Sandy trudged down the aisle toward her row, shoes going smack, smack on the floor. Purses and soda cups lingered at the seats, but Colette and Melanie weren’t there. Neither was the bundled-up stranger who’d sat just behind them. The auditorium once more smelled of popcorn.
Glancing back at the door, Sandy wasn’t sure how to leave. What waited out there, real life or something alien? She looked to the screen instead, read the credits.
They named no one for playing the Toad Man. Maybe no one had. Synthesizer music faded as the last of the unseen children’s chant overtook the soundtrack, ringing in the credits’ end.
Toad Man, Toad Man, he’ll have sweet dreams,
Of hands and hearts and skin and screams.
Toad Man, Toad Man, he needs his rest,
But don’t forget he likes you best.
Hailey Piper is the author of horror novellas Benny Rose, the Cannibal King and The Possession of Natalie Glasgow. An active member of the Horror Writers Association, her short fiction appears in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Tales to Terrify, Blood Bath Literary Zine, and many other publications. Her debut dark fantasy/epic horror novel, The Verses of Aeg, will be published by Bronzeville Books in late 2020. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where Hailey haunts their apartment making spooky noises. Haileypiper.com.
False Bay
Rick Wilber
False Bay
Chloe Cary, she of the Emmy nomination for her shoot-em-up role in the Annie Oakley series of the same name, she of the two golds and a silver in the pool at the Paris Olympics in ’24, she of the Pac 15 champion women’s soccer at Stanford in ’25, she who seemed to have it all just a year ago but is now reduced to the female lead in the straight-to-freestream Colossal III where she’s a frightened teenager (the wonders of de-aging technology!) who becomes a big ol’ monster kaiju, is in her trailer. She’s prepping for the second day of trying to get the scene right where she slowly emerges from the shallow water of the Gulf of Mexico and then, as she wades in toward the beach, she changes and grows and morphs into the eponymous colossal monster that stomps its way toward the city to thwart the attack from that other monster that threatens our very way of life. Twenty takes yesterday and no one’s happy. She doesn’t have the intensity the scene demands. She can’t seem to summon up the blinding anger necessary to make it work.
Maybe today she’ll get it right, find the right internal anger and fear to channel into her acting. She sighs. It’s a stupid movie. There’s not much of a plot and she hates this scene, but Colossal III will make her a few bucks and keep her name out there. It’s been a rough year.
So now she’s working on her physicality, trying to look tough, when her smarty dings. It’s set on silent and block while she works, so the ding means a top priority override. “I’m focusing, myBetty. I said no calls,” she says to her helpmate, her always-there companion who resides in a tiny bowl amp in her right ear and has all the answers to all the questions all the time.
“Sorry to break in, Chloe, but it’s all over the clouds,” says myBetty. “A S’hudonni ship has landed in the Salton Sea and Twoclicks is on it. He’s alive.”
“What!?” Twoclicks is the roly-poly alien overlord of the whole damn planet who was, or is, either a cuddly comedian or a stone-cold ruthless killer and profiteer, take your pick. He and his pals, a couple hundred of them, showed up a couple of years ago, landing their ships in warm, shallow estuaries worldwide, full of promises and, in Twoclicks’s case at least, a jovial and gently disarming charm that was backed up by those deadly screamships that dealt death when it was necessary. Twoclicks always expressed his deep regrets after thousands died in each of those early uprisings. Earth got the message, and after that the dissenters went underground, staying quiet and biding their time and making plans.
Which seemed to have worked, a year later, when Twoclicks died, two weeks into a trip to the home world where he brought along Earthie emissaries. The whole side of his screamship blew out and sent Twoclicks and his cabinet and all the Earthies—the ambassadors and directors and presidents and papal emissaries and under-secretaries—all of them and more, spinning away into the nothing, arms and legs flailing, mouths open in screams that were terrible and sad one second and then gone the next, because you couldn’t hear a thing in that sudden vacuum.
And all of this went live to everyone on Earth who was wearing a sweep receiver, or watching on old-school television or their smarties, or their new wavescreens or whatever the hell they used. All of them were watching and hearing as three dozen died, including Twoclicks, who’d brought them all together to sign the treaty he’d worked so hard for. Peace in our time! Under the benevolent guidance of mother S’hudon!
Benevolent, sure, but with the occasional reminder of who was in charge. The porpoisy S’hudonni, the friendly and slightly squishy and moist aliens from Out There who’d brought Earth the chance to trade and learn from a dozen worlds in their system. There were some adjustments to be made here and there, of course. But the science! The technology! The access to all those other worlds!
And the screamships. Ah, yes, those purveyors of power, those enforcers of calm. Those three examples as the Russians and the Chinese and the Americans all watched in dismay as their best weaponry, the hypersonic drones, the ghostships, the pulse weapons, the laughable lasers, the silly B-1s and 2s and creaky old F-35s and Russian Stingrays and French Dasaults and all the rest. Puddled. A quick flick from that beam from the screamships and that was it. Dissolution.
So it was the end of war, and peace reigned, rather gently enforced really. Surely the medcots and the free energy and the hypertubes and the travel for Earth’s elite were all worth a little humility, right? Visit distant planets! Learn the hidden secrets of the universe! Sign me up!
Not everyone thought the New Order was the best possible future. There were dissidents, a lot of them, but they were underground and powerless now, so who cares?
And then that tragic blowout meant the dissidents had proven they weren’t powerless at all, and when Earth woke up the next morning the aliens were leaving. The S’hudonni don’t stay where they aren’t wanted. And just like that, in forty-eight hours, they were gone. And with them went all the wonder, all the future, all the promise of membership in a galactic empire.
Oh, and there also went Chloe’s career, into a tank, an actual very large water tank ultimately, where Chloe/kaiju roamed as a disappointed Hollywood tried hard to forget about her. She’d taken a gamble with Twoclicks and she’d lost. She was lucky to be a part-time kaiju.
Until now! Twoclicks is alive! And he’s back! A ship, all spindly legs below that huge egg-shaped hull, landed this morning in the Salton Sea—the S’hudonni do love warm, shallow water—and, first things first, Twoclicks came out onto the landing platform to wave at all the flyeyes and drones and choppers and all the rest that had it on live and then he dived off the landing platform and into the shallow water. Hardly a ripple!
After the swim he popped back up on the platform, a meter or so above the water line, and disappeared back into the ship. Later, the usual platform opened at the top of the egg and an Earthie chopper landed. Twoclicks and another, smaller S’hudonni came out onto that platform while the world watched, and climbed into the helicopter and off they went, with dozens, then hundreds, of drones and other choppers and satellites high in orbit and cameras on the ground and Earthies with their phone cams on building tops, all getting it live as the chopper landed on the roof of the famous S’hudonni Consulate on Pershing Square.
So Chloe took that call from Twoclicks, for sure, and now here she is on her way to the consulate, coming to pay her respects. She’s his very first visitor! Before the new governor or any of the new presidents or popes or supreme leaders or secretary-generals or anyone else. Chloe Cary, his favorite Earthie!
And why would that be? Well, it was Chloe Cary that brought Twoclicks here in the first place. She’d been the host of Space Chicks two years before, when
her career was in a major slump and she took the job to keep her name out there. Her Stanford bachelor’s in physics finally paid off when she got the offer. She’d always felt guilty about earning that bachelor’s and then doing nothing with it, but there she was, asking the right questions of women who were space scientists, physicists and science writers, exobiologists ready to rave about the Mars bugs, and many more. Twenty-two weeks of classy pop science with plenty of CGI to dress it up fancy. They’d even done a three-parter on what aliens might look like if they ever came to Earth.
They’d guessed wrong. No one had figured on porpoisy, aquatic, jokesters, eager to help Earth along on the road to Shambala. Yep, no one had called that shot, but sure enough, up there in orbit around it, looking us over, undetected, was Twoclicks, who liked the show and loved Chloe Cary, so when they finally landed, the first thing he did was ask to see her. Take me to your actor! Wow, did her career take off. It went stratospheric, you might even say. She was everywhere! And that’s how you make it in Hollywood, boys and girls. Have an alien overlord as your pal.
Then a year later he died, assassinated in an act of terror was the general belief. One of those three dozen Earthies was a bomb who came in peace and died in violence, along with everyone else in that ship. And suddenly no one would take Chloe’s agent’s calls, and that high-flying career came back down to Earth. Months later, she finally got the Colossal III gig, and was happy to have it. That’s how bad things got.
But now Twoclicks is back. How had he survived? Why did he return? What were his plans for the future now? There were a lot of questions, and it seemed to have fallen to Chloe Cary to ask them, get some answers and clue us all in. Twoclicks wasn’t talking to anyone else.
So here comes Chloe! She’s heading straight from the studio to the consulate in a human-chauffeured limo, no lowly self-drive for Chloe Cary.
The paparazzi are following her with their ebikes and their drones and flittercams and spyeyes. All that whirring and humming right outside the smoked glass of her window in the back seat of the limo from the time she left the studio’s arched entrance right through the half-hour drive down Sunset and then Rodeo and then a left on Wilshire, past Louis Vuitton and Spago and all the rest of that, all the way past the Children’s Museum and the Tar Pits and MacArthur Park and on to Pershing Square and the ornate deco of the S’hudonni Consulate, three floors of quiet grandeur.
“Chloe! Chloe! Chloe!” they shout at her as she exits the limo when her human driver steps around the limo to open her door. She’s back at the top of the cycle! There’s nothing better, nothing bigger, than Chloe Cary!
And then, when the consulate’s door opens and the most powerful being on planet Earth steps out, “Twoclicks! Twoclicks! Twoclicks!” they shout, and he waves at them as he steps toward Chloe and gives her a big damp hug and says “Dear friend Chloe, we are sso, sso happy to see you!”
Twoclicks is really back! And he’s hugging Chloe Cary! The air is alive with buzzing and whirring and humming drones and the smaller flittercams and the pricey new spyeyes. Great stuff! Fabulous!
And then the door shuts and that’s that. Time to save some battery and bring back the cams and sit and relax for a while. And then wait, and wait some more if that’s what it takes.
Inside, Twoclicks takes a step back, holds Chloe out by her shoulders and seems to size her up. Then he smiles hugely and exclaims, “I knew it! You are a wonder!” and he brings her in for another hug.
It seems a little creepy, to be honest. Chloe can feel the oddly cold and slick, dark skin of his arms against hers and as if that isn’t weird enough, he then leans in to kiss her on the left check.
What’s the damn protocol here? myBetty wasn’t helping at all. Where is her helpmate’s advice when Chloe needs it?
Enough is enough, so Chloe gently pushes him back and extricates herself from those spindly arms, then forces herself to smile and say, “It’s a great pleasure to see you again …” and she hesitates, waiting for help from myBetty, who finally speaks up in her ear, “I’m having connectivity problems, Chloe. But he’s First Consul Twoclicks,” and Chloe says that, “… First Consul,” and adds, “We all thought you were dead. We watched you die, didn’t we?” It would be nice, she thinks, to get some explanation for how this is happening. Hell, the whole world wants to know, and she’s the one who’s here.
“First Consul?” Twoclicks says, “That iss too sserious! I am Twoclicks! We are great friendss! There is much to ssay and much to do!”
“Well, okay, then,” says myBetty, and “Sure, Twoclicks” says Chloe, smiling despite how creepy this is getting to be. She does have a lot of questions, starting with what the hell really happened out there. How did Twoclicks survive?
“So,” she tries again, “What happened out there?”
Twoclicks waves the question away. “Firsst things firsst, dear friend Chloe,” he says as he walks next to her down the long, ornate hallway toward the dining room.
“We will eat! Sso much to ssay for one meal, but we will try, dearest friend Chloe. Come, come, and I will tell you all about our adventuress. Sspace ssaga! Amazing! Astounding!”
Not for the first time, Chloe has to wonder just how goofy is this character. Our newly returned great alien overlord, our self-styled First Consul, is, at heart, a clown? A deadly clown, to be sure; but a goof, yes, and a charming one at that.
She hears from myBetty in her ear. “Breaking news, Chloe, S’hudonni ships, at least a dozen of them, are landing all over the planet. Nothing hostile. Seems our friends are back.”
Twoclicks waves his other hand at her to say, “Yess, yess, all are returned, dearest friend Chloe. Back! All will be answered ssoon! For now. Food!” And he takes her by the hand to walk into the dining room.
Chloe knows this room from the last time around with Twoclicks. There are long curtains that are always closed over the tall, narrow windows, and the long banquet table centers the room. There are settings for three at one end of the table. One at the head of the table, one on each side. Very cozy. But who is the other setting for?
Twoclicks walks over to a side table and pours two glasses of wine. He brings them over to Chloe, hands her one, says “Nice wine!” and when she takes her glass he reaches out to touch hers for a toast. “To our great friendship!”
“Friendship,” says Chloe, and smiles even as she wonders where the hell this is going.
She finds out. Twoclicks whistles and clicks something in S’hudonni and in through a side door at the back of the room waddles a S’hudonni child, a happy one at that, fairly skipping into the room.
Twoclicks is beaming to see him, Chloe notes, and then he says why. “Dearest friend Chloe, I introduce to you The Perfection, my son Treble, prince of the House of S’hu!”
“Your son?” Chloe asks, stunned.
“My son and ssavior!” says Twoclicks, “the one who found my lifecraft after drifting for weeks. Near death!” Then he turns to whistle and click at the little one, who whistles happily back and then steps up to Chloe to say, in perfect English, “Chloe Cary, I am Treble, and I am very excited to meet you. My father has said so much about you. You are, he says, the nicest human on Earth! I will be delighted to travel with you!”
“Wonderful!” says Twoclicks, “now let uss eat!” And so they take their places as waiters—Earthies, all—bring in the first course, some kind of soup. Chloe is wondering as she sits just what the child meant by “travel with you”?
Treble to the rescue. As he sits, he chats, in perfect English, “A grand tour is being arranged, and my father would like you to escort me as we meet your people. Would that be all right?”
“A grand tour?” Chloe asks. What the hell?
“Yes, a global tour, to all those places where my father needs to revive his interests. London, Paris, Cairo, Mumbai, Cape Town.”
Chloe shakes her head, blows out a breath. This is the worst idea she’s heard all day, or all year, or ever. Travel with the S’hudon
ni overlord and his little alien kid who surely will have a huge target on his back, since the same dissidents who tried to kill his father will certainly take aim at him now, too. And Chloe right there with him. Wonderful. The three targets.
“No, no,” Treble says, seeming to read her mind. “Father Twoclicks will stay home. There are important matters of state that he needs to take care of here.”
Chloe looks at Twoclicks, who is busy spooning cream of mushroom soup into his capacious mouth. Big slurps off the spoon. A satisfied smile. He said “Thiss iss very tasty, dear friend Chloe.”
So obviously the kid did better in the brains department than his father. And Chloe smiles and slides her bowl of soup over to Twoclicks even as Treble turns his attention to his soup, which he spoons with precision, bowl to mouth.
But Twoclicks! This goofy creature with little dribbles of cream of mushroom trailing down from his mouth as he slurps, is back in town and he is, no question, the most powerful being on Earth, the world’s leader in fact if not in name. She wonders if he wants to get even for the assassination attempt. In a day or two he’ll be attending to matters of state and heads, she suspects, will roll.
“Sso, dear friend Chloe,” Twoclicks says as he lifts the spoon to his mouth and slurps again, “it will be you and The Perfection, dear sson Treble and some Earthie guardss and media and the ssuch. Oh, and in Cape Town your guide will be the wonderful Anodiwa Pinaar!”
Great, thought Chloe. She’d meet Pinaar, whose career was rising even as Chloe’s fell. Sure, that’d be fun, hanging out with the next big thing. But she smiles as Twoclicks adds a bit of persuasion. “Great expossure, dear friend Chloe! Whole world will be watching you with my sson The Perfection, Treble.”
Chloe thinks about things. It will be good, great even, for her face and name to show up all over the place. Her publicist will be very, very pleased, and so will the agent and the studio and all the rest of the hangers-on.
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 21