What remained foggy in Adam’s memory? As he slept he began to know, but only with the logic of dreamers. It was some moment of utmost rejection…of hope and trust turned to fear…of babe’s eyes, twin jewels of innocence, the two things in this world which should have given him a chance—for what knew babes of monstrosity?

Yet the babe screamed.

The babe screamed, catalyzing a chorus of cries that issued from his own body, tearing at his papyrus-covered seams, disparate voices, half-human faces straining at his flesh—screaming reminder—he was Adam amalgam, disparate parts collected from graves and given what was never their due: new life…

Adam awakened in a sleeping coffin which was, itself, in a coffin-shaped sleeping chamber. He was convinced that several hours had passed since the magnanimous dinner. Outside, though, it was dark. He did not know this, for his present bedchamber had no windows. All around stood slate walls with a conspicuous hexagonal make, and classy electric lamps. Hanging in a prominent position was the portrait of some old guy. According to the placard, he was Dorian Gray.

Adam rose shaking, but the details of his dream wafted away, taking with them the knowledge of why he should shake. So he straightened, assured himself it had been nothing, and strode to the door, and called down the hall, which was a seemingly neverending corridor of manifold suites and fancy carpet. “Dracula, my benefactor, where art thou?”

Right on cue, the Count stepped into view, from one of many oddical rooms. “Good morning, or, rather, good waking!” he greeted. “I am pleased to see you well. Your complexion is looking quite strong, and there is a brightness in your eyes.”

“I thank you, but I dare ask, whose portrait is that which sits upon the wall?”

“Oh, that is from an art auction. It is of no consequence. I wish to inform you that to your right,” said Dracula with a motion to a door inside of Adam's room, “is your personal ablution chamber. The basin on the floor with overhanging knobs is the shower area, and is used for washing. By twisting the knobs, you can regulate temperature. The small brush is for brushing one’s teeth; it is known as ‘the tooth-brusher.’ I know that new technology may frighten you, but please, if nothing else, smear a pustule of paste on the brush, and brush. When you have prepared yourself, please meet with me in the foyer; you will not lose yourself, I trust, as I have placed helpful road signs along the way. This morning we meet a friend of mine. Ha ha! ‘Morning!’”

Adam said, “What means your chuckle? Is it still night? Has this future gone so mad that it has done away with time itself?”

“Not at all! We merely followed the night! Igor trained Bistritz well. My home ceaselessly circumambulates the earth, always plunged in darkness. The windowless walls, you see, are merely a precaution.”

Adam raised a trembling hand to his face and stammered, “Y-y-ye gads! This steed is capable of tracing the world in a mere twelve hours?" Then his temper became festive: "Well then, burn my briskets! What a thoroughly unfounded era! But tell me, what is Igor? A soft drink?”

Dracula, smiling, shook his head. “In due time, my friend.”

Adam thanked his host and proceeded to ablute. He took extra care to shampoo his papyrus wrappings (that day they smelled faintly of strawberries).

All the while, Dracula waited by one of the more ostentatious castle exits, occasionally consulting his holographic pocket watch. Eventually his guest jogged in with a new question.

“Yet before we leave, I must have inquiry as to your motives,” Adam notified. “Is there in truth some foul design entwined with mine resurrection? Mayhaps a tumultuous capture of the world and its peoples?”

“I give you a resounding no, my friend,” the Count answered with a jot of solemnity. “I have selfishly involved you in my search for allies. I shall divulge further details when I have assembled both you and our third member, but for the present I will tell you only this: I am on a quest...” He paused for effect. “...To save the world,” he concluded.

The ostentatious front doors swung open, and a drawbridge lowered for a full thirty seconds. Bistritz had landed long ago on the midnight shore of an island Galapagos! Soft Galapagos breezes poured in to greet them, and Galapagos turtles scuttled across grass which, sprouting from sand, billowed harmonious. In the emerald trees sat piping Galapagos finches, whose famously varied beaks had played in Igor’s Darwinian dreams so long ago. Now, of course, their beaks were even more astoundingly varied, some needle-thin, others hammer-shaped and larger than their possessors' entire bodies. Far in the distance, on a rock sublime and dark, a Galapagos penguin, its bill barbed and massive like a harpoon, bounded into the crystal ocean with a happy splash. The Count and his guest stepped out, out onto stairsteps that stopped in the coolest sand Adam had ever known.

He said, “And where, pray tell, are we?”

“The Galapagos Islands!” Dracula whooped. Bistritz’s head, mere paces away, gnawed on one of the many pineapple trees endemic to the Galapagos Islands. He paid the monstro-men no mind.

A limbless Roman statue, though gorgeous, can only offer a hint of its former glory, and thus takes on a melancholy aspect. So too the moon, floating ruin, which hovered high above, higher even than Bistritz could reach, a little misty in the refracting light of its millions and billions of particulates, was but a sad allusion to ancient Artemis. Crumbling beauty! Its main body now was naught but a crescent, and reckless dynamite had strewn rubble about it in an asteroid ring.

This wretched lune remained in sight until it was underpassed by clouds—of leaves, for Dracula and Adam had taken foot through Galapagos trees. With their footpath the visitors, immersed in airy humid, traced the ebbing, tidelike, sandy grains, until, arriving at a wide lake, they halted. There was a gurgle of water, the coo of Galapagos fishes.

Dracula took a knee. He lifted a small stone; beneath it lurked a circular red button. He said to Adam, “Brace yourself.” And he pressed it.

A horrible three-tone trumpet trill sounded from what must have been the island’s very core, affrighting every animal for a mile around. Galapagean birds fled, fluttering in chorus.

Adam gave a start, but, seeing Dracula unflapped, remained in place. Actually, Dracula looked a little annoyed, for though this was their ally’s doorbell, he found the sound irksome. He jabbed the chime twice more, and the same tinny trumpet blared, grated, self-interrupted. Adam briefly attempted to undo the stitches surrounding his ears.

Finally the lake trembled, shaking loose droplets by the tens of thousands! The tens became hundreds, and monumental splashes spluttered free. A quaint house straight from an early American suburb, complete with white picket fence, rose from the depths, its kindly kelp lawn groomed to perfection.

There was some manner of man on the porch, rocking in his rocker, smoking with his smoker (which means “pipe”). What rose from his smoker, however, were bubbles, for he was a moist old man—so moist that he was a fish. He waved to the duo and gasped warmly, “Hello, Drac, old, boy. Both, you, come, right, in!”

And Dracula said, “Meet the only man older than I: Robert Fishman.”

They stepped into his home, making sure to close the picket fence behind them to be decent. The inside was quite as you or I would expect from watching black-and-white television reruns, except in color, and also, Adam had never seen reruns; therefore he felt stupefied by it all. As the old friends chatted, he broke off, walking about the family room in a slow spiral of discovery.

“I have never in all my years seen such an abode as this,” he miranded. He looked to a digital clock. “Such a strange candelabra.” Then to a rabbit-eared television set, on whose screen a lupine man discussed tossed salad and scrambled eggs. “Gads! What playwright could direct such miniscule men? Shakespeare II?”

With a flash that put stars in poor 19th-century Adam’s eyes, the screen changed; a new werewolf was there, on his fur a suit and incongruous cowboy hat, in his teeth a toothpick. “Don’t take chances,” he said through a sheen of static. “If you see something strange and you think it’s a Dracula, call me. Call my Monster Hotline.” At the bottom of the screen flashed a series of twenty-five numerals. How baffling; that seemed as useful for making calls as a bucket of fish and chips.

With a groan, the monster hunter hoisted a laser blaster, a tool larger and meaner than the rifles Adam had seen, a metal hulk hoisted onto his shoulder that esaily dwarfed his torso.

Then he aimed it—and the mummyman gasped. The bazooka, charging with a power glow, was aiming through the screen, for the space between his eyes!

The glass screen splintered apart! Just kidding…but I could have fooled Adam, who had hit the deck with soldier speed, ears shut, panting. No damage was done. The laser whine had been confined.

The wolf rasped, “Keep our families safe, roof roof.”

Then he, like all spectres of the television, disappeared, leaving nothing but a warning to sizzle in Adam’s head.

Werewolf world! Felicity from the Count his host had heretofore wrapped him like a protective blanket. But should he ever enter the werewolf cities, they would know that he looked like—that he was—

Suddenly he became aware of the Dracula on the couch and the Robert in the kitchen.

“Oh—please excuse me,” he said, and he rose only to crouch, only to shrink into himself. His face, gross visage, inspiration of many a pejorative, was hid between his fingers. “Mr. Fishman, sir, please forgive me. Please…my face, my habits…they are disgusting to behold. I thank you for accepting the likes of me into your home, but…I do not require you to pay me mind.”

He must not have seen Robert’s face clearly from the porch.

An amphibious hand slapped him on the shoulder. It was the hand of a grandpappy comforting a sport-playing boy who had missed the big ball, just that one time. Less metaphorically, it was the hand of a green fishman whose entire body, lumpsome face included, was coated in a thick suit of scales, and then again in a business suit (though this was not, forsooth, a part of his body; he had simply put it on).

“Hey,” Robert inhaled. His voice sounded neither decrepit not weakened, but came haltingly forth due to a wound sustained long ago. Rather than a Galapagonian accent, he maintained a perfectly generic American one. “Me, know, what, like. Having, face, only, fish-mother, could, love. You, welcome, anytime.” Holding out twin glasses, he added, “Pink, lemonade?”

Adam brightened. “Even the lemon itself is pink in this unforgiving world!” He ceased his cowering and stood to take his glass with aplomb. “My gratitude, Mr. Fishman. Never before have I met with one so accepting of my appearance, except, well, yesternight.”

“It, happen. Rare, but, happen. Wouldn’t, you, say?” Robert motioned a glass in Dracula’s direction.

“Yes, most truly, and no thank you, Robert my friend,” declined Dracula.

“Oh, right,” remembered Robert, “saving, special, stuff, for, you, in, fridge!” He tromped back to the kitchen and took a medical blood bag from the back of his Frigidaire. “Universal, donor, just, like, you, like.”

“Many thanks, gracious Fishman!”