21st
Queens of the Stone Age: “Monsters in the Parasol”
Dr. Frankenstein was a plastic surgeon in L.A. He got into the business to create beauty but in ten years had found nothing but ugliness. In one of those seemingly endless nights of self-examination, the doctor had an epiphany: Beauty was not just in the body, but in the brain as well. He could mold all the bodies in the county but none of the minds. And these minds, warped and twisted, had to be sculpted along with the noses and cheeks and eyes. Frankenstein’s destiny had been revealed to him: Put a beautiful body together with a beautiful mind and create a Beautiful Creature.
Over the next several months Frankenstein began experimenting with recently deceased bodies. He trolled the morgue looking for potentials and one night came across the body of an ultimate fighter - who had died unexpectedly from a strange heart condition. The doctor took the body and began work. After two days of tucks, tweaks, snips and snaps the body was ready.
Frankenstein next had to find the perfect mind. It looked like Fate had dropped it into his lap when he read the paper and found that the World’s Preeminent Philosopher had croaked after a serving of his nightly Jell-O dessert. Frankenstein rushed to the morgue scooped up the brain and returned to his laboratory to complete his creation.
‘Awake! Awake, My Beauty! Awake!’ Dr. Frankenstein pumped the creature, laying prostrate upon the table, full of electricity. The doctor waited, watching with agony. The creature did not stir. He cranked up the voltage. ‘Rise!’ He shocked the body, which shook wildly as the electricity surged through it. The doctor stopped. Resignation began to creep up his spine. It was not to be. Suddenly, the creature leapt from the table. ‘Ssssuhmmm! Trrrraahhhb!’ It tried to speak, its arms and legs flailing, its head spinning. The doctor’s eyes lit up with an energy more powerful than electricity. ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’
The day after the creature’s birth, Frankenstein awoke to find the creature in the bathroom wearing a woman’s skirt suit and applying makeup to its face. The doctor began questioning the creature but it would not speak. After finishing with its makeup, the creature gave Frankenstein a slight smile and left the lab. The doctor stood stunned for several moments before he realized his creation was loose. He grabbed his coat and went out after the creature.
Frankenstein had nearly caught up with the creature when he decided to hold back. The creature was not harming anyone as it walked down the sidewalk and even seemed to be on a mission of some sort.
Dr. Frankenstein decided to simply follow the creature that day and only intervene if necessary - he had tranquilizer darts in his coat. What he saw surprised him. The creature went to the toughest neighborhoods of the city. It walked confidently down these mean streets with a calm and calculated demeanor, ignoring the vicious comments concerning its attire.
In the afternoon, a man snatched a woman’s purse a block ahead of the creature. The thief was making his getaway, about to pass the creature, when the creature stuck out its arm, clotheslining the thief. The creature then bent down slowly and methodically beat the thief. A moment later it returned the purse to the woman, giving her the same slight smile it gave the doctor that morning.
When Frankenstein returned home that night, after trailing the creature, he thought that either the World’s (Former) Preeminent Philosopher was one kinky and heroic man or that he had gotten the wrong brain. He went into his recycling can, fished out the newspaper about the philosopher’s death and looked through the rest of the obituaries. There he found his answer: The ‘Venture Beach Vigilante’, a forty year old woman who, after her husband was robbed and beaten to death and the suspects never found, took it upon herself to clean up the streets, had died of an aneurysm after five years of protecting the city. This was the brain in the creature.
It didn’t take long for the city to find out that they had a new vigilante. Rather than run it out of town with pitchforks and torches, they embraced it and the streets were safer for it. As for Dr. Frankenstein, he gave up on his quest for Beauty. His work was done.
