Lick Your Neighbor (21 page)

“But I don’t
feel
ready, Master. I feel like, well, pissing myself silly, if you must know.”

Shi floated up into Feathers’ face. “Look at me!” the head shouted. “Look into my eyes! What do you see?”

Feathers looked into Shi’s eyes and saw two boiling oceans filled with flaming waves that crashed against each other. “I see fire.”

“What you see is the raging flame that burns in my soul. It is the warrior spirit, and it burns within all those who stand up and fight against the army of clowns who rule this world. But now that I have passed into the spirit world, and my warrior days are over, I have no use for a whole ocean of such fire. And that is why I am giving some of it away.”

“To who?” Feathers asked.

“To you!”

A wave from the ocean of fire shot out of Shi and poured into Feathers’ eyes, filling them with the chi of his Master. Randy watched this like a kid at a fireworks show. He reached out a tentative finger to touch the flames but quickly thought better of it when the hairs on his knuckles were singed off.

“Do you feel ready now?” Shi asked once the transfer was complete.

The fire danced in and out of Feathers’ eyes. The flames looked like flying dragons as they swirled around his head.

“Oh yeah,” Feathers said, “big time.”

“Good, good. So what will you do now that you are ready?”

“I will hurl those evil clowns back to the circus of hell! Where their flesh will melt into a pile of unholy goo!”

“Now that’s the warrior spirit! Go get ‘em! And if you need anything, and I mean
anything
…get it yourself, because I’ll be at the bar.”

Shi floated down to the bar and hovered above one of the stools.

A tipsy Twitchy put down the Dr. T’s and leaned on the bar. “What’ll it be, Head?”

“Do you have any rice wine?”

“Now you listen here, fella. We don’t have any of that fancy foreign froufrou stuff. We are an
American
establishment. And that means we only carry refreshments that the Founding Fathers themselves would drink. So that means we have beer, we have whiskey, and we have apple passion wine coolers.”

Shi raised an eyebrow. “Your Founding Fathers drank apple passion wine coolers?”

“You bet your sweet head they did. None other than His Holiness George Washington himself used the apples from his very own backyard to distill apple passion wine coolers.” Twitchy took another swig of Dr. T’s. “Okay actually he made applejack. But that shit is nasty.”

“Then in honor of your holy ancestors I will have one apple passion cooler, please,” Shi requested. “With a straw, if you don’t mind.”

Back up on the ceiling beam, Mr. Feathers stood up and bent his knees. Like a tiger about to pounce.

Randy jumped up and grabbed him. “Wait!”

“What is it?”

“What about me?” Randy asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Fight with me.”

“In case you didn’t notice, one of us has flaming dragons swirling around his face and the other has a common housefly doing the same. Guess which one will get his head bashed in by the mutants?”

“Very well then,” Feathers said, “take Dale and get out of here. Get yourselves to Wild Willie’s Turkey Farm on the outskirts of town. There you’ll find the farmer. As soon as you see him, kill him.”

Randy sat up straight. “You mean, kill him kill him? As in, make him dead?”

“Yes, Randy, make the farmer dead. Make him as dead as dead can be. In fact, once you make him dead, you’d better go ahead and make him dead again. Just to be sure.”

Randy tapped a finger on his chin. “How would you recommend I go about doing that? Should I talk to him at length about the latest celebrity gossip? You know, to uh, make him want to commit suicide.”

“No. You should plant a hammer in his skull.”

“Well then. I see. But why, Feathers? What has the man done to deserve the hammer?”

“I don’t have time to explain. And really, even I don’t understand it all. Hopefully you’ll find the answers at Wild Willie’s. Oh and one more thing. I suspect there will be four of them.”

“Four of what?” Randy asked.

“Four farmers. Make them all dead if you can. It’s the only way you’ll know for sure.”

“Know what for sure?”

“That it’s over.”

Sword-ninja had his blade out in preparation for slicing through Shi’s head. Feathers jumped, performing a back flip in midair before landing on the bar with a loud thud.

The ninjas shifted their attention from Shi’s floating head to their flame-eyed opponent.

Feathers held out his hand. “Twitchy, broom please.”

Twitchy had the bottle of Dr. T’s on his lips. “Who what now?”

“Broom. Throw me the broom.”

“Oh no. No, no, no. That’s my
good
broom, Feathers. It’s not for fake sword fighting.”

Feathers sighed. “What about the mop? Can I have the mop?”

“The mop? You want the mop? Do you have any idea how many drunk fools have licked that thing thinking it was a silver-haired beauty? I’m talkin’ some serious tonsil hockey. Like this.” Twitchy started making out with the bottle of Dr. T’s.

“Just throw me the goddamn mop!”

Grumbling, Twitchy tossed the mop to Feathers, who grabbed it, twirled it around above his head, and then assumed a fighting position.

The brawl began with an eruption of gobbles. Weapons and bodies flew threw the air as Feathers took on all four ninjas at once. His blows were so vicious that they sent the beakmen flying across the pub. They slammed into the walls and went skidding across the bar. But each time they fell, the ninjas quickly got back up and went at Feathers again.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Randy hurried down the ladder and scurried over to Dale. He grabbed a beer from the bar and splashed it on Dale’s face. Dale didn’t so much as twitch, so Randy slapped his check and screamed into his ear. “Rise from your grave!”

Dale’s eyes fluttered open gently like a baby’s. He yawned and stretched as if he had just awoken from a summer’s afternoon nap in a hammock.

“Wow, I feel fantastic,” he said. “That was just what the doctor ordered. After a good nap like that, a guy feels like he can handle anything that’s thrown at him.”

“Oh really? How about that?” Randy grabbed Dale’s head and turned it toward the fight. Feathers had one end of the mop planted on the floor, and was spinning around the other end, kicking the ninjas in their faces as he spun.

After letting Dale soak that in for a moment, Randy turned Dale’s head to see Shi’s floating head sipping a wine cooler through a straw. Shi burped, and then turned to Dale and said, “The answer to your questions are no and yes. No, you are not dreaming, and yes, right now you should be running until your ass falls off.”

Randy and Dale burst out of The Thirsty Pilgrim and into the parking lot at full sprint. As Randy fumbled for his car keys, he glanced to his left, did a double take, and then froze.

On the other side of the lot there was a weary, chubby clown having some difficulty getting out of a bright green Volkswagen bug. The clown was dressed in oversized red and yellow polka dot pants, fourteen-inch long purple shoes, an orange afro wig, blue nose, and a shirt that read, in rainbow lettering surrounded by a cartoon explosion, “KA-BOOM!”

“By the unruly nose hairs of Saint Catherine,” Randy proclaimed, “this just isn’t our day.”

“What? What is it?” Dale asked.

“It’s Uncle Pookie.”

Dale peered over the wagon’s roof and saw the clown standing in front of his tiny car. Pookie yawned. Stretched. Then he blinked a few times. Just when he was about to yawn again, Pookie saw Randy.

The clown’s eyes turned red.

Randy frantically unlocked the car door. “Quick, get in. It looks like he just came from a kid’s party. That’s when he’s most dangerous.”

“You dirty son-of-a-bitch!” Pookie raged. “You thief! You cockblocker! I’ll tear your dick off and twist it into a giraffe!”

“He’s serious,” Randy noted. “He’s good at making balloon animals.
Very
good.”

Randy and Dale hopped into the car and slammed the doors shut. They got in so fast that the Mohawk turkey couldn’t get
out
of the car, try as it might.

Pookie jumped onto the hood before Randy could even start the car. As he banged on the windsheild the clown shouted, “I want my woman and I want my pogo stick! And I want them
now,
Tinker!”

“Start the goddamn car, Randy.”

“Do you see these teeth, Tinker?” Pookie bellowed. “These incisors? Take a good look because they’re going to be on your balls in minute!”

“Start it!” Dale shouted.

“I’m trying, I’m trying! It won’t turn over. It won’t turn over!”

Pookie threw his head back and let out a long, loud roar. One that would have made a lion look up from a fresh kill and say, “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

“Oh I get it now,” Dale said, “I’m still hallucinating. Whew.”

“Nope. This is all real.”

“Impossible. That clown just roared like a lion.”

“That he did.”

“You heard it too?”

“Yep.”

“Well, in that case…get us the hell out of here!”

“I’m trying!”

Just as Pookie raised his fist high, summoning all the strength in his body to smash the windshield, the engine came to life.

Randy slammed on the gas, sending the wagon flying backward and Pookie tumbling off the car. The clown hit the pavement hard and laid there motionless.

The wagon spun around onto the road and stopped.

Dale looked back nervously. “Is he dead?”

“Maybe,” Randy said, “A real shame. Dead for a pogo stick. Well, I guess we should get out and see if—sweet mother of mercy!”

Pookie sprung up from the pavement and charged at the Oldsmobile with the quickness of a puma. Randy gunned it, and the wagon just escaped Pookie’s wildly swinging arms.

As the Oldsmobile sped away from The Thirsty Pilgrim, Dale stared listlessly out the window, trying to separate what had been real and what had been a hallucination over the past few hours. In the end he decided the safest bet was to assume that it had all been real.

As they reached the outskirts of Duxbury, Randy looked in the rearview mirror and saw a small neon green dot in the distance. It was a car, and it was gaining on them. Randy glanced over at an exhausted Dale and decided not to say anything.

Surely,
Randy thought,
this can’t be the best of all possible worlds.

A clown on our tail

And a dead man up ahead

Uh, Jesus? Check please.

2
A Knotty-pated Mess

Excerpt from the diary of John Alden
Rendered into modern English by
Dr. Theodore “Mayflower” Jenkins

February 13, 1621

Things here have turned rather yeasty.

As I write, I sit fully armed and barricaded in the common house. The sick have also been barricaded into their house, with Giglet and Ratsbane charged to defend them. Several more of our Party have died since I last wrote, and many more are close to passing. Soon we will be reduced to half our original number. However, at the moment the sickness is not our greatest despair.

A few days ago a smiling Savage walked into our Village, went right up to Captain Standish and placed a bundle into his hands in a most rude manner. Then he spouted some gibberish which could perhaps be understood by a Bird, but certainly not by any of us.

A bewildered Captain Standish blinked a few times, said Thank You, and then excused himself as we all huddled up to examine the bundle. With the Indian waiting a few steps away, we saw that the bundle contained freshly roasted cobs of corn and a wide variety of fragrant dried flowers, all wrapped in a great snakeskin.

“Any ideas as to what the scut this is about?” asked Standish.

“It’s an insult,” said a wide-eyed Giglet. “They think we smell bad and they want us to rub those flowers on our skin. The nerve!”

“I think it’s a threat,” said a squinty-eyed Ratsbane. “That corn has been roasted. They’re saying they want to roast us too! And as for that snakeskin…they’re threatening to slip a poisonous snake into our homes at night. A snake which will surely bite our naughty minnows with its pointy fangs!”

I offered an alternative point of view, suggesting that perhaps it was a welcoming gift. In return I was called both a fobbing dewberry and a pribbling malt-worm.

“There’s no use trying to determine what this means,” said Standish. “The language barrier is too much to overcome. Let’s just send something in return that’s equally confusing to them. Any suggestions?”

“We barely know these Savages,” said Ratsbane, “so let’s not waste anything nice on them. How about a bundle of twigs wrapped in a tattered old rag?”

“It should be something they don’t have,” said Standish.

“Hmmmmmm, something they don’t have, eh?” said Giglet. “I have just the thing. A bundle of my finger and toenail clippings wrapped in my soiled knickers.”

“Remind me never to ask you anything ever again.”

“A bundle of live snakes wrapped with dead snakes?”

“No.”

“A bundle of fish wrapped with an eel?”

“What’s wrong with you two?”

“A bundle of bones of their ancestors. We can dig them up from their burial ground over yonder hill. Then we will cover the bones in our own excrement, and then wrap them in locks of hair we unknowingly cut from our sleeping women folk. This is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time.”

“That’s just sick, Reverend.”

“I think we’re over thinking this,” I said. “Why don’t we just combine all the individual hasty-witted ideas we’ve had into one big knotty-pated mess. I find that often, if you create something that is dense and confusing, people become so overwhelmed by the complexity of it that they don’t bother giving it much thought at all. They just assume someone else will scrutinize it for them and that there is nothing to worry about.”

“That is very wise, John,” said Standish, “We should keep that bit of wisdom in mind when we’re drawing up the town laws. Now, are we all agreed on Alden’s big knotty-pated mess idea?”

“Agreed!”

The smiling Savage returned to his people that day bearing a bundle of nail clippings, fish, snakes, bones, and twigs, wrapped together with dead snakes, women’s hair, a pair of soiled knickers, and one rather confused eel.

Hopefully that will either confuse or disgust the Savages enough that we’ll never hear from them again.

—John Alden