“This planet ain’t big enough for the two of us, Rumanos,” bellowed Ed Watkins, as we stood facing each other at opposite ends of the roof atop the Trader Jim’s Grocery location in the hideously-debased small town of Elkridge. Obese, middle-aged, dark-haired, scruffily-bearded, and with a Neanderthal-like brow, Watkins was clad in the seemingly-requisite dirty T-shirt and jeans of his plebeian caste.
“Just let the girl go, Watkins,” said I, wearing my usual velvet suit, opera cape, jungle boots, Magen David necklace, and panama hat. “I have no time for your churlish hillbilly nonsense.”
Her name was Raven Marron and she was thirteen years old. I had received an anonymous tip that this Watkins filth had abducted the girl from her classroom at Mayfield Woods Middle School; the school‘s idiot woman principal having believed his claim of being Raven’s “stepfather”, an appellation he thought justifiable as he had recently raped her mother after getting the latter stoned on opiates and dragging her into his squalid residence at the Pirchway Mobile Homes.
The young lass now sat huddled in fear next to Ed Watkins on the roof, and even from afar I could see she was exceedingly beautiful. Petite and perfect, she had dyed-purple hair, enchanting eyes of emerald, and skin of the purest white. Only a short blue skirt and cream-coloured halter-top covered her slender pubescent figure. Odd indeed that such a lovely young lady could actually be from the bloody Howard County area. Nevertheless, sometimes a flower grows in the desert -- they just usually do not live for long.
“Oof!” I heard the girl exclaim. It was her regular expression of any strong emotion.
“You don’t know who I am, Rumanos,” Watkins announced as he continued to face me that sultry, moonless night. “You don’t know the power I have. The power of the Wunjo!”
My informant had indeed told me that Ed Watkins had evidenced some type of “supernatural” power, but his claim that its source was from legendary beings only found in the lore of my own distant home-world was perplexing indeed.
“The Wunjo?!” I asked incredulously. “There is no such thing. They are creatures from an old Daemonian fairy-tale. Just let the girl go, Watkins.”
“Suck it, Rumanos.”
“No, thank you,” said I with disgust. “I would rather have the girl.”
“Well, you’re going to have THIS, you effin’ Demon-Star dumpster juice!” shouted Ed Watkins before suddenly projecting an immense non-corporeal force of the blackest black phantasmagorical horror. It was a wave of darkest energy that hit me before I could even react, sending me sprawling across the flat roof until I was hanging by one hand from its side, high about the parking lot.
It was then that Ed Watkins decided to commit a further outrage. He leered at the girl as she lay trembling below him, and began to undo his trousers. …
My name is RUMANOS -- DOCTOR DANIEL RUMANOS, Intergalactic Man of Mystery. Even though I have the physical appearance of an human being, I am in fact far more. For I do carry within my blood the vastly-superior genes of the enigmatic Aeternusians or Watchers of the Daemon-Star ALGOL, Masters of All Space and of All Time -- this extraterrestrial heritage granting me certain capabilities that appear as “magic” to lesser beings.
Whilst most Algolites keep to themselves, living their vastly-long lives in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe, I am an Operative for a covert organisation known as the KOSMIKOS or Cosmic Intervention Department, dedicated to maintaining order and balance and to defending the helpless against the cruel warrior races that plague the known galaxies.
Assigned to Planet Earth, I thus protect humanity from alien invasions, as well as mad scientists and indeed all manner of menace. I am the Living Icon of Algol upon this world. I am -- The DAEMON-STAR!!! …
The eldritch power that Ed Watkins had projected at me -- which he claimed to be that of the mythological “Wunjo” -- was indeed potent. I concentrated to clear my head from its impact even as I lifted myself back up over the edge of the roof. Fortunately, there had been something missing in Watkins’s wielding of this great power. Whatever it was, he was not in full control of it, and his blast had not had the full incapacitating effect that he had intended.
I stood back up on the rooftop just in time to see Watkins approaching the helpless damsel, his lewd intentions manifest. Before he could touch her, I unleashed a powerful blast of my bright orange and blue Algolitish energies directly at him.
(This was during a time when I had been empowered with certain experimental abilities by the Kosmikos organisation of the Watchers of Algol, and before I met my wonderful Millie Drake.)
I heard Ed Watkins screech in pain and saw him shake and shudder as my powers overcame him. Whatever phantasmal alien force was possessing him was not enough to prevail over his own inborn inferiority. The filthy redneck was obviously dying.
I took this opportunity to hurry across the roof and grab Raven Marron, taking the young girl back with me a safe distance from Ed Watkins.
The lass clung to me, weeping softy in my arms as I looked back at the dying Watkins -- kidnapper, rapist, and wielder of some obscure extraterrestrial power. His very body seemed to be crumbling away and vanishing as result of my blast, but the darksome force of what he had termed the “Wunjo” continued to glow blackly around him. Then I noticed something incredibly strange, something that was to take this already-fateful evening to an entire new level of unnameable horror.
As the corpulent body of Ed Watkins vanished, another form was taking its place. It was that of a taller, better-built man of perhaps fifty years. He was dressed in a black vestment robe and cloak. I could not suppress a feeling of absolute dread as he came into full manifestation -- forsooth, as I saw his face.
It was the face of a man handsome enough, but nonetheless marked with a look of unspeakable depravity. A man with dark hair and a goatee and icily-hypnotic blue-grey eyes. A man I knew only too well as the most unspeakably-evil and irredeemably-wicked individual I had ever encountered -- one I had indeed hoped and prayed was dead and gone forever.
It was DON WINGO!!!
“You!” I said. “So you did escape from the Kothovalth! I am aware of the many unhallowed attempts of your hideous ‘Spectral Paranormal’ cult to bring you back into this reality, but I also know that they kept failing. Oh, they tried hard, using many obscene and ungodly rites. Nevertheless, at best they would just get an image, like a projection of you, which would then fade away at the conclusion of their hideous ceremonies.”
“Nevertheless, I have now returned, Rumanos,” mocked Don Wingo with a wicked chuckle. “I escaped our last battle, indeed. That old dimensional transport device I had could no longer be controlled, but it had just enough ‘juice’ in it for one final journey before it faded away into the void.”
“Oof!” exclaimed Raven, tugging at my sleeve. “Who is that guy?”
“That, my dear,” said I, moving in front of the girl to shield her, “is the satanic arch-villain known as Donald Jay Wingo. In sooth, the very Quintessence of Evil. The most unmentionably evil being I have ever encountered. Some call him SATAN. He and I were friends once, believe it or not. But that was a very long time ago.
“Now, tell me, Wingo, you old jackanapes,” I continued, looking at him intently, “what are these things you are so ludicrously calling the ‘Wunjo’? I have not heard that ridiculous word since my own childhood on the planet Daemonia, when it was used to frighten truant toddlers.”
“Well you see, Rumanos, after our last encounter, when you thought you had destroyed me,” he said boastfully, “I ended up in Galaxy 6628.”
“Nonsense,” I retorted. “6628 is one of the Ebony Spirals. No organic life can exist there. Even the Watchers cannot penetrate its spatial insanity. It is said to be inhabited only by horridly non-corporeal beings. Creatures black beyond black, evil beyond evil, completely and totally amoral because they would have no point of reference into what is good and decent. Existence there by anything with even a thought of material life would be totally and utterly impossible. The idea is nonsense, Wingo. Complete nonsense.”
“Nevertheless that is were I found myself, floating forever in eternal darkness, but not alone. Oh no, so wondrously not alone. I was surrounded by essences, incredible beings of awesome chaos and raw power. Beings with which I was then able to touch minds. Beings that through me are now known as -- The Wunjo!”
“Well, of all the confounded arrogance! So that is it, hmmm? ‘Wunjo’ is after all just a derivative of ‘Wingo’! I suppose that would explain certain of the more obscure mysteries found in Algolitish lore -- just as your continued existence would explain why certain effects of the Kothovalth have not yet taken place.”
“Indeed, I found it was the only way they could pronounce my name, even psychically,” answered Don Wingo, “and I have know joined with the Wunjo and, through the attentions of my many loyal followers upon Earth, I have now returned to this world, where I shall now take my rightful place as supreme ruler -- after I have eliminated a certain annoying obstacle!”
Then I noticed something odd. Don Wingo’s form sputtered and vanished for a second, blinking off and on again rather like a faulty video signal.
“What was that, Wingo?” I enquired. “Ah, I see! Yes, of course! The connection you have with this reality is not stable, is it? Whatever remained of your physical body after the Universal Overthrow has leaked. Its energy would have been devastated by exposure to that non-corporeal existence in the Ebony Spiral. Are you really even here at all, Wingo?”
“Oh, don’t get your bloody hopes up, Rumanos,” he rejoined. “I am here, and my power through the Wunjo will grow until I am truly the Lord and Master of All -- All that is Real and All that is Unreal, All that is Physical and All that is Energy. I am DON WINGO, the Spectral Paranormal Overlord, and this is my power!!”
And with this, he unleashed a blast of ebon energy directly at me. It was the power of what he termed the Wunjo, those obscenely non-corporeal beings from that dark galaxy countless vintillions of light-years distant.
The power hit me with a pain beyond imagining, a pain indeed more mental than physical, as if every form of anguish, of sorrow and depression, could enter ones being in the time of one split second. I felt my legs buckle beneath me and I fell prostrate onto the roof of that grocery store there in Howard County -- forsooth, that bizarrely prosaic location of the otherworldly activities splitting that night into screaming eldritch madness!
I looked up, vainly attempting to shake off the effects of the pain. I looked up and saw Don Wingo hovering over me transfixed. Blacker than the blackest night, darker than the darkest evil, was the immense power of the Wunjo as it surrounded him, that boundless power of malevolence that I only knew from moralistic tales learned in a childhood long, long ago.
“I have come back to kill you, Daniel Rumanos,” announced Don Wingo, his cold grey-blue eyes narrowing in complete and unabashed hatred. “I have come back to destroy you -- once and for all!!”
Do you recognise the horror, indeed the unnameable demoniacal terror of this situation, my dear readers? Don Wingo, the most unspeakable villain the Cosmos has ever known, now had at his command the powers of a force only previously known from the lore of fairytales, beings of repulsive wickedness, creatures whose only previous existence had been as symbols of all that decent individuals were taught to always avoid at all costs!
I tried to think back, to think back over the stories I had heard of the Wunjo, those beings that were said to have existed so long ago and far away, those beings whose very existence was said to be born of hate and pain and suffering. They were portrayed as hideous parasites, mental leeches, psychic vampires, obscene life-sucking creatures that should not live in any rational Universe -- indeed in any world of sanity.
“Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you…” crooned Don Wingo mockingly as he hovered above me.
How bloody blooming horrible.
“So, I take it that Watkins varlet was a member of your cult, eh?” said I. “You possessed his body via a trans-dimensional carrier wave, but were unable to fully come through until I destroyed him.”
“Oh, yes,” replied Wingo. “I knew you couldn’t resist the underage damsel in distress bit, you old pervert. You can always be decoyed by fresh faces, pert breasts, and tight little… bodies. Always get it up for the touch of the younger kind, and all that. We should do a TV show together called To Catch An Alien Predator. Oh, the person who tipped you off was one of mine also.”
I had already deduced all of this, of course, but I knew that encouraging Wingo to go off into one of his habitual streams of boasting would give me enough time to concentrate through the pain I was experiencing. To concentrate and to prepare a counterattack against him.
“You are mad, Wingo,” I taunted him further. “You are utterly mad! This one outdoes even your past crimes! I see you have grown steadily more insane over the veritable lifetimes that have passed since you first gained ‘occult’ power in that horrid ceremony so long ago. Remember? When you contacted the Cacodemons of Andromeda? When you committed an unholy and unspeakable act upon your own daughter, poor little Stacy Wingo, and then watched as each member of your group of stoner ‘metal-head‘ friends took their turns with her? Ron ‘Savage’ Seidle; Drew Rite; John Garrison, the infamous 'Likebook Paedophile’… ”
“I’m so bloody sick of your jealous harassment, Rumanos,” he snarled back. “All those years you insisted upon interfering with my plans! All that time you stalked me and my followers throughout the Cosmos! For a thousand years we battled across the Universe! All those years, all those fights, all those wars throughout Time and Space -- and of course all those little girls that you… !”
“By the Triple Star, Wingo! Who is jealous of whom again?”
“It will avail you nothing now, you hebephilic hero! You will lose, you nympholeptic naysayer! To paraphrase the late Mr. Ed Watkins: This Universe if not big enough for both of us, and now I will rectify that by wiping you completely and entirely out of existence! I have returned, Doctor Daniel bloody Rumanos! I have returned to kill you and then to take my rightful place as supreme…”
Then his insane tirade was interrupted when I suddenly hit him with a powerful burst of my bright orange and blue Algolitish energies. He careened through the air above the parking lot, the ebony powers of the Wunjo continuing to swirl around him. Again, his form appeared to blink on and off several times.
“You are still leaking energy, Wingo,” I told him as utilised my own powers of aetheric suspension to levitate upwards. “You cannot escape the Kothovalth, the Universal Reset, the reboot of all existence that was engineered by the Absolute Convention of the Watchers of Algol! Your organic body has no real existence. Your physical hold on reality is totally unstable, and…”
“I have the force of the Wunjo with me,” he retorted. “That is all I need! They are a source of terror even to your kind! I will use them to gain power -- power I shall gain from the suffering and pain I shall bring to the human race; power from the horrors that I -- Don Wingo -- and my Spectral Paranormalists shall unleash upon this planet!!”
Then he hit me back with another burst of blacker-than-black energy from the Wunjo. I tumbled through the sky, out-of-control from the force of the blast.
“I will kill you!” screeched Don Wingo amidst peals of his demented laughter. “I will cause you pain beyond anything you have ever known and then I shall kill you! I will utterly destroy you! I am shutting you down! Daniel Rumanos shall NOT return!!!”
He unleashed yet another wave of dark force at me, but I had by now become adept at their specific tendencies, and so managed to dodge and avoid this one.
I sent another blast of Algolite power back at him, but he also managed to avoid it, though the effort caused him to again briefly blink off. He cast a further burst of satanic power at me. I avoided it and the bolt hit one of the tall lamps of the parking lot, breaking the glass of its bulb into a shower like streaming blackened confetti.
“Rumanos, you cannot win!” shouted Wingo. “You cannot win because when it all comes down to it, I know what your true weakness is, and I know how to best exploit it!”
“It is too late, Wingo,” I rejoined. “I am on to your ploys now, and they shall not avail you! I am authorised by the Kosmikos to end your existence and to hunt down and assassinate every last member of your rotten ‘Spectral’ cult!”
“Oh really?” he laughed as he sent another powerful blast at me. “But haven’t you forgotten something?”
By now, Don Wingo have manoeuvred himself back over the roof of Trader Jim’s Grocery, and he quickly swooped down and grabbed poor little Raven Marron. The terrified girl -- now in a near-swoon -- had been trying to hide behind the exhaust chimney of the store, but Wingo nevertheless cruelly picked her up by the shoulders and flew upwards. I heard the helpless lass scream as they soared high into the air.
I had been sent into a tailspin with my effort to avoid his latest blast of Wunjo energy, but from the corner of my eye I beheld what happened next. Don Wingo, from his lofty height far above, laughed in mad obscene sadistic glee as he intentionally dropped the girl. I saw Raven’s slender figure then begin to plummet downwards, down to-wards the hard unforgiving concrete of the parking lot!!
That poor, innocent little thirteen-year-old girl, the beautiful Raven Marron, was falling, falling fast to the pavement far below. In mere moments, she would have been just another innocent fatality, a mere cipher in Don Wingo’s ongoing career of ungodly evil.
That sweet little girl. That poor wee lass. That beautiful young lady who obviously deserved so much better than what life had so far given her. She was going to die as just another casualty in Don Wingo’s continuing ambition -- his mad campaign to be Ruler of All Space and of All Time; to be Lord of the Universe and Master of All Existence. No. No no no no no no no. Not if I could help it.
“By the Spires of Daemonia City,” I swore, “this shall NOT be!!”
The rest of it happened far more quickly than it can be described.
I swooped down, disregarding all else, racing through the air to-wards the little girl’s helpless form as she plummeted downwards.
Far above us, Don Wingo laughed, laughed with maniacal mirth at the unspeakable horrors he had brought upon the planet Earth -- indeed upon the entire Universe; all of Time and Space -- and the even greater horrors he contemplated for the future. So self-absorbed was he in celebrating his unnameable wickedness, that he did not at first notice that the forces of the Wunjo were leaving his body en masse, becoming a huge conglomeration of ebony evil that then shot downwards hungrily to-wards the falling figure of Miss Raven Marron!
When the Wunjo had exited his form, the thing that was Don Wingo, occult villain extraordinaire, began to flicker on and off.
“What the… ?” he stammered in sudden realisation of what was occurring, “No! Rumanos, you meddling son of a bitch! No! Nooooooooo!!”
And with this, the last of what seemed to be of Don Wingo instantly blinked out of existence -- hopefully forever.
I caught the lass safely in my arms, a mere instant before she would have hit the concrete. As soon as I did so, the horrid mass of Wunjo reversed their course to return to where Don Wingo had been and, finding him no more, gave forth with an horrendous howl, a bellowing cacophony beyond all earthly comprehension, before then a noise as of the clap of a thousand thunders signalled their own immediate disappearance.
“Raven’s win!” said I, as we landed safely on the parking lot.
I put the girl down and helped her to get steady onto her feet.
“What happened?” Raven enquired, recovering with that alacrity only found in the very young.
“Don Wingo is gone, thank goodness,” I assured her. “All that he represented is hate, and hate can never completely succeed in extinguishing life and love and hope.”
“Like I always say:” announced the teen beauty; “‘Live life as much as you can because you only have a short amount of time.’”
“Quite right, love,” I approved. “In fact, I seem to remember once saying something similar to Marcus Aurelius.”
In any event, I was glad that this sweet little lady was going to have a longer amount of time to live her life. This lovely girl who had so innocently gotten involved in the events of that momentous night. Raven Marron, my desert flower. The one that lived. Miss Raven Marron: Lucky Thirteen.
I had noticed a group of squad cars arriving to investigate the disturbance in the deserted after-hours shopping centre. The Howard County Police Department are well-meaning but decidedly inefficient, and so I thought it best to not stay and be questioned -- especially since the true answers concerning what had occurred that bizarrely fateful night were something that they could never possibly understand.
“Come along, my dear,” I said to the lass. “Come along and I shall buy you some breakfast. I know a place on Route 40 West that serves excellent Belgian waffles.”
“Oh, nice!” she said, and took my hand as we began to quickly leave the parking lot and duck into the safety of the near-by woods. …
Soon after, as a new day dawned brightly, we were at the diner enjoying an excellent meal of waffles with creamery butter and hot maple syrup, along with scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, orange juice, and coffee with cream and copious amounts of sugar.
“But I still don’t understand it,“ said Raven. “Will you explain it to me?”
“Of course, love,” I replied, taking another sip of coffee, “What exactly did you want to know?”
“So you have these powers, but you’re from the city?” she asked.
“No, I am from Outer Space,” I informed her. “I only work in the city.”
“How did you get rid of him? That Wingo guy, I mean?” the lass enquired.
“I remembered the old legends from my home planet about the Wunjo. They are psychic parasites, mental leeches, energy vampires, feeding on pain, suffering, and sorrow. I knew they would leave his body when they thought you were going to die painfully. Without their presence, Wingo simply blinked out of existence. You see, he was never really even here. Not in any true sense. What we saw was just a form built up by his mind utilising the powers of the Wunjo. The real Don Wingo is long dead. Then, when I saved you and kept the Wunjo from being able to feed, they attempted to go back to their host. Finding him gone, certain forces of universal reality caused them to immediate return to their own far-away Ebony Galaxy, that being the only place their non-corporeal lives can really at all be supported.”
“Oof!” she said, now delightedly. “You really are such a genius!”
“And you know what, Raven?” said I with a smile. “There are not many of us left.”
“Well, we should find a way to make more of them then,” responded the girl, her pretty eyes sparkling.
“Sounds like a plan, my dear,” I mused. “Sounds like a plan.”
***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN
