Book Radaptations

“Happy Birthday Paulie.”

The cold, sterile voice cut through the ominous sound of electronic beeps and blips. Paulie looked around in a state of disbelief and primal fear. 

He expected a cake. He expected a candles. He expected the a tone-deaf version of the traditional birthday song sung by Rocky. What he did not expect was a goddamn robot!

A menacing song erupted from the robot’s chest as its bright lights cut through the smoke and darkness. It rolled closer to Paulie, presenting him with a cake engulfed in the flames of too many candles.

“What the hell is this,” Paulie said while trying to keep a cool exterior despite his body full of terror and cheap scotch. 

“Your present,” Rocky Jr. said enthusiastically. 

Rocky Jr. approached Paulie, capturing every moment with a suitcase sized video camera that dwarfed his tiny frame. 

“Yo, I wanted a sports car for my birthday not a walking trashcan,” Paulie said. 

His weak insult was unable to hide the pure horror in his eyes as he confronted the autonomous machine.

Rocky let out a sigh of disapproval. He spend more than $400 million having this robot developed and, once again, Paulie is ruining his moment. 

“C’mon, it looks great,” he said.

“It’s extremely psycho Rocko,” said Paulie. He was on the verge of losing control of his bowels. 

Frustrated by his continued lack of appreciation, Adrian finally spoke out.

“Since you don’t have any friends, we thought you’d like it,” she said without compassion.

“Yeah, pretend your happy will ya. It’ll keep ya happy when your all alone,” Rocky said.  

The robot placed Paulie’s birthday cake gingerly on the table. Paulie gazed at a perfect portrait of himself, made entirely of frosting. 

“That’s a great looking guy,” he said.

“Please make a wish,” the robot asked, gazing at Paulie for acceptance. 

Thanks to delays due to downed wires, the Night Train to Terror was travelling in beautiful sunshine through a pristine forest. Inside, however, a storm was brewing...

Not really brewing as much as rocking. An impromptu session of “Dance with me, Dance with Me” had broken out, as is its wont on the Night Train to Terror. Like every normal passenger train, the Night Train to Terror was equipped with wide aisles in which to dance, fog and smoke machines, laser lights, and costume changes. It was an environment perfectly arranged for the passengers to spontaneously break into “Dance With Me Dance With Me”, much like a petri dish is a perfect environment for cultures to develop.

There was lust, and blood, and bloodlust, and Crush in the air this night. Despite the aforementioned fog and smoke machines, this would not be an ordinary train ride. No, this ride would not be ordinary at all. This train ride, to terror, would be extraordinary. In fact, it would crash.

Despite the crash, or maybe because of, the fog machine still worked. Was the fog machine part human, trying to cover all the death on the Night Train to Terror, so that it could reason with itself that it worked on a train whose passengers regularly died? Probably not, it was probably a machine that was plugged in somewhere and produced fog from water.

As the passengers lay on the ground, in varying states of death, injury, and general malaise, Satan laughed. Was he laughing at the train, or choking? He was laughing.

The train was an inferno, like Dante’s Inferno.

“Isn’t that beautiful,” Satan quipped to God, already knowing the answer (it was). “Shall we...continue?” He so hoped they would continue!

“I’m tired of playing this game with you,” retorted God, which is weird, because as God, he could play any game he wanted. He could force Satan to play Mousetrap. He could invent a game more frustrating game than Mousetrap and make Satan play that.

“This is for keeps,” said Satan. “The musicians must be JUDGED!”

Avoiding a lame The Voice joke, God did his best not to humor Satan.

“I shed my mercy upon them,” said God, wishing Simon Fuller had done the same thing. “As I do the gentle rain.” Fuck hard rain, thought God.

“You’ve shed no mercy on me!” whined Satan.

“You, I condemn to walk the earth, forever” yelled God. Which makes our existence suck if that is a punishment for Satan.

“And forever, shall i seek the company of men!” cried Satan

‘Whoa’, thought God.

“Seek out the rich, the powerful, kings and dictators. The poor, the sick, and the children, shall always be mine,” God verbalized.

‘Creepy,’ thought Satan.

Not to be outdone by God’s awesome showing, the passengers decided to ignore their fiery deaths and break into “Dance With Me, Dance With Me” again.

‘I don’t even believe in myself,’ thought God

Produced by Jay Schlossberg-Cohen

Dade ­­felt cool and confident after convincing the troglodyte security guard to read him the 10-digit modem code. This was proving to be easier than defragging a C-Level BRT drive on a 3kbps hardline. 

He closed his eyes, dreaming of the wealth of quality public access programming at his fingertips. After a mere 37 keystrokes, he was in. He had total control of OTV.

The hard work was done. Now all Dade had to do was sit back, pop open a TAB and adjust his oval sunglasses. No wonder they called him "Zero Cool."

Just as he was reaching his fanboy climax during the opening credits of "The Outer Limits," his computer monitor flashed and displayed a message far more graphically advanced than his Tandy monitor could handle.

"U have tread upon my domain & must now suffer…Who R U?" it said.

The awkward composure of the message briefly confused Dade. He quickly activated his bullet messaging service to craft an equally aggressive response.

As he began to type Zero, he realized the non-threatening nature of his current online handle. Something in him began to stir, powering through his brain into his nervous system and out the tips of his fingers.

"Crash Override," he typed confidently. "Who wants to know?"

The screen flashed and sizzled as the name ACID BURN appeared.

"Unbelievable," Dade said unbelievably. "A hacker!"

"ACID BURN SEZ LEAVE B 4 U R EXPUNGED," the hacker replied, seemingly using awkward abbreviations due to the massive font size.

As Dade's television went black, he knew it was time. Zero Cool was no more, there was only Crash Override and he wasn't going to lose this Hack Fight.

“In your seat please, in your seat,” the stewardess said with a slight hint of contempt in her pleasing British voice. Tension in the cabin was high as the plane had been circling Dulles International Airport for hours. Passengers anxiously shifted in their seats, wondering how much longer they’d be crammed together like biscuts in a tin. As she passed passengers making overly loud and busy nervous conversation, the stewardess noticed a particularly unsettled elderly woman. “Oh hey, we’re just like British Rail love. We may be late, but we’ll get you there,” she said with a dash of polite sarcasm. Angela Lansdown shook her head in agreement, but inside she knew her aged kidneys could not take this much longer. The smell of death was in the air. --- Time was running out and they were running out of options. Using a rope hastily constructed of discarded clothing, Leslie Barnes grunted and strained as he lowered  John onto the snowy runway below. Why he wouldn’t use the maintenance stairs instead spending 20 minutes constructing that rope would be a question Leslie would ask himself for the rest of his days. But as he saw John reach for the torches they crafted from a janitor’s mop and torn couch cushion fabric, Leslie couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous for that brazen asshole. “Good luck McClane,” he shouted excessively loud while only 15 feet away. McClane looked up at Leslie, who seemed as if he was about to pass out or throw up that tuna sandwich he hastily ate minutes earlier, and gave him a slight nod of approval before running onto the frozen tarmac. His frostbitten fingers fumbled his trusty lighter that got him through those dark days in Los Angeles. Hopefully, his flame would once again save the day. “Dallas, this is Winsor 114 inside the outer marker,” the captain said as an obnoxiously loud alarm reminded him the plane was running on fumes. He realized seconds later he had pronounced Dulles wrong. “Roger one-fourteen. This is Dulles tower, we have you on radar contact and show you on ILS. You’re in the glide path and looking good,” said Col. Stuart with an evil smirk on his chiseled face. McClane continued to wave his homemade torches furiously as if he were a Phoenix about to soar into the heavens. He knew the plane was coming in too low, the snow was just too thick and his cobbled together flames of salvation were just too little. He’d have to try harder to get the pilot’s attention. Try. Harder. What he wouldn’t do for a cigarette right about now.

Mo Rutherford didn’t miss anything about the FBI, including how it killed his wife. But this was a new day, and as he rode the speed boat to the yacht in the distance, he pointed and smiled, as if his ghost wife was floating over the waves of the Atlantic. ‘The best place to bury a person is in your heart,’ Mo thought. He was the best the FBI had ever seen, and he knew it. As he got to the yacht, an old friend awaited him. Except this was no friend; this was the opposite of a friend: an enemy. An enemy Mo hated. And loathed. “Hey, didn’t you used to be with the Bureau?,” Mo asked. But he knew the answer. Oh, he knew. “Yeah, well at least I didn’t get my ass kicked out like you did,” said Ex-FBI Man. “Yeah, yeah. I missed out on ABSCAM, DeLoreon, all the good stuff,” retorted Mo flirtily. “Just follow me, hot shot,” retorted the grizzled sexy Ex-FBI Man sexily. “Let’s see if you’re worth your money.” Mo lustily ambled into the den of the yacht. Except it seemed more like a den of greed and sweat to Mo. “Hello, this is some place you got here, fellas”, Mo said in a bizarre accent. What was he going for with that accent? Was he intimating the 5 men present were all gay and living a place that was all theirs? ‘Think quick, Rutherford! Get their minds of that awkwardness!’ He quickly grabbed hands to shake. Just as he thought: sweat. “Huh let me just...” he said as he pressed more flesh. “THat’s a sweaty palm. That’s two sweaty palms!”. He knew his distraction was working. Ex-FBI man looked on wetly and angrily. “Let me feel you,” he said, grabbing another hand. “Ahhhhh, that’s another sweaty palm!” He figured he should try one more hand. Sweat. “Yes sir, hello sweaty palms!” “How do you do?” said Richards