It was a whole year before our writing group held another round. That was The Scary Round V, which we held around Halloween time in 2010. Once again I wrote a very short story about some things that were interesting to me at the time: classic monsters and time travel. Ideas for this one had been rolling around in my head for a few years, and in a couple of different forms, so I was glad to finally get them out and on paper. I know this story mixed genres, but I figured if humans could time travel (in fiction, at least) then fictional characters should be able to time travel as well, right? 

Dracula's Great Escape
by Rusty Keele

A deep scraping sound accompanied the opening of the ancient stone door.  On the other side, perfectly still, stood a man in an impeccably tailored white shirt, black pants, black bow tie and long black cape.  His slicked-back hairline silhouetted a perfect "V" against his pale white forehead.  Only his eyes moved as they roamed back and forth, taking in the contents of the dusty, dark room.  First he listened, then sniffed.  Nothing.  There was no blood-filled creature to be found in this crypt far beneath the desert sands, not even a rat.  

Then he saw it in the middle of the musty room - the Mummy's sarcophagus.  It was opened and empty - which is what the man expected, since Mummy was vacationing in Geneva with that other monster - the one Dr. Frankenstein brought back from the dead.  What was it about the formerly dead anyway?  Why did they always band together against the other monsters?  Oh well, better to not think about that now - he just needed to find the mask. 

Quickly, silently, he swept into the room to stand next to the crypt, and began to walk around it.  There, on the floor opposite the door, and leaning against the crypt was the Mummy's famous golden death mask.  It wasn't the source of all the Mummy's power, but it did provide him with a great deal of recognition and prestige.  Stealing it would be a great blow to the Mummy's fragile ego, and possibly even sway public monster support to the man's team. 

He knelt down and carefully lifted the mask in his pale hands.  Holding it in one arm he gingerly reached into his left cape pocket and retrieved the temporal dial.  He slowly and carefully set the dial for two hundred million years in the past.  Ha!  No one in their right mind would look for a vampire in the Triassic period!  No one except for the Time Traveler that is, the evil genius who orchestrated this plan for their team, and the one who would rendezvous with the man and bring him back to the future.  As long as his dial emitted the temporal beacon then everything would be just peachy.  It was all so brilliantly evil that... what was that noise?  There was a slight bumping sound in the dark somewhere behind him.  Impossible!  Without moving he smelled the air - nothing.  Then there was another small sound.  Quickly he turned and raised his hands and flashed his fangs!  Raargh!

Inconceivable! A skeleton (one of Mummy's minions no doubt) had sneaked into the crypt while he was fiddling with the mask!  He hadn't anticipated a blood-less one being here on Halloween night. Quick as a bite to a beautiful maiden's neck the man pushed the large red button on the Dial and winced as a bright flash of shimmering light indicated the presence of a new time portal to his right.  There was no time to lose as he pounced towards the portal.  But he was stopped (shall we say "dead" in his tracks?) by the flat side of the skeleton's scythe.  The blow was surprisingly strong and sent the man sprawling away from the portal as the mask clanged to the ground.  He was dazed, but not so dazed as to miss the fact that the skeleton was about to split him asunder.  He rolled to his side and deftly scooped up the death mask as the skeleton readied another blow.  It was now or never - the man tucked the mask like a running back protecting a football and leaped head first through the portal.

He hit the soft, sparsely vegetated earth and rolled onto his knees.  Quickly he turned back to see if the skeleton had followed - but it hadn't.  Part of the genius of the time portal was that it closed instantly once the intended mark passed through it.  The man laughed his evil, chilling laugh and did a little moon walk as he murmured insults about the stupid skeleton.  Now that that little unforeseen problem was over with he reached into his cape pocket to get the dial and... where was it?  Noooooooo!

Somewhere under the sands of the Sahara, millions of years after the man died, a skeleton laughed a dry, bony laugh as he hacked a time dial to pieces.

The End

This story copyright © 2010 by Rusty Keele.  All rights reserved.