The Brain of Professor Washbeetle!
Tonight was my writers' group Christmas party.
Our usual ritual involves a story fragment contest, where everyone brings a two page story fragment, they are all shuffled about, read, and then everyone tries to guess who wrote what. This is enormous fun, as the fragments are almost always hilarious. Tonight was no exception.
I have posted a previous fragment of mine, and one of Sargon's, before. Those were both deliberately bad. The one I wrote today was not nearly as painful, I promise.
This year's theme was "death of the mentor." I had a really hard time with this one, but at the last minute managed to bang out two and a quarter pages. Should you choose, you can read it below. I've cleaned it up a tiny bit, and though it isn't serious, as something committed in half an hour, I'm quite pleased with it.
So read! It has mad science, evil geniuses, a brain in a jar, and lots of obscure humor!
The Brain of Professor Washbeetle
The great laboratory in Professor Washbeetle's secret sanctum - no longer so secret - was packed almost shoulder to shoulder with villains, evildoers, mad scientists, and misunderstood geniuses. They had ridden in on their steam-powered horses, flown in dirigibles, tunneled below sea and mountain, all to pay their respects to the man that the world had feared and villains revered as the Master of Disaster.
It was an unusual memorial in that not only had the notoriously overconfident Professor Washbeetle actually prepared a will ahead of time, but the accident that had killed him had also left a body.
Well, most of one.
The remains were in plain view, the various body parts floating in jars of bubbling preservative. Each of the Master's colleagues and protégés filed past, most wordless with shock and grief. How could this happen? It hadn't been the Brotherhood of Sanctimony that had taken him down, nor even the meddling children of the Upstart League. It had been a lab accident, a simple lab accident. Not a villain in the room could escape the uncomfortable knowledge that it could as easily have been them.
Kadigan, Lord of Khaos-with-a-K, listened to Lady Mondegreen read the eulogy with impatience. He had been Washbeetle's best disciple, the minion of minions, and in his opinion, he was perfectly entitled to the fortress, the flying sharks, the plague-apes, and the attentions of Mondegreen herself. He had helped to create her, after all, from scraps of the dozen or so girlfriends, wives, and offspring of the most annoying heroes.
A rustle of impatience ran through the room as the reading of the will began. Kadigan leaned forward, straining to hear.
"The Master's heart goes to you, Jenny," Lady Mondegreen said, and Jenny Blackheart herself stepped up to take the surprisingly small jar, tears in her single eye. She placed one hand on her electrobolt pistol in salute and bowed to the rest of Washbeetle's remains, then went back to her crew, who gathered close to comfort her. She had loved the Master, in as much as a sky pirate can ever love anything but her ship and the sky.
"To the Black Claw," Lady Mondegreen continued, "the Master bequeaths his hands." A shrunken, gnomish little man ducked around the Claw's piston-driven legs and came up to retrieve the bubbling bottle, where the hands stirred about. He bore it back to the Claw, who took the jar in two of his many manipulator tentacles, and viewed the hands with awe. Those were the hands that had rebuilt The Claw after the Bravado Battalion had nearly destroyed him, hands that had wieded the power of life and death over hundreds of thousands.
Kadigan frowned. The Claw had been the Master's dearest friend, but it was Kadigan who had helped the Master release a rare strain of Martian Death Flu over the west coast of America using only exploding pigeons, who had helped rain fire down on Ruritania for an entire week when the Master's hands - those very hands! - became too tired to hold down the button. Kadigan had been the master's right hand man.
Next, Lady Mondegreen called up the shifting, blinking, many-eyed blob that had once been Doctor Visionary. Her voice was soft with grief when she pushed two small jars into his waiting pseudopod and said "Right, left. Use them well." The blob wept oily tears as it retreated with the Master's eyes.
And so it went. Lady Mondegreen distributed Professor Washbeetle's liver, his skull, his wisdom teeth, his left foot, his spinal column, and so on, until there were no more jars on the long lab table and until Kadigan was trembling with frustration and rage. After all his labor, would he be overlooked now, at this ultimate moment? Was all his work for naught?
"The final bequeathment, that of the Citadel of Fear, cannot yet be made," Lady Mondegreen said. "The last of the Master's gifts must first be bestowed, a great honor. Kadigan, Lord of Khaos?"
At last! He started forward to claim his due.
But at that moment, the Claw's many steely tentacles seized him, Jenny Blackheart and her crew drew their pistols and trained them on Kadigan. The black blob of the Visionary engulfed his feet so that he could not even struggle.
From behind the table, Lady Mondegreen drew a final jar. Suspended within it, so small, so seemingly insignificant, yet terrible in its portent: a human brain. Her stare in that moment left him with no doubt that she knew of his treachery, knew that he had been the one to sabotage the matter displacement device, knew that he had been responsible for the death of Professor Washbeetle!
"He left you this. I believe, with such a team of experts at hand, we can arrange for immediate installation. You wanted everything that belonged to the Master," she whispered. Someone drove a needle into his neck and everything went dark. "Now you shall have it."
See? Was that so bad? I kind of want to write about Lady Mondegreen, now, and Jenny Blackheart.
If you're lucky, Sargon will post his Dr. Tentacle fragment, which I think is funnier than mine. And if you ask really nicely, I will post my fragment from last year -- or his, which was probably the funniest thing either of us has ever written.
Until tomorrow. Or whenever I feel like posting again. Moving sucks.
Our usual ritual involves a story fragment contest, where everyone brings a two page story fragment, they are all shuffled about, read, and then everyone tries to guess who wrote what. This is enormous fun, as the fragments are almost always hilarious. Tonight was no exception.
I have posted a previous fragment of mine, and one of Sargon's, before. Those were both deliberately bad. The one I wrote today was not nearly as painful, I promise.
This year's theme was "death of the mentor." I had a really hard time with this one, but at the last minute managed to bang out two and a quarter pages. Should you choose, you can read it below. I've cleaned it up a tiny bit, and though it isn't serious, as something committed in half an hour, I'm quite pleased with it.
So read! It has mad science, evil geniuses, a brain in a jar, and lots of obscure humor!
The Brain of Professor Washbeetle
The great laboratory in Professor Washbeetle's secret sanctum - no longer so secret - was packed almost shoulder to shoulder with villains, evildoers, mad scientists, and misunderstood geniuses. They had ridden in on their steam-powered horses, flown in dirigibles, tunneled below sea and mountain, all to pay their respects to the man that the world had feared and villains revered as the Master of Disaster.
It was an unusual memorial in that not only had the notoriously overconfident Professor Washbeetle actually prepared a will ahead of time, but the accident that had killed him had also left a body.
Well, most of one.
The remains were in plain view, the various body parts floating in jars of bubbling preservative. Each of the Master's colleagues and protégés filed past, most wordless with shock and grief. How could this happen? It hadn't been the Brotherhood of Sanctimony that had taken him down, nor even the meddling children of the Upstart League. It had been a lab accident, a simple lab accident. Not a villain in the room could escape the uncomfortable knowledge that it could as easily have been them.
Kadigan, Lord of Khaos-with-a-K, listened to Lady Mondegreen read the eulogy with impatience. He had been Washbeetle's best disciple, the minion of minions, and in his opinion, he was perfectly entitled to the fortress, the flying sharks, the plague-apes, and the attentions of Mondegreen herself. He had helped to create her, after all, from scraps of the dozen or so girlfriends, wives, and offspring of the most annoying heroes.
A rustle of impatience ran through the room as the reading of the will began. Kadigan leaned forward, straining to hear.
"The Master's heart goes to you, Jenny," Lady Mondegreen said, and Jenny Blackheart herself stepped up to take the surprisingly small jar, tears in her single eye. She placed one hand on her electrobolt pistol in salute and bowed to the rest of Washbeetle's remains, then went back to her crew, who gathered close to comfort her. She had loved the Master, in as much as a sky pirate can ever love anything but her ship and the sky.
"To the Black Claw," Lady Mondegreen continued, "the Master bequeaths his hands." A shrunken, gnomish little man ducked around the Claw's piston-driven legs and came up to retrieve the bubbling bottle, where the hands stirred about. He bore it back to the Claw, who took the jar in two of his many manipulator tentacles, and viewed the hands with awe. Those were the hands that had rebuilt The Claw after the Bravado Battalion had nearly destroyed him, hands that had wieded the power of life and death over hundreds of thousands.
Kadigan frowned. The Claw had been the Master's dearest friend, but it was Kadigan who had helped the Master release a rare strain of Martian Death Flu over the west coast of America using only exploding pigeons, who had helped rain fire down on Ruritania for an entire week when the Master's hands - those very hands! - became too tired to hold down the button. Kadigan had been the master's right hand man.
Next, Lady Mondegreen called up the shifting, blinking, many-eyed blob that had once been Doctor Visionary. Her voice was soft with grief when she pushed two small jars into his waiting pseudopod and said "Right, left. Use them well." The blob wept oily tears as it retreated with the Master's eyes.
And so it went. Lady Mondegreen distributed Professor Washbeetle's liver, his skull, his wisdom teeth, his left foot, his spinal column, and so on, until there were no more jars on the long lab table and until Kadigan was trembling with frustration and rage. After all his labor, would he be overlooked now, at this ultimate moment? Was all his work for naught?
"The final bequeathment, that of the Citadel of Fear, cannot yet be made," Lady Mondegreen said. "The last of the Master's gifts must first be bestowed, a great honor. Kadigan, Lord of Khaos?"
At last! He started forward to claim his due.
But at that moment, the Claw's many steely tentacles seized him, Jenny Blackheart and her crew drew their pistols and trained them on Kadigan. The black blob of the Visionary engulfed his feet so that he could not even struggle.
From behind the table, Lady Mondegreen drew a final jar. Suspended within it, so small, so seemingly insignificant, yet terrible in its portent: a human brain. Her stare in that moment left him with no doubt that she knew of his treachery, knew that he had been the one to sabotage the matter displacement device, knew that he had been responsible for the death of Professor Washbeetle!
"He left you this. I believe, with such a team of experts at hand, we can arrange for immediate installation. You wanted everything that belonged to the Master," she whispered. Someone drove a needle into his neck and everything went dark. "Now you shall have it."
See? Was that so bad? I kind of want to write about Lady Mondegreen, now, and Jenny Blackheart.
If you're lucky, Sargon will post his Dr. Tentacle fragment, which I think is funnier than mine. And if you ask really nicely, I will post my fragment from last year -- or his, which was probably the funniest thing either of us has ever written.
Until tomorrow. Or whenever I feel like posting again. Moving sucks.