Strange Tales # 27

We start out with a pretty good piece of narration.

But they are all one of the strangest tales ever told.  

While the man in the booth wants to leave because "Eww, poor people,", the woman is fascinated as to how the poor old janitor could be so happy.  Apparently, she's cleaned a few too man toilers at retail stores (seriously, how do you get it on the wall or in the hard-to-reach corners?).

As the woman, Cynthia, reluctantly leaves with her companion, the man is still smiling.

We flash back to one year ago when the janitor wasn't smiling. He chants a magic incantation that I guess I must have missed when I trained for janitoring.

Or maybe he just mumbled gibberish.  Maybe I should do that more.

Probably not, as he summons the devil.

Janitor immediately asks if he can sell his soul.  A bad day to clean bathrooms, I take it.  The Devil says no, he doesn't want that, but hey, what's your wish, Mr. Janitor?

Mr, Janitor says he wants the love of a beautiful woman, as his life of cleaning up after people who can't figure out how to use a toilet properly would be a lot less miserable if he had someone who cared for him to come home to.

The Devil gladly agrees and then vanishes.  The janitor goes back to sweeping, but finds something in his pile of dirt he didn't notice before.  No, not a dead rat, but a wallet.

In his free time, Mr, Janitor returns the wallet to the owner, who turns out to be a studio owner.  The studio owners offers him a pre-screening of his movie to get his opinion--after all, it's the hard-working people whom he wants to sell it to.

Mr. Janitor doesn't like the movie and instead of throwing a tantrum or saying he's the wrong demographic, the studio owner asks him how to fix it.  Mr.Janitor's ideas for the movie is a big success and from then on he's the studio's official consultant.

Months later, Mr. No-Longer-Janitor is introduced to Cynthia, an actress and the woman from the beginning of the story.  She's fascinated by his ideas and wanted to know if he was just as interesting of a dinner companion as he was in fixing scripts.

He is and their friendship eventually blossoms into romance and then into marriage.

But Mr. Janitor isn't an idiot.

But...

And so, a year later, the two celebrate their marriage announcement with a friend at the restaurant Mr. Janitor used to work at.  As they chat at the table, a waiter shrouded in shadow arrives.  We readers know who it is.

Devil or not, someone should complain about the lack of uniforms on the waiters

Cynthia and his companion turn away as the waiter reveals himself.  It seems The Devil really let himself go.

Having been swindled out of a trade for clothes his size didn't help

The Devil demands payment, but when Mr. Janitor gladly offers him his soul, The Devil refuses. He wants the life of Cynthia.  It's either her life or everything that he ever gained.

Do the others just see a very bitchy waiter or is the menu that distracting?

And so, Cynthia leaves, still wondering why the lonely Janitor is smiling liking he is.

He's the only person who knows the answer. Him and The Devil.

Two Englishmen are hiking in the Black Forest of Germany and become lost.I don't see how, as this guy cosplaying as a maskless Phantom of the Opera seems to know his way around.

He's going as the Lon Cheney version

As they get closer to the cave, they see a light in it.  Someone else must already be there.  Maybe they can help.

When they finally arrive they see rows and rows of wine barrels stacked against the cave wall.  The two men look for the owner and find an old man and a young woman--father and daughter.

The two travelers sit and talk and ask the old man questions while his daughter tends to customers they didn't see come in.

The old man is Baron Teufel, famous for selling wine in Bavaria.  But what is he doing here?

He tells them the story that led to such circumstances.

Years ago he was hanging out with his friends while his daughter was out riding.  Yes, he was so rich, he actually gave his kid a pony.  This day, however, she is injured while riding.

She needs blood transfusions, but it turns out her blood type is too rare. No one matches or people are too afraid of needles.

Why won't these floating head shelp me?

Then the cosplayer we saw before arrives at his door. He says he's her blood type. Huh.  I didn't know vampires' had blood types.  The vampire says there are conditions to him helping and Mr. Teufel agrees, as long as his daughter lives.

It works. Amusingly enough, 'blood transfusion' isn't a euphemism for the vampire.  He really gives her a blood transfusion.

The vampire sticks around until the girl is all better and says he'll help out if he can again.

Our fashion taste, though IS our fault

Look, I'm not a Twilight fan, but I do like this kind of take on vampires.  They aren't Hungry Hungry Hippos, they have individual personalities.  I prefer Stargate's Wraith when the need for balance between having to interact with something with a sapient mind and having to feed on things with sapient minds is presented.  Some are power-hungry assholes who don't care about humans, some understand the human mind, but also have a need for sustenance.  Give us that, not some whiner covered in glitter (and not even quality glitter).

That's his story.  And as the travelers can see, his daughter is now grown up and healthy.

They aren't satisfied.  "Why keep her shut in here selling wine to mountain folk?"

Mr. Teufel's reply is "Who says I'm selling wine to mountain folk?

Whatever happened to his hat?

Old Man Crackpot is yelling at eminent domain to get off his lawn and get rid of the newfangled bulldozers.

The government originally intended to buy the house and land from him, but he refused as the house had belonged to his family for generations.

His Uncle Crackpot made sure he'd have lots of supplies to hold off the government.

He starts by putting up an electric fence with no warning sign.  I think that's illegal. Government agents try to destroy it without warning.  I think that might also be illegal.

He plants land mines, the bulldozers going through the fence blow up.

Take that...dead people

As Old Man Crackpot toasts to his Crackpot ancestors, there's a sudden earthquake.  He runs out of the house, but it collapses entirely and is destroyed.  Still, it's the land the government wants for their Who Framed Roger Rabbit plan, not the house, so he's still going to defend it.

But the government has an even more sinister plan.

"Hey honey, did the road feel like a collapsed mansion for a second there?"

Yep, the government lured people to run over an innocent senior citizen on his own land in the dark.  But there's no one to press charges.

So how do you know which person is a weed?

This one is pretty cute, if also morbid.  Death has a garden.  In his garden are people.  Sometimes he can pick the 'blossoms' when they're old and withered, sometimes when they're in their prime, and even sometimes when they are young.

Death is worried mankind wants to end all wars, meaning so few blossoms would be picked.  Death, you have overpopulation, gendercide, idiocy, fundamentalist religious zealots, and bad cooks.  We're not going to stop dying just because we stop warring.

Then, somehow, Death is told there's a mushroom in his garden.  Twice.  The first one was a pathetic one, but this one in Hiroshima was absolutely beautiful.

So the mushrooms only appear when they kill people?  What kind of plant was Chernoble then?

The end.

TLDR: Money

Slightly longer answer: Murder and money of course.

Acutal story: Vivian and her husband invested in her aunt dying and she inherits her money.  Her aunt, however, decides to live as long as possible and enjoy her money and trust Vivian and her husband to save up and get jobs.

Her husband keeps pushing and she rejects the idea, but finally, gives in.  He says they planned for her aunt to die, so let's make it happen and she says that makes sense. I hope these two don't decide to have a kid.

I'd be scared of giant heads and disembodied hands too, to be honest

They lock her aunt in the closet and seal all the gaps with tissue or toilet paper or something.

This is why you never use the line "But who will take care of you when you're older?"

She listens in horror as her aunt cries for help and then struggles for air.  When her husband is sure she's dead he opens the door to check.  Vivian is terrified upon seeing what death by suffocation looks like.

Why does she carry so much toilet paper in her purse?

Somehow no one is suspicious an old lady suffocated in her own closet.  Later the will is read and her aunt leaves everything to Vivian.  So, time to dump her murdering husband and spend some money to ease her guilt, right?

Sadly, no.

She stays with him.  Mostly because she's now terrified of closets and wants him to retrieve her expensive coats from her own.

Eventually, everything becomes too tight for her.  Her new pearls, her new coat, her husband's hand on her shoulder, and so forth. She refuses to ride in a car and demands to sleep outside.  Who cares, she has money, let her sleep in a tent.

Her husband tries to stop her from sleeping outside. She insists the house is getting smaller.

He tries to prove to her it's not, but it turns out she's right!  The room is shrinking!

They try the doors and windows, but the shrinking room has wedged them tight.  They're too rich to smash they're way out, so they just pound on the walls.

The next day the Police enter their how to find a perfectly normal room but with Vivian and her husband in the center of it, having suffocated to death.
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It's Marvel's favorite and most useless vampire.  It's Morbius in the Marvel Rebooted Universe.

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