Bad Moon E-Zine #1 - New Moon

Bad Moon
E-Zine

#1

NEW MOON

from

Edited by Tom Laimer-Read and published by Let's Rock
Publishing in 2016

Copyright 2016 Let’s
Rock Publishing

Publishing Information

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only.

This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other
people.

If you would like to share this book with another
person,

please purchase an additional copy for each
person.

If you're reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this
author.

double featuring

Complete
Stories:

The Future Isn’t
What It Used To Be
,
Change
,
Death Sushi

Continuing
Serials:

The Grimm Truth
,
Fortress
Europe
,
Steaming
Pistons - The Chamberpot Crisis

Editor’s Note

Welcome to the
new fantasy, sci-fi and supernatural fiction E-Zine Bad Moon #1 -
New Moon. We bring you fascinating tales to enthral and amuse you
every full moon that rises, writing them in between the changing
phases in a flash of inspiration or the attempt to raise mild
amusement, at least.

We have
stories of abstract futures and mysterious pasts, yet all pertinent
to today. We will meet characters from future Tokyo, the
recently-populated planet of Mars, some spectral apparitions who
haunt unexpected places, reimagined Grimm Tales, amongst other
mangled fairytales, myths, parables and legends.

Enjoy the
rocking ride, and hold on tight!

The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be

by Tom Laimer-Read

The schematics
of the Gloomsday Device lay on the metallic trestle table in front
of Dr Gloom, who moodily perused the intricate designs and florid
yet deadly embellishments on this seemingly innocuous
contraption.

He sighed
heavily.

He desperately
wanted to get out of the super villain business. It just didn’t
have the ‘zing!’ to it anymore that it had in the Good Old Bad Old
Days. Back then, people respected the gravity and the ingenuity of
your evil plans for world domination. Crowds shrieked in abject
terror and world leaders quaked and quivered at your feet, pleading
for mercy, forgiveness and a 10% cut of the profits.

Nowadays folk
didn’t give so much as a shrug or a twitch of a whisker when you
revealed your latest petrifying weapon or unveiled your newest
hideous plan to hold a group of spoilt brat politicians and
business leaders to ransom. The big corporations had come in and
priced the original bad guys out of the market with their boring
suits and ties, their mawkish marketing strategies and despicable
Dress Down Fridays. If wearing weekend clothes at work was seen as
something to aspire to now to make the rest of the dreadful, dreary
business tolerable, Dr Gloom wanted no part of this insidious game.
Where was the style? The panache? The tristesse de vivre? The super
villain industry was all but over.

Dr Gloom, real
name Norman Skillet, a retired dentist from Kiddiminster who had
overdosed on laughing gas and could never laugh again, was thinking
of jacking it all in for good and going back to the dental trade.
It was a lot more stable and reliable work, without the stresses
and pressures that came along with super villaining. There was just
no money in being overtly evil anymore, and there were also no
laughs, not that Dr Gloom could laugh, anyway. To be fair, he
didn’t laugh that much before his unfortunate transformation, so it
wasn’t that much of a stretch for him to assume his evil persona,
but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now, now he
was not so sure what route to take.

Flaubert, the
disfigured, globular yet upbeat and infinitely loyal servant of Dr
Gloom, sloped up to the brooding figure to inform him of the latest
daily developments in his evil empire.

“So, good
morning, Sir,” slurped Flaubert with froglike lips. “There’s been a
general increase of evil in the market by around 3.7% this week.
Muggings, hold ups, burglary and general street crime has risen by
a moderate 4.4%, and people being nice to each other has dropped by
a considerable 13.6% net.”

“Oh, how
wonderful,” sighed Dr Gloom. “Flaubert?”

“Yes, master?
What is it?”

“Do you think
that there’s any point to all this... evil palaver?”

Flaubert
looked shocked at the suggestion.

“Of course, Dr
Gloom, Sir! It is imperative that we complete our work! But we
must!”

“Why,
Flaubert? Why bother? What does it all add up to, when all’s said
and done?”

“We have to
work, Master, otherwise, what’s the purpose of our endeavours?”

“That’s what
I’m trying to establish, Flaubert.”

“But that IS
our purpose... isn’t it?”

Flaubert
looked sternly at Dr Gloom, quite shaken by his suggestion. It was
Dr Gloom that gave him a reason to exist, had taken him in when no
other employer would due to his hideous deformities. Without him,
he would be very much alone in the wilderness.

“We must carry
on, Master. We’re evil. It’s what evil super villains and their
servants must do!”

Dr Gloom
surveyed his works and private army milling about on the floor of
his secret evil headquarters below him. He had built this empire up
from nothing, but now it all seemed so dull and tiresome to him.
Like all good super villains, Dr Gloom had loved and lost. She was
called Shirley, and was his former dental nurse. He had had a crush
on her like yesterday’s chop suey in the trash compactor, but it
was never meant to be. He could never find the right words, and she
was never available when it was convenient for him. She had found
solace in the arms of a confectionary salesman from Chichester,
which had caused Dr Gloom to fall into a deep depression and
mistakenly attempt to overdose using the laughing gas that he used
to anaesthetise his patients. This excessive intake of laughing gas
had left his nerves frazzled and fused them into a permanent state
of misery. He already had a lot to be miserable about, what with
Shirley, the confectionary salesman, being named Norman Skillet and
coming from Kiddiminster, as it was, but his disenfranchisement was
pushed over the edge of destruction when he inhaled the gas, and he
could never fully go back to his life before that, pursuing a life
of heinous crime and mayhem in recompense. He still did a bit of
private dentistry on the side, to keep his hand in so to speak, and
assist his employees with their medical packages, but the super
villain business took up most of his time after the incident
occurred, so there was scant time for romance or any other untoward
hobbies like that.

It had all
been such a blast to begin with. In some cases, quite literally. It
was a real wild ride. There was glamour, excitement, hostage
situations, secret missions, jet planes, hovercrafts, crazed
henchmen doing amazingly dangerous feats of terror... and then...
somehow everything had lost its charm. It had slowly become a
chore. Even evil super villains had to fill in invoices to their
suppliers and keep up with their monthly accounts. The tedious
trials of everyday life had taken over, and Dr Gloom was sick of
them all.

“Master, shall
we test the Gloomsday Device? It might help you feel better.”

“Hmm, I don’t
know, Flaubert. Maybe.”

Dr Gloom
observed the intricate gadget before him. He had designed it
himself, but got Flaubert and his engineers to develop it, since
they had the expert technical knowledge in that field. He wondered
if it wouldn’t have been more practical to have invested in
something that might have benefitted people slightly more usefully.
He mused that he could even have gotten on one of those television
programmes where business leaders invest their money in your
project if they thought that it was good enough, or could have done
some kind of crowd funding project over the internet. Still, things
were the way that they were.

The Gloomsday
Device sparkled in the morning sun. It looked as if this escapade
could be his final fling, his Swan Song, his curtain call. He had
better make it a very good, or indeeed very bad, one, and make
certain that it was worthwhile, if not why do it at all? He
expected some kind of feeble heroic response. Word always got out
when a diabolical plan was underway. There must have been leaks and
infiltrators within the organisation, no doubt, but even the rescue
attempts undertaken by his opponents were sloppy and underwhelming
these days. Who would they send this time? His arch nemesis,
Captain Saccharine, or one of the lesser lackeys to complete the
fixture? Captain Saccharine’s super power was to be excessively
cheerful to the extent of breaking down his foe’s will to continue.
It worked extremely well. Even Captain Saccharine was finding it
difficult to scrape around for work these days. He was getting past
it, with rheumatism and gout taking their toll. He was sure that he
would see him again, in time. Perhaps this would be their final
showdown? The thrill of a spectacular entrance had really worn off
a long time ago, it was all too eminently predictable these days
that to Dr Gloom, it was just going through the motions. These days
the new batch of heroes and villains were all gloss and image, it
was a culture of hype without substance. Dr Gloom had seen many
come and go in their tight spandex and rubber outfits, each one
swearing to put him away for good, and each failing miserably. But
it was Dr Gloom himself who was always the most miserable at the
end of it, whether he succeeded or not. He had spent some time in a
correctional facility, where they had tried to cheer him up, which
was more like torture than anything he could have imagined or
embarked upon. It had broken him down even further. He didn’t see
much hope left in the future of being a criminal mastermind, or
anything apart from simple dentistry. You knew where you were with
people’s teeth. Still, there was this, his new invention, perhaps
it would help perk him up a bit?

The Gloomsday
Device was an intriguing development. It had come to him whilst he
was tinkering around in his workshop. He had inadvertently dropped
a hammer on his foot, then bent over to pick it up and injured
himself. This made him think that the universe was an inherently
malicious place that was out to get him and everyone else within
it. What Dr Gloom had considered was a way to magnify this into a
wave beam that intensified the instances of calamities and
cataclysms taking place, in a way that would hopefully destroy the
entire world, and with any luck take Dr Gloom down with it.