by Mike McCarty
The trip to Washington, D.C. took about five minutes. It was faster than the fastest airplane or high-speed internet connection. Hell, it was even faster than getting a buzz smoking dope and drinking beer after donating blood. As we neared our destination, the ship made that strange humming sound. I listened to it for a few seconds and said, “What’s that weird noise?”
“Our force-field,” Dr. Strangebug said, “in case your Air Force or Army tries to blow us out of the sky.”
“Umm, good plan! We don’t want that to happen.”
“Now, both you guys step onto those teleporter pods in that far corner,” Dr. Strangebug said.
“Tell-a-what?” Goose said.
The alien pointed to what looked like some big black Frisbees on the floor.
So, we stepped onto them. A green light poured down from the ceiling and everything went all staticky. Then: silence and utter blackness.
Suddenly, the static came back and I found myself standing in the Oval Office of the White House, with Goose standing to my left. Then, Dr. Strangebug and Bong the robot popped into view on my right.
The President of the United States was seated behind his desk. At this late hour, he was dressed in blue satin pajamas with the word President embroidered in red and white over his heart. I guess having presidential PJs is one of the perks of the job.
“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. President Dude,” I said. “My name is Piers Blayloch, and this is my friend Goose. That silver dude is Bong the robot and this is Dr. Strangebug, who needs to speak to you about something really important.”
“Have a seat,” the President said, pointing to chairs in front of his desk. He wasn’t the least bit surprised that two stoners, a giant cockroach and a robot had beamed into his office. I guess that’s why he’d made the cut as the Commander-in-Chief.
Goose and I sat down. Dr. Strangebug and Bong remained standing, since the chairs were far too small for them.
“Mr. President,” the alien doctor said. “I come to this planet as a diplomat from the planet Roachvylla to demand that Earthlings stop killing our cousins.”
“Your … cousins…?” the President said with a smile that looked more like a wince.
“The cockroaches of Earth.”
“Oh!” the President said. “I’m sorry, but we would be unable to–”
Before the leader of the United States could finish his sentence, Dr. Strangebug pushed a red-button in Bong’s chest panel.
We then heard a thunderously loud, echoing noise, like someone’s stomach was gurgling. But that someone was the Earth, and that stomach was its core.
“I have just activated … the fart bomb,” Dr. Strangebug said solemnly.
The gurgling continued, louder and louder. All of the planet’s inner gases were building pressure. I later found out it could be heard everywhere: from Tokyo to Tulsa to Tibet to Timbuktu. The noise kept building and bubbling until at last the pressure was released.
The Earth farted horrendously with mega-volcanic force, shrouding the globe with stinking gas. The nauseating stench reached every nook and cranny of the planet. Imagine the super-reek of ten-thousand rotten ostrich eggs, a flooded New York City sewer, the combined manure of all the world’s buffaloes and elephants, and a billion angry skunk-squirts–all at once.
The President, Goose and myself were all gagging and crying and coughing and retching. We were practically dying from the horrible, overpowering stench.
“Please…stop.…” I begged.
Dr. Strangebug ignored me. He put his hand over another button on Bong’s panel and said, “The next one will be silent but deadly–deadly to humans, that is!”
“You didn’t let me finish what I was going to say,” the President said, wiping tears from his puffy red eyes. “Please, hear me out, and maybe we can figure out an answer. We would be unable to stop killing cockroaches here on Earth, because if we did, we would be overrun by them and they would take over our planet!”
Dr. Strangebug crossed his four legs in anger again. Then he unfolded one of his legs and started to reach for the button again.
“Wait! I’m sure we can come up with a diplomatic solution,” the President said.
Dr. Strangebug gave him a skeptical look.
“Hey, I have an idea!” I shouted.
All eyes focused on me–even Bong’s glowing red ones.
“Instead of killing the Earth roaches, maybe we could just send them back with you, Dr. Strangebug, to your planet of Roachvylla.”
The giant roach nodded happily. “Why, that is an excellent idea, young weed-smoker! Do you have any problem with us taking the cockroaches back to our planet, Mr. President?”
“Not at all!” the President said. “Take as many as you like. Take them all!”
“That can be arranged,” Dr. Strangebug said. He reached into his beret, took out what looked like a one-inch walkie-talkie, and spoke softly into it.
Seconds later, the spaceship landed in front of the White House and the silver doors opened.
Dr. Strangebug pushed a black button on Bong’s chest panel, and the robot started to make a high-pitched, creepy-crawly noise. There must have been something powerfully strange and super-scientific about all that racket the robot was making, because soon the White House lawn was covered with millions upon millions of cockroaches, all swarming into the ship. Every sort of cockroach you could possibly imagine was there–from the big-ass ones that creep around in the Rain Forest to the common ones you usually step on in the basement, and every kind in-between.
Finally the last cockroach crawled into the ship, followed by the three Roachvyllans and their robot. Then the silver doors closed and the spaceship soared up, up, up into outer space.
As we watched the spaceship fly off, the President said, “Piers Blayloch and Goose, you have just saved all of humanity. Not only that, you’ve rid the world of cockroaches! Is there anything America can do to repay you?”
I thought about it for oh, about five seconds. “America does ongoing research on marijuana, right? Well, make us test subjects for life!”
“You’ve got it!” the President said. “I’ll even throw in the munchies.”
“Awesome!” both Goose and I said at the same time.
“Jinx!” Goose this time.
We high-fived each other, and the President, too.
And we lived happily stoned ever after.
The Nightmare Quadrant:
The Legacy of Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois
by Mark McLaughlin
Introduction: Welcome to “The Nightmare Quadrant” by Mark McLaughlin.
“Cry for the Alienoid” Teleplay by Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois.
Previously Unpublished Poetry by Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois.
A Timeline of the Major Creative Works of Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois.
Interviews with Cast Members Kevin L. Jacobi, Chip Ranger, and Norma Jean Tumble, Conducted by Mark McLaughlin.
On the evening of Tuesday, September 12, 1957, the science-fiction/horror television show, “The Nightmare Quadrant,” premiered on TBS, the Transcontinental Broadcasting System. This black-and-white, hour-long, anthology-format program was produced by Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois, a wealthy and charismatic Southern businessman, poet, novelist, musician and entomologist. He was also a distant relative of mine on my father’s side.
Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois died in 2007 at the remarkable age of 107, and he left me all of his writings in his will, since I was a writer, too, and he believed that I was his only relative who could appreciate his literary talents. In my opinion (which I never shared with him, since he was a sensitive man and I wished to spare his feelings), he was not the finest writer who ever lived, but what he lacked in technique, he certainly made up for in unbridled enthusiasm.
> Sadly, the premiere episode of “The Nightmare Quadrant” was also its last. Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois pulled the plug on his own project. TBS executives felt that the first episode was too dark–and too experimental–for popular tastes, and they asked him to give subsequent episodes “a friendlier tone.”
Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois balked at the suggestion, and in a press conference on Thursday, September 14, 1961, told reporters, “I, Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois, would rather kill my baby than allow it to grow into an idiot. And by ‘baby,’ I am referring to my program, ‘The Nightmare Quadrant,’ and not an actual child. I wish to make that point abundantly clear.”
So ended the show which renowned television critic Linus Sinclair called “an exotic, albeit flawed, black rose in the weed-ridden garden of television programming.” No copies of the actual program remain–they have been lost in the fickle currents of Time.
Although Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois and I were related, we were not close friends. He was already rather old by the time I was born, and we lived quite far from each other. He became reclusive in his twilight years, so I was only able to meet him in person a few times before he entered the nursing home–usually at family functions, so it was difficult to hold long conversations with him. He also disliked talking on the phone. “I like to see who I’m chinwagging with!” he would say. “I’ll chat with Chip on the phone, but that’s about it.” Chip Ranger was an actor who appeared in “The Nightmare Quadrant.”
I did visit Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois several times in the nursing home where he spent his final years, but he didn’t want to talk for long about “The Nightmare Quadrant,” since the network’s response had been such a disappointment for him. During one visit, he told me this: “The man who played the Alienoid was named Kevin. At first I didn’t like the idea of someone named Kevin playing the monster. A monster named Kevin? Heavens! But the role had to be played by someone especially tall, and that actor named Kevin was a good six-foot-seven.”
Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois was sitting in a wheelchair as he said those words, with a praying mantis perched on his left knee. It remained on his knee during my entire visit. He did not comment on the insect.
Before I left, Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois told me that the letters of my name could also spell “alarm king mulch” or “magma kiln churl.”
All that now remains of “The Nightmare Quadrant” is a teleplay, as eccentric as its creator. I have taken the liberty of correcting numerous misspelled words, since Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois was dyslexic and also in the habit of using random abbreviations, such as “yr” instead of “your” and “grlfrnd” instead of “girlfriend.” Everything else, I have left the same.
You will notice that the script does not follow the usual teleplay format. Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois was probably not aware that such a format even existed. In all endeavors, he did things his own way.
The teleplay was also overly long. In the nursing home, Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois once complained to me about the fact that the network had cut and extensively re-edited the episode so it would fit into its time-slot. “But Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois!” I said. “What else could they do? The episode had to end in time for the following show!”
His reply: “Don’t sass me, you peppersnipe! Would you chop one end off ‘The Last Supper’ so it would fit between two other paintings? No! You’d just move the other paintings a bit–one to the right, one to the left. The same goes for TV programs. They could have just moved the other shows around.”
During another visit, he mentioned, “The second episode of ‘The Nightmare Quadrant’ was going to be called ‘Mint Julep for a Vampire.’ I’d written the whole thing and was going to expand it into a movie someday, but I got busy with some other trifling matters and lost track of where I’d put that wonderful script. It was beautiful, I tell you–a work of art. Absolutely beautiful. Poetic. Lovely! I wonder where that script is right this minute...?”
I have looked through all of the papers left behind by the late Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois, but sadly, I have not been able to locate the lost second episode.
According to an orderly at the nursing home, the last words of Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois were: “You know, if you rearrange the letters in my name, it spells ‘boiled whores sweat peanuts.’”
“The Nightmare Quadrant” Episode 1: Cry for the Alienoid
by Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois
CAST:
Voice of the NAMELESS HOST: Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois
BUSTER: Brock Pendleton
EDITH: Norma Jean Tumble
MAE BELLE FONTAINE: Loretta Frank
BEAUREGARD FONTAINE: Michael Copper
COLONEL PETRIE: Anthony Pleasant
DR. BELLAMY: Silas McDaniels
PRIVATE KINSEY: Chip Ranger
THE ALIENOID: Kevin L. Jacobi
Written, Directed and Produced by Alphonse Sweetwater-DuBois
(PROLOGUE: As the unseen NAMELESS HOST speaks, we witness dreamlike, slow-motion images of spiders spinning webs...a forest fire...gears spinning in an elaborate clock...a shadowy figure gliding through a lovely cemetery...vultures circling in a cloudless sky...lightning and stars. The words THE NIGHTMARE QUADRANT slowly spin into view and stop spinning just as the preamble of the NAMELESS HOST ends. The words then dissipate into mist and drift away. The voice of the NAMELESS HOST is low and cultured–the compelling tones of a sophisticated Southern gentleman.)
NAMELESS HOST (voice-over): Your life is composed of four essential quadrants: ambition, speculation, and growth are the happy, healthy quadrants in which most of us thrive. But for some, the fourth quadrant–the realm of nightmares–is the only home they will ever know. Welcome, curious traveler, to your unexpected destination...a mysterious realm into which you should never have wandered. Welcome to the darkest corner of human–and inhuman–existence. Welcome to...the Nightmare Quadrant.
(OPENING SCENE: BUSTER is driving a black sedan down a tree-lined country road. His companion, EDITH, is seated beside him. BUSTER is a lean, rugged, fortyish man, with a cruel mouth but deceptively sensitive eyes. He is wearing a pinstripe suit that he must have bought second-hand, since it is too big for him. EDITH is a pretty, slender blonde in her twenties. One can discern that she lives hard and probably doesn’t get enough sleep. There is a constant look of sadness in her large, lustrous eyes. She is wearing a black cocktail dress and quite a lot of make-up, even though it is morning.)
NAMELESS HOST (voice-over): Witness Buster and Edith, two loners, two drifters, two bad apples dangling from a crippled branch of the tree of Humanity. What worms writhe through the wicked white meat of these foul fruits? I, your Nameless Host, shall tell you, for that is what I do. That is all that I do, here in the Nightmare Quadrant. The names of these worms are Pride, Doubt, and the most insidious of them all...Fear.
(GRAPHIC: The name of the episode, CRY FOR THE ALIENOID, spins into view, stops for a moment, and then dissipates into mist and drifts away.)
BUSTER: About forty miles to the border, Edith. Forty miles and then all our worries will be over.
EDITH: Really, Buster? Our worries will be over? All of them? Or maybe we’ll just be switching them for a new set of worries.
BUSTER: That’s your problem. You worry too much. You leave everything to me. So long as we’ve got that...(BUSTER jerks his head slightly to his right and back, toward a black briefcase in the backseat)...we’ll be fine.
EDITH (sarcastic tone): Oh, yes...that. (EDITH jerks her head slightly to her left and back.) Sorry, Buster, but I’m not about to put my faith in...in...that thing. (EDITH shakes her head sadly.) I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. All this worry and confusion is bad for me–I have a weak heart, you know. Oh, why? Why, Buster? Why do I get messed up with guys like you?
BUSTER: I don’t know, Edith. But I do know one thing. I’m the
last guy like me you’re getting messed up with. Because this time, it’s for good. Once we cross that border and meet my...business associates...they’ll give us the money. Enough for both of us to start all over again. Together. And then– Hey, what’s going on?
(Steam is rolling out from under the hood of the sedan. BUSTER stops the car.)
EDITH: Great. This is the last thing we need. I told you to check the car last night!
BUSTER (with a smile): Hen-pecking me already, huh? (BUSTER exits the car, slamming his door shut behind him. He walks to the front and pops the hood. Billows of steam rise up from the engine. EDITH exist the car but leaves her door open. She walks to BUSTER’s side.)
EDITH (angry, impatient tone): Great. This is just great.
BUSTER: I don’t know which one’s hotter: you or this engine. (EDITH can’t help but smile at this comment.) We just need some water. (BUSTER looks around.) Over there! That old mansion! We’ll just borrow a bucket of water and we’ll be on our way.
EDITH: What about...? (EDITH nods toward the car–or rather, toward the black briefcase inside the car.)
BUSTER: You can wait with...(BUSTER nods toward their backseat cargo as well.)
EDITH: Oh, no! I’m not waiting here all by myself with...that. (Another nod from EDITH.) I’m sorry, Buster, but...it frightens me.
BUSTER: Fine. We’ll take it with us. I’ll carry it. (With a sigh of exasperation, BUSTER walks to the open passenger-side door, reaches in over the seat and grabs the black briefcase. He slams the car door shut and returns to EDITH.)
EDITH: Buster...what we’re doing. Is it...right?
BUSTER: We’ve gone too far to think about that now.
(EDITH nods sadly and they start walking toward the mansion.)