The Humdrum Lives of Cryptids, Monsters, and Villains
the door to the courtroom?"
"That won't be necessary," a muffled voice said from behind the door. A moment later, a glowing translucent figure glided through the doors. It was the ghost of Bigfoot.
Sheila gasped and inhaled a great deal of flame. The dozing centaur beside her woke with a start and every juror except for the sasquatch in front of her moved to the edge of their seats. Although the judge banged his gavel repeatedly to re-establish order in the courtroom, his own expression revealed that he was just as astounded as everyone else.
"The perpetrator of this vile act," Bigfoot's ghost said as he strode to the center of this courtroom. "Was apparently not aware, as I'm sure many, if not all, of you are - that after the library is closed for living cryptids and creatures, it opens for the ghosts of cryptids and creatures. I got to the library early that night, just after it had closed for the living and opened for the dead... I remember it well. I had recently finished a compilation of Snakespeare plays and was looking for something new when I saw a creature in the midst of a crime so foul that I forgot that I was dead and hid for my own safety… I could only watch as they went about their cruel deed... As they glued every book together at the covers and scribbled cartoons of the werewolf doing the act in the books they bound, all the while muttering how they would put away another werewolf. They seemed to be quite prejudiced against werewolves... Quite prejudiced indeed."
"Your honor, this is preposterous. Do ghosts even exist? I believe this to be a hologram or some other tomfoolery being perpetrated by the defendant, and - " Mr. Squetchly said quickly, before the judge cut him off.
"I'll not have you interrupt the witness again, Mr. Squetchly!" the judge said menacingly to the sasquatch lawyer. "Go on, Mr. Deceased Bigfoot."
"The real criminal, your honor and ladies and gentlemen of the jury and court.... Was Mr. Squetchly!" the ghost of Bigfoot said calmly as he rose his muscular ghost arm and pointed a pearlescent finger at the sasquatch lawyer trembling before him.
Sheila could hardly believe it. Could it really be? Could the werewolf they had all been prepared to write off as being guilty be innocent? Could the upstanding citizen and successful lawyer Mr. Squetchly be the criminal that perpetrated the horrendous act of supergluing every library book together and drawing cartoons of the werewolf doing it, so as to frame him?
"Surely you jest," Mr. Squetchly said with a chuckle after regaining his composure. "What other proof do you have? Anything? Anything at all? I highly doubt that the word of a previously unknown ghost would hold up in court without any backing evidence..."
"We do happen to have more evidence, Mr. Squetchly," Ms. Manetooth, the centaur lawyer said smoothly. "Your honor, I'd like to present Exhibit A."
Ms. Manetooth walked toward the judge's stand, her hooves echoing off of the marble floors, and placed a ripped book before the judge.
"If you'll allow the bailiff to open the book for you so that it won't get all soggy in your tank, you'll see several strands of hair caught in the glue... Sasquatch hair," Ms. Manetooth said triumphantly as the bailiff opened the book for the judge. A number of shaggy rust-red hairs hung from a dried glob of glue on the inside of the book.
"Your honor, you know as well as I that those hairs could belong to any sasquatch! They could have been there even before the act occurred and simply been caught in the glue... Besides, they look more like werewolf hairs to me..." Mr. Squetchly said with an absurd confidence. The court was no longer on his side however, though he fought to retain his confident facade.
"I thought you might say something to that effect," Ms. Manetooth said calmly. "That is why I have a second surprise witness who will present Exhibit B. Bailiff, will you open the doors to the courtroom and let them in? You'll actually have to open the doors this time, they're not a ghost..."
The minotaur bailiff strode across the courtroom, his bull-like hooves clicking and clacking against the marble floor. He opened the door, and for a moment it almost did appear to Sheila and the surrounding jurors that another ghost had entered. It was, however, a bright white unicorn wearing a lab coat that was somehow even brighter and whiter than it was.
Sheila let out an involuntary 'oooh' as she saw the unicorn, unleashing a spurt of fire from her nostrils. She was not berated by the other jurors this time, however, as they too were entranced by the unicorn's beauty and majesty.
The unicorn in the lab coat had a file folder in its mouth, which it ceded to the bailiff before it began to speak. "My name is Professor Trottenclop and I work and teach in the DNA research facility at the Cryptid University in the Pacific Northwest."
"Oh dear..." Mr. Squetchly muttered quietly as Professor Trottenclop made his way to the stand, taking the werewolf's place. If Sheila had not extended her elongated neck out of unrestrained curiosity over the lawyers and witnesses she would not have heard it.
"Mr. Squetchly," Ms. Manetooth said to the sasquatch lawyer, turning her horse-like body to face him. "Have you met Professor Trottenclop before?"
Mr. Squetchly cleared his throat and said uncertainly, "Well, it's hard to say... I've met so many creatures over the years..."
"I met Mr. Squetchly ten years ago while he was in the law program at the Cryptid University of the Pacific Northwest," said Professor Trottenclop from the witness stand.
"And what was the circumstance of your initial meeting with Mr. Squetchly ten years ago, Professor Trottenclop?" Ms. Manetooth asked inquisitively as she paced back and forth before the stand.
"He participated in a DNA research program in exchange for five Crypto-Units," Professor Trottenclop said while Mr. Squetchly shook his head in silence.
"And what form of DNA did Mr. Squetchly provide you?" Ms. Manetooth asked with the ghost of a smirk on her face. Sheila, along with all of the other jurors aside from the sasquatch in front of her who was squirming in his uncomfortable wooden chair, was sitting on the edge of her seat.
"Several hairs," Professor Trottenclop said.
Sheila thought it was over. It had to be over... Mr. Squetchly, however, was still grasping at straws, trying to retain his freedom.
"Your honor, simply, uh, comparing those hairs isn't... er, uh... My DNA could very well have changed since then!" he proclaimed loudly, with his hands shooting up into the air.
"Bailiff, would you show Judge Slipenscayl the results of the DNA test in the folder, please?" Ms. Manetooth asked the minotaur.
The bailiff approached the judge's water tank and held the file folder up against the glass while Judge Slipenscayl peered at it.
"I see very little cause to go into full deliberation over this matter," Judge Slipenscayl said after a few moments of perusing the DNA evidence. "How about we just do an informal vote. All jurors that believe that Mr. Grayblack Rancidfurr did not glue every library book together, and that Mr. Squetchly is guilty of framing Mr. Rancidfurr, perjury, and gluing together and defacing every library book available to this community, say 'aye'."
Fire erupted from Sheila's fanged mouth as she cried out 'aye'. Every other juror did the same.
"Now wait just one minute!" Mr. Squetchly said frantically, his hands shaking so badly that his rings clattered to the floor.
"Silence!" cried the judge, slowly pounding his gavel through the water in his tank. "It is my opinion that you should be sentenced to recovering and erasing the graffiti from every library book. You will also have bi-hourly therapy sessions with a werewolf psychiatrist to aid you in putting an end to your unjust prejudices. Bailiff, take Mr. Squetchly to the holding cell. Mr. Rancidfurr, you are free to go."
The werewolf leapt through the air and embraced his lawyer, Ms. Manetooth. The ghost of Bigfoot patted her on the back and Professor Trottenclop joined them in congratulations. Mr. Squetchly was led away from the courtroom in shackles as he screamed about 'injustice'.
The jurors surrounding Sheila began to rise and exit the courtroom. The sasquatch juror had begun to grumpily read his newspaper as he walked. Sheila caught up to him.
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"Is it always like that?" she asked the seemingly perpetually annoyed sasquatch.
"Oh yes... Hot courtroom, stiff chairs, and all that dull legal mumbo-jumbo..." the sasquatch said without sparing her a glance. He picked up his pace and disappeared out of the door.
Sheila was astounded that anyone could not have found the case they had just witnessed utterly thrilling. She exited the courtroom and began to flap her gargantuan wings. Her flight home felt much shorter. She spent the majority of the time pondering the case she had just witnessed.
When she arrived at the entrance of her cave, she found her goat Harold sticking its snout into the empty mailbox. "I've had quite a day, Harold," Sheila said to her pet. Harold replied with a bleat that sounded an awful lot like 'mail'.
"What would you say if I told you that I was thinking about going to law school, Harold?" Sheila asked as they descended into the cave over mountains of gold and treasures. Harold replied once more with a bleat that sounded eerily similar to the word 'mail'.
"Well, it's just something I'm going to think about..." she said, patting the goat gently with the tip of her outstretched wing. Far away from the cave, a sasquatch in an orange jumpsuit grumpily picked up a book out of an enormous pile and began to erase the cartoons he had drawn within it as a werewolf with a pen and pad asked him about his childhood.
Mermaid: Replacing a VCR
A maelstrom raged beneath a black and grey sky. Tumult and terror ruled the waves of the sea as lightning and thunder rent and ripped the air. Deep below the chaos, a mermaid sat on a couch sculpted of sand and clicked a remote control repeatedly at her television set. There was absolutely nothing appealing on television.
The storm raging above her would prevent her from visiting the surface to confuse sailors or even to go for a leisurely swim amongst the waves, so she was confined to the sea floor. She was actually perfectly content to spend this particular day lounging around on the bottom of the sea. Swimming at the surface was exhausting during storms, not to mention dangerous. She only wished that she could find something entertaining to watch so that her day would at least be somewhat interesting.
She caught glimpses of talk shows, sitcoms, sporting events, music videos, and the kind of movies that play during rainy days, but absolutely nothing seemed to be worth her time. Soon, she had flipped through every single available channel and was seeing the same uninteresting tripe over and over again.
The mermaid sighed deeply and looked around her apartment, hoping desperately that an idea or object would present itself as an end to her boredom. It was not an apartment in the conventional sense. It was a series of rooms separated by large stones and seaweed curtains in a small cove with a great number of other apartments for mermaids and other sea dwelling creatures and cryptids.
Overall, she liked her apartment. Her neighbors were nice. They were politely cordial and mostly kept to themselves aside from a sea serpent that lived down the hall. He was a drummer for some sort of punk rock band, and due to the properties of water, the sound waves from his drum set carried a little too well. Plus, he was just not a very good drummer. His drum playing was on a similar plane to his personality.
The sea serpent was not drumming at the moment, however, and the mermaid was grateful. She had appealed to her landlord, Poseidon, god of the seas, on multiple occasions but he seemed too preoccupied to do anything about it. When she was a day late on the rent it was a different story...
As she continued to scan her apartment, she realized that the answer to her need for entertainment had been lying right before her eyes the whole time. A vintage VCR that she had owned since she was only a little mermaid sat directly beneath the television set on a stand made from coral.
She had kept this VCR, despite the fact that it was a highly outdated technology, not only because of its sentimental value, but because she enjoyed the entire experience of using a VCR over using a DVD player or streaming a movie or series from the internet. There was just something special to her about pulling a video cassette from its case, putting it in the little VCR slot, and hearing it click into place. The rewinding, fast forwarding, and worn out segments of her most watched videos were an added bonus.
Some may raise the issue, as many had directly to the mermaid, that there was now a lack of new video cassettes being produced since it was a dead technology, thus rendering a VCR useless for any reason other than nostalgic re-viewings of old movies. It was precisely this reason that the mermaid venerated her VCR. New movies were hardly ever to her taste. She much preferred the tried and true classics, of which she had an extensive collection.
The mermaid arose from her sandy couch, swam to the corner of the room to a wooden trunk that was shaped like a treasure chest, and opened it. The treasure within was a bounty of video cassettes, all floating drearily in their watery trunk, rising and shifting slightly as she opened the lid. She shuffled them around and read the titles, looking for the perfect movie.
"'The Mixed Up Mystery of Mr. Conch'..." she read aloud, holding the movie in her hands and considering it for a moment. "No, not right now. Hmmm 'The Whale Song: A Whale of a Tale'.... No, too sad. 'The Sea Cowboys of the Western Seas'... Why do I even have that one?" she said, tossing the box with a picture of a manatee wearing a cowboy hat and holding a lasso aside.
"Yes!" she exclaimed, holding up a video cassette that no longer had a box to accompany it. A title, written in ink on a piece of tape stuck to the edge of the cassette read: “Escape From The Aquarium: Mermaid's Revenge”. Despite the ominous title which might lead one to believe this particular film was an action-adventure or thriller movie, it actually belonged to the romantic comedy genre. Sure, it had its moments of action, but she adored it for its real life scenarios and dialogue placed within a hilarious context and location.
Giddy with excitement and nostalgic glee, she withdrew the cassette from the trunk, closed the lid, and swam to the VCR. She pressed the power button on the rectangular, black machine. A small red power light turned on briefly, but then disappeared. This was normal. It had been doing this for at least eight years. The vintage VCR was not without its quirks.
She slid the video tape into the slot in the VCR. Numerous clicks and the whirr of tiny gears became audible. She set her television to channel three and returned to the couch, ready to enjoy one of her favorite movies in her favorite format. The sounds continued, but the movie never began to play. The content smile slid from the mermaid’s lips, and she swam off of her couch and kneeled down in front of the VCR.
This happened from time to time. She was sure that she just needed to eject it and then put it back in again. Sometimes it just took a few attempts. She repeated the process and got the same results. She tried valiantly another thirty-three times, but the same thing happened over and over. She cursed under her watery breath, and rose from the floor.
She swam back and forth across the living room of her apartment in her equivalent of pacing. This was a habit of hers when she could not figure out what to do. Was there even anything she could do?
As she swam past her coffee table she grabbed her smart phone, which was floating an inch or so above the tabletop. She opened the browser and began to think of the proper way to phrase her VCR problem to search for a solution.
“VCR does not play video tape,” she spoke aloud as she typed the words into the search bar of her phone’s browser. The front page was flooded with results, most of which, based on the snippets of content she read below the links, pertained to problems or issues she was not having with her VCR. She decided that she needed to be more specific.
“VCR makes whirring and clicking sounds and does not play video tape.”
The vast majority of the results still seemed to be unrelated to her problem. There were even several links that lead to series revolving around VCR related fiction of various genres. While slightly annoyed that she could not find an answer to her problem, she bookmarked the VCR e-books to check out later. r />
Finally, after several fruitless pages, she found an entry on a VCR repair forum that seemed to be exactly what she needed. She clicked on the link and discovered that she had to be a registered user of the forum to read or make posts to the forum. She rolled her eyes in annoyance. She hated when websites did this…
“FixthemermaidsVCR1989” she typed into the username space after confirming her email and setting her password. As she began reading the forum, her heart lifted. The problems described were the exact same as what she was experiencing, and it was even the same brand and model of VCR. She clicked through several pages of various VCR repair experts offering suggestions that apparently had not worked, but then on the final page she became confused. The original poster had obviously found a solution to their problem, but the last posts were all by the same username, the one who had the problem in the first place.
“That’s better, but it’s still taking a long time,” one read, followed by, “No that’s not it. Now it’s doing it again,” and finally, “That’s it! That fixed everything and it is working as well as the day I bought it. Thank you so much, underwaterVCRexpert for all of your very professional help. I could not have done it without you!”
She looked and looked, not only within the specific thread, but throughout the entire forum for the user named underwaterVCRexpert who had solved the problem, but they were nowhere to be found. Had they deleted their account? Had they been banned from the forum and their posts deleted? What was going on? Why would something so terrible and inexplicable happen to such a VCR genius?
She decided to post on the thread and hope that the user who had the same problem would respond to her with the way that he fixed the issue. She looked at the date next to the original post. It was made ten years ago. She had kind of forgotten the internet had even existed ten years ago. She felt that the post was frivolous now. Even if the user still remembered how they had fixed their VCR, surely they did not check the VCR repair forum regularly.
She clicked on the user’s profile and saw that they had not logged into the forum since the day that they had made the post. The mermaid sighed in frustration as she posted her question on the forum, hoping that some sort of email relay might inform the user that someone had posted on their thread.
Realizing that she was unlikely to get an answer soon, if at all, she began to search for another solution to her VCR problem. She tried turning the VCR on again, and inserting the video tape just to see if it had begun to work. It had not, so she restarted her swim-pacing regiment around her