Emperor of Gondwanaland

by Paul Di Filippo

  Dropping his feet to the floor with a satisfying thud, adjusting his holster, Sheriff Fuhrman once more thanked his lucky stars for making him the only law in this two-bit town.

  Lord knows, it was a dang sight better being on this side of the nightstick than t’other!

  O.J. of Melnibone

  From behind the golf clubs in the closet, Stormbringer called insistently to him.

  “Blood,” whined the cursed devil sword in its eerie voice only Prince O.J. of Melnibone could hear. “I need blood!”

  Huddled on the couch, hands cupped to his ears, Prince O.J. strove with every ounce of his royal strength to resist the call. Why had he not destroyed the evil instrument of chaos when he had last had a chance, back at the End of Time? Was it his destiny always to lose those he loved to the insatiable maw of the black sword? For days now it had been demanding souls to drink. Preferably the souls of those most beloved by its owner. How much longer could even one of such deep superhuman strengths as he possessed resist the foul urgings of the sentient nigrescent blade?

  Concentrate, he must concentrate!

  As the last heir to the glory that once was the far-off exotic kingdom of Melnibone writhed on the couch, the phone rang, shattering his single-pointed psychic resistance like a battering ram against a castle’s gates.

  “Argh!” yelled Prince O.J. “Curse you, Arioch!”

  Fumbling the phone off its cradle, Prince O.J. bellowed, “What the fuck is it!”

  “Uh, sorry to bother you, sir. This is the limo service. We just wanted to confirm your appointment—”

  “Yes, damn you! Eleven tonight!”

  Prince O.J. slammed the receiver back down. Then he moved to the closet, opened the door, roughly pushed aside the golf bag.

  There lay his sweet doom.

  “Ah,” whispered Stormbringer in its oily voice, “my old friend. Do we feast tonight?”

  Prince O.J. grabbed the sheathed instrument of carnage and strapped it on. Instantly a thrill as of his veins filling with pure essence of poppy surged through him. Once more he knew why he could never part with Stormbringer. Filtered through its presence, the world assumed a clarity of purpose and vision.

  “We will feast,” agreed Prince O.J. “I have someone in mind— someone quite special.”

  “Perhaps there will even be another with her,” the sword said greedily.

  “Naw, I got that bitch so scared she don’t dare date.”

  She

  At the ornately carved, vine-cloaked entrance to the abandoned temple, O. J. Simpson paused. Pushing back the pith helmet that had protected him from the African sun for the seemingly endless months of his trek into the unexplored interior of the Dark Continent, he stopped to contemplate what he had achieved. No civilized explorer had ever penetrated this far during recorded history! O.J. Simpson was about to become a legend. His name would stand in the history books as a shining example of the heights a man could reach if he followed his dream.

  Ending his reverie, pushing aside some vines, O.J. stepped through the ancient portal—

  And was snared!

  Natives of a peculiar degenerate type (myths O.J. had never countenanced till now referred to them as “mediamen,” an apparent reference to their status midway between beasts and humans) quickly bound him up, lifted him off his feet, and carried him through torch-lit tunnels deep underground.

  In what appeared to be a throne room of sorts, he was deposited still bound in a stone chair. Weird drums and flutes began to play. And from the shadows stepped—a woman!

  But what a woman! Clad only in diaphanous silks and ropes of pearls, she was femininity distilled into its purest essence, regal, imperious, seductive. Moreover, she was a white woman, although bronzed by the sun.

  Most strange to find one such here in Africa’s heart of darkness.

  “So,” said the queenly figure in a not unkindly tone, “you have returned to me at last.”

  “Returned? What do you mean?”

  “Ah, my dearest one, don’t you recall how, in another life long ago, you were Prince O-ren-thal, and I was your lover, Princess Faye-res-nik. How we pledged eternal troth, even unto death—and beyond! And now here we are, reincarnated and drawn together by the stars.”

  “Lady, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but I don’t buy all that New Age hooey.”

  The woman reared back violently. “Sacrilege! You dare to defy me? Don’t you know the name the natives use for me? ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’!

  “I shall possess you, body and soul, even if I must reduce you to my slave! Hmmm, let me see. I shall set you a task, one even repugnant to your noble nature, in order to prove the folly of resisting me. What shall it be, what shall it be— Ah, I have it! A murder!”

  O.J. fought his bonds without success. He could feel an occult narcotic haze wrapping his normally lucid thought processes, drawing him deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of damnation—

  One from which he would be incredibly lucky—even with the assistance of the most highly paid lawyers—ever to emerge.

  The Hornet’s Sting

  One lovely June night, Britt “O.J.” Reid, crusading editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel, summoned his faithful manservant, Kato, to his side. Reid sat in the parlor of his mansion (paid for by the honest sweat of his brow and his paper’s lucrative advertising income) drinking a healthful glass of that fine California fruit juice, an “addiction” to which had earned him his jocular nickname.

  “Kato, have you finished polishing the Black Beauty yet?”

  “Yes sir! She’s fueled and ready to go!”

  “Let’s don our costumes and hit the road then! I have news of a malignant sore upon the body of this fair city that needs some of our special kind of surgery!”

  “You got it, Boss!”

  Soon the Green Hornet—none other than Reid himself; and how his buddies would have been surprised by his transformation!—accompanied by his martial-arts-trained sidekick, Kato, were seated in their astonishing crime-fighting vehicle, a customized ebony Ford Bronco dubbed “Black Beauty.”

  “So as not to attract undue attention, and also obey the relevant traffic laws, what say I drive us to our destination at approximately ten miles per hour, Boss!”

  “Good thinking, Kato! I’ll direct you!”

  After approximately an hour of easygoing travel, the pair found themselves parked inconspicuously outside a familiar locale.

  “But Boss—can this be right? Isn’t this your ex-wife’s place?”

  Emerging from the car and checking his various weapons—gas gun, “stinger”—the Green Hornet replied, “Indeed, Kato. It is with sincere regret that I must spring a perhaps shocking surprise on you. My former wife has seen fit to tread the path of the world’s oldest profession. Out of sheer greed, not content with my generous stipends, she has started soliciting weak-willed males for sex. I have no doubt, in fact, that we shall find one such here tonight. In the words of the street-wise, she’s now nuthin’ but a goddamn ho! And we’re going to bring her to justice, much as it might hurt us personally. Unfortunately, lawless times require that we masked avengers take justice into our own hands! Now, here’s my plan. I want you to render my wife and any of her ‘johns’ we discover to be with her unconscious with your dazzlingly swift karate moves. Then leave the rest to me!”

  Kato’s expression—never that of a brilliant man—now reflected a puzzled acquiescence. “Sure, Boss. Whatever you say.”

  “Okay! Let’s move!”

  Within seconds, Nicole Simpson and an unidentified male lay quiet on the stone walkway.

  “Very good, Kato! Now, you just go back to the car and polish the head lamps a bit, okay? And oh—make ready the Hornet Handiwipes! I have a feeling I’ll be needing them!”

  The Dream Life of Ronald Mitty

  Driving through the evening after his boring, dreary job was over, Ronald Mitty began to indulge himself in his favorite pastime. The mental cinema of which he wa
s scriptwriter, director, projectionist, and sole audience member started to play.

  I’ll walk up her front path, suave and cool, pretending I’m not impressed at all by such a fancy place. She’ll probably think I live in such swell digs myself. I’ll ring the bell, straighten out my uniform— Oh, heck, this uniform! But I had to come straight from work or miss my big chancel Well, the heck with it, all the girls say my butt looks cute in my waiter pants. Where was I? Oh, yeah, right. The door opens, I smile, she says hi, I say hi, then I hold up the sunglasses, maybe twirling them a little on my finger, and say, “Do these look familiar, Mrs. Simpson?” No, wait, that’s wrong! How dumb can you get! Miss Brown, that’s what I’ll call her. Or should it be Ms. Brown-Simpson? Oh, rats! I’ll just go with Nicole. “Do these look familiar, Nicole?” “Why, yes, they do! However did you find them? You must be an extremely smart and observant fellow! I’d be absolutely lost without them! Glare of publicity and all, don’t you know! Now, how can I possibly reward you?” So I say, “Well, a ginger ale would go down nice about now,” and she invites me in, and then we—

  The images in Ronald Mitty’s brain acquired that peculiar vaporish insubstantiality imposed by the Hays Code at the most interesting moments in the narrative. Forcing himself to concentrate on his driving, Ronald Mitty began to whistle a sprightly tune from the current Hit Parade, congratulating himself all the while on his most excellent good fortune.

  Condo of the Damned

  The children—if children they still were—had been tucked into bed for the night.

  But that didn’t mean they were safe.

  Or that anyone was safe from them.

  Armed with a glass of Perrier to soothe her nerves and wet her nervously parched throat, Nicole Brown Simpson, mother of Sydney and Justin, curled up on the couch in her condo at 875 South Bundy, and prayed that she would survive the night.

  Once more, for the umpteenth time, she racked her brains for anything she could have done differently since that fateful morning in Cancun, when her world had come undone. But as always, she could come up with no alternative paths to the ones she had taken.

  How could she have known on that day—when the children (then still blessedly normal) had come running to her where she lay sunning her lissome form on the beach, happily babbling of their mysterious find—that her life and theirs were about to undergo a precipitous change for the worse?

  Sydney and Justin had been so thrilled with their sandy find— a small gold casket, encrusted with barnacles and draped with seaweed—that Nicole had never imagined that anything dangerous could be lurking inside it. Then, when her two beautiful youngsters—the beloved products of the wonderful marriage between Nicole and her worshipful, adoring O.J.—had finally cracked the casket open and that horrid cloud of green noxious gas had enveloped them, causing them to fall unconscious for a full twenty-four hours—only then had she shrieked and pulled her darlings away.

  But too late. Much too late.

  Nicole didn’t care what the doctors said. The children were different now. And not in a pleasant way. Thank God that she had managed to isolate O.J. from the worst of their bizarre new behavior, thanks to the ruse of pretending she wanted to maintain a separate household.

  Of late, Sydney’s and Justin’s unchildlike demands and veiled threats had become nearly overwhelming—

  “Mother, we need to talk.”

  Nicole screamed and launched her nonalcoholic drink in an arc across the room.

  Beside her, having crept up quietly as dust, stood the children.

  Their eyes glowed in the dimly lit room. Liquid pools of golden fire, the orbs seemed to spin hypnotically in the eye sockets of their once-pleasant mulatto faces.

  “Wha—what do we need to talk about?” stammered Nicole.

  “Opening the way,” said Sydney, age nine, in a voice resonant as a tomb.

  “So that more of us may come through,” explained Justin, age six.

  “It requires blood, you see,” Sydney continued. “The blood of a relative and the blood of a stranger.”

  Before Nicole could deny this horrifying request, the doorbell rang.

  “And there’s the stranger,” said little Justin. “Just in time.”

  Nicole made to leap up and flee, but was stopped by the paralyzing touch of her possessed daughter.

  “Now,” said Sydney, “you’ll walk outside and pretend nothing’s wrong. Keep him talking. We’ll be right with you—as soon as we visit the kitchen for the tools we need.”

  Helpless, silently screaming inside, Nicole did as she was programmed.

  Beyond the door stood Ronald Goldman. “Hey, Nicole—do these look familiar?”

  Run! Nicole tried to yell. Save yourself! But instead of the warning, all that emerged was foolish talk of the dinner she had just enjoyed and her unfelt gratitude for the return of her meaningless property. Moving her visitor outside with talk of not wanting to wake the children (!), Nicole admitted to herself at last that she was a dead woman.

  But oh, she selflessly thought a few seconds later as the knives wielded by the small but capable hands of her own children struck and struck again, how will my poor darling O.J. ever manage all alone?

  Elementary, My Dear Cowlings

  “Allow me to recapitulate,” said Sherlock Simpson in his familiar ratiocinative, brandy-mellowed, erudite tones. “Then perhaps you shall finally begin to grasp what is so patently obvious, Cowlings.”

  Seated beside his mentor and friend in a slow-moving horseless carriage now cruising down the turnpikes of southern California, Dr. Cowlings replied in his hearty, bluff, and game manner, “Why, I’m always absolutely thrilled to listen to you, Simpson. You know that, of course, as you know everything! I’ve been carefully recording all your deductions and adventures for years now. Why, perhaps there’ll even be a book composed of them someday!”

  “All beside the point, Cowlings, although I do appreciate your houndlike loyalty. The matter before us now is to ascertain the motives and probable destination of a certain party, based on the contents of his ‘getaway’ vehicle. We can see, first off, that he has made certain to obtain approximately ten thousand dollars in U.S. currency. A rather large sum, wouldn’t you say, for a simple ‘visit to the cemetery’? In addition, he carries a weapon, his passport, a map of Mexico, a fake beard, and a year’s supply of antivenereal sheaths. Left at home is a maudlin ‘suicide’ note plainly intended to send the authorities—so tiresomely blinkered, as always—on a wild goose chase. Very well—given all this, what conclusions can you draw, Cowlings?”

  Cowlings crinkled his brow in deep cogitation before finally blustering out with a guess. “Why, by Jove, I should say the bounder and cad was fleeing directly for the border and planning never to return, all to avoid prosecution and sentencing for a foul deed he most surely committed!”

  “Oh, bravo, Cowlings! Well done! Now, step on it!”

  O.J. Stover at Yale

  It was the twenty-sixth reunion of the class of ’68, held as always in the month of May, so that the “alums” could witness another perennial graduation: in this case the sterling class of’94. From far and near the old school chums had assembled behind the gates of their beloved alma mater, there gleefully to reminisce and gaily disport themselves. It was a sparkling assemblage, for the class of ’68 had done well by themselves, fulfilling their youthful promise. Present were lawyers and doctors, judges and politicians, graying executives and their young wives. Yet even amidst such a stellar crowd, one couple stood out.

  That former Big Man on Campus, the star Negro football player who had led Yale to its finest four seasons and innumerable trophies, repository of so many hopes and fond memories: Orenthal James Simpson, accompanied by his beautiful second wife, the Caucasian Nicole Brown Simpson.

  These days “O.J.” and his wife lived in exotic California, far from the sites of his old East Coast triumphs. Seen constantly on “television” and in the moving picture palaces, his face featured on
the covers of national magazines, “O.J.” had never been far from the minds and hearts of his old chums. Clustered around this handsome couple now stood a crowd of adoring compatriots offering what amounted almost to worship.

  “Can I get you another drink, Nicole?” one gentleman now considerately asked Mrs. Simpson.

  “Sure, sweetie,” replied “O.J.’s” spouse in a charmingly slurred voice perhaps in vogue on the West Coast.

  “No, she’s had enough,” interpolated “O.J.” “Haven’t you, dear?”

  “Fuck, no!” countered Mrs. Simpson. “In fact, I’m ready to do a few lines! Who’s holding here? C’mon, don’t be selfish!”

  “Hey, ‘O.J.’,” queried one rapscallion, “where’d you get this slut?”

  “Any more like her at home?” chimed in another banterer.

  “Slut?” echoed the furious “O.J.” “Who’re you calling a slut?” The burly ex-pigskinner now thrust his hand between Mrs. Simpson’s legs so as to cup her loins. “See this! This belongs to me! This is where my children come from!”

  In a similar joshing manner, Mrs. Simpson now tossed the contents of her glass in her husband’s face. “Pig! Bastard!”

  Displaying the same gridiron panache with which he had broken through many a defensive line, “O.J.” silenced his wife with a deft backhand, knocking her to the floor. Bending down as if to raise her, he ejaculated sotto voce, “You shamed me, you whore! Just wait till we get home! You’re gonna pay big time!”

  Mrs. Simpson only whimpered.

  U.F.O.J.

  Blissfully asleep in his home, O.J. was snared by the tractor beam of the mother ship. Drawn through his bedroom window and upward through the night sky, his pajama-clad form rigid as a board, he would have presented an incredible sight to any witnesses—save that the Men in Black make sure there are never any witnesses to such abductions.