The Return of the Giant Rat of Sumatra: Part 1

Page Created: 04/16/11. Last Updated: 05/26/11.

Editor's Note:

YOUNG DULLARD was a fanzine edited by Philip J. De Parto which featured a variety of works including including a serialized adventure of a superhero named Young Dullard. Additional notes will be posted after the story has been posted in its entirety.

The following work is reprinted with permission from:

Young Dullard Ashamedly Presents:

THE RETURN OF THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA (Part I)

by Charles Garofalo

(Featuring Young Dullard, relentless and sciolistic

foe of evil, and champion of truth and justice,

neither of which concepts he truly understands.)

An aura of menace hung over the city in the night. Dogs howled. Cats wailed. Children cried. Sleepers awoke sweating from nightmare. Muggers got so nervous that they couldn't hang onto their victims. Nightwatchmen tried to whistle and found themselves whistling funeral marches in minor keys. Policemen tried to twirl their nightsticks and dropped them on their insteps.

It was even worse than the usual New York City Nights.

Of course, Young Dullard, up and coming young superhero and illegal immigrant from the planet Arth, was not deterred by the aura as he went about his nightly patrol. In fact, he didn't even notice it.

"Fog's rolling in," he acutely observed as the mist got so thick that he could not see past his nose. He walked into a lamppost, knocking it to a 110 degree angle. Two bats flew past his face chuckling evilly as they went.

"Gosh," Young Dullard mumbled. "Gee."

About him in the fog, Young Dullard heard noises. Slow, stealthy footsteps. The sound of something being dragged. A chittering as of baritone rats. The beat of leathery wing. The steady glop of dripping slime.

A thickly accented voice, coming not thirty feet from where he was standing, solemnly intoned: "Ve'll go to your place young lady. You ... vouldn't like mine."

"Natives are restless tonight," Young Dullard duly noted. Not for the first nor the last time did the Arthian wish that he'd gained night vision or x - ray vision when he'd come to this strange planet, as had theat other extraterrestrial he'd met. That guy from ... what was that planet's name again? Neon? Argon? Something like that. Anyway, he had special eyesight because of it.

Well, Young Dullard felt he'd certainly done an outstanding job as it was, even without special sense or flying ability. Hadn't th crime rate dropped since he'd started patrolling this neighborhood?

Actually, it hadn't, at least according to the newspaper accounts. But what did they know? He'd certainly encountered far fewer criminals of varying degrees of vileness in his latest round of this precinct.

Young Dullard never considered the fact that a six foot six inch man with the build of a professional football fullback, dressed in bright orange and purple tights lurching about in the dark was a pretty easy thing for criminals of varying degrees of vileness to spot and avoid being encountered.

Nor did he realize that he was being watched.

* * * * *

In an improbable magic castle hovering eerily in the not - space of a sinister nowhere, a being bent over a crystal ball, observing Young Dullard's progress (if what Young Dullard was doing could be considered progress) on his nightly rounds.

The being resembled nothing so much as a tall and exceeding beautiful woman with statuesque features and long black hair, dressed in a style not dissimilar to that favored by the vamps in the silent movies. There was an aura of power about her, of might. Back in human prehistory, on the great island the ancient Greeks and Egyptians were later to call Atlantis, she had been worshipped as a goddess. That sort of thing can go to a person's head, and it had to hers.

Her name was Athrozetz.

Tiring of the distortion effect the crystal ball's spherical shade had on the picture, Athrozez blanked out the crystal with a gesture and transferred the picture to a larger screen she also kept in her room. Ah, that was better.

Considering the spectacle of a grown man stumbling about the city streets late at night in tights, the goddess (for Athrozetz, if no one else, considered herself as such) picked up a small brass mallet and struck an iron gong near her couch.

The gong reverberated throughout the halls of her castle, echoing in every nook and cranny. The one person it was to summon appeared in a second, regardless of the fact that he had to run from the other side of the castle, navigating around suits of armor, ancient statuary, large grandfather clocks, loafing servants, and the mummified bones of someone who had died of old age while wandering around lost in Athrozetz's extensive keep.

Athrozetz hardly looked up as the squat, toadlike little man entered her quarters.

"Ah, Nergon. You are prompt."

"As always, by lady."

Then Erus followed Nergon into the room. "You summoned, my lady?"

"I summoned Nergon, not you," Athrozetz hissed, then softened her tone as she saw the hurt look in Erus' eyes ... the only part of his face not concealed by his gray hood and mask.

"No, stay, good Erus. This concerns you as much as Nergon here."

It was politic to stay on Erus' good side. Although he seemed smitten with her, Athrozetz knew just how deadly an enemy this seven and a half foot tall demon warrior could be. And men scorned, human and otherwise, were every bit as dangerous as women.

"Do you recall the business of the Death Watch?" Athrozetz asked her two comrades innocently.

"Indeed I do!" roared Erus. "I recall we had that precious watch within our grasp, the timepiece of power, whith which we could have ruled the universe. The that blasted fool we used to get the watch insisted on winding it for us. So what does he do? We winds it the wrong way and too hard. One twist of his fingers and booiinngg, the watch is shot beyond repair. And the recoil blew the three of us back into nowhere."

"Do you by any chance recall the dupe's name, Sir Erus?"

"Oh, it was Young Asshole, or Young Idiot, or something along those lines."

"I believe it awas Young Dullard, my lady," answered the patient Nergon.

"Look on the screen."

"That's him," raved Nergon. "That's the fool who dropped the anvil on my foot, who flushed my wallet down the john and blew me off Earth. That's him alright!"

"That's the young knave who spilled the hot Lobster Newburg in my lap!" screamed Erus. "The one who ran into me from behind and knocked me into the lava pit. Oh, if I could get at him!"

For emphasis Erus materialized a broadsword in one hand and a morning star in another. Spontaneous weaponry was his most notable trick.

"Get rid of those things, you fool, before you hurt yourself." shouted Athrozetz. "Anyway, the youth is going to atone for his mistakes."

"How?" asked both of her comrades.

"By going on a quest, a quest to free us from this dimension. I have arranged for him to meet someone tonight who will start him on the quest. It will be difficult and torturous, a fitting punishment for the dear boy, too."

"It will also serve as a test."

"A test? For what?" asked Erus suspiciously.

"Oh, just to see if worthy of a certain position in my household," Athrozetz smiled enigmatically, "a special position."

"Restroom attendant?" Nergon asked hopefully.

"You'll see."

Nergon watched the screen eagerly, awaiting whatever his lady had arranged to befall to Young Dullard to happen. Erus, however, preferred to watch the goddess. He did not like the softening he thought he detected in her eyes as she watched the Arthian make his way through the city streets. She was looking at the hero in a way she'd never looked at him, in a way he'd have given a right arm to happen. Surely she could not be attracted to that dolt! That imbecile! She couldn't be. Just to make sure, though, he would have to dispose of Young Dullard.

* * * * *

Suddenly a scream cut through the night air, followed by a second scream. As Young Dullard turned in the direction of the commotion, a third scream cut through the air.

His keen intellect at once informing him that something was amiss, the valiant Arthian quickly ran in the direction the noise had come from. Within four paces he had smashed through the plate glass window and metal burglar grill of one of the city's finer china shops, which had the misfortune of being between him and the screams. Undeterred by this event, the benighted avenger charged onward, shoving shelves out of the way, ignoring the vases, glassware, and dishes falling and exploding all about him. Reaching the rear exit, Dullard tore the door off its hinges and hurled it over his right shoulder for luck. It knocked the arms off a bisque Ho-Tai and demolished the one set of dishes Dullard had missed on his quick trip through the store.

(Later the destruction was attributed to an African Rhinoceros that had escaped earlier that night. The authorities believed that nothing human could have done it. They were right.)

The sound of the screams grew closer. After a few minutes of blindly running about the streets, Young Dullard discovered the source of all the noise.

A woman with her back to the wall was screaming with all her might. Her eyes bulged with fear, her face deathly white in the fog-misted lamplight.

"Here now!" Young Dullard called as he ran up to her. "Stop that! Why are you screeching like that? People will think you're in trouble."

The woman pointed to a spot behind young Dullard, a part of the area the hero had not run across in his travels that night.

"You mean to say that you don't call that trouble?" she asked.

The valiant Arthian turned ... and stood rooted to the spot. Behind him loomed a rat, a rat whose glaring, malevolent eyes bespoke and inhuman intelligence, an obscene figure of a rat nine feet tall!

TO BE CONTINUED.