Author's Note: Note: in this chapter there will be several references to movies and broadway shows that you may or may not have seen. I will mention them and highly recommend them right now. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers movie. The One and Only Original Star Trek starring Captain James T. Paunch and Mr. Spocky. Zorro, the Gay Blade movie. Anything starring James Bond. Some random Placido Domingo music video featuring 'Lagrimas'. The original Broadway production of Jekyll and Hyde. Also the movie with David Hasselhoff is good. Also thanks to the director of X-Men for directing X-Men. Also thanks to Jim Henson for making my sad little life more fun.
Disclaimer: uy vleep nbarook skeeevers. Isht pahl nbarook ey. Kee wharga?
Camera blinks rapidly several times and goes into slowmo for a few seconds. The scene is very blurry and sparks are shooting everywhere. Then the camera blinks again.
Dracula is sitting very comfortably in a green plush armchair by a cozy looking fireplace. His feet are propped up on a footstool. There is a large bookcase behind him and a golden glowing candle flickering on an end table. There are several pictures on the table of Dracula and his friends. Also a couple of sock puppets. The scene is perfect except for the fact that Dracula's hair is on fire.
Dracula smiles warmly into the camera. He does not look frazzled at all. "Good evening—"
There are suspicious thumping noises.
"—friends. Ve velcome you back to Draculea's Rant." He continues smiling just as if the footstool wasn't breathing and making grunting noises.
Dracula kicks the footstool in the face, "This direct from Hollywood special program is about the whimsical, wonderful and just plain crappy things that happened in that silver screen favorite of ours, the mis-titled Van Helsing." Dracula places his palms together and leans back.
The chair sqeaks indignantly and the fabric starts poking out at odd places. It sounds like it's sobbing.
"I always thought," Dracula continues, "That the movie should be named after the most valuable character. The one character that the movie and everyone in it just couldn't do without….And of course we all know that is Igor." Dracula waves magnanimously offscreen. "Come on out old buddy old pal."
Igor shuffles onto the screen. He wipes his nose on his sleeve and grins sheepishly at the camera. He's holding a six-foot cattle prod. "Hi mom." He says.
"Now Igor what would I do without you?" Dracula says genially, "You always know how to keep unruly creatures under control, and you can foil any attempts on my life, you even know how to quote the Bible…and you know how I find that very comforting on those nights that I can't sleep. I appreciate the effort that you put into making every day a day of excellence and service. How on earth do you do it?"
"I used to work for Quantas."
Dracula looks patriotic for a second. "Oh Igor. You are without a doubt the best most useful character in the entire movie and I motion that we rename the film 'Igor the Minion' in your honor."
Dracula's chair is sort of drowning in it's own tears. It's kinda dripping on the floor.
Igor takes note of the situation, swings his cattle prod to bear and gives the chair a healthy bolt of lighting. "Quit whining and I won't torture you during lunch break."
Faramir's head pops out of his green plush cape, which, incidentally, comprises the chair, "But this isn't even my franchise!"
Carl continues to sob.
"And the monk who looks like Boromir is creeping me out!"
"I'm not a mooooooonkkkk!" Carl wails, "Iiiiiiii'm just a friiiiiiiaaaaaarrrrrrr!" He sniffs up a huge nose-full of snot and blows his nose on Anna's leather corset-ey thing. In case you were wondering, friars are allowed to do that kind of thing. Also Carl has steel nostrils. Just in case you were wondering.
"Eew!" Anna shrieks and jumps to her feet, knocking Dracula out of the makeshift armchair, smacking Van Helsing in the face randomly, and dislodging Frankenstein's Monster from where he had been trying to blend in like a chameleon with a particularly large tome marked 'Macbeth'.
Igor shifts his cattle prod testily, "Should I fry 'em boss?"
"I think you enjoy your work too much."
Igor smiles with pasty rotting skin. "I sure didn't sign up just because I like pasty rotting skin."
"You know…You could not go to makeup in the morning. I guarantee you'd look better."
"No," Igor shakes his head sadly, "Actually without makeup I look worse. My mother was Hillary Rodham Clinton."
The author takes this moment to randomly swing h/s/I's head down from the ceiling. "Um guys. This is supposed to be Frankenstein's Monster's Week. Igor, you have to wait your turn."
Igor points a pasty rotting finger at Dracula.
Dracula grunts and tries to look scruffy.
The author appraises the situation, reaches up onto h/s/I's computer and taps a few keys. Igor, Anna, Van Helsing, Carl, and Faramir all disappear in a sparkling swirl of special effects from Star Trek. Velkan doesn't need to be vanished because he's out partying with the yougurt-men. One of the yogurt men looks suspiciously like Spock. Dr. Spock.
"That was bizarre." Dracula says to a random man standing next to him.
The random man flicks his black cape over his shoulder, straightens his sombrero, and nods. In that order.
"Who are you?" Dracula demands.
"George Hamilton." The man grins like a very happy person who is happier than any person has a legal right to be, "But ju can call me EL ZORRO!" Zorro takes out his sword, stabs Dracula through whatever non-vital organs the network censors would allow and disappears in a puff of glitter.
"Now." the author says blinking stupidly, "That was bizarre."
Dracula frowns down at his chest, "Ouch."
Throughout this inane little escapade, Frankenstein's Monster has been staggering around with a heartstricken look on his face and a wilting boquet of daffodils in one gray fugly looking hand/mass of flesh.
"What are you doing?" Dracula asks and instantly regrets it when Monster begins reciting Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud.' Dracula lunges at him, and clamps a hand over his mouth to silence him, "Shhhh someone will hear."
"Mmmfff grymmmy frrrrrmmm?" Monster asks as eloquently as he can, under the circumstances.
Dracula shushes him one more time and takes his hand off of his mouth, "Monster, how 'bout you tell our nice audience why you're such a Shakespearean crackpot and I was perfectly humane to strap you to a table and make you get hit repeatedly by lightning."
Monster draws himself up to his full ten-foot-and-it-just-keeps-getting-taller height. "Mummy, I was wanting to talk to you about that."
"SSSSSSHHHHHHHH!" Dracula hisses desperately.
Monster shakes his head and sticks his lip out stubbornly, "Now you're not going to change the subject Mummy, I think it's very degrading to have you call me 'Monster' all the time. It just might give people the wrong idea."
"Also the fact that you are dripping green blood from the metal bolts in your chest might give people the wrong idea."
Monster looks heroic, forlorn, and stubborn as only a gothic antagonist can. "No Mummy, it's no use. So I went down to the courthouse and changed my name." He pulls a document out of his slick leather pants. It is coated with a sticky green sheen. "Here, it's legal and everything, so I'd like you to call me by my new name."
Dracula unfolds the paper. "….James…Bond?"
Monster smiles and exposes several copper teeth, "Shaken not stirred."
Dracula squints down at the paper with those gorgeous blue eyes of his, "James…007…Bond?"
Monster pulls a real (not-clip on) bowtie out of his pocket and ties it around his neck expertly. He straightens the bow in a highly seductive fashion. "MI7 agent licensed to kill."
Dracula looks up at him from under one eyebrow, "And so you legally changed your name to James…Bond?"
Monster nods heroically, forlornly, and above all stubbornly. "You're not changing my mind Mummy, I've decided to show the world who I really am! I'm coming out of the closet!"
Dracula swallows a few times, "James…Bond?"
"Yes Mummy? Did you want to say something?"
Dracula's breathing gets rapid and his eyes stare off into the distance, "If you'll excuse me for a second, Monster." He turns and walks offscreen.
Monster looks bewildered and there is a sudden and terrific lighting storm accompanied by what can only be described as 'insane villain laughter.'
Dracula walks back on camera and wipes his mouth. "Well dear audience, cheer up, Monster could still be in his Richard the Third phase, now that was frightening, so we should be happy for what we can get, eh Monster?"
"Bond." Monster says huskily, "James Bond."
Dracula laughs again and a lighting bolt strikes him in the head and makes his hair go all frizzy.
"Wow that's cool Mom," Monster lurches in Dracula's direction, "How do you do that?"
"Bloody annoying!" Dracula smoothes his hair (cue audience swoon), "…wait, didn't those special effects guys do that?"
"No, it looked like you laughed and sparked off a thunderstorm." Monster sticks his hands in his pockets. "By the way Mummy, I used your credit card to buy some new platform shoes. There was this great sale at Payless."
"I can't laugh and spark off a thunderstorm. It's all for dramatic effect." Dracula looks around nervously. "Isn't it?"
"Nah. Try it again, see if it works." Monster looks down at his shoes, "Do you think the leopard print is really me?"
"Oh definitely." Dracula says absently. Then he clears his throat, "Ok, here I go…hehehe ha…oh cough "
It begins to rain.
"Yo siento hundirme y me estremezco" Monster sings in his best 'Placido Domingo' voice.
"Monster?" Dracula shouts over the thunderstorm. "That is…James?"
Monster ignores him.
Dracula does the 'angry face thing' at the sky and it immediately stops raining.
"…si veo caer tus lagrimas….oh uh heh heh. " Monster looks sheepish.
Dracula looks at the camera. He is not wet in the slightest. He points sympathetically at Monster, "Don't you see that he needs the best psychiatric treatment available? Insulin shock therapy, the works?" Dracula looks very cute for being a nasty creepy monster that can frighten an indoor thunderstorm away. He smiles in his best 'cuteness' attitude. "I would like to take this point in time to ask you to donate a dime to help fight Severe Shakespearean Monologue. Many many people suffer from this terrible disease. So give a dime to Vlad's Children and save a life!"
Monster starts digging in his wallet. "That's very touching. How will this money be used?"
"To fund the firewood so that I can burn Van Helsing at the stake."
Monster pulls out a dime, thinks for a moment and then pulls out a twenty dollar bill. "That's so noble of you Mummy."
Dracula growls at him, "Can't you stop calling me Mummy?"
Monster looks bewildered. His lower lip starts to tremble.
"No it's ok. Forget I mentioned it." Dracula snatches the twenty bucks. Or leus, or whatever the national currency of Romania is. "Monster—"
"James Bond."
"James Bond then, you've been rather good tonight, would you like to say something to our nice audience?"
"Two truths are told as happy prologues to the swelling act of imperial theme." Monster turns to Dracula and bows, "I thank you gentlemen…ladies. This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill, why hath it given me earnest of success, commencing in truth?"
"Forget it Monster."
"But Mummy you said…"
"Forget it."
…
"Ok so now what should we do?" Dracula yells accusingly up at the author.
"So how should I know mate? Take a lunch break."
Dracula bares his fangs and lunges at Monster.
"Aaaaakkk!" Monster says "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then it is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!"
Dracula stops attacking Monster and looks something akin to awed. "Why do you randomly quote Shakespeare all the time? It's so stupid. You've never even read Shakespeare! You were raised in an absinthe brewery!"
Monster looks smug. "It's useful. It stopped you from attacking me."
"That's not the point? How come you can quote Shakespeare? It just doesn't make sense."
Monster looks smug-er. "I speak English, German, French, and Arabic. The first book I read was Plato's Republic. I am well versed in all of the classical literature and I also know some significant sum of musical theory."
Dracula raises an eyebrow.
"Just ask Mary Shelley."
"Hey look, if we go by the book, I'm eighty-five with a unibrow and hairy palms."
"I thought you were supposed to look like George Gordon, Lord Byron."
Dracula and Monster turn in unison and hold a moment of patriotic silence for the Gey Gordons…which happen to be the author's clan.
"We're going strictly by the recent movie Van Helsing." Dracula says like nothing happened. "You have to base your character solely off of that and the personality of the actor playing you."
Monster looks disappointed, "You mean I can't base myself off of Boris Karloff? Because he is like so HAWT!"
"Monster, you're frightening young children again." Dracula elbows Monster in the ribs.
Monster pouts. "Someday I'm going to run away to South America and marry an Amazon Chick and have lots of kids. Then you'll be sorry that you didn't create a Bride for me out of dead bodies."
Dracula zaps Monster with a couple of bolts of lighting.
"Well If I can't be Boris Karloff, can I show you my twin brother, Edward Hyde?"
Dracula nods hesitantly, "But only if you don't let Hyde be too gross. No butt-picking on camera. And he can't eat his cigars either."
Monster motions that Edward Hyde walk onstage.
Robert Cuccioli walks on stage. His hair is curly and straggley. He waves his cane. Several fangirls plead for only one little phial of HJ7.
"You're not playing by the rules!" Dracula raises his hands in the scary traditional-Dracula way that he does. "Suffer the consequences!"
"Bad news from God, Teddy!" Hyde shrieks in his oh-so-silky-smooth voice as Dracula transforms him into the Van Helsing Edward Hyde.
Monster looks heartbroken. "What have you done to him!"
Hyde burps contentedly.
Dracula looks at them both appraisingly. "You know. I don't think you're twins at all. You look nothing like him."
"Oh we have the same body. Matter of fact, you know that bat creature that you turn into?" Monster swaggers a bit, "That's my body too."
Dracula lets out a yell that makes everyone who was previously vanished un-vanish.
"Aaaaaaahhhh" screams Anna, still wiping snot off of her corset.
"Aaaaaaahhhh" screams Faramir, trying to get his cape un-stuck from Carl's head.
"Van Helsing? Van Helsing?" Carl says numbly.
Van Helsing does not scream. In fact, he springs to life and uses his can-openers-of-death to hack large chunks of flesh off of Edward Hyde's body.
Hyde watches him placidly.
"Where'd you get those, by the way?" Dracula asks.
"Tupperware. They were on sale." Van Helsing answers and plunges his arms up to their elbows in Hyde-blubber. When Hyde is significantly thinner, Van Helsing looks satisfied and tosses Hyde off of a handy nearby cliff.
Hyde changes back into Robert Cuccioli, "Father!" he gasps and dies.
Anna looks shocked, "But his hair was almost as good as Dracula's why did you kill him!" In revenge she goes over to Faramir, hacks a few limbs off of him and tosses him off of the same cliff. "Take that Van Helsing! I hate you!"
"Well I hate you too!"
"Well I certainly won't kiss you!"
"Me neither mmmff."
This is too much for Frankenstein's Monster. "Nobody loves meeeee!"
Velkan is happily getting a yogurt massage at this time and has nothing to do with the proceedings.
"They're a thorry lot marthter." Igor observes.
Dracula gives Igor a surprised look, "You've been reading those Pratchett novels again!"
"Yeth marthter."
"Well snap out of it." Dracula growls. "Help me think of what to do next. We've run out of characters to rant about."
Igor shrugs, "I dunno. Maybe you should end the rant."
A weird little man with long curly white hair runs on screen, holds up a stick to people, mutters numbers in their faces and runs off.
Dracula and Igor look at each other and shrug.
"Do you know what that was all about?"
"Me neither."
"I suppose you could interview Marishka, Verona, and Aleera."
"They're in Cuba for the weekend."
"Well you could nail the minor characters like that Catholic dude. And the famous surviving cow."
Dracula is in his 'musing' pose. He is looking up at the ceiling dramatically.
Igor shrugs, "Or we could go find Stephen Sommers and torture him for putting us through all of this in the first place."
Dracula snaps his fingers, "That's it."
"YEAH KILL STEPHEN SOMMERS!" a mob of yogurt covered people shout, waving their pitchforks and their bottles of crazy glue.
"Cut his budget!" a skinny young-looking man named Brian Singer yells.
"Make him write disclaimers for all the characters he ripped off!" the author shouts and types random words into h/s/I's computer. The random words later move north and become the disclaimer that you read at the beginning of the chapter.
Anna and Van Helsing come up for air and then start kissing again.
"But where would we find him?" Velkan asks, "We don't know where he lives."
Dracula raises his hands and the entire mob falls silent. "I have a plan."
"Ooooooo."
Dracula motions for the camera to follow him and he starts walking across the soundstage. Parked on one end of the building is a large rainbow-colored bus with the words 'The Electric Mayhem' marked in big letters on the side. Dracula tosses the small fuzzy creature out of the driver's seat and everyone climbs inside. He hotwires the engine and drives the entire getup outside.
The band in the backseat begins playing the musical number that the author promised at the end of the previous chapter. Unfortunately, Monster and Van Helsing sit on them and squash them. Monster spends the rest of the trip lamenting over their poor little broken velveteen bodies. Van Helsing starts singing '99 bottles of beer on the wall'.
And the quest begins for the sixth time….
Will they reach Stephen Sommers house without running afoul of, for one, highway patrol? What is that strange cloud of three white grisly looking girls and several thousand cute flappy bat things that is trailing behind the bus? Does Dracula know how to drive a stick shift? Find out next time in…
Dennis the Menace in Kensington Gardens, or We're Off To See the Wizard.
