Prelude to Space Rape! & Other Stories Read online

  She said, “Open up to the title page. It’s signed.”

  Paul opened the book and saw the words written in messy block print:

  IT’S ALL JUST SHIT!

  -DON PATCHOGUE

  CHAPTER TWO

  Paul asked the librarian if she had anything else related to Don Patchogue and was told that the only thing even slightly related was books on the history of the Pink Meat Brick Plant which, at one time, had been the number one source for bricks on the whole East Coast. Don Patchogue had worked there until the day it closed down.

  “No thanks,” Paul said. He wasn’t too interested in local town history and he couldn’t imagine there being anything interesting about the brick industry. He might ask Don about it if and when he got the chance to interview him.

  “Anything else I can help you with then?” the librarian said.

  “Yeah, I know you may not be able to but I was wondering if you could tell me where he lives, I mean, I just want to interview him.”

  “Did you check the phone book?”

  “No, why? Is he listed?”

  She laughed. “Yes, he is. You didn’t even think to check?”

  Paul’s face was in full blush-mode. “Uh, well I guess I just sort of assumed he wouldn’t be listed. I imagined he’s the type of guy didn’t want anyone to bother him.”

  “So you were going to go to his house anyway?”

  “Well, uh,” Paul said. He knew he sounded like an idiot but the librarian seemed to be having fun with him so the embarrassment was less than he had expected.

  “Don’t worry. He’s not real private at all, really quite normal really, just your typical small town retiree,” she said and then pointed to another computer. “You can use the Internet there to look up his address if you’d like.”

  Paul thanked her and then used the computer to do just that. It didn’t take him long at all and he cursed himself for not thinking of it before. He just assumed that a published author like that would not be listed. I mean, the guy had five books published; he was somebody. Wasn’t Don Patchogue worried about fans ringing his doorbell day-and-night asking about his books?

  He asked the librarian for directions which she gave happily. Her British accent seemed more pronounced as she slowly gave him explicit instructions on how to take the shortest route to the street where Patchogue lived. Paul thanked her and made his way out. Before he left, Paul took one last look at the librarian’s clunky shoes and wondered why she bothered to wear heels when she seemed to have to be on her feet all day. Did she wear them to be sexy? He’d always heard how uncomfortable they were. He never did understand women.

  As he walked down the sidewalk along Main Street, Paul looked up to the sky and wondered when the next attack would come. Sometimes weeks would go by between the rape attempts by Outer Space whereas other times he’d have to dodge three in one day. He wished he could make it through his trip to Pink Meat without having to deal with another one.

  He thought about the inscription in that copy of Small Gods in the Robot Skull. It was probably written tongue-in-cheek. Why would he insult his own work like that? The guy probably had a pretty good sense of humor, Paul figured, unless of course it was written in complete seriousness. In that case, the guy might turn out to be a sour curmudgeon with a chip on his shoulder who probably wouldn’t want to talk about his books.

  Even so, Paul wanted to give it a try. Though he would never admit it to anyone else by himself, he didn’t really have much to live for. After his parents died, he was left with trust fund that would keep him set for a long time. Because of that, he never went to college or even attempted to get a job that could turn into a career. Instead he smoked a lot of weed and listened to a lot of music, mostly stoner rock or 80s metal. That usually put him in the mood to read a Patchogue novel.

  Paul didn’t spend his money extravagantly which was evident in his choice of car. Most people would have found his 1989 Cavalier a shitty means of transportation but Paul thought it was dependable and cute in a weird way. But it was totaled now anyway and he’d probably end up picking a different type of car. Finding an 89 Cavalier in good condition with low mileage was pretty difficult.

  Paul realized that part of the reason why he wasn’t insane from the attacks from Outer Space was because it gave him something to live for. As long as he had to be aware of celestial rape-attempts, he had a purpose and when he decided to write a book about Don Patchogue, he felt like his life had even more meaning.

  As the cars drove past, Paul made sure that he kept his eye out for the cops. Once the found his car, they’d probably be on the lookout for someone walking around town. His eyes kept watching the road when he saw it on the lawn of a small dentist’s office. It was a dead cat lying on its side, mouth opened slightly as if in mid-scream.

  That sucks, Paul thought. He didn’t have a pet himself but he always felt bad for road kill. To just be left there like trash, without ceremony, well, it wasn’t right. He stopped and looked at it, forcing himself to get depressed. One thing he didn’t want to become was jaded. He didn’t want to just walk on by the dead cat saying to himself, “Oh well, that’s life.” That was a shitty way to live.

  So he kept looking at it and stepped closer to it. Out of the corner of his eye came a bubble of light accompanied by a whooshing sound.

  Oh shit, here it comes.

  Another big load of space-cum came falling from the sky. Paul fell to the ground to dodge it and watched at the goo hit the cat corpse. It enveloped it like wrapping paper. The corpse shook as if being resurrected. It floated three feet into the air and became a swirling mass of fur-flesh and plasma: a dead cat-star. Paul could feel the air around him being sucked into it like a vacuum. He looked around to see if any cars had stopped by as each one went by none of the drivers seemed to notice. Paul was alone in facing the feline monstrosity.

  The floating mass dropped to the ground and became motionless. Paul waited to make sure it didn’t pop up again. A part of him felt bad for the cat even though it had been dead already. Because of that, he dug his hands into the lawn, brought up two handfuls of grass and dirt and threw it on the thing. He repeated this a few times, trying to give it a make-shift grave. Finally he covered most of it and by that time the glow had faded and the vacuum effect had disappeared. It was now just a mess of fur and unearthly junk.

  It really impressed Paul that he was not out of his mind. He didn’t think he was an overly intelligent or completely stable guy but he imagined most people would probably have run in terror at what had just happened. Instead of that, Paul stood up and continued to walk in the direction of Don Patchogue’s house. Nothing, not even Outer Space itself, would stop him from writing his book.

  CHAPTER THREE

  What Paul liked most about Don Patchogue’s novels was the fact that they were not the usual science fiction books that had come out of the 1970s. Patchogue wasn’t heavy on technology or hardcore scientific theories. Sure his novels contained the staples of SF: time travel, robots, parallel universes, outer space, bizarre creatures, and extraterrestrials but they were all placed within books that defied categorization.

  Paul thought back to when he first read Patchogue’s third book THE GRUB STAR SHUDDERS. It was no doubt influenced by the author having worked in the brick industry because the story was about a man named Muck Flanagan who was the night manager at a brick-making plant. Flanagan became obsessed with a certain pile of clay so much so that he refused to have it made into bricks.

  Night after night he stared at it, prayed to it, and eventually wrote a bible of sorts that was dedicated to every lump, crack, and crevice of the pile of clay. Eventually the story takes the reader on a journey from a monolithic city in the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the planet Mars where Flanagan recruits a small army of worm-like aliens in order to convert the people of Earth to his religion. It all ends in a bizarre apocalyptic battle of complete with giant monsters with metallic tentacles, horny robotic vixens, and a doppe
lganger of Flanagan who comes to Earth in order to destroy it with his own army of man-eating worms. It all ends with the universe being blown up by the atomic burp of one of the giant monsters.

  What starts off as a story about one man’s obsession with a pile of clay ends with a cataclysmic battle for the fate of the universe. Patchogue’s stories always started at one point and end at a completely unexpected place and that’s what Paul liked most about the books.

  Paul was thinking about THE GRUB STAR SHUDDERS as he made his way up Patchogue’s street. He was grateful that the librarian’s directions had been perfect. The street itself looked like every other he had passed in the town. Nondescript houses, some in more disrepair than others but all with some amount of small town charm. It reminded Paul of the sitcom Roseanne. This street was exactly the sort of town he thought of when he thought of that show: a dismal but somewhat quaint working-class neighborhood.

  Don Patchogue’s house came as a surprise to Paul. He had expected it to be a broken down shithole with a lawn that was months overdue for mowing. It was all expectations that he had for this reclusive, retired author. Instead, the house was probably the nicest on the street, freshly painted and with a well-manicured lawn. Paul walked up the patch to the front door and rang the doorbell.

  There was no car in the driveway but there was a closed garage. He hoped that Patchogue was home but was fully prepared to walk around the block until the man came home. He was lucky, however, because a few seconds after he rung the doorbell, he heard footsteps.

  A bright and cheery voice said, “Just a minute!”

  Paul took a quick survey of how he looked.

  Goddamn, he thought. I look like shit.

  He was covered in dirt, grass, and his clothing had large amounts of dried blood. His face was no doubt just as filthy and he was worried about the impression he would make. Even if Don Patchogue was inclined to be interviewed, would he want to be interviewed by the disheveled young guy who was standing at his door right now?

  The door opened and Paul got his first glance at Don Patchogue: a muscular man in his late fifties, clean shaven with a full head of black hair. He was wearing a button down shirt and a pair of dress pants. Paul thought he looked like a high school Math teacher.

  “Can I help you?”

  Paul said, “Hi, my name’s Paul Minisink. I’m looking for Don Patchogue?”

  “You got ‘em. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’m a fan of your books and I was wondering if I could maybe, uh, talk to you and maybe interview you or something. I mean, it doesn’t have to be now or anything. I can come back.”

  Don Patchogue had been looking Paul in the eye right up until the interview was mentioned. Then his eyes went down to the ground and he lost some of his cheeriness.

  He said, “Well, I’m pretty surprised. I haven’t had someone ask about my writing for years. Where’re you from?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “No, I mean, what magazine, newspaper, website, that sort of thing?”

  Paul felt his face blush again for the second time that day. “Oh, uh, no where. It’s just for myself. I wanted to interview you and do some research and maybe if it was okay with you maybe write a biography or something.”

  Don Patchogue looked up from the ground and looked into Paul’s eyes. “You mean to tell me you came all the way from Pennsylvania just for yourself? Shit, son, I haven’t had a book published in, what is it, thirty years or so?”

  “I know but, uh, I’m really interested and if it wasn’t any trouble I thought maybe we can just talk for a little bit?”

  Patchogue sighed. “Yeah, I guess we could. I can’t promise you that you’re gonna get anything interesting out of it. I guess you probably came up here expecting Salinger or Pynchon or something. Just to warn you now, I’m a pretty normal guy, not a recluse or hermit. Up until a year ago I did brickwork for a general contractor, I go to church every Sunday, and I like gardening. Nothing special.”

  He motioned with his hands and walked inside as Paul followed. The house was tidy and smelt like potpourri. They walked into the kitchen where Patchogue asked if he wanted anything to drink.

  “Water, please,” Paul said, now realizing that his throat was very close to being able to be considered sandpaper.

  Don poured a glass of water and put it on the table as Paul got out a notebook and a pen.

  “What, no tape recorder?” Don said, smiling.

  Paul blushed yet again. “Uh, no. No tape recorder.”

  “So what is it you want to know?”

  “I guess my first question is why did you stop writing?”

  Don said, “I never stopped writing. I just stopped having my stuff published.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “My wife was the reason why I gave up sending my work to publishers. She hated science fiction or anything like that. She wanted me to be a serious writer. You know, write the great American novel. There was a point where I felt like I was betraying her by writing the stuff. So I stopped for a while and then just started writing here and there when she wasn’t around. I had a little typewriter set up in the garage. Most of the stuff I wrote was complete shit, though, so I guess you could put down in your little book that Don Patchogue’s work from the eighties and nineties isn’t worth wondering about. I don’t think it would’ve sold anyway. That was when that whole cyberpunk stuff was in vogue and I wasn’t into computers and all that so no one would’ve been interested anyway.”

  Paul thought it would’ve been shitty to have a wife that didn’t approve of what you did, causing you to stop doing what you love.

  Don said, “Guess you may not know, my wife died two years ago.”

  “Yeah, I heard. I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s okay. I think I’ve gotten past it, you know, as much as a man can, considering they still didn’t catch the guy.” He waved his hand. “But I really don’t want to talk about that, really.”

  Paul nodded sympathetically.

  Don went on, “But just so you don’t blame it all on my wife, I guess that wasn’t the only reason. The time I was getting published, we’re talking about the seventies here and back then most books didn’t have so much sex and violence as the books today. Mine did and that seemed to be a problem. After my last book was published, I got a lot of bad reviews because of the content and I just thought ‘fuck it’ and didn’t feel like I had a choice. I didn’t want to tone down what I wrote but I also didn’t want to hear a bunch of prudes complain about it. So what, you know? Writers write for themselves mostly. Unless you’re a hack and just out to make a buck or to get attention. But true writers write to express whatever shit they have in their heads and so whether it’s published or not, who cares?”

  Paul was scribbling as fast as he could. He said, “But don’t you think every good writer has gotten bad reviews? It’s sort of letting those critics win, don’t you think?”

  “Win? They didn’t win. I had a happy life despite not getting published all those years so they didn’t win shit.”

  Paul said, “If you don’t mind me asking, you said you never stopped writing. Don’t you have anything that you would want to have published? Anything you’ve written recently?”

  There was silence for a minute while Don put his hand to his chin and looked down at the table. Paul sat there with the tip of the pen touching the notebook, waiting to write.

  Finally Don said, “Yeah. A few things.”

  “Would you mind telling..”

  “I guess if you want to know about them I’ll tell you. Stay here.”

  Don got up from the table and walked out of the house. Paul could hear the garage door open and then close after a minute. The man walked back in with three stacks of paper.

  “I wrote three novels within the last two years. If I had to judge it against my other books, I’d say they were better but who knows because that was thirty years ago. Stll, I didn’t even bother trying to get them pub
lished because I just don’t think people would appreciate them. Back thirty years ago, people who read these types of books were true fans of the whole genre but now, you got these attention-deficit kids who read one chapter and then give up. And don’t get me started on the Internet. Everyone on there is a fucking critic.”

  Don laid the stacks on the table.

  Paul looked at the titles of the three novels: THE VAMPIRES OF THE APOC’O’LIPS, WEREWOLVES FROM VENUS, and THE ECTOPLASMIC BOSS.

  He said, “What are they about?”

  “One’s about some vampires from a parallel world that come busting through into our world but they aren’t romantic vampires or anything like that. They look like big bald goliaths and they suck blood through fangs in their testicles. Then the other one is about telepathic werewolves from Venus that act like some sort of CIA with surveillance and they are messing with some guy on Earth and the last one is about a group of horny old women who worship a big ball of ectoplasm that lives in the basement of a bed-and-breakfast down in Cape May. That last one is a bit perverted but it was fun as hell to write.”

  “That all sounds awesome,” Paul said. He was genuinely excited to hear about the novels. At that moment he would have given anything to see them in print, to hold the published versions in his hands.

  They talked a little more about the new books as well as Don’s past working in the brick industry. Not once did the fact that Don’s wife was found in the brick factory come up. Paul knew it would be too sensitive of a subject though he was dying to know how the man felt about that.

  After an hour Don said, “Well, Paul, it was very nice talking to you but I’ll tell you I’m pretty tired now and I have to get to sleep early tonight. But how about I make you a sandwich to take with you?”