The little girl opened the cupboard. "Daddy, there's nothing to eat."  "Why don't you just boil us up some eggs, then? Huh?" He had meant it as a little father-to-daughter ribbing. But he immediately regretted having said it. It had come out wrong, oh so wrong. He was bitter, bitter like a cup of Maxwell House coffee that's been sitting in your pocket all week long. Good to the last drop. Now he was being sarcastic. Sarcastic. And why not? Who has a better right to be?  .  "The men in the black car, Daddy! They're coming! They're coming! I feel it in my little bones, the bones of which are psychic."  ."Keep your head down," he screamed at the top of his lungs, "or they'll know we're here!"  .  Look at the mess she's gotten me into now. Her and her damn psi powers, he thought.  .  What about yours, Dad? You're no slouch in the kinesis department yourself, she thought back.

Outside the house, the black car cruised slowly down Maine Street in Ebbets Field, Maine. Inside the car, three members of a secret government agency, the front for which was the slightly buffoonish American Egg Growers of America, surveyed the surrounding surroundings for the father-and-daughter team of psychics.  .  Each man had dreamed of the girl. Each man wanted the girl. Each for secret reasons of his own...  .  But of course it's always best to start at the beginning.

 

Christmas in Maine. Know what it's like? It's special. Snow, Christmas trees, wreaths, good cheer, eggnog, a time to say 'howdy-do' and shake your neighbor's hand, and kiss his wife maybe longer than you should, maybe slip her a little Christmas tongue, but what the hell, it's Christmas. And presents under the tree, and animated specials, and sometimes wolfmen.
.
Christmas 1963. The specter of the Kennedy assassination hung over the country like a shroud. . . a scary black shroud with mold on it, and dirt and worms, and it's around the shoulders of a decaying, bloated corpse. But it's not really a corpse. It's a zombie! Yeah, that's it. A zombie. And it walks, nice and slow. But no matter how fast you run, you can't get away from it. And it leaves a trail of slime! And it screams an inhuman and soulless scream. A scream from hell. And you know if it touches you, you'll become a zombie, too. And eat human flesh, and worship the Dark Master.
.
Anyway, that's the kind of Christmas it was. But Nick Sullivan was determined, in spite of it all, to make this Christmas as wonderful as any other, for the sake of his daughter Dotty.
.
So, like every other year, they bought presents, and lit the windows, and talked of Santa's imminent arrival, and put up a tree, and strung the eggs that would, as always, adorn the tree.
.
Then on Christmas morning, around five o'clock, Nick and Elvira Sullivan watched through their cracked bedroom door as Dotty sneaked downstairs and opened present after present. Something was wrong, though. None of the presents seemed to please her. Not the welder's mask, not the complete works of Robert Frost, not the partially squashed fox that Nick had found on the side of the road and that Elvira had wrapped so carefully, prettily, and lovingly.
.
When all the packages had been said and done, a scowl flitted daintily across her little features. And she began to tremble.
.
Elvira moved to open the door. But almost instinctively Nick jumped out the window and ran down the street to get a priest. This made Elvira think better of opening the door. Instead she stood and watched as, one by one, the eggs strung around the tree began to tremble and smoke.
.
My God, she thought, those eggs are boiling in midair.
.
And there's no water.
.
Elvira screamed, and Dotty turned, smiling at her mother. But it wasn't Dotty anymore. It was something possessed. And for a moment Elvira thought it was something terribly evil.
.
"Eggboiler," whispered Elvira, and the eggs on the tree began to crack and turn black and inedible as she watched as the four thousand-year-old corpse staring over her shoulder.
.
Just kidding.

Six years later, Dotty went on a field trip with her English class to the Northeastern Chicken Hatching Facilities of the American Egg Growers of America. First she stubbed her toe, then the other children made fun of her because someday she would get her period.
.
She had promised her mother, her father, and the priest that she would never boil eggs again. But too much was enough.
The first sign that something was wrong was the screaming of thousands of little chicken embryos.
.
The second sign was the screaming of thousands of Dotty's classmates, who were jammed into the hatchery like so many sardines in a Bell Telephone phone booth, so that there was nowhere to run. Suddenly the air was filled with flying razor-sharp shards of brittle white eggshell fragments. It reminded little Timmy Watson of his father's descriptions of Nam, that is, until Timmy's little towheaded skull was penetrated by a sixty-two-inch jagged piece of eggshell from a rather large egg that had been on exhibit in the Hall of Freaks. Blood splattered and Timmy Watson died.
.
And the egg-growing officials took notice of the little girl with the terrible powers.

Her hair matted with yolk, albumen, and eggshell fragments ... and an occasional beak ... Dotty cried into her Popeye's-head-shaped mug of Bosco. Just Bosco, that's all. No milk.
.
Arm around his daughter Dotty, Nick Sullivan tried to comfort her with a harmless lie calculated to make her more at ease with her death-dealing ability; while in the kitchen, her apron pockets full of eggs, Elvira set herself the task of fixing omelets for dinner. She did not want to be in the same room with Dotty now. At first she was calling her "eggboiling mutant" behind her back. Now she had reached a point where she called her that to her face then ran. It was a hell of a time for all of them.
.
"Hundreds of thousands of years ago," Nick explained to Dotty, "in a place known only as Ire-land, our ancestors, who didn't have the benefit of a good education, like you and your mother and me, and Grammar and Gramper, and Uncle Ned ... well, not Uncle Ned, but you get the point. Anyway, our ancestors were so dumb, they thought A Farewell to Arms was a book about leprosy. And not only that, I but they thought the only way to boil potatoes ... which is actually only the Ire-ish word for what we today call eggs ... was to make a pact with whichever Evil God was closest and most evil. So every hundred years someone of the Sullivan clan is born possessing the blessing-curse of eggboiling. Some have used it for good, some for bad, and some to get through chef school. It's your gift. It's up to you. I love you no matter which path you choose."
.
Nick hoped that she bought it and that it would help her ... and that she wouldn't choose the chef path ... even though he knew it was a lie. What he didn't know was that it wasn't a lie. It was the truth. A truth he was picking up psychically from a priest on a religious program on Channel 6. And not only was the TV not on, they didn't even own one!
.
Suddenly the front door flew open, to reveal sixteen men and a tank. On the side of the tank were the words "American Egg Growers of America."
.
One of the men flashed a badge.
.
"Pardon me, sir," he said. "Are you the man of the house?"
.
"Yes, I am," Nick said, playing their little game. He had already read their minds and knew that they wanted the girl, his daughter. .. Dotty. And to sell him insurance.
.
"We are sixteen insurance salesmen and a tank. Have you ever considered how your loved ones will be provided for after you are extremely sanctioned?"
.
One of his fellows jabbed him in the ribs.
.
"I mean die," he corrected himself. "Yeah, that's it. Once you die."
.
"Come in and sit down," said Nick. "I'll be right back."
.
The sixteen men entered. Also the tank, ripping the front off the house as it did.
.
Nick, in the kitchen, asked, "How many eggs we got, dear? Quick, give 'em to me."
.
"Forty dozen, dear," said Elvira. "Here they are. But don't ruin 'em. The McNabbs are coming to dinner tomorrow ... all of them."
.
She gave them to Nick. Almost all the eggs they had in the house. She had forgotten the three dozen she had in her apron pockets.
.
On the way back to the living room, Nick worried about how he would slip forty dozen eggs into thirty-two pockets. He decided that patting the men on the back while slipping the eggs in would do the trick. So one by one, he patted and slipped, patted and slipped, patted and slipped ... the whole time trying to look as much as possible like a man who wanted to buy insurance, lots and lots of insurance.
.
Hope this works. Or we're up shit's creek. What the hell am I going to say to all those McNabbs? Doesn't matter now ... can't be helped.
.
"Dotty!" he screamed telepathically. "Now! Boil 'em!"
.
"But Daddy, the McNabbs..."
.
"Do it! Now! Before it's too late. Before they find out I filled their pockets with eggs!"
.
The man with the badge squinted and edged toward them. The eggs rattled in his pockets.
.
"Say, what's going on over there between you two?"
.
"Nothing, sir."
.
"Do it now, Dotty!"
.
Instantly, the men's pockets began to tremble and smoke. Terrible cracking sounds emanated from their suits. The stink of scorched polyester filled the air.
.
The men began to scream and dance around from one foot to the other, going, "Ooh-ooh! Ah! Ah!"
.
Nick grabbed Dotty as the eggs began to fly and ran to the kitchen to get Elvira. They were getting out of there. Now.
.
But it was too late. Elvira lay on the floor, covered with bubbling yolk from head to foot.
.
Dotty gasped.
.
"Don't look," said Nick, pulling her back, shielding her from the sight.
.
"Oh, Daddy. I killed her!"
.
"No, punkin, it was me. I killed her with my crazy scheme."
.
"No, it was me," she said. "It was my accursed power."
.
"But it was my idea to use it," Nick said.
.
"See if that stands up in court! I did it!"
.
"No, me!"
.
"Me!"
.
"Me!"
.
"Me!"
.
"Me!"
.
Then, all of a sudden, it didn't seem very important who had killed her. They were both just glad that she was dead at last.
"We cannot stay here, honey," said Nick. "They are dead, all of them, your mother and the insurance salesmen (No, not salesmen. Government operatives! Oh God. My own country!) are dead. But there are more where they came from. And they'll be here soon."
.
"And don't forget the McNabbs."
.
"Hoo-boy!" he said laughing. "Are they gonna be sore!"
.
"I just hope they don't think Mom's an omelet."
.
They both laughed, but Nick knew they were only laughing in the dark. But if I have one laugh to laugh, mused Nick, let me laugh it in the dark.
.
He turned off the lights and they left, never to return to their home again.

 

Dear Pops,
I know all your phones are bugged, so I'm sending you a Mailgram. Good idea, huh? Anyway I'm running out of words, so let me be succinct. Did I spell succinct' right? Is that how you spell it? It looks kind of funny to me. No matter. It seems I'm running out of words. Let me just get to the point. I may not have enough money to pay for. .. Only ten words left, now only three
Love,
Skip Jenkins

PETROGRAD, RUSSIA.
A coded communiqué came in staticky bleeps and blips over the wireless from Skip Jenkins's ordinary spoon shaped transmitter. Frantically decoding the message was Comrade Slim Redman of the KGB. KGB was the acronym for the Russian words meaning Russian Potato Growers of Russia. Potato was the Russian word for egg.
.
Slim could not believe his eyes. Clearing his throat, he steeled himself to read the message to his superiors, the doctors in charge of potato growing ... Drs. Billy Jeff Scrimshaw and Barry Waldenpond ... and to the head of the KGB himself, Chief Leo Guabello.
.
Slim read, knowing that, as the bearer of this bad news, he could very well be sent to Siberia or, worse, to see the Russian ballet again.
.
I didn't have enough change for a long-distance call and I knew you wouldn't want me to call collect, so l thought I'd use my spoon transmitter. Eduardo thinks I'm tapping along to the music from the speaker in the coffee shop where we're drinking coffee. I know it's risky sending this right in front of him, but this is so important that I can t wait. Uh-oh! Here comes the waiter with the dessert. I have to sign off now before the ice cream on my apple pie melts. It's vanilla.
.
The big black phone rang.
.
"Guabello," said Guabello.
.
"Hello, sir. It's double agent Skip Jenkins. I was going to call you back on the spoon transmitter, but I ate my pie with it and the waiter took it away with the dirty dishes. But not to worry, I got $450 in dimes from the cashier at this coffee shop, which is not bad and very reasonable, by the way. I told Eduardo that I was calling the weather number for Australia, which is where they plan to keep the American egg boiler, and I don't think he suspects a ... what's that you say? Forty degrees in Melbourne? Thank y ... sorry, Chief, but Eduardo walked by and I had to pretend that you were really Australian weather.... But anyway, I'll be home in time for the premiere of American -Wheat: Not a Grain of Truth. See you then."
.
Click.
.
"He hung up," said Guabello. "He said something about an American eggboiler. He must mean potatoboiler. Egg is the American word for potato."
.
One by one, they all turned to the one-way glass that looked into the room in which they kept their own Russian potatoboiler, Subject MNX-43-A. The little blond girl was watching a new situation comedy, "Three Pairs of American Blue Jeans." It did not disconcert her at all that the actors were chained to the floor. It was always thus on Russian television.
.
"Could it be," wondered Dr. Scrimshaw aloud, "that there is another?"
.
Guabello frowned. "If there is," he said, "Skip Jenkins must surely kill her so that the Americans cannot retaliate once we boil all their potato cells. Transmit the order to Jenkins at once, before he gives his flashlight-shaped gun to a movie usher."
.
The radio operator understood and began to transmit the message to Skip's toothpick-shaped receiver.
.
At the same time, the little potatoboiler in the next room understood and also began to transmit....

EBBETS FIELD, MAINE
And Dotty felt and understood her twin sister's message. The Russians know about you now. They want to kill you. Look out for the man with the flashlight and the toothpick in his ear.
.
"Daddy," said Dotty, "remember my twin sister?"
.
Nick searched his memory. "Sort of," he said. "What ever happened to her?"
.
"We were separated at birth and, through some clerical error at the hospital, she's now being held prisoner in Russia."
.
"That's too bad. I'd always hoped she'd be the one member of the family to make something of herself. No pun intended."
.
"None taken," she retorted smartly.
.
"But why do you bring her up now? Now of all times, when I'm frantically searching for whatever food and supplies may be in this house we have commandeered as a hiding place from those G-men."
.
"G" for goon, he thought.
.
"This is no time for nostalgia," he said.
.
And he was right, for they were trapped ... the girl and her father ... and they knew it. What they didn't know was that their terrible predicament had been made even more terrible by a string of coincidences so terrible that . . .
.
Well, here.
.
This is how terrible coincidences occur in a small town like Ebbets Field, Maine.
.
First the neighbors went away. On vacation. All of them at the same time. Some kind of package deal over to the Shangri-la Travel Agency over to Portland. All of them, that is, except Sonny Tillitson and his wife ... who murdered each other in their sleep ... and Eb McMann, who had fallen prey to McMann-eating beetles. And Zeke Wilson, who had recently become a giant slimemold, with eyes, and was embarrassed to leave his house.
Then there were the dogs. They didn't go on vacation either. But to make up for it, they became rabid. All of them. Some kind of package deal over to the Ebbets Field garbage dump.
.
And oh yes, the power lines. They were cut by a lawnmower boy cum worshiper of Pan gone berserk.
.
The phones were dead, too. All of them shot by the deputy sheriff, Herb Winkler, who had mistaken them for flesh-eating zombies.
.
And then the blizzard hit.
.
"Daddy, no time for tangents. My twin sister and I have been psychic pen pals for years now, and I have always been a secret to the men who keep her prisoner. But now they know about me and want to kill me. Also, there are some more of those nasty insurance salesmen outside. What are we going to do?"
.
Looks like we're trapped. But don't let on. Don't scare the kid.
.
Too late. My hair is standing on end already.
.
"Cupcake, cupcake, cupcake. Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you. But I am the only one."
.
Stop. Don't say this. Can't help it. For her own good.
.
"Everyone else will. And not just everyone, but everything. Look, the closet doors. It is as if they reach out for you. But don't be afraid. There are no such things as bogeymen. Or are there? Look, there, the closet doors seem closer now and . . . bigger!"
.
Simply the perspective. Closer means bigger. Don't tell her that.
.
"Run. Run! Run!! But there is nowhere to run."
.
"Daddy! Daddy! I'm scared!"
.
"Don't be afraid." The man held the girl close to him, felt her tears on his unshaven cheek. "Daddy's here. Daddy loves you, the way he used to love Mommy."
.
"You mean . . . very much?"
.
The house reached into his mind, and he knew that he was the house. And always had been. He felt the studs and lathing and beams and wainscoting the way a man feels his skeleton.
.
What's happening to me? Got to. .. pull away. But I like it. It's good. Good to have a basement.
.
"It's hard to put into words, punkin. Come up to the bedroom and let me show you." The man took her by the hand.
.
The closets opened and reached out for what was theirs. Outside the wind raged.
.
And the black car approached.

Operative 53, Skip Jenkins, a round, stupid man, scanned the house fronts with his Smith & Wesson night scope." A lot of fucking rabid dogs in this neighborhood," he said. "This is nothing like Nam."
.
Another operative, Mack "The Knife" McKnife, said, "One dog per house, it seems. I've been keeping track by putting notches in my cheese dip."
On the car radio, the Beatles sang:

I'd rather see you dead, little girl,
Than to see you with another man....

"No, Daddy, Don't!" screamed Dotty.
.
Her father, now hinged to the wall, looking more like a door than she had ever seen him before, tried to have his way with her.
.
"Daddy, what's happening to you? You're becoming a door!"
.
"I'm not your daddy anymore. While you were in the bathroom before, I sold my soul to this house for life eternal. So I have to live it as a door. Big fucking deal. Now the house wants you."
.
"No!" she screamed, and chopped the door to pieces with an ax.
.
"You can't kill me," the pieces said in unison as they began to chase her across the room.
.
"Or us," said the window, opening and shutting on her head.
.
"Or us," said the salt shaker on the table.
.
"Or us," said the spice rack, flying at her from across the room.
.
"Or us!"
.
"Or us!"
.
"Or us!"
.
The house began to tremble and laugh.
.
Dotty took out her blowtorch and set the house on fire.
.
It stopped laughing.
.
"Dotty, Dotty!" wailed the pieces of her father in unison.
.
"Ow! Ow! Ow!" said the spirits of the undead which possessed the objects in the house.
.
Dotty began to collect the pieces of her father.
.
No!, she heard the pieces say in her head. It's too late for me! I belong to the house now! And when I burn to cinders, I will go on existing for all eternity as nothing but a living breathing evil swirl of dust.
.
"Oooh, creepy!" Dotty whined, dropping the pieces.
.
Run! Escape! And watch out for the men in the black car! And the dogs. And the Russian. And the snow. And that crazy Ehrhardt, who lost his mind on his vacation and has decided to come back and kill anyone who remains in Ebbets Field. Especially if it's a little kid. Now hurry. Goodbye. I'm sorry. I love you. I love you as much as burning cinders can love anything

But she was already out the door ....

And running in the snow.
.
And being chased by dogs.
.
And Jake.
.
"There she is!" yelled Pops.
.
And now Pops.
.
"I see her through the maggots which are now my eyes," said the zombie of Skip Jenkins.
.
The Russian, too.
.
"Looks pretty bleak," said Dotty.
.
And also McKnife in snowshoes.
.
Suddenly Dotty stopped and faced them all, closing her eyes and raising her hands.
.
"Calling all eggs in Ebbets Field," she cried at the top of her little lungs.
.
Her pursuers stopped in their tracks, including the dogs and the zombie.
.
Something was happening. Rattling came from the houses around them. And suddenly windows were blowing outward, and steaming hot eggs were flying through the cold winter night air.
.
We love you, Dotty, the eggs seemed to hiss.
.
Just like Nam, McKnife thought, as he was decapitated by forty eggs. The snow around him turned red, blood red.
.
And the bloodthirsty Jenkins forgot his patriotism and went for it
.
Dotty remembered the old wives' tale that to kill a zombie, you must hit him in the heart with a hard-boiled egg. She took a chance, and the egg went through Jenkins's body like teeth through a Mars bar, and he crumbled into a pile of dust.
.
The rest began to run, but there was nowhere the eggs could not reach when propelled by the awesome power of the little girl.
.
Jake Ehrhardt was hit next, and his head exploded from the force of it.
.
What dogs there were left were eating the eggs and boiling slowly from the inside out, like hamsters in an Amana microwave oven.
.
Finally there was Pops alone, facing Dotty. The flying eggs had subsided.
.
"Now, Dotty, be reasonable," Pops pleaded. "If you kill me, there'll always be others to come after you. But we could be partners and rule the world."
.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the unbroken eggs began to pile up around him until he was encased up to his neck in the accursed things.
.
"Does this mean we don't have a deal?" he said.
.
As if in answer, the eggs began to warm. And at first it felt good. Pops was happy to be free of the cold.
.
Then the eggs were hot, and pressing on him. Pops was reminded of the witch burnings in Salem, and his tour of duty in Nam. He began to whimper.
Dotty concentrated all of her energy on the eggs around Pops, until she was nearly one tight eggboiling muscle from head to toe.
.
"If you're going to do it, do it fast," wept Pops.
.
No, do it slow, she found herself thinking. Make him suffer. The way I suffered. And my daddy. And the McNabbs. But not Mommy, she deserved it.
Then the eggs began to hiss and sizzle as they dug into Pops's flesh. From all around the eggs burned deeper and deeper into him, converging on his heart. Boiling blood bubbled from his nose and mouth, and Pops was dead.
.
And Dotty eased herself down into a nearby snowdrift and waited calmly for sleep to come, and then death.

 

A faceless man came to the girl as she lay dying in the snow. A faceless man with an egg for a head. No, it was just a hairless man with a head for a head. It was only bald Carl Reiner.
.
"The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" he said. "But don't forget: the Americans are already here! The Americans are already here!"
.
"Talk sense, Reiner," she demanded, "or at least be funny. Or is that too much to ask of you now that you no longer have Rose Marie around to make you seem funny by comparison? Just as you no longer have Morey Amsterdam around to make you seem tall, or Dick Van Dyke to make you seem sober, or Jerry Paris to make you seem as though you have talent, or Richard Deacon to make you seem as though you have hair. .. "
.
"All right! All right! I'll talk sense. I know you're thinking that it would be very easy now to just give up and go to sleep, but all the world loves an eggboiler. Boil eggs and the world boils with you. Fry and you fry alone."
.
"Say, that's pretty good, and Rose Marie is nowhere to be seen."
.
"Never mind that now. What you have to consider is that the world is in danger because there is no country working toward good. Both sides, the U.S. and Russia, are as evil as they come. You and your sister alone have the powers and the knowledge to turn things around. You must fight back."
.
"You're right. Even though you're Carl Reiner, you're right. But what can two little moppets like us do against the whole world?"
.
Carl Reiner smiled slyly.
.
"Oh, I don't think you and your sister, little Sullivan Sullivanovich, will have any trouble taking the world into your own hands. For what is the world, after all, but a big, big egg, with lots of little eggs moving around on it?"
.
"You mean people!" the girl said brightly.
.
"Yes. And babies and dogs."
.
"And Uncle Ned?"
.
"Well, no, not Uncle Ned. But you get the point."
.
"Yes, I do," she said.
.
She felt the power swell up in her and she knew that when it came to boiling, eggs were peanuts. And it was time to take the next step, to move on to bigger and hairier things ... namely people. And beyond that, who knew? The world itself? The very core of the universe? Suddenly she felt there was no limit to what she could boil.
.
"God, the power is intoxicating," she said, slurring her words and putting a lampshade on her head.
.
And as Carl Reiner floated into the sky, Dotty awoke from her dream with a terrible hangover and sent the message to her sister: Meet me in Grand Central Station, Friday at two, under the big clock. Then, pausing to consider the immensity of the task ahead, she added: And bring your big oven mitts.

By Paul Proch & Charles Kaufman
Illustration by Matt Mahurin

From the April, 1984 National Lampoon