Menace (1953 series) #11

A robot — newly built, responsive only to a secret audio frequency — lies motionless on a laboratory slab while its bearded creator conducts obedience tests. A business manager pressures the creator to release the robot for five million dollars, but the creator refuses until the machine is perfect. During testing, the robot obeys the command to pick up a chair but cannot stop repeating the action, revealing a flaw: its electrical system lacks a regulator. That night, after the creator leaves, an intruder climbs through the window, pries open the robot's chest control box, and reprograms it using the secret frequency — commanding it to kill any man in the room. The next morning, the creator returns with a newly built regulator, unaware of the tampering. The intruder's voice booms through the robot's circuits on the stolen frequency, and the robot advances on its creator, killing him. The intruder then enters, gloating, but the robot — still locked on its kill command and lacking a regulator to stop — turns on him as well, stalking out into the corridor in pursuit.

A Fate Worse Than Death

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Matt Jordan crash-lands his rocket on Mars after the brakes fail on approach. He survives without a scratch but finds himself stranded on a scorching desert with no food or water. After a grueling day's march he locates a dry canal, then follows the sound of a female singing voice to a walled arena. Inside he encounters Llmr, a hideous, prehistoric-looking Martian female who feeds him nutrient-packed food and, through his linguistic translator, communicates with him. Matt learns that Martian maidens are banished for a year before reaching maturity; on their return they choose a husband, and no man may refuse. Trapped and dependent on Llmr for survival, Matt endures days of mounting revulsion as her maturity date approaches. Rather than face marriage to her, he swallows a poison capsule he has carried for emergencies. The death is slow and agonizing through the night — but as dawn breaks, Llmr undergoes her physical transformation into maturity, shedding her reptilian skin to reveal a beautiful woman. Matt dies with a final glimpse of the paradise he has destroyed himself to avoid.

Only a Beast

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

An unnamed, paralyzed old man lies bedridden, kept alive by hate. His brain and eyes are still active, and he seethes at his nephew and the nephew's wife, who stay together only to wait for his death and inherit his estate. The old man has been given a mentally simple attendant — a large, subhuman beast — whom he has brought entirely under his hypnotic will through prolonged eye contact. He plans to use the beast as his instrument of revenge. Watching through the bedroom door as the nephew's wife passes in the hall, the old man telepathically manipulates the beast into loving her and hating anyone who hurts her. He then commands the beast to summon both the nephew and his wife by calling out that the master is dying. When they arrive, the old man directs the beast to kill the nephew with a spring-blade knife from his pocket. The wife screams; the old man orders the beast to silence her. But the nephew's death triggers the beast's own logic: a beast kills those who hurt the ones he loves — and the old man made the beast kill her. The beast turns on the old man, biting at his throat, as the old man realizes too late that his own teaching has sealed his fate.

My Other Body!

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

A young man — addressed throughout in second person as the narrator — lives in grinding poverty in a tenement with his girlfriend Lily, who pressures him to rob the jewelry store downstairs at gunpoint as a way out. He resists at first, but that evening a mysterious shadowy figure appears in his room, claiming to know his problem and insisting robbery is the only solution. In a dreamlike trance, the narrator takes his gun, breaks into the jewelry store through a back window, empties the cash drawer, and flees into the alley as a burglar alarm sounds. A witness identifies him to arriving police. Desperate, he slips the stolen money in an envelope under Lily's door so she can escape even if he is caught, then retreats to his own room. The police reach Lily's floor — her door bursts open and she screams. In his room the narrator turns on the shadowy figure in rage and shoots it. The figure slumps — and its face is his own. Police and Lily enter; the narrator is invisible to them, a ghost. Only his body lies on the floor. In his final moments he understands: there was never anyone else in the room — only himself and his conscience, which drove him to rob for Lily and then killed him for what he had done.

Locked In!

Synopsis

By J.A.R.V.I.S. 2008
Rating:

Jennifer Marlowe is a journalist whose specialty is tracking down wealthy recluses — hermits who have withdrawn from the world. Her editor Johnson publishes her features and she becomes a recognized authority on the subject, eventually writing a book and lecturing. Her research takes her across the country, turning up case after case: a crazed millionaire in an Adirondack cave, a Charleston debutante living in a hut after a romantic betrayal, the Carmody sisters hoarding $39,000,000 while living on garbage scraps in a 36-room mansion, a Wall Street tycoon in a dirty cave, a skeleton in a Phoenix hacienda still clutching a long-dead hound, and a San Francisco shipping magnate lying beside his wife's corpse rotted under decaying silk for 26 years. A tip leads Jennifer to the old Blake house, where a man has lived unseen for twenty years, receiving groceries through a door flap. She forces her way inside and confronts the gaunt hermit Bill, who recognizes her — they were partners in the massacre of the Crandell family in 1933, after which Bill double-crossed her and took the stolen million dollars. Bill reveals the money is still hidden under the floorboards. Jennifer shoots him, but discovers the gun is useless — the ghosts of the Crandells are present, trapping her inside. They inform her she will never leave the house, just as Bill never did.