Thu, 19 May 2005

Necromancy For Dummies
From time to time, certain of my associates get the bad idea to bring people back from the dead, either for fictional creep-out reasons or just to have an army of the damned to come over and do lawn work. But lo! it is necessary for me to inform and enlighten as to the evils and dark prices paid for such foolishness, in the hope that you will not end up in the lowly position I found myself in, attempting to bring the dead to life.

It was me and Ana and Ana’s new boy Clyde Apostrophes and Huey Kablooey, who had escaped from some kinda crazy high-rise/helicopter fracas under conditions still unclear, out at Metro Grave Distribution #8, by the old highway. The plan was we were going to bring Clem Fichus back from the briny underworld in order to have him answer some questions. Our reasoning for this endeavor was varied and suspect: Ana and Clyde were asked to participate by shady academic forces I’d rather not know about, I was there basically because Ana was there and wanted to scope out the new boy, and Huey was there because, apparently, “chicks dig necromancy”. So Huey and I get out our rocket-boosted pole vaulting equipment while Ana and Clyde push the car gate open and drive over by the big oak. Huey’s liquid-based propellant sloshed around in the coffee-can tank, thus giving an incredibly uneven propellant distribution, and to cut to the chase I ended up in the oak tree, prompting Huey to take the gateway and basically making me look really dumb in front of Ana’s new boy, which I have to admit was causing me all kinds of inner torment and hand-wringing and whatnot. By the time I got out of the tree Huey had his autographed copy of the Necronomicon out and was setting up his turntable and Judas Priest record collection (Huey, Fast Eddie Satan, Merle and I earlier had an incredibly lengthy discussion as to the best music for summoning the devil to do your bidding; my in-depth argument re: Barry Manilow I’ll spare you, for now: eventually we went upstairs and asked the two Satanist members of Loyal Evansdale Satanists And Librarians #281 for hints and suggestions, which led to all kinds of arcane vinyl that noway nohow could we get our hands on so eventually we just defaulted to the fucking Priest) while Ana got out a small stack of notecards and Clyde busted out a tape recorder so that we’d only need to do this once, which seemed like a super-bad idea but there’s apparently no talking to that boy. Huey, a master (in a savant kinda way) in the black arts, explained to me that the best way to raise the dead is to trick them into thinking they’re headlining the Sands and by the time they realize they’re not anchor for “Whipped Cream”-era Herb Alpert and Tiny Tim it’s too late, you got ‘em. So while “(You Got) Another Thing Comin’” spun backwards on the turntable, Huey belted out via Mr. Microphone “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Tangerine Lounge here in beautiful downtown Elk Run Heights is honored to present a performer who needs no introduction, a man whose songs have touched the hearts and privates of millions worldwide, the Blue Schmaltz Daemon, the one, the only, the never ever lonely…Clem Fichus!” Everybody made that Elvis-On-Stage music that sounds like the theme from Family Feud and we felt the earth shake, and we scattered and jumped back just before Clem burst out of the ground, hollerin’ “Yeaaaaaah! Party people in the place to be, lemme see some love out there tonight!” Not actually expecting this plan to work, we all started screaming, which Clem took as a show of love, and he started doing his best Mr. Showtime hustle, accidentally falling back into his grave, which startled him enough to realize he wasn’t on stage at all.

“A’ight, what the fuck is all this commotion about? Do you people need something or something?”

Huey had long since split with his turntable and records and I was pretty much eyeballing Clyde, who was cool like Brando, so it was up to Ana to answer (or ask) any questions.

“Hi, Mr. Fichus. My name is Ana Skyfish, and these are my associates. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your involvement in the scat riots of 1957…”

“You a cop?”

“Nosir. I’m doing an essay for school.”

It dawned on me and Clem right about the same time what was happening —

“Waitaminute. I was all cool and shit and now you brought me back here because you wanna work out some stupid answers for some stupid paper?”

“Well, um.”

“Oh, oh you people, you people just gotta leave it alone.”

Clem then climbed back into his grave and pretended to be sleeping, and we all felt kinda creepy, so we took off and got overcaffeinated at Eat (where Huey was nursing his scratched-vinyl traumas over the Unholy Frijole Platter) and discussed how crappy all this new music is while Clyde and Ana got all googly-eyed and moony, which was exactly how I expected the whole miserable night to end.

(dramatic orchestral music)

So let this be a lesson to you! Do not tempt the demonic fates rashly, or you — yes, even YOU — could fall into the same fate! Take caution as your guiding light, and…well, you get the point.
(12:09.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #