Sunday, August 26, 2007

ISLAND MACABRE: Episode 3 - "Rise of the Lunatic’s Moon"

Before I send this off to Scott, I'm posting it here. It'll gimme time to ruminate over missed typoes and structural whathaveyous while I finish the logos and banner headers for ShadowDaily.com. Yup, Scott roped me into doing the banners. However, I have no say in the "brought-to-you by Shadow Daily" additions. However, by fave banner isn't the one I did for Island Macabre, but for a serial called Strong Coffee, but they have yet to post it. Also been listening to Geinoh Yamashirogumi's score from Akira for Episodes 3 and 4. If you haven't seen the anime or heard the score, I think it's about time you did.


Also, ShadowDaily.com's seems to be growing. I know, because I have to do another logo every other day it seems. So, if you'd like to submit stuff, you can email Scott directly, scottEA@Gmail.com.

Anyway, as always, have fun or die.




Island Macabre (Episode 3: Rise of the Lunatic's Moon)

A Philip Davetas Ride

Orion yanks Rooke back into the Rover by the front of her pants just as a curtain of poisonous frogs splatter over the vehicle. Teach jumps. Orion crunches the accelerator forcing the Rover through the fog. The frogs hop through the broken windshield and into the Rover.

"Get 'em out!" Orion shouts. "Don't let 'em touch your skin!" Orion cracks the wheel to the side making the Rover screech a 180-degree turn staring right at the on-coming headlights of Shanghai Mars and his pirates. He shifts the Rover in reverse. The Rover speeds backwards making the frogs smack up against the rear window.

"There's gloves in the glove box. Get these frogs outta here!" Orion orders, but a couple of frogs hop into the backseat forcing Teach against the window.

Rooke tosses Teach a glove. Orion looks out the back window while trying to stabilize the wheel. Teach struggles with the glove seeing the pirates' headlights breaking away erratically. He catches one of the headlights rise straight up into the air and then disappears. "Dear me."

Rooke tosses a frog or two out the window. The Rover scrapes against the ravine wall. Teach follows a frog croak in the dark of the Rover floor. He picks it up and tosses it out the front. Something gets his attention from outside. "Did anyone see that?"

Rooke answers while picking up a frog, "It was nothing!"

"I thought I saw something fly by the window."

"Just a trick of the Lunatic's Moon, Professor," Orion answers, but clearly looks panicked.

"I could have sworn I just saw something slither past us," Teach insists.

"Professor, if you don't get these frogs outta here you're gonna find out what's in the mist!"

Rooke tosses out another frog seeing the gaping mouth of a tube worm slap shut—swallowing the frog. Teach stares with bugged out eyes, "Polychaete." Transfixed with a frog croaking in his glove, "Giant polychaetes."

Rooke throws out a couple more frogs, "They're attracted to the croaking! Toss 'em out!" The mouth of a tube smashes against the driver side of the Rover pushing it against the ravine wall. Orion hits the brakes as the worm's mouth squeaks off the window. He shifts back into drive making another u-turn and flooring it past the body of the worm. The worm slithers back around spitting frogs at the back of the Rover.

Teach smacks his hand against the window making a couple frogs drop off, "Shoo!" But they're still there. Not far behind, through the red brake lights and fog a worm opens its mouth. Next to it another one swoops in spitting frogs.

Rooke sees a frog croaking on Orion's leg. She gulps. "Don't move, captain." But right then, Orion hits the brakes to fishtail the vehicle around a base of a rock column making the frog hop onto his crotch. She reaches for it, but it hops away, making her accidentally grab onto his groin.

He hits the accelerator, "Whoa, Tempa!" The two worms smash against the back, forcing the Rover to roll onto its side. The Rover slides across the ground a few yards. Everyone's smashed up against the ceiling. "Everyone grab a weapon! Scoot, scoot, scoot!"

Everyone peels out through the windshield. Rooke grabs the BAR. Teach gets the micro-UZI and Heckler in a dorkified version of a double-fisted John Woo archetype. Orion snatches the Garand. "Okay," Orion begins. "We shoot for keeps. No warning shots."

A war-cry approaches from the distance. "Hark," Teach whispers. And then it smashes against the Rover erupting into an explosion. Everyone keeps close to the Rover. "What was that?" Teach asks.

Orion grabs the fire extinguisher from inside the vehicle. "Wait here."

They say in unison, "Yes, captain."

Orion rounds the front of the Rover spraying down the flames noticing a scorched pirate and the blackened skeleton of a motorcycle. Then he hears Shanghai Mars' pirates zooming all over the ravine firing their weapons. Off to the side he hears a motorcycle cruise by with a shrieking pirate, but as the bike passes he hears the pirate screaming on the way up. He sees a clearing in the fog as the moon outlines the giant worm slurping down the pirate. Then he hears his muffled screams fly past him toward the rock columns. Orion backs toward Teach and Rooke slowly. The tube worm hovers close to Orion. He waves his hand in front of the worm, but it can't see him.

Orion kneels in front of Teach and Rooke. He whispers in both their ears. "They can't see us. Don't make any noise." Teach's eyes are ping-pong balls as the body of a tube hovers past them. Then Shanghai Mars' pirates roar by on their motorcycles. One of them crashes a few yards away and then makes a run for the Rover with machine-guns ablaze—blasting away at the worms. Orion shakes his head, while Rooke and Teach wave him away. A huge worm snatches up the pirate.

Orion takes a breath. He notices the worms are leaving them alone in their silence and going after the pirates, but then there's a croaking close by. They all exchange confused glances. They take quick looks, but can't find the frog. Orion looks up seeing two worms coming towards them. Rooke shrugs in confusion then turns to Teach who's pointing at her. Orion sees the frog hidden in her hair. Orion grabs it and furls it out to toward a passing motorcycle, diverting the two worms.

Orion's hand twitches. He falls to his knees grabbing his wrist. Teach and Rooke exchange concerned glances. Teach takes a knee and examines Orion's hand. Orion whispers through his gnashed teeth, "We gotta turn Temba over and get outta here."

They all push the Rover back on to its wheels and file back in. Teach steps into the driver's seat. Rooke slips into the back. Orion clutches his wrist. The Rover takes off into the fog.

The frog Orion threw away hops into a rocky crevice escaping a worm's gaping mouth. The frog twitches, then flips onto its back, turning dark. The frog's limbs begin turning into black fingers. Then eventually a hand. It continues to twitch and pulsate as it grows larger.

Teach's eyes shift from side to side not knowing what's ahead, when suddenly the vehicle slips off a cliff. Rooke braces herself, "Teach!"

"You drove us off a cliff, Professor!"

They seem like they're falling forever, but it's only mere seconds.

Teach leans back in the seat when the Rover crashes into some shrubbery and then onto the ground. He double-takes everything. Woodlands all around.

Rooke throws her head back defeated, "Please tell me we didn't land on the back of a giant scorpion."

After seeing they're all okay Teach says over his shoulder, "There are no such things as giant scorpions, Rooke." He puts the Rover in motion and they drive through the woodlands.

"And what was that giant tube worm all about?" She spits back.

"Giant polychaete is theoretically possible judging by this environment."

Teach and Rooke get into an existential spat about giant killer creatures. Orion sneers and rips open the First Aid kit sloshing alcohol over his hand. The sting burns through his skin, but anything's better then listening to them argue about giant killer something-or-others. He turns the knob on the scanner to pick up some radio chatter. He hears something, "Hey, Bickersons! Knock off the Philosophisification."

Orion leans closer to the radio hearing some overlapping panicked voices over the Ghost Ravine fiasco. He turns a couple more knobs catching a conversation between two people. A phrase is made clear, "I'm gonna bring 'em all down. From Shanghai Mars all the way to Captain Orion." Orion flips the knob off.

"Looks like Shanghai Mars' got a G-man in his midst," Orion says while clenching his fist.

"What would a government official be doing working for pirates?" Teach asks.

"Probably to put a stop to all this shit that's goin' on out here in the Rotten Sea." Orion takes a breath, "I'm the best smuggler in these here waters. I'm sure the United States government ain't too happy about me utilizin' decommissioned military vessels to make a livin'. And I can bet you those G-men ain't too happy about Shanghai Mars almost gettin' 'em eaten by giant killer worms."

The Rover leaks fluid as Teach cruises through what looks like woodlands.

"We need to find water to irrigate his wound." Teach says.

Rooke looks at her rubbing seeing a body of water. "The map shows a river up ahead." Rooke says.

Teach hits the brakes. "Blimey." Teach and Rooke stare in shock.

"We better get to washing this out quick, Professor. The Lunatic's moon is workin' it's mojo. I'm startin' to hallucinate."

They all look out seeing hundreds of modern cars parked along a modern man-made bridge erected over a river. None of the cars are moving.

"You didn't see this before, captain?" Rooke asks.

"Last time I was here was eight years ago, Honeycomb. This's new."

***

The Rover cruises along the bridge swerving around cars with corpses of drivers and passengers. Rooke shoots footage. She says, "It's like they just up and died in their cars."

Teach notices, "The license plates are only a year old."

"The Bushido's Breath has taken them all." Rooke says.

"But how could they build this city?" Teach asks.

"Unless somehow, someone unearthed the samurai temple." Rooke says. "The curse unleashed the shogun's wrath."

"There's always an alternative to mythology." Teach says. "Maybe it unleashed a dormant bacteria. Or an epidemic of poisonous frogs dropped in the water."

"Whatever the case," Rooke says, "why would someone populate this island?"

While Rooke and Teach ruminate, Orion points a shaky finger at a sign, "Hey, look. Hospital next right."

Teach snaps out of it, "Of course, captain!" The Rover rolls towards the end of the bridge. It's a city all right. Dead. A perfectly functioning medium-sized city. Just lifeless. The only thing working is the local traffic lights which Teach clearly ignores. Corpses are collapsed right on the street in mid-stride.

Rooke notices, "They just died. They didn't see a threat coming. It's like they just… stopped."

Teach pulls the Rover into the Emergency Room.

Rooke and Teach help Orion inside.

They trudge down the hallway stepping over doctor and nurse carcasses. "This place is foul!" Rooke says while trying to stuff her nose into her shoulder. "What do you need, Teach?"

"Poison control."

"Here." Teach kicks in a door, rolls off a corpse and helps Orion on to a gurney. Orion starts to writhe just as his veins begin to blacken. Orion shoots his hand up to the ceiling reaching for the fluttering fluorescent light. "He's having a botulistic seizure."

Somewhere in Ghost Ravine a black arm reaches for the full moon just like Orion. The frog has mutated into an 8-foot black juggernaut. He sports the same sacrifice tattoo as Orion. The same shoulder and ass wounds.

A giant tube worm lunges for the juggernaut, but it catches the worm by its mouth ripping a piece of its flesh off. A tentacle unravels from the worm's mouth wrapping around the juggernaut's forearm.

Back in the poison control room, Teach watches Orion's arm contract and start to bleed as bits of his flesh start to tear off.

The juggernaut wraps the worm's tentacle around its own mouth binding it shut. The juggernaut yanks on the worm as his rock column collapses to the ground. He drags the worm close to the cliff side and furls it off the edge. The long 30-foot worm falls, snapping its tentacle. The juggernaut unravels the tentacle from his bloody forearm and drops it over the cliff. His face resembles some parts of Orion, but more monstrous.

Orion stops writhing on the gurney seeing blood pooling around his arm. Teach and Rooke just stare in loss. Rooke shrugs. Teach shakes his head. Orion grabs his arm, but he seems okay. Just exhausted.

Teach puts the finishing touches on Orion's bandages. "All I can figure, captain, is that the poison in the frog has a delayed constrictive reaction."

"Naw, Professor," Orion starts, "this was something squeezing and ripping my skin off. It was like an Indian rug burn… only my flesh was twisting off."

"I wonder," Rooke begins, "if you've developed a psychic-symbiotic link to the frog." Teach shakes his head. "It's not unfamiliar in ghost lore."

"What're you sayin', Honeycomb? I'm being haunted by the ghost of a frog?"

"What I'm suggesting is that whatever it feels you feel."

"So, if that little bugger gets slurped up by one of those giant worms, I'm gonna suddenly be boiling in stomach juices?"

"I don't know how that works exactly. It's all theory. There's never been a proven case. Some say if the symbiotes confront each other the psychic bond is broken. But if something else kills the other they'll both die."

"Is there a book in this kind of stuff? How do you know all this, Honeycomb?"

"Actually, there have been books, but they've all been banned and chalked up as mythology." She looks to Teach.

"With all due respect to the scientific community, Rooke—"

"How do you two know each other anyway?" Orion asks.

Teach clears his throat, but Rooke answers first, "I own a rare book shop that specializes on subjects of the occult.

"Which is true." Teach interrupts.

"Which could be true," Rooke steps back in, "anyway, we get into this little spat about this island and the paranormal energy encompassing this part of the world and we went our separate ways."

Teach shrugs. "Low and behold."

"Well, let's be sure and go back and stomp on a frog, Honeycomb."

Rooks remembers, "I thought you didn't believe in ghosts, captain."

"When giant worms try to swallow me whole and I drive into city of dead people, my superstition jumps the meter. Some really spooky shit is goin' on here and I don't wanna be around when those dead people suddenly get a hankerin' for my brains."

"My best in trying to find that frog." Teach says. "The poison doesn't seem to be bothering you now. I don't think it's a lasting effect."

Orion sees some of the bleeding coming through the bandages. "What if it isn't?"

"How's this? Can you walk?" Teach asks.

Orion attempts to ease down from the gurney as his ass wound acts up. Teach holds up a pair of tongs. "While we're here, let's take out the bullets shall we?"

Orion's teeth grind, "Right as rain." As he hobbles to his feet the bullet from his ass meat falls out. Teach tilts his head in curiosity. "I'm shittin' bullets, Professor."

Rooke sits in the waiting room next to a corpse studying a map in the local phone book and compares it to her rubbing. Orion arrives with two Japanese-labeled Cokes.

"Okay," Orion starts, "I've got Diet, I think, and Classic."

Rooke looks up smiling. "Classic, please."

Orion tosses it to her, but the can slips between her hands bouncing off her forehead. "Oh, my fault, Honeycomb. That's one hundred percent my fault." Rooke holds her head inhaling through her grit teeth. Orion sits next to her, brushing the hair out of her face and brings the Diet Coke to her forehead to sooth the pain. "After all we been through in the past twenty-four hours. Damn it."

"It's fine, captain."

"Know what?" Orion's expression droops to a somber mood. "Just call me Orion. I'm not so sure I should even be called a captain."

"You must be joking. If it wasn't for you we wouldn't be alive. We'd be lost at sea. We're the ones that dragged you out here."

Orion thinks about it, "You're right. It is your fault." Her face drops, but he nudges her making her smile. "Naw. I knew what I was gettin' into. It always seemed unfair that I'm dubbed this sole survivor of Island Macabre." He notices her set-up. "What's this?"

Rooke looks back at the phone book. "This little city seems to be in constant construction. I've been comparing it to this rubbing and the temple seems to be here." She points to clearing in the phone book map. "I picked up this newspaper which was dated back a year and in the Local section it talks about this groundbreaking in that area."

"That's where that breath stuff is coming from?"

Rooke says with a jolly grin, "Exactly."

Teach enters the waiting room. "I think I've figured out your frog problem, captain."

"Hit me, Professor."

"From the frog samples I've pulled from the Land Rover and your blood, it seems to have extraordinary regenerative and mutation properties."

"You sayin' I'm gonna be a frogman, Professor?"

"Not at all. I think the more dominant elements have already altered the weaker." Orion just stares at him confused and a little spooked. "You're fine, captain. It's the frog."

Orion scowls, "What about the frog?"

"It's the frog that mutated."

Rooke is concerned, "Mutated into what?"

A faint haze of the Lunatic's moon burns through some fog as Orion's symbiotic juggernaut makes its way to the dead city.

To be continued…

© 2007, Philip Davetas



Appendix:




Golden Poison Dart Frog

This is the Golden Poison Dart Frog. Not typically found in the region that's portayed in Island Macabre, but then there really is no Island Macabre is there? Anyway, these frogs will pretty much fuck you up by simply touching their skin or touching something they've walked over.


Polychaete

As featured in the serial, the various species of polychaete or the 30-foot poisonous frog-spitting tube worms are also living outside their environment. Normally found in the deep sea feeding on plankton, here they live in 13-foot rock columns feeding off of pirates and other lost pedestrians making their way through Ghost Ravine.


Coca-Cola

In Episode 3, these Cokes are described as simply "Japanse-labled". The idea was to make it quick and easy to understand while also subtley reminding the reader that they're somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

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