LNH: Pants Rabbit Lad: Whatever Happened to Suicide Werewolf?

Tom Russell milos_parker at yahoo.com
Mon Nov 6 01:06:10 PST 2006


PANTS RABBIT LAD in
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...
SUICIDE WEREWOLF?

A VOCAB-STORY CHALLENGE
BY TOM RUSSELL

   Deadly toxins plume from the tall gray stack. 
Inside, Pants Rabbit Lad knows he must act fast.
   "Once my highly deadly toxins are absorbed into the
atmosphere and become part of the water cycle," says
the unkind Suicide Werewolf, "it will be only a matter
of days before it rains down!"
   "I'm sorry," says Pants Rabbit Lad, scratching his
groin, "but I'm not going to let that happen!"
   Suicide Werewolf turns up his nose.  "That's the
optimistic statement of the century!  I dare say that
I could quite easily knock you into next week!"  He
smirks, scratching the hair on his left leg.
   "Ah," says Pants Rabbit Lad as Suicide Werewolf
begins scratching the right leg as well, "but you're
covered head to toe in short, curly fur, remember? 
With my ability to have and spread body lice, I think
this victory is in the bag."
   Within moments, Suicide Werewolf begins to freak
out.  Pants Rabbit Lad takes this moment to act. 
"Two, four, six, eight," he says as he punches Suicide
Werewolf unconscious, "who do we appreciate?"
   Before he can say "Pants Rabbit Lad", he notices
the last of the toxins escaping into the air along
with any trace of his good luck.

   "When it comes to screwing up," snarls the Ultimate
Ninja, "you really wrote the book!  What are we going
to do now?"  The Ultimate Ninja sighs before sending
Pants Rabbit Lad out of the room, seeing no point in
continuing the lace. [*]
   What was it he had learned from his ancient Ninja
master?  "Do not be angry without purpose, for an
angry worm always takes the bait."
   "Whatever the hell that means," says the Ninja,
turning sadly towards the rapidly fading dusk.
   
   Pants Rabbit Lad dreams that he is having tea with
a giant spider.  When he awakens, he cannot decipher
its meaning.
   It's only after he rolls out of bed that he
realizes that he now has a tail.

   "Just as your proximity to Suicide Werewolf gave
him crabs, his proximity to you has transferred
werewolf-type properties," explains his (completely
hairless) psychiatrist of the last four years as she
pockets the dough.  She begins to write out the next
appointment card before tossing it into the
waste-basket adjacent her desk.
   "Silly me," she says, "still caught up in rituals
of the past.  After all, we're all going to die in a
deadly toxic rain thanks to you and that villain whose
werewolfism you're starting to copy.  Hmm-- I wonder
if I can still psychoanalyze people as a ghost?"
   Her words, dripping with contempt, cut him with the
expertise that comes naturally to a surgeon.  With the
scalpel of a ruthless mind and a psychological body to
operate on (ridden with the cancers of self-doubt,
guilty dreams, and secrets), she very quickly draws
blood.

   Tomorrow night, the rain is supposed to fall, but
Pants Rabbit Lad is more worried about tonight and its
full moon.

   "I liked it better when we were worried about the
Russians, and the bomb."  Pants Rabbit Lad mumbles an
apology to the sneering Steak-and-Potatoes Man and
wonders if any of his comrades are going to let him
have any peace.  As he sees Master Blaster and
Sarcastic Lad clearing the corner, he knows this hope
is just plain wrong.
   "Hey, Commander Crabs," says the caustic crusader,
"that whole toxic smoke/werewolf/toxic rain holocaust
thing is quite a feather in your cap!"
   "Yeah, way to go," says Master Blaster, using a
double thumbs-up to underline his statement.

   Night falls, and Pants Rabbit Lad begins to squirm.

   Pants Rabbit Wolf, his body aflame, tries to
relieve the painful itching by rubbing up against a
thorny branch.  "I'd worry about whether or not this
is going to happen every month, or just until it gets
out of my system, but, really, what's the point?"

   They find him the next morning, human and naked in
the streets save for something around his neck that
looks suspiciously like a Christmas wreath.

   "And all she has to do is drop by our studio to
collect her prize!  But you better make it quick!  As
to why, let's take a moment to talk to WKNT's resident
weather man, Barton the Amazing Weather-Clown!"
   "Well, Wally, what with the toxic rain that will
kill you on contact and, in general, make all air
unsafe for human consumption, I'd say it's every bit
as bad as you think."  He pulls a clown horn from the
breast pocket of his green vest.  He gives it three
sad long honks and short melancholy one-- a
traditional clown blessing.  "The rain's going to come
at noon today, and it's going to come fast and thick."

   "Hi Nina," says Pants Rabbit Lad as he passes the
Ultimate Ninja's visiting eight-year-old niece, "I see
you're still working on your school paper."
   "Sally's helping me," says Nina, holding up a
headless glove puppet.
   "Nina," says the Ninja, as he enters the hallway,
"what'd I tell you about talking to Pants Rabbit Lad,
pumpkin?"  He tosses a banana in the air and with a
swift swipe of his ginsu blade he manage to lop off
the top of the peel.
   "If I talk to Pants Rabbit Lad, you'll cut the
heads off my dollies," says Nina, staring wide-eyed at
the forlorn banana peel top.  "And you'll preserve
them with formaldehyde and keep them with the others
in a bottle."
   "Ninja have innate parenting skills," says the
Ultimate Ninja with a satisfied exhalation of breath.
   Pants Rabbit Lad shudders as he wonders how many of
Nina's doll heads the Ninja has started to collect. 
And in that moment, he snatches a hint of bravery
hidden in an unfathomably pathetic abyss.
   "You have terrible parenting skills," says Pants
Rabbit Lad, and already the words in his throat are
subject to a tight and cowardly squeeze.  "I would
never say anything before, but since we're all going
to die anyway, I've got nothing to lose and, to be
quite frank, I've just about reached my limit!"
   "Please don't kill him, Uncle Grumpy," says Nina,
looking away from her school paper (which,
incidentally, was about a chameleon).
   "Listen, you little twerp," says the Ninja,
stepping towards Pants Rabbit Lad, "with my bare
hands, I can halve a diamond."
   Self-Righteous Preacher, Lester, and Cheeez Cowboy,
all of them soaking wet, suddenly run down the hall,
their voices a far from harmonious chorus.
   "We're saved," says Self-Righteous Preacher, "saved
by the Lord in All His Mercy and Glory!"
   "It's plain old rain," explains Lester, his fingers
crossed that this rather colourless plot-puppet
appearance might lead to him appearing more often.
   "The weather man said it was toxic rain, but as
always, the weather man was wrong, it's one of the
rules of the universe, like eyes before pee except in
the sea," babbles the gouda gunfighter.  He celebrates
by slicing up a cheddar brick.  Self-Righteous
Preacher declines this extravagance, preferring the
simple pleasure of uncooked oats.  Lester, realizing
that none of them are going to have any more lines,
wonders if perhaps he should just up and quit.
   Once they have all left, the Ultimate Ninja stares
at Pants Rabbit Lad, and the look about turns him to
stone.  "So, you were challenging my parenting
techniques?" says the Ninja, his voice extremely cold.
   "I wouldn't be caught dead."

   Pants Rabbit Lad scratches his groin until the skin
underneath the hair is a bright and painful pink.  The
tail is gone, another full moon came and went without
incident, and life is sweet.
   "Well, if one's definition of sweet was unbearable
physical pain, aching loneliness, and soul-crushing
ostracization, then, sure, my life fits like a glove."
 But if sweet was defined by having a life that was
slightly more interesting than Limp-Asparagus Lad's
personality, than his life was actually not sweet, but
a gaping, dark, unforgiving chasm.
   It sucks when you're less interesting that a man
who's named after a vegetable.

--
   

[*] According to the Random House Dictionary, one
meaning of "lace" is to assault someone physically or
verbally, i.e., the teacher laced into his students.

Pants Rabbit Lad, Ultimate Nina, Cheeez Cowboy: Tom
Russell.  Nina's appearance here, as a child, would
correspond with the summer/early fall she spent with
her uncle in 1998.  She is again visiting LNHHQ
currently, though Pants Rabbit Lad passed in 2005
(story time) or 2006 (actual posting time).

Suicide Werewolf: Tom Russell; created with Lee's
Useless Superhero Generator way back in 1998.  He was
a member of the Perplexing Random Battalion of Poland.

Ultimate Ninja, Self-Righteous Preacher: wReam.

Lester: Ken Schmidt.

Sarcastic Lad: Gary St. Lawrence.

Master Blaster: Martin Phipps.

Limp-Asparagus Lad, of course, did not actually appear
in this story, but is the property of Saxon Brenton.

This was, of course, an entry into my own Vocab-Story
Contest.  It took me about four hours to cobble this
together into something somewhat semicoherent.  The
only word that really gave me trouble for a long
period of time was "chameleon".

Which brings up a question: is Social-Chameleon Boy in
the LNH?  I came across Social-Chameleon Boy # 0
(1994) when searching for a legionnaire whose name
might have "chameleon" in it, and I found the name in
a "Wild Cards" Roster.

But near as I can tell, neither he nor author Eric J.
Rampson appear in the Author's List.  Anyone remember
this character popping up anywhere else?

(C) COPYRIGHT 2006 TOM RUSSELL.



.         __________
         /          \
        |    TOM     |
         \ RUSSELL  /
          \___   __/
              | /
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         /  ..\    *
         \____/  * | *
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see the zombie sitcom, NED & SUNSHINE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fen83bl8jSw


 
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