The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: Mister Crumbcake’s After-School Hour
Kids in Pittsburgh have been acting weird, attacking authority figures, spouting off with Axis philosophies, and putting themselves in dangerous situations. The Office has tracked down the source of their startling behavior: the odd and goofy radio show hosted by an eclectic character calling himself Mister Crumbcake.
Lynn Beasley, last seen in The Case of the Broken Fixers, has tracked him down and must take him off the air for good.
The Mister Crumbcake After-School Hour is the second of three short stories from Another Three Cases of Mayhem and Mad Science and will be featured in The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: Old Dogs Still Got Teeth.
Content warnings: violence, drug use, child endangerment, creeps, mild swearing.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 1, 1943
WPC-FM AT OVERBROOK STUDIOS
PITTSBURGH, PA
“Ask your parents to take you to the woods, they are not that far away,” Mister Crumbcake crooned into his microphone.
The clown-painted creep tapped out a three-tone on his xylophone as Curator Second Class Lynn Beasley kicked through the studio's door.
“Not another word, Mister Crumbcake!” she shouted. She pointed at the kook through the thick glass. Her men streamed into the cramped room behind her. “Shut this thing down!”
Mister Crumbcake stuck his tongue out then rushed the sound-proofed recording booth door. He slammed about sixteen locks into place in practiced succession and retook his seat to grin at her, his teeth crooked and narrow.
“Shut it down!” Beasley ordered, shouting like he could hear her through the glass.
Mister Crumbcake shrugged and pointed at the illuminated 'on air' sign above his head.
“Now my little crumbles, Mister Crumbcake is having a little tiff. A big ol' bully's come in and says I talk too much. Who can protect us from big ol’ bullies who want us to be quiet? That’s right the brave men from our sponsor, Pinkerton Review Services, who work hand-in-hand with your local Patriotism Board. So what should you do when you meet a bully?” he mewled into the microphone. He clanged another off-kilter ditty on his xylophone.
Beasley yanked at the locked door. It might as well have been welded shut.
“Get the crowbars,” she hissed. One of the officials bolted out.
“That's right boys and girls, you call Mister Crumbcake,” the radio star said. His lilting voice echoed out of the little speaker beneath the 'on air' sign. “Well I have a big ol' bully right here.”
“We need to cut this broadcast,” Beasley said over her shoulder. Another official disappeared at her word.
A telephone rang in the recording studio and Mister Crumbcake snatched it right up and set it on a recorder.
“You're live with Mister Crumbcake,” the ghoul said. “What brave little boy or girl am I speaking to today?”
“Cut the phone lines,” Beasley ordered. Before anyone could hop to it, every telephone in the building began ringing off the hook. It had to be hundreds of them, every phone on the floors above and below, in every adjoining room.
“What?” one of the men asked, shouting over the clangor.
“Cut the phone lines!” she yelled.
“Hi,” a soft voice said over the speaker, it was a little boy, no more than five or six year old, “My name is Tim. Tim Dillard.”
“Well, good afternoon there, Tim Dillard, how was school today?”
“It was fine,” Tim replied, suddenly shy.
“Just fine, Tim?” Mister Crumbcake asked. Beasley kicked his door, but it didn't budge.
“It was okay,” Tim replied.
“Just okay, Tim?”
“I had a bully, Mister Crumbcake.”
“Just like me, Tim!”
“Mister Crumbcake, nobody would bully you.”
Beasley grabbed a chair and swung it as hard as she could at the studio's wide window. The chair shattered into pieces which clattered to the floor. Mister Crumbcake pantomimed belly-aching laughter while pointing at her.
“Why is that loon still broadcasting?” she snarled. The officials looked at each other in confusion. “If we can't cut him off, we've got to cut him out. Find me a Snap-back, now.”
Another two officials ran back out.
Mister Crumbcake blew a raspberry at her and turned his attention back to Tim.
“Tim,” he said, almost whispering, “Do you remember what a bully is?”
“It's someone mean who says you can't say or think the truth,” Tim answered.
“Exactly! Who was your bully today, Tim?”
“My teacher, Missus Martin,” Tim replied. “I told her what you said about how they're sending all our toys away for nothing and she said I was wrong.”
“Yes, Tim, yes! She can't tell you what is right and what is wrong. Who can tell you that, Tim?”
“Only me!”
“Yes, Tim, yes! So what did you tell her?”
“I threw my pencil at her, she gave me detention!”
“That's what bullies do, isn't it? They tell us to be quiet. Only they can be right, and if you tell them they're not, they hurt you or take away your things. Mean Old Franklin is taking our toys away, and he's sending them to Stingy Joe and his ugly Russians. A bunch of bullies, especially to your friends and mine in Germany. You were absolutely right, Tim, and you did the right thing to mean Missus Fartin. Remember, you can only trust yourself, or me. Or you can call a True Patriot.”
“Yeah,” Tim replied through his giggles. “I called ‘em. They said they’d talk to her at her house.”
“Perfect, Tim, perfect! That’s what the Patriotism Board is for! Protecting you from stinky ol’ Missus Fartins,” Mister Crumbcake echoed. He smiled at the seething officials.
“Where did everyone go?” Beasley demanded, her gaze locked onto his bloodshot eyes.
“Here, ma'am,” one official said, handing her a crow bar.
“Thank you.” She stabbed it into the space where door met jamb and wrenched back as hard as she could. It didn't budge. She pulled and pulled, harder and harder, fueled by fury at the laughing clown and the cacophonous ringing of a hundred phones.
“Thank you for calling in, Tim, you make me so much braver facing my bully. And never let Missus Fartin tell you how to think again!”
“I won't! I'll throw my compass next time! Bye, Mister Crumbcake!”
“Good thinking, she'll get the point! Bye, Tim!”
“He's reinforced the door,” Beasley said after a moment. One of the male officials took the crow bar and tried to force the door to the same result. He swung it at the glass, only for it to clang off, reverberating so hard that he nearly dropped it.
“Yippee! My house is a castle!” Mister Crumbcake announced to his listeners.
“It is armored glass,” Beasley growled, then snatched the crowbar back.
“What don’t you use that rock?” one official snickered from the back. Beasley grunted and turned her brand new ring around and clenched her fist around the diamond. She recognized the heckler’s voice as that of a former merchant marine who had yet to get used to how she ran things. Hell, she’d just gotten her team, she wasn’t sure how she ran things.
She held her tongue, though. But if he had any inkling to sass her again there was a good chance her next attempt to break the glass would be with his forehead.
“Now boys and girls, my bully's name is Miss Scrunchface,” Mister Crumbcake played a few more notes stuck his tongue out at her again: “Because she's got a really scrunchy face. And she says I can't talk to you. She's really mean. She says a lot. Show Miss Scrunchface what you want her to say.”
In an instant, the incessant ringing of hundreds of phones ceased. The sudden silence nearly bowled Beasley over. A piercing tone burrowed into the base of her skull.
Mister Crumbcake scrawled a note and held it up for her to see.
THEY R ALL MINE
He grinned, cooing:
“Thank you, my little crumbles.”
“Why is he still broadcasting?” she asked, speaking loudly over the ringing in her ears.
“He's hardwired into the antenna, with his own damn generator,” one of the officials she’d sent running reported. He was wheezing and sweating. “We have to get in there.”
“What about the phones?” she asked.
“Phone and power lines are in poured concrete, we have a jackhammer on the way.”
“None of this is happening fast enough,” Beasley grunted. “We need the Snap-Back.”
“He's coming,” the other assured her.
“My little crumbles, Miss Scrunchface just told me that she'll smile and be our newest friend!” Mister Crumbcake piped gleefully. “And aren't all little girls so much prettier when they smile?”
Beasley's scowled deepened to Mister Crumbcake's delight. He prattled on:
“But she needs us to do one thing, boys and girls! Can you guess what that is?” He paused and shook a rattle. “If you guessed 'Cooking Party,' you're right! You're so smart!”
“Cooking Party?” one of the officials wondered.
“That's right, my little crumbles, everyone get up and go to the kitchen and turn up every burner on your stove, up as high as they can go! We want those pretty blue lights dancing!”
“Holy shit,” an official muttered.
“If they're turning up the gas like they made those phone calls...” another started.
“They're going to burn the whole city down!” Beasley concluded. “Where is my Snap-Back!”
“Here, ma'am,” someone gasped from the door. He shoved past the other officials and thumped a heavy device onto a table. It was riddled with dials and switches and had ports for more plugs than Beasley knew what to do with. She had a lot of experience with electronic systems from her time cross-referencing files with the difference engine beneath South Baldy mountain, but even to her the Snap-Back looked like it was built by Martians.
She picked up the headset crowning the device and tapped on the glass with it.
'Pick up the phone,' she mouthed silently.
“Someone call him, please,” she ordered. One of the officials dialed a number and she heard Mister Crumbcake's phone ring over the speaker.
“Hello? Mister Crumbcake here!” he answered in a sing-songy voice.
“Anthony Michael Dreffis, you are under arrest. Please cease your broadcast and surrender immediately,” Beasley said.
“Miss Scrunchface, my new friend! How are you? Do you like all the pretty blue lights the boys and girls have made for you?”
“No - !” she started, but he interrupted.
“Do you hear that, boys and girls? Your pretty little lights aren't going high enough! She needs more! Let's help Miss Scrunchface smile!”
“Anthony Michael Dreffis, you are under arrest - !”
“On what charge?” Mister Crumbcake snarled, all of his synthetic cheer shattering. His makeup crackled and crumbled off his face, his bloodshot eyes went wide.
“Sedition, child endangerment, fraud by impersonation,” Beasley listed.
“No,” he said and crossed his arms.
“Mister Dreffis - !” she tried, but he cut her off again.
“There is no one by that name!” he howled. He ripped his shirt open, revealing torrents of sweat running around his exposed ribs. A pill bottle fell out of his pocket. Beasley recognized Crown Pharmaceuticals' stamp. Mister Crumbcake popped the top and drained a dozen military-grade amphetamine pills down his gullet, dry. He swallowed and smiled, then resumed speaking with cartoony glee:
“Kids, she's not smiling yet.”
“Mister Dreffis, I am warning you...”
“What will you do? You and your little Office? You can't get in here. Would you shoot me live on air? Gas me? Burn me out?”
“Sir, you're putting hundreds of children at risk! Please stop this. Surrender peacefully.”
Mister Crumbcake leaned back in his chair and smiled, baring his thin, crooked teeth. She smiled back. A little green light on the M-38 Snap-Back spark-gap overload device told her that she'd locked into his radio transmitter. All she had to do was wake it up.
“I'll tell you what, Miss Scrunchface, and this is just because I like that smile so much,” he started. “Boys and girls, why don't you go get mommy and daddy's special juice, that juice they won't let you drink, the brown juice in that glass bottle they store up so high. If you can't reach it, cooking oil works, too. Or bacon fat! Let's put those dancing blue lights out. Pour it all on the - !”
Before he could finish, Beasley pushed the button.
The spark-gap inside Mister Crumbcake’s transmitter absorbed the glut of high-frequency radio waves emanating from the Snap-Back, then began to warm up. Its ambient temperature increased by three thousand degrees in an instant, igniting and expanding the the receiver's inner workings. His last instant was a flash of light and the deafening sound of shorn metal whipping through him at two hundred yards-per-second.
Mister Crumbcake's hour was up.
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Copyright © 2025 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.
Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.