CHAPTER TWO AND A HALF : The Killing Moon (Unfinished/In Progress/Don't judge me too harshly it's only an outline)

Charles Cromwell was planning on taking over the world. So far he had the following plot:

Plans for World Domination: How I Will Rule

1. My government will decide important legislative matters with bouts of rock-paper-scissors, and games of dodgeball. Also footraces. Twice a year we will have balls. In addition we shall host a duck vs. turkey boxing competition every April, where the turkeys and ducks will box with gloves on their faces.

2. There will be mostly jaywalking as a mode of transport.

3. Workers will be paid one dollars, for every job. They will get this one dollars once a year in the form of an enormous cardboard check, handed to them by a man in a hotdog suit.

4.

Carl had stopped at four because he could not think of anything else vital to the way his government would run. His government’s structure laid out, he wrote up a statement on why the people of Gromit should vote for him for dictator.

If I controlled everything, there would be a severe increase in the rate of awesome. For example, not only would vending machines dispense pie and packets of ham but also guns that shoot acid, bottle rockets, and women’s lingerie. They would dispense pirates, famous historical figures, and other vending machines. All for free. Whether you wanted it or not. It would simultaneously be a biological miracle, seeing as a man-made object had discovered a way to reproduce itself. Just like dinosaurs.

Have a nice day,

Charles Cromwell.

Charles folded the paper angrily and got down to the launching pad where he and his buddy Jose Krycheck were going to conduct the best experiment ever for their biology class--it was the last week of high school and they were both looking for high honors, at least Jose was, Charles simply wanted to get his diploma so he wouldn't have to repeat for a third year in a row. The two of them had built a rocket, and intended to go to the moon with this rocket, or more specifically, Jose would go to the moon while Charles shouted at him through the two-way radio to hurry up with Charles's homework. Charles did his part by keeping a watch over Jose’s TV and refrigerator, in case a burglar who happened to be a grocer or an electronics dealer showed up. Little did either of them know, but this experiment had nothing to do with biology at all, and would receive an F two days later.

“Okay, are you at the controls?” Jose asked.

“Yes,” Charles said, as he turned up the volume on the Mexican wrestling program he was watching diligently.

“Okay, push the big, red button.”

“Okay.” The TV turned off. The TV turned on again. The coffee machine was started and stopped. Then the vacuum. Sounds of running could be heard on Charles’s half of the connection, followed by several crashes and some cursing. Finally Charles pushed the right button, an alarm sounded, and Jose flew into the sunlight in a gleaming red and white rocket, going very, very fast and with a heavy pull. Jose opted to work on Charles's algebra assignment during the ride. Charles discovered the liquor cabinet and passed out drunk on the floor within an hour.

A while later, on the moon, a rocket crashed down much to the chagrin of Hitler, who was currently hiding out in a moon base on account not of avoiding the law, but because he had only one testicle, and was rather embarrassed about this. Jose landed in a crater next to moon Hitler.

“Hello,” Jose called.

“Hi,” moon Hitler said awkwardly.

“So how’s it been?”

“I have only one testicle.”

“. . . I see. And so what brings you to the moon?”

“I am too embarrassed of having only one testicle to go back to earth.”

“You know, if you didn’t tell people about it, nobody would know,” Jose said, with a skeptical look.

“. . . Do you suppose that would work?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Hitler went back to earth, where the authorities apprehended him five minutes later.

Jose decided to investigate the moon for a bit. He took photos in front of all the famous landmarks, such as that one crater, and that one other crater, over there. He then put his instamatic camera into a plastic baggy and got into the rocket’s docking bay.

Within two hours Charles had downed three bottles of different contents and sizes in the Krycheck family liquor cabinet and was passed out on the floor with the sunlight reflecting through a green glass bottle blindingly and making him wince in half-consciousness. It was then that things went horribly wrong. 250,000 miles above the earth, on a craterous moon half white and downy and half horribly black, at the very same instant in which Jose's booted foot stepped upon the docking bay floor, something inside the computer's mainframe snapped. With a fizzling of strange flame and a sudden fiery jerk the rocket thrust into the air, the docking bay doors still open to the black vacuum of space outside like liquid black nothing, a nothingness so complete that it couldn’t even be completely nothing, but was scattered with stars. Jose fell into the void from these open doors as the rocket’s force caused an equal and opposite reaction; a force which was pulling on him. In his panic Jose saw only a blur, could not think as the pull threatened to crush him, to pull him out to emptiness. Struggling and hyperventilating, Jose got himself half into the docking bay, righted himself to stand upright in the threshold—suddenly like a bullet of cold steel the doors slammed shut of their own accord, right on Jose’s left arm and leg, severing them both just below the elbow and knee. Jose screamed as blood poured out and the rocket crashed into the atmosphere; things flew about and smashed equipment, including Jose’s glass helmet visor. Had he had time to examine the cabin before such an abrupt and disastrous takeoff, Jose would have noticed some strange wobbly things, jelly-fish like creatures, floating about, but now it was too late, and the infection had begun. Like a nightmare a swarm of them came flying at his smashed helmet, and Jose screamed as one burrowed behind his right eye, into the very core of his brain, and everything went black. Charles would have heard all of this on the radio, had he had the conscious to turn it on louder than his Mexican wrestling, and presuming he hadn't been so intoxicated. The rocket landed screeching to earth, crashing into its landing pad, and Jose, half of his own will and half-directed by the monstrous thing inside him, set to work.

An inestimable amount of time later, Charles woke up with a terrible hangover and went to throw up, and then to get some coffee. Pouring the coffee pot’s contents into a glass cup, he glanced out of Jose’s kitchen window. Pot and coffee and cup all fell to the floor as gravity greedily sucked all things alike to itself, and they shattered into a thousand pieces of sharp shiny glass. In the reflection of a piece of glass there was Charles, running to the garage door. From inside the garage the scent of liquid oxygen rocket fuel and burning chemicals wafted, some things glowed red hot and others just smoked, but no flames had yet appeared.

“Jose?” Charles asked softly. Nothing. Then, lowly, almost inaudibly, a clicking sound came, a metallic rap followed by what sounded like a footstep, irregular and almost limping. Two white eyes glowed out from the dark of the hull, one with a brown, familiar iris, the other a strange milky-white. Sounds of heavy breathing could be heard, and, jerkily, Jose came into the light, one foot came forward, booted in white, and then a monstrous metal leg formed of bent equipment twisted into a kind of robotic contraption. A hand gripped the door frame, and then, a severed stump of an arm, an inch below the elbow and then nothing, came into view. Then Charles saw the blood.

“Oh my god . . .”

“Oh, I’m quite alright,” Jose said in a hoarse voice. “But you, you are going to pay,” he added. “You are going to pay indeed.” Agilely Jose slipped a flare gun from his belt, aimed, and fired at Charles, no expression on his face—Charles ducked and ran as fast as he could out the door, Jose walking calmly behind him, clank, step, clank, step, firing shots as he went. Charles plunged into the blackness of night, racing down a steep twisting path of spiraled hill road, tripping over a rock wall and running into somebody’s car, making the alarm go off. Dogs barked for miles just as the moon rose into view from above the enormous tall tree that topped that oh-so-vertical hill which was home to Krycheck Laboratories, the business of Jose’s father.

Charles got home that night late, home being a room in the palace of Gromit’s royalty, a room far too near the infamous flooding for his liking. It was an Indian-style onion-domed building of inlaid gold and tile and rich hues, and Charles was mainly staying here because his father was opting for him to be married off to Princess Durga, something which nobody favored unless you got down to fiscal matters. Manly, chivalrous lad that he was, Charles opted to hide under a pile of pillows, and told Durga that if Jose tried to kill him, she should tell him to go away. Durga would have nothing to do with this.

As usually happens when somebody inept tries to hide, Charles was found a while later by an enraged Jose, who now had a robotic arm to match. He was tied, gagged, and locked in a trunk which smelled like Fritos, the worst smell known to man. The car crept up a narrow drive leading to the largest experimental power-plant in the world, where Jose parked, pulled Charles out of the trunk, and carried him towards the building. After a while he started hyperventilating and stooping with exhaustion; Charles was 200 pounds, and Jose was 115. Jose got an idea and put Charles down. He then went off for a bit. He came back driving a forklift, which he tied Charles to, and through these means he entered the building through the warehouse and into the dangerous chemicals lab. This lab was not like normal labs, in that rather than beakers and vials, this place contained whole vats of strangely-colored liquids. Indignantly, Charles muttered sarcastically and rolled his eyes at Jose as Jose tipped the forklift’s contents into a vat marked DANGER: UNSTABLE, and also LIQUID OXYGEN IN A HIGHLY KINETIC STATE (with a hint of lemon). As flesh met liquid a huge light blared out of the entire lab, illuminating the doorway like a horror movie vision. Jose chuckled evilly and walked briskly from the lab, clunking as he went and touching his fingertips to each other in a way similar to that of Mr. Burns. It was all very cliche.

After a while the flashes tapered off and became less bright and less frequent, and when they did the contents of the tank could be seen—muscle, tendon, and bone were all tensed and spastic as light shot from Charles's eyes and hands, then, finally the tension, just like the bright flashes of light, receded, and Charles slumped forward in the clearer than clear water, seeming dead. Suddenly his right hand shot up in a seizure-like jerk and grabbed a hold of the edge of the clear glass vat, and he pulled himself up almost involuntarily with an abnormal amount of strength. Like a floating cloud he hovered up into the air, and other things in the laboratory also began to float and spin on invisible axises. Slowly his eyes opened, glowing a translucent white, then fading off to egg-yolk yellow. Tentacles of liquid light shot from his palms but he was not afraid, and it was for one reason. He now had the means to carry out his plan--he was now, Carl the Evil Sorcerer.

Tonight was the two-year anniversary of that night, and Charles was feeling unusually pissed off. It was also the same night that Ignius Gloom decided to come to the palace.