by Jordan Krall
PRELUDE TO SPACE RAPE!
and other stories
JORDAN KRALL
CONTENTS
Prelude to Space Rape!
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
Stories
THE DUNCH HORROR
HOWLING BEARD
FUNTIME, USA
BILLY ROANOKE
BRADLEY SANDS IS A DICK
HEY ANDY
SO ANDY
SICK ROOM NEEDS
SANTA CLAUS AND THE ELVES OF FUCK
AND YOU SHOULD BELIEVE IN SOLAR LODGES
THE PISTOL BURPS
Unfruitful Works
& Other Personal Horrors
THE FATHER TRILOGY
A REPTANT HELL
UNFRUITFUL WORKS
NEON GUTTER MEAT
HIS CANDESCENCE
HAIL DESIRE AND BODIES OF COLD GENTLEMEN
BLACK POLAROIDS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prelude to Space Rape!
CHAPTER ONE
Gobs of milky space-cum splattered the hood of his car, causing Paul Minisink to swerve into a tree. With an ear-crushing crash, the automobile scrunched like an accordion. In great pain, Paul pulled himself out of the wreckage and onto the grass a few feet away from the tree. His tongue wiggled a tooth that had become loose from the impact.
Paul had a feeling the car might explode. That would be just great. A fiery ending to thousand-dollar investment: a blue 1989 Chevy Cavalier that, despite its age, was in great shape. But whatever, it was totaled anyway. Good thing he had reached his destination. He looked at the large road sign which read:
Welcome to Pink Meat, New Jersey
Established 1788.
He looked up at the sky and winced, imagining more liquid scum would come falling down to finish the job. It had been a long time since Outer Space declared a rape-vendetta against him. It would not rest until it blew its load all over Paul and drowned him in thick globs of space-sperm.
***
TWO YEARS AGO
It had all started when he was perusing the shelves in a used book store for vintage science fiction paperbacks. He didn’t find anything worthwhile and he soon found himself browsing through the New Age section, snickering at the various books on crystal-power, Wiccan love spells, Area 51, and David Icke lizard conspiracies.
His eyes caught a ragged hardcover of The Bizarronomicon. There was no author listed. Paul picked it up and immediately smelt the stench of cheese coming from the book.
God, don’t they clean these books before they put them on the shelves?
Despite the smell, he was intrigued. He quickly flipped through it, reading a sentence here and there. Paul was totally lost as none of it made any sense. It was like Lord Dunsany screwing William Burroughs in a fever dream. Some pages were full of dense paragraphs of poetic nonsense where other pages had sparsely placed sentences full of crude gibberish. There were pictures, too: intricate black and white sketches of bio-mechanical monstrosities along with cartoonish drawings of ducks, cakes, squid, hypodermic needles, cats, film projectors, and a giraffe on a bicycle.
Paul looked at the price sticker: $75.
Way too much for a book that smells like cheese, he thought. Above the price tag, there was another sticker that read:
“The Bizarronomicon is probably the most important book that has ever been written.” – Don Patchogue, author of The Fall of Because.
Paul had thought he’d seen that name before: Don Patchogue. He went back over the shelves and found it, a battered paperback in the Science Fiction section: The Fall of Because by Don Patchogue. He read the description on the back. A bunch of space-vampires coming down from space in the 1920s to create an army of Aleister Crowley clones? He was immediately interested. The price was right, too. It was only $3.00. Not too bad for a book from 1970.
Paul went back to the New Age section and placed the Bizarronomicon back in its place when he saw what was next to it, a huge book titled: The Book of Space Codes.
It looked metallic but when he took it off the shelf it felt like velvet. Then he ran his fingers down it and thought it felt like leather. It was as if the book couldn’t decide on a texture. There was no description or any other words on the cover. The only place the title was evident was on the spine. When Paul flipped through it, he was baffled. All he saw was flashes of numbers or what he thought were numbers. It was like he was watching the flickering of a movie. Numbers and colors, shades and hues, some which had never experienced before. Then he stopped at the last page that simply read:
YOU WILL BE RAPED!
That’s a pretty shitty ending to a book, Paul thought. He put the book down and took the Don Patchogue book over to the counter and paid for it. There was no reason why he would have ever thought about The Book of Space Codes again. That is, until a week later when the first load of space-cum landed next to him while he was mowing his lawn. At first he thought it was a joke. Maybe one of his more immature neighbors thought it’d be funny to throw some goopy shit into his yard. But Paul soon realized the truth.
The goopy mess bubbled and started turning the grass beneath it into shimmering slivers of light. He got closer to it and found it harder to breathe with step he took as if the unidentified mess was sucking the air like a vacuum. Paul backed off and watched as if finally wiggled into a pillar and floated back up into the air, taking the grass and a layer of dirt with it.
Similar instances kept happening for the next 2 years during which Paul spent hours trying to figure out what was happening. He realized that someone, or something, was trying to rape him. He thought first that it might be God but that was silly. When God wanted to spread his seed, he did so in an underage virgin. Paul eventually remembered The Book of Space Codes and its threatening last page and decided it was Outer Space itself that was trying to sexually assault him and he thanked God it had such bad aim.
During that time he had also become obsessed with the books of Don Patchogue. He devoured The Fall of Because in one day and soon sought out the other four books by Patchogue. The books had only been printed once by a small science fiction publisher and were out of print. Paul didn’t have difficulty tracking them down, however, since he used the Internet to scour dozens of used book shops around the country. What he couldn’t find, though, was any real in-depth biographical information on the author. The only information that he had was that Don Patchogue was born and raised in New Jersey and had worked for ten years at a brick-making plant until it closed down.
Paul decided to do some deeper research and find the man’s address. He was successful and found a Don Patchogue listed in the New Jersey town of Pink Meat. His plan was to go there and interview the man about his life, his work, but more specifically why he had stopped writing. Then, with Patchogue’s permission, he’d put all of that in a small book and try to find a publisher for it or if need be, publish it himself.
After driving from Western Pennsylvania to Eastern New Jersey, dodging cosmic sex-traps along the way, he was close to the man whose books he had read ten times over. He had to maneuver around falling spunk meteors and other messy snares for the whole trip but he made it.
So now there he was, leaning against the road sign with broken bones and a bloody mouth but feeling relieved after reaching Pink Meat. He decided he’d leave the car and call a tow truck later. The chunk of gooey space-cum was turning the hood of his car into a nebulous vacuum of metal and slime. It looked alive. Paul didn’t want to leave until that thing floated up into the air like the other ones. But something was wrong.
It didn’t float up. It didn�
��t disappear. The strange metallic-goo just hovered over the engine of the car and seemed to be almost watching Paul. It had no eyes but he got the feeling that it possessed some sort of intelligence or at least awareness of him. It quivered and fell onto the ground, moving slowly closer to him. Paul stood up quickly and ran.
He looked back, expecting to be involved in a chase but saw that the space-cum creation was on the roadside quivering like fresh road kill. After a minute it stopped moving. Paul figured most people would have gone insane after witnessing that but he found himself in possession of both his logic and sanity. Or at least he thought that was the case. Did an insane illogical person know they were insane and illogical?
Paul didn’t care.
His backpack was in his car so Paul would have to buy a notebook when he found a store which looked like it would be an easy task. The town of Pink Meat was identical to the other New Jersey towns he had driven through. Most of the houses were over eighty years old but every so often you would see a new development with houses that lacked any sort of character. They were bland and oversized and designed for people with too much money on their hands. Paul thought that he’d rather live in a tree house than in one of those.
Being it was in the “Garden State,” most of the streets in the town were lined with trees. Paul thought that for a town with a name like Pink Meat, everything was all very green. He wasn’t really sure what he had expected. Pink trees, maybe. Trees made out of raw meat. But that would have been ridiculous and bizarre.
In pain Paul walked down Main Street and hoped that a cop didn’t stop to investigate the long-haired stranger that looked like he had been in a car accident. Though Paul had no problem with the way he looked in general, he could admit that to the average person, he probably looked like a dirt-bag. He didn’t think of himself in that way, of course, he thought he was a pretty good guy and his hygiene was pretty normal.
He reached a strip mall that looked like every other one he drove by since he had been in New Jersey. There was a Quick Stop, a liquor store, a pizzeria, a dry cleaning place, and a dollar-store. Paul walked into the Quick Stop and found its small selection of spiral notebooks. He grabbed two of them and a pack of blue pens.
On his way to the counter, he saw the headline of a local newspaper. It read:
WOMAN, 25, FOUND MURDERED IN BRICK FACTORY.
He leaned over and read the first few paragraphs. A woman was found with her throat cut in the Pink Meat Brick Company factory. It was the fifth murder in two years and some people were calling the killings the work of the “Pink Meat Ripper” though the police had no comment on whether the murders were related.
Shit, that’s pretty fucked up, he thought.
When he reached the counter, the woman behind it gave him a mumbled greeting without making eye-contact. Paul figured she was probably in her fifties and looked like she’d been through a lot of shit in her life. It showed on her face, in her wrinkles, in the bags under her eyes and even in her poor posture. Paul wasn’t really surprised at the lack of cordiality.
She grabbed the notebook and pens and scanned them.
“Excuse me,” Paul said. “Can you tell me how I get to the library?”
The woman, whose battered name tag said her name was Barbara, said, “Down the road, right after the Middle School on your right. If you get to the High School you went too far.” Her eyes finally came up from the counter but not to look at Paul’s face but instead stopped to look at his ripped Judas Priest t-shirt. She made a sour face but he couldn’t tell if it was from the blood stains or her hatred of heavy metal.
“Thanks.” Paul always hated asking for directions not so much because he was a man and men don’t do that sort of thing but because he always feared that the person he asked would give him the wrong directions. He didn’t want to get lost while the person who gave him the directions was laughing behind his back. There were times he even asked two separate people for directions just to see if their routes matched.
But Paul decided to trust Barbara.
He walked with his plastic bag of notebooks and pens down the road. His mind kept going back to the newspaper article. Being a man, he felt pretty safe walking the streets but he still felt like his whole perception of Pink Meat changed. It was as if there was some sort of sinister sleeping beast underneath the town.
Paul passed the Middle School and there it was, the Pink Meat Free Public Library, a tiny red brick building that looked more like a small bunker than a library. Paul walked past the three cars in the parking lot. Apparently people in Pink Meat weren’t voracious readers.
When Paul got inside he walked to the front counter and saw there was no one behind it. Then he heard foot steps, the clip-clop of high heels. From his right he saw her, a chunky woman in a tight skirt that did nothing to hide her wide hips. Her hair was in a bun and she was wearing thick-rimmed glasses. She’s the epitome of a librarian, Paul thought, but she sure is a hot one.
She smiled widely at him when she reached him.
“May I help you?” a British accent said.
Paul was shocked. What the hell was a Brit doing working as a librarian in a small New Jersey town?
“Uh, I was wondering if you could help me find some information. I’m doing research on a local author. Don Patchogue?”
She laughed. “Oh my, that’s quite a surprise.”
“Why’s that?”
“I can’t remember the last time someone was looking for information on him.”
Paul watched as she walked past him and around the counter. He couldn’t help but look at her ass as it wiggled in her skirt. A small portion of her legs were visible in between in skirt and her shoes. She was wearing pantyhose.
He said, “Yeah, well, I’m a fan and I came here to interview him but wanted to see I could do some research before I talked to him.”
The librarian said, “To tell you the truth, there isn’t much about him but I could show you what we have.”
She walked back from behind the counter and motioned for Paul to follow her which he did, happily. He was now aware of his horniness more than ever. It was three months since he had sex and that was while he was in a very brief but passionate relationship with a girl named Tina. It was a relationship which Paul had enjoyed but apparently Tina had only wanted something very brief and passionate and therefore dumped him when the sparks faded. Then she got back together with her ex-husband.
Tina had said to Paul, “It’s nothing personal. You’re a great guy and everything but you knew me and Mark were working it out, right? You didn’t really think it was going to last, did you?”
“Yeah,” Paul had said, “I did.”
Now he was three months sex-sober and was now lusting after a British librarian in a New Jersey library.
While he was following her, he said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“You’re from England, right?” As soon as it came out of his mouth, Paul knew it sounded stupid.
“How could you tell?” She turned her head, smiled, and then stopped at a computer.
“I mean, your accent,” he said but realized that she was being playfully sarcastic. Paul hated himself for sounding so stupid. “What made you come to New Jersey of all places? I don’t think I’ve ever actually met someone from England before.”
The librarian put a palm down on the computer desk and leaned to one side.
“I guess it does seem strange. I actually came here right out of college. I always wanted to visit the States ever since I was a child.”
She turned abruptly and turned the computer monitor on.
“I’ll show you an article from the newspaper about Don Patchogue first.”
The librarian started to type at the computer while Paul watched her. His gaze travelled from the bun in her hair down to her feet. He could see her toes wiggling through her shoes like they were dying to escape. For a few seconds he imagined her kicking her shoes off and running around the library
, taunting him to catch her. He imagined that he’d eventually catch up with her and then…
“Here it is,” she said, interrupting Paul’s daydream.
An article came up on the monitor. She motioned for Paul to have a seat. The article was from the Pink Meat Tribune, the local newspaper and was dated three years ago. The article was about the murder of Sara Patchogue whose body was found in the brick factory. Her throat had been slit.
Most of the article, however, was about her husband, the local author. It started with how Donald Patchogue had been born in Pink Meat, left to go to college out of state and then had come back after having five books published by a small science fiction publisher. It ended with a quote from Patchogue saying, “I’m just trying to get over this tragedy. I have no plans for having any more books published. I just want to enjoy my time here in Pink Meat just like I did when I was a child.”
Paul said, “Did they ever find the killer?”
“No, unfortunately they did not.”
“But it’s the same guy who killed the other women, right? I mean, that’s what it seems.”
She shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know, really. The police don’t think so but a lot of people believe otherwise.”
“But they were all found dead in the brick factory. How can they not be the same person?”
The librarian shook her head. “No, no, only this one and the last one were found there. The others were found in different places.” She smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t come here to talk about this gruesome stuff, did you? If you still are interested in Don Patchogue, follow me.”
She led him to a small room in the corner that had to be unlocked with a key that she had around her neck. It was a room where they kept the rarer tomes which, in a small Jersey town like Pink Meat, was surprising. The librarian walked over to a small metal box, unlocked it, and pulled out a small paperback that was in a protective covering. Gently, she took it out and handed it carefully to Paul. It was a mint condition copy of Don Patchogue’s fifth and last novel that had been published in 1976, Small Gods in the Robot Skull.
