Shots In The Dark
(Del-Fi 2113)

I am Audrey Phebrun. I fight for the animals who are tortured and persecuted in the name of "progress." This has been an unusually easy past couple of days.

Joey Yunioshi is one of the most vile men alive, or rather, *was*. In the early 1980s the Yunioshi Corporation raped deserts and forests to construct the "BANZAI PIPELINE," a conduit of industrial waste extending across Asia and Africa whose construction and toxic contents drove two species of turtles and at least three varieties of centipedes to extinction. At least one connected case of elephant mutation is known, however all film footage of a BABY ELEPHANT WALKing on *five* legs was systematically destroyed. The "PINK PANTHER" mutation was revealed to be a fur-dyed hoax, with the media making Yunioshi out to be a victim of environmental fanatics trying to frame him.

Word came through the underground that Yunioshi was conducting grotesque animal experiments in an outbuilding behind his home in an isolated valley in the Himalayas. Nicknamed "THE MONKEY FARM," it was a chemical research lab for Yunioshi Soft Drinks, Inc. It was up to us to assassinate Yunioshi, blow up the "Farm," and help draw the earth closer to its intended state of global harmony and oneness. Yunioshi was naive, and thought no one knew or cared of his actions, and that his hidden, isolated location was sufficient security. It would just be him and a few geeks in labcoats.

Peter Fwinean, a top-notch marksman, joined me, as well as Max Droses, a brilliant explosives man. We knew it would be a long, arduous DAY, SO FWINEAN, DROSES, and I made sure to retire early that evening. Despite the stress I was under, I fell right asleep and it was DREAMSVILLE for a full eight hours.

Max was to retrieve us with the helicopter after we'd taken care of Yunioshi. After a two mile hike from our 'copter, Peter and I neared our goal as the sun set. PETER, GUN Now in hand led us toward MR. YUNIOSHI's exotic ARABESQUE mansion. A shiver rushed through me, a TOUCH OF EVIL over my skin, my body in cosmic communion with the animals inside, victims of some unimaginable EXPERIMENT IN TERROR.

In an incredible twist of fate, Yunioshi was totally alone. His lab technicians apparently all left for Tibet to see a Combustible Edison concert in some abandoned monastery. Peeking inside a window on the outbuilding, we found him jotting down on a clipboard rudimentary notes on his "lab tests." I gazed across the grotesque torture chamber, populated by creatures better off dead than in this nightmare state. A tear streamed uncontrollably down my cheek as I saw a shaved monkey, LONESOME and floating in a tank of what appeared to be cola, with a plastic tube forcing oxygen down her windpipe. Dead primate bodies were piled like a Nazi death camp atop blocks of ice. Yunioshi was disposing of the monkey corpses by grinding them up into meat sludge, apparently SOMETHING FOR CAT food for his pet food subsidiary. What a sicko.

I quickly attached Max's explosive devices to the walls of the building. Peter had Yunioshi in his sights, but just as he pulled the trigger, Yunioshi bent over to pick his dropped pencil. Peter missed him, instead hitting an electrical fuse box. Peter uttered a dark, authoritative roar, "Hold it right there, MR. LUCKY!" Startled by the gunshot, shattered glass, flying sparks, and the loss of the electric lights, the frail old man froze with fear. An easy target, with A SHOT IN THE DARK, Peter granted him a quick, unjustly painless death. I muttered his eulogy..."THE PARTY's over, Yunioshi! We've put an end to your evil CHARADE..."

I radioed in to Max, and Peter and I were soon in the helicopter. I yelled, "HIT THE BUTTON, MAX!" Max detonated his explosives and we flew home, away from a sickening smell of burning monkey flesh and caramelizing soft drink sugars, knowing we've made the world a better place.

---Michael Toth