How to Kill Monsters Using Common Household Items

by Jason Offutt

  How to Avoid Faeries

  The best way to avoid faeries is to stay away from nature and old barns, which are where these creatures tend to live. If you don’t understand some of the key words I’ve used here, “nature” means green things, especially green things you walk on surrounded by tall brown things that have green things on top. Concrete is not nature. Steel is not nature. Heidi Montag is not nature. “Old barns” are usually found surrounded by green things in places called “farms.” However, faeries lonely from being trapped in a non-green thing/non-barn home like a sidewalk or Heidi Montag may opt for something as close to an old barn as they can find, such as a Little People farm set, so make sure your children are aware of this. If your child opens the barn door and the cow says, “So it’s me gold you be wanting?” instead of “moo,” your kid should know to beat the barn with the butt of their Nerf N-Strike rifle until it either stops talking or starts bleeding.

  Who’s Going to Help You

  Sauron. Oh, come on. Who hates elves more than this guy?

  Your Arsenal and Where to Keep It

  No matter the name, no matter the country, no matter the weird idiosyncrasy that makes them just a little different from all the other faeries, these buggers are tough to kill. You wouldn’t think so, given their diminutive stature, their rosy cheeks, and the fact that they’re magically delicious, but trying to kill a faerie is a lot like trying to kill a cockroach. You can’t poison them, probably won’t capture them, and it’s almost impossible to crush them. Almost.

  If you’re thinking about hunting faeries, don’t. Trying to hunt faeries in their home is a lot like fighting the Viet Cong in the jungle—you’re not going to win unless you’re Chuck Norris (Bad Ass Factor 20 out of 10). Are you Chuck Norris? I’m not, but if you are, thanks for buying my book, Mr. Norris. The best way to fight faeries in their natural habitat is to torch the forest or old barn where they live, which will cause some legal problems we’ll deal with in Chapter 13: Donating to the Monster Killer Defense Fund. Fighting faeries in their underground cities, or Faerieland, is generally not an option because they immediately get you drunk and make you dance. They also outnumber you. The only effective method of destroying faeries in Faerieland is with a suitcase nuke, but a suitcase nuke is not as easy to acquire than, say, a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s. Because of their elusiveness, it’s best to let faeries come to you, and it’s best if you’re ready for them when they come.

  How do you know a faerie is in your house?

  1. Your kids are wearing more pixie dust than a stripper.

  2. Small electronic appliances have turned into Danish goat cheese.

  3. Zuul is in the refrigerator, and it’s eaten your Werewolf Distraction Device.

  4. Someone dressed Barbie like a whore, and she smells like hard liquor and cabbage.

  5. Shoes are everywhere.

  6. At various times during the day, you swear you can hear someone whispering, “Run, it’s Gargamel.”

  Are faeries in your house? If so, it’s go time. Although faeries are elusive, tricky, and sometimes invisible, they can be captured and killed.

  Things You Should Have Everywhere

  Vaguely Humane Traps: Weaknesses for gold, wine, and flowers make faeries susceptible to traps. However, given the faeries’ variations in size, you can’t hope to bait a rat trap with a shot of Mogen David and expect to find a pixie with a broken neck lying in a pool of blood the next morning. You might just find an angry leprechaun with a sore foot. Faerie traps need to be quick, loud, and painful. They’ll only hold the little monsters for a few seconds, which should be all the time you’ll need to take them down.

  Take No Prisoners Traps: Ever see Home Alone? Macaulay Culkin may have had problems with the Oklahoma cops in 2004, but he didn’t have any problems beating the shit out of Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. I can guarantee Culkin has never had problems with faeries. Traps should involve bait, trip wire, and heavy things falling with a big thud. Sprinkle the floor with flour in case the faerie escapes the trap so you can easily track the hopefully limping beast.

  Guns: The spray pattern of a 10-gauge shotgun will turn the little pointy-eared pixie into a spot on the wall in less time than it would take it to say, “You’re looking at Brian of Knocknasheega, king of all the Leprechauns.” It’s more like, “You’re looking at …” Boom. End of goblin infestation.

  Things You Should Have in the Living Room

  A Lit Fireplace: Although it’s tricky to coax a nature-loving faerie to a fire, it’s not impossible. Threatening to toss all the flowers from your yard or a copy of Peter Pan into a fire might send a faerie screaming to stop you. Simply stick out a foot and watch them fly to their crackly doom.

  Things You Should Have in the Kitchen

  Bladed weapons: Knives should only be used for close-quarters combat with faeries. Steak knives are perfect for stabbing or slicing a small moving target. If you’re quick enough, severe the elf’s little hamstring and watch it gimp around before smacking it with a hammer.

  Things You Should Have in the Bathroom

  The Toilet (I sure as hell hope so): Coaxing a faerie into an open toilet bowl is much easier than coaxing it into a live fire. A Tinker Bell action figure bobbing in the water is enough to send any horny faerie (and they’re all horny) diving into the depths to rescue the hot little pixie. And you’ll have to admit, for a child-capturing demon, Tinker Bell is pretty hot. To ensure the execution, toss in enough toilet paper to drag them to their watery doom.

  Things You Should Have in the Garage

  Smashing weapons: Although axes and chainsaws are generally effective monster killing weapons, when battling something the size of a faerie, there’s a good chance you’ll cut off some of your own body parts. Blunt weapons, like baseball bats, golf clubs, canoe paddles, table legs, croquet mallets, cutting boards, and lumber work well with faerie killing because your aim does not have to be as precise as with an ax. Lumber, however, should be clean. A 2x4 with a nail in it may be nice when combating a velociraptor, but faeries tend to stick to the nail and will mock you as you try to shake it off. The best smashing weapon is a shovel because you can also use it to bury the tiny corpse.

  Garden implements: Hoes, hedge trimmers, Garden Weasels, and spades are effective in killing faeries. Since faeries are tiny little hippies, being attacked with a tool designed to care for nature is a lot like killing a member of PETA with a ham sandwich. Cherish the screams. Although it would be sweet to run over an elf with a lawnmower, they’re much too elusive to guarantee a kill with a mower unless you’ve irrevocably crippled one and nailed it to the lawn.

  Behavior of the Faerie While You’re Trying to Kill It

  Most faeries are cowards, which is why they live in hiding. So while fighting a faerie, it will cry, plead, beg, and attempt to bribe you into sparing its life. If a leprechaun offers to give you its pot of gold, whack it with a brick. Don’t give faeries time to talk you into feeling sorry for it—they eat babies. Just remember Rule Four of dealing with faeries: they’re full of crap.

  Disposing of the Body

  Since faeries, on the whole, are about the size and weight of a small dog, the bodies are a lot easier to dispose of than a werewolf, clown, or Bigfoot. Garbage disposals work well, as do Rottweilers. Although burying a faerie is also an effective method of body disposal, make sure to take the proper precautions, such as avoiding streams, trees, and flowerbeds—elves are nature creatures, and the closer to nature you bury the body, the better the chance the elf may come back to life as an imp zombie bent on revenge. Rule Five of dealing with faeries, bury the body in concrete. A fifty-pound bag of Quikrete Portland Cement costs $8.49 at Ace Hardware. A small price to pray for peace of mind.

  Ash: What are you? Are you me?

  Evil Ash: Whad are do? Are do be? Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. You sound like a jerk.

  --Army of Darkness, 1992

  Chapter 12: Your Evil Twin

  There’s another you somewhere.
It looks like you, it sounds like you, it has the same fingerprints, blood type, and DNA as you—but it’s not you. This thing that shares your memories, your profile, and your underwear size is evil. Pure evil. Hitler evil. Maybe this other you is a demon, or maybe it’s you from another dimension—a wicked dimension where Full House is still on the air. If you’re an Olsen twin, your evil twin is this anorexic gypsy who’s been attached to your paycheck since you goo-gooed your way through that hell on earth that was the Tanner house. But whoever you are, your doppelganger’s out there, stalking you and sometimes pretending to be you to your friends, your boss, and maybe your spouse.

  Problem One: we all have one of these evil twins—even Spock from Star Trek. That evil Spock (Bad Ass Factor 9 out of 10), with his “Doesn’t this facial hair Make Me Look Manly” beard, would have you for breakfast if you screwed up a sensor reading—literally have you for breakfast. The regular Spock is a pacifist, like a hippie, and wouldn’t have anyone for breakfast unless he was under some serious Pon Farr rage. If you understood this Star Trek reference, I’m so, so sorry (for both of us).

  These evil twins have been known to have conversations with your friends, be a jerk to your boss, and take your girlfriend on holiday—and nobody knows it’s not you but you. That’s because you skipped work to watch the baseball game, and spent most of the day flirting with a Hooter’s waitress who wouldn’t give you the time of day. You couldn’t have done those things everyone told you about. So who did? Some asshole who’s probably going to do it again.

  Okay, so this guy who got you fired and left the toilet seat up (which your girlfriend’s still pissed off about because she sat and touched water) is standing in front of you holding a gun. What are you going to do? I mean, seriously, you’re staring down the biggest jerk who ever lived and it looks like you. Just imagine this guy at Thanksgiving dinner, sitting in your old man’s recliner, dripping gravy all over Mom’s TV Guide, smoking your Aunt Selma’s cigarettes, talking during the Cowboy’s game, setting the house on fire, and killing everyone, including your dog Fluffy. I’m mad enough to kill him, and he’s not even my evil twin.

  The ultimate goal of all evil twins is to replace you in this dimension because they must have done something seriously wrong in their dimension. Maybe they gave during a PBS fund drive and now the local station won’t stop calling. To keep this evil twin from replacing you, you have to kill it—there’s no other way. You can’t reason with something evil. All you can do is stab it with a skewer, preferably in the eye, although the ear will work in a pinch. If you don’t, you’re in for a lot of despair.

  When it comes to evil historic monsters, people think of names like Genghis Khan (Bad Ass Factor 9 out of 10), Nero (Crazy Assed Factor 8 out of 10), Charles Manson (Crazy Assed Factor 11 out of 10), and that dude from Hell’s Kitchen, but when Hitler’s name comes up, it’s game over. Hitler is Rock to history’s Scissors. He’s the trump card of all monsters. The funny thing is, all these people, even Hitler, had an evil twin, although Hitler’s evil twin helped the homeless and founded PETA.

  How to Identify an Evil Twin

  It’s a twin. Problem Two: if you have to ask, you’re an idiot and will be the first to die. Do you expect your evil twin to look like Tom Arnold? No, it looks like you. Exactly like you. And if you’re Tom Arnold reading this book, yes, your evil twin does look like Tom Arnold. But if you look closely enough, there’s always something subtly different about an evil twin that gives it away as a cheap copy of your coolness. On Lost in Space, John Robinson and Major Don West had evil twins with noticeable scars on their necks, probably from erotic asphyxiation. On Star Trek and South Park, evil twins have goatees like college frat boys. On I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, the evil twins were brunette. If you ever watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you know you can’t trust anyone. Family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors who never return tools are all probably space aliens born from pods and look exactly like the people you know. They want nothing more than to ruin your life, and probably your credit rating.

  Evil Twin Powers

  Evil twins don’t have any more powers than you do, so unless you can fly or bend quarters with your bare hands, your evil twin is just an average squishy American who sits on his butt eating way too many bags of Doritos. However, evil twins possess two abilities I consider powers.

  1) Evil twins know everything you know—your weaknesses, your vulnerabilities, your bathroom schedule, the last time you snuck a look at a Victoria’s Secret catalog—and will rely on that knowledge to plot against you. Do romantic comedies render you weepy? Are you allergic to shellfish? Will you do anything for a Klondike bar? Your evil twin knows all this and will use these weaknesses to screw you into the ground.

  2) Evil twins are … well, they’re evil and will do things to you that you would never do to yourself. They’ll destroy your marriage, get you fired from your job, and noticeably fart in church just so everyone will think you’re disgusting—even the cast of Sesame Street; and they hold grudges a long time. The more people hate you, the easier it will be to make you disappear and for them to take your place.

  Evil Twin Weaknesses

  Even though they’re wicked, beastly jerks, evil twins are still human and are vulnerable to everything we are. Bullets, blades to the throat, and smacking one over the head with a frying pan will ruin its day as much as it would yours. Just pray to God (not God’s evil twin) that your evil twin is not reading this book. If it is, do the opposite of what I tell you to do because you’re going to die anyway; you’ll thank me if I help make it quick, because it sure won’t be painless.

  How to Avoid an Evil Twin

  Simple. Don’t go into a parallel universe. That’s where they usually hang out. However, if the evil twin has come into our universe, he’ll be harder to avoid. You can’t hide at work, home, or beach because your evil twin knows about these places and will be looking for you—he may even beat you there. The best way to avoid your evil twin is to barricade yourself in a castle surrounded by landmines, Civil War cannons, jet fighters, and a dragon. If it still gets through, put on a Will Ferrell movie. That should render your evil twin dumb while you fetch an ax. Just don’t look at the screen.

  Do not, under any circumstance, tell your spouse, mother, or best friend your evil twin is trying to kill you. These loved ones will not protect you from your evil twin; they’ll just shove large, bulky things in your way—like psychiatrists.

  Who’s Going to Help You

  Bruce Campbell (Bad Ass Factor 10 and a half points of Groovy).

  Your Arsenal and Where to Keep It

  Since evil twins are basically you in a bad mood, they must be easy to kill, right? No. Evil twins are hard to kill, mainly because someone will be trying to stop you. Problem Three: Bad television has influenced American society. As soon as your wife, best friend, or next-door neighbor sees you using a gardening implement to dismember someone who looks just like you, they’ll jump in, completely ignoring your pleas of, “I’m trying to kill my evil, demonic twin from another dimension.” This is because your loved ones won’t see an evil twin from another dimension; they’ll see 1980s Soap Opera Plot Line Number 247: this is obviously the twin your mother secretly put up for adoption forty years ago. Now he’s back in your life and you’re trying to stave in his skull with a cinder block because you don’t want him to find Uncle Albert’s will that leaves the family fortune to you and Albert’s dog, Spunky. Thank you, All My Children creator Agnes Nixon. You’ve made everyone’s job harder. So what do you do to convince people this twin is a villain? Bring up a program more believable than soap operas, like Gilligan’s Island. Mr. Howell had an evil twin, Ginger had an evil twin, and Gilligan had an evil twin. Gilligan’s was the worst—he was a communist.

  Now kill that thing. The evil twin, not your friends … unless they get in your way. It’s best to keep evil twin death short and simple.

  Things You Should Have Everywhere

  Guns: Ther
e are two problems with guns. If your spouse is confused and thinks the guy with the gun (you) is the bad guy, she’ll try to save your evil twin by standing between him and the gun. This not only gives the evil twin time to think of a way to get out of being killed, it gives him plenty of time to look at your wife’s ass. Unfortunately, she may step in the way when you’re already committed to pulling the trigger, which gets a bit sticky for you later at holiday dinners. The other problem is the mess. Do you know how hard it is to patch drywall that’s been peppered with bone fragments? Then you have to match the paint. Yeah, that wall will never look the same. Blood is also tough to get out of carpets. But that’s what throw rugs are for, right? Despite these drawbacks, guns are quick, powerful, effective killing machines and make you feel like you’re in a Matrix movie.

  Things You Should Have in the Kitchen

  Stuff you’re allergic to: If peanuts make you die, you really shouldn’t have peanut products in the house. However, if peanuts make you die, peanuts will also make your evil twin die. A squirt gun loaded with peanut oil kept in a hermetically sealed glass case only accessible through a plastic bubble is a worthwhile investment.

  Things You Should Have in the Bathroom

  A Scooby-Doo trap: Watch a few episodes of Scooby-Doo, observe how Fred Jones designs his traps, then make one of those, and add wooden spikes smeared with fresh feces. If your evil twin lives through your trap, he’ll die a deserved death from infection while rotting in a cage in your laundry room.