HauntedMTL Original – Whoops-A-Doodle – Mark A. Nobles
Whoops-A-Doodle
Dedicated to the memory and spirit of Fredrick Brown
Mot moved down the Eternal Hallway with an effortless glide. He was tall, 8 foot 2 and a half inches to be precise, dressed in a black cloak, hood over his head, obscuring all facial features. In his bony left hand, he carried a long scythe parallel to his body.
Mot had been moving down the hall for somewhere between 750 and 900 years, give or take a decade or two. He wasn’t exactly sure as he hadn’t checked time before embarking on his journey. Time isn’t relevant to an Angel of Death.
Screams, throat rattles, and guttural moans from the eternally tortured were piped into the Eternal Hallway like Muzac in a suburban mall. Mot hummed along to his meeting wondering how long he had been traveling because he knew Bilé would chastise him if he were tardy. While it was impossible for Mot to be tardy, existing outside of time and all, Pwcca would burn him nonetheless. It was what Tezcatlipoca did, burn and torture and other things unspeakable.
Mot was also going through the innumerable names of Yaotzin. He had so danged many. Besides Bilé, Pwcca, Tezcatlipoca, and Yaotzin, other favorites were Adramalech, Apollyon, Mantus, Melek Taus, Mictian, Moloch, Nergal, Nihasa, Samnu, Sedit, Yen-lo-Wang, and many more unnavigable with a human tongue. His friends often called him Hoof.
Mot was not his friend, so choosing a name with which to address him was a befuddling task.
Several hundred years later Mot arrived at his destination. Standing in front of the door he removed the round, yellow smiley face pin from his cloak and dropped it in his pocket. “You got to go in the pocket for a while, Ted.” He had named the smiley face pin Ted. “Just for a little while.”
Uniform accessories were forbidden and Samnu was a stickler for dress code. Mot checked his breath to make sure it was putrid, shook his bony arms to relax and loosen up, then finally grabbed the handle, turned the knob, opened the door, and walked in.
The door creaked open like a rusty castle drawbridge. Mot glided into the outer office and stood in front of the secretary’s government surplus metal desk.
He stood for what seemed like fifty years. The secretary was typing memos or some such on an old Underwood typewriter, oblivious to Mot standing before her. She was a timeless hag, snaggletoothed, with open sores oozing puss, and wearing an immaculate Guy Laroche black dress accented with a pearl necklace and baby teeth earrings. She finished the memo with a flurry of mad typing, ripped it out of the Underwood, and slid it neatly on a stack of papers in her outbox. As she turned to Mot, a tricolored scab fell from her neck along with several ashy flakes. The skin on her face, what was left of it, had turned to leather and was stretched drum tight. Her empty eye sockets were black as pitch. Her eyeballs were missing, but her eyelids still clung to her forehead, drooping lackadaisically over the sockets. The left one still had a few lashes. The secretary’s name was Marzanna, her friends called her Marge.
Mot was not her friend, either.
“And how are you, Marzanna?” Mot inquired politely.
“Shitty,” she replied.
“Glad to hear it.” Mot rocked on the balls of his feet, drew a deep breath, and continued, “Is he in?”
“He’s been waiting,” Marzanna said testily. As she spoke, a left incisor fell out of her jaw and into her mouth. She rolled it with her wart covered tongue and spit it into a wastebasket across the room. “You are his last appointment. He’s anxious to leave for the weekend.”
“It’s the weekend, is it?”
“It is if he wants it to be,” she paused and lined her empty, gaping, soulless eye sockets directly at Mot, “and he always wants it to be the weekend.”
“Yes, of course, who doesn’t look forward to the weekend. Seems like it never gets here,” Mot laughed awkwardly, “mostly because it never does.”
Crickets crawled out of Marzanna’s left ear hole.
Mot knew he should stop talking but he kept hearing words drop out of his mouth, “Sorry if I’m late,” he turned and pointed a bony finger, missing the top joint, towards the open door, “They don’t call it the Eternal Hallway for nothing, you know.”
More crickets crawled out Marzanna’s left ear.
“Have a seat,” she said, dust spraying out of her mouth as she spoke. “I’ll tell him you’ve finally arrived.”
“Ahh, yes, thank you.” Mot turned and surveyed the outer office. If memory served, they had redecorated since he had last visited. His remembrance from before was the office had been medieval, heavy on blood, and tones of excrement. The room was now more inquisitiony with holocaust accents and hints of BDSM with no safe word. As he took a seat in a leather wingback chair, making sure the spike went straight up his ass, Mot asked, as casually as he could muster, “Any idea why he wishes to speak with me?”
If Marzanna had eyes, she would have cut them in his direction to signal Mot he should shut up. She didn’t need eyes to convey this message. Mot sat quietly. Marzanna picked up the phone, and viciously hit the intercom button. After two beats, “He’s finally arrived.” After another two beats, “I’ll tell him.” Before she could hang up the phone, her hand fell off her wrist and into her lap, the receiver clacking to the floor. She took no notice. “He’ll be right with you.”
Mot sat quietly, squirming as little as an Angel of Death can when he is nervous and has a wooden spike up his posterior.
Soon enough the door to Nergal’s office opened and he stepped into the outer office. He was tall, though not as tall as Mot, thin, and his face was pale almost to transparency. He had no outstanding features save a pencil thin mustache. His suit was black and for a splash of color, he wore a lavender beret atop his head at a rakish tilt.
Mot, thank you for coming, unimpale yourself and come on in.
“Thank you,” said Mot. He carefully rose and glided ahead of Adramalech into the inner sanctum.
Maggie.
“Yes, sir?”
Hold my calls.
“No one calls you.”
I know.
He turned and walked into his office. Mot was standing in front of a six foot tall, twenty foot wide, and ten foot deep black marble desk. The walls of the office were yellow fire and the floor was high viscosity lava. The room smelled of sulfur, ragweed, and lemon rinds. Nihasa closed the door behind him and walked to his desk.
I’m sorry to take you off the streets, Mot, but HR is climbing up my ass about you and I think you know why.
“I more than meet my quota, I’m top 15 percent every quarter.”
It’s not production, Mot, it’s method.
“You said snot.”
Don’t humor me, Mot.
“No, sir.”
Mantus walked behind his desk and sat on a giant golden throne.
Please, make yourself comfortable, stand in the boiling diarrhea barrel.
Mot glided to the barrel of boiling diarrhea in the middle of the room, “Head first or feet first?”
Feet first is fine.
Mot climbed into the barrel.
Comfortable?
“Not really.”
I have reports here. Melek Taus shuffled through papers on his desk, found the report he was looking for and began to read.
Intake says some people are arriving in hell snickering. He looks up to Mot and shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.
What the what, Mott. Snickering?
“Uhm.”
That’s not all.
Shuffling more papers he comes up with another report.
Here’s one that says chortling. Chortling, Mot. Pause for emphasis. I don’t even know what chortling is but I’m pretty sure it is worse than snickering. You are a freaking Angel of Death dispatching souls to hell. They are not supposed to arrive chortling and snickering. That’s for souls going the other way.
“Some are scared,” pleaded Mot. “Some are really scared, and disconcerted.”
Sedit rubbed his temples.
Explain to me this method of yours I’ve been hearing about.
“Well, I sneak up on them,” Mot crouches in the barrel of boiling diarrhea as best he can, raises his scythe and torques his back, “then I whack their head clean off,” he lets rip a swing of the scythe, “and as the head tumbles and rolls I say, ‘Whoops-a-doodle.’” He stands straight and fidgets a might. “Kind of ironic like, you know. Whoops-a-doodle.”
Whoops-a-doodle.
“Whoops-a-doodle.”
Long, slow, heavy sigh from behind the desk.
First thing, Mot, and take this as constructive criticism. So, you cut their head off in one fell swoop, which is okay, I suppose, on occasion, but it would be better if you hacked them up a bit. Use the pointy end of the scythe to stab them, then slice and dice a little. I mean, we gave you the scythe for a reason. One, it looks cool, especially with the robe and all, and two, it isn’t very efficient for killing people, you have to work at it. So take advantage, Mot, come on, ingenuity, my man.
“I see what you’re saying.”
Do you, Mot. Do you really?
“Yes, sir.”
I need to know that this time, you really hear what I’m saying.
“I do. More stark terror, less irony and whimsy.”
Stark terror ALL the time, irony on occasion, to break the monotony. Absolutely no whimsy. Whimsy is out.
“Got it.”
No more whoops-a-doodle?
Mot sighed, his hood slouched, he whispered, “Whoops-a-doodle is right out.”
Moloch slaps both hands on the black marble.
Excellent, he exclaimed.
Mot began to climb out of the barrel of boiling diarrhea, careful not to spill any on the lava floor.
One last thing, Mictian said.
Mot was one beaten down, hapless Angel of Death. He looked mournfully to Yen-lo-Wang.
You know what I’m going to ask for. He held out his hand.
Mot sighed, reached into his pocket and withdrew Ted.
You know we freaking see you. Everywhere. Throughout eternity, time and space.
“I know.”
Mot stretched out a shaky, bony hand and gave the smiley face button to Apollyon, who took it, opened his desk drawer to reveal hundreds of other smiley face buttons with names like Billy, Joey, Fred, Buddy and so on. He dropped Ted with the others and closed the drawer.
So we are all clear, are we?
“Yes, sir.”
Go knock them dead, Mot.
Mot shuffle-glided out of the office and back down the Eternal Hallway.
Mark A. Nobles is a sixth generation Texan. Born on Fort Worth’s infamous Jacksboro Highway, Markproudly claims blood and kinship with Thunder Road’s gamblers, outlaws, and wastrels. His work has appeared in Cowboy Jamboree, Sleeping Panther Review, Crimson Streets, Cleaver Magazine, Curating Alexandria, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and other publications. He has produced and/or directed three feature documentaries and several short, experimental films. Mark lives in Fort Worth but hopes to die in the desert. He loves his two dogs, two daughters, and Texas, but not necessarily in that order. He can be found and followed on Facebook @ Flyin’ Shoes Films.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
You’ve seen me as Theda Bara, a Witch, and a Necromancer already (as well as Cleopatra, Elvis, and Andy Warhol) but here are some more fun costumes I’ve worn while figure modeling for the Friday morning art group at Hutchinson Art Center. The group is switching to Saturdays but hopefully I’ll still be able to make it in from time to time… Life’s a circus, or maybe a magic act in a shamanic ritual with Holly Hobbie… At any rate – beam me up Scotty, I have your missing spaceship part…
Yeah yeah, so none of that was really all that terrifying. Just another time warp in all honesty. At least there’s still some residual Rocky Horror vibes to be found, but then again, there usually are with me when I get into the identity based costumes.
But in follow up and in the spirit of so much of my other randomness, here’s a music video for Everything Changes by Eytan and The Embassy. Check it out if you want to see some more fun costumes in an immersive homage montage experience unlike any other. (If the video doesn’t load, just follow the link here.) See how many artists you can recognize in this quick change setup. Ready… Set… Go!
