Plasticwear

Some people say that man is mastery and woman is mystery. That’s a clever play on words, certainly, but there is a very spooky truth to it. When the former goes wrong, the latter sets it right, sometimes in the most horrifying ways. There’s a reason why some women are called witches and a hapless young man discovered that reason. Just off the campus of the University of New Wales at Pennstadt stands Sorority Row, a neat array of former mansions lining one of the main streets that run by the campus. Set a little apart from the others, separated from its nearest neighbor by a miniature park, was the Shi Imega Lambda house. It was to that house that Stefan Bonhuizo came with sinister intent. ...

In the story “Schauerkappe” the narrator described how, through a series of errors, he had become Marla Schauerkappe’s plastic prisoner, had been turned into an inflatable woman by Marla’s teenaged son Dale, and made pregnant with a raincoat, and then, after giving birth to the new raincoat and discovering that Marla and her husband Beaubeau had captured themselves a new pair of inflated plastic prisoners, was scheduled to be married to Dale. This is how the wedding went. ...

I had gone to the beach with my girlfriend Sondra on a lovely, warm spring day and we were strolling barefoot along the shoreline when we were captured. We had gone under the wide pier that ran a hundred yards back from the waterline to the street and were enjoying the coolness in the shade. I heard someone behind me on my right say, “Don’t move.” I started to turn when I felt something touch my right cheek and cold fire flashed through me. The same voice said, “Don’t move” again and I stopped dead in my tracks. I could see Sondra and I saw a hand holding a weird luminescent rod touch her cheek and a young man’s voice say, “You will do only what is necessary to fulfill my commands.” Then the rod touched my cheek and the voice repeated the order. ...

How can someone become an inflated slavedoll for a plastic witch? What could compel a man to put on a girl’s plastic shower cap in order to become an inflated plastic punching bag bouncing gaily for his captors? Someone found out. Inga Yelma was missing. That fact in itself would not have drawn Dick Tracy’s interest. But there were hints that something more sinister was at play. The information had come from Joe Cullun, crime reporter for the City Press. He had been making the report to Officer Lizz Worthington, saying that Miss Yelma had contacted him, saying that she had a horrifying story for him. “She said that she was scheduled to compete in the Women’s Ski-Jumping Championship Meet at Indian Head,” he said, “and that she wanted to meet me the next day to give me the scoop. It sounded like she was about to tell me more, but then I heard her say ‘Oh!”, as if she had been startled, and she hung up. And she never showed up for the meeting." ...

I am supposed to be Marla Schauerkappe’s plastic prisoner. And even that’s a mistake. I had originally been captured for the pleasure of Marla’s husband Beaubeau. It was a rainy day and I had to go out on some minor errand. I put on my raincoat and went on my way. That’s what got me in trouble. My raincoat is a woman’s raincoat made of soft, skin-smooth, semi-transparent light-blue plastic closed with thumbnail-sized patches of magnetized rubber, each surrounded by a quarter-inch aureole of welded plastic. To make matters worse, I needed a haircut: my hair puffed out the raincoat’s pixie-style hood. So it was kind of understandable that Beaubeau would mistake me for a woman. ...