Funny Horror (Unidentified Funny Objects Annual Anthology Series of Humorous SF/F)

by Alex Shvartsman

  Bradley galloped through the streets on all fours, seeking that prey. That musky smell had to be the raccoons that turned over the neighborhood garbage cans. He ran towards the strongest concentration of smells.

  Unfortunately, smelling went both ways. They detected him long before he arrived at the place they had just been. They had fled up trees, where he could not follow, or into their well-defended burrows, claws and teeth facing out. He didn't want to dig for blood. He wanted to leap upon his victim!

  He went to the park, where the playground equipment swung empty. The scent of young, sweet human blood floated to his nostrils, but the taste was old. It was after ten o'clock. The children had a curfew, imposed only that spring by the state legislature. They were all inside. Even the tough kids got tired of being rousted out of the parks by the cops night after night. Bradley turned away from the swingset in disgust. How inconvenient! Someone had to be out walking somewhere.

  He smelled fresh blood and headed toward it, trotting from thin grass onto tarmac. The convenience store, yes! People came and went from it all night long. He slunk around the side of the building on all fours, and watched for a stray, unwary human.

  His eyes were dazzled by the parking lot lights. He had never noticed it before, but the convenience store had lights more powerful than those in a ballpark. To his heightened senses, it was like getting slapped in the face with a flashlight over and over again. He saw cars pull up to the six spaces near the door. Humans hopped out of them, but they were inside the store before he could make himself spring toward them through the glare. Within moments, they emerged again with slushies and hot dogs. They got back into their cars and drove away.

  One looked promising. A girl in a low-cut tank top that revealed her slender throat came out to a convertible with a bag in one hand. Forcing himself to ignore the lights, Bradley wiggled his backside, and sprang. As she pulled out of the space, he thundered toward her. The car lurched out of reverse and shot out of the parking lot with Bradley in pursuit. Wait until she stopped at a light. He'd leap over the back of her car and tear her to pieces!

  The speed limit on the road was only thirty-five, but the girl had to be doing at least ten over the limit. Bradley cursed all law-breakers as he chased her through several stoplights, including one she sailed through on amber. Her posture remained easy, and she swayed her head to the music blaring out of her radio. She didn't see him. How could she miss a full-grown wolfman, unless she never looked in the rearview mirror. Kids! He let out a howl. In response, the girl in the car turned her radio up.

  Bradley galloped around the streets, looking for a victim on foot. He tried the shopping mall. At that hour it was closed and empty. The grocery had just shut. Even the cart boys had left. The schools and the junior college were desolate. Not one single warm body was out on the sidewalks where he could kill them.

  It was the suburbs. No one walked anywhere. They drove out of their attached garages already in their cars, and rode around in parking lots until they found a space close to the door. How was he to find prey to satisfy his urge?

  He turned back toward his neighborhood, ready to give up in dismay. Then, his keen hearing picked up the distant sound of hysterical barking. He knew that yap! He turned on one foot and hurtled in that direction.

  The Lermans on the corner of his street had an obnoxious little dog. Bradley had despised it from the moment it had arrived. He stopped in the shadow of a bush and sank to his belly. Narrowing his eyes, he focused on the yard. He saw the dog through the trees lit up like a fluorescent glow stick. Now was time for revenge for all the times it piddled on him, attacked his ankle, yipped incessantly for hours out on its chain in the yard. He would tear it to tiny, quivering pieces!

  Bradley hurtled toward it on all fours. It saw him. At first it dashed toward him, barking frantically. His scent hit it. The dog yelped and turned around. It scampered in the direction of the back door of the house. It couldn't possibly make it before Bradley descended on it. He bared his teeth and leaped, cutting off the dog's escape. It froze. Bradley laughed.

  "Die, you miserable Beanie Baby!"

  He lunged. The dog cowered, its legs shaking.

  Good sense brought Bradley barreling to a halt in spite of himself. What was he thinking? It was his neighbor who left the dog out all the time and wouldn't get it obedience training.

  No, he should terrify the pesty little monster, not kill it! That is what it deserved.

  Bradley stood over the small dog and howled. The animal stood its ground for a moment, but primal sensation of predator meets much, much larger predator kicked into its small wad of neural tissue. It let out a sound that was the canine equivalent of Ayieeeee! It circled around Bradley and went tearing back toward the house. It scrabbled hysterically at the door with its little claws, yelping to be let in.

  Satisfied, Bradley galloped away. When the door opened, he heard with his extended hearing Mr. Lerman swearing. The dog raced into the house, still crying in terror. He bet he wouldn't see it outside again until its bladder was bursting.

  Bradley returned to the house happy but exhausted. So he wasn't going to find live prey. He could put up with that. He could not wait to show Angela his new shape. She'd be knocked out. In the meanwhile, he had one more night of wild freedom until she returned.

  HE GOT HOME FROM work in time to greet the family as the car pulled into the driveway. Bradley kissed them all and carried the luggage inside. He kept looking at them while they ate dinner at a local family restaurant, doting on them, wondering how he got along for seven whole days without them. He was dying to tell them about his transformation. Twelve-year-old Mark would be thrilled. He wasn't too sure about ten-year-old Elizabeth, who covered her eyes during scary scenes in the movies. But Angie had to know.

  "What are you looking at?" his wife asked him, squirting mustard on her hamburger.

  "Uh, just glad you're back," he said, hastily picking up French fries and stuffing them into his mouth. That wasn't the place to tell them.

  Mark had to go to band practice. Instead of griping that he had had a long day at the office, Bradley cheerfully volunteered to drive him to the junior high. Angela gave him a strange look, but she didn't say anything. He decided he wouldn't tell them, not yet. He wanted to show Angela first.

  Just before moonrise, he pulled her into their bedroom and locked the door.

  "What are you doing?" Angela demanded.

  Bradley sat down on the bed and patted the mattress beside him. She shook her head and stood with her arms crossed and worry on her face. Not a good start, but he had to tell her. He took a deep breath.

  "Honey," he began, "I have something I have to tell you."

  "You're gay?" she blurted out.

  Bradley gawked at her. "No! Where did you get that? Figure skating makes me sick. No. I'm…a werewolf."

  Her expression turned from concern to naked disbelief. "Yeah, right. I've got laundry in." She started for the door. He jumped up and took her arm.

  "No, really, honest, honey! It happened a couple of days after you left." He told her about the silver object, about Mr. Elanovitch, about the transformation and racing through the forest preserve. He skipped the part about the girl in the convertible.

  She listened, searching his face as if trying to decide whether he was crazy or deluded.

  "Brad, I don't know what to say. I mean, I don't know whether you're crazy or trying to pull something on me. Just tell me what it is, all right? I know you're bored out of your mind with your job. Are you telling me you want to quit your job and go into acting? Is that it?"

  Bradley threw up his arms in frustration. "Forget it! Wait until moonrise. You'll see."

  They stayed together at opposite ends of the room, waiting for the edge of the lunar globe to appear over the trees. Against Angie's objections, he opened the window so he could jump away from her if he felt some urge to harm her.

  The moon rose. Bradley braced himself…and nothing happened. He ran
to the mirror and stared at his face. Grow! he thought at the stubble on his chin. But it didn't. He ran back to the window. The moon was rising, wasn't it?

  The tension in Angela's body melted away.

  "Uh-huh," she said.

  "But…" he said. Angela shook her head and unlocked the door, leaving him staring out of the window.

  What was wrong with him? For three days he had been a man-beast, a creature out of legend. He was an ordinary person again, overweight, with thinning hair and a 401K account.

  He ran into Mark's room and thumbed through the books on the shelf. In the story he pulled out, it said that the werewolf only roamed during the full moon.

  The moon was no longer full. It had dwindled at its right-hand edge to a shape like a face. It reproached him. Bradley moaned. The magic couldn't be over!

  He got up several times a night to consult the mirror. The bland, ordinary face that stared back at him refused to transform. He wanted that sense of transformation. He had to have it back, but it wouldn't come back. He returned to work more miserable than he had ever been. When he got home at night, he did his chores and played with the kids, but he found it hard to find to be enthusiastic about. The midlife crisis came back so bad that not even three red sportscars or a dozen blondes could help.

  Angela regarded him with pity and exasperation as she watched him mope around the house.

  "Honey," she said, as he hoisted the full garbage bag out of the kitchen can, "I want you to find someone to talk to. Is there such a thing as Werewolves Anonymous? Because you are an addict."

  Bradley regarded her with suspicion. "You don't believe me."

  Her expression was kind, not cynical. "No, not really. But you've imagined yourself into something powerful. I know you hate your job. You always talk about how it's killing you. Maybe it is. Start looking for something else. That'll help. Or how about a hobby? You're always talking about taking up a hobby. I love you. I hate to see you being miserable."

  "It was so great," he said sadly, as he took the white bag out to the trash can.

  Angie was right. He had to snap out of it. Maybe he had been dreaming for three nights in a row. Shellfish gave him weird dreams. Maybe this time the combination of stress, TV dinners and the Ambien he had to take to put himself to sleep gave him hallucinations. He settled back into their ordinary life, resolved to find a counselor and take up woodworking, or something.

  Life at work continued to be miserable. One so-called international businessman who had been caught with ten containers full of designer knockoffs had had the nerve to threaten him personally with a lawsuit for restraint of trade. The government ombudsman assured Bradley he was not individually liable for government regulations, but it still kept him from sleeping at night. It got so bad that he took a double dose of sleeping pills against the warning on the front of the bottle. Sleep dragged him deep into his pillow, but his dreams were active and weird.

  He felt a fierce nudge in the ribs.

  "Brad! Brad, wake up!"

  He tried to crawl out of the dream, where he was being prodded into a corner by a barber holding a rat-tail comb.

  "Brad! Wake up! You're hairy!"

  "I am?" The drug haze receded, and he realized could see her in the dark. He felt his jaw and his ears. Thrilled, he leaped up and turned on the lights. They flooded his brain, much more light than he needed, but he wanted her to see. "See?" he said. "I told you." It came out "Grrr grrr gghhh." He tried again, but he didn't need to. Angela screamed, but more with delight than fear.

  "Oh, my God, you're not going crazy!"

  Bradley got control of his tongue, palate and vocal chords. "You thought I was?"

  "Well, naturally I thought you were. Who believes in werewolves?"

  "I do. You should, too. Look at me." He pounded his bulging chest.

  Angela surveyed him up and down. Her eyes widened, then she got a coy look on her face.

  "Who is this big, hairy creature in my bed? I certainly hope he's not going to attack me." She threw herself down among the pillows, arms up over her head. "Is he?"

  Bradley could never resist it when she lay like that. He dived for her and wrapped her in his arms, mouthing her neck. She let out a shriek of delight.

  Leaving her limp and satisfied, he jumped out of the window and ran through the neighborhood. He couldn't help bellowing his delight, hearing echoes in the deserted streets. There were some annoyed shouts and barking from distant dogs, but he didn't care. He felt great. The curse hadn't gone away. In fact, it had some fabulous fringe benefits.

  Three days of the lunar month helped keep him sane at his job and managing the kids' full schedule of activity during the other twenty-five. Enthusiasm for Angela's new, hairy suitor made the marriage bed a more interesting place than it had been in years. Bradley also discovered his senses were boosted during the non-wolf times. He found things the kids had lost by smell. He cleared pests out of the yard, including the gopher he had been unable to unseat for years. The Endangered Species act wouldn't let him kill or harm it, but never said a damned thing about werewolf eviction. He had never been in better shape in his life. Three days of intense physical activity per month started to whittle away the suburban paunch. His muscle tone improved to the way it had been when he played soccer in school.

  "I have to admit I'm envious," Angela said one evening, admiring his trim solar plexus. "Is there a way I can get in on this?"

  "Should we have two…you-know-whats in the family?" Bradley asked.

  "Why not? Frankenstein had his bride. How about the Wolfman?" She tickled the whiskers at the side of his jaw. He just couldn't resist that.

  "I'll figure something out," Bradley promised. He would find Elanovitch. It was what Customs and Excise was best at, after all.

  They had not told the kids yet. He was still trying to figure out how, but since Angela had taken the news so readily, he doubted the kids would have problems. It only interfered with their social life a little.

  As the keeper of their social calendar, Angela was the one who coordinated with their friends for nights out. "No, sorry, we can't get together on Saturday," she told someone on the phone. "That's one of Brad's hairy days and we've got a date that night. Can you imagine what a mess he'd make of the Olive Garden? How about Tuesday instead?"

  Bradley was a changed man at work. Instead of slinking in in the morning, he strutted. His supervisor noticed the boost in his confidence, handing him the tough cases. Instead of dreading them, Bradley came to enjoy them. He just pictured the head of his interviewee on the body of the yappy little neighbor dog, racing toward its house. His success rate soared.

  "Newton," his boss barked at him. "Got a big problem for you. I want you to handle it yourself."

  Brad was instantly on guard.

  "What is it, sir?"

  The supervisor's mouth went up in the corner. "Mr. Elanovitch is back," he said. "The guy just doesn't know when to quit. This time we've really got him."

  Bradley matched his grin, and he felt the wild blood rising in his veins. But the practical side of him made itself felt, too.

  "Say, sir, can we keep him until after moonrise?" Bradley asked, hoping he didn't sound too eager. "Mr. Elanovitch and I have a lot to talk about."

  This story originally appeared in Strip-Mauled anthology, Baen Books, 2009.

  Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as "spoiling cats." She lives near Chicago with her current cat, Jeremy, and her husband, Bill. She has published more than 45 books, including collaborations with Anne McCaffrey and Robert Asprin, and over 150 short stories. Her latest books are Rhythm of the Imperium (Baen), Moon Beam (with Travis S. Taylor, Baen), and Myth-Fits (Ace). She also teaches the annual DragonCon Two-Day Writers Workshop.

  Final Corrections

  M. Bennardo

  IN SEVERAL ITEMS YESTERDAY, the Visitor was variously described as having six legs, eight legs, or "an unholy agglomeration of writhing, thrashing appendages, unable to be counted." The
correct number of legs is eight.

  In our lead story, it was reported that electronics in the city and some suburbs had been disabled by an "electromagnetic pulse, or EMP." In fact, there was no such burst of radiation. Instead, the Visitor itself appears to be the source of a continuous emanation of radiation.

  The extent of the Downtown Caldera was misstated. It is bounded roughly by the Boulevard of the Allies to the south and by Grant Street to the east, extending north through the former Cultural District as far as the Allegheny River. See map inset on A3.

  We incorrectly reported that all bridges in the downtown and surrounding areas were impassable. In fact, at press time yesterday, the Birmingham Bridge and Hot Metal Bridge were intact. Since then, we are informed that the Visitor has pulverized both in the irresistible clutches its sixty-foot claws.

  Moreover, those claws should not have been described as "adamantium." Adamantium is a fictional substance of impossible hardness and strength. Scientists we interviewed suggested "adamantium" as a proposed name for the so-far impenetrable armor of the Visitor, but those suggestions do not represent a scientific consensus.

  One of our correspondents repeatedly and erroneously referred to the Downtown Caldera as a "yawning hellgate." In fact, it is not known whether the caldera is a gateway and, if so, whether it leads to Hell. In addition, the caldera is not surrounded by "curtains of sulfurous fog", but rather by the steam of the boiling river. Finally, descriptions of "omnipresent screams" in the area should not have attributed those screams to "the wailing souls of the dead and the damned."

  Surviving city officials inform us that we misquoted the Mayor as saying, "It's the end times! It's the end times! Oh God, it's Judgment Day!" No alternate quotation was provided, and the Mayor himself could no longer be reached for additional comment.