Edna Yaghi’s Column
Once long ago, Uncle Sodom had been known to everyone as Uncle Sam. At one time Sam stood for liberty, justice and the inalienable rights of all regardless of race, religion, or ethnic affiliations. But one day, Sam met Dr. Frankenstein who had dug up the body of a mad degenerate and decided that by his experimental procedures, he would bring the defunct back to life.
Dr. Frankenstein concocted all sorts of chemical brews and connected to the body he had dug up, all kinds of electrical wires. There, in the sinister doings of the darkest night, the body of the deceased lay on a table down deep in the dungeons of the mad scientist. Thunder boomed like a thousand cannons and lightening split in half ghoulish trees in the doctor’s courtyard. The water in the deep medieval moat that wound itself around Frankenstein’s mansion rose and fell like the wild jerky beating of a spastic heart. Somewhere in the distance, a fiendish cackle burst out in a Madeline A.-like frenzy.
As he sat watching the sordid event unfold before his eyes, Sam shuddered. Then he began to sweat. He wanted no part of this insane plan to bring the dead back to life. He must escape before it was too late. All at once, the fingers of the dead man moved and then he slowly sat up as if some unseen wench had raised him. His face was green and bloody gashes zigzagged their way across his countenance. He grinned a sluggish nearly toothless smile. Sam’s shaking almost got out of control. His hair stood on end. He would not be an accomplice to this madness. He rose to go, to run for his life. But the good doctor shouted to him, “Wait, don’t leave now when the fun has just begun. Stay around a while. Join the party. Don’t be a chicken. Here drink this and everything will be all right. I want you to be the first one to recognize my man Israel.”
“Who’s Israel?”
“Frankenstein’s Monster. My monster. You will see, I will be famous and my name will live forever as the genius who gave life to a dead body.”
This is the night when Uncle Sam turned into Uncle Sodom. Something happened that sinister night other than the metamorphism of Frankenstein’s Monster. Perhaps it was something Sodom drank. Perhaps it was the night itself. Perhaps it was because of the tainted company of the mad scientist. No one really knows. Fortunately for Israel, Uncle Sodom declared him to be his brother, his best friend, his only ally in the Land of the Rising Sun and renamed him Uncle Gomorrah. To make matters worse, he proclaimed him legitimate from the moment of his reincarnation.
Fifty years later, now separated by an ocean of time, Uncle Gomorrah returned to visit the benevolent Uncle Sodom. When he first stepped off the plane, Uncle Sodom’s father Grandpa Sodom or George B. was there to meet him. He grinned from ear to ear and eagerly shook the monster’s hand. His first words to Frankenstein’s Monster were, “It’s good to have you as our honored guest, but God, you’re even uglier than you were when I last saw you.”
Whereupon, Gomorrah, green skin bloody red gashes and all, answered, “It’s good to be here, but God, you won’t win any beauty contests yourself and hey, by the way, you’re still a wimp.”
Later on, in the House Painted White, Uncle Sodom and Uncle Gomorrah had much to discuss. Late into the night they talked, surrounding themselves with delicious delicacies and delectable morsels. There was much treachery to plot. The latest uprising by the indigenous inhabitants of the land Uncle Gomorrah occupied did not like the fact that every evening, when the wind shrieked and wolves howled, Uncle Gomorrah sat around a bonfire and feasted on the remains of at least one of the unlucky inhabitants of the land he had abducted with the blessings of Uncle Sodom and Rev. Billy Graham.
Both Sodom and Gomorrah agreed that the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun had no right at all to oppose the occupation of what was left of their country or the cannibalistic eating habits of Gomorrah. After dinner, and it was not reported who the dinner was, Sodom listened to Gomorrah’s complaints. “We’ve got to agree that these Natives cannot make any gains through violence and that their terrorism is a threat to regional stability.”
“Indeed,” stated Sodom, “the Natives have to cooperate and stop their terrorist activities. The nerve, throwing stones at you just because you eat some of them. Why, they should consider it an honor to be eaten by a monster such as you. And please stop drooling every time you look at me. You’ve already eaten one native tonight and I’m really too old and too tough to digest by now. Save your drooling for one of the Native children.”
To literally save his skin, Uncle Sodom ordered champagne though he had promised his wife he would never drink again. But Gomorrah was so horribly ugly and kept drooling every time he stared into his eyes that he couldn’t help but drown out the fear that he himself might become the monster’s next meal. And so, the pair drank and drank and reminisced about the special relations they shared and stressed how there was a need for calm after 6 months of uprising.
The following day, Uncle Gomorrah made the rounds to Sodom’s Congress and his people, the Sodomites. Though no one could bear to look at his green face and the bloody gashes that still circled his countenance, Gomorrah made a successful comeback after his settlement policy had made him an outcast among Sodomites who saw him as an obstacle to peace. He even had a picture taken of him holding hands with the thing known as M. Jackson. Even the evil monster did not know whether Jackson was male or female, black or white. But it really didn’t matter as long as whoever Gomorrah associated with was as morally debased as he was.
When his tour de grace was over, and he was charmed to the core by his cordial reception, he then boarded the plane that would carry him home saying, “My mission was accomplished. I got a lot of understanding and warmth. Everyone thinks it absurd that the Natives protest the fact that I devour one or two each evening for dinner.”
A nearly toothless sluggish smile spread across his grotesque face.
Uncle Sodom and Grandpa Sodom were there to wave him a tearful farewell. Sodom turned to his father, smiled stupidly as he was known to do quite often and said, “Gee Dad, I am so proud of our solid-as-a-rock friendship with Gomorrah.”
“I am too son. But I sure am glad he boarded the plane. That creature is frightening to look at.”
“Yeah, and if you only saw how he drools when he stares at people. That’s even scarier.”
“Well, it’s back to the Natives. As long as he eats them and not us, there’s nothing to fear.”
The doors of Uncle Gomorrah’s plane slid shut and the hideous green being disappeared inside. With a sigh of relief, both Sodom and father were just about to return home to the House Painted White when the plane carrying Gomorrah rose up into the air and then all at once, dived nose down on the tarmac. Up in flames went Gomorrah, and plane. Fire and brimstone spewed out everywhere and hailed down on Sodom and father burning them to ash just before the entire airport gave way to a violent earthquake which turned everything in the immediate area upside down.
When word of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah reached the Land of the Rising Sun, the Natives shouted, honked their horns and sang and danced. They were free at last.
And thus ends the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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