with a vacant stare and wispy little voices that sounded all stupid, like they were reading cue cards. Years ago, the man-hungry Venusians sent Special Agents M and W—a.k.a. Jayne Mansfield and Andy Warhol—to acquire human cocks for their trendy Venusian supper-clubs, where big clunky Cuban heels were all the rage.
The Venusians weren’t really mean: they knew guys kinda liked having cocks. So after they cut off some fella’s yogurt-gun, they replaced it with a fully functional synthetic boner made out of durable alien bio-plastic, capable of having seven orgasms in a row.
So Agents M and W travelled the world, luring hunky-boys to their evil lairs, plying them with pills and cigarettes laced with hog tranquilizers, then chopping off and teleporting the tasty tube-steaks to Chez Twilight Zone. The woozy hunky-boys then woke up with big plastic schlongs, complete with faux veins, waggling around between their legs. And first the hunky-boys would be all freaked out—but then they’d find out that these particular Thanksgiving turkey-necks were able to spurt home-style gravy ’til the cows came home. That made them feel a little better.
But: there was a side effect.
IT’S ALL UP TO ME. STORED IN A MISSILE SILO ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, I STAND READY TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE, THE FLOWERS, AND ALL THE LOVELY BOOKS.
You’d think a guy with that much money could afford a better haircut:
Death doesn’t exist on Venus: them jet-trash space jackanapes used to just wear out...just erode away like living pencil erasers. And all the little chunks and bits that wore off kept on living. If something and someone cut up a Venusian with a machete or farm implement or something equally nasty, the pieces instantly became separate entities that could not be reattached. You could hardly walk down the street on Venus without stepping on somebody’s pinky or spleen or something. But then, if you were wearing big clunky Cuban heels, you probably wouldn’t notice. If a Venusian was badly injured, or got really sick, he or she would just take a nice refreshing decades-long nap. The sort of nap any Earthling might easily mistake for death.
That whole ‘ain’t-gonna-die’ quality is inherent in all things Venusian—even their bio-plastic. So, when those radically-altered hunky-boys passed away, their undying synthetic boners would begin sending polymeric pseudo-nerves through their rotting flesh. It would take about fifty years, but finally, revivified zombie-boys would come a-scratchin’ and a-squirmin’ and a-creepin’ out of their graves—and oh, surely each was a slave to the rampant Venusian trouser-boa between its legs.
Fast forward:
One fine day, John Q. Spaceman and Little Miss Meteor were flying around on Buck Rogers jetpacks, happily blabbing about all the test-tube babies they’d have after they were connubially interfaced. They had just landed in Neutron Park, right next to the statue of Rex Reed, America’s most beloved President, when suddenly! from out of nowhere! Andy Warhol and headless Jayne Mansfield came strolling along. Despite a touch of worm-nibbling around the edges, Jayne looked pretty good for a women whose head had been snicked off in a car crash. She carried a sequined pink bowling bag, swinging it back and forth in time to the swaying of her hips.
As for Andy Warhol: well, he’d always looked a little zombied-out anyway, so his groovy dirtnap (in his top-secret vault beneath the employee lounge of a Campbell Soup factory in Idaho) had actually improved his appearance by fifteen percent.
And THEN! John Q. Spaceman and Miss Meteor were felled by simultaneous heart attacks when they saw the unspeakable horde that followed Agents M and W. Those wacky plastic-penised hunky-boys had risen from their graves, and now they were on the loose. The crusty, lusty zombies bumbled forth like erotic rumba dancers on acid, sticking their insatiable pseudo-salamis into every available hole: knotholes, beehives, even the sundry orifices of two young lovers who’d dropped dead of fright directly in their path.
A ROBOTIC SENTINEL (DESIGNED BY THE RENOWNED NEPTUNIAN SCIENTIST ERNEST HEMINGWAY) BIO-ENERGIZES ME TO OUTLANDISH PROPORTIONS, MUTATES MY HIDE INTO A METALLIC CARAPACE, AND SLAPS A FEW HEAT SHIELDS HERE AND THERE FOR GOOD MEASURE.
Sassy neck-stump lookin’ fine/gonna make it mine all mine:
Cha-cha-dancin’ Jayne Mansfield and an undead battalion broke into the jetpack factory, and soon the skies were filled with happy-pronged zombie flyboys. Andy Warhol led his troops into the studios of government-regulated PTV (all propaganda, all the time) and began producing and directing art film/pseudo-documentaries about zombie junkies having sex with zombie boywhores. Somewhere along the line, Andy Warhol took a moment to broadcast a message to Venus: “Fire up the frying pans. OPERATION: EARTH-SAUSAGE back in action.”
But what Andy Warhol didn’t know is that, while he had been asleep:
The body of Theda Bara, megalomaniacal Plutonian empress-in-exile, had been stolen from its mausoleum by a league of intergalactic vampire performance artists, led by their trans-dimensional high priest, Aleister Crowley. The vampires melded Theda Bara’s genes with those of a prehistoric praying mantis and a Mercurian rock-crab, creating a gigantic chain-smoking transvestite BugBitch in blue velvet pumps. Aleister Crowley then unleashed this glamorous creation on the penis-eaters of Venus. In no time at all, Theda Bara used her granite claws to crush the undying bimbos into a really delicious pâté.
The vampires then turned the Planet of Love into an enormous coffee shop. (After drying the pâté in huge ovens, they ground it up to make their espresso. And there you have it: How To Exterminate A Seemingly Immortal Alien Race.) They had just run out of powdered Venusians when they received Andy Warhol’s message. The insouciant vampires reviewed all of Earth’s TV and radio broadcasts (the sort of thing B-movie aliens loved to do), assessed the situation, packed the giant Theda Bara monster into their biggest battle cruiser and headed her toward Earth. For Aleister Crowley had a plan:
Them jumbo-baloney zombies were already screwing the Earth up, down and all around. Once Theda Bara began her attack, civilization soon would be reduced to a fleshy frappe. At that point, Aleister Crowley would send down his vampire legions to set up the building-sized coffee roasters and grinders.
The smirking high priest put an eye to his most powerful telescope and watched with glee as Theda Bara spouted bright orange poop onto the faces of Mt. Rushmore. He threw back his head to cackle with triumph—and so, didn’t notice the bright flash of silver that zipped, quick as a cork popping out of a champagne bottle, from the moon to the Earth.
THE ROBOT SENTINEL FIRES ME TOWARD THE GREENS AND BLUES, HIGHS AND LOWS, SWEETS AND SOURS OF EARTH. A MOMENT LATER, I STRIDE FORTH TO DEFEND CULTURE, KITTENS AND PUPPIES, AND PARIS, MY BELOVED PARIS. ALONE AGAINST IMPOSSIBLE ODDS (IF ONLY ALICE WERE HERE!), STILL I PERSIST: FOR I, POSTMODERN-WARRIOR-CYBERGODDESS GERTRUDE STEIN, HAVE A JOB TO DO—A WAR IS A WAR IS A WAR—AND DAMN ALL THESE ALIEN FUCKS! IF THEY SO MUCH AS LAY A FINGER ON THE EIFFEL TOWER, I’LL RIP OFF THEIR BUTTOCKS AND FLOSS MY TEETH WITH THEIR LOWER INTESTINES.
Pretty-Boy
Edgar Blanchard handed a glass of champagne to the young woman on the couch. “Can’t you stay just a little longer?”
Claudia glanced at the cobbled-together clock on the wall. One hand was a dagger; the other, a pink baby spoon. The gears were housed in a human skull painted bright green. According to Blanchard, the timepiece had been made in 1927 by a Brazilian serial killer with a genius IQ. “Maybe another twenty minutes,” she said, “but then I have to go. I’m looking at a two-hour drive. I’ll only be able to squeeze in six hours of sleep before I have to start getting ready for Jason.”
“Getting ready?” Blanchard sat next to her. “For what?”
“Good God, Edgar. I’m
