Punchbag

Each invitation came with a small package. The invitations were sent out in the morning by courier to mobsters throughout Metropolis and the surrounding areas. Each recipient was invited to attend a not-to-be-missed party the next evening. Since the invitation came from Lex Luthor, no one was inclined to miss the party, but the contents of the packages clinched the deal. Each package contained a pair of boxer shorts and, if the mobster had a teenaged son who would be attending, an extra pair for him. The shorts were made of limp, skin-smooth, transparent-white plastic film and came with a note recommending that the recipient wear them under his trousers while he attended the party. ...

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 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. ...