by Mark Cox
Chapter 1: Castle Dracula
Andrew Wingate was quite well known in the societies for B movies. He would often appear on films typically shown between midnight and four in the morning. These were the sort of films with the lightning crashes and trumpet fanfares which gave the viewer a feeling of horror, especially with titles like “The Thing that came from There”, “The House that Jack Built” etc. etc. However he would appear in more major films with better budgets, the type with choirboys singing: “ Ah! Ah! Ah! Aaah! I-I Died most Tra-agicall-yyy.”
The one most famous horror story for which Andrew was well aquainted with, was of course Dracula. Also known as Dracul, Drac or D. It was Andrew who devised the methods to combating vampires, the sign of the cross, stake through the heart and garlic bread. But perhaps he meant the garlic bread for starter and then steak for main course or whatever. These techniques enabled people all over the world to combat vampires but also started speculation of whether making the sign of the cross with fingers did work. Lately however, Andrew was experimenting with other methods as well, one particular favorite was the chainsaw. Once he had a vampire on a trolley with no limbs.
“Ah! Ha-ha! I will get you!!” threatened the vampire.
“But you have no arms or legs.” Andrew replied.
“Er, could you bend down here a minute? I’ve dropped my keys.” asked the vampire. But of course, Andrew was not so easily fooled.
Another great weapon in Andrew’s arsenal was the use of daylight. It was well known that vampires in daylight turn to jelly and smoke. That was all very well until some miserable git wrote a script saying vampires could survive during the day, but only as a low powered vampire. People in the streets were attacked by vampires going:
“Aha! Ha-ha!! Thhhpppprrrr!![raspberry] Sorry that’s all I can do since I’m low powered. Care to hang around ’til sundown?”
Anyway I digress. In this particular story Dracula was dead (big climax there) that is until Tuesday morning when a pig drove by Castle Dracula playing a Banjo and then Dracula was very much alive.
Meanwhile back home, Andrew had teamed up with James Mason and a few others for a trip to Castle Dracula. “Come Agatha, Tabatha, Bagatha and Andrew. Let us go forth to Castle Dracula.” declared James Mason.
So they set off and eventually arrive at a pub full of people with beards just recently attached to their faces and trying to find a gap to drink through. Eventually an old man approached them.
“Ooh-Arr!!” he said, “I’m from around here I am. Who might you be?”
“I am James Mason” replied he, “and this is Agatha, Tabatha, Bagatha and Andrew, don’t mind Bagatha she’s a bit weird, we’re off to Castle Dracula.”
“Oh dear!!” replied the man, “You don’t want to go there, you want to go to a pub with people from here.” Meanwhile James had noticed that the others were getting quite drunk while paying close attention to Andrew’s explanation that the molecules of the alcohol they were drinking could not have more or less than two carbon atoms, and James was getting frustrated with envy.
“Right!!” he ordered, “Come Agatha, Tabatha, Bagatha and Andrew, let’s go to Castle Dracula.”
So they embark upon the stagecoach to Castle Dracula and the driver looked like a hairy monster going: “BOAHA! HA! HA!” However inside the coach the people (or victims I should say) seemed to have their common senses suppressed. The fog was closing in and Castle Dracula, which was approaching, looked like hell on toast. If you or I were in that stagecoach, we would say: “Right. We are getting out here right now. Forget the man-eating wolves we’re walking back.” Instead Andrew commented: “Oh what a delight place. A bit spooky. A tad slower please cabby.”
Anyway to cut a long story short, they arrive at Castle Dracula and Dracula attacks ruthlessly, killing all apart from Andrew who had the insight to whip his cross out in time. But unfortunately the top had been knocked off.
“Aha! Ha-ha! I will get you now.” declared Dracula “Aaarrghh!! You’ve got a cross, come now I was only joking, forgive at forget? Wait a minute. That’s not a cross, it’s a T sign, I’m not stopping at that.”
So Andrew stuck his thumb up through the T. “No. Fingers.” and so killed Dracula, returned home to do more Chemistry. Andrew of course had many more adventures, but that’s another story.
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