The Legacy of the Classic Reality Series Monster Island
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
(Portions of this installment previously appeared in The Hell’s Half-Acre Herald, October 2001)
Introduction: Welcome, folks, to another exciting evening of (theme music and opening show logo) Monster Island! I’m your host Rand Hagen, and this is internationally famed cryptozoologist Marie Elspeth, and we’re broadcasting live from Biolar Island in the South Pacific, where thirty of the most annoying people on the planet will compete for TEN MILLION DOLLARS, all tax-free. All they have to do is get across the island on foot, with nothing other than their wits and each other, They already know about some of the various monsters raised on the island, but they don’t know how many, and they don’t know about any of the other surprises waiting for them.
Marie: That’s right, Rand: anywhere between ten and 100 of the deadliest monsters ever known. We’ve spared no expense in bringing you, the viewing public, the ultimate in life struggles. Absolutely nothing is staged, absolutely nothing is faked. It’s just like professional wrestling or political debates, only MORE REAL!
Rand: Now, as regular viewers already know, the goal of Monster Island is simple. Biolar Island is a research station for St. Remedius Medical College, where various time- and space-displaced, genetically engineered, and artificially augmented organisms live free without threat from human hunters and sightseers. Many of them, though, either require humans for food, reproduction, or to move to the next stage of their life cycles. All of our contestants start at this disembarkation zone (map appears on screen, showing the zone in green) on the south side of the island, and all they have to do is get to the Rescue Station on the north beach (Rescue Station also highlighted in green). They each get one survival pack with food, water, and a basic first aid kit, and maps to weapons, food, and medical supply caches scattered across the landscape, but otherwise they’re on their own. Cameras and drones are set up in the jungles and in the savannahs on the main volcano, and each contestant is wired for audio and video. We ourselves are on a St. Remedius research barge off the coast: if they make it, we’ll be the first ones to see them.
Marie: And don’t forget, Rand, that they can work in groups, or they can go it alone. Either way, this promises to be a real smackdown bloodbath!
Rand: And now it’s time to introduce Dr. Cuauhtémoc Alvarado, head of the Veterinary Medicine department at St. Remedius. Dr. Alvarado, we know that this run will feature the usual collection of kaiju, uranidonts, vishaps, cryptids, cyborgs, and ambulatory plants, but we’ve been informed that there’s something new. Could you fill us in?”
Alvarez: Well, what we have today are carnivorous pangolins made safe from poaching via gene splicing. The young now feed like a candiru.
Marie: A candiru?
Alvarado: Candiru are parasitic South American fish that swim up the orifices of any animal in the vicinity, lodge themselves in that orifice with spiny gill covers, and then chew on the surrounding tissues. The only way to get one out before it’s ready is with surgery. These were rescued from an anti-petting zoo in San Antonio, so we thought they would add an additional challenge to the contestants.
Rand: So let’s say one of the contestants were to be grabbed by a baby pangolin. Would it hurt?
Alvarado: Well, if your deepest sexual fantasy is to be gerbilled by a backhoe for about a week, you’ll be in for the greatest experience of your life.
Rand: What about everyone else?
Alvarado: I think they’re going to be too busy screaming to worry about the level of agony. At a certain point, all excruciating pain is the same.
Marie: Thank you, Dr. Alvarado, for your contributions to Monster Island.
Alvarado: I’m glad to be here. If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be back to working on bioweapons for the Space Precinct program.
Rand: But I thought the Space Precinct program was a missile and asteroid defense system.
Alvarado: Oops. Said too much. My bad.
Rand: And now it’s on to the contestants. Each was selected not on the basis of their attributes or their skills, but on how badly they annoyed the screening jury. Although the jury had plenty of material just from the United States alone, we went for a truly international constituency. We have people literally from all walks of life, but they have one thing in common: all of them would turn the Dalai Lama into a chainsaw murderer in a week. Marie?
Marie: Rand, I’m talking with Trey, the Selected Contestant this week. (Scrolling announcement at bottom of screen: “For full biographies of Monster Island contestants, visit www. their-asses-are-dead-meat dot info.”) Trey is a third-year law student at Southern Methodist University, and he’s looking forward to dating supermodels if he wins. Trey, what is your strategy?
(Closeup of Trey: shining example of collegiate sociopath. Picture Tom Cruise playing Ted Bundy. Jogging jams, T-shirt reading “My Maid Went To UT,” flattop haircut, jaw shaped like a toilet bowl.)
Trey: Whoo! They can’t touch me! I get across to the volcano, grab the fire gem, and get back to the shore before any of these losers can make it halfway across! I AM BUFFED!!
Rand: Marie, what’s this about a fire gem?
Marie: Rand, we’ve been trying to explain to him for an hour that there isn’t any fire gem, but it just doesn’t register. We figure he’s better off not knowing.
Rand: Got it. Trey, can you hear me?
Trey: I AM BUFFED!
Rand: That’s good to know. Now, do you understand the rules as they’ve been explained to you?
Trey: Yep. I mean, I looked at them. GO MUSTANGS!
Rand: And that’s all we needed to know. And we now have a green light from the judges: three minutes until the start of the race.
Trey: Great! Giselle Bundchen had better look out! I AM BUFFED!
Rand: Thank you, Trey. Do you know what a coprolite is?
Trey: Hell, no. I don’t have to learn any big words until next year.
Rand: Well, you’ll have close contact with one soon. You’d better get to the starting gate.
(Trey leaves the screen, and the camera pans across the rest of the participants.)
Rand: As we can see, we have quite the selection of contestants tonight. Among others, we’ve got several weekly newspaper music critics, two TikTok therapists, five mechanical engineers, an arthouse movie theater concessionaire, three big-box bookstore employees, a regional magazine editor, and a comic shop owner. Vegas odds are on the comic shop owner and one of the therapists: they each know fifteen recipes for raw palm fronds.
Marie: Thank you, Rand. We’d like to welcome noted documentary filmmaker Edgar Harris to tonight’s show: Edgar is all too familiar with the monsters herein, and we’d like his expert advice.
Harris: Thank you both. I thought I just heard the one-minute warning horn. If I can hear it, the monsters can, too.
Marie: So what is your advice to the contestants?
Harris: Well, the trick is to get the monsters to do the work for them. For instance, we have only one Kaijusaurus on the island today, so the trick is to lure him toward the other monsters and let them fight it out. This way, they only have to worry about quicksand and giant centipedes. Same deal with the two Hyperdactyls: they’ll only pick off people in high locales, so sticking to the deep jungle is not a bad idea. Everyone will have the temptation to go for the weapons stores, but most of these will be completely ineffective against the big monsters. The best idea is to go for the medical supplies: a good tourniquet, an autoinjector full of antibiotics, and an amputation clamp are the most important things you can use if you’re bitten or clawed by one of the smaller creatures, like a hoatzal or a pika.
Marie: Any other advice?
Harris: Whatever they do, they shouldn’t hold any monster down and jam a thumb up its butthole. It really pisses them off.
Marie: Thank you, Mr. Harris. And that’s the starter siren, and they’re off!
(Camera returns to Rand.)
Rand: Marie, if you look at the topographical map (screen sidebar showing the island by elevation), you’ll see that half of the group is taking the straightaway north path. Not a bad idea, only they’re about to run into that sundew orchard. We’re bringing up the lifesign indicators, and…well, we just lost half. That’s seven down already.
Marie: According to the telemetry, the other half are taking the shoreline. Six are heading along the east shoe, and eight are going along the west. All but one, and it’s headed straight for the volcano.
Rand: Let’s hope Trey gets his fire gem. The east group is in trouble: they’re getting strafed by a Hyperdactyl. And half of them are down, too.
Marie: That’s a third of the contestants either eaten or squashed beyond recognition. I hope they didn’t make plans for the weekend. (Both laugh.) And what about the western group?
Rand: They seem to have found a weapons cache, and just in time. Three tar slugs just emerged from the ocean, and they’re moving fast.
Marie: Do you think that the contestants know that a fragmentation grenade dropped into the middle of one will turn it into a slime smear?
Rand: I don’t think so. They’re only using the light firearms.
Marie: I wouldn’t use those for shooting the regular bats, much less the giant ground ones.
Rand: They just found both sets of bats, too. One managed to escape, and he’s got the flamethrower. He’s moving at a pretty good clip, and he might make it by nightfall if he keeps moving.
Marie: And Trey?
Rand: He’s on the volcano, and the Kaijusaurus spotted him!
Marie: I can’t see what he’s doing. What’s he doing, anyway?
Rand: Oh my dear Elvis in Heaven…HE’S MOONING THE KAIJUSAURUS!
Marie: He’s either brave or stupid, and I know where I’m putting my money!
Rand: And the Kaijusaurus knew where to put its atomic flame breath. It’s now stomping on the ashes and heading toward the western shore.
Marie: We now have eleven contestants…no, make that eight. Two learned that they couldn’t swim in quicksand, and one couldn’t outswim the giant crabs. Where are the rest?
Rand: The comic shop owner is the guy with the flamethrower, and he’s already roasted a pack of man-eating rabbits and another pack of killer shrews. I think he’s going to have problems with the giant Gila monster though, because that sucker is fireproof.
Marie: And the rest?
Rand: I see bits…I see shreds…I see gobbets…no, WAIT! I see two people heading toward the Rescue Station. It’s one of the TikTokers and the magazine editor! And they don’t know they’re headed right toward the ant lion pits!
Marie: Well, they do now. Here’s some advice: tying yourselves together with rope only works if you’re mountain climbing. So it’s down to the comic shop owner. He’s made it to the Rescue Station, and he’s started up the automated recall boat. WE HAVE A WINNER!
Rand: We’re getting a video feed from inside of the boat, and it’s Marc Klicks of Lewisville, Texas. Mr. Klicks, congratulations on making it across Monster Island. To what do you attribute your success?
Klicks: Well (nasal snort), I got the idea from the debut issue of Evil Ernie, where the planet was being overrun by evil zombies, and I’m planning to buy that issue once I get back. Did you know that comics can only go up in value if you bag them, and that classics like Evil Ernie are worth really big bucks if you got them early before they were reprinted, and…(picture replaced by static)
Marie: What happened?
Rand: Marc didn’t know that the big Mesosaurus swimming around the island is attracted to high frequencies, and his talk about his collection was just ringing the dinner bell. The prize money is going back into the pot, and we’ll start fresh next week.
Marie: And that’s it for tonight. Don’t forget to watch Celebrity Monster Island, where five of the most annoying celebrities we can find see who can be the first to cross (theme music and ending credits) Monster Island! Just don’t tell them that they’re playing, because they don’t know yet! G’night, folks!
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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