Mothership Zeta issue 1, volume 1

by Escape Artists, Inc.

  Having a little brother is one of the most stupid, annoying, horrific, eldritch things that can happen to a kid. Fhtagn is always ruining my life. But now I won something. I named the evil baby octopus “C’thulhu” and brought him home. I didn’t want to show him to my parents, who can be funny about pets, or to Fhtagn, who tries to eat them, so I hid the bowl under my cloak when I came in through the back door.

  “Randy, is that you?” my mother called.

  “Yeah,” I called back.

  “How was the party?”

  “Okay, I guess. We played some games—I really liked ‘Pin the Tail on the Dimensional Shambler,’ except the cardboard Shambler didn’t look much like the pictures in the book daddy gave me for Candlemas, maybe there wasn’t enough blood dripping down the proboscis—oh, and we buried this one kid, and we ate cake.”

  “Well I hope you haven’t spoiled your dinner. There’s something on the stove that smells of offal and fish and your father wants us to eat it before sundown.”

  “Okay, I’m just going to get washed up!” I yelled, moving down the hall to get to my room before she could ask more questions or say she wanted to see me.

  I ran up the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I looked around my room. “Fhtagn, you better not be in here!” Sometimes he’s invisible, although at six feet tall and with three trunk-like legs it is hard for him to hide. He just goes invisible, then you run into him and he giggles. He thinks it’s the funniest thing. I hate him.

  I took the bowl out from under my cloak and showed C’thulhu my room. “This is where you live now,” I told him. “Here is my bed, and my desk, and my grimoire, and here is my poster of John Dee, and this was my great-grandfather’s skin, and here is my collection of bottle caps.” Pushing the skull on top of my dresser to the side, I put C’thulhu down next to it. “You’re going to live here,” I announced.

  Then the door flew open, despite the fact that I had closed and locked it, and Fhtagn came into my room. He can’t say my name right but just calls me “Tekeli-li,” which doesn’t even sound like my real name.

  “Tekeli-li okay?” he gurgled. He was standing there in his three-legged footy pajamas, holding on to his favorite stuffed nightgaunt. My grandma gave it to him and it’s a good thing it didn’t have a face because he chews in his sleep and the thing was already missing an ear and my mom has had to sew the neck closed several times from when he really gets going with the chewing.

  “Get out of my room, Fhtagn, or I’ll tell mom,” I warned him. He was already leaving a pool of slime in the doorway that I was going to have to clean up. My mom says that because Fhtagn is special we have to take care of him, but I don’t know why I should have to clean it up when he leaves a trail of loathsome slime in my room. It’s not fair!

  “What Tekeli-li got?” Fhtagn asked, pointing a hand-like tentacle at the bowl on the dresser.

  “Nothing, Fhtagn! Go away!” I yelled, putting myself between C’thulhu and Fhtagn.

  “Fhtagn play?”

  “NO, Fhtagn! MOOOOMMMM, FHTAGN’S IN MY ROOOOOOM!” I sang over his shoulder, down the stairs.

  “You boys play nice!” Then she began to giggle quietly and I heard a thumping noise. Usually that noise means she is banging her head on the wall or floor. When she does that, I know she isn’t coming. Fhtagn knows it, too.

  “Fhtagn play with Tekeli-li and bowl?”

  “No, Fhtagn. Let’s go to your room and play ‘Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young and Indians.’” He loved that game. He liked pretending he was an Indian.

  “Okay, Tekeli-li!” We ran to his room and immediately I began the chant and waving my arms like they were tentacles. Fhtagn picked up his headdress and bow and arrow and began stalking me. We then jumped up and down on the pile of rags he slept on until our father came in.

  “If’n ya caynt keep quiet whilst I’m reading, I’ll sacrifice you both, next new moon!” he said sternly. He can be angry when he gets home from work. Or when he’s reading. Or talking to our mother. Or talking to anyone. Or any other time. We know he probably won’t sacrifice us, but when he tells us to be quiet, we are very quiet.

  The next day I went to school and when I came home, my bedroom door had been smashed open again and there was slime everywhere. I was gonna kill Fhtagn until I looked at my dresser and saw the bowl was empty. And a bite had been taken out of one of the drawers as well.

  “Dagonit, Fhtagn!” I screamed, so angry I didn’t care that I might get in trouble for swearing. “Did you eat C’thulhu?”

  Mother came tentatively up the stairs. “Now, Randy, stop yelling. What’s wrong?”

  “Fhtagn ate C’thulhu! And one of my drawers. I think he might have gotten some of my socks. But C’thulhu was mine! Why did he have to eat my pet?”

  “He ate your what?” I forgot she didn’t know about the baby evil octopus.

  “I won a stupid baby evil octopus at Harley Warren’s birthday party and it was in my room and it was mine and stupid Fhtagn came in here and ate it while I was at school!” I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but I could feel the hot tears forming. I wanted to be a big boy but I was so tired of Fhtagn ruining my life and eating my stuff.

  “Now, Randy, don’t call your brother stupid.”

  “He is stupid, and selfish, and I hate him!”

  “Don’t say that!” She looked around nervously. “Your brother might hear you.” She didn’t have to say because he might be invisible in the room with us just then.

  “Good. I hope he does. He should know he is stupid and selfish and I hate him.”

  “Son,” she said, “I know you are unhappy with your brother right now but you do not hate him. He’s your brother and he is special and we need to give him some extra kindness because he is so special.”

  “I’m so tired of being told how special Fhtagn is. Nobody else has to put up with a six-foot-tall little brother who destroys all his stuff and eats his pets. I liked it better when it was just you, dad, and me. Why did you have to have him?”

  She got that look in her eye again and started to giggle. “Well, Randy, sometimes you don’t plan to have... sometimes someone chants the wrong thing while inside you... and when the doctor tells you about the pseudopods on the sonogram and then you feel it kicking inside you... and we love your brother, he is so special... Excuse me, please, I need to check dinner.”

  And with that she walked out of my room and down the stairs and a minute later I heard the banging again. It sounded like the living room floor.

  I cleaned up the slime and threw away the bowl. Just as well, I thought. The strange non-Euclidean geometry of the castle in the fishbowl had given me nightmares last night, and had also made it difficult to find the door when I had to go to the bathroom. Still, Fhtagn had no right!

  I saw him later in his room as I walked by on my way to dinner.

  “Tekeli-li mad?”

  “I’m not talking to you, Fhtagn,” I told him and kept walking. I could hear him twittering and crying for much of the night, but it served him right.

  The next day, I was at school and during recess we were all outside playing. I’m not great at kickball, but they let me play and I usually get to kick the ball once. Then some kid started screaming, followed by more.

  I saw the kids starting to run and then I realized why. A Dimensional Shambler had manifested on the playground. It had picked up one of the Marsh girls, Emily I think, and was draining her blood. You could tell because even though it was kinda invisible her blood was flowing through what looked like air as she dangled ten feet up. Everyone else was screaming and running, but a Dimensional Shambler was not as scary as my dad when he was really angry.

  My dad had gotten me this book for Candlemas last year, My First Unausprechlichen Kulten. The pictures were really disturbing and gave me nightmares, and my father was disappointed in me again, but
I remembered some of the spells from it.

  The Dimensional Shambler dropped the now-desiccated remains of Emily Marsh and began lumbering toward a group of second graders pushing their way back into the school. I ran and jumped in front of it. Making strange gestures in the air, I said the Zoan Chant. The Dimensional Shambler shrieked, and vanished. The second graders kept screaming and it took Mr. Alhazred, the principal, ten full minutes to restore order.

  “Mr. Whatley, you are responsible for this?” he said, looking down his nose at me.

  “No sir. A Dimensional Shambler manifested in an invisible form on the playground. I banished it, sir.”

  “Be that as it may, Mr. Whatley, we still have to call your parents.”

  I waited patiently for an hour on the bench outside Mr. Alhazred’s office for my mother to show up. The door finally opened and my father strode in.

  I knew I was in the deepest trouble I had ever been in. My dad didn’t even look at me. He just walked straight into Mr. Alhazred’s office and shut the door. I could hear their voices through the door, low and dangerous. Finally, my dad emerged and, without looking at me, said, “C’mon.”

  We got in the car and I waited for him to start yelling at me and threatening me with death, sacrifice, or being grounded. Instead, he said quietly, “Mr. Alhazred sez there was a Dimensional Shambler on the playground and you got ridda it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Not knowing his mood, I dared not say any more than that.

  “How’n ya do that?”

  “I did a Zoan Chant like in the book you got me.”

  Dad’s head snapped to look at me closely, as if he were seeing me for the first time. “Zoan Chant canna banish nothin’!”

  “No, sir. But Dimensional Shamblers don’t just show up. So I figured this one was sent by someone. And a Zoan Chant would send the malevolent beast back to the caster that summoned it.”

  He smiled at that. “Yeah! A Zoan Chant would send that beast straight on to the one what called it! Whoever sent the fearsome brute afta the young’uns would be drained dry as a matchstick. How’d ya think to do that, lad?”

  “Well... it was in the book you gave me for Candlemas last year. And I’ve watched you do the Zoan Chant sometimes, like when you figured out Dr. Muñoz was trying to curse you, and you made him rapidly decompose. So I figured somebody was trying to kill kids with the Dimensional Shambler and if I sent it back to the one who summoned it, it would drain him and maybe kill his family.”

  My father slammed on the brakes, then pulled to the side of the road and gave me the biggest hug he’s ever given me. “My son is a Whatley after all! I’d given up hope on ya, boy! But you can cast spells and get terrible revenge on folks what try’n harm ya! You’re like your old man, after all! This calls for celebration. We gotta eat dinner out!”

  “Will we go home and get mom and Fhtagn?” I asked.

  “Nope. Yer mother has locked herself in her room agin, bangin’ her head on the floor. Tonight is just about the Whatley wizards, right?!”

  And he took me out to eat at the Crab Shack. He let me get anything I wanted off the grown-up menu. When we got home, he told my mother what I had done and she smiled at me in between screams.

  Even Fhtagn was proud of me. “Tekeli-li a wizard, just like daddy!” and hugged me with all his pseudopods. “Tekeli-li the best big brother ever!”

  That night, when I went to bed, I didn’t mind having a little brother, or an angry father. Because I knew that, like them, I was a Whatley, and I had power. I was going to start tomorrow by bringing little C’thulhu back from the dead. And someday, when I was big, I was going to make them all pay. Fifth grade was going to be great!

  Kevin Wetmore is an award-winning short story writer whose work can be found in such anthologies as Midiian Unmade, Enter at Your Own Risk: The End Is the Beginning, History and Horror, Oh My!, and many others, as well as such magazines as Devolution Z. He is also the author of Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema and Back from the Dead: Reading Remakes of George Romero’s Zombie Films as Markers of their Times. You can learn more about his work at www.somethingwetmorethiswaycomes.com

  /review

  We at Mothership Zeta love Rachael Acks’ “Drunk Reviews” so much we asked her what she’d seen lately that fits our love of fun, uplifting speculative fiction. She surfaced this gem: TURBO KID. Oh, and her BMX bike? It will have a dragon head prow like a Viking ship, a rainbow flag, and a beer cooler. #Classy

  Movie Review: Turbo Kid: Why this BMX Blood Sparkle Unicorn Apocalypse will Blow your Mind

  by Rachael Acks

  One crazy night in 1988, BMX Bandits, Evil Dead 2, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome got together for a wild party that ended in a drunken menage a trois. The resulting offspring was given to its godfather Kamen Rider. 27 years later, that baby has come riding back to our world from the secret space fortress where its been chilling with Buckaroo Banzai and landed in a theater near you in a shower of spurting blood and explosive sparkles.

  I swear on my own pink, sausage-like intestines all the above facts are one hundred percent true. The name of this young movie? Turbo Kid.

  Turbo Kid is about the post-apocalyptic world of 1997 (the year before I graduated from high school) as imagined from the 80s and filmed in the 2010s. It’s a fucked up blend of over-the-top, frothy gore, rainbow plastic, and 80s teen movie magical friendship. And it works.

  Munro Chambers plays a kid known only as “the Kid” who lives in this water-starved, acid-rain leached, robot-war-blasted wasteland, which is—shockingly—called “the Wasteland.” He rides his BMX bike around in the rapidly dwindling safe zone to search garbage piles and old corpses for batteries and lawn flamingos, which he takes back to the underground bunker where he lives. What makes the Wasteland unsafe isn’t the environmental horror that’s turned everything into a West Virginia tailings pile; the safe edge of the wastes is marked by charming clusters of gory heads on spikes. These are the handiwork of Zeus (played with perfect, grinning menace by the great Michael Ironside), his human saws-all, and his Road Warrior reject minions, who kidnap hapless innocents and grind them up for their water. You heard it here, Soylent Water is people. The Kid does his best to keep his head down and stay out of the way until he meets a strange girl named Apple (Laurence Leboeuf), who at first blush seems to be a golden retriever in human form, but is actually a robot designed to make friends with people. Apple gets kidnapped, and while fleeing from her abductor, the Kid falls into the crashed space ship of Turbo Rider, who turns out to have been a real superhero of this world and not just a comic book character. The Kid steals his stuff, as you do, and goes to rescue Apple. This puts him on a collision course with Zeus and Frederic (Aaron Jeffery), a tough-as-nails, arm-wrestling, Kiwi Cowboy who wants revenge on Zeus for cutting off his hand and rendering his brother to water. People are exploded, tiny bicycles are ridden aggressively, and someone gets run through with a unicorn.

  If the last sentence I wrote doesn’t make you want to throw handfuls of money at your TV screen until the movie starts streaming, I can’t help you.

  The aesthetic of this movie is so 80s, I came out of it feeling like I’d just gotten high on Aquanet. Before the movie even starts, one of the production company titles that pops up is “Epic Pictures Group” followed by the subtitle, “#1 in laser disc sales.” This is the production company telling you, with all the subtlety with which the unicorn is used later, that this Is Not To Be Taken Seriously. My favorite character in the entire film has no lines. She’s one of Zeus’s guards, and I think he abducted her directly from Big Trouble in Little China. She’s Asian, has a purple mohawk, glam makeup, and an anatomically correct breast (hur hur) plate. And while all the other minions are getting exploded into a literal totem pole of trailing intestines, she roundhouse kicks her way to glory. The music is all synth, all the time—except for when it’s briefly a hair band power ballad. It’s the ki
nd of music I’d expect out of a classic platform jumper, so hearing those cheery scales while the Kid jumps his BMX off a pile of radioactive waste is fucking beautiful.

  This is the most practical effects you’ll see outside of a Chris Nolan movie. The fake blood is real, and there’s a lot of it. A lot. Buckets. Sprays. Jackson Pollocks. Fake sharks should have been going in a frenzy on this set and chewing on Michael Ironside’s head. The only obviously non-practical (impractical?) effects were the animations for the turbo glove, which were so carefully 1980s animation fake that it brought a tear to my eye. And the constant use of bicycles? On point, well-done, and a hilarious running gag. But also, if you step back to think about it seriously (not recommended) a much more realistic apocalypse than Mad Max.

  The only real complaint I have about Turbo Kid is that it perfectly reflects the industry standard for racial and sexual diversity. Which is to say, it has approximately three female characters (with an extremely high and unnecessary mortality rate for them) and approximately two non-white characters. Those populations overlap. The minor manpain before the credits roll is annoying because it’s so goddamn unnecessary.

  I’ve heard Turbo Kid called a parody, and I don’t think that’s true. It’s the same kind of movie as Shaun of the Dead (with a similar aesthetic of over-the-top blood splatter thrown at confused people, come to think of it). It’s hilarious, and off the fucking chain, and it works not because it’s making fun of its predecessors, but because it loves them with all its candy-colored, murder unicorn heart. Parodies are the hipsters of the movie world. Turbo Kid is solidly a millennial creation, unafraid to unironically like things in public, and loudly, and brightly, and then garnish them with wiggly fake intestines.