Emperor of Gondwanaland (31 page)

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.

Through the opened iris of the saucer-shaped ship ringed with multicolored lights he was guided, finally to rest upon an examination slab, the focus of scores of mysterious instruments. Attenuated, nakedly gray-skinned, big-eyed forms emerged from the depths of the ship to cluster excitedly around their captive.

Now the various probes were inserted and samples taken. The E.T.’s huddled together, examining holographic displays and twittering musically. Returning to their patient, they proceeded to make the Changes.

After a time, when O.J. had been sealed up again, he was levitated off the slab, out the port, and back to his bed, all while it was still dark.

In the morning he awoke normally and stretched vigorously. “Damn, that was a solid night’s sleep! But those dreams! Crop circles, man! Never dreamed of any crop circles before! Hell, I even think there was something in there about cattie mutilation!”

The Limo Driver Always Rings Twice

Paula Barbieri, widowed owner of a little juke joint halfway between LA and Vegas known as the Playboy Lounge, sauntered into the kitchen where her hired hand, a young, naive lad known as O.J. Simpson, was busy sweeping the floor. It was June, the desert was brutally hot, and Barbieri’s thin cotton dress was pasted to the wicked curves of her sweaty body like the shirt on a drowned man’s chest. She fanned herself with a sheaf of fifty-dollar bills, licked her lips, and purred, “What’s a girl to do with herself when there’s no customers in sight for miles, it’s so damn hot all you can do is lie naked in bed, and the only person with her is a handsome stud?”

O J. stopped lashing the floor with the corn bristles and regarded his employer grimly. “Miss Barbieri, I wish you’d tone down your language and lewd ways a trifle. I can’t be responsible for my actions much longer, if you keep on torturing me this way.”

Flinging the wad of cash aside, Barbieri hurled herself at the boy.

With her arms draped around his neck, grinding her nubile form against him, she raved like a madwoman. “Don’t be responsible! Take me! What do I have to do to break down your honest and moral nature? Oh, damn the day I ever fell in love with an ethical man!”

O.J. unpeeled the temptress from him. “Ma’am, you know I didn’t have no ulterior motive in taking this job. It was the only one I could find, times being so tough and all. And I need it! I’m trying to support an ex-wife back home—”

Barbieri jumped away from her prey like a tiger in reverse, vehemently spitting out, “So! That’s it! You’re still in love with her! Admit it!”

O.J. glanced shyly at the floor, blushed, and dug the tip of one shoe into the boards. “Well, maybe a little …”

“But if she were out of the picture,” Barbieri continued, musing out loud, “then I’d have you for myself!”

O.J. came alert. “Nothing better happen to that sweet little girl, or I swear—”

“Do you know, honey,” cooed the viperish Barbieri, “the penalty for rape in this state? All I have to do is lodge a complaint, and your ass is grass!”

O.J. fell to his knees, wailing, “Oh, Lord, what have I gotten myself into?”

Barbieri grabbed her hapless victim’s head by his hair and pulled his face against her throbbing loins. “There, there, baby, let Mama handle everything—”

The Puppetmasters

Wandering in its aimless canine way, sniffing the familiar pavements, the Akita named Kato strayed under the low-hanging branches of a tree, little realizing what deadly creature lurked patiently above.

In those branches hung a deadly parasite not of this world. A protoplasmic tendriled mass the size of a football, it was equipped with a cunning intelligence dedicated to the conquest of this new globe.

Now it dropped down with a squishy plop onto the furry back of the dog. Kato yelped and bolted, but it was too late. Tendrils burrowed into its spinal cord, and thence to its brain.

Now the dog was under complete alien control!

Tapping the animal’s memories, the Puppetmaster guided it home.

Standing in the secluded walkway were two figures.

Not good, thought the Puppetmaster. The humans would never let their dog access the television, computer, or phone! And the young Puppetmaster was not yet mature enough to handle a human host.

No, there was only one solution.

“Hey, Nicole, shouldn’t your dog be inside?” said one of the humans.

“Why, how did he ever get loose? Here, Kato! Come to Mama!”

Kato began to trot. When he was within range, letting loose a savage growl, he leaped!

At their throats!

The Wiles of Lance Manchu

Tied to a chair in the dim, dank basement of a sushi factory in the heart of Los Angeles’s mysterious and impenetrable-to-Occidentals Japtown, the valiant O.J. Simpson could only squirm helplessly. Beside him in a precisely identical fix—save for the added fillip of having been beaten unconscious—slumped his sidekick, Nayland Kaelin.

“Drat!” exclaimed O.J. “If only those thugs hadn’t taken my pocket jackknife away, there might be some hope. But as things stand—”

From behind O .J. came a voice rich in Oriental menace to complete his thoughts.

“But as things stand, Honorably Despised O.J.-san, you and your precious friend have reached the end of the line!”

From the crepuscular shadows now stepped that most dreaded archvillain, bane of the world’s law-enforcement systems, perpetrator of innumerable arcane crimes and plots, a figure to strike terror into the hearts of the superstitious—Lance Manchu!

“Lance Manchu!” ejaculated O.J. “I knew it had to be you behind this kidnapping! No one else could have been so devilishly clever! Imagine luring the two of us to that hamburger joint with the anonymous tip that offered the promise of breaking up a drug-smuggling ring! What fiendish scheme have you in mind now?”

Rubbing together his long-nailed yellow hands, Lance Manchu smiled like a cream-fed feline, contorting his pitiful facial hair along repugnant leer-lines.

“Oh, not much, my good sir. Simply the end of your career as a thorn in my side. After I’m done with you, you’ll perhaps wish I had killed you outright!”

“You demon! What unnatural doings are afoot?”

“Oh, nothing too complicated or bizarre, my old enemy! I have simply sent some highly reliable assassins to visit your wife. And with them they carry your jackknife! With your fingerprints upon it! Some of her blood will find its way back to your vehicle and domicile. A certain detective on the force is also in my pay. With all these factors, I think you’ll be lucky to avoid the electric chair and merely spend the rest of your life behind bars!”

O .J. rocked furiously back and forth in his chair, his enormous muscles straining to no avail against his bonds. Curiously, his first words were not a plea of mercy for his beloved Nicole. “Gosh darn you, Lance Manchu! You won’t succeed! No jury would believe such a circumstantial case in the face of my reputation and character!”

Lance Manchu seemed unfazed by O.J.’s assertion. “Perhaps not. But you’ll certainly spend months and millions defending yourself. At the end, you’ll be a broken shadow of your old self. And I—I shall be unstoppable!”

The insidious slant-eyed underworld mastermind turned to leave. “By the time you and Kaelin succeed in freeing yourselves, you’ll be a wanted man!”

With a flourish of his black robes and a peal of chilling laughter, Lance Manchu disappeared through a secret door that closed behind him.

Subsequent to the departure of the evil archcriminal O.J. seemed to relax, as if dropping a pose. “We’ll see who laughs last, Lance baby!” the redoubtable O.J. exclaimed to the stone wall. “Oh, and thanks for saving me the trouble of wasting the old ball-and-chain!” Then, with a smile, our hero settled back to await his freedom.

For years, the gifted SF writer Carter Scholz was rumored to be working on a novel to be titled, simply,
Science Fiction
. I envisioned this unborn masterpiece as a kind of
Miss Lonelyhearts
of the genre, akin to some of Barry Malzberg’s riffs on the sad and lonely life of the SF writer. When Carter finally told me that the project was dead, I knew the title, in all its stark allusiveness, was too good to let die. When asked by Claude Lalumiere and Marty Halpern for a contribution to Witpunk, their anthology of black-humored, satirical SF, I realized I had found the perfect home for my diminutive take on Carter’s abandoned masterpiece. How I decided to attach the style and tone of one of my favorite mainstream writers, J. P. Donleavy, to this tale is less clear in memory. But I think the combination of subject matter and angle of attack work well.

Science Fiction

Pissing warily but with immense somatic relief in one of the ill-maintained and rather frightening rest rooms at Penn Station. And Corso Fairfield blissfully directs his golden urine into the commodious porcelain basin. Distilled from several cups of tedious Amtrak coffee. While trying not to eyeball the spectacle around him. Motivated not by anti-homosexual anxiety. Certainly not a prejudice found in Corso’s liberal soul. But rather a discretionary maneuver directed at the homeless men. Who throng the room, with its scatter of smudged, wet paper towels across the tiled floor. Washing their feet in the sink. And other even less savory parts.

Corso finishes his own noisy voiding. And replackets his penis. Certainly nothing special, and in no wise superior to the members of the surrounding indigents. But indisputably all his own. Yet regrettably not likely to be shared with any female. Since his wife, Jenny, left him. Eloping with his exceptional car mechanic. Jack Spanner. A double loss. And hard to quantify the ratio of injury between bedroom and garage.