Creatures of the Night… and of the Afternoon In English Class
Inspired by Random Battlecry's awesome fic "Whose Lair Is It, Anyway?" and sequels.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in my cast of characters, no form of Frankenstein (except the ones I'm writing), and nothing I may inadvertently refer to in this fic. Including the usual author's disclaimers, one of which whose this disclaimer is starting to sound strangely like. Haha, dangling participle! (Cat bats at it) No, not for you. Oh, I also did not read Frankenstein in English class…I wish I did, some strange deranged expression of what's in my heart compels me to analyze the work, and love it… (A cyber-ice-cream-cone goes to anyone who guessed the musical reference.) Anyway, now on to the story!
Cast of characters:
Mary Shelley-creature aka The Creature
Dean Koontz-creature aka Deucalion
Van Helsing-creature aka Frankenstein's Monster
Frankenstein-The-True-Story-creature aka New Adam
Boris Karloff-creature
Robert DeNiro-creature
Luke Goss-creature
Young-Frankenstein-creature
Frankenthumb-creature
Midnight. Through the thick black of the foreboding night, a dim glow shone from an appropriately dark, gothic, secluded building. Lighting warred in the sky with the clouds of thunder caused by the smoke coming out of the purists' ears who were insistent upon the fact that the Creature was not created in a mad-scientist's lab with lightning flashing in the sky - and in fact, the scientist was not mad at all, just misguided and possessing a Prometheus complex, which was really quite admirable because his intentions were noble, after all, and anyway, what they were sure Shelley had intended was…
They finally came to a compromise. Lightning would not flash, not now or any time in the near future. The lightning mooned.
Inside the castle-science-lab-upstairs-apartment-building (the fans were still arguing about this,) New Adam peered through the window and smiled, combing back his thick black hair with his continuously growing nails. "Victor," he said randomly.
Deucalion said something esoteric and wise, which nobody paid attention to since all the Frankenstein fans were rabidly looking up the name Deucalion in their search engines and finding out that he was the son of Prometheus in Greek myth, and then foaming at the mouth and grinning because it was so perfect…
Or maybe that was just me.
Karloff-creature forced a rigor-mortis-stricken arm to bend, scratched his head painfully, and, observing the fans, let out an eloquent " Unnnnnhhh."
Deucalion raised an eyebrow. "My thoughts exactly."
Helsing-creature pounded his chest and growled. "My green light broke!" he shouted gruffly. "Now I won't have that sympathetic-alien-character-ET edge with the glowing heart!"
Mizamour suddenly popped in and hugged him. "Don't worry, I love you!" she said tenderly, and then disappeared.
Helsing-creature looked around with puzzlement. "That was….odd," he decided, turning back to Deucalion. "So, when is this new one supposed to arrive?"
A voice boomed from the chandelier, shattering the glass and plunging the room into…well, it was already dark…into darker, deeper, more dramatic darkness. Appropriately dramatic music began to echo from the walls.
"He's here!" said Goss-creature nervously. "The Phantom of the Opera!"
Suddenly, the door flew open and a looming figure lumbered in, glowing luminously like an evil Lucifer of unlovely light. Enough alliteration? The figure was white, yellow-eyed, caked with scars, and wore, drawn around him, a black cloak that reminded them all of a shroud – or a baby blanket, depending on where they were created. As they all stared, it opened its mouth, the organ clashed down in a few deep notes, and…
It did not sing.
It spoke, which is a good thing for everyone involved, because if it sang, everyone's ears would be traumatized… except, of course, if it was the Off-off-broadway-musical-Frankenstein-Creature, in which case it would have a good voice. Anyway…
"I…am not…the Phantom…" the creature said laboriously. "I…am…"
"What I am, and that's all that I yam," quipped Helsing-creature (which, by the way, is hard to do when you're a 7-foot monster with a deep, serious voice).
"I am…" said the new creature, "the De-Niro-creature." His eyes roamed the room mournfully. "My creator made me…. in a bucket of eels… talk about…childhood trauma. And then…" – here the creature's eyes narrowed with rage – "he left me without clothes."
"What's wrong with that," piped up a random ex-hippie. "DeNiro with no clothes? I wouldn't mind!"
Helsing-creature slowly swiveled around and glared. The ex-hippie melted into a psychedelic pool.
"Hey," Helsing-creature growled. "I did not know I could do that." Ooc-ly playful, he turned his gaze on the next creature, which happened to be… Shelley-creature.
"Commit this act," Shelley-creature intoned. "End my misery. I was not made for this earth… I am abominable to it. My creator, who should act toward me with all benevolence and love, has betrayed me. No, she wrote me into a book. No, he ran from me. No, she let her fop-husband edit me until I was academialized beyond all hope of recovery. No, he hated me….called me a demon, a devil. No, she hated me…called me her hideous progeny…" the creature sank to his knees with a thud, covering his face.
Deucalion raised his other eyebrow.
"Author-creator confusion," Goss-creature explained. "Happens to the best of them."
Helsing-creature, shaken out of his ooc-ly jovial mood, knelt (with an equally resounding thud) by Shelley-creature. "I know," Helsing-creature said. "I am accustomed…to pain."
Shelley-creature looked up in hopeful surprise.
Helsing-creature put a hand on Shelley-creature's shoulder.
"Victor!" said New Adam cheerfully.
Needless to say, that broke the mood. All of the Creatures got up, stomped heavily around the room a bit, and then settled down in their respective corners, (which was hard, considering there were six creatures, and only four corners) After a Creature-versus-Creature-B-movie-hopefully-money-making-sequel-this-one'll-turn-out-because-of-the-name-right?-maybe-fight, the Creatures settled down with various satisfied and angsty grunts and growls, all except Goss-creature, who curled up in the middle of the room, pulling the rug over him for a blanket, and New Adam, who settled down close by in the room's one chair and cheerily, if awkwardly, said,
"Good night, everyone."
More chapters coming after my trip:)