by Frank Lesser
Now more than ever, we must teach younger generations that no matter how tempted they are to spill their milt on the roe a mermaid has deposited on the seabed, they must wait until merriage. And we must continue to oppose seahorse merriage, which teaches our mer-children that it is acceptable for the male to carry the egg sac.
These are not the only threats our virtuous mer-children face. In addition to the natural predators of the sea, we must keep them away from the dolphin, the sexual predator of the sea. Behind their smile lurks a calculating mind that’s thinking about only one thing: how to get their flippers near your mer-daughter’s blowhole.
Join me as we end on a prayer. May the mer-Lord forgive us our trespasses and have mer-cy on all sinners, except for the aforementioned ones, and also the baby mer-derers.
Mer-men.
Unsuccessful Monsters
For every Count Dracula, there are a hundred forgotten undead dukes, earls, and baronets. This is a list of monsters who never made it.
Merwolf: On full moons, this creature transforms into a vicious wolf with the lower body of a fish. On other nights it is just a regular wolf, furiously dog-paddling in the ocean.
Count African-Americanula: More politically correct than Count Blacula, but slightly less menacing to white suburbanites.
Reverse Medusa: If anyone looks at her, Reverse Medusa turns to stone. Not to be confused with Opposite Medusa, who can look at a stone and turn it into a person. A tiny, round person.
Minocentaur: Variously described as “a minotaur with the lower body of a horse” (Pliny), or “a centaur with the head of a bull” (Ovid), the minocentaur never really felt he fit in and tried his best to stay out of mythological events.
Germlins: Never get them wet, or they will catch pneumonia.
Frankenstein’s Mother: Unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, Victor Frankenstein’s mother constantly nags him about finishing med school. “Your cousin Morris is already done with his residency,” she will often remind him.
Giant Leprechaun: Although gargantuan compared with his peers, the giant leprechaun is only 5’5”, maybe 5’6” if he’s wearing the right shoes.
Dwarf Giant: Minuscule compared with his peers, the dwarf giant is only 5’5”, 5’4” if he’s slouching. The main difference between a dwarf giant and a giant leprechaun is the amount of green in their wardrobe.
Goylem: This self-hating golem converted.
Count Macula: This vampire lures trendy victims to his castle using the latest Apple products as bait and advises them to hide their neck wounds under black turtlenecks.
Pigfoot: A cryptozoological mystery, Pigfoot has four pig’s feet for each of his feet. The only proof of Pigfoot’s existence is his unique tracks, which look like two normal pigs walking side by side.
Deep-fried Kraken: A breaded and deep-fried giant squid often encountered floating in a pool of aioli, although in less sophisticated seas it is tartar sauce. Ancient mariners often ordered siren cocktails instead.
The Invisible-Skin Man: Due to a miscalculation in the formula, only the Invisible-Skin Man’s skin is invisible. He works at a plastinated bodies exhibit as the football-throwing guy.
Reverse Banshee: Shortly before someone dies under embarrassing circumstances, this hag dressed in mourning clothes laughs uncontrollably.
The Phantom of The Phantom of the Opera: This disfigured fan of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical lurks in the alley by the stage door, waiting for actors to emerge and sign his acid-scarred playbill.
Andy Werehol: This icon is best remembered for his observation that in the future, everyone will be a werewolf for fifteen minutes.
The Loch Ness Lobster: This creature is reputed to live in Scotland’s famous loch, although a recent increase in sightings of puddles of drawn butter has led some cryptozoologists to conclude it has been eaten.
Atheist Witch: Born to a progressive family of reformed Wiccans, the atheist witch doesn’t believe in magic and plans to pursue a more practical career as an accountant.
Midlife Wolf: Just as the so-called teen wolf first experiences a transformation during adolescence, the midlife wolf first transforms during his midlife crisis, and is usually spotted hanging his wolf head out the window of his new sports car.
The Creature from the Mixed-Race Lagoon: This scaled beast has to deal with prejudice from both the creatures from the Black Lagoon and the creatures from the White Lagoon.
Coffin Ghost: This unambitious ghost haunts the coffin it was buried in.
The Riddle Artist
How to Seduce Any Sphinx
There she is, the girl-with-the-body-of-a-lion of your dreams. But you’ve never been good at talking to ladies, and you think you might have a cat allergy. Don’t worry—if you follow these time-tested rules, the only riddle this sphinx will be asking is, “Your place or mine?”• Relax. Just think of it as talking to a dude who has the body of a lion and you’ll be fine. Having said that, the stakes are pretty high here because if you strike out you will be torn to shreds.
• Don’t try a cheesy pickup line. No matter how original you think you’re being, the sphinx is immortal; she’s heard them all before. Avoid all of the following:“What’s a nice girl-lion hybrid like you doing in a place like this?”
“You’ve got great legs, but they’d look even better lyin’ on my bed.”
“Are your haunches tired? Because you’ve been hunting gazelles through my mind all day.”
“Was your daddy a thief? Because he stole the zoo’s most beautiful lioness and mated with it, producing you.” “Got a little [your ethnic identity] in you? Want some?” The sphinx may misinterpret this line to mean you are offering yourself to her as dinner.
• Let her come to you. Many times, the sphinx will initiate the conversation. For instance, if she is guarding a passageway, she might say something to get your attention such as, “What mortal dares approach the all-knowing sphinx?” Don’t let this throw you off your game. She’s just playing hard to get past.
• Don’t compliment her looks. Even if she’s got the body of a lion half her age, she’ll be more impressed if you compliment her on something unique, like her fur-grooming techniques.
• Be aloof. If there’s one thing a sphinx likes, it’s mystery. Don’t try to woo her with front-row tickets to The Lion King on Broadway, or she’ll feel there’s no challenge. Remember, cats like to play with their prey before sealing the deal.
• Be cool. If things don’t work out at first, don’t act like you’re in some sort of Greek tragedy. However, if you are in a Greek tragedy, and there’s a sphinx involved, that other chick you’re banging might be a MILF, and not in the good way.
• Ask her about her own riddles. Don’t just spout off a soliloquy; make sure you keep the conversation going. There’s nothing worse than finding you’ve been chorus-blocked by a group of omniscient narrators.
• Bring a wingman. Not only will a good wingman laugh at your jokes to make you look good and distract the sphinx’s less attractive harpy friend, but if things go sour she might eat him first.
• Pay attention to body language. If the sphinx starts playing with her hair or initiates physical contact by gently touching your shoulder, she’s interested. If she starts playing with a ball of yarn, she’s getting bored. If her hackles rise and she starts hissing, or the physical contact escalates to clawing, time to bail.
• Bone up on the brain teasers. When asked, sphinxes will say they like a man with a good sense of humor, but what they really mean is someone who’s good with riddles.
• Be sure to answer “man.” Perhaps the most important tip: When the sphinx asks you what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs during the day, and three legs at night, the only correct answer is “man.” Saying anything else—even the most charming compliment in the world—will result in the sphinx immediately strangling and eating you. (Additionally: The surgeon cannot operate on the patient because it is her son, the survivors of a plane crash are not b
uried, and the dead man hanged himself by jumping off a block of ice that later melted.)
• Get out of there in the morning. If you get lucky and you go home with the sphinx, make sure you wake up before she does. You do not want to stick around for her version of breakfast in bed.
Crypto-Racism
Dear fellow patriot,
I am a Bigfoot, and like you I believe our country has an immigration problem. Every week, dozens of chupacabras sneak across the border from Mexico, taking valuable sightings away from American legendary creatures.
That sobering statistic doesn’t even count the illegals coming across the wardrobe from Narnia. Fact: Armoires have been stopped at the border holding literally thousands of fauns, centaurs, and undocumented talking lions. Fortunately, it is easy to spot illegal Narnians, as the coyotes transporting them are often actual coyotes.
Do not misunderstand me: I am in no way anticrypto-immigrant, as long as they are here legally. In fact, one of my best friends is of the chupacabran classification, and I am hardly aware of that fact, except when he’s draining a goat. Which, I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t want him to do in front of my children. It’s only a matter of time before they run out of livestock and start draining our daughters.
To these illegal chupacabras, our country is just one giant goat, waiting to be sucked dry. Worse, instead of shambling through the trees while avoiding detection, they scurry through the underbrush while avoiding detection, completely destroying our forests’ sacrosanct cultural traditions.
It was bad enough in the nineteenth century during the Irish rainbow famine, when our ancestors had to deal with immigrant leprechauns. Don’t fool yourself—no matter what the legends say, those shamrock flaunters got that gold by stealing it. Besides, we Bigfoots would have plenty of gold, too, if the golems didn’t control the banks.
Some Bigfoots, especially those who prefer to call themselves Sasquatch-Americans, say we’re distracting ourselves with imaginary enemies. They say we should focus on real problems affecting us, such as deforestation, pollution, and split ends. But claiming our problems with chupacabras aren’t real is a slippery slope to claiming we aren’t real, either.
And that’s the problem. In this era of twenty-four hour cable news, Bigfoot sightings already have to compete with countless other baseless claims. When we are ignored by the mainstream media, we lash out. If a Bigfoot cries in the forest and no one is around to hear him, does he make a sound? Yes, and that sound is, “Shamble through the trees or go back to Mexico!”
You may be wondering why I am writing you, a human. Well, we have many things in common. Like you, we want the snooping government off our backs. And you probably won’t be surprised to hear that we don’t pay taxes. Our secret? As far as the federal government knows, we don’t exist.
We are not extremists. We reject the outright racist ideology of the Skinhead Bigfoot groups, and besides, they look ridiculous.
Several of my fellow right-thinking Bigfoots have a compound in the backwoods of Michigan, and we are reaching out to like-minded individuals, regardless of species, to join our movement. And also to ask for donations. We would have no problem raising our own money if only these illegals weren’t destroying our main source of income, selling footprints and hair samples to cryptozoological researchers.
You can mail your check to our PO Box, or just bury it beneath the maple tree at the intersection of the brook and the fifth boulder. If you cannot contribute financially, please consider volunteering at our next rally and help us take our forest back. You have nothing to fear: Although only the liberals among us are herbivores, humans are not part of the Bigfoot diet. That is a vicious and deeply hurtful stereotype, and whenever anyone repeats it I get so mad I want to eat them.
Yours in confidence,
Growlnathan Widetread III
St. Patrick’s Morning-After
Top o’ the morning to you!
Sorry. I didn’t realize you were still hungover. I’ll stop shouting. It’s more like the top of the late afternoon, anyway. I just figured you’d want to get out of my clover bed and have some of the delicious human food I made you: scrambled eggs, corned beef hash, and crisp potatoes! Technically, I was out of some ingredients, so I made you a pot of acorn gruel and used my leprechaun magic to make it look like scrambled eggs, corned beef hash, and crisp potatoes!
No, it’ll all still taste like acorn gruel.
You’re going to skip breakfast? That’s cool. It’s the most important meal of the day, but what do I know? Nothing, except the hiding place of billions of dollars of gold.
Suddenly you’re hungry. Hmm.
It’s nothing. I guess I’m still a bit hurt that you asked that Keebler Elf we met at the ogre hoedown if we could go back to his place for what you kept calling a ménage à tree. There are better ways to get free cookies.
Hey, after brunch, want to dance some more? I’ve got some magical dancing shoes, and once you put them on you’ll dance and dance and—oh, you’re kind of tired of dancing. I guess you did get a workout last night digging those holes in the woods after I told you that was where my gold was hidden as part of a delightfully mischievous leprechaun prank.
No, I was not taking advantage of you when you were drunk. You’re the one who did enough fairy dust to kill a centaur.
Let’s start over. Remember how much fun we had yesterday? It may have been tiring to chase that rainbow, but it was worth it once we finally caught it and rode the purple stripe to the fairy land of Tir Na Nog, where babies’ laughter is born. Incidentally, that wasn’t cool when you stole the Fairy King’s crown. I don’t care how good it looks as a bracelet; you’re going to have to return it.
Fine, keep it. It matches the donkey’s head that the King’s servant transformed yours into.
Yes, you have a donkey’s head. You didn’t just sleep on your hair funny.
Let’s just watch TV. I TiVo’d Finian’s Rainbow, and I figured—wow. You did not just say you’re sick of leprechauns.
I see how it is. Oh, on St. Patrick’s Day, we had lots of fun—you trying to trick me into revealing the location of my gold, me tricking you into digging for it where it wasn’t. I’ll admit it: I was playing games. Hey, babe, I’m a leprechaun—that’s kind of my thing. But the next morning the beer goggles come off, and you wake up in a hollowed-out oak, and I’m a lot shorter than you remember.
I bet you wish you’d gone home with that tooth fairy. Sure, in the morning you’d probably wake up in an ice-filled bathtub missing all your teeth, but at least you’d have made a few bucks. Gold digger.
I think some of the magic of last night has worn off. Also some of the leprechaun magic. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but if you look out that knothole, you’ll see that the Mercedes SL convertible I was driving is actually a rotting log.
Here’s your gruel. You’d rather have something else? What did you have in mind?
Oh. Lucky Charms.
Yes, I get it.
No, I’m not going to say it.
Fine, if that’s the only way you’ll eat your gruel: “It’s magically delicious.”
God, that was degrading.
The Ordinary Spider-Man
Before you say anything else, believe me, pal, I’ve heard it before. I’m not the Spider-Man. I am a Spider-man.
You don’t think it’s tough enough for me to go out on a date when I’ve got six extra legs, and now I need some jerk at the bar to start cracking wise about Doctor Octopus? I swear, buddy, if I wasn’t with a lady right now, I’d trap you in a web of silk, liquefy your innards, and suck you till you were a shriveled husk.
Sorry, Marla. What were you saying about your waitressing job at Denny’s? Something about how frustrating it is when customers ask the same dumb questions, like is the sweet tea sweetened? Boy, do I know about dumb questions. “My God, what happened to you?” “Are you a man or a large spider?” “Will you cover your spinnerets? There are children watching!”
I don’t mean to always bring everything back to myself. This is probably why my last girlfriend left me. Although it could have been all the dried-up carcasses I left lying around the apartment. Or maybe the novelty of me being half-spider finally wore off.
I guess I got a lot of baggage, and not just the webcovered kittens I carry around in case I need a snack. I’m hypoglycemic, but I try not to complain.
I probably still have some anger left over from high school. Specifically, from my high school biology class field trip to the natural history museum, where I got bit by that radioactive spider. Who builds a natural history museum next to a nuclear testing ground? And if you do build one there, don’t you think you’d put up some safeguards to make sure the radiation doesn’t leak into the live insect exhibits? And then, even if that safeguard failed and somehow a spider became radioactive, wouldn’t you have some other precaution to keep the radioactive spiders away from visiting high-schoolers? At least a goddamn sign?
I should have sued that lousy museum and my school. They said they were sorry, yet they never found me a desk that could accommodate more than five legs. Let’s just say I wasn’t too upset when someone encased Principal Hilliard’s car in a giant spiderweb. Although I’m sure whoever did it deeply regrets that he didn’t realize Principal Hilliard was still in it.
I know I shouldn’t dwell in the past, but in the present I dwell in a giant spiderweb. Technically, it’s a loft in Hoboken, but it’s furnished mostly with spiderwebs.
I wouldn’t be this upset if I’d become a human with the powers of a spider instead of a spider with the powers of a human. I can climb walls, but only if there’s a ladder. The only “spider sense” I get is the constant feeling that people are pointing at me behind my back. Mostly I just sit around my apartment staring at the spiderwebs I made when I was high.