Unholy Mafia II: The Best-Case Scenario

            “Everybody!  We’re under attack!  Man your battle stations!”  he shouted.

Sure enough, we were.  The demon mobsters had returned, and they ran about stealing souls to feed their dark master.  If you failed to relinquish your soul, they’d have you wearing brimstone shoes, and would throw you into the abyss to “sleep with the Leviathan.”  All in all, it was a typical Wednesday night.  I dug around in my dresser for my M-79 40mm grenade launcher, when I stumbled upon a rough draft of a story I wrote about Chrissy.

Chrissy was a freshman, and was not used to the frequent attacks by the armies of the dead.  I wanted to make sure she was alright, so I make my way into neighboring Earp Hall, where she lived, only to find a cryptic message on her marker board:  “Went home” was written in her neat script.

            I was momentarily relieved to see that she was away from the thick of the fighting, However, her house wasn’t far from campus, so it wouldn’t be long before trouble found her.  I knew I had to find her and keep her safe.  I ran full sprint through enemy lines, stopping only to kill any incubi impeding my path with my bare hands.

            It took me nearly an hour and a half to reach Chrissy’s house, due the frequent brawling and my lack of cardiovascular endurance.  I cautiously made my way through her backyard. There was an earthquake-like tremor, and an enormous creature arose from her above ground pool.  I had never seen nor heard of anything like this in real life, but it was reminiscent of my most terrible nightmares.  “This is the Beast.”  I said to myself.

            It looked down upon me with the eye-slits on his octopus-like head.  For some unknown reason, covering his green, scaly body was a dark blue janitor’s shirt with “Cthulhu” in cursive embroidery on the left breast, and holes in the back so his rudimentary wings could to protrude.  He spoke to me without sound, and without words:  “I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!”

I picked up an M-60 machine gun that was conveniently nearby, held it with one hand, and told Cthulhu:  “No, you’ll eat my lead.”  I opened fire and Cthulhu was ripped apart by the blasts.  I stood there holding my ground, letting out a Stallone-eque “Waaaaagh!”  Cthulhu collapsed back into the non-Euclidian depths of Chrissy’s swimming pool.  I blew the smoke off of my gun’s barrel, and then performed the impossible task of twirling an M-60.  Since I was out of ammo, I threw my gun to the ground and walked into Chrissy’s house.

I walked through her kitchen on my way to her room, but when I was halfway through, twenty ninjas leaped out of the cupboards.  They weren’t your ordinary ninjas though -- they were communist ninjas, with bright red hammer-and-sickle logos sewn onto the front of their shinobi shozoku’s.

“Ahh!  Now you die, Comrade Coons-san!”  they shouted in unison.

One of the ninjas charged me, and he flew across the room, thanks to a well-placed side-kick.

He brushed against the stove, and tried to grab onto the oven door to support himself, but he fell unconscious.  Another ninja came at me with a French chef knife, trying to stab downward like an icepick.  I stopped it with an X-block, and twisted his wrist until it broke, making him drop the knife. Then I grabbed the back of his hood and bashed his face into the burners, over, and over, and over again, before whipping him into the oven.

“Ahh!  Lemme out!  Lemme out!”  he screamed, as he pawed the glass.

            After that, there was a well-choreographed twenty-minute fight scene, and I took out all the ninjas, finishing off the last two using the jump-in-the-air-and-do-a-split-and-hit-two-guys-in-the-head-kick, kind of like David Lee Roth.  That’s not the wisest thing to do in a kilt, oh no.  I take a brief second to catch my breath before dramatically walking up to Chrissy.  I hold her tight in my arms and ask her “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, now that you’re... oh my God look!”

            One of the broken ninjas had a kilo of C-4 strapped to his chest, and I could see the timer ticking down.

Reflexively, I throw Chrissy over my shoulder and run across her living room in slow motion, before diving through the picture window.  I twist in midair so she lands atop me, and absorbs none of the impact.  Together we roll in the grass, and onto a plaid blanket, next to a pre-packed picnic basket, just in time to watch the sunrise.  A rainbow arched its way across the sky, while monarch butterflies gracefully float by, and fuzzy bunnies mill about in footed pajamas.

The bomb did not explode.  The ninjas, while decent martial artists, made poor terrorists.  They didn’t know how to set up the detonator, and used the unimaginably stupid movie Deep Blue Sea as a reference.  Since they failed to hook up the negative electrode, the bomb was defused from the get-go.

            I often dream in “movie” terms (third person perspective, using montage), the camera panned away from Chrissy and I, and over to her swimming pool.  The camera plunges beneath the water, and sinks until the sun disappears, and we see Cthulhu sitting at the bottom, and the narrator, Boris Karloff reciting a poem along the lines of this:

 Three thousand feet deep!  At the floor of Chrissy’s pool, laid the Great Old One, evil and cruel!  “I shall take these souls!"  for his wounds were now numbing.  “They're finding out now that no Hat Man is coming!  They're just waking up!  I know just what they'll do!  Their mouths will hang open a minute or two -- the souls in the ‘Boro will shout ‘our last hope was you!’”

“That's a noise,” grinned Cthulhu, “That I simply must hear!”  So he paused, Cthulhu put a talon to his ear.  And he did hear a sound echoing through the deep.  It started a peep.  Yet this wasn’t a weep...

Yes, the sound wasn't sad!  Why, this sound was one of glee!  But this could not be!  But it WAS of glee!  Yippee!

He looked up at the town!  Nothing like he thought!  Then he stopped!  For his evil plans were all distraught!

Every soul down in the ‘Boro, the tall and the small, was cuddling!  Without any effort at all! He HADN'T stopped Hat Guy from coming!  He CAME!  Somehow or other, he came just the same!

And Cthulhu, who lay dead but dreaming in this sea, sat plotting and scheming:  “But how could it be? He came without weapons!  He came prompt and soon!  He came despite incubi, ninjas, and doom!”  And he dreamt for three hours, of pestilence and war.  Then Cthulhu thought of something new -- devoid of gore!

“Maybe humans,” he thought, “aren't for me to abhor.  Maybe humans... people... mean a little bit more!”

And what happened then...?  In the ‘Boro they say that Cthulhu’s small heart Grew three sizes that day!  And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight, he rose from the deep wanting to make things right, and he slew Yakuza!  And demon goodfella!

And he... Cthulhu, carved the broiled ninja.

The ninja laid curled up on a platter with an apple in is mouth, and Cthulhu sat at a perch at the head of the banquet table, running as far as the eye could see.  He ran the French chef knife along the sharpening steel in preparation of the feast.  A choir continuously sang the lines “Bah-who-bore-hey, Dah-booh-door-hey, Welcome Hat Man, It’s Hat Man, Yay!”

Seated near Cthulhu, as other guests-of-honor, were Chrissy, myself, Chrissy’s older sister Amy, and Cindy-Lou-Who (who was no older than two).  Next to them was the Beatles, dressed in their formal pastel faux military regalia, which they haven’t had to break out since the photo shoot for their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band album.