Lorelei And The Wholly Weird Day

All credit to Franklin and Sam for these characters, and apologies if due for any liberties taken. This started life as a silly conversation with Sam, so it's for her



LORELEI AND THE WHOLLY WEIRD DAY
By Paul Newman


TAWNY sunlight sliced through the blinds, transforming the cheap motel room into a Cubist tiger skin and throwing the lazily shifting pall of stale cigarette smoke into precise strata of fire and shadow.

Shifting restless in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets, Lorelei felt its heat on her skin and dragged herself the final few inches towards consciousness. A greasy tickling of perspiration snaked into the hollow of her throat and pooled there as she luxuriated in the last lint-flecked dregs of sleep, willing away the soft snoring of her companions. She heard a mattress creak to her right as a sleeper shifted; from somewhere close by curled the drowsy insistence of a slide guitar, its tremulous, serpentine notes shivering with the promise of a melody only to slip into elusive fading echoes.

The muted whir of cicadas hung on air that already felt stifling. Outside, a flimsy wooden screen door was slammed half-heartedly into its frame by the breeze. Time to rise and shine on, if they were to catch the day and do anything useful with it. Lorelei opened her eyes and looked down to the foot of the bed.

“What the…” she croaked through an arid Marlboro mouth.
She wasn’t blind but still couldn’t see. At least not past the monumental cleavage and improbably cantilevered breasts looking her right in the eye, dominating her line of sight and heaving into a sizeable proportion of her peripheral vision. Just how hammered had she got last night? She shook her head with an effort, a white-streaked curtain of sable hair sticking mussed to her shoulders and across her face as she levered her elbows beneath her shoulders and forced herself into a sitting position. The breasts rose with her, maintaining their perfect frontal assault on the world and proudly telling Newton just where he could shove his apple. The guitar shimmered on quietly like a mournful redneck’s lullaby.

Looking around the surreal, sticky haze of the room, she took in the bed beside her own and the drowsing Gordian Knot of pale limbs, smooth fur, tousled blonde hair and hooves that might unravel into Valerie and Goat Boy. Across from her, The Chef was slumped upright in a tatty Naugahyde armchair, chin sunk on his chest and emitting low rumbling snores; funny, she’d never noticed before just how much he looked like Robert De Niro, at least when he wasn’t displaying the wicked nest of shark teeth that passed for his mouth.

There was a side table beneath the window, pock-marked worse than any burger-flipping teenager’s face with the scars of a hundred cigarette burns, and squatting atop it was a Bakelite radio, spilling out the raw, muted guitar loops. She could hear the scrape of the player’s calloused fingertips as they shifted up the strings, something about the music so familiar it tantalised, hovered clear in her memory, its identity the shifting reflections on the oily skin of a soap bubble that popped every time she grasped at it. Her gaze followed the cord trailing from the back of the antique set to where it ended on the floor in a small two-pin plug sat in a nest of dust bunnies. The only other object on the table was a plastic display holder for tourist brochures touting the arid, masochistic thrills of a pleasure jaunt to Death Valley.

Death Valley? Death Valley-in-fucking-California Death Valley? Oh, crap. This is not good. And this is definitely not Scotland. Which it most definitely should be.

Lorelei glanced from the leaflets back to the radio, up to the window and down to her unfamiliar and most likely back-breaking pneumaticism, barely encased in a sleeve of tight black leather which merged seamlessly into sprayed-on black jeans and chunky motorcycle boots. She coughed once and announced to the room in voice that fluttered hot against the lightbulb of panic: “People, wake up. Wake up, damn it! We’ve got a problem, a big problem.”

Two big problems, actually, she muttered to herself. The Chef was awake instantly, rising from the chair with a fluid grace belying his size and fetching up with him the battered, leather-finished presentation case in which he kept his beloved knives.

“Lore’, what’s up? What’s the…?”
He stopped and stared at her, jaw vaguely working around an invisible wad of gum, eyes transfixed.

“Darlin’, I’ve got a sneaking feeling these are least of our troubles.”

A silvery squeal of surprise interrupted her and she looked sharply across to the next bed. Valerie was gazing down at own amplified endowments in disbelief as they strained dangerously at the gauzy, semi-transparent material she was almost wearing, even as her fingers explored the ludicrously accentuated tips of the ears rising pointedly through the flaxen cascade of her hair. Her ears. Small rainbow-flecked wings twitched at her shoulder-blades.

“Who dares?”
The music of her voice was retuned to vicious high-C glass shards.
“Who dares use their art to turn me into this… into this…”, words failed her for a moment , “ this fucking porn elf?”


Still brushing the dust of sleep from his eyes, Goat Boy rolled back from her and blinked stupefied as his vision came into focus. Or tried to. He leaned a little further away to improve his aim.
“Oh, my…”
A lascivious grin blossomed on his lips as his right hand meandered south along a well-travelled route, down through the fine hairs of his chest and stomach to between his legs. He froze and his grin fell to the floor in pieces. Clawing at himself in frantic disbelief, he toppled from the bed to the horrific chocolate and orange whorls of an industrial-grade carpet, tottering to his hooves and letting loose a bleat of pure anguish. Where he’d expected to find his oldest and firmest companion was now only the smooth, sexless sheen of a pair of black Lycra shorts. His desperate fingers scrabbled without success to find purchase at the waist, then at where his legs emerged from the ridiculous garment. He gave a sob of barely contained panic as he let his hands fall, clasping them over his crotch to conceal his shame.

“I hate cyclists.”

Lorelei looked steadily at her companions, down at herself, as four pairs of eyes locked in shocked incredulity. Lewd of the Rings. A eunuch Mr Tumnus. Robert De Niro. And the Bride of FrankenHeffner.

Somebody was going to pay for this, and not in small change.

“Who?” demanded Valerie, rising from the bed with murder gleaming white-hot in her eyes.

“Where?” choked Goat Boy, fingers seeking substance in a vacancy.

“Why?” thought Lorelei.

Something was wrong with time; the air felt oppressively thick, thoughts crawled around her mind with the alacrity of vacationing slugs in a treacle Jacuzzi. The Chef cocked his head a moment, detected the low crackle of tyres rolling on gravel and was at the door in a heartbeat, neck craning around the window frame as he scanned the outside world.

“This’ll have to wait. Lore’, we’ve got company.”

“Company?”

“Cops.”

“Cops? How many?”

He turned from the window and looked at her nervously. “All of ‘em.”

Lorelei and Valerie moved swiftly to his side, ducking low to peer out between the lower blinds and squinting into the glare of the sun rising in the south. From behind them came the crack of hoof on wood, succeeded immediately by a sharp hiss and a stream of uncreative if heartfelt swearing from Goat Boy, but they were too transfixed by the view to turn around.

An arc of vehicles swept across their entire field of vision, cruisers with their reds and blues revolving, doors thrown wide to provide cover for scores of men in khaki uniforms, mirrored shades and ‘70s-style horseshoe ‘taches . Every one of them had a weapon in his hands and all were trained unwaveringly on the window.

More muffled cursing and grunts from Goat Boy, accompanied by a low scuffing sound as of something heavy being dragged across cheap carpet.

“Hey…” he began.

“Not now, son, not now.”
The Chef might have sounded casual if not for the tremor in his voice.
“Lore’, got any ideas?”

“You mean apart from observing that the sun’s in the wrong place today? Not a one.”

“Where the hell is this? Are we still in the Astral?”

Lorelei closed her eyes and sniffed deeply.
“No, we’re not. But I’m not picking up the stink of the Real, either. This is someplace far weirder and more dangerous by far. I think this is California.”

“Aw, crap.”

“Crap is right.”

“Still no ideas?”

“Yeah, one ...” She apparated a lit cigarette and drew hungrily on it. “Smoke if you got ‘em.”

“Hey, seriously ...” Goat Boy tried again.

Valerie kept her eyes on the black-unformed ATF goons scuttling about and taking up defensive postures behind the phalanx of cops, hut-hut-hutting to and fro in small units and giving each other leg-ups onto the assorted outbuildings.
“What is it, my beloved creature?”

“I really think you need to take a look at this.”

The three turned from the window to find Goat Boy crouched low. Before him was a cheap pine coffin with brass fittings, and with one hand he held open the hinged lid which concealed its contents from them. He looked up at them and for a moment the pain of his loss was gone from his face and he was lit up like Old Scratch on All Hallows.

“I was just wondering ...” He threw open the lid fully, “... who all these guns belong to?”

The casket was a bristling arsenal of high-powered, gleaming death, oiled and ready to rock ‘n’ roll; a jumble of AK-47s, magnums, an Uzi or 10, the blunt nose of a sawn-off shotgun, a couple of pump-actions, bandoliers of ammunition shining in their dull brass clips. And, front and centre, cradled lovingly in the lethal arms of its kin, a fuck-off M60 that looked just about right for carjacking a tank.

Lorelei apparated a bottle of Jack, took a hard pull on it and handed it across to The Chef.
“Okay, not what I was expecting, but I’ll drink to that.”

The Chef flipped the bottle over to Goat Boy, who deftly caught it in one hand, gulped down a quarter of the contents and tossed it back before delving into the coffin.

A bullhorn quacked, clicked sharply and squawked again.
“You inside the cabin. Open the door slowly and throw out your weapons. Exit one at time. Hands laced behind your heads.Do it now and nobody dies.”

The four friends looked at one another, gave a collective shrug and dived into the coffin. The Chef lost his knives somewhere within his improbably accommodating overcoat and took both pump-actions, holding them by the slides and jacking shells with a single savage flick of his wrists. Valerie snagged a pair of Uzis, slung one over each shoulder and bent to hook a couple more. Lorelei was strapping a holster tight around her waist, tying it off just above her knee and slipping a gleaming .44 Magnum snugly home before reaching for an AK-47.

“God damn,” muttered The Chef, “doesn’t this tin-pot station play anything but Ry Cooder?”

Goat Boy just stood there looking glassy-eyed and lost, somewhere between a kid set loose in Hamleys at Christmas and a dog being shown a card trick. Valerie moved to his side, her palm and fingertips caressing the Action Man simplicity of his crotch.

“Who did this to us will pay, darling creature, but none more so than the one who in taking from you took from us both. Until that time …”

She bent and with no effort at all lugged up the M60.

“… this should help you deal with any separation anxiety. You know, size is important.”

Her lover hefted his weapon, approved of its weight and authority. Adjusting the strap over his left shoulder and holding the monstrous gun close on his hip, he looked at his companions and grinned.

“Check-out time.”

The four stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the window and the khaki army beyond. The first lachrymose chords of the theme from Paris, Texas shimmered from the radio and Lorelei scowled in annoyance, drew the hand cannon from her hip, dropped into a professional shooter’s spread-legged stance and fired. The roar was deafening as scraps of Bakelite, wood and transistor showered down around them.

She looked around a little guiltily.
“Sorry, but that was really starting to piss me off. Besides, nothing quite like starting the working day with a quick shot of Ry.”

The bullhorn was quacking against outside, joined by a commotion of shouts and orders.

“This is getting old,” she decided. “Time to go.”

The first eruption of gunfire turned the front of the motel into a colander, the four of them spewing out a Biblical curse of lead onto the heads of the cowering cops behind their car doors or, caught short in the open, simply curled up foetally in the dust. To Lorelei’s right, The Chef worked with the steady application of a gravedigger. At her left, Valerie emitted a shrill ululation of battle frenzy as the Uzis burped and stuttered bright fire in her hands. Beside her, Goat Boy was too busy studying his faery queen’s breasts jiggling magnificently to the rhythm of her gunfire to be looking where he was shooting, but it hardly mattered; the M60 laid down a criss-crossing trail of carnage the like of which might impress Kalashnikov himself, punching gouts of dirt from the ground and stitching ragged lines of fist-sized holes in the wall of vehicles and the men crouching behind them. The noise was incredible. Over to their right, a gas tank caught with a dull crump and sent up a roiling, greasy fireball. The exploding vehicle detonated its neighbours, the force lifting them from the ground, and on and on in a devastating chain reaction.

Their weapons showed no signs of running out of ammunition but by unspoken assent they reined in their deadly fire and stood panting in the acrid cordite.

It was a total rout.

Through the shattered wall and mashed blinds, the desert before their cabin was a landscape of twisted, burning wreckage and bleeding bodies. The soundtrack was all screams and cries for help.

“Screw me sideways, Lore’,” breathed The Chef in awe, smoke rising from his cuffs to merge with that wafting from the hot barrels of both guns.

She nodded, then flicked a glance over her shoulder.
“Better see if we’ve got a rear exit we can use. It won’t be long before what’s left of those bozos pulls together.

“I’m on it.”
His teeth sparkled like a fistful of steak knives and he was off to the rear of the room, stretching on tip-toe to peek through the single strip window high up in the wall.

Outside, they were beginning to hut-hut-hut again, the sound of the survivors getting organised drowned by a heavy clattering as four Bradley tanks rumbled into view behind the carnage, each sheltering long lines of very cautious and very heavily armed ATF troops. Even from this distance, Lorelei, Valerie and Goat Boy could read the malice glittering in their eyes, the grim set of their facial hair. The trio shared a look and readied their weapons for the onslaught.

“Excuse me?” said The Chef from behind them. “Did anybody order a werewolf in a hot pink Cadillac convertible playing death metal?”

They wheeled about in time to see him dive away from the wall, ricochet off the bed and land in an ungainly heap at their feet. For an instant there was the approaching roar of an engine and the rear wall disintegrated as a classic car slammed through it and slewed to a halt in a tangle of cheap furniture and dust.

“Trevor!” Goat Boy bounded across the wreckage. “Oh, man, talk about good timing.”

“Long time no see, you son of a bovid.”
The driver’s bloodshot lilac eyes twinkled from under the curtain of creamy white hair which covered every inch of his body. He was naked but for a pair of cut-off denim shorts, one furry paw on the wheel and the other resting casually on the door as he took a long, slow hit off a joint only slightly less impressive than John Holmes’ appendage.

Lorelei stepped up beside Goat Boy, nodded in greeting to the new arrival.
“You know him?”

“Know him? Know him? Shit, we were practically brothers from other mothers once upon a time. This is Trevor The Amazing Dog Boy .. the Trevor The Amazing Dog Boy. We were, what, five years together on the road with Professor Lynch’s Cavalcade Of Mutants And Inhuman Curiosities, back when the northern club circuit was still a going concern.”

“So what brings you here?”
Lorelei was still jittery from the shooting, antennae crackling on high alert. She had to shout to be heard above the frenzied metal pouring from the car’s speakers.

“I’m a little curious about that myself, Miss.”
The dope made him slur a little but his impeccable BBC English survived well enough.
“One minute I’m rattling down the M11 in my old rusting shit-box death-trap to catch Hawkwind in Brixton tonight, there’s a weird flash as I go over a pothole or something and, voila, I’m here, in this retro wet dream on wheels, it’s daytime and I’m barrelling into some shitty motel. This shitty motel here, as a matter of fact. Where is here, by the way?”

“California. Maybe.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Quite. And from the sound of that small army outside, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.”

“You need a ride?”

Lorelei smiled at him for the first time, apparated a smoke and reached over to trade it for his joint.

“Trevor, I thought you’d never ask.”

Lugging their small arsenal with them, the four piled in to the Caddy, Lorelei up front and the others in the back seat.

“Can you do anything about that bloody noise?”

Trevor fiddled with the stereo a moment, frowned and punched it in. Slayer’s No Remorse continued to erupt from the speakers like a blender full of nails.

“Sorry, sweetheart, looks like we’re stuck with it.”

“Never mind. Least it’s good for one thing ”

“Yes?”

“Getaway music.”

Trevor grinned werewolfishly.
“Right you are.”

In a howl of roaring mechanics and bellowing metal, the Caddy fishtailed for purchase and smashed through the shattered remains of the front wall, heading straight for the line of burning cruisers before Trevor wrestled the wheel into submission, spun about and headed for the single highway running to the sun.

A stutter of bullets began, some spanging into the car and most simply kicking up dirt fore and aft.

“Those idiots are lousy shots ....” Goat Boy swivelled around, hoisted the M60 onto the rear of the seat and started to fire back, “… but we’re not.” He laughed aloud, then looked puzzled.”Oddly.”

As the hot pink Cadillac screamed down the highway in a blur of bullets and basslines, several cruisers and a couple of Humvees peeled out of the motel forecourt in pursuit, their wailing sirens adding marginally to the toxic noise pollution. Valerie joined Goat Boy in firing back and in a minute there was only burning wreckage in the rear-view mirror.

A few minutes further on, The Chef spotted a dirt track branching off to the west.

“Lore’…?”

“I see it. Trevor, hang a right and kill the speed so they won’t have any dust to follow.”

His pelt rippling in the wind, teeth bared with the thrill of the chase, Trevor spun the wheel around with one hand and the next moment they were jolting and bouncing along track. A mile, two miles later, and the terrain began to crowd in on the car, boulders joining up until they were creeping through a ravine of sheer rock walls and deepening shadows.

Goat Boy bleated a little from down in his chest.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Valerie moved tighter to him, her head on his shoulder as her hand stayed protectively between his legs. The tip of one elfin ear tickled his cheek but he was too smart to say anything about it.

“He’s right,” said The Chef. “In a day of some fucked-up weird shit, this does not bode well. Has anybody else noticed the sun’s already going down?”

The Caddy coughed and lurched. Trevor peered at the antique dials on the dashboard.
“Speaking about not boding well, I estimate we’re going to run out of petrol about…”

A final rattle, a shiver of metal and the car died.

“… now.”

Even the squalling from the radio faded into silence until there was nothing but the random pinging of the cooling engine and a soft whirr of crickets in the scrub.

“So I guess we have to walk our way out of here.”
Lorelei opened the door and swung her legs out, staggering a little as she stood from the unfamiliar additional weight upstairs.
“I swear, when I find who’s responsible for this, I’m going to feed them their…”

“Lore’! Shh!”
The Chef was already out of the car, crouching to the ground with the palm of one hand spread flat in the dirt.
“We’ve got company.”

She spun and looked back down the way they’d come. No headlights. No nothing.
“Where? How many?”

“Where? Baby girl, I’m not even sure ‘what?’.”

Trevor vaulted out of the driver’s seat and landed gracefully on all fours. He sniffed the wind.
“Search me. Something old, smells like. Ancient. Evil.”

“Great,” sighed Goat Boy. “So now your mum’s after us?”

Trevor growled at him. “No, worse than that. Much worse.”

The dog boy took point, followed by Lorelei, Valerie and Goat Boy with The Chef bringing up the rear, and they trudged into the gloom of the canyon.

After a few hundred yards, the towering rock walls to either side of them began to fall away and they emerged into a wide valley. As far as the eye could see, it was densely planted with maize, the waxy green leaves rustling secretively as they caught and turned bloody rays from the setting sun. The far reaches of the valley were already in shadow and a thin mist wreathed the corn.

“I’m not liking this one little bit, Lore’.”
The Chef’s face creased in a creepy, mirthless grin, teeth and eyes shining bright.

“Me neither, but I can’t see any way around it. Single file, as we were, but first…”
The air in her palm shimmered into a bottle.
“… a little something to lubricate balls of steel, yes?”

The bottle did the rounds, miraculously surviving the damage inflicted by Trevor, until it ended back with Lorelei. She clasped it around the neck and raised it in toast to her comrades; in the brief moment she held the bottle steady before her eyes she felt a curious tremor in the ground. A perfect circle of ripples raced over the surface of the last inch of whisky. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, opened them again and stared into the bottle. There it was again, racing in and then back on itself in circles, and this time the motion in the ground was unmistakable. Trevor whined and Lorelei had the strongest urge to reach out and ruffle the pelt behind his ears. Whump! A third time, and now the tremor was strong enough that everyone felt it.

“Earthquake?”

Goat Boy hefted the M60 and backed protectively to Valerie.
“I don’t think so, lover.”

Trevor was sniffing the air at all points of the compass and when he was facing back the way they’d come, his stance locked rigid. He raised his head, wet black nose hungrily drawing in the evening air. And then he was off, bolting through the cornfield. They barely caught his shout as he went, but the message was self-evident.

“Run with me if you want to live! Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnn!”

And they were hard at his heels, haring blindly through the corn when the first bowel-melting bellow made the stalks around them tremble; a second followed, somewhere above, beneath and everywhere in between the range of human hearing. As the ground began to shake from some colossal impact, Valerie risked a glance over her shoulder. Her eyes widened and she turned back, doubling her speed and driving a startled Goat Boy before her.

Impressively big, impossibly savage and improbably there, the Tyrannosaurus Rex burst from the canyon and thundered towards its prey as they fled through the corn. Teeth like ivory Ghurkha knives, ropes of viscous saliva whipping from its jaws, it carried a reptilian stench of rotting swamp matter and carrion combined; its howl was ear-splitting and, as it trampled into the corn, it lowered its great head in preparation for the kill. Lorelei risked a glance over her shoulder and stopped dead. In the pathway flattened by their passage, The Chef stood alone, facing the creature impassively as it tore towards him. The shotguns were at his feet.

“Chef! No!”

He didn’t turn to her, but she sensed as much as saw his shoulders stiffen for an instant. Then he shucked his coat and straightened to his full height, a wicked blade in each hand.

The prehistoric horror was almost on him, mouth gaping with death and pestilence. In the last instant, The Chef launched himself upwards and directly at the behemoth. Lorelei heard him cry “Bon appetite, fucker!” And then he was gone.

“Nooooooooooooo!”

The T-Rex threw back its head and worked its gullet. Another fog-horn blaring of primal power and it lurched forward, head scanning for movement. It clocked her stumbling backwards and started in her direction, its howl almost gleeful. One gigantic pace, another and the third brought it towering over her. Jaws gaping wickedly, it loomed down at her… and then stopped abruptly. It made as if to roar once more, but only a thick coughing came out. A fine spray of blood misted onto Lorelei’s face. The creature stumbled to one side, spluttering and growling as it tried to bite into its own stomach, pointless little upper arms flailing uselessly. It went to roar again, but this time emitted an appalling shriek. Thrashing its head around, the dinosaur lunged clumsily at Lorelei, missed by a yard and thumped into the dirt. She backed away from its whipping tail, snapping jaws, leaving it to flatten itself a clearing in the maize. Its breathing came harsh and laboured now, and with each exhalation it blew out a river of blood and shredded tissue.

Lorelei felt a hand on her shoulder, realised the others had made their way back. Stunned, they kept at a safe distance and watched as the beast shivered uncontrollably in a final spasm, released a thin groan and died.

Goat Boy squeezed Lorelei’s shoulder a little tighter.
“It got The Chef, huh? Damn, I’m sorry about that I’m going to miss his canapes.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

“Wha….?”

Lorelei nodded towards the T-Rex’s hips, where there was still a slight motion between its legs. A single shark fin of silver broke through the surface of the skin, tracing a bloody swathe towards the tail as more of it emerged. The blade vanished from sight, reappearing with its twin in tow, and the pair danced a graceful waltz until the flesh of the creature was reduced to ribbons and soup. As if taking a bow, the blades leapt up to salute, each gripped in a bloody fist. Keeping the dull top edges of the knives towards him, The Chef used them as pitons to heave himself from the belly of the beast. Slithering down the last few yards, he gained his feet and weaved slightly as he sloughed great gouts of gore and clots of pulverised organ.

“How do like your steaks?”

Words were not enough and his friends crowded around in a tight embrace of relief and gratitude, for their lives, for his. He assured them he was fine, no, really, and went to retrieve his box while the companions flicked away what they could of the dinosaur’s innards he’d left adhered to them.

Trevor sniffed at the cooling body, looked to the far end of the valley.
“Much as I don’t want to be the one to break this up, particularly as it’d be a real pleasure to claim a T-bone and a set of luggage from this…,” he kicked idly at the T-Rex’s snout, “… I can’t help but think it’d be a good idea to get moving. How many more of these things might there be out here?”

Weary but smart, they nodded ascent and moved on. Shortly, the corn thinned and they were tramping through soft ochre sand still warm with the sun. Lorelei had heard of sunsets that seemed to go on forever, had even sat through a few of them herself in a previous life, but this was the first she’d encountered that really looked as if it might. She was about to propose a break, regardless of the danger, when it reared its ugly head again.

Or, rather, heads.

There were about a dozen of them, smaller kin to the monster through which The Chef had just tunnelled and about a hundred yards out, circling them warily. The party noticed them at the same time and pulled into a tight knot, facing out and weapons readied

Communicating with loud nasal honks, the mutant velociraptors slowly drew their trap tighter. They were about five feet tall, maws of needle teeth and vicious-looking toe hooks. Fifty yards. Thirty. Twenty. The pack became more agitated the closer it got, adding low snarls to the strange honks and keening whines.

The fine line of tension was stretched to breaking point when Goat Boy inadvertently snipped it.

“Why’s that one wearing a watch?”

The creatures paused, milling about in confusion. Goat Boy stood now, the muzzle of his gun dropping towards the sand.

“You! No, not you…you!”

He pointed a finger at the culprit. The creature seemed to cringe as its companions drew back from it with an air of embarrassment. Trevor brushed the hair out of his eyes, sniffed deeply and howled with laughter.

“Eddie Lizard! I heard you were dead.”

The velociraptor hung its head sheepishly, tried to angle its body to conceal the cheap digital watch it wore on its left wrist.

“Oi! Get over here, now.”
There was a bite to Trevor’s bark that brooked no argument. He looked around at the others.
“And you lot can just fuck off. Sharpish!”

Not quite knowing where to look, the velociraptors kicked up the sand, seemed to remember pressing engagements and slunk away. Satisfied, Trevor rounded on the cringing creature before him.

“Okay you, what’s your story? And make it a good one. With a happy ending.”

Lorelei shot an inquiring look at Trevor, who shrugged and nodded in Eddie’s direction.
“I ran into him a few times, years ago when I was doing the summer season in Yarmouth; he was one of the meet-and-greeters at some themed burger joint …what the hell was it?...ah, Arizona Smith’s Restaurant Of Doom.”

“Classy.”

“You’re not wrong, but I’ll bet it was the only place in the country that served seven different kinds of meat cooked on a sword, right at your table.”

“A sword? But wh- ... oh, forget it.” Lorelei turned back to Eddie. “More importantly, what are you doing here? You’ve got a minute to audition for your future or my friends here’ll be firing up the barbeque.”

Eddie looked as abashed as a carnivorous lizard could, and when he spoke it was with a poorly concealed West Country burr.
“He’s right, I did a few seasons at the seaside but when Spielberg came along I thought my bed was made for good. Upped sticks and took off for LA.”
He showed a lot of teeth in what passed for a smile.
“I was ‘Second Raptor’, but the bastard had me killed off.After that, well, y'know Hollywood; it’s who you know. I tried out for everything but couldn’t even get on Barney as a bloody sidekick …’too much negative energy’ according to some pony-tailed tosser of a producer. I managed to scrape together an agent, tried to break into stand-up for a while but got fed up taking beer and glass showers behind the chicken wire every night, with supper shows on Saturdays. It got so bad, bills mounting up, the drinking and all that… I found myself in porn, wound up as a fluffer on Jurassic Pork II. A bloody fluffer!
Please, you’ve got to believe me, I didn’t want to do this, but I was desperate ... and the money was just too good to walk away from.”

He cringed and looked up at Lorelei hopefully, one claw washing the other in a particularly unctuous manner. Her expression was grim as a Bank Holiday forecast and she was nodding steadily to herself.

“The next time I see you, you’re shoes. Go!”

“Oh, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, Miss, I ...”

“Shoes!”

The squirming ‘raptor took to his spiked heels.

“What is it, Lore’…?”

“Thump me, Chef, and do it damn hard. What an idiot I’ve been not to see this.”

“See what?”

“Well, look at us,” she gestured at Valerie. “I should have guessed when we woke up with Frazetta tits and fetish wardrobes. And Goat Boy, suddenly he’s rated PG? And you, Chef, how long have you looked like Robert De Niro?”

“Well, since about the time he did Goodfellas; a bit, from the side, and sometimes when I smile, if the light’s right. But yeah, I see your point.”

“It’s time we brought this farce to a close.”
She dropped her guns in the sand, turned to address the shadows obscuring the end of the valley.
“You, whoever you are, wherever you are… show yourself!”

A single tumbleweed rolled across the dirt with a dry crackle. The air seemed to be holding its breath.

“I said now!” she shouted, louder, her voice razor-edged and packing knuckledusters. “Or do you want to meet some of the friends and acquaintances who owe me favours? Big ones.”

The air before them shimmered, smudged and solidified into a pale, cadaverous man. He wore a faintly pretentious beard waxed to a fine point, expensive designer jeans, a black body-warmer and a purple beret, cocked at what was likely meant to be a cavalier angle indicating ‘artiste’. His washed-out eyes darted nervously and he looked ripe to either bolt or drop dead with a coronary. Lorelei’s face suggested she’d be happy to administer one.

“Wilhelm Scream? I might have known….”

Goat Boy voiced everybody’s incomprehension.
“Who he?”

“Second-rate mage turned third-rate movie maker, underground purveyor of carnal cliches, bespoke blockbusters and trailer trash for the Magickal community.”

Scream stiffened to his full height and attempted to gaze down imperiously.
“I am not third-rate,” he emphasised indignantly in a sneering Valley whine, tinged with a just hint of fake French ‘Je suis un artiste!’

Lorelei ignored him.
“Sheb Wooley, graduated Brown University with a 1st in illusions but couldn’t do a damn thing with it because they always came out so corny; was stripped of his degree a year later when he got pissed in the wrong Salem bar and bragged that he’d cheated in the final; crawled into a bottle as perpetually arseholed as country singer Ben Colder and then sold his soul, and his real name, to the Devil in ‘51 for eternal fame and a killer toe-job from Lucretia Borgia. How am I doing so far?”

She drew a breath and laughed in his face.

“Only he neglected to read the fine print and got stiffed on the deal. The eternal fame came, but not quite as he’d imagined. Since then, he’s traded on his slender Hollywood connections to… which reminds me, where is he?”

“Who?”

“You really don’t want to fuck with me right now, Scream.”

He winced, looked as if he’d lost a foot in height and unsteadily made a few passes in the air, muttering briefly. There was a shimmering next to him, a soft pop, and a small crimson creature appeared hovering in the air on stubby wings. In place of its face was huge camera lens.

“That figures… ‘Arry Flecks, the over-familiar familiar. Lose him, and while you’re at it …” she gestured to her heaving bosom and at her colleagues, “…fix this.”

The fluttering cameraman buzzed huffily as Scream made more gestures, his lips moving in a blur of incantation. Then it was gone. Lorelei felt as if she’d just shed a backpack, arched her spine with pleasure.

“Oh, you fucking beauty!”
Goat Boy was looking down at himself in round-eyed pleasure. Beside him, Valerie was Valerie again, but just as baleful. The Chef still looked a bit like Robert De Niro, but no more than usual.

“One thing, Scream,” Lorelei snared his eyes with hers, bore into him. “Why us? Why this?”

“But Lorelei, dahling, you’re sensational box office. The entire Astral and half the Real is alight with tales of you. The people and the not-people just can’t get enough. And if not me, then who? What, I should wait until some talentless schmuck in bed with the big boys has the same idea?”

“Do you have any idea what kind of a day we’ve just had?”

“No pain, no gain sweetheart. Besides, you’re a natural; trust me, with my help, the sky’s the limit. I can make you a star! Think of it, we ju-“

He made a strangulated sound as Valerie materialised at his side, one slim hand locked around his throat with all the tenderness of a witch-hunter’s strapado. Slowly, almost erotically, she loosened her grip and trailed her hand down, unbuttoning his expensive fly and taking the matter in hand. Her other hand appeared around his waist, one of The Chef’s finest knives glinting prettily in the amber light. She lifted him almost gently to sit him right on the cutting edge.

“Lore’, what you want to do with this prick?”
Chef’s teeth gleamed wicked and hungry.

“Well, it’s been one hell of a day. I’m starving… what do you say to a cook-out?”

“Baby, I’ve got just thing.”
He smiled warmly at her, rummaged in an inside pocket and extracted a roll of greaseproof paper, opening it to reveal a neat stack of flour tortillas.
“Your call.”

Lorelei looked at him, stared contemptuously one last time at Scream and finally locked eyes with Valerie.

She nodded once, smiling.
“Cut!”

It really was a most unique scream.

“Okay everybody, that’s a wrap.”