Obnoxious Novelist How-to

Blake woke on a filthy sofa in a cobweb-covered, dusty auditorium. The sofa was comfy, but it smelled like Daddy's hunting dog that time it had hidden Daddy's recently shot pheasant in its doghouse and rolled in it daily for a week.

It smelled really, really bad, is what I'm telling you.

And even that Blake could have borne with the calm aplomb that came with his lofty station in life, but then...then a spider ran across his hand.

Blake shrieked like something that shrieks really loud and jumped off the sofa, waving his hand in the air as he tried to dislodge the amorous arachnid. His flailing arm smacked Solemn right in the forehead, knocking her out cold.

A strong, manly, muscular, manly hand grabbed Blake's arm while another manly hand slapped away the spider. Blake turned and found himself gazing into the hard, steely, heated glare of Lyle, and his heart skipped a beat.

Could it be?

Was his dream finally coming true?

That's when Lyle opened his mouth and said...

"Curse you, Voluptua! What the devil are you doing here?"

My bosom heaved with wrath, and an electric current stirred my loins to anger.

"So all along, Lyle, it was you who stood between me and my true love! You thought those poisoned yogurt-covered raisins would get rid of me, didn't you? Well, you thought wrong!"

Blake turned his manly glance upon me. I felt it sear to my soul.

"Voluptua, we need to talk. But first, would you mind removing the duct tape from my wrists and ankles?"

My hand trembled as I reached toward my lost love. I was torn. If I released him, would he leave me for Lyle? Or Solemn? Or Bertha?

But just then...

Solemn lay at the bottom of the steps, alone and forgotten and alone and miserable and, above all, alone.

She heard something skitter across the floor, and tried to turn to look, but her head hurt where Blake had hit her, the cad. Then the skittering was right next to her, and a pair of glowing red eyes appeared, looking down at her.

"Are...are you a...vampire?" she asked breathily, hardly daring to hope.

"Yup."

"Are...are you going to whisk me away and make me a vampire and watch me sleep and we'll sparkle together in the sunlight?"

"Uh...no."

As the fangs sank into her tender, anemic neck, Solemn thought, "Well, this sucks."

My long, elegant legs trembled as I fled down the steps, away from my love, down, down into the harrowing pit of despair in which he'd plunged me.

I could not face knowing whether he would embrace me at last, sending me into shudders of rapture, or hurl himself headlong into the arms of Lyle, leaving me broken-hearted and alone -- so, so alone. So I left him duct-taped on the sofa and fled. Down, down, down...

...until I bumped smack into a black-robed vampire who held my sister limply in his grasp. At the impact, he dropped her to the floor, where she lay sprawled like a pale and anemic corpse.

"How dare you interrupt my blood feast?" snarled the vampire. "But you will do nicely as a substitute."

My bosom heaved in terror and my loins burned as he took me in his grasp and pushed the long red-gold curls from my snowy neck.

But suddenly Solemn sat up. She was sparkling oddly. And she said...

"I feel a sudden surge of power I never knew I had!"

Her hands burst into flames, which then leapt upon the vampire. Furthermore, while he was screaming, who should run up the stairs but Bertha Slops!

Amidst my torn feelings, my endangered sister, and the sinister plot, I felt, at least, a little satisfaction at seeing her party ruined by all this drama. But then she ripped off her unfashionable sweats and underneath them had a tommygun that fired stakes!

"Now!" She screamed.

Solemn hurled another fireball at the vampire, who screamed, and then Bertha fired stake after stake into his body.

Disrobed of the unfashionable sweats, she needed only to pull her hair out of that sooo sixties bun and all of a sudden she looked exactly like I remembered from school! I coudln't believe it?

"Bertha Slops?"

"That's Agent Slops," She said cattily and snottily, "Of the Paranormal Ordeal Order!"

"OMG what r u doing here!" Solemn exclaimed surprisedly.

"We've been hunting that vampire for weeks, but when I saw you, I knew; sometimes people between the ages of 4 and 792 display phenomenal powers when pushed past their Danger Threshold by danger!"

Bertha, trying to recruit my sister for some kind of POO? I growled at her.

She growled at me.

Oh, it was so on again. First she moves on my man, and now she's hunting vampires through my house, and that after it had already been bought out from under my uncle. This wasn't over, Bertha Slops!

omg, i wuz so ready 2 take on teh vampire n do dangrous things and make incredably poor choices just like the hot ghost told me 2 do 2 save my fortune and castle n stuff n then my shallow materielistic sister n her freind cum round shooting steaks n stuff n creating drama just when i becam all sparkley and vampirey and cool at last n it wuz my tern 2 be teh center of attenshion 4 once. its sooooo not fair, rite? i meen wtf. rite?

I looked at Bertha.

She looked at me.

We both looked at Solemn, who had just spewed a vomitous mass of almost-words at us and now stood staring at us with that vacuous stare she could stare with. It made my heaving bosom itch.

I nodded at Bertha. She opened fire, turning my sparkly sister into a pincushion...of stakes. Stakecushion?

"Don't think this makes us even," I snarled at her, in case she'd forgotten that she was just a man-stealing wretch.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," she said, and pointed her tommygun of stakes...staketommy? Tommystake? Stakegun?...at me.

omg, this is so totes like a freakin bummer. i mean wtf, these steak things totally hurt n my self-centered so called sister didn't do like anything 2 help me, like big suprise there NOT.

but at least may b this time Voluptua gets hers cuz like this POO chick iz so totally aiming at her now, yay.

and weight. i here someone cuming down teh stairs n i'm so shure he'll like totally call 911 or give me mouth 2 mouth or sumthing

The vampires performed the tango with Texas Line dancing precision, as the smoke from a thousand opium hookahs drifted toward the ceiling five stories above.

Blake cringed, sinking into the sofa as if it were a submarine and his only hope of salvation. ‘Chico’ the debonair Chihuahua, unfolded his bar and winked back another alias, before he poured Blake a tumblr full of the cheap rum Bertha had ordered for the engagement party.

“Oh what is going to become of me!” Blake wailed in the manly way he wails when he is unmanned by circumstances.

“You know what you MUST do to gain the inheritance and lose the shticks,” Lyle chuckled as he tangoed, rubenesquely close with Voluptua in his arms. Voluptua grabbed the harmonica from the air and played a haunting Eminem melody as Lyle twirled her away into the gloom of the gas-lit room.

Blake shuddered, knowing the only way out of the difficulty he’d caused himself by monetizing the securitized receivables balance of the chain of shoe stores controlled by his bank was to embark on a marriage of convenient lust and depravity in hopes of siring a child from whom he could pay for a cheeseburger on Thursday if the loan were to be given on a Monday.

As his thoughts returned to panic mode, Solemn walked up to him and slapped him across the face.

“I’m not pregnant, and I never will be pregnant, because, not only am I a vampire, too, but HAH HAH HAH!! I spent the last two years, not in Albania, as my mother would have you believe, but in IRAN…where I have become Captain Cannabis!”

Blake blinked.

"Oh, yeah," Solemn added.... "and I'm a man."

Solemn collapsed onto a barstool and burst into tears that trickled down his nose and mingled with snot, making snot-tear bombs that dropped upon the clean countertop.

"Chico," who liked to keep the place neat, placed a napkin a few inches away and swiveled Solemn's stool until all the fresh drippings were caught in this makeshift net. Then the chihuahua grabbed a bar rag and wiped up the mess.

Blake was impressed with the tiny dog's efficiency. He was less impressed when, the task completed, Chico returned to wiping out clean glasses using the snottified bar rag. He supposed you could only expect so much from a bartender who would cheerfully eat his own (or anyone else's) vomit.

Blake sighed. He hated dealing with emotions, for he was a manly man of might, but the sight of Solemn sniveling on the stool forced his hand. He patted Solemn's heaving shoulder. "I knew it all. I knew about your undead Irannabus frolics thanks to my connections with the FBI and I've know you were a man ever since the night the "marker" in your pocket kept poking me as we danced. If only there were a way for you to bear my child, my problems would be solved..."

Randy stifled in the stifling bear costume, fidgeting as a drop of sweat ran down between his shoulder blades, slowed to an easy trot to the small of his back, then walked, huffing like a 400-lb. hamburger lover, to his buttcrack.

He'd pulled one arm out of the costume sleeve and into its main body, so that he could just squeeze the small bottle of cheap whiskey to his lips now and then. This was his third small bottle, and he was starting to feel the effects, if by "feel the effects" you mean "couldn't see straight or stand without assistance."

That's when he finally heard his cue -- the word "bear," spoken by the manly lips of the totally masculine Blake.

Still struggling to push his arm into the sleeve, he lumbered in from Stage Left and gave his best approximation of a roar. It sounded more like the dying wail of a car-struck cat.

"Dammit, Randy, you don't come in for another twenty pages!" Blake roared.

Randy admired Blake's manly roar as he stumbled back the way he'd come, tottered off his path, and fell off the front of the stage.

Blake turned back to Solemn. "Now, where were we...oh, yes. If only you could...er, have my children," he said, glaring toward the spot where Randy's mangy bear costume had disappeared.

As if on cue, the band walked onto stage.

"Aha!" Said the ghost. "This will finally shed some light on something that needs light shed on it! But why were you so late?"

"Sorry," Said Dr. Dethmarch, his bright orange hair teased into stiff spikes atop his head. "We figured if this was a party, we should bring a few kegs, but then there was this really long line." He grimaced in the memory of the really long line. It made him feel very frustrated. Waiting in it had been very boring, like those amusement park lines, except instead of a roller coaster at the end there was beer.

The chihuahua was happy to have more beer, though, since he had been- though he shuddered to admit it to himself- getting slightly low on that particular beverage. He felt happy and somewhat relieved, although slightly annoyed, too, that he had not thought to bring more. He prided himself on being an excellent bartender, and an excellent bartender never ran out of beer.

Anyway, Dr. Dethmarch jumped on the stage and started singing,

THIS IS THE CASTLE OF PAIN AND DEATH
WHERE SPIRITS HAUNT THE AGES
AND THOUGH THERE COULD HAVE BEEN A TIME SKIP
WE STILL GOT TO READ VOLUPTUA DRIVE FOR THREE F***ING PAGES
BUT THE WEDDING PARTY OF DESPAIR
THOUGH EVIL MAY PORTEND
THE [censored] WILL [censored] TO [censored censored censored]
'CAUSE METAL ALWAYS TRIUMPHS IN THE EEEEEEEND!

The music caused all kinds of metal shit to spontaneously break out, like a Viking ship pulled up in the front yard and Vikings spilled out to do battle with skeleton warriors while dragons swooped overhead, steered by sexy wizardesses, to burn down the neighbor's organic fruit stand, which was mostly empty t his time of year anyways. But last of all, they swept onto one of the tangoers and removed her rubber mask.

"OMG!!!!" Solemn and I both said in unison.

Because the woman they had unmasked was...

"My wicked stepmother!" Solemn declared.

I gaze at them, both shocked like a Halloween pumpkin with a too-large candle stuffed inside. Slyly, I ask, "Were you expecting a fairy godmother?"

Their eyes dart from side to side, like a maniacal frog in a butcher's dumpster. Speaking shakily, they say in unison, "But... but... you're dead!"

I raise a haughty eyebrow at them, like a frightening school-teacher straight out of Harry Potter, and whisper scarily, "The wicked never die. Don't you watch horror films?"

Suddenly shriveling back on himself like a fast-tracked voodoo shrunken-head, Blake simpered, "It wasn't me--I just found the body, nothing more!"

Smirking at his fear, I sauntered closer like a tigress closing in on an especially raunchy piece of meat. Purring seductively, I said, "Don't worry big boy, you and Solemn can make it up to me."

The two handsome figures before me trembled, shaking against the well-worn bar like a pole dancer two years past retirement.

Solemn opened and closed his mouth like the electric doors of a small-town mini-mall.

"Yes?" I asked excitedly, waiting for an answer like a sailor on his last night of shore leave.

"I'm totally sorry," snivelled Solemn, "but like, I've lost track of who the character is who's narrating in the first person at the moment. This story started off as Voluptua narrating, and I took a turn or two, and I think the candy dish had a shot at it, and maybe Blake, I dunno, but now I'm like totally confused. Also, I didn't even know my evil stepmother was dead until now, though I can't say I'm sorry to hear it."

I stamped my foot, which, as it was clad in a metallic shoe, clanked resoundingly on the stage.

"I am your evil stepmother, and I'm narrating from now on. And I was never dead, which you'd know if you had the attention span of a gnat, you silly slut. But you might also know me by another name." I held up my rubber mask.

"Lyle!" gasped Voluptua. "All along it was you?"

"Yes!" I snarled.

"You planned the engagement party for Blake and Bertha?"

"Yes!" I shrieked triumpantly.

"You helped me bathe and dress and undress and gave me long hot oil massages which carried me through all those dark nights when I longed unavailingly for Blake's strong manly touch?"

Yes! Yes! Yes!" I cackled.

"You think you have it all figured out, don't you?" hissed Voluptua. "But there's one thing you didn't count on --"

Just Then!!! The most suave and canine Haggis Chihuahua spoke to Solemn, "I noes u r a vampire n such, but us canines are betters and hotters. Come away with me to Vegas!"

Solemn thought long and hard for 15 seconds, and then jumped on his back and the two rode off into the moonset.


Then, after arriving at Vegas, she moped amongst the slot machines, wondering if she shouldn't have left and stuff. Then!!'! She saw a show recreating the musical numbers from Cats, and it all slipped away, like a bad dream... UNTIL

I yanked the chapter back to me.

"Listen, you little snotnose brat," I sneered. "Whether you're my sister or my brother or a vampire or whatever it is you are, I was IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE when you ran off to Vegas with that damn chihuahua and tried to take the chapter with you. Well, it's not going to work. I was about to, er...uh..."

My bosom heaved as I tried to remember where I'd left off. My loins burned as Blake spoke up in his manly voice.

"You were saying that there was one thing Lyle, er, your stepmother hadn't counted on," he said.

I shuddered as I felt his burning glance pierce through me.

"Absolutely! Yes, that's what I was saying! Well, mama, there's one thing you weren't counting on. I'm PREGNANT!"

There was a collective gasp as everyone in the room gazed at my slim, willowy midsection, which, they now saw, was ever so slightly swollen with the fruits of forbidden love.

"Yes!" I cried triumphantly. "It's true! I"m going to bear...

BLAKE'S CHILD!"

Astonishing all, Voluptua and Blake broke out into an uncannily accurate and heartfelt rendition of The Marcarena. The onlookers cried, embarrassed that they had judged them so harshly. Lyle ordered cupcakes, which arrived too late for most, which was okay with Voluptua, because she was really hungry.

Randy was jolted out of a weird vampire dream by the sound of the Macarena and...something else. Something...he was supposed to do.

He tried to focus, but the alcohol made him as confused as a man drunk on alcohol, and he started to go back to his dream.

"BEAR!" he shouted. After three tries, he was able to pull himself back onto his feet. Someone had said, "Bear," and by golly, he wasn't going to miss his cue.

"BEAR!" he shouted again, but no one could hear him over the Macarena music and the odd stomping rhythm of Vol-- Vola-- That V Woman's improbably metal shoes.

He finally managed to drag himself onto the stage, cleared his throat for a dramatic roar, then stumbled drunkenly into Lyle's...er, V's stepmother's?...back.

"You're still EARLY!!" shrieked Blake, stamping his foot in a way that was totally not feminine at all. "Get off the stage, you dolt!"

Randy lifted his bear head, belched a drunken belch drunkenly in Blake's face, then steered drunkenly offstage.

UNTIL --

"STOP IT! Just shut up right now" screamed Solemn, yanking at his lovely black hair as though he wanted to tear it out by the roots. "I am SO SICK of you hogging all the attention, Voluptua!"

"Wait a minute," said one of the masked tangoers. "I thought you went to Vegas with that chihuahua bartender. He never got my drink, by the way."

"Could've fooled me," said another tangoer. "I thought that Bertha chick killed her a couple plot twists ago."

"No, he survived that somehow," replied the first. "I think you were in the bathroom and missed it. I guess you missed the whole sex reveal, too. He's a he now. But then --"

"SHUT UP!" Solemn stamped his foot. "I came back, OK? It was totally shallow and materialistic and filled with banal corporate musicals and I hated it, OK? And like anyone cares where I went anyway! It's all Voluptua, Voluptua, Voluptua! We had to listen to her driving and talking to herself for three freaking pages! Then we had to listen to all her sickening thinly-veiled sexual innuendos, and her blathering about Ladeeda castle's flowers! She even made Bertha's engagement party all about her! And now she's going to have a freaking baby so everyone will be cooing all over her and the baby all the time!"

The hot ghost zoomed down from the ceiling, where he and the other ghosts had been pow-wowing, trying to decide their next move. He hovered translucently in front of Blake and Voluptua.

"Hey, speaking of the baby, I've been wondering how you managed that, Voluptua. I mean, haven't you been pining on and on since the beginning of this story about how you and Blake never managed to get together to do the deed?"

"SHUT UP!" screeched Solemn. "That's just what I mean! Everyone is always talking about Voluptua! What about ME! Why doesn't anyone care about me! I can't BEAR this anymore!"

"ROOOOOAAAA- oh, to hell with it," Randy stumbled back on stage and swayed like a swayey thing. Why all this drama? All he wanted to do was put in a stella performance, even though he was seeing triple. "YOU DON'T APPRECIATE MY TALENT!"
"You're still early" Blake bellowed in his manly voice of manliness. Randy openedhis mouth to respond, but all that followed was a torrent of partially digested mexican food and roughly four pints of whiskey. The manly one did not notice Randy's plight, for the bear suit hid all. Except the mold.
"Be gone!" The person that was Lyle and or a wicked stepmother pushed him off the stage and he stumbleded and fell. Why? he thought. Why me?

"So wait," the ghost said, his scorching dead translucent features deigned to convey confusion. "I have no idea what's going on any more. We have a POO lady-"
"I'm not a poo," Bertha said. "I hunt monsters."
"No, Bertha," Blake spoke in his deep manly voice of manliness that would make the ghost's innards squirm if it had any. "You are the monster."
Then Bertha was a monster.

But of course, we'd known SHE was a monster all along. At least, those of us who'd been paying attention.

"Back to me!" I said, stamping my foot in indignation. It seemed like the thing people were doing these days. "I am WITH CHILD here! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"

Unfortunately, in the woods nearby (which were still a little on fire), the football team of Deadmeat High and their cheerleader friends were setting up camp.

"Great times after that last game," said Buff Linebacker, smoking a joint.

"We are NUMBER ONE!" was the eloquent response of Muscles MacMassive.

"But are you sure we should be out here?" Said Belle Glasses. "I mean, after that terrible thing happened here that long time ago that resulted in all that stuff and those stories of hauntings?"

"Oh, nobody believes that," buff laughed as he cracked open a brewski.

Then Bertha, who had become what she hunted and was filled with hatred and envy, remembering her own high school days in which she had been queen bee and that loser Voluptua was her footstool, killed them all except for Belle.

"Stop it, guys, this isn't funny," Said Belle, wondering where her friends had all gone.

Meanwhile, Voluptua...

...I, Voluptua, was watching in grim triumph as my old school rival showed her true colors.

Bertha had laughed scornfully when Blake called her a monster, tossing her long, honey-blonde tresses that, for most of the story, she'd kept confined in a tight, unattractive bun, and wiggling the curvaceous hips that were now encased in a form-fitting leather jumpsuit, but that, until recently, she'd kept shrouded in unfashionable velour sweatpants.

But then her laughter turned into hideous grunting and snarling. A hairy snout thrust forward from her face, and huge horns leapt out on either side. Three rows of enormous fangs sprang from her foaming mouth. Long, razor-sharp claws shot out from her hands, and another set from her toes, slicing straight through her thigh-high patent leather boots. Her slim form convulsed, swelled, burst through the jumpsuit and boots, contorted and twisted into an immense crouching form on the floor.

I had been expecting it for some time.

"Ay carumba!" ejaculated Blake "What the hell did I get engaged to?"

My loins burned at his use of Spanish and his ejaculating, but the plot was moving too quickly now for me to elaborate on it.

"I told you," I said, batting my emerald green eyes at him. "I told you she was a pig. Now, can we get back to talking about me?"

"I don't think that's a pig," pointed out one of the tangoers. "I think it's some kind of mythical monster. Maybe a manticore?"

"Nah," said another. "A manticore has wings."

"I think they're budding," said the first, pointing at the mounds rapidly swelling on either side of Bertha's torso. "Check it out. Yep, I was right," he said smugly as wings burst out and flapped ominously. "Bat wings."

"Fine," I said irritably, tossing my red-gold tresses. "Whatever. But can we get back to me? And my unborn child?"

"What about me?" whined my stepmother. "I've been posing as your childhood friend and would-be lover for ages, and now you've upstaged my big reveal that I'm really a woman, and your stepmother. In any other story, that would have been huge news."

Solemn's normally anemic complexion was suffused with purple.

"SHUT UP! What about ME! I had my big sex reveal before you did, AND I got kidnapped by a ghost, AND I became a vampire, AND I got killed with a stake gun, AND I ran off with a chihuahua, and STILL no one is paying attention to me!"

Celestia Constellation McMurphy lit the final candle and sat at one point of the pentagram on the floor. She sighed for the million-and-first time over her unfortunate last name. It just didn't fit the aesthetic she was going for. Oh, well.

"So, um, are we, like, going to talk to Chet's grandma again?" asked Bethany Hawke. Now there was a last name. "Because she was, like, a total bitch last time."

"Hey!" Chet said, glancing up from his GameBoy for the first time.

"Shut up," Celestia snapped, placing the Ouija board in the center of the pentagram. "And she totally was, Chet."

"You try being dead for fifteen years," Chet grumbled. "See how YOU like it."

"I don't see why we have to use the stupid board," Steph said. "It's so...gauche."

"Stop trying to sound smart," Celestia said. "It so doesn't work on you."

"Haha, good one," Brad said. "High-fives!" He held his palm up toward Celestia and waited expectantly. She glared at him for an awkward moment, until he slowly lowered his hand. "Cold, dude. Cold."

"Everyone shut up and put your fingers on the puck."

"Planchette," Steph corrected, still smarting over Celestia's joke.

"Whatever." Celestia glared around at them, and each put their fingers on the planchette. It was crowded...but not quite as crowded as it should be. Celestia slapped Chet on the back of the head.

"Ow." He put the GameBoy in his lap and reached his hands toward the planchette. "You're always so violent, Cel."

"Shut up," she said again. She cleared her throat, scanned the book next to her one last time, and started chanting.

"Omni portenta dementia mundi--"

"I don't think that's right," said Steph. "'Dementia'? Isn't that a thing old people get?"

"Shut up, shut UP, SHUT UP," Celestia yelled. "Now I have to start over."

"Sor-ry," Steph muttered.

Celestia rolled her eyes. Another five minutes, and she'd be rid of all of these idiots, once and for all. She took a deep, calming breath, and began again.

"Omni portenta demoni mundi," she chanted, with a quick glare at Steph. "Banana-fana-bo-bemoni," she continued, as a sickly green glowing haze started to form over the board. Chet gave an appreciative whistle, which she ignored. "Fee-fi-mo-mundi," she finished, and waited expectantly for her new demonic servant to ask for her orders.

The green haze solidified into a hunched creature with a hideously deformed face, still floating in the air above the board. Celestia shivered. "Now, my servant --" she said in her chanting voice.

"Oh, piss off," the demon growled. "You bore me." He turned in midair and streaked away, smashing through the window and hurtling toward the woods surrounding that weird creepy castle nextdoor. The sudden wind through the broken glass blew out the candles.

The five witches of Broken Coven sat staring at each other, then at Celestia. Finally, Chet broke the silence.

"Well, that was fun. Pizza, anyone?"

I stomped my slim, elegant foot, clad in a delicate satin sandal, and my bosom heaved in rage.

"Who the F__ are all these football players and cheerleaders and teenage coven people who keep intruding on MY plot?" I demanded.

"YOUR plot?" snarled Solemn. "Why is it YOUR plot, other than the fact you keep trying to hog it?"

I slapped him. "Well, I AM the protagonist. Duh. Why else do you think this novel started with three pages of my driving fast while having highly intellectual internal musings?'

Solemn sneered, despite the red mark of my hand on his cheek. "You may not have noticed it, dear sister, but we've hardly kept to your POV throughout."

A hum from the ceiling grew and swelled until it overcame the tango music from the band and the harmonica that Randy the bear was plaintively and drunkenly playing.

It was the ghosts, massing together and muttering invective. This tower had been theirs for centuries. And they'd come up with a plan to get it back.