By the Author of “Holy Laughter!” and“How to Write All Kinds of Comedy Jokes”
MONSTER LAUGHS
From the Secret Files of the Mystery Hunter
Dean Burkey
TABLE OF CONTENTS
File #141:
Count Dracula
Sinks His Teeth into the Big Apple
11
To stop the villainous vampire,
the Mystery Hunter puts his neck on the line!
Count Dracula! A.k.a. One Big Nasty Sucker. He’s a rich Transylvanian vampire whose sole form of sustenance is human blood. He also likes Dinkies Sponge Cakes. … Elusive and unpredictable, he’s the most notorious of nocturnal creatures, except night-crawlers, glow-worms, and the late shift at the IRS. … Captain Fang stalked closer, vowing to drain me and the drunk of our blood through a massive hickey. I told him I didn’t know him that well and wanted to remain “just friends”, or in our case, “just enemies”. Please! My pleas didn’t work; Batty Rebel crept closer, to kill me and the drunk. … The Fearsome Fiend felt about blood, the way I felt about pie. And waffles. And -- … With vampires, one quick nibble can turn you.
File #142:
The Howling Werewolf’s Hairy End
24
Bring Your Pet to Work Day
has never been so deadly!
Or so itchy.
Fur Boy’s little more than an overgrown puppy. … A humongous, homicidal, overgrown puppy. Other than occasional murderous fits of furry fury and semi-frequent bad hair days, the Big Bow-Wow enjoyed a howling good time. So I had no idea what brought him to Toledo. … the Bark-Meister’s bite is worse than his bark. One bite; and you’ll be turned into a cursed, card-carrying member of the Werewolf Howling Tabernacle Glee Club. Other than that, no worries. …
File #143:
Frankenstein’s Monster
Bolts Loose
42
Big and green, mighty and mean,
the most menacing monster the Hunter’s ever seen.
(So far.)
Standing seven feet tall, the King of Stitches can be so intimidating, you can sweat through a five-day deodorant pad in five minutes. Or five seconds, if he breathes on you. With his Monster Breath. Green-faced, with bolts and scars. Short, frizzy, black hair. Gray eyes. And clumsy. What a klutz! Old Flat Top never meant to hurt anybody. But when he hugged some folks, he accidentally yanked off their skulls. And ever since, the unforgiving, grudge-and-torch-bearing villagers have tried to destroy him. And that hurts. … “Nothing conquers the fear of death better than dying.” An evil glimmer clambered across his monstrous eyes. … “The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, ‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.’”
File #144:
Doctor Jekyll & Ms. Hyde
61
Double the pleasure; double the danger!
And with the Hunter involved, double the laughs and mishaps!!
And double the indignities and insecurities!!!
The Queen of Cutting-and-Gutting rolled her eyes and swung her scalpel at me, just to watch me flinch. Which I did with deftness and style. … Talk about a big Ms.-understanding! Ms. Hyde had nothing to hide, except that she’s Doctor Jekyll. … Thought the mystique of the Jekyll & Hyde syndrome dealt with good vs. evil, but with Dr. Doofus & Ms. Snide, the battle raged between evil and eviler. (Or more evil, to be grammatically correct. Or less incorrect.) In their case, those two may have tied in the evil contest. Although Ms. Hot did more tying than Henry J.
File #145:
Unraveling the Mystery
of the Mummy
86
The Mystery Hunter faces more horrors than he’s ever imagined.
Is the Mummy out for revenge?
Or just running a pyramid scheme?
Professor Horace Howard Hornsby, some poor sap of an archaeologist, disturbed Im-In-Step’s tomb, which made the Mummy moan and groan and attack everyone on the excavation team. That’s so him. But what’s Band-Aid Boy’s problem? You’d think he’d be bored silly after lying around, doing nothing for over three thousand years. On the plus side, stalking and destroying an archaeological team is aerobic. So at least he’s stretching his legs a bit. And airing out his nasty, stale grave cloths. The Mummy’s Curse becomes a lot less threatening after he gets a fresh change of bandages. After a few millennia, he develops quite a pungent odor. I’d never say that to his face. He’d wail and moan all night in that annoying way that he does.
File #146:
Skinny Dipping with the Creature
from the Blue Lagoon
116
Cannibals, pirates, and sharks, oh my!
Also, lost treasure, a whale, a gorilla,
a Navy seal, and a couple grabby blue crabs.
And let’s not forget the web-footed horror
of the amphibious Creature!
Does the Creature want to kill the Hunter?
Or are his desires a fate worse than death?
What else would you expect
during mating season at the Blue Lagoon?
The Creature from the Blue Lagoon resembled his cousin, the creature from another lagoon, but varied in appearance only as much as needed to avoid a copyright infringement suit. And he was blue. He resented his cousin’s film success. Although Hollywood made movies about the Blue Lagoon, none included the Creature. Poor Fish Face, the breaks never came his way. Until he crossed my path; and I broke one of his fins. … We fared to find a Finned Fiend; and what a fine Finned Fiend I found. Say that ten times fast. … Although not wanting to die, I felt relieved Captain Gills only wanted to kill me. But just when I thought it was safe to be murdered by a homicidal maniac, …
File #147:
The Swinging Tale
of the Blue Moon Monkey Man
143
The Mystery Hunter encounters a new menace.
Before he gets himself killed over a blue banana,
the Hunter better solve this case and split!
The Azure Primate Gone Wild raised his brows and grunted my way. I needed to see if he could understand me. On some level, I think he did. I pulled out my handcuffs and a blue banana, hoping to lure him close enough to cuff him to the fire escape. I chanted, “Looks who’s got a bigger ba-na-na?” With the jumpy ape hopping my way, everything proceeded as planned. Until. Dunt, dunt, duhh! Moonlight reflecting off my handcuffs made the Monkey Man go ape-kaka! Screaming and swinging his arms. With a huge leap, he landed above me where he hung to the railing with his tail. One well-placed punch or kick; and I’d plummet six stories to an early grave. … The colorful creature grabbed me by the throat with his feet and dangled me above the alley.
File #148:
Illegal Aliens
from Outer Space
157
Worlds turn against the Mystery Hunter, including his own!
The galaxy cries out: “Bring me the Hunter!”
A full scale alien invasion ensued! With a handy-dandy portal tucked inside the Sargasso Sea, the green grouches could get great mileage and still have plenty of resources left with which to devastate the Earth. The invading space aliens never presented documents showing we gave them permission to visit our planet, much less pillage and destroy. Probing and poking the occasional country bumpkin was one thing. But annihilation? No thank you. These Illegal Aliens from Outer Space must go! … More assault saucers flew our way. For the next four hours, Neil A flew while I fired the laser. I felt like I played a video game marathon. Except I had no margin for error, no free games, no replays. One mistake; and it’d be bye-bye me, bye-bye Earth, bye-bye Miss American pie.
File #149:
Being Seen with the Invisible Man
(Or Not!)
187
Although he prides himself on always being prepared,
the Mystery Hunter never saw this one coming!
How could I fight an invisible foe? I couldn’t. But on the plus side, he wasn’t blue. I endured enough of that. And I could escape by flying. Unless he can fly too. I worried about that possibility for a moment. With another rock thrown my way, I charged the turbo rockets to full power. Onlookers gasped. Especially the general whose toupee shot into the crowd ... One well-placed punch could shove a broken rib into my aorta. Death seemed imminent. … The Unnoticed Nuisance jumped on me; and we rolled around the ground exchanging punches. Sadly, since Captain C-Thru was see-through, everyone else thought I’d gone cuckoo.
File #150:
Challenging
the Unchallengeable
Charlie Change-O
201
The Final Chapter!
Home from a whirlwind, worldwide tour of mystery-hunting,
Eddie faces his fiercest foe
and solves a mystery he wishes he’d never solved.
I needed a change. I came here to rest, perhaps to find a new career. But Destiny had other plans. Destiny wanted me to die. … Charlie’s illuminating form blazed brilliantly as he babbled about being omnipotent. I told him that was too bad, but a certain blue pill might help. He became livid and repeatedly enunciated the word omnipotent before resuming his rant for an hour and a half. Still flaming, Char boasted that he could take on all the gods of Olympus at once. When I told him the Greek gods were mythical characters, he seemed relieved. But then he thundered about his ruling the world; and only stopped, when he caught me roasting marshmallows on his leg. … He gleamed. More than usual due to his illuminative condition. “Now you die!” … “You win, Chuck the Schmuck. Kill me; and kill me fast.” “What if I want to kill you slowly?” I sighed. “Okay. Kill me slowly. Just hurry up!” “I booked the stadium for the whole night. What’s the rush?”
File #151:
Return of the Blue Moon Monkey Man
(And Another Crazy)
216
The Final, Final Chapter!
A fiendish foe returns. So does another crazy.
And the Hunter makes a monstrously horrifying
realization about himself.
As the wind wafted aromas around, I caught the familiar scent of radioactive simian fur. Smelled blue. Some shade of azure; that’s for sure. I looked up to find an old adversary dangling from a fire escape by his tail. … “Your postcard trick won’t work anymore, Murky Hunter.” … With so much craziness in the past several years, I needed some sanity, some relaxation to collect my wits, whatever was left of them. More than that, I needed pie. Sweet, creamy pie. But just when I thought it was safe to contemplate pie, … Dunt, dunt, duhh.
Songliography
222
A List of Songs Mentioned, Referenced, Quoted, Misquoted,
Paraphrased, Parodied, and/or Spoofed by The Mystery Hunter.
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