Hey, I'm back...and would you believe it, I've been on this site for over a year already! Gosh golly wonkers! Anyways, I remember last Halloween I tried to be scary. I'm not doing that this year. I'm just trying to be entertaining this time around...with some freaky/disturbing elements along the way.
This reads much like Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in the sense that the narrator is actually adressing the audience. I figured I'd give it a try.
This story combined many elements from darker musicals on and off Broadway (Little Shop of Horrors, Bat Boy, Rocky Horror, Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, and many others). So if you are a fan of Broadway or musicals in general, strap yourselves in for Lemony Shepard's Picture Show...
Hello, readers. I am the Lemony Shepard, your narrator and host for the evening. I shall be taking you on a strange, fantastic journey through time and space, through fact and fiction, and through life and death.
As many of you know, Halloween is just around the corner. Many people are preparing for this event by placing pumpkins with ridiculous faces out on their porches and buying cheap, plastic costumes that make them look even more atrocious than they truly are. These people are oblivious to the story I am about to tell you, a tale so bizarre and frightening that only I, the Lemony Shepard, could bring it to you so vividly.
This is the story of a man. A human man, of course. His name was Leopold Bloom, a barber from Fleet Street, traveling to the distant country house of his dear beloved, Kerry Butler. He was dressed in a very nice navy blue suit (rented, of course, for Leo wasn't the most comfortable man money-wise) and had a very strange and interesting plant sitting on his lap.
The plant was only about as large as his hand and resembled a Venus flytrap, with small red warts covering its green pod. It was bought by Leo a mere half hour ago by an old Chinese man on the corner of Fleet Street. The barber was planning on giving it to Kerry as a gift, for she had a great interest in unusual plants.
Sitting shotgun by Leopold was a teenager wearing a nice dress shirt and a red sweater vest. His name was Edgar and he had large ears and razor-sharp fangs in his mouth. He was discovered in a cave many miles south of Fleet Street by Leo's good friend, Dr. Thomas Parker. After the good doctor's untimely death, Leopold agreed to take in the bat-child as his own.
He was also a good cook.
Now, it was raining, of course, outside of Leo's old Ford Prefect, and the ghastly fog that seemed to engulf the cryptic forest they were in simply made the entire picture seem all the more menacing. The radio was playing light jazz, interrupted on occasion by the sound of thunder exploding overhead and static buzzing through the speakers. The dark clouds barely shadowed the full moon, which, apart from the intensity of the Prefect's brights, was the only form of light that pierced through the darkness that eerie night.
Now, an important thing to keep in mind is that Leo was never a brave man. In fact, he won "Most Likely to Die of Fright One Night" in high school. He is literally scared of his own shadow, to the point where he sued it for stalking him (he lost the case, by the way, though that is completely irrelevant to this story). He was terrified of Edgar when he first met him and had only grown accustom to his presence after the bat boy cooked him a delicious meal of tender boneless chicken breasts, asparagus spears with Hollandaise sauce, and red roasted potatoes one evening. He was slightly nervous purchasing the strange and interesting plant until thoughts of Kerry's beautiful, blonde hair and striking blue eyes entered his mind. However, that didn't change the fact that every time lightning struck he jumped five feet.
"Leopold, I must ask you why Kerry asked you to join her at her home on this horrid night." Edgar asked in a rich English accent. Leo narrowed his eyes, absorbing the question. Why did Kerry want him to come over on this night? Even he had no idea.
"I have no idea." He stated.
"Well, the rain is simply intensifying," Edgar pointed out. "And this dirt path is getting less and less easy to see."
"Yeah, Edgar, I'm well aware of that." Leo snapped, trying to keep his eyes on the road. "But it's not my choice, alright? I'm not God, I can't make it stop raining."
"Yes, but I was merely stating-"
"Alright, Edgar, we've got a long ways to go and, frankly, I don't want to spend it arguing." Leo argued. "Somehow, I got lost in this stupid forest…funny, I don't remember this forest at all, actually."
Edgar looked around, rolled down his window, stuck his head out, and screeched, forcing Leo to slam his hands over his ears.
"Edgar! What are you doing?!" he cried out, clamping his hands down on the steering wheel before he lost too much control over the vehicle. Edgar pulled his head back into the car, shook the rain violently off his fuzzy head, and starred at his adoptive father.
"I was using radar to locate the nearest building or shelter." He replied. "Perhaps we could stop and ask for directions?"
"Edgar, I don't need to stop for directions, alright?" Leo said strictly. "This forest has got to end sometime and, when it does, we'll be back on the right track and pull up at Kerry's house in no time, get it?"
Edgar crossed his arms in a childish manner and starred out the window. He did sense a very large building about a mile from where they currently were, but he found it useless to tell Leo since he would only shout again.
Leopold squinted in the darkness, the rain, as Edgar had stated, intensifying. He could hardly make out which shadows were real and which were trees or bushes. The road was getting slippery with mud and the tires were spraying up splashes of mud onto the windows. Leo found himself applying pressure onto the brakes with no results. As panic coursed through his blood veins and into his heart, he felt beads of sweat pouring down his horror-struck face, as he clenched onto the steering wheel for his dear life.
Suddenly, Edgar screeched again, making Leo cry out in terror. His eyes slammed shut as the scream emerged from his vocal cords, his hands slamming down on his ears, the wheels of the Prefect driving directly off the muddy path and into a shallow ditch. Glass shattered out of the windshield like arrows, one piercing poor Leo in the shoulder. The airbags exploded out of the dashboards, catching the two travelers' faces merely seconds before their almost-positive death.
For a long moment, there was silence, a terrifying sound that is usually broken by the sound of someone talking or a loud explosion of some kind. This time, however, the silence was broken by the sound of sucking, like a baby sucking on a pacifier. Leo slowly opened his eyes and grasped his shoulder. He was bleeding pretty badly. He groaned as he quickly removed the shattered shard of now-crimson glass. He sighed, slowly turned his head, and then slapped Edgar's shoulder, perfectly fine.
"Way to go, Edgar!" he shouted angrily. "We're stuck in this godforsaken forest, in the freaking rain, with a car that is totaled! What now?"
Edgar's eyes were fixed on Leopold's bloody shoulder for a second, a look of hunger pulsing over his face. He eventually snapped himself out of the trance and returned his glance to his adoptive father.
"Well…I sensed a large building nearby. Perhaps we could…call a tow truck or something?"
Leo glared at the boy.
"Fine, whatever." He responded, kicking the door open, and stepping outside, strange and interesting plant in his hands. "But one more screech out of you, and I swear to Thespis you will be sleeping in the rain tonight, got that?!"
Edgar lowered his now-drenched head and began to trudge through the mud and rain in the direction of the "large building." Out of the corner of his eye, Edgar could've sworn that he saw a trickle of red liquid being slurped into the pod of the strange and interesting plant…
It would be nice if you commented or critiqued this...
