Emperor of Gondwanaland (30 page)

“Uh, sorry to bother you, sir. This is the limo service. We just wanted to confirm your appointment—”

“Yes, damn you! Eleven tonight!”

Prince O.J. slammed the receiver back down. Then he moved to the closet, opened the door, roughly pushed aside the golf bag.

There lay his sweet doom.

“Ah,” whispered Stormbringer in its oily voice, “my old friend. Do we feast tonight?”

Prince O.J. grabbed the sheathed instrument of carnage and strapped it on. Instantly a thrill as of his veins filling with pure essence of poppy surged through him. Once more he knew why he could never part with Stormbringer. Filtered through its presence, the world assumed a clarity of purpose and vision.

“We will feast,” agreed Prince O.J. “I have someone in mind— someone quite
special
.”

“Perhaps there will even be another with her,” the sword said greedily.

“Naw, I got that bitch so scared she don’t
dare
date.”

She

At the ornately carved, vine-cloaked entrance to the abandoned temple, O. J. Simpson paused. Pushing back the pith helmet that had protected him from the African sun for the seemingly endless months of his trek into the unexplored interior of the Dark Continent, he stopped to contemplate what he had achieved. No civilized explorer had ever penetrated this far during recorded history! O.J. Simpson was about to become a legend. His name would stand in the history books as a shining example of the heights a man could reach if he followed his dream.

Ending his reverie, pushing aside some vines, O.J. stepped through the ancient portal—

And was snared!

Natives of a peculiar degenerate type (myths O.J. had never countenanced till now referred to them as “mediamen,” an apparent reference to their status midway between beasts and humans) quickly bound him up, lifted him off his feet, and carried him through torch-lit tunnels deep underground.

In what appeared to be a throne room of sorts, he was deposited still bound in a stone chair. Weird drums and flutes began to play. And from the shadows stepped—a woman!

But what a woman! Clad only in diaphanous silks and ropes of pearls, she was femininity distilled into its purest essence, regal, imperious, seductive. Moreover, she was a white woman, although bronzed by the sun.

Most strange to find one such here in Africa’s heart of darkness.

“So,” said the queenly figure in a not unkindly tone, “you have returned to me at last.”

“Returned? What do you mean?”

“Ah, my dearest one, don’t you recall how, in another life long ago, you were Prince O-ren-thal, and I was your lover, Princess Faye-res-nik. How we pledged eternal troth, even unto death—and beyond! And now here we are, reincarnated and drawn together by the stars.”

“Lady, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but I don’t buy all that New Age hooey.”

The woman reared back violently. “Sacrilege! You dare to defy me? Don’t you know the name the natives use for me? ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’!

“I shall possess you, body and soul, even if I must reduce you to my slave! Hmmm, let me see. I shall set you a task, one even repugnant to your noble nature, in order to prove the folly of resisting me. What shall it be, what shall it be— Ah, I have it! A murder!”

O.J. fought his bonds without success. He could feel an occult narcotic haze wrapping his normally lucid thought processes, drawing him deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of damnation—

One from which he would be incredibly lucky—even with the assistance of the most highly paid lawyers—ever to emerge.

The Hornet’s Sting

One lovely June night, Britt “O.J.” Reid, crusading editor and publisher of
The Daily Sentinel
, summoned his faithful manservant, Kato, to his side. Reid sat in the parlor of his mansion (paid for by the honest sweat of his brow and his paper’s lucrative advertising income) drinking a healthful glass of that fine California fruit juice, an “addiction” to which had earned him his jocular nickname.

“Kato, have you finished polishing the Black Beauty yet?”

“Yes sir! She’s fueled and ready to go!”

“Let’s don our costumes and hit the road then! I have news of a malignant sore upon the body of this fair city that needs some of our special kind of surgery!”

“You got it, Boss!”

Soon the Green Hornet—none other than Reid himself; and how his buddies would have been surprised by his transformation!—accompanied by his martial-arts-trained sidekick, Kato, were seated in their astonishing crime-fighting vehicle, a customized ebony Ford Bronco dubbed “Black Beauty.”

“So as not to attract undue attention, and also obey the relevant traffic laws, what say I drive us to our destination at approximately ten miles per hour, Boss!”

“Good thinking, Kato! I’ll direct you!”

After approximately an hour of easygoing travel, the pair found themselves parked inconspicuously outside a familiar locale.

“But Boss—can this be right? Isn’t this your ex-wife’s place?”

Emerging from the car and checking his various weapons—gas gun, “stinger”—the Green Hornet replied, “Indeed, Kato. It is with sincere regret that I must spring a perhaps shocking surprise on you. My former wife has seen fit to tread the path of the world’s oldest profession. Out of sheer greed, not content with my generous stipends, she has started soliciting weak-willed males for sex. I have no doubt, in fact, that we shall find one such here tonight. In the words of the street-wise, she’s now nuthin’ but a goddamn ho! And we’re going to bring her to justice, much as it might hurt us personally. Unfortunately, lawless times require that we masked avengers take justice into our own hands! Now, here’s my plan. I want you to render my wife and any of her ‘johns’ we discover to be with her unconscious with your dazzlingly swift karate moves. Then leave the rest to me!”

Kato’s expression—never that of a brilliant man—now reflected a puzzled acquiescence. “Sure, Boss. Whatever you say.”

“Okay! Let’s move!”

Within seconds, Nicole Simpson and an unidentified male lay quiet on the stone walkway.

“Very good, Kato! Now, you just go back to the car and polish the head lamps a bit, okay? And oh—make ready the Hornet Handiwipes! I have a feeling I’ll be needing them!”

The Dream Life of Ronald Mitty

Driving through the evening after his boring, dreary job was over, Ronald Mitty began to indulge himself in his favorite pastime. The mental cinema of which he was scriptwriter, director, projectionist, and sole audience member started to play.

I’ll walk up her front path, suave and cool, pretending I’m not impressed at all by such a fancy place. She’ll probably think I live in such swell digs myself. I’ll ring the bell, straighten out my uniform— Oh, heck, this uniform! But I had to come straight from work or miss my big chancel Well, the heck with it, all the girls say my butt looks cute in my waiter pants. Where was I? Oh, yeah, right. The door opens, I smile, she says hi, I say hi, then I hold up the sunglasses, maybe twirling them a little on my finger, and say, “Do these look familiar, Mrs. Simpson?” No, wait, that’s wrong! How dumb can you get! Miss Brown, that’s what I’ll call her. Or should it be Ms. Brown-Simpson? Oh, rats! I’ll just go with Nicole. “Do these look familiar, Nicole?” “Why, yes, they do! However did you find them? You must be an extremely smart and observant fellow! I’d be absolutely lost without them! Glare of publicity and all, don’t you know! Now, how can I possibly reward you?” So I say, “Well, a ginger ale would go down nice about now,” and she invites me in, and then we—

The images in Ronald Mitty’s brain acquired that peculiar vaporish insubstantiality imposed by the Hays Code at the most interesting moments in the narrative. Forcing himself to concentrate on his driving, Ronald Mitty began to whistle a sprightly tune from the current Hit Parade, congratulating himself all the while on his most excellent good fortune.

Condo of the Damned

The children—if
children
they still were—had been tucked into bed for the night.

But that didn’t mean they were
safe
.

Or that anyone was safe from
them
.

Armed with a glass of Perrier to soothe her nerves and wet her nervously parched throat, Nicole Brown Simpson, mother of Sydney and Justin, curled up on the couch in her condo at 875 South Bundy, and prayed that she would survive the night.

Once more, for the umpteenth time, she racked her brains for anything she could have done differently since that fateful morning in Cancun, when her world had come undone. But as always, she could come up with no alternative paths to the ones she had taken.

How
could
she have known on that day—when the children (then still blessedly normal) had come running to her where she lay sunning her lissome form on the beach, happily babbling of their mysterious find—that her life and theirs were about to undergo a precipitous change for the worse?

Sydney and Justin had been so thrilled with their sandy find— a small gold casket, encrusted with barnacles and draped with seaweed—that Nicole had never imagined that anything dangerous could be lurking inside it. Then, when her two beautiful youngsters—the beloved products of the wonderful marriage between Nicole and her worshipful, adoring O.J.—had finally cracked the casket open and that horrid cloud of green noxious gas had enveloped them, causing them to fall unconscious for a full twenty-four hours—only then had she shrieked and pulled her darlings away.

But too late. Much too late.

Nicole didn’t
care
what the doctors said. The children were
different
now. And not in a pleasant way. Thank God that she had managed to isolate O.J. from the worst of their bizarre new behavior, thanks to the ruse of pretending she wanted to maintain a separate household.

Of late, Sydney’s and Justin’s unchildlike demands and veiled threats had become nearly overwhelming—

“Mother, we need to talk.”

Nicole screamed and launched her nonalcoholic drink in an arc across the room.

Beside her, having crept up quietly as dust, stood the children.

Their eyes glowed in the dimly lit room. Liquid pools of golden fire, the orbs seemed to spin hypnotically in the eye sockets of their once-pleasant mulatto faces.

“Wha—what do we need to talk about?” stammered Nicole.

“Opening the way,” said Sydney, age nine, in a voice resonant as a tomb.

“So that more of us may come through,” explained Justin, age six.

“It requires blood, you see,” Sydney continued. “The blood of a relative and the blood of a stranger.”

Before Nicole could deny this horrifying request, the doorbell rang.

“And there’s the stranger,” said little Justin. “Just in time.”

Nicole made to leap up and flee, but was stopped by the paralyzing touch of her possessed daughter.

“Now,” said Sydney, “you’ll walk outside and pretend nothing’s wrong. Keep him talking. We’ll be right with you—as soon as we visit the kitchen for the tools we need.”

Helpless, silently screaming inside, Nicole did as she was programmed.

Beyond the door stood Ronald Goldman. “Hey, Nicole—do these look familiar?”

Run!
Nicole tried to yell.
Save yourself!
But instead of the warning, all that emerged was foolish talk of the dinner she had just enjoyed and her unfelt gratitude for the return of her meaningless property. Moving her visitor outside with talk of not wanting to wake the children (!), Nicole admitted to herself at last that she was a dead woman.

But oh
, she selflessly thought a few seconds later as the knives wielded by the small but capable hands of her own children struck and struck again,
how will my poor darling O.J. ever manage all alone
?

Elementary, My Dear Cowlings

“Allow me to recapitulate,” said Sherlock Simpson in his familiar ratiocinative, brandy-mellowed, erudite tones. “Then perhaps you shall finally begin to grasp what is so patently obvious, Cowlings.”

Seated beside his mentor and friend in a slow-moving horseless carriage now cruising down the turnpikes of southern California, Dr. Cowlings replied in his hearty, bluff, and game manner, “Why, I’m always absolutely thrilled to listen to you, Simpson. You know that, of course, as you know everything! I’ve been carefully recording all your deductions and adventures for years now. Why, perhaps there’ll even be a book composed of them someday!”

“All beside the point, Cowlings, although I do appreciate your houndlike loyalty. The matter before us now is to ascertain the motives and probable destination of a certain party, based on the contents of his ‘getaway’ vehicle. We can see, first off, that he has made certain to obtain approximately ten thousand dollars in U.S. currency. A rather large sum, wouldn’t you say, for a simple ‘visit to the cemetery’? In addition, he carries a weapon, his passport, a map of Mexico, a fake beard, and a year’s supply of antivenereal sheaths. Left at home is a maudlin ‘suicide’ note plainly intended to send the authorities—so tiresomely blinkered, as always—on a wild goose chase. Very well—given all this, what conclusions can you draw, Cowlings?”