireplace. “Look at that. That one tile on the mantle has been touched a lot.”

                Craig took notice of it too. “You’re right. You don’t think some dust was rubbed off in the fight?”

                “No,” said Pam. “It’s at least a yard away from where the scuffle took place. I wonder…” She pushed the tile. First came a click, followed by the sound of sliding bricks. An opening was made in the back of the fireplace. “Like something out of Scooby-Doo,” she remarked.

                Whoever was hiding out here was down that passage. Now or never.

 

 

Vornoff’s Lab

 

Stationary on the table, Janet eventually blinked. Whatever trance Vornoff had put her under had worn off and she found herself bound by leather belts. “What are you doing?”

                Vornoff smiled wickedly, looking up at his apparatus aimed at Janet. “Don’t panic,” he told her. “It will hurt but only for a moment… but you will emerge a woman of super strength and beauty—the bride of the atom!”

                “Y-You’re insane!” said Janet, terrified. “My paper knows where I am, you can’t hurt me and get away with it!”

                “When my experiment is complete,” Vornoff said, assured, “no one—American, Russian, or whatever—can ever touch me. I will make the laws.”

                Janet looked around. Vornoff hobbled away from the table. Lobo, meanwhile, cowered in the corner by the archway his head shifting back and forth between his master and her. As scary as the ogre looked, he was visibly afraid and befuddled. Afraid of Vornoff. “Let me… go!” she demanded.

                “It will not hurt very long, either way,” said the old man.

                “You heard her!” Craig and Pam had entered the lab, brandishing their respective Glock 22 and Uzi. Neither had seen Lobo cringing behind them.

                “Who are you?” Vornoff asked, casually.

                “The police and SERAPH,” said Pam. “Let her go.”

                Vornoff chuckled.

                “You get that girl loose,” Craig told him, “and you’d better do it fast!”

                “Yes,” said the doctor, playfully. “You have the advantage for the moment.”

                “I would put holes in you than a four-year-old’s alibi if I had it my way,” Pam said coldly, “but I’d rather talk Dr. Gorgolov—Where is he?”

                Behind the two, Lobo was creeping up (as stealthily as a man with his body type could manage) with his out hands clasped over his hairless head. “Dick, behind you! Look out!” Janet screamed to no avail; the big guy’s double ax-handle knocked out Craig.

                Skipping a good distance away, Pam pointed the Uzi at Lobo. “You make one step toward me, Gargantua, and you’re hamburger!” He lumbered toward her, prompting Pam to let the lead go flying. The rapid hail of bullets didn’t even seem to leave a mark. Lobo simply batted the gun out of her hands and gave Pam a hard slap. The agent took one more glance at the mass of muscle and lost consciousness.

                “Tie them,” Vornoff ordered. “Quickly!”

 

 

On the shore of Lake Marsh.

 

The removal of the Mercedes made it visually easier for Martin to get his patrol car down to the beach, but neither Craig nor that SERAPH agent was there to meet him. Perhaps they went on to the old Willows place and ran into some trouble? He lit up a Winston and stared up at the overcast. Cracks in the clouds flickered, followed by rumbling.

                Three other police cars came rolling in, lights flashing, from up toward the main road and all parked alongside the one he and Craig had come in. Martin emerged from his car, followed by Captain Robbins from his. Other cops were there, including that greenhorn Kelton.

                “Where’s Lieutenant Craig, Martin?” asked Robbins.

                 “He and that SERAPH girl went off through the swamp,” he explained. “We found Strowsky’s truck up at the field and he told me to wait for him here.”

                “Where were they heading?” asked the captain.

                “The old Willows place,” Martin said, pointing.

                “This is your first time out, Kelton,” Robbins said, firmly, “don’t screw this up.”

                “Yes, s—I mean, no, sir!”

                Robbins looked at all the other men who had come with him. “You all spread out, get to the Willows place, ASAP!”

                The police all left at different angles, but heading in the same directing. Martin and Kelton followed closely behind Robbins.

 

 

The Lab…

 

Pam came to, finding herself bound to a cot with blue twine, the type one would see holding a hay bail together. It was a bit tight, but she thought that if she worked at it, she could get loose. An iron ring on the wall nearby had a rope running through it; the rope was tied around Craig’s wrists, his hands high over his head.

                The smug old Russian ex-pat placed his hand on Craig’s shoulder. “I’m sure my experiments on the young lady will interest you.”

                “Buddy, I’ll live to see you hang,” the lieutenant said through his teeth.

                Vornoff chuckled. “There are more important things at hand.”

                Pee trickled into Pam’s diaper as she struggled in her bindings. “Tell me what I want to know,” she yelled as she tossed and turned. “Where is Dr. Gorgolov?”

                “I washed my hands of Vsevolod Feliksovich a long time ago,” he explained. “He still lives in the past, fantasizing about the old days. I don’t know where he is now, but he’s one the opposite side of the coin Strowsky was on.”

                “Was? You killed him?” asked Craig.

                Vornoff said nothing. The devious smile he gave did all the talking. He walked toward the strapped-down Janet and studied the belts restraining her. “I trust the straps are not too cutting. Such lovely skin should not be scarred.”

                Pam tried pushing her body upward against the twine, hoping to loosen it and possibly free one of her limbs. Around her, Craig and Janet struggled to get loose as Vornoff advanced to the switchboard. That big meaty guy, meanwhile seemed to be turning his head back and forth between Janet and some fuzzy object he had in his massive hands.

                A loud clunk was followed by loud whirring; Vornoff had pulled a lever. Time was almost up.

                With a thunderous “RRAAAAAA!!”, Lobo charged Vornoff like a bull, knocking him to the floor. Threatened, Vornoff whipped a pistol from his pocket and fired two shots in desperation. Pam, watching the whole thing question why. If her Uzi didn’t scratch him, what good would that do? The massive man picked up the old scientist and hurled him over the operating table like a rag doll. He dropped the gun upon landing.

                The giant moved back to the switchboard and pushed the lever Vornoff had just thrown. The humming stopped.

                “Geez!” Pam muttered “If Macho Bunny could only see this…” All the rocking Pam had been seemed to be working. The strings keeping her torso down seemed to be giving way. If she could only work some more on her legs...

                The human mountain moved over to Janet, and quickly unbuckled her. Once free, she scooped up the pistol Vornoff was using, raced over to Craig, and stuck the weapon in his pocket. The monstrous man then turned his attention to his unconscious master. He lifted his numb body and placed it on the bed Janet had occupied just moments ago and strapped him in.

                “Now what’s Jumbo doing?” Pam asked, trying to wiggle her legs.

                Craig and Janet’s eyes were fixed on the strong man as well, as the latter messed around trying to free the former from his bonds.

                The henchman turned the machine back on. Vornoff had done most of the work for him, so all the big palooka had to do was throw a couple of toggles.

                Vornoff had finally woken up and quickly took in his current predicament. “LOBO! STOP! I COMMAND—AAAAAAAAAUGHHH!!”

                The three captives watched in horror as focused radiation belted the hapless old man, who screamed his throat out, unable to move. His lackey stood by, laughing silently.

                Craig got his left hand free first. “I’ve gotta stop him!”

                “You can’t!” shouted Pam, who had just managed to free up her right arm. “He’ll kill you!”

                “Wouldn’t be surprised if he did!” Craig responded just as he was completely free. He rushed over to the giant man, only to get swatted aside, stunned once more.

                Meanwhile, Pam was able to slip under the loosened twine. Her upper torso and arms were free, but her hips were giving her trouble. She shimmied a bit, and came out of her daisy dukes, wet diaper on full display.

                Yet greater focus was on the operating table. The radiation had warped Vornoff’s entire frame, increasing his height by roughly thirty percent. His limbs became longer, his jaw became locked in place, and his skin had become sickly green. He broke free of the leather bands and stood up, hunched over. The monstrosity which had formerly been a doctor bounced toward his lackey, issuing a gurgly growl and a strong swat across the face.

                Both monsters locked hands like sumo, but it was clear that the Vornoff-creature had the advantage in strength. He kicked his henchman in the guts, pushing him into the switchboard. Sparks drifted around like cherry blossoms. The green beast then lifted the hapless behemoth high above his head and hurled him into the hardware. Flames began to lick the immobile mass of muscle and the trappings which surrounded them all.

                Janet struggled to snap Craig back to his senses, but the mutant gathered her up in his arms and left through the archway.

                Feet on the floor, Pam found her sidearm on the table and her Uzi still on the floor, not too far away from Craig. She patted him frantically on the cheek. “Lieutenant! Lieutenant! Get up! This whole joint’s barbecue.”

                Craig came to, but Pam had to help him up. “What… Ms. Sato? Where’s…? Why are you…?”

                “No time!” she yelled, pulling her pants up. “Vornoff took Janet and went—” as if on cue, a beam of burning timber, came down, blocking the archway “through there…”

                “The way we came in,” said Craig, breathing heavily.

 

 

END OF PART 5 

 

——

 

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Edited February 1 by DLClayMongoose
Some links and tweaks added.

[DLClayMongoose]

PART 6

 

The Old Willows Place

 

Eight cops formed a parameter around the decaying building, Robbins, Kelton, and Martin had gone inside. It wasn’t long before the trio came to the parlor and found Strowsky’s stuff. The captain sat down on the ancient couch and plundered the dead man’s briefcase. The papers inside were all in Russian, and there was nobody in the group who could translate. They did find pictures of an old man he deduced had to be Vornoff. “It would seem that Mr. Strowsky’s monster stories were all a front to find this guy.”

                “Captain, smoke!” Robbins alerted. Black vapor billowed thinly from behind the bricks in the back of the fireplace. Suddenly, a huge puff burst out as the back opened and Craig and Pam hurried out.

                Pam coughed. “We need to get out,” she said, “the house is burning from the bottom up!”

                The fivesome rushed outside. The wind was picking up; there was no rain yet, but plenty of thunder and lightning.

                “Captain, look!” one cop on the east side of the house shouted. A green, lanky creature in a shredded lab coat carrying a woman in a white gown emerged from the bluff and rock-strewn hill dominating the other side of the lake.

                Some of the officers were muttering about whether or not that was the monster, but Pam shouted “It’s Vornoff!”

                “He’s got Janet!” added Craig.

                “W-What?” asked Robbins, surprised.

                “It’s a long-ass story, cap,” said Pam, “but he got turned into a monster.”

                “It’s impossible.”

                “This isn’t time for a facts-versus-fiction debate,” Pam told him, a bit miffed. “We need to stop him!”

                Kelton, Martin, and Robbins began to draw their Glocks and started to make their way toward the mutant.

                “W-Wait! You might hit Jan!” Craig warned.

                Robbins nodded, heeding the warning.

                Pam joined the cops, tailing Vornoff along the beach, Mr. Uzi in her hands and Bessie at her side.

                KRAGOOOM!!

                A lightning bolt came down on the burning house’s Victorian tower, blasting part of the old bungalow open and igniting it on the upper levels. The blast caught the attention on the Vornoff-monster, who took notice of his pursuers. He laid down his captive and with a snarl. He looked away from them and at the rocks in the water below. The wind made the water lap against them.

                Pam said what was assuredly on everyone’s minds: “If only we could get him in line for a good shot…”

                “Could I suggest something, Captain?” asked Kelton.

                “No,” Robbins said, pointing at the rocky hill the cliff stood at the foot of. “You climb those rocks. Get up over him!”

                “T-That’s what I was going to suggest.”

                “Can the chatter and get into action,” the Captain ordered through his teeth.

                Kelton made off to the top of the hill, while the abomination reached the edge of the cliff. Unfortunately, the young ladder-climber tripped over a rock on the way up and let out a loud scream.

                It distracted the mutated Vornoff for a moment, who quickly put down the girl and started toward the fallen rookie.

                “Now he’s clear!” Robbins announced. “Give it to him!”

                Craig made a mad dash up the hill as Pam and the cops readied their guns.

                Pistols blazed, Mr. Uzi rattled, but the ammo didn’t seem to scratch him. Not even slowing his momentum, Pam thought. Did those rays give him an R-field? On the corner of her eye, she saw Craig on the crest of the hill, trying to shove a boulder. It dawned on her what his plan was, Vornoff just had to stand in place. She dashed ahead with a shout of “Yo, Tiny!”

                “Sato, what the hell are you doing?” Robbins motioned to stop shooting.

                She stood about ten feet away and began unloading what was left in the clip. Still no effect, but the perpetually wide-mouthed beast-man snatched her by the throat, causing her to drop her SMG, and lifted her high off the ground. “Wanna meet my friend Bessie?” she forced out as she whipped out her sidearm. I sure hope this guy’s not as tough inside his mouth.

                It would be a mystery which would never be clearly solved. Only a split second after firing off the Beretta, the boulder slammed hard into them, pushing her part way over the bluff and Vornoff into the water. Martin went over to help Kelton, Robbins pulled Pam up from the ledge, and Craig went over to Janet.

                Everyone got front row seats to watch the mutant they had chased down struggle in a mess of tentacles. One monster was dragging the other toward the raging inferno which had been the old Willows place and they both vanished beneath the dark water.

                “There really was a monster?” said Robbins.

                Pam hung her head in exhaustion. Her voice sounded final. “I wouldn’t have come if not for these monster reports and Vornoff’s ties to them. My job is done here. I need to contact my boss.”

                “Ms. Sato…” Janet felt bad for the agent for some reason. Her demeanor really gave off a sense of anguish.

                “No doubt this has been one of the weirdest experiences of your lives,” said the agent, “but I’m something more horrifying than any monster.” Picking up Mr. Uzi, she made a long, silent walk back toward her car.

 

 

Castle Dracula, Crypt

 

Gorgolov and Helga surveyed the charred bones of the castle’s namesake, now assembled in a stone sarcophagus. A ring had been fixed on the ceiling, with a rope through it. A young woman trying her best to look sexually ambiguous dangled from it, still unconscious. By the chamber’s entrance stood two Red Guards, armed with Mosin-Nagants with bayonets.

                It was well after midnight where they were, but the next step in the operation would be impossible in the morning.

                “Fritz and Igor have left for Brasilia this morning,” Helga said. “Karl will return tomorrow.”

                “Excellent,” said Gorgolov, hearing the bound guest coming to. “Good evening, Ms. Boldt.”

                “You let me down from here, you-you… reactionary!” the woman snarled.

                Gorgolov laughed. “How am I reactionary?” he asked. “I seek to crush capitalism, but I don’t need dead weight.”

                “What are you saying?”

                “Simple: you’re useless!” he told her. “You refuse to fight or work for the Revolution, and you refuse to learn either. Furthermore, the decadence of your Western trappings has infected your mind as it has done with the majority of young socialists these days. You believe in fantasies and simply assume you will be afforded a place in the central committee. You don’t love the Revolution. You simply want to escape from work.”

                Boldt looked as if she had been slapped. “Do you really think I’m that shallow?”

                “Yes,” the doctor confirmed. “You probably wouldn’t even be competent enough for agriculture, if the images from that little commune in Seattle was any indication. Nevertheless, we have a way you can serve the international proletariat. Guards, flank her!”

                “RIM! It’s rim, not her, you-you-you FASCIST!” She was so upset by the manner in which the old man had addressed her, she barely noticed the two men approaching.

                “You’ve just demonstrated the delusions of which I just spoke of,” said Gorgolov, coldly. “I would have you know that I don’t take the word fascist lightly. During the Great Patriotic War, my father was a submariner for the Baltic Fleet, and his brother gave his life at the Seelow Heights. Had they and my countrymen had been like you, Hitler would have been holding a victory parade down Tverskaya Street.” He nodded.

                The guards raised their guns.

                “What are they doing?” she said, worriedly.

                “They are about to make the best possible use for you.”

                “I don’t believe this!” said the activist. “How could someone who fought fascists raise such a… fasc…….. ist…?” The bayonets entered the sides of Boldt’s body and cut downward, eviscerating her innards.

                Blood and tissue rained down on the vampire cadaver, which seemed to absorb every drop. Soon the stone box was awash in Boldt’s gore. The skeleton seemed to writhe as sinews formed, as if by some dark magic. Muscles and veins came into being and pointed ears took shape. Soon, the body was groaning and moaning.

                “Get the choker ready,” Gorgolov ordered Helga.

                Sickly pale skin came into being, along with silky black hair. The creature leaned forward and a thin dark band was snapped on around his throat by Helga. Bringing its talon-like hands to his temples, he rubbed the sides of his head as if he were fighting of a bad hangover. His crimson eyes fluttered open and he looked around at the strangers about.

                “Welcome home, Citizen Dracula,” the doctor greeted. “I am Dr. Vsevolod Gorgolov and this is my assistant, Helga von Housen.”

                “What are you doing in my castle?” the vampire asked.

                “It is hardly your castle any longer,” said Gorgolov, matter-of-factly. “It has been claimed on behalf of the global working class.”    

                The resuscitated count rose, his eyes blazing with fury and paying no mind to the dangling corpse of the lady used to revive him. “You... and your companions… will leave.”

                Gorgolov was undeterred. “At present, citizen,” he said, firmly “your request cannot be fulfilled. This castle is now property of the Communist Party of the Transylvanian Workers’ Republic.”

                Dracula snarled. “Impertinence!” He lunged toward the old man with all speed, but halted in pain. Three small lights on the collar hastily fastened to his throat shined a bright green. The vampire clasped his neck and collapsed, writhing in anguish.

                Gorgolov pulled a small, radish-shaped remote from his housecoat, whose sole button he had a thumb on. “You are now experiencing the influx of electricity generated by the restraining choker Comrade Von Housen here has bestowed upon you,” he explained, before giving the button a rest. “All the Red Guards are equipped with remotes like this one. Should you make any attempt to remove yours, you will receive a shock automatically.”

                Dracula glared at the old man, baring his teeth.

                Gorgolov merely gave a smug smirk. “I wasn’t planning on reviving a vampire without countermeasures in place to insure he cooperates.” The old man looked toward the stairway and began to hobble toward it, with Helga following. “Comrades Habe and Darota,” he ordered the two troopers. “Please get some clothes for Citizen Dracula and see him nourished before dawn.” The old man then took notice of the suspended, lifeless body of Gwen Boldt. “And get that garbage down from there before Karl returns.”

 

 

Oxford, Super 8

 

“Well, there were two monsters I’d encountered down here: an octopus in the lake and Vornoff after he got mutated. There was a debatable third in Vornoff’s assistant, he likely died when the Willows place was destroyed.” With nothing better to do, Pam went back to the motel and called Baldwin to debrief.

                “Did he have any information on Gorgolov’s whereabouts?” the boss asked.

                Pam shook her head, not that Baldwin could see it. “They severed ties long ago, he said. He didn’t know where he is now. Another man, Strowsky, came looking for Vornoff as well as this gung-ho journalist, but she was more focused on the monster stories. Truth be told, it seemed like Vornoff was trying to strike off and do things himself.”

                “What about that octopus?”

                “Still out there in the lake,” said Pam. “Not sure if we’re going to leave it, collect it, or kill it.”

                “We’ll make a decision.”

                Pam could see a face in the mirror on the wall, it grimaced on the girl in wet Cushies. “Still wearing those things?” The phantom mother came back for another visit. She shook her head and faded.

                The young agent heaved a sigh. “Mr. Baldwin, I’m going to turn in,” she said. “When the next job’s ready, let me know.”

                “Very well. Goodnight, Agent Pampers.” The call ended.

                Pam poked her padding. She hadn’t changed yet, as she felt the diaper wasn’t stinky or soaked enough to warrant a new one. She’d just go to sleep in it and finish it off in the morning. “What do you say to a bedtime story, Macho Bunny?” She scrolled through her phone and picked one out. She crawled under the covers and turned the lamp off. I’m sure by morning a new case will be waiting for me. I’m resigned to my destiny: Pamela Sato, agent of SERAPH and a miserable ABDL...

                The story began to play: “Once upon a time, there was a poor husband and wife who had three sons. Their names were Genius, Average, and Moron…”

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

 

So ends the first entry in my ABDL Monster/Actioner. If any of it seems familiar, this introductory chapter was an adaptation of Edward D. Wood Jr..'s 1955 low-budget opus Bride of the Monster, whose working title serves as the title of this chapter. You can also track down the MST3K treatment it got. Working from the original shooting script, I merely changed a handful of things here and there, namely making certain things make a little more sense and even combining scenes for better cohesion. 

The Gorgolov scenes, however, are 100% original. The bit with the Canadian college student during those portions was something I had expected to land me in hot water when I attempted to post this chapter on ADISC, but they locked the thread over there, so I can't update. Their loss!

 

If you liked this story, please leave a comment and consider leaving me a little tip in the tip jar. It would really help me out.

 

Thank you for reading. Now to start on the next chapter...