It was long after midnight when the strange light streaked across the sky over the city. No one paid any particular attention to it as it splashed into the waters of the harbour just offshore of the Locust Point neighbourhood. It was just one of those late night happenings that go unnoticed in a city already beleaguered by crime, violence, and corruption.
Shortly after this, Casmir Grimsom strolled out of the backdoor of a local “all ages” discothèque known by the name of “Shut Up and Dance”, as the neon sign on the building’s façade proclaimed. He was the club’s owner, middle-aged and dark-haired, clad in a polo shirt and slacks.
Cas Grimsom was annoyed at having to put up with being a nightclub entrepreneur in order to earn a living. The joint had been denied a liquor licence by the city due to Grimsom’s criminal record (some charges related to possession of narcotics many years earlier). He had thought this meant the enterprise was doomed until the club’s disc-jockey, Vince, had made the suggestion that they just not serve alcohol and make the disco open to patrons of all ages. Having no other options, Grimsom had agreed to this.
Of course, Cas Grimsom had assumed that Vince liked the “all ages” idea because it would facilitate his meeting young girls. He had been disillusioned of this one night when he discovered Vince in his DJ booth with his trousers down around his ankles and an underage boy kneeling in front of him. But whatever.
Grimsom walked down to the waterfront, glad to be away from the pulsing music and flashing disco lights of the club. He was worried about expenses, and realised that once again profits had only barely been enough to pay expenses for the month.
It was when Cas Grimsom was musing over whether he should get back into the narcotics trade when he was distracted by something odd. He noticed that just offshore, from deep under the waters of the City Harbour was a pulsating light far stranger than anything that any discotheque had ever seen. It was a sickly, pale sea-green in colour, and seemed to move with a bizarrely-organic life of its own.
Grimsom stood at the very edge of the water and squinted in an attempt to see what it was. He noticed a disturbance at the surface of the harbour, as if something were about to emerge. Then, Casmir Grimsom, former drug pusher and now struggling nightclub owner, knew an horror beyond anything from this world -- an horror of eldritch darkness and of something out of the unspeakably vast gulfs of Space. For at that very moment a long tapering tentacle merged from the water and wrapped itself around his throat. Before he could even cry out, Grimsom’s body was devastated by a powerful electrical charge that took his life away. The hideous tentacle then dragged him into the harbour, his corpse disappearing quickly beneath the surface. …
My name is RUMANOS -- DOCTOR DANIEL RUMANOS, Extraterrestrial Espionage Agent and Intergalactic Man of Mystery. Even though I have the physical appearance of an human being, I am in fact several thousands of years old and do carry within my blood the vastly superior genes of the legendary Watchers of the Daemon-Star ALGOL -- the most intellectually-advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it often appears to be “miraculous” to lesser beings.
Whilst most Algolites live in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe, I am an Operative for a secret organisation known as the KOSMIKOS or Cosmic Intervention Department, tasked with maintaining peace and order throughout the farthest reaches of Space and Time. “Plausible deniability”, and all that.
Currently assigned to Planet Earth, I protect its people from the hideous manipulations of the arch-villain known as Magister Don Wingus and his occult terrorist organisation, Spectral Paranormal; as well as alien invasions, mad scientists, and indeed all manner of menace. I am the living icon of Algol upon this world. I am the sword of justice from the planet Daemonia.
I am -- THE DAEMON-STAR!!! …
I ran down the downtown sidewalk, holding the transonic turnscrew -- an highly-advanced scientific instrument somewhat resembling a writing pen. I was chasing a homeless person, a scruffy, grey-bearded man in rags who was possessed by Shaitans.
Now, the Shaitans are disembodied life essences of the race of evil beings that once inhabited the now-lost planet Eblis, which had orbited in the area of what is now the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. They had been active recently as a side-effect of the activities of my archenemy, Don Wingus, in his attempts to harness the powers of a certain other ancient evil. The details of this plan, and of the things I had to do in order to stop it, are found as a part of that entry in my case-files which is entitled “Voodoo Child”.
Following the abatement of the plans of the wicked Wingus, I had been left with the task of cleaning up the remaining Shaitan spirits, after tracking down the several individuals who had suffered cases of possession from them. This homeless beggar was the last of them.
So there I was, hurrying down the street chasing an hobo whilst clad in my usual finery, including a frilled poet shirt and purple velvet dinner jacket. I had programmed the transonic turnscrew with a recording of the proper exorcism sequence to cast out the evil spirits, and now aimed it directly at the afflicted individual before activating it.
The man shuddered and then fell to the ground. I then beheld a stream of ebon-black entities exit his form, letting forth a cacophonous howling sound before vanishing into the void. The exorcism was complete.
I checked on the poor homeless chap. He was asleep, snoring steadily as if in just another alcohol-induced stupor. The few passers-by who had even noticed our brief melee had already returned to their own concerns. It was just another evening in the big city.
I immediately walked back to the parking garage where I had left my car. I paid the attendant and got into the vehicle, my canary-coloured Edwardian roadster affectionately known as “Lizzie”. Another assignment awaited me, an assignment concerning a possible alien ship splashing down in the City Harbour just offshore of the Locust Point area. My instruments had detected its presence the night before, but had been unable to determine the ship’s origin. Was it a potentially-hostile force, an invasion, a group of extraterrestrial conquerors intent on enslaving or wiping out the human race? This is what I had to determine and, if so, take appropriate actions to protect the planet Earth from any menace.
(This was all in the days before I met my wonderful Millie Drake.)
I appropriately drove Lizzie to-wards the establishment closest to where the alien ship had been detected, a discotheque that went by the name of “Shut Up and Dance”. …
At that same time, in the cellar below the dance club, old Reuben had come to work early. Reuben, the elderly African-American man who did janitorial duties there, usually did not come in until it was near closing time. He had arrived sooner this night in order to enjoy a supper of fried chicken wings that he had picked up at a local Chinese take-away.
Reuben had just sat down to his meal, with the loud dance-music of the club clearly heard from overhead, when he noticed something odd. There was a strange flashing from the near by electrical room. He got up to investigate.
What Reuben beheld when he walked through the door of the electrical room was bizarre indeed. It was the disco’s owner, Cas Grimsom, standing with his hands grasping a mass of exposed wiring and allowing the energy to flow directly into his body!
“Mr. Grimsom!” exclaimed old Reuben. “What’s you doin’? You can’t do that! You’ll be hurtin’ youself!”
Grimsom then let go of the wiring and turned to face Reuben.
“Whuuuh…” stammered the old man. “What’s wrong, Mr. Grimsom? What’s that in you eyes?!”
Grimsom’s eyes were indeed glowing with a sickly sea-green effulgence as he reached forth his hands and grasped Reuben’s head between them. The old janitor let out a brief scream of pain before the electrical shock from Cas Grimsom’s hands took the life from him. …
I entered Shut Up and Dance, finding it to be the common type of teen discotheque that have remained in existence since their heyday in the 1970s, the only real change being the addition of laser-lighting to the usual flashing strobes. The music was a throbbing, bass-heavy rhythm accompanied by synthesisers and the occasional funky guitar, overlaid with vocalisms filled with a preponderance of heavy breathing and numerous sexual innuendos.
There were fewer than twenty patrons. A smattering of them were girls, but they were mostly men and boys of a decidedly homosexual caste. Some were on the dance floor, others lounging around the bar or tables.
I walked over to the bar and sat down next to a particularly attractive young girl with dusky hair. The bartender came over, a rather grotesque bottle-blonde whose tight black dress only served to highlight the fact that she was way past her expiration date.
“I shall have a vanilla cola,” I said, “and please give the young lady another of whatever she is having.”
“Oh, thank you,” said the girl, tilting her head with a look of joyful surprise. “You’re so thoughtful.”
The lass was exceedingly lovely, apparently of Middle Eastern origin, with honey-coloured skin and deep tawny eyes. Her hair shone like licorice in the flashing disco lights. She was barely in her teens, and the short, navy-blue dress she was wearing showed off the slender curves of her newly-pubescent figure.
“No worries, love,” I replied. “I am Dr. Daniel Rumanos. Just call me ‘Doctor’.”
“I’m Jasira,” she replied in her sweetly-accented tenor.
The bartender brought our drinks; the girl’s being a grape soda.
“‘Jasira’, did you say?” I addressed the lovely teen. “That is a beautiful name.”
“Thank you,” said the nymphet, sipping her drink with her luscious cherry-red lips. “It’s Jasira Ibrahim. My family is from Turkey, and my parents and I just moved here a couple of years ago. My dad is Muslim and my mom is Christian, so we had to leave our old country to escape bigotry.”
“Understandable,” I sympathised. “Religious persecution is particularly unpleasant. In fact, of all the reasons that humans employ as excuses to hate each other, I have always thought the worst to be disputes over how to properly address the Almighty.”
“So, you’re a doctor?” Jasira queried. “Are you a physician? A scientist?”
“Actually, I am an extraterrestrial secret agent here on a mission to investigate a possible invasion of your planet by hostile alien forces,” I confessed.
“You’re funny,” giggled the girl. “I like that.”
Just then, we were interrupted by a man coming up behind us. He was middle-aged, dark-haired, and rather pale of complexion. He was clad in a grey polo shirt and black slacks.
“Welcome to ‘Shut Up and Dance’, kids,” he addressed us with what appeared to be a rather forced smile. “I’m the owner, Cas Grimsom. I hope you have a good time tonight.”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” replied Jasira.
‘Yes, thanks for your hospitality, Mr. Grimsom,” I added. “This seems like a very interesting establishment you have here. I…”
Whilst addressing Grimsom, I had turned to face him, Upon beholding me thus, his countenance had fallen somewhat, and from his eyes had briefly flashed a weird sea-green glow. Without uttering another word, he quickly turned and walked away.
I turned back to my drink and resumed chatting with the girl, all the while secretly contemplating the implications of the oddity that I had just experienced.
A few minutes later, there was a sudden power outage. The music ceased and the room was plunged into darkness save for the red glow of the emergency exit signs. I heard the patrons utter groans of disappointment as they made their ways to the door.
I turned back to the girl, but she was gone as well. I felt a feeling of disappointment, as I had hoped to get to know her much better. Nevertheless, I supposed it was good that she had left, as I perceived that there was danger here, danger that I alone would be prepared to face.
I took a small electric torch from my pocket and began to explore the now-quiet nightclub. The bartender and whatever other staff the establishment employed had apparently exited as well. I was just about to begin making a scan for alien technology when it happened.
For it was at that very moment the door leading to the disco’s basement area burst open, broken clear off its hinges by the shambling otherworldly horror that emerged from it. The thing was about four feet tall and five in width. It had slimy flesh of a sickly sea-green hue, and at its top and centre glowed one great eye fully as large as an human head. From it waved eight horrid tentacles, writhing continuously in obscene eldritch animation.
I stood there as this hideous alien horror continued to creep to-wards me!
“So, who might you be then?” I addressed the creature. “Squid Vicious? The Octodad? Ah, I know! Grimsom the Jegrodis!”
“You know of our kind?” suddenly responded the monstrosity, its voice an indescribable low-pitched screech.
“Enough to know that you must be finally losing that interminable war with the Dojjolye,” I replied. “Nothing else would bring you to Earth. Your ship was damaged in battle and you crash-landed here, hmmm? Your race feed upon electricity. That is what brought about this power outage, eh? You planned to absorb enough to then go back and share with your comrades who are repairing the ship.”
“You are correct,” affirmed the Jegrodis. “Your knowledge proves that you are not of this planet.”
“I am Dr. Daniel Rumanos of Algol,” I admitted. “You recognised me as not being a local when you were disguised as the owner. Yes, I know that you Jegrodis have rudimentary shape-shifting abilities. I also know you have to kill the person first in order to create a psyche-physical mockery of their DNA sequence. Your unexpected encounter with me disturbed your concentration, causing you to shift back to your natural appearance.”
Just then, the door of the disc-jockey booth burst open and a very young and nearly-nude boy emerged from it. He struggled into his clothing whilst running out of the front entrance of the club. Behind him was a man in his mid-thirties, tall and thin with sandy hair. He was shirtless, and strolled non-chalantly out of the booth whilst buckling the belt of his jeans. He was facing the wrong direction to see the monstrous Jegrodis.
“Oh, hi. I’m Vince, the DJ here,” he lisped. “What’s going on with the power failure? Is it… ?”
By this time, Vince had turned just enough to observe the octopoid alien. The pederastic DJ then shrieked a brief shriek of utter terror before the deadly tentacles reached out and grasped him, fast filling his form with an electrical charge that left him a charred, blackened corpse. …
Unbeknownst to me, at that same moment was occurring something that would have an effect on my future, forsooth an effect of lasting and ongoing importance. For at that time, in a secret location somewhere in the State, a scene of bizarre consequence was occurring.
Upon the wall of the room, which was furnished in antique Victorian splendour, was a symbol made up of three inverted interlocking triangles -- the horrid sigil of that occult terrorist organisation known to ungodly infamy as Spectral Paranormal!
Before this unholy sign was seated a man in a large chair resembling a throne, He was dressed in a black satin suit also of 19th Century fashion. His face was like unto one of middle years, still showing signs of handsome distinction despite being marred with the effects of lifetimes of absolute profligate evil and wickedness beyond all sane imagining. His hair was long and dark, and his countenance was decorated with a thin moustache and goatee. Most of all, his pale eyes shone with the look of an irresistibly hypnotic gaze.
“Master, what is your will?” enquired the one attending him, a short, rather obese man of about thirty, his hair and unkempt beard both the colour of excrement. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt advertising some trashy “doom metal” band.
“My will concerns you, Matt Macklin, my servant,” returned the evil one, his voice dripping with absolute satanic arrogance. “It concerns a part you shall play in the upcoming plan, the plan that shall at last bring about that for which Spectral Paranormal was founded, and that shall establish my absolute power for all of eternity.”
“Oh yes, Master! I hear you and obey.”
“Drop your trousers and bend over Macklin. The time has come for you to receive my glorious essence.”
“Yes, Master!” exclaimed Matt Macklin as he hurried to obey. “Oh yes!”
“Soon the final game will begin,” intoned the dark lord, as he unzipped himself and took his position behind Macklin. “The girl-loving pervert Daniel Rumanos shall be destroyed, and I, Magister Don Wingus, will at long last take my rightful place as supreme ruler of all existence!!” …
Back at the discotheque, I stood still facing the horrid Jegrodis. The thing was glowing its sickly green electric glow after having killed Vince the resident homosexual disc-jockey.
“Jegrodis, I am giving you one chance only,” I insisted. “You and your kind must stop this outrage and leave the planet Earth in peace. I cannot allow you to continue to drain its energies and murder its inhabitants.”
“You cannot stand against our power,” claimed the monster. “I have discovered that this world has much of the resources we require. When I return to my comrades, we will inform Jegrodis Central Command of this fact. Soon entire battalions of our warriors will be here, and we will use this world as a feeding place and as a base from which we will achieve final victory over the accursed Dojjolye Star Empire!”
Suddenly, from the bar area came to noise of shattering glass.
“Bismillah!” came the sound of a feminine voice as Jasira Ibrahim slid out on the floor from behind the bar. She had been hiding there since the beginning of the power outage, but had slipped from her crouching position on a wet spot of spilled beverage, thus upsetting a line of glasses as she attempted to reach out and steady herself.
Jasira then looked up and fully beheld the Jegrodis for the first time. The poor wee lass let forth a scream of absolute horror as the creature’s eight slimy tentacles reached their deadly lengths out to-wards her!!
Do you perceive the terror, the extreme unnameable fear of this situation, dear readers? That alien monstrosity, the electrified octopus-like horror known as a Jegrodis, was reaching out its potentially-lethal tentacles to-wards the helpless young girl!
I took the transonic turnscrew from the pocket of my jacket and straightway aimed it at the Jegrodis. As I activated the proper setting, the horrid monstrosity shuddered and quaked, its unspeakably-dangerous tentacles stopping mere inches from the terrified damsel. The glow from the creature then gradually subsided, and I saw the thing begin to shrink away into nothingness until all that was left of it was a viscid puddle of slime upon the dance floor.
The lights of the discotheque then came back on as I ran over to Jasira, taking the girl comfortingly into my arms as she sobbed quietly.
“It is all right now, love,” I assured her. “I switched the polarisation of the neutronic stream, draining the power from the Jegrodis and putting it back into the electrical system of the club.”
“Doctor, you were telling the truth!” cried Jasira. “About aliens and all that! I thought… I thought you were joking!”
“Oh, I never joke about alien monsters,” I told her. “Well, I do sometimes make fun of them a bit. It helps to take the pressure off.”
The lovely young lady laughed slightly at this, and I knew that she was going to be fine.
“Why did you stay, Jasira?” I enquired.
“I don’t know,” said the little teenage beauty. “I guess I just… I wanted to be near you.”
At that moment there was a sound. It was a sound as of the high-pitched wine of an huge engine, combined with the splashing sound of something emerging from the water.
“What is that, Doctor?” asked the girl.
“That, love, is the Jegrodis ship emerging from the harbour,” I explained. “I cannot allow it to escape or they will just go elsewhere to drain electricity -- and likely also to murder more innocent people!”
“But what can you do?” asked the gorgeous Arab girl. “Do you have a way to stop them?”
I looked up at the disco lights and a thought straightway occurred to me.
“Of course!” I realised. “The possibility is all right here! If I can manage to combine and boost the energy of these light amplified by stimulated emission radiation sequencers, I can then proceed to focus them into the equivalent of a laser cannon! It will be a bit crude, but it should just work!”
I lifted the transonic turnscrew to-wards the ceiling, activating it to fuse together the power of the various laser-lights and to increase them by a forced rerouting through wires to the filaments of the largest disco bulbs.
“Now, I just have to set it to focus directly upon the alien ship,” I said, changing the transonic to another frequency. “Ah, done! We had better leave the building, Jasira. Just in case they get a chance to fire back!”
I took the girl’s hand in mine and we ran out the front door into the city night.
“Doctor, look at that!” shouted the little beauty as she beheld what was occurring above the City Harbour.
Steadily rising higher above the water was an huge rectangular shaped object, glowing with its sickly sea-green hue.
“The Jegrodis ship,” I affirmed. “It is in range, so the laser should be activating any second now!”
From the neon sign proclaiming “Shut Up and Dance” there now shot force a bright, sharply-focused laser beam that hit the Jegrodis spaceship. The craft soon exploded with a loud crackling noise and a tremendous flash of light. The glare then quickly cleared, showing that the ship had been completely obliterated. The only sounds were the cries of a few annoyed seagulls.
“A direct hit! Well, that should certainly be the end of that,” said I. “Strange creatures, the Jegrodis. Their ships are like massive fish-tanks… or rather, octopi-tanks.”
“Doctor!” suddenly cried Jasira with distress. “I can’t see! I’ve gone blind!”
“Worry not, love,” I assured her. “It is just a temporary effect from seeing the flash from the ship exploding. My Algolitish vision prevents me from suffering the same. It should clear up if you just blink a few times.”
She did so, fluttering her lovely eyelashes until her eyes focused upon me.
“Is it all right now?” I queried.
“Yes,” she answered with a sigh of relief. “I can see again now.”
I looked closely at Jasira Ibrahim and noticed something new, something that was now different about the beautiful Arabian girl.
“I say, your eyes have changed colour,” I informed her.
“Huh?” she stammered. “Really?”
“Yes, it is a more permanent effect of the flash,” I explained.
“What colour are they?” she enquired.
“Blue,” I answered. “I must say, it is quite fetching. Though you are indeed a ravishingly-lovely young lady in any event.”
With this, little Jasira smiled a wonderful smile and put up no resistance as I pulled her close, right there at the waterfront on that fateful night. The teen beauty put her arms around my neck and trembled with pleasure whilst I clasped her gorgeous young figure against me and passionately kissed her hot, cherry-red lips. …
***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN
