7-1-17 No Rain

Byline: Gary Llewellyn

Dateline: July 1st, 2017

No, people, you can’t leave Ohio without learning something completely awful. This time the grim toll for egress was the Melonheads. They are not a catchy, upbeat, sweater-wearing band of the early nineties. These Melonheads are of the evil children variety. Now, normally I don’t fuck with evil kids, but these little motherfuckers have an off the wall origin story. It starts with a mad scientist named Dr. Crow who performed weird experiments on children. Metal as hell from the get-go. The doctor would take these children...I don’t know how big their heads were from the jump, but the Dr. Crow would inject fluid into their heads which caused them to expand. I don’t think it works that way, but myths don’t operate on sense, they operate on belief. What is it in the psyche of Ohio that demands demon monkey science projects into existence? Or Connecticut, who made the little jerks into cannibals who live on Dracula Drive? In Michigan they call them ‘wobbleheads.’ The kids eventually burned down the orphanage Dr. Crow kept them in.

These little bastards have been running around the Cleveland suburb of Kirtland since the 1970’s, when they were summoned into the agonizing existence of the weakest of myths, the ‘urban legend’. Even still, the local police force keeps a company of snipers on hand in case one gets rowdy. In 1983, one went nuts in a shopping mall at Christmas. The local authorities covered it up and pinned the rap on the homeless vet that was always in the library, said he lit off a nail bomb, or some such shit. ‘The holidays broke him’, type jazz the man feeds you. Most of the time however, they never seem to do worse than armed robbery, but every now and then, one of them will get a wild hare up its ass and the next thing you know, Santa is getting his face eaten off in front of about thirty screaming, future alcoholics.

In Cannibal Connecticut, where they’re cannibals, they’re escaped inmates, from an asylum fire in 1960. As well as cannibals. Why do demonic children also have to be cannibals? Maybe it’s the Northeast? Northeast winters scream ‘cannibal’.

Michigan’s version is a little better. Some children lived in a mansion, but for one reason or another retreated into a system of underground caverns and became mole people. In the caves, they planned out the murder of the doctor that abused them. After said murder, they realized they didn’t have a cleanup plan. So they chopped up the body and stuffed the pieces in mattresses and closets. Sometimes they live in an abandoned zoo. Which sounds awesome. Unlike like their dick counterparts, these kids mostly keep to the house. The Michigan psyche called out for a horrifying story of homicidal children but didn’t really need to be haunted by it.

7-1-17 It’s a Shame About Ray

Byline: Stephanie Morgan

Dateline: July 1st, 2017

Heya, SEG-ers. I’m never having kids. I’m never babysitting again, not that I thought I would. I’m never driving past a daycare or school or park ever again. Every time I look at a kid, I see those wretched basketball heads with the mouths that take up half their face. I think they can unhinge their jaws and they eat everything. I can’t believe Steve would recommend we look these guys up while we’re in town. Maybe he gets a different side of them than we got.

Gary told me a story about when he was eight, he watched the shopping mall Santa get his face eaten right in front of him by one of these. When someone finally pulled the thing off it was gnawing on a skull. I couldn’t imagine why he wanted to go looking for them and to that he replied, ‘catharsis’.

When we finally caught up with the melonkids, they were just sitting down to dinner. Gary just crouched in the bushes and stared in the window, watching. I’ve never heard him so quiet. His eyes were dead and glazed. His expression was carved from living stone. He seemed fixated on one in particular. This one was bouncing a smaller one on its knee, clapping and singing songs. The others seemed to gravitate toward that one the most, he was like the beloved patriarch.

“Got it,” Gary whispered.

“Got what?”

“My target,” he pulled a pistol from his jacket.

“What? You’re going to shoot the grandpa one? Why?”

“It has to be the one that means the most to them.”

“What the hell are you talking about.”

“The coming storm.”

“That again?”

“I need an edge. The best way to get a quick edge is to horn my way into a preexisting myth. You want in? I got another piece.”

“What? No. I’m not shooting them.”

“Take this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a sackcloth bag. You’ll carry it back into town. I’ll even let you dramatically dump it on the police officer’s desk.”

“Why would we do that?”

“We’ll be the ones who bagged the chief melonhead. We’ll be like Patterson, Zapruder and Bob Lazar all rolled into one. Baked into an urban legend. Trust me.”

I’m not sure why I trusted him. Now everytime I see a child, I see those wretched basketball heads with mouths that take up half their face, unhinged and wailing in grief.

7-8-17 Life Stinks

Byline: Gary Llewellyn

Dateline: July 8th, 2017

Do you know where you’ll spend your retirement? Have you thought about it? If my dad is correct I’ll be spending it in a shallow grave. That’ll probably be the only time that cop bastard was right. It’s still a lucky guess. Next question; do you ever wonder what monsters do with their retirement? If you said ‘yes’, it’s highly likely you’re a liar. Last question; did you think we were done with Bigfoots? Were you really glad we were done with Bigfeet? I know you probably thought, ‘Grassman? We’re scraping the bottom of the crypto-hominid barrel now. There can’t possibly be any more of these fucking things.’ Well, like my dad, you’re wrong.

Welcome to Florida, land of opioids, fucked up animals, and theme parks. As the cliche goes, you’ll also find more than a few retirees. Also where you can find another kind of retiree. An ape-man, known as the Skunk Ape. So named, as you could probably imagine, because of his pungent odor. Stephanie couldn’t handle it and returned to base camp. One time, I was locked in a steamer trunk with a corpse for three days. This was like a spring day. Local legend pegs his height at eight feet and weight around three hundred pounds. In reality, the codger is about five seven, one hundred and ten pounds, with terrible posture. About once a year, a report will emerge of people being attacked by the Skunk Ape, while out in the Everglades. First of all, why are you wandering around the Everglades? Second, this old coot isn’t attacking anybody. Maybe he’s got a grandkid that visits once a year.

When I found him, he was sitting on the front step of his rancher, carving his own bocce balls out of cypress. The idea was to get a look as I casually walked by, but then he offered me a beer and who am I to decline hospitality. Turns out, he has a nephew that visits once a year who likes to tie one on. He’ll wander around the swamp drinking Jagermeister from the bottle. Passing hikers/idiots will inevitably ask him for a selfie and that’s usually what sets him off. And then he hits the crystal.

He came down to Florida after his hundred acres in Oregon were plowed over and replaced with 632 identical Neo-eclectics with three car garages. He came to the Everglades because “this place will never be a suburb.” He was left behind in the Mars relocation. As one could imagine, his persistent aura of rotting fish, burning hair and cat piss was an automatic disqualifier for extended, close quarters travel. We shot the shit and listened to Grand Funk until before I knew it, it was dusk. He offered to let me crash at his place, but all the furniture was submerged in about three feet of swamp water. Plus I should get back to Stephanie before she spends our last four bucks at Shoney’s.

7-8-17 Transcription of Stephanie Morgan’s voice memo 7/3/17 2:47 pm

Ms. Morgan: Okay, PFG for the second week of July. Not this week, Uncle Mort. I’m wading into a swamp to look at another ape thing, except this one reeks. I couldn’t do it. I went back to the Shoney’s.

<silverware clicking>

Ms. Morgan: <off mic> I ordered a large orange juice.

Unidentified woman: <off mic> That is the large.

Ms. Morgan: <off mic> Are you freaking serious?

Unidentified woman: unintelligible

Ms.Morgan: <off mic> Thanks, whatever. <on mic> I paid four dollars for an orange juice the size of my pinky. We’re almost through the money my parents gave me. Send us something, reactivate the charge card. Gary’s learned his lesson; no more buying fireworks or chopping lines with it. I’ll keep him honest I promise. If I’m going to be attacked, clawed, abducted, drowned, trampled or coerced into participating in the murder of the beloved Melonhead patriarch, I’m going to need a compensation. I can’t sleep anymore. I’m hungry all the time. My teeth hurt, I don’t know what that’s about and all of a sudden I’m allergic to purple. If things keep going this way I’ll be the subject of one of these. I should have just went to nursing school like everybody else.