PART ONE OF “THE NAUGHAHYDE CAGE”

MONDAY

1530

“MY BABY LEFT ME TO BECOME A NUN!” Choog-choog-chooga choog-choog-chooga. “I’M GONNA BLOW HER HEAD OFF WITH THIS BIG SHOTGUN!” Choog-choog-chooga choog-choog-chooga.

The din was horrifyingly loud, and that was the way Pig Blood liked it. They weren’t the best band to come out of Alabama -- they weren’t even the best band to come out of Alabama that week -- but by God they were the loudest.

“Thank you very much, you freakin’ worms!” the lead singer shouted to no one in particular. They were playing the deserted bar of a Motel 6. It was 3:30 on a Monday afternoon, and the band was ready to kill, dismember, pound, chop up, burn, and stomp on the ashes of their manager, Godzilla Joe. The drummer also wanted to rape him, but the drummer was very different in a lot of ways.

They finished up the set with their “Animals Medley” (“Freebird”, “War Pigs”, and “Rock Lobster”), smashed their indestructible cast-iron guitars against each other, and left the stage to a rousing silence.

“All in favor of utterly destroying Godzilla Joe right now?” the bassist asked. His name was Winky. He was built like a mountain. He had to be to hold up his 480lb. cast-iron bass.

“We can’t kill him,” the gargantuan lead singer (whose name was Bubbles) replied. “Who’re we gonna get to replace him?”

“There’s always Ferris,” said the lead guitarist, a juggernaut named Sweetie-pie. “He said he’d do it anytime.”

“Mmm, I bet he would,” murmured the drummer, who stood five-three and dressed like Scarlett O’Hara.

“Shut up, Tank,” rumbled Bubbles. “Ferris just wants to make us sound like Molly Hatchet.”

“I like Molly Hatchet,” Sweetie-pie retorted angrily. “You got a problem with the gods of Southern rock, you little faggot?”

“Hey, I didn’t say anything. Leave me out of it.”

“Shut up, Tank,” said Bubbles. “No, I ain’t got no problem with Molly Hatchet. I just thought we agreed we wanted to sound like an unholy union of White Zombie and Iron Maiden.”

“Well,” Sweetie-pie muttered. “As long as there’s a little Molly Hatchet.” He punched the singer on the shoulder. Peace had been made.

“And some Pet Shop Boys, too –“

”SHUT UP, TANK!” Winky dropkicked the drummer into the empty parking lot. Smiling grimly, he turned back to his bandmates. “Now, about Godzilla Joe. We gotta get rid of him.”

“We can’t get rid of him, Winky. We signed a contract.”

“That wasn’t a real contract.”

“We still signed it,” Bubbles sighed. “It’s still binding.”

“He wrote it in crayon, Bubbles.” Bubbles shook his head sadly. “Sweetie-pie, back me up. He wrote it on the hood of your truck. ‘Godzilla Joe can be our manager.’ That was it.”

“We still signed it, man,” said Sweetie-pie. “Winky, Bubbles, Sweetie-pie, and Toots.” At the name of their fallen friend, the three fell silent. Toots had been their original drummer, and it was their fault he was now trapped in a Lovecraftian Hell. At that moment, their penance came back inside, hips swinging and eyes ablaze.

“If you think you can just slap me around like a two-dollar whore, you’ve got another thiiiii – “ Tank’s tirade became a shrill scream as Sweetie-pie began slapping him around like a two-dollar whore. Wrapping the drummer’s petticoats around his delicate face, Sweetie-pie whacked him twice with his massive imitation Les Paul.

“Too bad we can’t kill him,” the guitarist complained.

“No joke,” said Winky. “Still, though, what if we sacrificed Godzilla Joe to Nyarlathotep or somebody. Wouldn’t that get rid of him?”

“Lemme get this straight,” Bubbles replied. “You wanna offer a loser like Godzilla Joe to the Crawling Chaos? You forget what happened last time we offered an inferior sacrifice?” He pointed to the indestructible Tank, who was even then trying to extract himself from the morass of linen and silk that engulfed him, and they were once again reminded of the eternally damned Toots.

“I guess you’re right,” Winky said, picking up his bass.

“Besides,” added Sweetie-pie, “Godzilla Joe dies, we lose all that free pizza.”

1830

Lucas Gusher sat and stared out of his window.

For more than fourteen years he’d done this every night. He worked all day at the Saizal Novelties factory, packing rubber chickens and losing himself in the forgetfulness of monotony. Then, at 5:03 p.m., he clocked out and walked the six blocks to his one-bedroom apartment on Chaney Street. He spoke to no one, only nodded occasionally to the hooker in front of his building. He climbed up to his apartment, took off his clothes, showered, ate a can of beans, and sat in his chair until he fell asleep, thinking of the fateful game fifteen years before.

Lucas Gusher had been the fifth-string quarterback for the Mizell High School Ravenin’ Spaniels. He was a senior, eighteen years old, 4'10" and seventy-three pounds. Puberty had not yet darkened his door, which made him extremely insecure. Unfortunately, he sucked at football, which made him even more insecure. (The fact that he was the only senior – male or female – who hadn’t slept with Arantxa Corpus-Christi, the Argentinian exchange student, also did no good for his self-esteem.) Then during the last game of the season, his life changed forever.

The Ravenin’ Spaniels were down by two, with one minute left in the fourth quarter. Their archrivals, the Misogynists of Susan B. Anthony High School, had the ball on the Mizell five-yard-line. Through some freakish chain of events, Lucas found himself actually playing, which confused just about everybody.

The Misogynist quarterback threw a perfect pass to his seemingly wide-open receiver in the end zone. Just before what would have been a textbook completion, though, a pair of tiny hands reached up and snagged the ball.

Lucas seemed more surprised than anybody to find the ball in his hands, and for a moment seemed at a loss for what to do with it. Then a surge of testosterone flooded through him. Puberty hit with a vengeance.

He never remembered much of that hundred-yard sprint. Huge bodies rose before him, and he brushed them away, ducking his head and ramming defenders three or four times his size. At the twenty he found himself in the clear; eighty yards of open field stretched before him, beckoning with its siren’s call.

He ran as he had never run before; the entire world seemed to flash by in an instant. He was at Susan B. Anthony’s twenty-yard-line when he heard feet pounding behind him, and at the ten he could hear his pursuer’s breathing. At the five he felt hands grab his shoulder pads, and at the three his world spun around.

The old Lucas Gusher would have gotten dizzy and fallen to the field in frustration, but the new and improved Lucas Gusher tore himself savagely from his captor and ran as if all the hounds of Hell were baying at his heels. In the back of his mind, a small voice told him that he had run a lot farther than three yards, but his adrenaline-choked body disregarded it and kept going. Eventually, he noticed that the other players seemed to have caught up to him, and that the people trying to stop him had uniforms just like his. Just before he crossed into the Spaniels’ end zone, he realized his mistake. As the final seconds ticked away, Lucas Gusher ran off of the field and into oblivion.

2000

“My name,” said the man holding the fountain pen, “is now Island of the Sea Turtles.” He looked around the room for a response, but was granted none. “Meep meep,” he added hopefully. “Meep meep meep.”

The room was filled with women, mostly twentyish, only one of whom ever paid him the slightest bit of attention. She was short and round, about thirty-five, but with a spectacular mane of silver hair falling down her back. “Hong Wang, dearest,” she said quietly, “put your pen down and come sit with me.” She patted the Naughahyde cushion beside her ample hips. The entire house was done in varying shades and colors of Naughahyde. The man the world knew as Hong Wang Spankweiler shuddered to think how many innocent Naughas had been slaughtered to satisfy this woman’s mad decorating scheme.

“My name,” he repeated desperately, “is now – “

”Dearest,” snarled his wife.

“Of course, there’s no reason for us to be so formal, my sweet.” Hong Wang Spankweiler, unlike the rest of the house’s inhabitants, did not have a tail, but if he had it would have been between his legs as he slunk over to the Argentine’s pumpkin-colored Naughahyde couch. Settling beside her, he spoke imperiously to the other women. “As for the rest of you, you will refer to me as Island of the Sea Turtles.” He looked around until he spotted one he didn’t recognize. “Except for you,” he said, pointing with his many-jointed toe. “I’ve always liked you, so you can call me 33 Blue Maga.”

2145

It didn’t take much to hire a werehooker for an hour, which was good, because much was something Reginald Mooney didn’t have a lot of.

The stench from Perky Saizal’s rubber-chicken factory hung in the warm night air. Mooney breathed it in, knowing that if he screwed this up, he’d never breathe in anything again.

He approached the corner of Chaney and Streiber, where she stood in the orange sodium glow of the streetlight. She was beautiful, dark and lean, but more importantly she was definitely a werewolf. Even in human guise she radiated an aura of lycanthrope, and lycanthrope call-girls were pretty hard to find.

The clock on top of Saizal’s plant read 9:45 as he crossed Chaney Street, juggling the silver bracelet in his pocket. The werehooker turned and smiled at him as he approached.

She was tall and very dark, with olive skin and black hair and eyes. “Do you have a cigarette?” she asked, her voice barely tinged with an unidentifiable accent.

“Sorry,” Mooney said. “I don’t smoke.” He could smell the wolf on her, and it smelled very good indeed.

“Me neither,” she replied, smiling sweetly. “It just seemed like a good excuse to start a conversation.”

Mooney ran quickly through his mental file of lines and came up with, “Do I need an excuse to talk to such a beautiful woman?” She gave her eyes a microscopic roll, then grinned coyly.

“I bet you do have an excuse, though, don’t you?” She reached out and took his right hand, examining the lines on his palm for a moment. “Oh yes, I see. You’ve been searching long and hard for me, and now that you’ve found me you’re bulging with anticipation. Now that you know where I am, you’ll be coming back again and again, won’t you?”

“What’s your name?” he gasped as she delicately licked his fingers, hand, forearm, shoulder, shoulder blade, and left knee.

“Milensa.” She continued licking, encompassing both feet, his entire torso, and the majority of his head.

“Pretty,” he croaked. “Is that a Gypsy name?”

She giggled like a schoolgirl caught doing something unspeakable but undeniably funny to her school’s mascot. “Why don’t you cross my palm with a piece of silver and find out?”

Quickly, before she could distract him with any more of that incredible licking, he grabbed her right hand and slid the silver bracelet over it. “I can do better than that.”

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she yelled, trying to tear the bracelet from her suddenly furry arm.

“Well, I’m trying to become a werewolf.” Mooney was immensely pleased with himself. So far, everything was going great. “So what I need for you to do is to bite me.”

“I beg your pardon?” Milensa was not really upset anymore, now that she had gotten a good look at the bracelet.

“You have to bite me.” He smiled. “I’m sorry, ma’am. That sounded pretty rude. What I mean is, you have to draw some blood. With your teeth, I mean, so I can be a werewolf, too.” He didn’t notice that the fur had entirely disappeared.

“And why would I want to do that, Reginald?”

“‘Cause that’s a magic bracelet that makes you do whatever I say.” He looked confused for a moment. “How’d you know my name?”

“We Gypsies know a lot of things, Reginald.”

“Oh. I know lots of things, too. I’ve read all of Hong Wang Spankweiler’s books on werewolf whores.” At the mention of Hong Wang Spankweiler, she started, but quickly regained her composure.

“Really, Reginald? All of them?”

“Well, I may have missed a couple. Actually, I only read one. Part of one.”

Milensa smiled wide, revealing her squeaky-clean canines. “ Then you know what will happen if I do this for you?”

“Um, not really.”

“This,” she said, and her face elongated into a slavering mass of flesh-rending teeth, which she used to rip out Reginald Mooney’s scrawny throat. Then she bit through the cheap imitation-silver bracelet and threw it onto his bloodstained chest. “You got gypped, by the way.”