Fritz: All Fritz/All Fritz.zip/All Fritz/FILES/MISCEOUS/DISKZINE.LZH/MAGNUM.DOC

Text File | 1988-07-31 | 15KB | 302 lines

                      Magnum's Dark and Stormy Night

                                    by
                               Philip Dunham


     It was a dark  and  stormy  night.   The  wind  howled  and  the  hogs
squealed,  and  the  chipmunks  just  sat there! The streets were deserted,
except for the street festival and the ensuing traffic jam.

     The tacky black, yellow and orange helicopter swooped out of  the  sky
and  landed  on  the  front  lawn  of the old mansion.  A dashing young man
climbed out of the 'copter looking like he just stepped out of GQ magazine.
He handed the keys to the parking attendent  along  with  a  twenty  dollar
bill.   "Make  sure you don't scratch the paint job," the man said.  "And I
don't want to find any used condoms in the back seat."

     The parking attendent smiled sheepishly and glanced at his girlfriend,
whose car was still stuck in the traffic. She loved to do it  in  the  back
seat of a helicopter.

     As  the man walked to the front door, he decided to do his George Raft
impersonation.  The door bell didn't ring, it howled like a cat whose  tail
had been hacked off with a butcher knife.

     The  door opened and the tall thin butler with an eagle beak of a nose
stood in the doorway.  "Come in, sir," Eagle Beak said.

     "Thanks Frenchie," the man replied smugly,  knowing  that  his  George
Raft was impeccable.

     The  butler  wondered  what he meant by that crack; he was British and
sounded like it too! "You're quite welcome...",  the  butler  said  as  the
young man walked by.  But under his breath the butler added "...asshole!".

     As  the  young  man  was walking down the hall he passed a guy leaning
casually against the wall.  "You'll never make it out alive, kid."  He  had
the  brim  of  his  hat  pulled down over his eyes, and all the time he was
flipping a coin into the air and catching it as it came down.

     "Shit," the young man thought, "he's got my George Raft  beat  all  to
hell."

     Without  breaking  stride  the young man changed to his Humphry Bogart
impersonation.  It wasn't as good as his George Raft,  but  it  was  either
Bogart or Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis just didn't seem to fit here.

     When  he arrived at the main ballroom the hostess came over to him and
introduced herself.  "My name is Countess Aberdeli Pastrami," she  said  in
a  soft  Italian accent.  Suddenly she broke into a Bogart impression, "who
'da hell are you, Sweetheart?"

     "Looks like it's up to Bruce after  all,"  he  thought.  "My  name  is
Tom,"  he  said  as he put on a pair of sunglasses, "I think I took a wrong
turn someplace, I was looking for the  bathroom  and  I  haven't  seen  any
porcelain since I got here," he said in his Bruce Willis voice.

     The  Countess arched her eyebrow and looked at him long and hard for a
minute, but had pity on the young man (and her carpet), and  pointed  to  a
door in the hall.

     "Thanks  babe,  you  really don't know how much this means to me," Tom
said, and dashed off down the hall.  As he slipped through the door, he let
out a long sigh and wondered how he had managed not to wet his pants.

     'The Governer's daughter is being  held  prisoner  somewhere  in  this
mansion and I sure as hell am going to find her,' Tom thought to himself as
he took off the sunglasses.

     'And  these  narratives  are a dirty job, but someone has to do them.'
And with that he turned around and noticed that he wasn't in a bathroom  at
all.  He was in a dungeon, complete with stone walls, torches for light and
a  torture  rack.  It also had a TV showing re-runs of 'I Love Lucy,' along
with a few other implements of pain and mental trauma.

     'Yep,' he said to himself, 'this must be the right  place.'  The  room
was  silent  except for an occasional, "Awwwww Rickkkiieee" and some occult
sounding chanting coming from a large hole in one of the walls.

     'Ah-ha' he said to himself,  'this  looks  like  a  clue!'  He  peeked
through  the  hole  and saw a sight that startled even him.  It was a large
underground cavern with a bonfire in the  center  of  the  cave.   Standing
around  the  fire  were  a bunch of people wearing long monk-like robes and
chanting . At the far end of the cave was  the  statue  of  a  large  demon
creature.   This  in  itself  wasn't enough to bother him too much, but the
fact that the statue was starting to move unnerved him.

     While Tom was wondering how to get into the cave, he was  startled  by
some more chanting coming down the hall. "Uh-oh", he said stepping behind a
curtain  as another dozen monks entered the room and headed for the hole in
the wall. As the twelfth one went by  the  lump  in  the  drapery,  a  hand
reached  out and clasped itself over the warlock's mouth and pulled him in.
A quiet "Murff" and a muffled thud were all that was heard at  the  end  of
the line, and that was covered by chanting and a fairly loud "Baba-Loo".

     Tom  stepped  out  from  behind  the curtain and adjusted the robe and
plopped the hood over his head.  "Hang on Maddie, here I come!" he said and
took off after the rest of the group.

     Stone steps led down into the  cave,  and  slime  covered  the  walls.
Near  the  bottom  of the steps the hooded figure ahead of Tom looked back.
"Hey that's a nice robe you got there, where'd you get yours?"

     "Uh, K-Mart," Tom said without thinking.  "It was on sale." The  whole
group  turned  and  looked  at  him.   'I  think I'm in deep shit now,' Tom
thought as the robed figures pressed in around him.

     "Do they have any left?" the one in front said.

     "Do they have any in extra large?"

     "What other colors do they have?"

     "Can they put one on lay-away?"

     "Do they have any in pink?" the assemblage asked.

     Tom just nodded his head a lot; inside, he sighed  a  sigh  of  relief
that the robe was dark brown and wouldn't show any embarrassing stain.

     The  warlocks gathered around a marble slab as the Governer's daughter
was being dragged out.  She was wearing a red dress that was cut so low  in
front that you could see pubic hair, and so high on the sides you could see
armpit hair.  "This is our virgin sacrifice to the great god 'Bauslog'" the
leader of the coven said to the group.

     "She's a virgin?" Tom said dubiously.

     "In my left ear," she said with a sheepish grin.  The crowd grumbled a
little  bit,  but the consensus was that that was good enough for what they
had in mind for her.

     "All right now,"  said  the  High  Priest,  "enough  of  this  fooling
around, get up on the altar like a good little sacrifice."

     The  Governer's  daughter hesitated.  "Look guys, I thought this was a
regular, everyday kind of kinky orgy.  You  never  said  anything  about  a
sacrifice, I'm not sure I want to go through with this."

     The  assembalage  let out with a low, sarcastic, "Aw shucks," and some
joker in the back started playing a violin.

     Tom was still dwelling on the phrase 'kinky  orgy'  when  he  realized
that  the  coven really meant business.  By this time a couple of the monks
had thrown the girl up on the altar and the High  Priest  had  pulled  what
looked like an ornamental, jeweled steak knife from under his robes.

     "Tink  fast, you waskeley wabbet," Tom said to himself as he pushed to
the front of the group.  Walking up next to the Priest, he managed to  step
on  the statue's foot.  The statue was not amused, and let Tom know it with
a mean growl.

     "What do you want?" the High Priest said in exasperation.

     "It's your wife on the phone," Tom said in a whisper that  carried  to
about  half  of  the  group.   "She said if you don't come home 'right this
instant', you'll be eating cold meals for the next month."

     The priest looked real uncomfortable as he handed the steak  knife  to
Tom.  "Could  you take over for me here?" Tom nodded his head as the priest
stormed off.  "Jesus Christ ... sorry, by the Holy Bauslog, I swear one  of
these days, pow ... to the moon!"

     Tom  felt  a  little sorry for the poor schmuck, but figured he should
be home with his family, instead of staying out till all hours of the night
killing virgins.

     "Ahem ..." Bauslog said, nodding  toward  the  girl  and  tapping  his
still sore foot.  He had the look of a very impatient demon.

     Thinking  as  fast  as he could, considering the situtation, Tom threw
off the robe, put on his Groucho Marx glasses and  mustache  and  popped  a
rubber  cigar  in  his mouth.  The move was so fast and fluid that everyone
thought it was part of the ceremony, even the demon wasn't too sure.

     "Say da' secret woid, and win a hundred  dollars,"  Tom  said  to  the
confused demon.

     "Huh???"

     "That's  it,  you win a hundred dollars," Tom said as a rubber chicken
on a string dropped down from the ceiling. The card in  his  beak  had  the
word  'huh'  on it.  As Tom handed the crisp one hundred dollar bill to the
demon, he pulled the girl off the altar. "Hey  guys,  you've  been  a  good
crowd,  but  I've got to go now. It's been real, and it's been fun ..." Tom
said as he ran out the side door.

     At this point the group didn't know what to think, when Tom poked  his
head back in the door.  "...  but, it ain't been real fun!"

     The  demon didn't care about any of this, he had never won anything in
his life and he was very pleased with the fact  that  he  had  just  won  a
hundred  dollars.   A few seconds later he realized that he was a demon, he
didn't need money, and that his virgin just skipped out with Groucho Marx!

     As the pair ran down the hallway, the girl managed to ask Tom  between
pants  and gasps, "Who are you and where are we going, and for that matter,
where did that rubber chicken come from?"

     "I am your  saviour,  your  salvation,  your  hero.   I'm  your  Zorro
without a mask, Superman without tights, James Bond with a toupe.  I'm here
ta  rescue  ya  babe,"  Tom  said,  not  realizing he was still doing Bruce
Willis.

     The Governer's daughter stopped and looked deep into Tom's blue  eyes.
"A name would work real well right now."

     Dropping  back  into  his  normal  voice,  he replied, "Hi, the name's
Thomas Magnum, I'm a private investigator."

     "Oh.  O.K.  Tom, good to meet you, my name is Janice," she said as she
started to sprint for the door.  "You better get your ass  in  gear,  those
guys aren't in a real good mood right now."

     Stepping  through the door marked 'Exit,' the pair emerged on the side
of the house that faced the valet parking area.  The chopper was  right  in
front,  in a space marked 'Reserved for J. Baker.' They could hear the roar
of the demon as Tom helped Janice into the helicopter.  Tom slid  into  the
pilot's seat and started the motor.

     The  door  from the mansion burst open just as the 'copter was leaving
the ground.  The demon stepped out and let out a scream that caused all  of
the  guppies  in the fishtanks within a fifty mile radius to turn belly up.
He jumped at the departing helicopter and tried to grab the  landing  rail,
but missed by mere inches.

     "You've  had  your  turn,  now it's mine," Tom said rhetorically as he
started feeling around under the seat for his gun.  Instead, all  he  found
was  a  used  condom.  The look on Tom's face was enough to convince Janice
that it wasn't his.  "Yuck," Tom said as  he  tossed  the  rubber  out  the
window.

     Down  on  the  ground,  the  monster  was  following the lights of the
'copter. His prey had left the area of the mansion, but he didn't care.  He
wanted to get them.

     The demon bellowed and shook his fist at the 'copter,  just  when  the
condom  hit  him in the eye.  Blinded for a second, the creature stepped on
to the highway and was hit by a truck.

     The truck driver saw a big hairy beast, but  was  unable  to  stop  in
time. The sight of a semi hitting a demon is not a pretty one.

     The  Governer's daughter was safe, the demon was destroyed, and by the
way Janice was looking at Thomas, he was going to have some fun tonight.

     Suddenly, he realized that something had been bothering him.   Off  in
the  distance, he thought he could hear someone calling his name.  "Oh no,"
he said, "don't tell me this has all been a ..."

     "MAGNUM!!!!" yelled Higgins at the top of his  voice.   Thomas,  still
half  asleep,  fell out of bed.  He quickly pulled on a pair of shorts, and
ran into the living room.

     The guesthouse looked as if a hurricane had been invited in  to  spend
the night.

     T.C.   was  laying  on  the floor, face down in the remains of a pizza
called "Maunaloa's Revenge".  Rick was on the couch, where  he  had  passed
out, reaching for the last roll of sushi.  Vague memories of ten chili dogs
wandered  into  his  mind; it must have been a good party, he wouldn't feel
this lousy if it wasn't.

     The Tigers  won  the  game  the  night  before,  and  the  celebration
included an extra large pizza, a large plate from "Sushi Man" and those ten
(bruupp)  chili  dogs.   Tom  had  to  try a little of every thing.  'O.K.,
O.K.', he thought to himself, 'I had to try a lot of everything.'

     "I just stopped by to bring you the  newspaper,"  Higgins  said  in  a
snottier-than-usual  tone,  "Oh  yes,  and  by  the  way,  what  is  T.C.'s
whirlybird doing in the tennis court?"

     Tom smiled dispite the fact  his  head  felt  like  it  was  going  to
explode. "Playing tennis?"

     Higgins  gently  dropped  the newspaper on the table, and walked away,
making sure to slam the door on his way out. Rick fell off the couch.   Tom
grabbed his aching head and whimpered.  T.C. just rolled over in his pizza.

     "Thomas,"  Rick said, picking himself up off the floor, "That was some
party, wasn't it?"

     "Yes Rick, it was strange last night."  Thoughts  of  the  dream  were
still  rolling  around  in his mind.  Tom glanced down at the newspaper and
noticed a small story about a bear that was  hit  by  a  semi  last  night.
According  to  the  story, no one could figure out what a bear was doing on
the highway.  'Going to a party?' Tom thought to himself.   He  started  to
laugh, but the pounding in his head convinced him not to.

     "A  bear  on the highway," Tom thought aloud, "but what if it wasn't a
bear. What if it was a ... Nawww, it was just a dream."

     "Thomas," Janice said as she walked out of the bedroom, "what was that
noise?"

     Tom saw her standing there, a sheet wrapped around  her.  It  was  the
girl  in  his  dream, and she was wiping something out of her ear.  Her ...
left ear.

                                * * * * * *