Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls: Tales of Horror and the Bizarre

by Mark McLaughlin

  IV. The Truth about the Pyramids

  For centuries, people have wondered how those ancient Egyptians built those enormous pyramids. The general consensus seems to be some clever combination of slaves and pulleys and rolling big stone slabs around on tree trunks. Yeah, right.

  The ancient Egyptians were 24-7 party people. They had slaves, but they were sex-slaves, and so they really didn’t mind, because everybody was so damned good-looking back then. All tan and fit and really into eye make-up.

  The royal families actually did all the construction work, and it wasn’t that hard, because they were telekinetic. In fact, they were specially bred for the task. Those big gold headpieces they wore back then amplified their psychic powers by three-thousand percent. So yeah, Pharaoh and the missus did all the work while the people had fun. Even the slaves.

  The ancient Egyptians used to hang out with a race of animal-headed aliens who also liked to party, but that’s more of a late-night story, if you know what I mean. I do have something to tell you about a descendant of those aliens…I’ll get to that later.

  V. How Brianna Styles Lost 22 Pounds

  Brianna Styles, pretty auburn-haired songbird, was every teen boys’ dream. All the teen girls wanted to look like her and especially dance like her. Her top-ten singles and music videos made her the queen of the world for a golden season.

  But seasons end. One day, the vast majority of people realized they were sick of Brianna Styles. Sick and tired and bored to tears.

  Brianna was only nineteen at the time.

  Fast forward eight years and three husbands later. Poor Brianna: two kids, two drug habits, twenty-two pounds overweight, and two-hundred bucks in her checking account.

  The kids were staying with Grandma one weekend. On Saturday afternoon, Brianna got drunk, took a few pills, snorted a few lines, got out the vacuum cleaner and a kitchen knife…and did a little home liposuction. Eventually she passed out, and woke up screaming twelve hours later.

  She survived, and a sympathetic surgeon did try to even out the hideous results. She still looks a little asymmetrical, and she can’t feel her left thigh or buttcheek. But at least she’s back on top with a new book and a movie, both based on her ordeal, and plenty of talk-show spots. Plus, a private collector bought that vacuum cleaner from her for a quarter of a million dollars.

  VI. Secrets of the Internet Witches

  They are all pale with dark red hair and they laugh like dogs barking. Even the baby ones.

  You can see them any time you like on their unholy websites. You can read their rants, some of their spells, or perhaps a few of their recipes, always for desserts. Learn how to make vulture’s egg cupcakes, hell muffins, cheesecake made from the milk of black goats.

  But whatever you do, do not click on the green glowing eye in the corner of each webpage. Nothing will happen if there are other people around, but if you are alone, green lightning will spring forth from the screen, split in mid-air, and strike you in both eyes.

  You will fall to the floor dead and then a crow will appear, even if there’s no window, and pluck out one of your eyes and fly off, the same way it arrived. A moment later, your glowing, one-eyed corpse will walk the earth as a radioactive zombie, as that crow carries your eye far, far away, to the main computer of the internet witches. It will stick your eye on a wire and download everything you have ever seen.

  So please, surf only friendly webpages, the puppy and rainbow sites, the silly, harmless, happy spots. Fill your cyber-shopping carts with toys and books and CDs. Such fun!

  Who knows, maybe you’ll meet a pretty young thing in a chatroom.

  Maybe you’ll exchange e-mail addresses.

  Maybe she’ll send you a link to her webpage—

  —and then you’ll forget my warnings and click on the glowing green eye in the corner.

  Before long, the main computer of the internet witches will know everywhere you’ve ever been…everyone who’ve ever loved…everything you’ve ever done.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not. Who can say?

  It’s a big world, with so many possibilities.

  And they all begin and end in the dark.

  VII. How Reginald Farthington Lost Weight in Just One Day

  Reginald Farthington was never really what anyone would call a celebrity. He didn’t have tons of groupies or a breakfast cereal named after him. But he was a pretty good writer—not great, but pretty good.

  He wrote gentle, cultured, mannered little stories, in a world that wanted big-city car chases and trashy alien chicks doing it with robots. Ooooh yeah.

  Reginald could have, should have settled for pretty good. Pretty good ain’t bad. But the problem is, he reeeally wanted to be great. And the need to be great burned within him.

  So he tried to extinguish that inner fire with lots and lots of drinks. Stupid man. Pouring alcohol on a fire is the worst thing you can do.

  He had diabetes, his boozing led to health problems, and one day, he couldn’t feel his feet.

  They were dead. No circulation. His doctors only had one answer for him.

  Chop, chop.

  Poor sad Reginald lost some weight—and a little height, too.

  VIII. What’s the Deal with Vampires?

  So many people have had so many theories about vampires over the years. Are they part-demon? Undead spirits? Aliens? Another species? Or just folks who really like drinking blood?

  The truth is really quite simple.

  Vampires are time-traveling slave-clones from the far, far future, when it will be possible—quite easy, really—to manufacture slave-clones and blood in mass quantities. Slave-clones emerge from their synthetic wombs fully grown, but not really altogether alive. They need a shot of some fancy futuristic glowing green goo to get them started. That’s the stuff that makes them vampires. It also makes them allergic to natural sunlight. Those slave-clones run off of blood, like cars run off of gasoline. Just give them a big can of blood and they’ll bite two holes in the top—one to suck, one to let air in the can.

  The future-clones aren’t sex-slaves like those ancient Egyptian folks. The clones are built strong to work in the time-machine factories. Security is tight in those places, but vampires can be tricky customers. Occasionally a small group of them will steal a time machine right off the production line, so they can go back in time and be free.

  Some of them do go to ancient Egypt to become sex-slaves. Still, that’s not really what you’d call work.

  Unfortunately, those escaped slave-clones must resort to sucking blood out of folks, since the past isn’t stocked with big yummy blood-cans, like the far future.

  Somewhere along the line, folks got it into their heads that vampirism was contagious, like rabies or mono. That’s not exactly true. Here’s the deal about that. Once a vampire sucks all the blood out of you, you’re dead—unless the vampire takes pity on you and injects you with the glowing green goo used to bring slave-clones to life. When a dead human is injected with that stuff, they come back to life, but they need blood and hate sunlight. Plus, it reacts badly with the calcium in real humans, so it makes their teeth grow into fangs and their fingernails into talons.

  So when you see an ugly, pointy-toothed vampire in a movie, that not really an accurate depiction of a real vampire. Real vampires look great, like lifeguards and fashion models. What you’re seeing on the big screen—or the little screen, if it’s on TV—actually looks more like a vampire’s human victim, reanimated with the glowing goo.

  But of course, you’d never know that from watching movies. Those movie people just make up stuff as they go along. They don’t go digging for the real facts, like me.

  Whatever you do, don’t ever tell one of those time-traveling clones, “Gee, it must suck, being a vampire.”

  They’ve heard that joke a million
times.

  IX. The Unholy Computer Viruses of the Omega Coven

  Of all things living and dead, internet witches enjoy eating tripe most of all.

  Tripe, in case you didn’t know, is the stomach tissue of a hooved animal, like a cow or an ox or a sheep. At least, that’s the kind of tripe you can buy in a butcher shop. Internet witches don’t always limited themselves to tripe from hooved critters. In their opinion, the tastiest tripe of all comes from humans. But how to get it…?

  The internet witches formed a committee to handle that problem: the Omega Coven.

  Using their magic and technology, the members of the Omega Coven created a subspecies of tiny invisible monkeys. Then they converted the monkeys into digital energy and packed them into evil computer files. These files are known to the general public as e-mail viruses.

  Once a virus gets into a person’s computer, their hard drive is automatically infected with the evil monkeys. The monkeys radiate out of the computer monitor as light energy and enter the person through their eyes. They can travel in that fashion to and fro, from the monitor to the person and back, quite easily. Once inside someone, they rob the person of chunks of their stomach tissue—little chunks, not enough to kill a human. They convert the chunks into digital energy and carry it out of the person, through the eyes into the monitor. From there, the monkeys transport the digitized flesh via the internet back to the witches. The witches then convert the digital chunks into tasty human tripe for their dinners.

  That is why so many people who operate computers have ulcers. The virus-monkeys are stealing little stomach chunks, creating painful sores.

  The virus-monkeys also steal vital information out of the computers, and they usually screw up the workings, too, just for the Hell of it.

  Perhaps you are saying, “Oh, I have nothing to worry about. My computer has all the latest anti-virus software on it. My hard drive is fine. I’m fine.”

  That may be true. Still, for the sake of your stomach and perhaps your soul, don’t spent every waking minute in front of a computer screen. Go outside. Get some sunshine. Take a walk with a loved one. If you don’t have a loved one—find one. There are plenty of lonely, good-hearted people out there. They don’t have to be lonely. And neither do you.

  X. How Michelangelo Delgado Lost 17 Pounds

  Michelangelo Delgado was a real Hollywood heart-throb, and he knew it. What a prima donald.

  He had to have everything his way on the set of each of his movies—champagne and fresh strawberries in his huge dressing room, a new purple silk robe every day, eleven different types of sushi, salads made with hand-picked gourmet wild greens, double-mocha macadamia nut cookies, the list went on and on.

  Michelangelo was unbearable on the set of Gauguin!, a movie about the famous French painter who lived a tropical island. Perhaps it was the lavish tropical setting that brought out the snitty, snotty man-diva in him. He bitched and moaned about everyone and everything, when in fact he was lucky that he had it so good. Michelangelo wasn’t what anyone would call the sharpest knife in the drawer. Nor would he be called the brightest bulb in the marquee. In fact, most people would just call him a moron and leave it at that. He spelled “cookie” with a “y” and a “u,” and his interpretation of “macadamia” had a “k” and an “h” in it.

  The only reason he was so rich and popular was because he had a great Hollywood agent—who was also his mother. She’d spoiled her special boy rotten, so of course she thought the world had to follow suit.

  That is why he drove everybody nucking futs during the on-location filming of Gauguin! They were working on a perfectly lovely little South Pacific island. Paradise on Earth. But did that matter to Michelangelo? No. He screamed for prettier island girls. Greener thatched huts. Whiter sand. Less clouds in the sky. The director assured him that most of those things would be enhanced or added in during post-production, but that didn’t stop Michelangelo from having a screaming tantrum every four hours on the first day—and every three hours on the second day—and every two hours on the third day. And so on.

  At the end of the eighth day of production, the cast and crew got in their boats and left while Michelangelo was taking a nap. It was really just a practical joke, but they also hoped it would teach him a lesson about cooperation. They were going to leave him alone overnight on the island—with no champagne, no cookies, no soft and silky robes, not even a roll of toilet paper.

  At that point, it wouldn’t even have mattered if Michelangelo had thrown a fit and walked out on the filming. They’d finished shooting all his scenes that afternoon. There were a few beach scenes left, but they were going to use a body double for those, since Michelangelo had a little bit of a potbelly on him, from all those double-mocha macadamia nut cookies.

  At first Michelangelo was confused, when he woke up and found that everyone had left him. Confusion soon gave way to sadness, but that stage didn’t last long. The sadness turned into a little bud of anger, which soon blossomed into a huge, gaudy jungle orchid of livid rage. But only the crabs on the beach and the monkeys in the palm trees heard the brittle clatter of his gnashing capped teeth.

  And speaking of teeth…do you remember those time-traveling vampires I mentioned earlier? That night, a whole time machine full of them appeared on the island. They were very surprised to find Michelangelo there. Surprised and delighted, for they were all very hungry. They tied him up with tikuuni vines and then proceeded to suck all the blood out of him. Some of those vampires even took a few bites out of his belly, since it was a little on the big side anyway. Altogether, they sucked and bit seventeen pounds of Michelangelo out of, or off of, him. After he was dead, the vampires felt sorry for what they’d done, so they injected Michelangelo with that glowing green goo, to bring him back to life.

  Pretty-boy Michelangelo wasn’t so pretty after that.

  Mama Delgado was distressed to learn that her special boy had become a gaunt, blood-thirsty freak with fangs. But she was an agent, and so with a sad maternal sigh, she shifted her mind into agent-gear and considered all the money-making possibilities.

  In the years that followed, Michelangelo became one of the world’s greatest horror actors, starring in such fright-flick classics as Starship Bloodsuckers, I Saw Who You Bit Last Winter and Dracula’s Deadly Hug. His mother made a secret deal with a Hollywood blood bank, so she always made sure he had plenty of bags of juice to take with him on long trips to foreign locales.

  On the plus side, that high-protein diet made it easy for him to keep slim and trim. No more champagne. No more double-mocha macadamia nut cookies.

  XI. Internet Schminternet

  Lex Crayton, CEO of CyberKitty Industries, wasn’t always mega-rich. No indeed. He used to be a regular Joe Schmoe. On weekends, Lex worked at a coffeehouse with internet terminals. On weekdays, he created digital graphics for a video production house. Evenings, he built webpages, freelance. He was a busy boy with a peachfuzz haircut and a watch on each wrist.

  Each day, he would get up, drink some cappuccino, read his e-mail (it ain’t gonna answer itself, ya know), feed the cat, go to the job du jour, drink more cappuccino, work work work, come home, make more cappuccino, build some webpages, and then ride, cruise, surf, whatever one does to or with the internet until it was time for bed. And his kitty would curl up and lull him to sleep with her purrs.

  But then he started taking on extra hours at the production house. A few more hours at the coffeehouse. A few more webpages. He made his cappuccino stronger, and wore more watches to create the illusion of extra time. He bought some pills, too, to help him concentrate. When friends tried to stop him on the street for a quick chat, he would rush on by, shouting, “Send me an e-mail!” Sometimes Mother would stop by his apartment and he would have to waste an entire half-hour talking to her. She had no use for computers and would counter any talk of that sort with a cry of “Internet
Schminternet!”—swinging her lime-green purse like a tacky Luddite.

  Our busy boy ordered little wristwatches for his kitty and starting carrying her around with him in a bookbag. Even now and then he would slip her a piece of raw beef or fish. Lex was a hard worker, so his coworkers overlooked his eccentricities. He had a cappuccino machine installed in his cubicle at the production house. He had video equipment moved into the spare room of the coffeehouse. He loaded webpage software on all these computers. He bought more pills, and more and more and more coffee beans.

  Months passed, and he gradually weaned himself down to three hours of sleep a night. He hired a consultant to invest his earnings in software, hard drives, and coffee, always coffee. His investments blossomed like velvety red roses, so he was able to buy out the coffeehouse and eventually, the production house. His consultant became his right-hand man, and this trusty fellow was allotted the task of dealing with folks when a time-consuming face-to-face meeting was required. Still, our busy boy could not bypass Mother so easily—she insisted on stopping by his big new house, wasting his time with the same old boring anecdotes and crying out “Internet Schminternet!” at the slightest provocation.

  To save manhours (because that e-mail ain’t gonna answer itself, ya know), Lex strapped on more wristwatches and started work in his basement workshop on a mega-machine that was part computer, part coffeemaker, and part microwave oven—after all, he still had to eat. To this magnificent work-in-progress he soon added a variety of other appliances and even an internal habitat for his kitty to wander around in, complete with a self-cleaning litter-box and an automatic feeder filled with raw meat.

  By this time, he was quite wealthy: he owned a nationwide network of coffeehouses and production houses, and a few pet shops, too. He only communicated with his right-hand man by modem. The mega-machine continued to grow, up the basement stairs, through the kitchen and into the dining room. He even built himself a habitat within the machine, since there was so much to do in there. He had to change its filters and oil its gears and calibrate its electronic components and every now and then he took a catnap, lulled to sleep by the velvety purr of its workings.