Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

The Securitate Searched for Dracula’s Grave

“Ceauşescu believed that in the Transylvanian Alps a mechanism must exist to keep vampires immortal and give them unbelievable power. That’s why we searched for Count Dracula’s grave. We have also searched for descendants of the witches who have lived in Hunedoare and the surrounding mountain since time immemorial. I don’t know if they found anything, it wasn’t my assignment. Even if people thought what they liked about such things, they never said anything aloud, since that could mean treason. We had to obey orders, no matter what. But sometimes we didn’t feel like laughing. For example, when the Securitate got people into a state of clinical death to send them down the famous tunnel and then tell us about it. Who would do that? We were never short of volunteers: prisoners, Securitate members, or simply volunteers for anything. And if we didn’t have any volunteers, then we’d always find someone. We spent almost five years trying to find out if you could dodge a bullet. Several people were involved and finally we found one who was really good. During a demonstration, there was an accident. He really did dodge a bullet, but despite his excellent health, he had a heart attack. We also experimented with the energy people radiate at a moment of mortal danger. For example, when they fall under a car, they manage to stop it for a fraction of second, though, in reality it doesn’t mean anything, of course. As far as I know, among the East European states, Czechoslovakia played a prominent role in this kind of research. Arab saboteurs in Sahara trained some of us. There they taught us various things you don’t like to talk about. Some Securitate men are said not to have survived this; others lost their minds…”

Living Lie Detectors

“It was interesting when we searched for and tested people who could recognize a liar by his smell. They were living lie detectors. With people it works the same as with the animals, except for the suppressed olfactory and animal instincts. When a wolf is hunting, animals get scared, since they know that he’s out to kill. That’s how nature works. If they weren’t afraid of the wolf, he wouldn’t merely leave them alone: they’d make him run, since he’d be the one afraid. This is how it works unconsciously with people, though they don’t realise it. These fear and superiority pheromones can be activated and intensified by training. Our specialists have worked on it. You can recognize a man who is afraid by his smell, since he knows you’re after him and his conscience isn’t clean. This special science is ideal for counter-terrorism and other investigators. With that sense of smell, you can discover a corpse, no matter where it’s buried. Some people are born with it, others can get it by an operation, but it’s dangerous, since one small mistake changes a person into something completely different. Besides, I know that almost all police forces and armies in the West use similar ‘noses’.”

Politicians Change, but the Methods Stay

“We also researched telepathy. Ceauşescu had a special team of scientists and specialists in the Securitate that tried to discover and communicate with beings from parallel worlds. Apparently, it worked quite well, but I don’t know much about it except that they managed to enter a parallel world a few times, but I’ve heard that beings from parallel worlds come to us much more often. They communicate with us telepathically. To research their existence, the Securitate used newborns, animals, and Down’s syndrome people. A person has to have a blank mind for this kind of communication. Madmen are mad from our point of view, but they can communicate with beings from parallel worlds quite easily. You can see it in their eyes. You suddenly find they’re normal, since their eyes begin to shine and they behave like human beings. Maybe they behave differently, but with intelligence. And when beings from other worlds leave, they again turn into demented people and their eyes turn off like lamps. As for animals, they say that fish, pigs, and cats react best. Dogs can be great, too, and strangely enough, even snakes…”

Is the Junjan Snow Monster a Phantom,

or a descendant of Extraterrestrials?

The mysterious Ökötöm-kökötom, the snow monster, has been an object of terror for the inhabitants of the permanently snowbound tundra in the interior of the islands of the Slovak Archipelago. He is very shy, but at the same time extremely powerful and rapacious. Nobody has yet seen him, or if he ever did, then he couldn’t tell anyone about it. In the distant past, the snow monster was responsible for culling whole herds of reindeer, and for the mysterious disappearance of groups of fur trappers.

“Of course, as soon as I arrived in Junja, I got interested in Ökötöm-kökötom,” claims Mäodna in his Czech exile. “We made several attempts to catch him. Alas, they all failed. Eventually, I stopped believing in his existence. It’s the same as the Loch Ness monster. Among the Inkirunnuit, the original population of the Junjan Archipelago, there is a legend about gods who came down from the heavens and then could not get back. They were said to be evil gods who threatened people. It’s possible that unknown arrivals were forced to adapt to life in inhospitable regions of Junja and gradually lost their technological advantages and became wilder from generation to generation, until they became the feared Ökötöm-kökötom. I think this is a puzzle awaiting a solution. When European companies start to mine uranium and gold intensively and drill for oil, the interior taiga will lose all its secrets.”

Dream and Reality

During the nineties the Czechs tried unsuccessfully to join the European Union. In the process they were constantly humiliated and bullied by Eurocrats who kept upping their senseless demands. This went on with the assistance of the home-grown Euro-suckers, such as the former government appointee Pavel Hul, who later committed suicide after being voted the Most Hated Man on the Czech scene in a New Year poll.

Not surprisingly, it was the EU that was supposed to have regretted most the restoration of Czechoslovakia. After assisting the Slovak victory over the Junjans, the top Czech politicians openly boasted of their aim of “giving it to the European Union”. The unimaginable wealth of natural resources in Junja (above all oil, uranium, gold, and natural gas) gave this basically justified bitterness the semblance of a probable threat.

“A few years from now, all Europe will be fatally dependent on Czechoslovakia,” the Czech Prime Minister Petra Buzková told a press conference. “Of course, we’ll be ready to consider helping in exchange for accepting our political and economic conditions. And they will be unusually severe, I can tell you that now.”

The Czech King, Václav V, in his “Speeches from Lány”, tried, as is traditional, to smooth out the unfortunate undiplomatic rhetoric of his Prime Minister: “The natural resources found on the Slovak Archipelago could help the economic problems of the whole world. The lands of the Czech Crown will merely manage this wealth and distribute it according to both need and merit. Help will be determined by rules that we will draw up. Every superpower has a right to make such conditions and if my memory serves me right, so far no superpower, former or present, has renounced that privilege.”

The Czechs dreamers’ plans and calculations met the resistance of the majority of Junjan Slovaks. They approved of the Czechs when they needed them to defeat the Junjans, but afterwards they were no longer needed. And so behind the Czechs’ backs they crowned the freshly named provisional chief administrator of the Slovak Archipelago republic, Alfréd Mešťánek, known under his nom-de-guerre Telgarth, as Slovak Emperor. Todor-Lačný-Dolniak, a devoted supporter of cooperation with the Czechs, the provisional Prime Minister in the first days of the free state, had to give up office and was de facto sent into exile on the north coast, where he had begun his victorious march on Űrģüllpoļ.