Choose Your Own Adventure #31: Vampire Express

Last time I was able to save Spock from himself in a highly satisfying literary version of a moron box show. Now it's back to Choose Your Own Adventure as the dream of finishing this series sometime before I get early-onset senility continues to sag like a heavy load. Today we're traveling back to 1984. We were winning the victory over ourselves, Eastasia had always been our enemy and vampires didn't sparkle, own businesses or fill giant rooms with dozens of floggers and allied devices. Instead they apparently hung out on trains and performed all the usual Bram Stoker cliches. Yeah, it was a better time.

I love the cartoony version of fiery immolation at the bottom.

We've got a new author for this one, some guy named Tony Koltz who will be deploying his Ivy League education and massive experience in the publishing industry. Yes, these goofy books were serious business at this point. Not just any geek off the streets can write one. Gotta be handy with your big degrees, earn your keep. 

Despite this formidable background Mr. Koltz manages to insert two cliches into the very first sentence: vampire haunted Romania and a visit to a possibly wacky uncle. Wave that Colombia degree all you want buddy, this is not a good start. I'm taking a train through impaler country where the plan is uncle Andrew and I will team up to scientifically prove vampires, once and for all time. You know, just explaining how magnets work would be impressive enough, let's not get wild.

Time to check that stock portfolio, go back to high school for the hundredth time, etc.

I'm joined by "Nina" a blonde who is my age and her aunt Mrs. West who I'm sure will be preventing a lot of awkward make-out sessions by hanging around. I recall a bizarre letter from Uncle Andrew claiming these two might hold the key to solving the whole vampire problem, a shaggy dog story about a painting and a jewel that might be magical or whatever and a promise that legendary gypsy hospitality is out there should I need it. Fair enough. 

Darkness settles in and Mrs. West has a freak-out where she grabs the previously mentioned jewel and claims she can sense the painting is in danger. Nina responds with typical teen arrogance and lack of empathy but it doesn't stop her aunt from leaving. Fifteen minutes pass and my game is apparently so weak that not only does nothing happen but Nina wants to leave to hunt for her second tier relative. I offer a pathetic White Knight act, agreeing to help in the search. It's pretty clear the vampire is the only one on this train with any chance of doing the Wild Thing.

On the alternate cover the main character is a bit more successful with the ladies.

I decide to question other passengers, since maybe some normal human interaction will prove helpful in interpreting basic social cues in the future. There's plenty of train description, making me long for the days of Which Way Books and their patented "You're on a train.Left or Right?" prose. Instead I encounter an unhelpful conductor who has very little to say on the missing older lady and possibly endangered painting front. He explains that people disappear on this train all the time and its really not that big a deal. Life is cheap, get over it.

Still, I'm given permission to search anywhere, except the private car of a Count and Countess. Hmmm. Noble title. Probable business holdings. Female companion that is likely to have signed a submissive contract. Yeah, that's our vampire. I'm trying his door.

"I like watching you sleep."

After the initial knocks are ignored, the door finally gets answered by a "dwarf" with a "repulsive face." R.A. Montgomery would be proud. He tells me to go away, but I've got to find and save the woman that I mostly know as a wearer of garish jewelry, listener to animate objects and preventer of light petting.

Fortunately the main man arrives, pulls the little person aside, apologizes and invites us in. Inside it's all luxury and class, of course, and his "lovely wife" is there as well. The countess even provides the underage version of late night drinks, in this case trays of cookies and candy. Man, these satanic monsters really are good people. I bet he pays his employees well, too. 

Nina and I tuck into the candy and weird red punch and it would be hard for Western Union to telegraph this any better. The vittles actually taste awful and give an odd tingle that's presumably bad, not like the ones you'd get if this guy was whipping you. An attempt to make a break is blocked and sure enough, the teeth are out. Who could have foreseen this? 

You can trust me, I served in the military.

Somehow my friend zone partner and I manage to get out of the vampire room and get on top of the train, because if there's a train in an action story you're going to end up either on top of it and/or clinging from the sides at some point. The undead lack the southern speed to catch up, despite reaching out with clawed hands in classic style. We jump off the train, land in soft snow and make out way to a cabin and safety. A nice happy end. Well, Nina's aunt is probably getting a neck i.v. from European Old Money right now, but you can't win them all.

I thought this was a decent effort, not really what you'd call original but good enough for what it is. There is a reason cliches exist, after all. They work. Considering how much vampire mythology has been carpet-bombed by talentless hacks in the last few years it's almost a relief to get back to the basics.

   You get jacked up by poisonous spiders and fall to a horrible death. The End.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Which Way Books #2: Vampires, Spies and Alien Beings

After a potential hollow earth adventure ended by playing it safe and avoiding danger it's back to Which Way Books. They're what I'd imagine the Choose Your Own Adventure series would have resembled if it had been produced by East Germans. You've got stark, utilitarian prose, tons of White space where words or illustrations probably should be but are absent in a masterstroke of bleak, modernist art and a quality that veers from pretty good to "There are two doors, which one?" making up an entire page. For all its obvious shortcomings, there's a certain charm to this series. Like that Soviet bloc product, you get the feeling that with everything that was stacked against the makers, including their own considerable limitations, the moderately serviceable final result still represents the best that could be hoped for. On days when the kommissar is there it can aspire to even greater heights than, "well, that's something."

Compare that to Twist-a-Plot, where clearly talented people were involved but they just didn't care and had a massive amount of contempt for their potential readers. I'll take my entire page with two sentences on it, thanks, as long as those two sentences aren't full of terrible, suspension of disbelief shattering attempts at comedy.

You know what, maybe we should just start reading this book.

Today it would be vampires, factory owners and kinky billionaires.

With all the artistry of a Minsk apartment building I'm informed I won the "Grin Toothpaste Sweepstakes." That's pretty much it as far as that goes: no attempts to expand on the concept, no jokes about consuming thousands of tubes of the stuff en route to this amazing triumph, nothing. The only reason it's even mentioned is to provide a fig of explanation for what follows and having served that purpose we just move on. Nice.

The big prize is a trip to a movie lot, but before I can start watching amusing celebrity meltdowns there's crazy noises and the sort of glow that suggests imminent alien abduction. The guide is all "Oh no, it happened!" which might be more understandable in the face of a tantrum from a bankable star than this madness.

The explanation, as you probably already guessed, is the studio created a machine that turns fantasy into reality. Yeah, just let this idea wash over you. One thing you have to say about Which Way, they never met a high concept too ridiculous. "Turn on the reality machine, we need to create glistening blood-suckers of high school age!" Sounds a lot more sensible than endless remakes. 

I feel the Killer Goalie story should be told to every new generation.

The bottom line is we're caught in the "Reality Warp," which sounds more like what happens after a six pack of beer than a science fiction concept. An attempt to run, clearly the best weapon against the very fabric of our world being torn open in pursuit of an off-brand E.T. knockoff, fails when I crash into an invisible barrier and am confronted by three "grays." For some reason the book let's you simply walk away from this inescapable mess to see the vampire movie area, so I do that. 

I end up in a dark classroom where stern Mr. Draco (Man, Harry Potter stole from everything, no matter how humble and forgettable) and am instructed to take a seat. I'm informed by a classmate that the one I selected used to belong to "Charlie" but he was murdered the night before. Well, it's not like he's going to need it, then. 

  If Dracula had studied liberal arts instead of business.

The school day goes by without result and it's pretty clear this part was written to stand alone and then shoe-horned into the "Movie comes alive!" conceit to fill pages. The "reality warp" and movie lot tour have been forgotten and this is all described as banal and ordinary. The teacher wants me to stay after, since I'm new and all. The meeting is going down when halfway through there's a horrible odor. Yeah, creatures of the night were a little different before they discovered their love for erotic tie-up games. I'm given a chance to bolt, but honestly this book is robbing me of my will to resist and I'd kind of like to wrap things up.

Draco denies that there is any smell, which of course confirms that he's the origin. Then I get dizzy and pass up. Yup, they really missed the boat on the concept of vampires using their horrible personal hygiene to get their victims as the centerpiece of the new, totally lame mythology recent years produced.

I treat my hundreds of employees very well.

I wake up in a graveyard and, hey, it's Lisa! Remember her? Well no, in a nice continuity error the route I took to get here contained no references to this character, who apparently was another student that disappeared. I forgive the mistake. When you have to churn out dozens of words a day to write one of these it's easy to see how this might happen. Anyway, she's basically offering to turn me into a vampire, but I'm apparently so slow on the uptake that I just "feel strange" about this whole arrangement.

I tell her to put in the fangs and that's what happens. I'm given the dark gift and become an undying monster. Still, I'm an optimist to the last, realizing this means no more "decimal points" or being told not to stay up late. Sorry kid, if you're going to become an industrialist like most of the undead you're gonna need that long division. 

All amazing.

I didn't like this one. It seems likely that the author couldn't manage the 3,000 words required to produce a full Which Way Book and just combined some failed, poorly edited fragments with the "reality warp" nonsense providing the link. It doesn't really auger well for this series that this sort of almost unbelievable laziness is already happening two books in. I also didn't like how clueless to obvious genre elements my character was. This isn't a zombie movie ("Some kind of ghoul...or walker? I don't know!") so there's really no excuse.

Maybe the "aliens" and "spies" portions were better, but I'd bet a shiny nickel against it.

  Mars needs suburbanites. 

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.