Call of the Monstrous

A local council in the South of England has been heavily criticised by residents after spending tens of thousands of pounds of Council Taxpayers money on a series of what have been characterised as ‘bizarre schemes’. The latest of these has been the installation of a huge loudspeaker on the roof of the Civic Centre, from which have been broadcast a series of disturbing bestial cries. “It goes off at all hours of the night and day,” complained local Crapchester resident Ena Frix told her local newspaper, the Crapchester Chronicle. “The sounds are horrendous – enough to send shivers down your spine! One night I was awakened by this horrible screeching noise going out all over the town – apparently it was heard as far away as the south coast!” Other residents have complained of having been woken in the early hours by strange undulating noises, loud boomings, eerie wailings and ethereal singing. “If nothing else, the stuff being emitted by that loudspeaker must surely break noise pollution regulations,” observes another local, Fred Wippy. “They’ve certainly disturbed my sleep patterns and given me tinnitus. It’s about bloody time the council packed it in!” There have been numerous complaints from local farmers that their chickens have stopped laying and their cattle’s milk curdled by the nightly noises. There have even been reports of several residents being driven insane by the nocturnal disturbances. “I have it on good authority that some bloke a couple of streets away went berserk after four consecutive nights of this racket and ran into the street naked waving his big chopper,” claims Wippy. “Apparently he sliced up three people with it before the cops caught him! Of course, the council have hushed it all up!”

But just what is the purpose of the loudspeaker and its disturbing emissions? According to one senior councillor, the answer is simple: the loudspeaker is broadcasting the mating calls of various giant monsters, in the hope of luring at least one of them to Crapchester. “It is a well known fact that the best way to attract these creatures is through the promise of sex,” explains Councillor Rob Grickett, Chairman of the Civic Reconstruction Committee. “There are so few of them that they just can’t get any on a regular basis, so the merest promise of getting some action from a beast of the opposite sex will bring them running.” It has been pointed out, though, that if such a creature was to respond to one of the siren calls of sex being put out by the council, it would surely become enraged when it arrived to find that, instead of a potential mate, it was a loudspeaker putting out the mating call. “Well, obviously – that’s the whole idea,” declares Grickett. “With any luck it will be so angry that it runs amok and destroys half of the town! I mean, I’ve seen that film The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms where that prehistoric monster thinks that foghorn is a mating call – when it realises its mistake, it goes crazy and destroys the lighthouse the horn is mounted on! In fact, it is where we got the idea for the whole scheme!” The council’s plan, apparently, is to have a monster destroy large parts of Crapchester in order to be able to institute a new urban renewal scheme and attract reconstruction funds from the government.

“Let’s face it, this place is an utter shit hole and, thanks to austerity, we don’t have the funds for any kind of renewal. Right now, we can’t attract private investment or new employers to the town, it has such a shitty reputation,” says Grickett. “Even if we had the money, there’s no way the bleeding heart liberal bastards on the council would let us demolish our sink estates and put up luxury housing instead. But if some natural disaster for which we couldn’t possibly be blamed – like a monster attack – were to destroy those areas of the town, then we’d have carte blanche when it came to rebuilding. Plus, we’d be declared a disaster zone and receive tens of millions of government funding, not to mention international aid!” As earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters on the required scale are rare in the South of England, the council decided upon the idea of luring monsters to the town instead. “We did consider authorising mass fracking in the Borough in the hope of inducing an earthquake,” says Grickett, “but the bloody environmental lobby is too active around here.”

Grickett points to Japan as proof that the council’s strategy is viable. “Just look at all the funds and sympathy they got after Godzilla attacked that nuclear power plant and snorted the radioactive materials in it to charge up his power,” he opines. “I know the authorities claimed the devastation was all the result of a tsunami, but that was just nonsense – clearly a cover up to prevent widespread panic.” The councillor is ambivalent as to which type of monster the council hopes to attract to Crapchester. “Obviously, gigantic Godzilla-type prehistoric reptiles would fit the bill nicely, but they only rarely venture into such Northern climes as UK waters,” he muses. “A giant ape is always a possibility, or maybe a huge moth or massive bird from outer space, That’s why we’re constantly trying out new mating calls, to maximise our chances of attracting something.” Which raises the question of just how these ‘mating calls’ are generated and how the council knows what the mating calls of various monsters sound like in he first place. “We’ve got a chap from the local tech college who mixes them – he uses all sorts of sounds he’s recorded, from human cries of ecstasy to rutting wildebeest,” explains Grickett. “He bases the individual calls on the mating sounds of the nearest equivalent normal animal, but louder and weirder.”

This isn’t the first time that Crapchester council have tried to attract monsters to the town – last year the town was plagued by foul odours which regularly engulfed it, causing outbreaks of mass vomiting. The smells were eventually traced to an apparatus mounted on the roof of the civic centre which was belching out the evil stenches at regular intervals. “It was an attempt to use pheromones to attract these fantastic beasts to the town,” says Grickett. “We had a bloke from the local sewage works mixing up some simulated pheromones for us, but it clearly wasn’t working, so we decided to pursue the mating call strategy instead.” While the mating calls have, so far, failed to attract any monsters to destroy Crapchester, they have been affecting some residents in unexpected ways. “There’s no doubt that I’ve been getting it more regularly since the sounds started,” reveals Ena Frix. “They might not been doing anything for the likes of King Kong, but they’ve certainly been giving my husband the horn – as soon as they start, he rips off his clothes and runs around the bedroom naked, making ape noises, before jumping off of the top of the wardrobe and ravishing me.”