Unidentifiable Remains

I can't sleep,

so I wander.

Leave the house,

walk the block.

Looking for distractions.

One night, I found one.

Dead animal,

not a possum,

dog, or cat.

No idea what it was.

Brought it home,

put it on the kitchen table,

careful not to wake the fam.

Had to find out what it was.

I took to the internets.

Three eyes should have been a clue.

Nothing on the net with three eyes

No mammal, insect.

Nothing this size

with extended mandibles

More research

gave me no more.

Who can I call?

This may be a new species.

Then I heard it

Scratching at the door,

the front,

so faint,

you would have missed it.

And a whimper.

This was unlike a dog's whimper.

It had a guttural reverb

like several mouths letting it out

with one breath.

I stood by the door and listened.

Eventually, this whimpering thing

lost patience

and pawed at the door harder.

I heard deep grooves 

digging into the wood.

I turned on the porch light

but t was out of site

from the window.

I could only hear it.

And then it started banging into the door, 

The house shook.

The thing howled now.

A terrible sound.

Now I knew it had come for the dead thing.

I knew it would bash through the door to get it.

My back door.

I checked, coast clear.

I tossed the dead onto the porch,

slammed the door.

Moments later I could hear the other.

It cried.

Almost human,

like a baby

I lay against the door

listening.

When I woke up,

my kid was watching TV.

I had fallen asleep on the floor.

Kid didn't seem to notice.

I opened the back door.

Nothing.

The dead thing, gone,

a trail of blood slid off the porch.

I followed it into the back yard

where it disappeared under the pines.

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

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BEHEMOTH: Scene 10 - I'm Big Shot

INT. REC CENTER - RING - NIGHT

Bigs turns just in time to see it wreck into his face, sounds like a car crash.

The crowd winces. 

The chair dents in. Bigs' face dents in, and down he goes.

Big Shot over him, smashing him down more and more, warping the chair, warping Bigs, blood splatting on the ring, the crowd booing,  completely off team Big Shot.

RINGSIDE 

Gore Man is flipping out!

GORE MAN

Stop it! Stop it, you idiot!

Big Shot stops, and now sees, the chair covered in blood, a pool soaking into the mat.  

Bubbling up through Bigs' ruined face.

And the crowd hates him. for the first time in his Big Shot's career, he is no longer a face, and they hate him.

Gore Man is not happy about that.

GORE MAN

Look at this,  look at what you've done. I can't sell this. I can't spin this. You're a goddamn psycho, probably going to jail. Which makes this...

Gore Man happens to have a copy of the contract in his jacket which he pulls out and tears in half.

GORE MAN

worthless.

BIG SHOT

But, I'm Big Shot?

GORE MAN

Not anymore.

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

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TMI: 4 to 10

Thinking about what happened. I want to explore this.  Time, and life and where these things go. Where do my memories hide? Where was I when there are no memories of what had happened during the day.

I was off at 4:30. I went to bed at 10. What happened in between those times? I made a sandwich. Cooked dinner.  That didn’t take 5 and a half hours. So where did they go?

Wait. I remember

I took Sarah to Starbucks and got an iced coffee. She got an iced tea. We ended up sitting in the car talking for an hour.

That was the bid deal yesterday. When your kids get older, they separate from you. The conversations become less encompassing. They used to tell you everything, every dream and fear. Every single random thought that popped into their heads. Then one day they stop, and it all becomes polite. They stick to safe subjects.

I know Sarah carries a lot on her shoulders. All A student and color guard and role model to her brother and sister. Always patient and never complains. So where does IT go? She gets headaches and stomachaches.  Thank God she keeps a journal. All those stresses need to go somewhere.

We talked about anxiety, depression, mania, my three amigos. I told her that she had won the genetic jackpot and if she ever needs to talk to someone, better to do that than suffer in silence.

So that was where the hours went. I just had to sit calmly for a moment for it to come back. 

Oh, that was something else I told her. 

When you get older, being alone and still with your thoughts is too terrifying for people. They would do anything to prevent it from happening. Whole chunks of the economy are based on keeping yourself away from yourself.

Just your typical father-daughter chat.

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

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x

x

TMI: The Baking Incident

Abbie and I attempted to cook macarons yesterday. I had been held up in the shed for hours, working on a thing. She would come up every so often and ask me, ”Now? Are you ready now?”

“Not yet,” I would say, “Soon.”

By 5 PM she was done waiting and pulled me into the kitchen.

Curse you YouTube! You make it all look so easy. Baking is like brain surgery, and baking macarons is like taking out a tumor over the pituitary. It's three simple steps that we quickly ran rip shod all over.

It started well enough. The happy YouTube people were patient and clear. I made the first decent meringue of my life. Got those peaks standing up, son! But my victory was short-lived.

The next step, add dry to wet. Fold and fold until you can figure eight the batter. How much sugar did I use? Way too much.

All dry ingredients together, except for granulated sugar. That is just for the egg whites. Now you tell me. I had used double what I needed.

"So these are going to be really sweet."

Abbie’s face lit up! Nothing wrong with that.

Now, the disaster. Piping batter onto parchment takes a steady hand and experience. It also takes the right piping tip on your bag. I had none of these things. Abbie was furious over the malformed blobs I produced. Like she could do better!

The situation devolved from there. Abbie yelling and calling me names. Me dishing it back as hard as she delt it. She is 8. I am 44.

“You don’t like these, fine, they are probably going to taste crappy anyway!” 

“They are going to taste crappy because you put in too much sugar!”

She was right, but I was.out of patience. Messing up 8 more dishes to make the buttercream icing wasn't going to fix anything. 

“‘No icing? The whole point is icing!“ Abbie protested.

She threw something at me and stormed off. I tossed the pans in the oven. Cookies are cookies after all. I could hear her sulking. Let her sulk.

20 minutes later the abominations emerged from hell. Liver shaped and glossy on top.  We had no food coloring, so, they had the shade of dried feces. "Come try these," I called out. Abbie and the perpetually sweet-toothed Cameron approached the tray as if it would spray them with poison.

A few crunches later, Abbie admitted they weren’t too bad.

She doesn’t know how angry I was at them. The YouTube people, who lied to me. Who giggled throughout the entire process. Not once calling anyone names or throwing projectiles. They seemed so smug and sure, and confident. Everything I mistrust.

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

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DISCO FRANKENSTEIN

DISCO FRANKENSTEIN

By Sam Drog

Back in the 70s, and not many people know this story, so I’m telling it to you now, but I totally realize that you may not believe me. You can go back and check these facts, but you probably won't find much. Sure, disco was a thing. And yes, Frankenstein may pull up 100 bad movies on IMDb. But the connection, only a few know the connection.

You can laugh if you want, I’m just repeating what I heard one night in 1998 while sitting at the Waffle House.

The drag queen had a thick Eastern European accent.  Like what you would think of as Romanian if you weren’t sure where they were from. This was 3 am. I was an insomniac 20-year-old with a love for solitude and Waffle House coffee. The waitress would set a pot at my table, and I would give her five dollars and drink it down over the next two, three hours as I worked on my great American novel, which is, as of now, still unfinished.

But anyway, let's stick with the queen. Three booths down, she was holding court to a gaggle of club kids and an old tramp they had picked up to give a meal to. He had no interest in the story she was singing out. He kept face down, staring transfixed into his chili as if it was a wishing pool and that he could see his future materializing there in the greasy beans. The queen was going on and on about the good old days.

She was from Romania. I was right! Her sleepy village lay right at the steps of the Carpathian Mountains. This was back in the 1970s, and the queen, Madame Buttergrind, she revealed herself as, was trapped in a town that was stuck in the 1570s. That all changed when she opened the first all-night discotek in Romania.

This was a very dangerous thing to do. The Soviets still controlled the area, and any western influence was strictly prohibited. Buttergrind could get a bullet to the head if she was discovered. She would have to be tricky. The sign outside the club said "The Carpatian Re-education Center." But inside was something else altogether.

Inside, the world got crazy, Donna Summers got loud, and the townspeople, especially the younger ones, traded in their farm clothes for polyester one night each week. Saturday night became the one night they looked forward to.

It was tough though, Buttergrind couldn’t deny that. She always had to look over her shoulder. It would only take one squealer to send the iron fist down on top of them. But she felt like she was doing a public service. Even the old-timers had started to come in on Saturday night, dancing until dawn. The valley surrounding them echoed for the first time with The Bee Gees, The Village People, and Sister Sledge. And somewhere, deep in those towering shadows, someone was hiding, and someone was listening, and they made themselves known one special night.

On the last night of the month, The Carpathian Re-education Center held a dance competition and the winner would win a golden crown and reign as king for 30 days, after which they would have to defend it against a swarm of competitors. For the last 3 months, Yergi Clompovich, the town’s blacksmith, was king. No one could beat him. No one, until a tall, dark, and gruesome stranger came stomping in on that night, October 31st, 1979. You won't find it in any history books, the Soviets saw to that, but that night was nothing if not historical.

The gruesome guy, a first-time visitor to the club,  was not human. He was humans. Stitched together. Parts from many making one. But, my god could this beast dance.

Yergi lost his crown to this towering inferno of moves and grooves as, appropriately,  Le Freak by Chic blared over the speakers. Yergi could not keep up. The beast was unstoppable, drawing strength from the sounds The bolts on his neck cracking with raw electricity. At one point, he jumped into the air, did a triple somersault, then crashed down onto his back, knocking the needle off the record and sending the place into shocked silence.

Frankenstein, come on, you know who it was, let out one of those famous howls and, ninja-like, lept back to his feet, the music got back on beat, and three maidens fainted in ecstasy.

Yergi, the humble blacksmith, gave the crown over that night, though truth be told, it was way too small for Frankenstein's square head and had to be hammered into place. People cheered. It looked like the night would never end, but, unfortunately…

x

"My coffee is cold,"  Madame Buttergrind said. Her face changed, sagged down and I could see the years come crashing back, with the lines under her fake lashes and the hanging jowls she hid under the black boa. Something happened next that still haunted her. Someone had ratted them out. The KGB had eyes and ears everywhere.

Moments after 4 am, seconds after the crowning of the new king, the army showed up. Two dozen men, armed with machine guns, murder in their eyes, flooded into the club. The villagers were beaten.  Buttergrind tried to stop them, but was given the stock of a rifle to her face and was out cold. Frankenstein, King of Disco, saw all his new friends being rounded up and pushed outside for the firing squad.

These were his friends, his first friends, the only people who had ever accepted him. He couldn’t let this happen. He wouldn’t let this happen.

This party wasn’t over.

Buttergrind was awoken by screams, blood-curdling screams of men losing their minds to terror. There was The King, ripping arms from their sockets, taking bullets to the chest and not even wincing. The bolts on his neck glowing red. He lifted one solder high over his head and ripped him in half. Blood and entrails splashed down over his crown and onto the dance floor. Soldiers too scared to run were slaughtered. Those that did run, were shot by the officers hiding outside in their jeeps.

The club was silent again, the skipping end of the last record was the only sound. The King helped up Madame Buttergrind and she hugged him so hard that even he had to gasp. But now, outside, villagers screamed, and the rattling sounds of heavy machinery were growing louder. The King and Buttergrind stormed out the front door and were met by a tank turret pointed right at them.

Across the street, the commander of this red brigade, poking his scared face out of the tank, screamed the order to fire. The King grabbed Buttergrind and lept out of the way just as a massive shell fired into the front of the disco.

Detonation!

The building, an old stable, was obliterated in a cloud of fire and smoke. The villagers ran. Buttergrind screamed and wept.

But the King had nothing but murder on his brown and blue eyes. He rose from the mud and approached the tank. The commander, his eyes wide with fear ducked down into the steel machine and locked the porthole. Inside, he screamed to reload and blow the approaching monster to kingdom come.

Frankenstein picked up speed and grabbed the turret, and with an excruciating display of raw power, bent the barrel up to a 90-degree angle. Seconds later, the fools fired the cannon.

Shrapnel filled the cabin. Fire spread quickly, cooking the shredded bodies off all that were inside, including the commander. His blood sizzled over the hot metal.

The check was due.

The tramp had finished his chili and there wasn't much story left. The club kids were speechless. Madame Buttergrind sighed.

On that long-ago morning, The King returned to the mountains and was never seen again. Though some say, on quiet October nights, deep in the darkest regions of the Carpathians, if you are still, and silent, you can hear the far away echos of Le Freak throughout the valley.

Buttergrind paid her check and went to the ladies room. The club kids jumped into their orange and green van. The tramp wandered off into the darkness. After a moment, she came back out and saw me looking. She smiled at me, “Good night Frankenstein”.

I growled back, “Gooooood niiiiight.”

And with that, Madame Buttergrind jumped into the van with her adoring children and tore away down Hwy 54.

The End

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

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The Unluckies - a short screenplay

INT. BEDROOM - MORNING

A middle-aged man, TONY, wakes up in his bedroom to the sound of his alarm clock. The clock sounds like an electric chicken. Tony hits the alarm and gets out of bed. He is dressed in the same crumpled blue jeans and black shirt from the previous day. His face has several days of beard smacked on it.

BATHROOM

Tony looks at himself in the mirror

TONY
Hi there, handsome.

Tony takes the mouthwash and gives his mouth a quick swish. Immediately, pain hits his face. Tony spits. In the sink, ribbons of red blood mixed with the icy blue foam from the mouthwash.

Tony opens wide and looks deeply into the mirror, into his mouth, and sees nothing strange. He closes his mouth and pokes around with his tongue and gets the sudden shooting pain again.

INSIDE MOUTH

His tongue sliding over his dull yellow enamel, until, bingo, a soar deep in the back, under the last molar. The tongue touches the soar and

TONY

winces in pain.

KITCHEN

Tony has taken all the medicine out of a cabinet. They are laid out in a row as he searches, and in the process, organizes the endless bottles and boxes. Aspirin, antihistamines, Tums. On and on the colorful packages stretch. Finally, at the very back of the cabinet, his hands find a small tube of Orajel.

The tube used to be white, but over the many, many years, lost it in the back of the cabinet, it has turned gray and dingey. Tony looks at the expiration date, 4/3/1977, Are you kidding?

TONY
I was two.

Tony’s tongue finds the soar again and he winces.

The lid is unscrewed and a dab of greasy gel is squeezed onto his finger, the finger into the mouth, the gell smeared on the soar and…

IN THE SOAR

chemical reactions, the gell in the blood, the blood transformed, the blood in the body, through the heart, to the brain.

KITCHEN

Tony takes a deep breath

VOICE (off-screen)
Pass the bacon!

and looks over at the kitchen table. He hadn’t said anything. No one was home but him. At least not until five seconds ago.

Now, sitting at his kitchen table, eating a hearty breakfast of eggs bacon, grits, and toast, are FIVE LITTLE GREEN MEN. Elvish, or gnomish, or impish, whatever you prefer. They all have green glittery skin and they all are wearing technologically advanced suits that have dials and displays and tubes running in and out of multiple sockets. They are all male, all middle-aged, like him, all pretty much identical, like worker bees.

LEAD IMP
Let’s go over the schedule.

HUNGRY IMP
Please pass the bacon

LEAD IMP
9 am

ALL IMPS

Hide his keys

LEAD IMP
10 am

ALL IMPS

Flatten his tires.

LEAD IMP
11 am

ALL IMPS

Text his boss, calling him an asshole

LEAD IMP
12 pm

ALL IMPS

Lunch

LEAD IMP
Where?

HUNGRY IMP

Chinese?

GRUMPY IMP

Again.

HUNGRY IMP

BBQ?

AGREEABLE IMP

I could do BBQ.

LEAD IMP
BBQ it is. 1 pm.

ALL IMPS

Delete his hard drive

LEAD IMP
2 pm

ALL IMPS
Reflatten his tires.

LEAD IMP
3pm

TONY
Hey! 

The table of imps freeze, some with half-chewed food in their mouths, one in mid-reach for more toast.

TONY

What are you guys doing in my house?

NERVOUS IMP (whispering)

He couldn’t, right?

LEAD IMP

Nah, he ain’t talking to us.

TONY
I’m talking to you! What the hell are you little freaks doing in my kitchen!?

HUNGRY IMP

He sees us.

NERVOUS IMP
Oh my god.

AGREEABLE IMP

What do we do?

HUNGRY IMP
You should say something.

NERVOUS IMP
We should run.

LEAD IMP

That’s it.

AGREEABLE IMP

Yes! 

LEAD IMP

Run!

ALL IMPS

Run!

The imps jump from the table.

Tony runs after them, but they scatter. He catches the Lead Imp and lifts into the air, facing him.

TONY

Who are you? How did you get...

Lead Imp hits a button on his wrist. A MECHANICAL ARM deploys from a little box mounted on his shoulder.

TONY
... in my...

The mechanical arm pokes Tony with a taser and knocks him to the floor. 

Lead Imp crashes on top of Tony and grabs him by the collar. Tony is completely paralyzed, his face frozen in terror.

LEAD IMP
Who you calling freak, freak? He’s down guys! Regroup to Alpha. Mission aborted.

NERVOUS IMP
Mission aborted? Thank god!

LEAD IMP (to Tony)
You are going to forget everything you’ve seen here today. Got it?

Tony groans, it is all he can do.

LEAD IMP
Or better yet, tell everyone. You’ll be in the loony bin by Friday. Hahaha.

The other imps gather\ around. Agreeable Imp speaks into a radio mounted on his wrist.

AGREEABLE IMP
Mission control, we need a teleport to Alpha ASAP. Mission Aborted. Target acquired insight.

LEAD IMP

Don’t tell them that.

AGREEABLE IMP

They’re going to want to know.

NERVOUS IMP

So much paperwork.

LEAD IMP

I’m not going under the bus for this one.

HUNGRY IMP

Me neither.

LEAD IMP

None of us are. Cool it.
(to Tony)

You are going back to sleep. And when you wake up, this will all have, obviously, been a dream. You‘ll call your boss, tell him you overslept, and get back to your crappy little life.

Tony’s face is frozen. He whimpers, his mouth hanging open.

LEAD IMP

Oh, that reminds me.

The Lead Imp reaches into Tony's mouth, and from under the back molar, embedded in the soar, he pulls a long silver needle with a cobalt blue light on the end.

He shakes the spit off and places the needle in a small metal tin with dozens of other similar needles.

Tony's eyes show all the shock and horror that his mouth won't allow him to say.

FRONT DOOR FOYER

HUNGRY IMP
Get back, everybody!

Time and space rip open into a swirling vortex. Wind and lighting rage, sending everything that's not bolted down flying through the air as if an indoor hurricane had erupted.

Tony, mind snapping, screams and screams as one imp after another leap into the vortex and disappear. The Lead Imp pauses and turns to him.

LEAD IMP

Take it easy Tony, we'll be seeing ya, but you won't be seeing us!

He takes out a ray gun and shoots Tony with a bolt of energy.

Tony is out, and Lead Imp jumps into the vortex. Flash! The vortex is gone. The house is a silent wreck. Papers drift to the ground and are still.

Time passes.

Tony sleeps

More time passes

He awakens and lurches back to the

KITCHEN

The microwave clock says it is 6 pm.

He grabs his phone and dials.

CUT TO BLACK

Voice track over the credits.

Steve the Boss

Hello

TONY

Steve, it’s Tony.

Steve
Tony? Jesus man, we called you 100 times. Where have you been?

TONY
I was... I overslept

Steve
Overslept? Dude, it's 6 PM

TONY
Yeah, it’s late. I think I must be sick.

Steve
Too sick to answer your phone?

TONY
Um maybe. I may be really sick.

Steve
Well, today really sucked because of you.

TONY
I don’t know what happened.

Steve
Barbara had to come in, and you know she wasn’t happy about that.

TONY

Oh Jesus, I’m so sorry.

Steve

So if you want to keep your job you better say something incredible. I hate to put it that way, but this has become a real pattern for you.

TONY

I know.  My keys, my wallet, They keep getting...

Steve

I've heard it all. You are a broken record. I mean, once, twice, sure. But you are a mess, Tony.

TONY

I’m a mess, yeah, a mess. But I think I got it figured out. I think I know what’s been happening to me.

Steve

Oh yeah,, what. What's been happening?

TONY

I, well, you ever seen Time Bandits?

END





FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

Buy Satanic Killer Chicken Here!

Watch Short Films Here!