Reginald Blisterkunst, Ph.D.
Among the Remembered Saints: My Life and Subsequent Death
Pluto Wars

Greg Chandler
"Bee's Tree"
"Local Folk"
"Roland's Feast"
"Pond Story "

Doug Childers
"The Baptism"

Gene Cox
The Sunset Lounge

Clarke Crutchfield
"The Break-In"
"The Canceled Party"
"The Imaginary Bullet"

Jason DeBoer
"The Execution of the Sun"

Deanna Francis Mason
"The Daguerreian Marvel"

Dennis Must
"Boys"
"Star-Crossed"

Charlie Onion
"Halloween"
"Love Among the Jellyfish"
Pluto Wars
"Feast of the Manfestation"

Chris Orlet
"Romantic Comedy"

Daniel Rosenblum
"A Full Donkey"

Deanna Frances Mason
"The Daguerreian Marvel"

Andrew L. Wilson
"Fat Cake and Double Talk"

Jackson Davis
"The Shovel"
"Depth of Field"
"Come Back"
"Using the Briar Blade"
"Ash Hand"
"Fishing from the Blue Canoe"
"A Virginia Private at Appomatox"
"My Mother's Death"

Christopher Voigt
"Chapel"
"Let Me Try"
"Sad Vespers"
"The Secular Child"

Editor's Note: This is a sequel to Reginald Blisterkunst's Among the Remembered Saints: My Life and Subsequent Death, which was originally serialized in WAG. Readers who prefer to begin at the beginning may read the first book by clicking here.

Part Nine

In a related story

Did you feel that? Like a jarring. You know, someone nudging you out of the way. No? Anyway...damn. Where was I? Oh yes: the girl's swirling dust-storm face. An unseen voice begins asking her questions: what's her name, what's her age, what, exactly, did she see, etc.

—Well, Jaime, how would you describe this, er, ship?

—Round, she says, helpfully.

There is a moment of silence, then the voice returns.

—Color?

—Blue. No, sapphire.

She smiles at her perceptiveness.

—What were you doing immediately before the abduction?

—Sleeping.

—I beg your pardon?

—You see, I fell asleep and had this dream—

—You fell asleep while floating on the river?

She nods, embarrassed.

—Yes. I don't know why. But I had this strange dream that—

—Did the men say anything after the ship appeared?

—No. I mean, she says, they screamed. But that was it.

Armando leans over me.

—Bullshit, he whispers. The chick's faking it.

I turn down Armando's offer to watch them shoot the news in the studio. Instead, I thank him for being so gracious and open and then, as I shake his hand, he pulls me close to him and for a moment I think he's going to kiss me.

—No body slams, he says to my forehead. We've got an agreement, right?

—Of course, I manage to say, before fleeing through the gauntlet of the Illuminati.

Back home, Woody invites me over for dinner and while we eat, I tell them about the UFO story.

—They're running the interview at six o'clock, I say, through a mouthful of slippery eggplant.

—Maybe I should call McKratchett, Woody says.

He picks up the phone, dials a number, waits.

—Not there, he says, setting the phone down. Damn. Damn. This could be big for us.

He turns the TV on and while we chew eggplant fibers we watch the last few minutes of a talk show about men who find one-armed brick masons attractive and then, after a symphonic surge, Dick Armando appears on the screen wearing a god-awful scowl.

—Good Evening, he says. I'm Dick Armando and this is the news.

—What ho, Woody says.

—First tonight, Armando says, switching cameras deftly, we have an exclusive interview with the local girl who says she was a witness to an unearthly abduction on the river earlier this afternoon.

—McKratchett better be watching, Woody mutters, as Armando segues into the interview.

As before, I am hypnotized by the girl's swirling storm face and hear little of what she says. Woody, in the meanwhile, takes furious notes. Coming out of the interview, we see Armando rolling his eyes at someone off camera and then, when he realizes he's on, he scowls hard enough to break blood vessels and bears down on the audience.

—UFO sightings around the world have risen by more than 20,000 percent during the past year, he says. Adler Cantaloupe, editor-at-large of There They Are! Magazine [here, a still shot of a dark-skinned man in a cape appears over Armando's shoulder, grinning maniacally], was quoted Thursday in the Chilean daily La Tarantula as saying that there are some particularly hot spots where we've seen a 40,000 percent rise. That's an unprecedented and frightening onslaught of UFOs visiting Earth. Senor Cantaloupe added that he had over 100,000 slides to prove it. He is particularly disturbed by the rash of so-called chu...pa attacks, which have left local natives ritually scarified by such messages as Blister Lives! and El Capitan: Yes! The conference, organized by La Tarantula and the Group of Very Sane UFO Researchers, opened Wednesday and is expected to close on Sunday.

—No. You don't think—

—Nah. Couldn't be.

—In a related story, Armando continues, a strange woman is reported to have knocked men to the ground all day today along the river while shouting Long live El Capitan, Lord of the Dark World. Police are still not sure the two cases are related.

—Weird stuff, Woody mutters.

Protectively, Candy Tabitha rubs her swollen belly. Soothing fingers for a nervous fetus. Armando jumps track to another story about a local man who beat himself to death with his own artificial arm and then, after the weather report, I walk next door and write a thousand fawning words about Dick Armando's hair. The way it catches the light, the way it shifts as he walks, the works. After making another pass through and punching up the alliteration, I print it out and lock it up with Eddie's father (thank God for the padlock; I only hope ghosts can't read). Then I go upstairs and, as I hear the woman across the street burst out onto the porch and shout at the sky, I fall asleep and dream that I am drifting helpless in the UFO girl's car, clutching an ice cream cone and gawking at a handful of glistening-pectoral Rabbit pushers, each of whom, I swear, has the swirling hair of yes, you guessed it: Dick Armando himself.

Is this mike on? Yes? We're on right now? Ah. Very good then.

Now then. Where were we? Ah yes.

Allow me to introduce myself: Blistering Captain Pluto, former English professor (Milton), now dead. At your service. I'd shake hands but, metaphysics being what they are, I don't think you'd enjoy it.

(—oh honey, did you feel that cold wind rush by us?—yes, it touched my hand, it did, cold as death itself, it was.)

Dead what—two years now? And feeling better than ever, as they say in commercials for health products targeted at the weak and elderly.

(—I'm telling you, Madge, it's like I'm a kid again. And just two pills a day.)

Death's really not bad, you know—you should try it sometime. Forget that nonsense about the rotting and the worms and all—once you get a handle on it, it's actually quite enjoyable. Like moving to a new school, really. Learn the ropes, make new friends, start building power structures, and before you know it, you're plotting to control the world.

(and just two pills a day)

But really now, I ask you: is it true? you really haven't heard of me yet? No, no. Never mind. You will soon. The Brazilian experiments were just a warm-up—stretching the metaphysical muscles before taking on the big boys of the First World. But quite a bit of fun, if I do say so myself.

Yes, that's right, my little Portuguese-shrieking friend: tell your friends Blistering Captain Pluto, Newly Crowned Ruler of the Dark World, sends his regards.

—Looklooklook, the skin, the light, el chupa; aahhhhhhh

Silly sod.

Ah, there's another one. Zip bang stench.

Ahhhhhhhhh

Could have done that all night, really, if it didn't get so tiresome after a while. Just warming up, though, dear reader, just warming up.

And I—wait a minute. Yes. Jesus Christ. I told him to—all right. Never mind. Have somebody levitate or something. And make sure you get an eyewitness. Somebody at the U.N., say. They'll want to make a big fuss about it, just to spin the Army dizzy. Yes. That's right. And we—what? Goddamn it, is this a universal cataclysm we're running here, or a damned Chaplin short? What's say? No! Impossible! Christ. I say, dear readers. I, haha, I need to slip out of the flow for a moment here. I've got a black helicopter downed in Texas by some damn-fool farmer, but I'll only be a moment, so don't listen to a thing that Onion catamite says in the meantime because when I get back I'm going to—aaaahhhhhhh

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

About the Authors

The late Reginald Blisterkunst was a college professor whose areas of expertise were Milton and the Metaphysical Poets. Among the Remembered Saints, his first novel, was also serialized on the WAG Web site.

Charlie Onion is a frequent WAG contributor.