He noticed a lot of frantic activity as flames and black smoke billowed out of the engine room, and as he headed toward the bridge he saw some of the crewmen sharpening knives and sabers and talking openly about mutiny. One fellow, covered head to toe in Maori tattoos, was even building a coffin.
On the bridge, Rex greeted the new skipper of the boat, who was smoking a fatty and paying little attention to the helm.
“Hello, Mr. Havoc. Quarters to your liking?”
“I’m good, thanks. How long ‘til we get back to America?”
“The engines are at full speed. We should make port in four days.”
Rex looked through the forward window and saw an enormous storm brewing on the horizon.
“Looks like a pretty bad squall coming in.”
“It’s a hurricane, actually,” said the skipper. “But don’t worry—it’s just wind. Can’t hurt a tough little boat like this. We’ll be fine.”
Rex peered through the window, trying to make out some whitish shapes in the choppy seas ahead.
“What about all those icebergs ahead of us?”
“Yeah, there’s quite a few of them. Just frozen water. Can’t hurt our thick steel hull. We’ll be fine.”
“Not to add to your troubles, Captain, but as I walked past the out-of-control fire in your engine room, I overheard the crew talking mutiny.”
“Oh, it’s just some of the lads blowing off steam. We’ll be fine.”
“There was even one fellow building a coffin.”
“Yeah, the islander chap with the tattoos. He’s been workin’ on that coffin for days now. He’s doing a lovely job.”
Rex noticed a phone on the control panel.
“I’d like to call home, if that’s okay, Captain.”
“Certainly. There’s a satellite phone right there,” said the captain, pointing to the panel.
Rex called his apartment in New York City, and was relieved to hear Dementia answer the phone.
“Rex, you’re alive!” she said excitedly.
He laughed, thrilled to hear her voice again.
“Yeah. I’m on a tramp steamer—whatever that is—heading back to America.”
“That’s great,” said Dementia. “We were afraid something terrible had happened to you.”
“Nah. Just got shanghaied to an island full of monsters and mad scientists. Pretty routine stuff, actually.”
“Well, we’re really glad you’re safe.”
“Are you guys okay? How’s Crayon doing? Is she there?”
Dementia hesitated a moment, then replied.
“She, um, stepped out for a bit. I’ll be sure to tell her you called, though. She’ll be very happy to hear that you’re okay. How long before you get home?”
“Well, there’s a hurricane heading our way, the engine room is on fire and I can see several icebergs dead ahead, but Captain Ulysses says there’s nothing to worry about. He’s going full throttle and we should be home very soon… a few days at most.”
“Great, Rex. Can’t wait to see you.”
Then an awful thought occurred to Rex.
“Hey, you guys didn’t touch anything in the apartment, did you?”
“Of course not,” said Dementia, which was a big fat lie. “The place looks just as shitty as ever.” Which was not a lie.
“Okay, good. ‘Cause there’s some really dangerous stuff around there.”
“Is that right? Well, don’t worry. We promise to be careful,” she said.
There was a sharp jolt and the ship listed hard to starboard as it narrowly missed an iceberg. The captain seemed completely unfazed by the drama, but Rex decided he’d better wrap up the call.
“Okay, Dementia. I gotta go now. Looking forward to seeing you guys.”
“Same here, Rex. See you in a few days.”
Inside the smoldering ruins of Rex’s apartment, which was riddled with holes in the walls and a bigger hole in the ceiling where the genie had escaped, Dementia hung up the phone. She looked at Crayon, who was hovering in the lotus position five feet off the floor in her genie regalia. She looked like a cuter, bluer-skinned version of Barbara Eden.
“You think he’s going to be angry when he finds out?” asked Crayon.
“Oh, he’ll be irked for a while, but he’ll get over it.”
“Have you decided what your final wish will be?”
“No, not yet. What was your third wish, by the way?”
Crayon became embarrassed, her blue face blushing red as a beet.
“I asked for free Wi-Fi inside the magic lamp. I figured if I had to stay there forever, I could at least get on Facebook.”
“I can’t even begin to comment on that,” said Dementia.
Crayon chuckled, and then abruptly turned serious.
“Well, listen. We really need to move along on that final wish. There are some pretty strict time rules involved in this genie business.”
“Okay, just give me a few more minutes to think this over.”
“No more delays!” Crayon bellowed in a deep and terrifying voice. “State your wish, you obnoxious shit, or I’ll tear you to shreds!”
Dementia sighed, and made her final wish.
Back aboard the Lady Vain, Rex looked out the bridge window and saw the hurricane was nearly upon them. He decided to take safety below deck when he heard something in the wind—like singing, or wailing—penetrating deep inside his brain.
“Captain. Those voices. Are those Sirens I hear?”
“Yeah, they’re tryin’ to lure us to our doom.”
He handed Rex two small balls of wax.
“Just stick these in your ears. You’ll be fine.”
Rex jammed the wax in his ears and made his way onto the deck.
Outside, the wind howled furiously and huge waves crashed across the deck, making it nearly impossible for Rex to remain on his feet. Several of the crewmen were trying desperately to lower a leaky lifeboat into the water, while other men were being driven insane by the wail of the Sirens and jumping into the sea like lemmings.
As the hurricane bore down on the Lady Vain, lifting great icebergs out of the ocean and tossing them around like hacky sacks, a gigantic white whale rose from the depths of the churning sea and slammed into the hull with tremendous force, breaking the ship in half.
And then things started to get bad.
THE END
OF
“HORROR ISLAND”
BUT REX HAVOC
WILL RETURN
IN
“TIME, SPACE
AND MONSTERS”
Author’s Note
Mad scientists rule. And monsters, by and large, drool.
If we had a mad scientist in the White House today, our bio-engineered super soldiers would have conquered the solar system by now, made slaves of the Amazon Women on the Moon, and vaporized whatever alien race it is that’s been drawing those ridiculous heart signs on planets throughout the galaxy, like on Pluto.
Things wouldn’t be perfect with a mad scientist in charge, of course. Most of the human race would be ground up into Soylent Green and the rest would be thrown into the arena to fight killer robots for the amusement of our Benevolent Leader, Dr. Wackadoodle.
But the rest of us—those who know how to juggle and crack a joke—would get along just fine as court jesters.
My first exposure to mad scientists was in 1959, when my mother took me to the Lake Theater in Minneapolis to see “The Revenge of Frankenstein” starring Peter Cushing.
It shook my little 8-year old world. Cushing’s portrayal of “Dr. Victor Stein” was amazing, shifting effortlessly from sympathetic healer to cold-hearted villain. And that laboratory of his! Brains and eyeballs and a severed hand floating in tanks of bubbling chemicals, all in lurid Technicolor.
This film had a seismic effect on me, course-correcting all my plans for the future. No longer did I want to be a singing Texaco gas station attendant. My new goal was to become a morose and vengeful mad scientist. I e
ven asked my parents for (and got) a chemistry set for Christmas. (The fools! I would experiment on them first!)
Later on, when I discovered there would be math involved in becoming a mad scientist, I abandoned that dream and decided to write stories about these wonderful lunatics instead.
Sure, vampires and werewolves are way sexier than mad scientists, who in the movies spend most of their screen time looking through microscopes and obsessing over having enough spinal fluid drained from beautiful young women to finish their diabolical experiments.
But without mad scientists, we wouldn’t have the Frankenstein Monster, the Invisible Man, the Fly, Mr. Hyde, the Two-Headed Transplant, or even Robby the Robot. And that, my friends, is not a world in which I care to live.
So let us raise our smoking beakers and give a toast to these crazy bastards:
To Drs. Frankenstein, Moreau, Caligari, Rotwang, Jekyll, Cyclops, Griffin, Morbius, West, No, Carrington, Phibes, Delambre, Goldfoot, Hill, Forrester, Evil, Brundle, Lizardo, Strangelove, and all the rest…
Thank you, gentlemen—without your deliciously mad schemes the world would be a much saner place… and a whole lot less fun.
A Pledge to My Readers
At the Jim Stenstrum Word Farm, I pledge to use only the highest quality ingredients to craft my fiction.
Every word contained in my stories is hand-picked by me at the peak of its entertainment freshness, slow-cooked in my coal fire brain, seasoned to snarky perfection on my fifteen dollar keyboard and served hot and tasty to your mailbox or Kindle for hours of reading pleasure.
Only the most vivid descriptions, memorable characters and snappy lines of dialogue are ever used to tell my tales. I will never use impenetrable plotlines, ponderous exposition, bloated metaphors, or fillers of any kind to pad out my page count.
I know there are many other words farms you can go to for your entertainment needs, but these are not nice people and I appreciate your patronage far more than they do.
All of which is to say: Thank you for buying this book.
This is the second Rex Havoc novel, and I hope you will come back for lots more fun in the future. My goal is to publish at least two new Rex Havoc tales every year, along with some other damn peculiar novels I think you will also enjoy.
I welcome your comments, and please feel free to use me as a character reference when you apply for that bank loan.
Yer pal forever,
Jim Stenstrum
October 2015
About the Author
Jim Stenstrum is the rightful King of Norway, but a long time ago misplaced the paperwork that would prove his claim. So until he has a chance to go through the garage and locate all that legal stuff, he writes books for a living, including the very book you are holding now.
Today, Jim writes his outlandish stories in Santa Clarita, California, where he lives with his beautiful wife, Sue, and their darling little Shar Pei puppy, Charlotte.
To contact Jim Stenstrum:
thevaststenstrumempire.com
[email protected]
facebook.com/jimstenstrum
Also by Jim Stenstrum
ASSKICKERS OF THE FANTASTIC (2014)
A Rex Havoc Novel (Book 1)
ISBN: 978-1-942617-00-6
In his debut novel, Rex Havoc has his hands full when immortal killers from another dimension appear in New York to lay waste to the human race.
Aided by a mysterious woman with unearthly powers and a hooker he saved from cannibals, Rex has only hours to somehow destroy a pair of indestructible predators before they turn the earth into their personal 24-hour buffet.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 The Four-Armed Chauffeur
Chapter 2 Shanghaied
Chapter 3 “Shoot the Asshole.”
Chapter 4 Horror Island
Chapter 5 The Hive
Chapter 6 “I’ve Done Some Terrible Things.”
Chapter 7 Count Kalashnikov
Chapter 8 The Pitch
Chapter 9 Three Wishes
Chapter 10 The Trophy Room
Chapter 11 Dance with the Devil
Chapter 12 “I’m Not Very Keen on This.”
Chapter 13 “Just the Two of Us Now, Hunchback.”
Chapter 14 “Are Those Sirens I Hear?”
Author’s Note
A Pledge to My Readers
About the Author
Also by Jim Stenstrum
Horror Island Page 11
