You can always tell when it has been an especially windy day in the city due to the fake hair strewn across the pavement.
Faux tresses are quite the industry in that city, you see, especially amongst the local African-American community; this being due to the widely-accepted myth that people of that particular ethnicity cannot grow their hair long. That is, the myth is accepted amongst the female gender of that demographic. That some of the men so easily grow Jamaican-style dreadlocks seems to go unnoticed by the women, who in stead fall for the ongoing swindle of purchasing simulated locks of hair and often having it woven into their own natural growth.
Now, it should be noted that the product thus provided is often advertised as “real human hair”, but this, far more often than not, is not actually the case. The deceptive curls are in actuality made of synthetic fibres, often of polyester or acrylic or similar substances. The weaves thus provided are therefore of a rather precarious nature, and do not stay in place for long.
This can be taken, in truth, as just another example of the human race’s lack of concern for the environment of the very planet on which they live; in that this synthetic and unnecessary imitation hair is even allowed to exist, much less to pollute the very land and sea of the globe known as Earth. Nevertheless, so many examples of this could be given -- examples of when human negligence and lack of care has melded with some malevolent outside influence to threaten the very safety and security of the planet, and of the entire population of its people, along with all animal and plant life upon it.
Forsooth, it is because of this that our story came to pass, when a particularly strong windstorm had hit the area, and many of these fake hairpieces had been lost on the streets of the city. In truth, it is specifically one of them that blew along a side street of the Westside area, and was just in place for the bizarre and grotesque happenstance to occur -- an occurrence that then led to an unspeakable horror and unprecedented terror far beyond all sane imagining.
For, if truth be told, that particular windstorm did not come about by normal circumstance, but was actually caused by the planet Earth quickly passing through the path of some Space debris, an happening that was noticed by a few astronomers with interest but with no particular concern. However, what was not noticed was a meteor from said debris that fell directly onto the streets of the city, near by the previously mentioned strands of synthetic hair.
This meteor, in itself a tiny stone no bigger than a large coin, split open when it hit the pavement. From it a creature emerged, a being like unto a slimy black tadpole that then proceeded to wriggle over and attach itself to the faux hair. Within a scant few seconds, it had succeeded in integrating itself with the substance, and the fake hair -- hideous to relate! -- then began to crawl, unnoticed in the dark of the city night, down the street to-wards the waters of the harbour. …
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 Aeternusians or “Watchers” of the Daemon-Star ALGOL. Originating ninety-three light years from Earth, we are the most intellectually-advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it often appears to be “magic” and “miraculous” to lesser beings.
Whilst most Algolites tend to keep to themselves, preferring to live in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe and thus merely observing the goings-on of the myriad races of the vast reaches around them, 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. You know, “plausible deniability”, and all of that sort of thing. It is our ongoing mission to defend the weak, the unfortunate, and the innocent from those who would harm or exploit them.
Currently assigned to Earth, I protect its people (both upon their own planet and across the eternal void) from the hideous manipulations of the arch-villain known as Magister Don Wingus and his occult terrorist organisation, Spectral Paranormal; as well as from alien invasions, mad scientists, and indeed all manner of menace. Assisted by my friends -- the beautiful young Hollywood starlet Miss Millie "The Girl From Beyond" Drake, and our catlike robot known as Kit-10 -- I am the living icon of Algol on this world. I am a Knight of the Eternal Spires. I am the sword of justice from the planet Daemonia. I am the cosmic crusader. I am the stellar swashbuckler.
I am -- THE DAEMON-STAR!!! …
I drove my canary-coloured Edwardian roadster, affectionately known as “Lizzie”, to that part of the city’s Inner Harbour area that is most remote from the usual tourist stops. I was clad in my usual finery, including a frilled poet shirt, purple velvet suit, panama hat, jungle boots, and one of my favourite opera capes.
“So this is the area the strange reading was coming from?” enquired Millie Drake from the passenger seat beside me.
“Quite so, love,” I replied. “According to our instruments at headquarters, it does seem to be some kind of extraterrestrial biology, and it appears to have been here for a few weeks.”
“Oh my gosh," returned the girl. “It must have arrived on Earth when we were away on our assignment in the outer Solar System.”
Millie Drake is an exceedingly beautiful young lady, petite and perfect with luxurious chestnut hair, enchanting blue-violet eyes, sun-kissed skin, and a sensuously wide mouth. She was wearing a tight, short, rose-coloured dress that only served to highlight the soft curves of her slender teenage figure.
Behind us in the car was Kit-10, our mobile personal computer that resembles nothing more or less than a small robotic cat.
I stopped the car a few metres from the water’s edge and we got out. It was an humid, overcast day of the type so common to the region. The clouds seemed to hang low above the urban skyline.
I took the transonic turnscrew, an highly-advanced scientific instrument somewhat resembling the form of a writing pen, from the pocket of my jacket and began to scan the waters of the harbour.
“By the Triple Star!” I swore upon examining the readings thus provided by my device. “There is indeed some alien biology present here. It seems to be of the type found in some of the dark nebulae; a somewhat parasitic being with an affinity for non-organic substances. They are said to have a certain low level of intellect, an intelligence quite evil and uncaring, delighting only in pain and horror. Hmmm. It must have gotten here via a wandering interstellar asteroid. Odd; it seems to have amalgamated itself with something made of polyester fibres of the type that are used in… hair weaves?!”
“But Daniel…” said Millie with some trepidation in her voice, “how big is it?”
“According to the readings,” I answered, “it would have been quite small when it first arrived upon Earth, no bigger than a coin, perhaps. None the less, it has since fed upon industrial pollution in the harbour and has from this sustenance grown to be… quite massive.”
“Danger, s--,” suddenly interrupted Kit-10 in her simulated yet pleasantly-feminine voice. “Detecting danger underneath the water.”
(It should be noted here that Kit-10, along with her various other feline characteristics, is possessed of the singular disability to openly show respect to anyone. Indeed, the closest she over comes to it is by addresses me by a slight “s--” sound -- for “sir” -- and Millie Drake by “m--” -- for “ma’am”.)
“Daniel, look!” added Millie. “There’s something out there! Something is moving under the water!”
I peered out over the harbour and beheld what appeared to be an huge mass of some menacing black bulk beneath the water. As I watched, it seemed to become larger. Something was indeed rising from the waters of the Inner Harbour. Something bizarre and grotesque and beyond the pale of all sane thought. Something horrendous and destructive and monstrously gigantic.
Suddenly, the surface of the water was broken when the eldritch thing emerged. I heard Millie scream in abject horror at the sight of it. It was a giant black amorphous mass of what appeared to be hair, covered with slime and sludge and definitely moving of its own horrid volition. It was lurching forwards to-wards us, with the obvious intention of coming ashore.
From my device readings and the evidence of my own eyes I knew what it was, that horrifying thing that was even then coming forth from the water to spread terror into the city. It was hundreds of feet tall. It was a thing born of an unholy melding, a grotesque and horrible conglomeration of alien biology and local garbage. It was -- The Hair Monster!
“Millie, Kit-10,” I called. “Run!”
We hurried back to Lizzie and I started up the car, then driving the vehicle out onto the street. A line of traffic screeched to a halt near by, and we just managed to avoid colliding with a large lorry that was labelled as carrying a shipment of draft ale to the local pubs and taverns. The driver leaned out with the obvious intention of remonstrating with me, but upon seeing the terrifying monster emerging form the harbour, he in stead opened the door and jumped out of his vehicle, then running away down the street in total uncontrolled fear.
I stopped Lizzie just outside of the Harbour View Hotel on the other side of the wide city street. Before I shut off the motor, I held the transonic turnscrew up to the car’s onboard computer and programmed it to send out a certain signal. The girl, the robot cat, and I then got out and ran with much haste into the hotel lobby.
“What is that thing, Daniel?” enquired Millie. “It looks just like a big blob of hair!”
“That is sort of what it is, love,” I told her. “According to the information I got via the transonic, it was created by a parasitic alien life form melding itself with discarded synthetic fibres of the type utilised in faux hairpieces. It then went below the surface of the harbour and grew to gigantic proportions by feeding upon pollution and sludge.”
“So it’s -- The Hair Monster?!”
“Quite so, my dear. Quite so. I sent out the signal to call Pederosis. Our old friend the giant radioactive lizard is the only one I know who may be able to deal with that thing.” …
Near by, at the hotel’s front desk, stood the young man who was assigned to work there that day. The nametag on his uniform said “Trayvon”, and he was of that particularly brutal sort all-to-commonly originating from the slums of the city and then hired by respectable businesses that are cautious of otherwise being accused of bias.
Unknown to us at the time, Trayvon the hotel clerk peered across the lobby and saw Millie Drake, his animalistic visage filling with unfettered lust at the sight of the girl. She was just the type, he thought, just the kind of upper-class and sophisticated young lady that had always been denied to him and to his kind. But now he had a chance. He knew that some chaos was occurring outside and cared not what it was. Trayvon only thought of it as a distraction that he could use to kidnap the girl and take her to one of the hotel rooms in order to have his barbaric way with her. …
“But how long will it take Pederosis to get here?” queried Millie Drake concernedly. “Will it be in time for him to fight the Hair Monster before it destroys the city?”
“There is no way to predict that, love,” I informed her. “Pederosis, in truth being a living remnant of the Kaiju -- those monsters that ruled the Earth in the ancient aeons before life as it is now known on this planet even existed -- is himself like unto a force of nature. He has dedicated himself, as the alpha monster upon this world, to defending the planet from alien threats, but his movements and responses cannot be predicted. To call upon him is a great responsibility, and we can not know for certain how or when he will react to the summoning.”
“The Hair Monster has now come ashore, s--,” stated Kit-10. “It is now proceeding to approach inhabited structures.”
We looked out of the large glass front of the Harbour View Hotel lobby and beheld the horror that was occurring there in the city’s Inner Harbour area. The Hair Monster had indeed come on land, and was now approaching the Light Street Pavilion whilst crowds of people screamed and ran in absolute terror in often-futile attempts to avoid being crushed in its path. Indeed, at times the thing would reach out long tufts of its terrifying imitation hair and would grasp a group of helpless individuals, squeezing the very life from them. When it did this, an horrible sound like unto a low, grotesquely-evil laugh came forth from its repulsive and horrific self.
As we watched, the horrifying Hair Monster reached the pavilion, and began to tear the very structure apart! The noise of this was tremendous, and we did not therefore hear or otherwise realise that the hotel clerk Trayvon, guided by his own unspeakable lusts, was approaching Millie Drake from behind. Seeing that his opportunity had apparently arrived, the churlish young man grabbed the girl around the waist and began to drag her, despite her struggles, quickly away across the lobby -- with the obvious criminal intention of then taking her to a place where he could use the helpless young girl to slake his own heinously savage and feloniously uncivilised lusts!
“I’m gonna have you, girl,” muttered Trayvon in his uneducated city slum patois. “I’m gonna take you up there and have you!”
It was Kit-10, with her robotic abilities, who first realised what was happening to Millie. The mechanical cat turned and fired a blast of her nose laser at the felonious Trayvon. Nevertheless, having caution to not hit Millie necessitated a poor aim, and the beam of light missed the criminal, in stead just burning an hole in the hotel carpeting.
By then, I had perceived what was going on and ran to-wards the bestial human garbage known as Trayvon. I grasped the criminal by the throat and pulled him away from the girl. Then, with a Daemonian kung fu kick directly to the centre of his darksome and unholy face, I sent him hurtling through the plate-glass front window of the Harbour View Hotel.
Trayvon hit the concrete pavement with a shower of glass all around him. The shock caused blood to burst from his bodily orifices and his broken body was then motionless in death.
“Rapist lives do not matter,” said I. …
The Hair Monster was by now halfway through in its destruction of the Light Street Pavilion when suddenly it was hit by a blast of radioactive fire. The thing turned to see what was assailing it and beheld what was like unto an huge bipedal lizard, forty storeys tall, incredibly muscular, and green of colour. His back had a triple row of spikes that continued down his long reptilian tail, his head was held high and proudly, and his subtly-slanted eyes bespoke of a keen and dedicated intelligence.
As he came ashore, the heroic giant lizard known as PEDEROSIS released a tremendous roar of challenge to the horrid Hair Monster! …
In the Harbour View lobby, I was seeing to Millie Drake’s safety after the attempted assault of her by the perverse -- and thankfully now deceased -- hotel clerk.
“Are you all right, love?” I enquired concernedly.
“Yes... ” she stammered. “I… I’m okay now, Daniel. Look! It’s Pederosis!”
The lass had glanced outside and had seen the mighty lizard as he came on shore and engaged in battle against the repulsive Hair Monster.
“Yes, my dear Millie, he has responded to the call from his slumber deep beneath the ocean,” I said. “Now, the battle is on! Pederosis must defeat that abomination, that it cannot continue to assault the innocent and to ravage this planet!”
As we watched, Pederosis reached out and attempted to put the Hair Monster into what resembled a sumo wrestling hold. He managed to pull the abhorrent thing away from the pavilion just before it managed to break free from him. At this, Pederosis then quickly responded with a series of martial arts style blows to the creature, at which the hideous thing hit back with strands of its hair wielded like whips against the giant lizard.
Pederosis then sent another huge blast of his glowing radioactive breath at the Hair Monster, hitting the thing square in its midsection. Incredibly, it was soon apparent that the radiation had little or no effect on the horrible monstrosity, which then reached out numerous long tufts of its grotesque and bizarre synthetic hair and utilised them to surround the giant lizard. Within moments, Pederosis was almost entirely engulfed in the mass of black hair, and -- horrifying to relate -- struggling apparently in vain to break free of them!
“Oh my gosh, Daniel!” cried Millie Drake from our hotel vantage point. “That Hair Monster is beating Pederosis!”
Whilst we continued to view the horrid scene from there in the lobby of the Harbour View Hotel building, the eldritch Hair Monster once again let out a terrible sound -- a noise like unto a wicked and unhallowed laugh, as its strands of synthetic fibre began to tighten -- its obvious goal being to squeeze the very life out of Pederosis!
Do you even begin to recognise the obscene and unholy horror, forsooth the horrendous and ungodly terror of this exceedingly grotesque and horridly bizarre situation, my dearest friends and most loyal readers? The Hair Monster -- that disgusting and abominable creature generated by the melding of discarded synthetic hairpieces with an evil and malevolent extraterrestrial life form -- was apparently winning the battle against that heroic giant lizard, that true king of the kaiju and defender of planet Earth known by the most mighty and powerful name of Pederosis!!
“Daniel, if only there were some way to weaken the Hair Monster,” said Millie Drake. “Some way to get it to loosen its hold so Pederosis can fight again!”
“Of course!” I exclaimed in sudden realisation. “The Hair Monster is made of polyester fibres. Polyester is soluble by ethanol. That is it!”
“What do you mean, Daniel?”
“Ethanol is what drinking alcohol is made of, my dear,” I explained.
“Oh, I get it!” exclaimed the girl in realisation of my plan. “You mean you can… ”
“Yes, that shipment of ale! It just might work, hmmm? If we can use it to weaken the Hair Monster, it will give Pederosis a better chance of defeating the creature. Come on!”
Millie Drake, Kit-10, and I ran outside and over to the now-abandoned lorry, with its shipment of draft ale. I pondered for a moment before proceeding.
“Hurry, Daniel!” screamed Millie. “The Hair Monster now has Pederosis completely covered.”
I glanced over at the monsters and, indeed, the gigantic alien horror had in fact entirely engulfed the big heroic lizard in its horrible locks of hideously black imitation hair. We could behold the form of Pederosis struggling from inside the terrible strands, but thus far unable to break free of them!
“Kit-10,” then said I, “do you think you can blast the side of that vehicle just so the ale will reach the Hair Monster?”
“Of course, s--,” responded the computerised pussycat.
With this, Kit-10 then moved into position closer to the abandoned lorry. She then proceeded to let forth a beam of her nose laser directly at the tank on the back of it -- the tank that in sooth held the shipment of draft ale. The laser succeeded in making a precise hole in the tank, at which the ale shot forth, foaming and spewing directly at the Hair Monster.
“Good shooting, Kit-10!” I approved. “Though it is kind of a shame to have to waste so much good ale, hmmm?”
“This unit does not consume beverages, s--,” responded the mechanical feline.
Within a few seconds, a result began to take place. The Hair Monster started to shudder and visibly weaken as the alcoholic beverage spread over it. Some of its faux hair began to fall off, and it made a noise like unto a deep bellow of pain.
“Look!” cheered Millie Drake. “Pederosis is coming free!”
And indeed, with the weakening of the strands of hair that had been imprisoning him, the great lizard was managing to tear himself loose. In moments, Pederosis stood completely unbound by the strands. He stood tall and powerful and faced his unholy opponent with another mighty and most potent roar of challenge.
With this, Pederosis ran quickly at the Hair Monster and began to tear at it, pulling out larger and larger tufts of the synthetic hair that had been weakened by the spewing ale.
“If Pederosis can hurry and take the Hair Monster apart before the effect of the ale wears off,” I mused, “he should be able to completely destroy it!”
And indeed, the heroic giant lizard had soon torn the hideous Hair Monster in numerous pieces, and its former form was no longer seen there that day, no longer seen to threaten the Inner Harbour area and the city itself -- in truth no longer seen to threaten the very human race and indeed the entire planet known as Earth!
With the numerous pieces of the Hair Monster now strewn around the area, Pederosis then proceeded to incinerate them one by one with blasts of his radioactive breath -- blasts that succeeded in burning the last vestiges of his foe completely out of existence!
“He’s done it!” Millie continued to cheer. “Pederosis has beaten that horrible Hair Monster!”
“Indeed he has, my dear Mills,” I agreed, putting my arm around the lovely lass as we watched the end of the monstrous battle, “and we must pray that the human race should learn from this; that they should learn to not pollute the land and waters of this planet, in order to be certain that further horrors like the Hair Monster are never allowed to come into existence.”
With this, after the final pieces of his enemy were no more, the mighty Pederosis then looked back at us, and -- amazing to relate! -- let out a roar as if in agreement to my words. Then the heroic kaiju proceeded to turn and walked out into the harbour.
“So, where will he go now?” queried Millie Drake as we waved goodbye to our giant lizard friend.
“He will go back to his hibernation deep beneath the ocean, my love,” I told her. “Back to his long sleep until the day comes when he is again needed.”
“I’m just glad he’s on our side,” stated the lovely lass. “Right, Kit-10?”
“Of course, m--,” agreed the robotic cat.
Then, with one final roar of victory, the noble monster known as Pederosis waded out and began to swim to-wards the sea.
***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN
