"And we're back." Linda DuPree smiled into the camera, doing her best to appear natural. "With LaBrea... Uh... Is that your first or last name?"
The camera panned over to Linda's "guest." At first glance she appeared human, though the illusion broke down quickly. The size was the immediate tip-off: nine feet tall, with chalk-white skin and half-feline features.
From her short muzzle a pair of dagger like fangs dipped to just under her jaw. She "wore" an evening gown and opera gloves made of viscous liquid tar, the same material that formed an impossible mane upon her head.
The liquid moved and shifted with a life of its own, and a tendril of her floor-length "tresses" was presently dancing behind Linda like an agitated cobra, dripping rivulets of shimmering black oil that flowed along the ground back into her dress.
"Just LaBrea." Her voice carried an odd mix of valley girl inflection and a Hollywood Count Dracula accent, somehow unimpeded by her tusk-like fangs. "Thank you for asking. And Linda, can I just say that I am so thankful that you had little old me on your show, to get to know all the good people at home?"
"Thank, yes, I would like to-" Linda paused, and gathered herself. "I'd like to thank you, very much, LaBrea, for allowing the paramedics to give Sarah and Pauline transfusions."
"They were deliciously boring, dahling." She smiled. "Not like you. So. What do you want to ask me?"
"Well, what are you?" Linda winced. "Was that rude? I-"
"No, Dahling, you're just timid, frightened, like a little mouse. I like you." LaBrea tapped her chin, the slick mass of tar on her head shifted into a raised secretarial bun, a pair of glasses frames forming on her face, evoking a 'thoughtful' look by way of a fashion photo shoot.
"I'm a sabertooth tigress by death, a vampire professionally, an actress by calling and a Fossil Ghoul in general."
"Lets talk about that last one."
"Oh, acting! I don't have representation yet, but you have seen me on the news! And now here! On the hostage episode of The Squadt with Linda, Sarah, Pauline, and the husk formerly known as Darla!" She made an old fashioned 'call me' gesture into the camera with her tar-dripping claws.
"She'll be fine. I mean... not psychologically, but in a few categories I'm sure."
"I meant lets talk about the Fossil Ghouls. What does that mean?"
"Okay, so, like, I'm sure you've heard all kinds of things from the DynoGuard and their little juicebox pals, no offense."
"None taken."
"Wasn't a request. Like I was saying. You've heard that we're some kind of alien species that feeds on fear that's come here to bring an age of suffering and ultimately extinction upon you all. And I just want to let everyone know that couldn't be further from the truth."
"I, for one am glad to hear tha-"
"Yeah, species implies we reproduce and create life like mortals, which is downright offensive. Also, we feed on all forms of evil that you both commit and suffer, not just fear."
"So what are you then?"
"I'm the bones of a sabertooth cat, a whole lot of tar, a mass of your species superstitions, fears, and desires brought to life with a dark heart."
"A Dark Heart... is that metaphorical-?"
LaBrea plunged a hand into the tar at her hip, digging around in it as it were a pocket, before withdrawing a pulsing crystal the size of a cantaloupe. It was shaped like a human heart, carved crudely out of a sickly amber-yellow crystal. Inside, Linda could see a shadow moving around like a bug in a jar.
"This is a dark heart. Made form the ichor of Apothis herself, and holding a poor little soul that was too wicked to get fully digested after the master's last stop." LaBrea turned to the heart and its tiny shadow. "Who wasn't digested? You weren't, you weren't digested were you? You little atrocity you!"
Linda flinched as the shadow slammed itself against the wall of the heart nearest to her. She couldn't remember what it looked like, only that it had many teeth and claws it ought not to have, and was scrabbling furiously at the crystal in a futile attempt at escape. The camera did not pick up the finer details.
"You need a lot of evil, a lot of entroplasm, to make a little monster like this big and strong enough to be a real Fossil Ghoul." LaBrea said. "So you see, by letting us run roughshod over your world, you're actually helping us thrive. Isn't that fun?"
"You mentioned Apothis... That's the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?"
"Oh sweet little mouse! Apothis comes for everyone eventually. As a civilization gets big, and gets smart, its capacity to both inflict and experience evil swells. And when you're ripe, the monster meteor herself comes to feast, leaving a mass extinction in her wake. Before moving to the next star to do it, and the next, coming back around when your world has a new set of annoying talking matter that knows how to scream and mean it."
LaBrea shook herself from her ravings and regained her perky, if uncanny, posture. "Annoying talking matter and you, Linda. We're besties. Obviously!"
"How, how many times has Apothis done this?"
"To Earth? More than a couple by a few, dahling." LaBrea. "The lizards were the only ones to do something about it, and we'll have them dealt with soon."
"Why are you telling us this?" Linda asked.
"Because, dahling, it won't help. Not knowing, not begging, not even worshiping me." She tilted her head and smiled. Both the tilt and smile went farther than they ought. "Not that you shouldn't do all three anyway. They're fun!"
Linda blinked, unsure of how to respond.
"I mean fun for me." LaBrea grinned into the camera, then took a long, low inhale through her nose. As she did, Linda saw tendrils of smoke roiling from the cameras, the audience, and even herself, rushing into the creature's oddly petite nostrils. The smoke was an impossibly dark and deep purple and it smelled of burning decay.
She could taste the wisps flowing out of her mouth. They tasted like her divorce, her broken leg, her father's funeral-
"Don't turn that dial." LaBrea said in a mocking parody of Darla's voice. "Some of us will be right back after a message from these sponsors."
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