13 Days 13 Shorts: Killer Potatoes

Welcome to the week leading up Halloween! This has been an extremely exciting last few days and reading these shorts has been nothing short of horrific joy. Just to give you an idea as to how this all came together, the writers chose the spooky subjects for their stories from a list that ranged from typical choices such as vampires to really out there ideas like... oh for example: killer potatoes. My very good friend Evan Koehne picked killer potatoes and ever since I personally have been highly awaiting the lovechild of this festival and such a ridiculous topic to write about. And let me just say, it was worth the wait. Without further ado:



THE GRUESOME AND UNWHOLLY TALE OF THE KILLER SPACE POTATOES!!! by Evan Koehne

Perhaps you have heard of a story so juicy
With bad B-movie effects no lover of film would ever go to see,
Called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
While that legends a lark, a nonsensical farce
Read along for a story with a little more starch;
Harken to the Gruesome and Unwholly Tale of the Killer Space Potatoes!!!

A short word of caution: if you are a person quite queasy
And horror and gore stimulate your gag reflex quite easy
Leave now or hold you peas, forever.
For this yarn of murderous space-alien mayhem
And the many side dishes that go so well with them
May turn vegetables into a most unwholesome endeavor.

'Twas long ago when Potatoes descended from the stars
Some say they came from Venus, others from Mars
But what is certainly known is their cunning and deception was bold.
They came long before man, riding meteor showers
Towards the earth they would one day devour
Little did we know our actions on them would be visited on us tenfold.

They landed many in the Land of Ire,
Observing humanity was their one desire,
In patches and gardens they did survive.
Though many were eaten
They could not be beaten
Killing one was like swatting one bee from the hive.

The potatoes were a race full
Of the most wise and the graceful
Asked to pass judgment upon all human kind.
But the humans were wasteful,
And to the spuds, seemed distasteful;
But they were merciful and pitiful for a very long time.

The battles we kept waging,
And the wars kept on raging
With us unaware of the taters that we sickened.
The spuds understood
A slow death would be good
"Make them suffer so they will see they are wicked."

It was potatoes who killed our most beloved brothers
Covering up by framing innocent others
Ghandi, Lincoln, and Martin Luther among us they killed.
By taking down the best of us
they hoped to best the rest of us,
But even then the insatiable urge for evil we still had not filled.

"That's It," they said in unison, "We gleefully decree
The only thing to cleanse this planet is an all-out killing spree."
So on the day that they snapped and took their stand,
Potatoes gathered, glass shattered,
Little feet ceased to patter; nothing mattered---
For the time of the Spudtotcalypse was at hand.

They took forks and knives and ate people alive
From all of humanity they seeked to derive
The same mad pain we had inflicted upon the earth and their brothers
They ate us on kabobs of sishes
Made all of us crap right in our britches
The hearty ones in vats of wine they smothered.

Terror reigned in the streets of all metropolitan areas,
New York, Paris, Los Angeles and the Bay Area,
Seriously, it was like something out of Cloverfield.
Even Petersville, Virginia was not spared,
All the quaint townsfolk running around scared
Their candy-worn bodies freakishly tenderized and peeled.

Blood ran through the malls, the skies, and the fields
The very few survivors would never quite heal
Crying out to what Gods they had left and kneeling in piety.
The Spuds used their ray-guns, even AKs and bazookas,
And on many occasions decided to nuke us
Our own belov'd weapons the downfall of our illustrious society.

And finally, to leave satisfied,
They flew out in their spaceships and fixed their eyes
On our planet before stuffing it into a creamy Shepard's Earth Pie
They baked the whole world in their intergalactic space cooker
Cooked it till light-golden brown, then ate us for supper,
They made absolute sure every last one had died.

Then they stole off into the far dark reaches of space
And a newly cleared void with nothing in it's place
Wondered why it wasn't spinning, like it should have been.
And just think how disappointing the fate of the world is,
That despite all our knowledge and innovative inventions
Some fucking potatoes got us in the end.

I know what you're doing. You're saying,
"That's bull! I won't believe you!
Because it hasn't happened yet and that can't be true!"
You say it's not true, fine, that's your opinion.
But I suggest you just wait and see.
For just because it isn't true now,
Doesn't mean it won't be.

-Brett Whiltmann, From Some Distant Planet
Year 2343, 125 A.S. (After Spudtotcalypse)