Edwina and the Mad Scientist by Jason Earls

The middle of August, one oâ€™clock in the morning, a Mad Scientist drove into the town of Dregville. He crept down Main
Street in a long black Cadillac, the dim street lights barely illuminating the big patches of rust on the sides.
   The first night he parked and curled up his long body in the back seat and barely slept. But the next morning he rented a small
trailer from an elderly blind woman on the edge of town.
   It didnâ€™t take long for the citizens of Dregville to notice the tiny trailer was occupied, and they began to gossip about the
Mad Scientist. They talked of his appearance even though no one had actually gotten a good look at him. They extrapolated their
disinformation from the dilapidated state of his rusty Cadillac and from the fact that no one had ever rented the blind womanâ
€™s trailer before.
   Winona Smith, the local butcher, said the Mad Scientistâ€™s teeth looked like a saw blade and that his hair was a tangled up
mop of rat frizz. Eric McGillicutty, the county sheriff, said the Mad Scientist was so skinny he looked like a "hunnerd year ole
corpse" and that he wore a black trenchcoat that went to his ankles and was weighed down with three shotguns tucked into
specially-made pockets. Dave Brody, the blacksmith, claimed he saw the Mad Scientist carrying tools into his trailer from the
trunk of his Cadillac; a multitude of monkey wrenches and old cutting saws and metal hooks and jars of gray viscous liquid and
buckets of twisted metal and orange globes of stained glass, all the items barely fitting into the small trailer; and he said the Mad
Scientistâ€™s steel toed jackboots clippety-clopped on the sidewalk "like he had big bricks tied to his feet."
   But it was all a mass of lies.
   And the next day the town forgot about the Mad Scientist.
   For awhile anyway.
   Then one morning a month or so later, several of the citizens went out to their front porches and found a big surprise. The
fronts of their homes and the boards of their porches were covered with pools and splatters of shiny red blood, and they couldnâ
€™t tell if it was from a human or an animal. The women fainted and the children screamed. The men stomped around shouting
death threats with hoarse voices and gnashing their teeth and shaking their fists, turning their ball caps around backwards
preparing for a fight.
   And the Mad Scientist cackled like a warlock in his cramped trailer and planned his next sadistic move.
   He went into his kitchen and mixed chemicals in porcelain bowls and poured them into a huge pot and boiled the whole mess
for hours. He stood over the pot and stirred the brew with a big dinosaur bone and breathed in the white steam and watched
gruesome horror movies and snuff films that he had made himself years earlier when he was even more evil than he was now.
   Six hours later, the Mad Scientistâ€™s concoction was ready. But he needed to kill some time until it got dark. So he
sharpened all his knives and shot drugs into his veins and cleaned his guns and swallowed 18 pills and drank a gallon of rotgut
whisky and then started working on a Death Tool that no one had seen or even needed before. And the citizens of Dregville
heard saw blades screech and pulleys squeak and gears grind and motors ratchet and muck drip, and some of the green slime
even oozed out of his trailer door and dripped onto the dirt causing puffs of orange smoke to rise. The Mad Scientistâ€™s lethal
brain and lithe body were in overdrive and the town could hear the disturbing consequences. They trembled and paced and cried
in their homes until finally the Mad Scientist completed his Death Tool; it was in the shape of a scythe with a huge gun on the
handle. And even though he didnâ€™t think he would need it for his current mission, he knew his Death Tool would come in
handy sometime in the future.
   The Mad Scientist sat down on his tiny sofa, his new weapon in his lap, and he pondered why he had came to Dregville in
the first place.
   He had a secret wish.
   He wanted to be in love again.
   And he decided Dregville would be the town in which he would take his new companion. He sat on his tattered sofa poking
his pink tongue between the spaces in his black teeth, thinking of all the fun he would have with whomever his new companion
turned out to be, until he noticed his clock on the wall, which read 1:13 AM.
   He went back to his kitchen and filled three 5-gallon buckets with the concoction heâ€™d made and he carried them to the
trunk of his Cadillac. As most of the town slept he drove to the water plant and toted the buckets up the hill. He dumped their
contents into the tanks and the odor that erupted when the chemicals hit the water was so vile even he had to draw back and
wrinkle up his long nose. He went back to his Cadillac and tossed the empty buckets into the trunk and drove back to his trailer.
He went inside and lay down on his dirty bed and immediately fell into a deep peaceful slumber.
   The next morning the citizens used water from their faucets to make coffee and cook oatmeal and brush their teeth and take
showers (swallowing some of the water). Then over half the women of Dregville filed out of their homes in a vegetablelike
stupor and stalked down the street, heading toward the Mad Scientistâ€™s trailer. (He had designed the concoction so that it
wouldnâ€™t work on the men.) The women queued up at his door, moaning and rubbing their legs together, pulling at their
own hair, grinding their teeth with Olympian lust and desire. Every half hour the Mad Scientist would open his door and yank
one of the drugged women inside. He put a metal hat on each of their heads. It had numerous wires connected to a big machine.
He took his time analyzing their bodies and dissecting their personalities and working hard to find the best companion possible.
He also wanted a helper for his future ghastly experiments.
   The womenâ€™s husbands, boyfriends, and fathers stood a block away, locked out by a six inch layer of glass the Mad
Scientist had scientifically and mystically erected as a barrier after the women had arrived. The men beat and kicked the glass
and yelled vicious insults and spit into the wind. Some turned and ran home and brought back copper pipes and rotten lumber to
use on the glass. But they couldnâ€™t break it. The Mad Scientist had designed it to be shatter proof and physically impossible
to bust.
   Then the Mad Scientist flew out of his trailer and began to examine the women in line because he was running out of time.
He knew the female specimens would soon piss their pants and unintentionally release themselves from the poison causing their
attraction to him. When the Mad Scientist showed himself, the men were amazed. (The women still couldnâ€™t comprehend
much.) He didnâ€™t have teeth like a saw blade and his hair wasnâ€™t a tangled up ratâ€™s nest and he didnâ€™t wear steel
toed jack boots. Instead he looked rather plain and like a typical science fiction geek -- he sort of resembled Jerry Lewis in the
face. But he did wear a trench coat, except it was red with a huge green infinity symbol on the back and it wasnâ€™t weighed
down with shotguns. The Mad Scientist started to run back and forth in short bursts, up and down the line of women, nervous
and almost out of control. He rubbed his calloused hands together and tried to discern the female candidateâ€™s interesting
qualities. Fifteen minutes passed. He smacked his lips and clicked his heels and eventually made his decision.
   She was over six feet tall with curly brown hair, heavily applied makeup, big green eyes, and a pink summer dress drawn
tightly over her rather broad shoulders.
   "You are the one for the Mad Scientist," said the Mad Scientist, as he pointed an unnaturally long index finger at her breasts.
"What is your name?" His voice screeched like a pickup skidding down the highway.
   "My name is Edwina."
   The Mad Scientist sniffed the air around Edwina and it smelled like a wet cat. He howled and spun around three times so fast
no one saw him, then he halted and spoke two sentences of magic words in a language no human could understand. The glass
barrier dissolved and the women broke out of their trances and ran toward their waiting boyfriends, husbands, and fathers.
   All except for Edwina.
   The Mad Scientist squeezed her arm, grinned, moved his hand to the small of her back and led her toward his trailer. He
opened the door and raised his foot to step inside. Then he heard a deep, bowel-shattering voice rasp out, "Wait. My name isnâ
€™t really Edwina. Itâ€™s Edwin."
   The Mad Scientist scrunched his face and said, â€œHuh?â€� Then he turned to see Edwin holding a two-foot long machete
with rust all over the blade. He had pulled it out of his pink summer dress and was holding it up, the tip of the blade level with
his nose. The Mad Scientist shrieked like a hag and bent at the waist, thrusting his hands forward in a feeble attempt to protect
himself. Edwin brought the machete down on the back of the Mad Scientistâ€™s neck with a grunt and his head rolled across
the dirt.
  Edwin let the machete thunk to the ground. He picked up the Mad Scientistâ€™s severed head and brushed away a few
clumps of dirt sticking to his face. The sun hammered down on Edwinâ€™s broad shoulders and he shadowed his eyes with
one hand and cradled the head with the other. He glanced around till he noticed a cattle fence not far away, carried the head over
and stuck it on one of the poles.
   How did Edwin manage to accomplish this? How could he have been the one to kill the powerful Mad Scientist? Well,
earlier, when he had seen the women lumbering down the street in a stupor, he started pretending to be hypnotized right along
with them. So he could find out where they were going. Edwin was a transvestite who had been saving up for years in the hope
of getting a sex change operation. And Edwin had been suspicious of the Mad Scientist ever since he had moved into Dregville.
He had seen blood on his own porch that morning and his testosterone kicked in along with his rage and thirst for revenge when
he saw what a mess all those dribbles and splatters of blood had made. Edwin hated blood more than anything in the world and
he'd been truly repulsed.
   He glared at the Mad Scientistâ€™s head on the fence post. Its eyes and mouth were open, the pupils pointing up and
glowing a light shade of green. "There," said Edwin. "To hell with that sick bastard." He exhaled a tremendous sigh of relief and
started hobbling down the road in his red high heel shoes. Then he wondered if the other citizens of Dregville were all right and
an idea popped into his brain and he got excited: Maybe somebody will be grateful that I killed the Mad Scientist, he thought.
Maybe they'll loan me the rest of the money I need for my sex change operation. Iâ€™d finally get to become Edwina. God, that
would be wonderful.

    -end-