It was a full moon on the night of Friday the thirteenth. Dracula was celebrating his two-hundred and fiftieth birthday in a grand style. He had invited all his horror friends to a party! It was twelve o’clock and Dracula was just inviting the first of his guests into his castle.
“Good evening, Mr. Ripper,” he said with a strong Transylvanian accent. “it is a pleasure to see you.”
“Of course it is, Count. Where are all the others?” said Jack the Ripper, in his gruff voice.
“You are the first, my friend. Just go into the banqueting hall where the food is, and you may start.”
Jack the Ripper left the Count, but a few seconds later there came a knock on the door. Dracula opened it and there stood Dr. Jeckyll.
“Ah, my dear friend. It is good to see you, but I was expecting Mr. Hyde.”
“Oh, just give me a few minutes and he’ll be here.” And with that Dr. Jeckyll produced a bottle from his pocket and drank it. He sank to his knees and then lay full length on the ground, but when he got up, he was Mr. Hyde.
“Excellent!” said Count Dracula, “If you go through to the banqueting hall, you will find Mr. Ripper already there.”
The next guest to arrive was Wolfman, accompanying Medusa and her sisters, who were all wearing masks to prevent everyone from turning to stone. When Frankenstein’s monster and the Mummy arrived, Dracula told them to come in. They did, without opening the door! Pretty soon all the guests had arrived. Among them there were such characters as the Invisible Man, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Phantom of the opera, King Kong and Godzilla. The latter two, as they were too big to enter the banqueting hall, stayed in the courtyard of the castle, and were visited every now and again by someone with a roast ox or two for them.
The last guest to arrive was the Devil himself. He arrived by coming up through the banqueting hall floor, surrounded by a mass of fire. The fire subsided when the Devil raised his hands above his head and clapped twice. From then on there was more of a party atmosphere, as the Devil was the life and soul of the company.
It was he who suggested they play charades. “I’ll start with an easy one,” he said, and proceeded to goose-step around the room, doing the Nazi salute.
“That’s easy!” cried the rest. “It’s Hitler.”
Wolfman did one next. He went out of the room and talked to the other guests through the door. Everyone was puzzled, but a voice from near the fire said “It’s me!” It was the Invisible Man’s voice, and everyone clapped Wolfman’s ingenuity.
“It will be hard for me to act one out for you, so I’ll do a sound charade,” said the Invisible Man, and there followed a buzzing that went all over the hall.
“A fly!” shouted Mr. Hyde, and again everybody clapped their appreciation.
Everyone had a go at the game. Quasimodo pretending to ring a bell. The Mummy acting as someone in hospital. Dracula acting as a blood donor, and Medusa and her sisters acting as three winners in a Miss World contest.
When they had tired of the game, Dracula put some music on and said “It’s drinks time.”
Everyone was just about to take their first drink, when the ground began to shake, and loud thumps were heard from outside. Everyone rushed out to see King Kong and Godzilla waltzing together. It was then that the Phantom of the opera began to sing “Happy birthday to you,” and everyone joined in. When the song had been sung, they all returned into the hall and continued to drink and talk. This went on for an hour and at the end of that time, everyone, except Dracula, the Devil, and the Invisible Man, was drunk.
Mr. Hyde was making trouble by calling everyone names and he fell foul of the Wolfman, who howled and then jumped on him. The two knocked into Frankenstein’s monster, who picked them up and threw them to the far end of the room, where they were knocked unconscious.
Dracula turned to Satan and said, “I think now would be a good time.” Lucifer agreed and clapped his hands once, and the floor beneath Wolfman and Mr. Hyde opened, and they fell through. All the other guests ran to the hole, but before they got there, the hole closed up.
Jack the Ripper, who also had had too much to drink turned on Satan, shouting.
“Those two were my friends, you dirty little…!”
But he didn’t finish his sentence for he suddenly burst into flames, and after two seconds burning, all that was left of him was a pile of ashes on the floor.
“And let that be a lesson to anyone else who tries to attack me!” bellowed Satan. “Let’s get on with the party.”
But the party spirit had gone out of everyone, except Frankenstein’s creature and the Mummy, who had become great friends, and these two started dancing, regardless of who or what they knocked over. Medusa was sent sprawling on the floor when the Mummy did a quick turn, and she got up, flinging off her mask. Unfortunately her two sisters were looking at her, and Medusa was too late in turning away, for they slowly turned to stone.
“Oh my poor sisters!” Medusa wailed, laying a hand on the shoulder of one of them, and in doing so knocked it over. It fell against the other one, and they both smashed into tiny fragments as they hit the floor. Medusa was so grieved that she tried to go on the rampage, but she had hardly taken two steps, when out of the floor poured a thousand tiny devils who proceeded to pull her to bits.
While all this had been going on inside, outside King Kong had grown hungry, and so had eaten Godzilla. He had just finished off the last of the tail, and in his tiny mind he realised that he wasn’t having a good time, so he got up and stepped over the side of the castle. In doing so he tripped and fell into the moat, where he was immediately set upon by thousands of piranha fish.
Back inside, however, the mummy had just stepped on Frankenstein’s creature’s toe for the fifth time, and Frankenstein’s creature lost its temper, pushed the Mummy over, and pulled its head off. The creature seemed pleased, because it started smiling, but the smiles turned to screams as the Mummy caught fire, and as everyone knows, Frankenstein’s creature was afraid od fire, so it leapt up to try and get away, but the fire has spread to him, and so he burnt. Satan clapped his hands twice again, and once more the floor opened up beneath the two creatures.
“And now, Count Dracula, I must thank you for your hospitality,” said Satan. “But before I go, I will ask you a question. Just a simple one, but if you get it wrong, you will come into Hell with me.”
“Yes, of course. If it’s simple, I don’t mind.”
“Fine. And now this is the question. What do you look like?”
“WHAT? How am I supposed to know that? I’ve never seen myself. I haven’t got a reflection, you know?” exclaimed the Count.
“So I take it you can’t answer the question, Count Dracula? Too bad,” and with that Satan clapped his hands and the floor beneath Dracula opened and he fell into Hell. The Devil was about to sink into the earth when he said, “Good-bye, Mr. Invisible Man, you will still be here I have no doubt, but as even I can’t see you, you are free,” and the Devil sank into the earth.
Teacher’s Comments
9/10
Excellent work, M. Very good imaginative writing.
(c) M. Robert Gibson
First written 1977-12-07
School exercise.
Don’t forget, it was written by a schoolboy.
It is published here for purely selfish vanity reasons.
M. Robert Gibson 