Codename Prague (8 page)

War broke out. Scikungfi masters invaded the tent like a flock of vampire bats, attacking circus performers and circus-goers with equal intensity, flying back and forth as if on wires, ripping off body parts, swinging and twirling staffs and nunchucks and electric eels and hurling endless splash weapons that mangled their targets irreconcilably. Whips cracked. Jungle cats roared. An out-of-place flapper sang earsplitting doo-wop…Stench of manure. Hay bales on fire…Genetically enhanced porcupines fired mushroom clouds of poisonous quills that made people explode. Jugglers threw torches at hot dog salesmen. Tightrope walkers hung themselves with bungee nooses. An electric mastodon with a preprogrammed prejudice against birdwatchers stomped on one, two, three, four birdwatchers…Tsunami of surrogate blood, mudslide of entrails. Haunted house screeches and moans…Pulp alien octopi-craft stormed the circus, reducing animals, humans, mutants to puddles of semi-conscious sludge. A brigade of comic book superheroes followed in the aliens’ train and committed their own irreplaceable acts of ultraviolence…

…
Cirque de socius
, thought Dr Teufelsdröckh. If a man doesn’t have a woman, he tries to get a woman. If a man has a woman, he tries to get another woman.
Fin
…

He opened an umbrella to shield himself from the rain of gore. “I have in my possession one of John Keats’ death masks,” he continued, oblivious, raising his voice above the hullabaloo. “It’s an original, constructed the day after he died by a Roman
creatore del candlestick
. Do you know that Keats’ visage was the spitting image of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s? The cheekbones. The lips. The chin…Do you know who Jean-Claude Van Damme was? Have you ever seen the film
Bloodsport
? Let me ask you this: have you ever seen
No Retreat, No Surrender
, or, even better,
Breakin’
? Van Damme appeared in all of these films. And while his acting skills left something to be desired, he certainly did have a nice body, and he was a remarkable protoscikungfi fighter. If only Keats had possessed the actor’s body. And his moves.”

Dr Teufelsdröckh ventured a look at Delilah Jive. She was dead. And in two parts. One part twitched wildly on the floor as the other leaked aromatic coffee beans.

How long had he been talking to himself?

He felt a tug on his shoulder. He turned around.

Truth.

“What the? How did you get in here?”

Truth shrugged. “Beauty ate all the celery. We need more.” He shrugged again. “What should I do?”

Poltergeists began to leap out of people and devour the residual bodies. “Christ. I can’t leave you alone for fifteen minutes.” It was time to leave anyway. But that didn’t mean Dr Teufelsdröckh had to like it. He tried to steady his breath, wondering what Truth and Beauty could have been doing with celery. He despised celery. An entirely lackluster vegetable. He certainly wouldn’t have authorized its use, even privately. “This is the last straw,” he assured Truth. “Come with me.”

Escorted by the gongs of Apocalypse, the doktor and his assistant left the Question Mark Circus, tipping the head waiter at the door as they hurried into the brown night.

06

The Count of Vincent Prague

“Eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine, nrrrrrrr…”

He trailed off. He hadn’t been counting long. But there was nothing else to do. He grew bored of the count quicker than desired or anticipated. How long had he been incarcerated here? No more than a few hours. Maybe just a few minutes. Now what could he do?

This is what happened next: eighteen years passed…

07

Eleven Mad Scientists & Fifty-Five Monsters

The monster-making kit came with four additional items, free of charge: a Mr Hyde action figure, a test tube of hemlock (in case the final product turned against its master), a vintage 8-track cassette tape of the Cryptkicker’s song “Monster Mash” (incl. four remixes), and a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair. The hair wasn’t authentic, but it had been cloned from a simulacrum of a replica of a carbon copy of a genetic twin of the original mane’s imagined DNA. Batteries not included.

“For a little extra,” said the monster peddler, “I’ll throw in this DAT, too. Can’t get this one anywhere anymore.” He inserted the tape into a vaginal slit that opened in his forehead, pressed his right nipple, and opened his mouth. A Bass-O-Matic version of “The Purple People Eater” flooded the room.

“No thank you!”

He pressed his left nipple, closed his mouth. “Suit yourself. Your loss.” His chest ejected the tape. The monster peddler crushed it in his fist and tossed it into an incinerator hole. “Everything’s in the contract,” he grumbled, “although this is the black market and contracts are entirely irrelevant and worthless. But I like to tickle my customer’s funny bones.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

“That was a fake laugh. Just remember what I told you about making the unit your own. Basic assembly is only the first step. After that, it’s up to you. Your monster can be anything you want it to be as long as you don’t muck it up. Get it?”

“I understand.”

“I require a signature at this point please.”

“Signature? I thought this was the black market?”

The monster peddler pointed at his elbow. “Funny bone.” He handed the customer a slip of paper and a magic marker. “At the bottom, sir, please.”

Dr Teufelsdröckh perused the document:

QUANTITY 1 ACME MONSTER MAKING KIT® sold to QUANTITY 1 PERSON. The seller is not responsible for ANYTHING that happens (pertaining to the aforementioned ACME MONSTER MAKING KIT® or life and the universe in general) after the conclusion of this transaction to QUANTITY 1 PERSON, who buys at his own risk, of his own free will, and according to his own code of ethics.

Satisfied, he put his signature on the document—

Honk Honk!

—and removed his spectacles. The monster peddler scanned his retinas and extracted payment.

“You know, those sight refining instruments are out of style.” The monster peddler pointed at the spectacles.

“Sight refining instruments? You mean my glasses?”

“Glasses? I drink from glasses, sir. I don’t look through them.”

Dr Teufelsdröckh put his spectacles back on. “
Auf Wiedersehen
.” Tucking the box in an armpit, he crawled out of the manhole and rolled across the street onto a slidewalk…

That evening, in the laboratory…

“It isn’t working!” exclaimed Truth. Beauty cowered behind an anatomical skeleton as the monster repeatedly stabbed itself with shards of broken test tubes. They had already made ten monsters. None of them worked. That is, all of them either failed to come to life or came to life and tried to commit suicide. The assistants began to spin Grimm-like fairy tales in which ne’er a monster functioned properly.

Dr Teufelsdröckh remained positive. “Chins up. Panic theories are for the Henpecked.” He struck the monster in the back of the head with a hammer. A bolt of wet lightning exited the wound and the monster collapsed. Truth and Beauty took it by the arms and legs and heaved it atop the pile of monsters in the corner. “What we need,” the doctor said, “is an effektive architect. Clearly I am not that architect. But perhaps I can create an organism capable of creating my
desiratum
.”

“Perhaps,” said Truth, overconfident in the doktor’s power to fail.

…The subsequent
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
(trans. mad scientist monster) was eight feet tall.

Truth and Beauty tried to strap a lab jacket onto the
Wütendeswissen-schaftlermunster
that was six sizes too small. The
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
s
watted them away. But the assistants kept coming back. Eventually Dr Teufelsdröckh blew its head off with a shotgun. “Too tall,” he noted.

The next
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
was not only too short, it had a severe case of phocomelia; armless, its hands hung from its shoulders like rubber gloves. Dr Teufelsdröckh plunged a
nagamaki
into its chest…

The third
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
looked like Donald Pleasence.

“Donald Pleasence?” said Beauty, raising his bushy eyebrow. Juxtaposed with its considerably diminished peer, the eyebrow looked alive. As if, the doktor thought, it might be an organism in and of itself.

“He played Dr Loomis in those
Halloween
movies,” said Dr Teufelsdröckh. “Sam Loomis?”

Truth shook his head.

“You’ve never heard of a movie called
Halloween
? Or
Halloween II
? And so on? I should fire you for that alone.”

“I only watch silent films,” said Beauty.

“I saw
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
,” bragged Truth.

“I wasn’t in that installment,” admitted the
Wütendeswissenschaftler-munster
in an aggrieved British accent. “Nor was Michael Myers.
Season of the Witch
has nothing to do with the
Halloween
series. The plot concerns an evil-doing corporate magnate who manufactures a line of novelty masks that spew serpents and ooze bugs and eat people’s heads. Brilliant. But an anomaly. A barracuda in an aardvark colony, so to speak. And yet I’d argue that it’s easily the best installment.”

“I can’t disagree,” said the doktor, and killed the
Wütendeswissenschaftler-munster
with a geyser gun…

The eighth
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
finally satisfied the doktor, but after failing to create eleven functioning monsters, he killed it and created another one, which failed to create twelve functioning monsters before losing its life. He told the tenth
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
to create another
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
to do the job that neither it nor its colleagues hadn’t been able to do. The
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
resisted, claiming it wasn’t like the others. It also claimed that it was a deeply spiritual being and a son of God and killing it would be murder. Dr Teufelsdröckh thought: What would Thomas Carlyle do in his position? Give the
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
the benefit of the doubt? Respect its spirit of faith in God and itself? Dr Teufelsdröckh tried to embrace an Everlasting Yea…which, per usual, was usurped by an Everlasting No, and he insisted that the
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
create another
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
to do his bidding. Reluctantly the
Wütende-swissenschaftlermunster
obeyed…and created another Donald Pleasence lookalike. This one, however, possessed venomous tentacles and a deadly mouth-within-a-mouth à la the
Alien
film franchise.

“That’s better than I could do,” the doktor admitted. “But not good enough.”

He ordered the Pleasence/Alien
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunster
to kill its maker, then itself. The monster croaked, “Nothing can stop Michael Myers…”

…“I don’t understand it.” Dr Teufelsdröckh poured himself a glass of table wine and took a sip. He cut up a block of Gruyere cheese and ate a slice. He chased the Gruyere with a croissant. Truth and Beauty watched him. “There. That’s better.” He wiped off his mouth. “What am I doing wrong? I followed the instructions.”

“Sometimes instructions lie,” said Truth.

“Instructions don’t lie,” replied the doktor. “Truth lies.”

“Him, you mean?” asked Beauty, pointing at Truth. “Or the concept of honesty?”

Truth punched Beauty.

“
Hören Sie auf!
” Dr Teufelsdröckh finished the wine and put his glass aside. “At any rate, these
Wütendeswissenschaftlermunsters
are a waste of time, energy and resources. If one wants something done, one must do the thing oneself.”

Twenty-two monsters later…

“That looks like Jean-Claude Van Damme with a mustache,” admitted Truth, itching an armpit. The burlap fabric of his orderly uniform was almost unbearable. But the doktor insisted, advocating burlap’s many half-lives.

“I disagree,” said Beauty. “Dressed in a bowler hat and tramp suit, it would bear an unmistakable likeness to Charlie Chaplin.”

Truth huffed. “You’re wrong. Its face is too sharp and angular.”

The monster goosestepped back and forth across the laboratory, reciting fragments of “Endymion.” Now and then it tripped over discarded body parts and slipped on puddles of viscera, motor oil and fiberoptics, but it never fell down. Dr Teufelsdröckh looked at the monster with equal measures of terror and wonderment.

Truth said, “It’s not as ripped up as Van Damme, though. Van Damme had a better body. He was like an anatomical dummy. He was probably a clockwork man. This thing is downright flabby by comparison.”