A collaborative Halloween story for and about the halfbakery, including lots of dark, gothic cliches, obscure physical, electrical and chemical phenomena, the characters being halfbakers portraying themselves within the context of the story. Oh, and weapons. Lots of weapons.
NOT a "Call For List".-- 8th of 7, Oct 18 2011 Meissner-Effect Salt-Shaker Meissner-Effect_20Salt-ShakerThe inspiration. Prior Art acknowledged. [8th of 7, Oct 18 2011] All I'm saying is, be careful http://gigaom.com/2...s-the-movie-rights/ [theircompetitor, Oct 21 2011] It all began this morning. I knew I shouldn't have bitten into that green bun...-- swimswim, Oct 18 2011 It's origin: unknown. But it's aroma was inellectable.
As I sunk my teeth into it's mysterious flaky goodness, the world around me swirled and faded.
I slipped into a deep slumber.
When I awoke, I was ethereal. Massless and free to roam wherever my mind could conjure.
For some reason, [21Quest] crossed my mind, then as swift as the thought had occured, I found myself floating above his chaise lounge.
A light tapping on his front door caught, my and his attention.
I watched intently as [21Quest] inched tentatively onward, every step diminishing his miniscule reservoir of courage. His legs shook, his eyes darted to and fro. Sweat glistened on his fear-wrenched visage. His mind lurched from one imagined horror to the next, each a personification of the unseen threat that had rapped on his door.
"Wha... wha... what do you wa... wa.. want f-from me?", words caught in his throat as he fought the urge to run as fast as his legs could carry him.
"Some candy, mister...", her voice was sweet and naive. "It's Halloween!"
He slide to his knees, feeling so scared and so vulnerable. Leaning against the door, he pressed his trembling fist to his mouth, muffling his terrified sobs.-- MikeD, Oct 18 2011 Several knives spilled out of his pockets. "Frightened, and armed to the teeth," she thought, fingering the garrotte. "This isn't going to end well. Best finish him off now."-- mouseposture, Oct 18 2011 ... little suspecting that none of her orifices had a mating thread.-- mouseposture, Oct 18 2011 ... She suspected unsuspectingly.-- rcarty, Oct 19 2011 [21Quest] initiated what he thought to be an unanticipated attack. The threaded power baton arced through the air in a lethal path which would have ended well inside the cranial cavity of 'Lil Miss Moriarty, had she not caught his arm in a lightning grasp, and wrenched him to the ground.
"Please! Oh God please! It hurts!" [21] begged her for mercy as he writhed on his porch.
"Not till you take back those mean and nasty things you said on the internet!" She said firmly, while tightening her grip on his fore-arm.-- MikeD, Oct 19 2011 Meanwhile, 3,000 miles away in an East London cafe, a man sat in a booth, motionless. He stared for some time. His eyes looked dry, unblinking. His manner was peculiar. He wore a grey suit, corn-blue tie, white cotton shirt, silver cufflinks and brown loafers. He wore a watch, at which he suddenly moved to view.
Clearly, this man was agitated, waiting for something. In front of him were the remains of his breakfast; some bacon rind, a corner of toast, smeared HP sauce, 3 beans he had diligently cut in half and shuffled around, some tomato seeds, a dribble of orange juice in a glass tumbler, half a dozen screwed up napkins piled to one side – stained with food residue – and an empty cup of coffee.
The man glared at the carnage in front of him, then suddenly doubled over, sweat pouring from his brow. He shook uncontrollably, his head in his arms. His boney fingers tugged at the remnants of his hair. Nearby customers turned to look at the shaking, sobbing man, when he reeled back and burst into roaring laughter, sheer uncompromising madness! Saliva erupted from his mouth as he rocked back and forth in hysterics.
He slammed a fist onto the table and in that instant returned as stoic as before.
"I've seen him before," whispered one customer to her partner. "He's called Ian Tindale, apparently. They've tried to tell him; people just don't do refills in Britain."-- theleopard, Oct 19 2011 Then Tindale grabbed his camera and went out into the street...not expecting that someone out there was taking his photograph...-- xandram, Oct 19 2011 ... and, rubbing his eyes, was just a bit mystified that today the world was in colour-- po, Oct 19 2011 ...and not blurry-- hippo, Oct 19 2011 The cold grey miasma of a classic London pea-souper fog crawled through the shadowy, noisome alleys of East London like a predatory reptile, twining itself into strange and hideous shapes, and limiting [The Alterother]'s vision to little more than an arm's length ahead of him, which was really very odd as he was at that moment sitting deep in the pinewoods of the North Eastern United States. He coughed violently, driving the acrid vapours from his lungs, spluttering and choking. Slowly the spasms subsided, and he cautiously rubbed his eyes; the blurring was less noticeable now. He stared down at the pickle jar of home made hooch from which he had taken a mere cautions sip, still collecting drips from the condenser coil of his crude still, and smiled, then frowned at the odd grating sensation - yet another layer of tooth enamel had gone, scoured away in moments by the hellish brew.
"Not bad", he muttered under what was left of his breath ...-- 8th of 7, Oct 19 2011 Up until now, the weapons had been hidden in a secret cache. A rather normal looking quill pen was left atop of 8th of 7's desk by a slinky maid wearing fishnet stockings, it was perched upon the parchment that he was using to write his story...the inkwell had been filled with poisonous ink.-- xandram, Oct 19 2011 Fortunately, the building was somewhat dilapidated and, through the many gaps in the brickwork, a shambling army of zombies could be seen shuffling unsteadily out of the fog towards them. The fishnet- clad maid squeaked in concern and then gave an impressed sigh as 8th's unit, still stiffly at attention, pointed the business end of their weapons at the nearest available hole and began banging away with gusto...-- DrBob, Oct 19 2011 "Une espece de 'gang bang'" she sighed (she was, of course, French) "quelle barbe."-- mouseposture, Oct 19 2011 po sent a carrier pigeon with a message from an unknown undertaker. the message was written in a foreign script unbeknownst to most except the most brilliant of men like Maxwell Buchanan. he had to be found and brought here immediately...-- xandram, Oct 19 2011 And when she came in, that's where I come in. I was already on my second cup of coffee when her silhouette appeared in the window of my office door. Her hair was blond and long, but not as long as she was tall. Still, she was tall, but not as tall as the order she wanted me to fill. She was looking for a guy, someone named Max. All she had was a name, but not a face and a place. I'm a Dick, a good Dick, the best, but I can't place a face to a name, or a name to a face for every leggy blond that happens upon my dusty office in the bad part of town. She flashed her buns, and I took the case.-- rcarty, Oct 19 2011 yes, she was a very pretty pigeon with bits of bun around her flushed cheeks. she squawked a thank you and flew home...-- po, Oct 20 2011 After firing my .38 revolver at the pigeon and it landed like a falling plate of spaghetti against the side of a skyscraper I resumed my search for Max to decipher the script.-- rcarty, Oct 20 2011 Alas, like the ancient Phoenix arising from the ash, the lovely pigeon took flight once more, stunning the brutal thug who had tried to do her wrong.-- blissmiss, Oct 20 2011 The pigeon of peace, having escaped from the entangling fishnets, found its work cut out as it tried to mediate between a priapic hegemonizing swarm and the impending zombocalypse.
"Brains," said one shambling figure, passing by.
"Braaaains," said another.
"I'm more of a tit man myself," said the sardonic zombie in the trench coat. "... but don't mind me. Have you seen Max?"-- pertinax, Oct 20 2011 Max was in the laboratory deciphering DNA cells. He was clueless as to the story evolving around the murder mishap, which hadn't taken place yet.-- xandram, Oct 20 2011 Taking another sip from his jar of moonshine, the low-born son of a typographical error smiled contentedly. The distant sounds of gunfire and chemical-laser discharges told him that the Plan was going smoothly. Soon, very soon, England and the more desirable bits of Scotland, as well as Argentina and a little over half of Vancouver Island, would once more belong to the Heathens.
In his drunken stupor, he was completely unaware of the shape that slowly, silently materialized in the mist behind him. With a murderous gleam in its dark eye, the Blink Deer raised a hoof and-- Alterother, Oct 20 2011 little realising that he'd forgotten Wales altogether...-- po, Oct 21 2011 ...said, without a tear, "here, here; in yer ear" and tossed back the year's last queer swallow of blink deer beer.-- swimswim, Oct 21 2011 /without a tear/
Excuse me, but didn't the original concept mandate there should be lots of weapon?-- bungston, Oct 21 2011 [The Alterother], hearing the gulp in the gloom, spun 'round in a flash to face his doom. He advanced with a mighty Viking battle cry, brand-new shillelagh* held proud and high; his death would be for future sagas fare...
...but the Blink Deer wasn't there...
*just got it today. Weapon enough fer ye, boyo?-- Alterother, Oct 21 2011 I'm confused by the term 'more desireable bits of Scotland.'-- RayfordSteele, Oct 21 2011 some is under water.-- po, Oct 21 2011 The bits without so many people in them are the ones we Heathens are primarily interested in, being rugged individualist types that we are. But that's for another time; on with the spooky story! I really want to know how it ends...-- Alterother, Oct 22 2011 ...it ends with // lots of dark, gothic cliches, obscure physical, electrical and chemical phenomena, the characters being halfbakers portraying themselves within the context of the story. Oh, and weapons. Lots of weapons.//-- xandram, Oct 24 2011 All right.
Out of the broom cupboard fell a harpoon gun, a slingshot, half a pint of black powder, a craft knife, a bucket of congealed saturated fat, a modified rugby boot (left), a nine-iron, two shotgun shells, a crossbow missing its crosspiece, an envelope of talcum powder labeled as anthrax, a straight-edge razor with lubricating strip, an exploding cigar, the head of a battle-axe, three 7.62 mm rounds (possibly blank), [po]'s frying pan, a spear-headed regimental flag, some piano-playing nunchakus (YMMV), a bag of marbles, a spice rack with several unstable compounds of nitrogen labeled in Jeeb Ponk Fwee, a garrote, a box of matches, a silver bullshit, a set of false teeth for a chainsaw, a chianti bottle full of stomach acid, the counterweight from a trebuchet, a basket-hilted tin-opener, some brass knuckles modified to double as house-keys, a branding iron, an experimental flechette mine, a washing line made of det-cord (or possibly vice versa), a chisel, a flick-knife with more flick than knife, a wheel-lock musket, an array of ash and hawthorn stakes in elegant porcelain stake-holders, a broken beer glass, the fuel tank from a flame-thrower, a combined paint-and-pepper spray, a staple gun, an Uzi disassembled for cleaning, an empty aquarium with a sign warning of the blue-ringed octopus, some more brass knuckles specially adapted for a chimpanzee's feet, a sharp retort, two weaponized poison-pen letters, half a dozen shurikens and a blunderbuss. And some safety instructions. For the vacuum cleaner.
It wasn't easy for a maid to stay slinky around here - too many things could ladder her fishnets.
'nuff weapons, [bungston]?-- pertinax, Oct 25 2011 <Python> What about a pointed stick? </P>-- DrBob, Oct 25 2011 What about rasberries? We haven't done rasberries yet, have we?-- Alterother, Oct 25 2011 Who? J.R.?-- swimswim, Oct 25 2011 We do seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked. I'll see what I can do about that. Stay tuned...-- Alterother, Oct 25 2011 Hopelessly sidetracked in the Transylvanian countryside, Alterother cursed the GPS system in his cheap rental car. In the pitch dark and through the pouring rain he wouldn't have been able to see a thing were it not for the regular flashes of lightning. And the wretched GPS' voice intructions had been all but drowned out by the tremendous peals of thunder along the way. He slowed the car to a halt and tried very hard to remember. "Follow the howls of the children of the night until you pass through the dilapidated, old village with the impaled corpse in the town square", it had told him. He'd got that bit alright but he couldn't remember if it had said "Go up to the old castle after dark" or "Don't go up to the old castle after dark" before it had suddenly cut out completely. Fortunately, on the craggy hillside ahead, there seemed to be an old castle and, judging by the single, faint light coming from one of the windows in its ruined tower, there appeared to be someone at home. Perhaps he should go and ask them for directions...-- DrBob, Oct 25 2011 Meanwhile, the Borg collective re-formed their ranks and strategically withdrew to form a tight perimeter around the secret BorgCo Research & Development Facility. Lifeless eyes and cybernetic optics tracked back and forth while pervasive sensor scans molested the city in a nine- block radius.
The sheer number of movement returns gave even the emotionless and imperturbable Borg pause, for the collective knew that this next wave was not composed of just ordinary zombies; nor were they the cheesy super- mutant zombies with tentacle fingers and lamprey mouths you see these days because for some reason the classic shambling Romero-style zombies just won't cut it anymore. No, these were something even more abhorrent, disgusting atrocities created in a hidden underground laboratory by none other than The Mad Fairy Jenny herself.
Slowly and unstoppably, with a terrible chorus of yowling, [The Alterother]'s zombie-cat horde shuffled out of the mist...-- Alterother, Oct 27 2011 And they all lived happily ever after.-- rcarty, Oct 27 2011 a baby was born...-- po, Oct 27 2011 Concern for the Aristotelian unity of place was what prompted Max to send a blink deer to pick up Mr Tindale from East London and drop him off in Transylvania. After all, that dusty old "deus ex" machine in the corner had to be good for *something*.-- pertinax, Oct 27 2011 I sent for an order of boron carbide for the hidden armor factory in the basement of the ruined tower. The children were going to be put to work making the armor... ...suddenly a car came screeching around the curves of the washed out road- it was the Batmobile!-- xandram, Oct 27 2011 After checking via remote camera drone that his zombie- cat assault was going well, and pleasantly surprised to discover it was receiving help from an entirely unexpected source, [The Alterother] stubbed out his roach and pushed open the doors of the appropriately spooky Transylvanian castle. Strangely, they did not emit the obligatory loud creak, but swung smoothly on well-designed, teflon- coated, counterweighted, servo-driven hinges. A cold dread crept over him.
Another Halfbaker must have been here.
Readying his sword, the Heathen King crept into the castle. Aside from Ian Tindale quietly reading the DK Transylvanian Travel Guide by the eerie Cherenkov light of a quantum candelabra, the place was empty. Too empty. It had the emptiness of a place recently filled with activity but vacated, so to speak, in the blink of an eye.
The herd couldn't have followed him, [The Alterother] decided. He'd been careful, taken every precaution. His fieldcraft was sound. No, they'd gotten here before him. Somebody was helping them... but who?-- Alterother, Oct 27 2011 Chrissy was so nervous, she had never before been so doubtful of herself. She wanted to be on the cheerleading squad more than anything in the world. She would give up her cellphone, facebook account, pink convertable and even her chance at becoming homecoming queen to make it. Even though all of her friends had told her she was going to make captain she still wanted Brad the captain of the football team to tell her.-- rcarty, Oct 27 2011 Where's [po]'s baby? Is Brad the father?-- pertinax, Oct 27 2011 Nnooooooo!!!!!!-- Alterother, Oct 28 2011 The newborn draws a staccato first breath and opens ages-old eyes of a color not yet witnessed.No cry announces its arrival...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 29 2011 ...just a bemused gurgle as its first view of the world turned out to be 8th of 7 dancing round the maternity ward pretending to be a ghost, with a white sheet draped over his head and making 'Ooh wooo' noises.-- DrBob, Oct 31 2011 This went on for only a few minutes, however, before the child brought unto this world by the interdimensional being known only as [po] was whisked away, under a cloud of secrecy, to the MaxCo Advanced Biosomethingtech Research Institute on Vancouver Island. What fortunes or strange twists of fate awaited the infant there? Only time would tell.
Meanwhile, in Transylvania...
The castle was a smoking ruin. The battle had been an epic affair, a three-sided, no-holds-barred, super-scifi- smackdown between the Borg collective, the scarlet- schnozzed leader of the Teleporting Deer Army, and, of course, [The Alterother]. Unfortunately, nobody actually witnessed it, so an accurate account of the titanic clash is impossible.
As he dusted himself off, Ian Tindale was pleased to discover that the fortuitous piece of cover he'd chosen was in fact a rather nice rental car with a helpful, user- friendly GPS navigation unit. He wasn't too sure about the large bundles of dried plant matter in the back seat, but perhaps he could find somebody who knew what they were and might be interested in buying them. Pocketing his camera and travel guide, Tindale went happily on his way.
As the red glow of the car's tailights receded into the night, a small stone fell from atop the pile of smoking rubble. It had been dislodged by the barest twitch of a finger...
[The Alterother] lived. He lived, and he swore upon that day that no matter how long it took him, even if it was, oh, say a year, he would return to wreak his vengeance!
To be continued...-- Alterother, Nov 05 2011 random, halfbakery