Read by Silas Hawkins
“Eins Zwo’ Acht Acht Zwo Sechs.”
I can tell from the number that it’s Krond. I move the phone an inch from my ear before he bellows his reply.
“Earthman Thomas! Are you still willing to help me out tonight?”
“Of course, when I’ve finished in the office. I know, I know, I did promise.”
“Yes. YES! Promise, Thomas. You need to meet me at six of the pm. This is an important promise, Thomas!"
“I’ll be there, Krond. And I’ve translated those German letters you had, just bills and stuff. Nothing important.”
“Promise Thomas. Excellent.”
There was a huge pause as I could tell he was wracking his giant brain for the right word.
“Wunderbar, Yes? Thomas. Wunderbar!”
He hung up. Suppressed laughter from the nearby desks told me my co-workers had overheard yet another loud call from my friend Krond.
I imagined the derisive whispers they were sharing: “Does the Englishman think it impresses anyone to get calls from such a creature?” and “Of course they would be friends.” My German was never quite good enough to work out exactly what they were saying, but I still got the gist of it.
I stood up angrily and tried to make eye-contact with the sniggerati. They locked their faces onto their computer screens and pretended I didn’t exist. This was ridiculous. What did it matter that Krond was my friend? Krond, the Bulbous-Headed Has-Been of the Hollywood B-Movie, once the monstrous star of Fifties alien invasion films; a creature who'd carried countless blondes in his giant claw-like hands back to numerous unconvincing UFOs. Did they think themselves so above it all, so untouchable?
Instead of meekly sitting back down again, I made my way to the stationery cupboard. I was glad it was empty; once again I could feel my loathing for my co-workers rising: I needed to be alone. I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding my desk, counting down the minutes till I could escape and head over to Krond’s place.
*
I could see him as I approached his flat, standing on the balcony – nine feet tall, three of those taken up by his enormous brain-shaped green head. As usual he was gazing down as men and machines efficiently took apart the Wall, piece by piece. He'd first come to West Berlin not long after it had gone up, finding the city, with its greater tolerance for the peculiar, a welcome refuge from his failing film career. I think he liked being witness to the Wall’s demise.
“Thomas – I shall meet you at the car!” he shouted down. “Posters? Do you think I should bring posters? Will there be fans, Thomas? I have pens!”
“It’s an airport, Krond. No posters.”
“Yes. I’ll bring some. Just in case.”
In the car, it was obvious quite how excited he was, and he prattled unceasingly as we drove through the streets. “Did you hear, Melvous B Hickney died? Now there was a director. He knew how to handle us. If he was disgusted by our diets or habits, he never let it show. Lovely man. Well, there was that drug-fuelled murder, but apart from that…”
Like much of Berlin, the airport was undergoing sizable reconstruction, which meant that given our mutual struggle with the German language it took a while to find where to meet Krond’s friends off their flights. I never quite knew how to deal with recognizing Krond’s otherworldly co-stars. You could go by their appearance in posters from their heyday, but decades had passed, and who knew how they might age, if at all?
The Wolfman from Sirius seemed completely unchanged from his glory days, while the Creature From The Black Lagoon had turned grey. Krond bounded over to them, his clawed arms more than lengthy enough to surround them both. The Creature twitchily fished out a cigarette, “we can s-s-moke in this airport, c-can’t we kid?” he asked me, lighting up before I could answer. The Wolfman gave nothing away, his eyes hidden behind expensive sunglasses.
“My friends, so good to see you!” Krond’s single giant unblinking eye seemed to have lit up. “It’s been far too long. Wine?”
“N-not for me, not any more – but I’ll h-happily have orange juice,” began the Creature.
At the wine bar, Krond’s ebullience showed no sign of abating, helped no end when an old couple sitting nearby asked for his autograph, and he was able to furnish them with a full-size signed poster. “Say, is this it?” the Wolfman drawled as Krond wallowed in the attention, “just the three of us?” His barely concealed sneer revealed perfectly whitened teeth, and he began to occupy himself with his suit sleeves, making sure they were rolled up to show off his coiffured arm-hair.
I gave an update on what I knew. Qurk the Robot from Mars had recently had a bout of unsuccessful upgrade surgery, and was in seclusion until all the magnetic tape could be retightened. While the Vampire Princess of Venus was going through her seventh acrimonious divorce and “vanted to be alone”. And as for the Blob …
“We didn’t invite the Blob!” bellowed Krond.
“Th-th-thank goodness, the bitch! What a diva!”
*
The arrangements for the evening were going to involve the Wolfman crashing at mine, while the Creature stayed with Krond. In the end though, it didn't take much to get the three of them watching the old films again. Krond’s VHS collection was immaculately kept, all the great B-movies that had featured genuine monsters taped from early Eighties TV reruns. During “10,000 Martian Maniacs”, Krond eagerly pointed out where the mirrors had been placed to make him look like an invading army. A detailed description of his humanoid co-stars' failings accompanied “The Wild Wolf-Man’s Arkansas Rodeo Rampage”, while the Creature moaned that the Glorious Technicolor of “Black Lagoon Blood Fest” was less than Glorious. All three were always ready with their humorous anecdotes, mostly prepared for the next day – although the biggest whoops of derisory laughter were saved for the decade-old adverts during the commercial breaks.
We started early the next day to prepare for the convention, loading a van with the memorabilia that they all hoped to shift over the course of the long day ahead. Then the phone rang. I could tell from the moment I heard my boss’s thick German accent it was work. “Look, Ja - so zer is an emergency here – you must come in.”
“Sorry, I can’t come in. I’ve had today booked off for a long time.”
“Thomas,” he barked, making full use of the German accent’s innate ability to snap angrily, “You must to work come, it is only by working hard at your desk that you vill get any better vis your German.”
“My German is fine.”
“You think so, yes? You think you impress us vis the vay you pronounce things? You spend too much time vis zat ridiculous creature, it is always about you two. Or ‘you Zwo’ as you vould say.”
I recognised the derision in his last remark – an ongoing snide dig my co-workers had adopted at my attempts to use colloquial German – and put the phone down immediately. I couldn't face this argument, and there was no way I was going to disappoint Krond.
“Work again, Thomas?” Krond’s head was too large to ever really peer round a door but he did the closest approximation that he was capable of. “Forget it,” I shrugged. “It’s going to be a long day and I need to get driving.”
Berlin’s first ever Science Fiction convention was poorly organized and overly attended. Queues became crowds became agitated mobs. We’d been allocated a relatively modest corner of the Main Hall within which to put our stand, and I was worried that Krond might take offence. But none of the trio I’d driven to the event were that comfortable being surrounded by too many people so it seemed to work. A steady stream of B-movie aficionados kept us busy, and the Deutschmarks flowing, and I had to run back to the van several times to stock up on merchandise.
It amazed me how much Krond enjoyed it. The same questions kept turning up, and he'd answer every time with the same level of enthusiasm, as if he’d never been asked it before. “No you are right”, I’d hear him say repeatedly “Krond isn’t my real name, my race don’t really have names – no, it’s not my stage name. It’s my Monster name. My first agent in Hollywood, a wonderful man told me all about ‘A monster name’. It has to be short, one or two syllables. Punchy, yet alien. That one day will be synonymous with a monster.” And even those who’d heard all the answers before at earlier conventions would laugh and enjoy the stories of a bygone Hollywood era.
This was how things should be. Not stuck in an office. Spending ages getting people’s computers to work and then having them leave English/German dictionaries lying on my desk. Dictionaries open at the words I might have once misused. And certainly not having to suffer an “office nickname” based on my earnest attempts to speak German.
Occasionally a minor actor from the new Star Trek show would appear on the main stage, and we’d enjoy a quiet period. The Creature would make up for lost time by shoving a cigarette in each gill and power-smoking. The Wolfman would be continuing a one-on-one conversation with one of the younger female autograph hunters. Krond, however, would say seated at the stand, just in case. This was his day, and he wasn’t going to miss anyone who wanted to tell him how brilliant he’d been in “that film where the UFO lands in a remote part of California but no-one initially believes the kids who see it”. And just before it ended, we all trooped over to a makeshift cinema to watch a rare 3D screening of Krond’s finest hour, “Venusian Voodoo Vixens Versus The FBI”. Even if Krond spent most of it struggling to get some sort of extra-dimensional effect from his single, staring eye.
Finally, it was all over. We re-loaded what was left into the van, and drove the Creature to the airport for a late-night flight. We weren’t quite sure where the Wolfman had got to, although reports in the Berlin press a week later did dwell on a curious decline in the city’s cat population. Then at last, I parked outside Krond’s building.
“Thanking you Thomas.” Krond began. “Promise, Thomas. You are a man of your word and you keep your promise.”
I smiled.
“And now, it is time for me to keep my promise. My part of the bargain. You help me with a favour, and I do one for you.”
I took a small tatty piece of paper out of my jacket pocket and placed it on the dashboard. Krond picked it up, deftly unfolded it and tried to make sense of the angry jottings, the numerous crossings out and re-writings.
“Is everyone you work with on this list?” Krond asked.
I nodded.
“And it is definitely disintegration you want?”
I smiled again.
Krond’s eye blinked and then he laughed.
“Monstrous, Zwo, Monstrous.”
© Alan Graham, 2012
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