Tijuana Donkey Showdown

by Adam Howe

  Eliza rallied the regulars and started leading them in a hands-and-knees conga line towards the fire door. Lou couldn’t believe his luck, wedged between Eliza and Marlene, Eliza’s ass in his face, Marlene’s nose up his butt; he’d die a happy man, if it came to that.

  The fire exit was blocked from outside. The dumpster had been shoved against the door to block any escape. Eliza’s frantic message traveled back along the Human Centipede: “We’re trapped in here!”

  There was a lull in the shooting as the gunman reloaded.

  Then a familiar voice called out, “Levine! Reggie Levine!”

  Feeling like a contestant on The Price is Right, I peeked above the parapet of the pinball machine. I squinted through the haze of cordite and fire retardant.

  Out in the parking lot, Cage’s chopper pilot was cowering on his knees before Coogler, who held the muzzle of the assault rifle to the back of his skull.

  “Niccy!” the pilot yelled. “Help me, bro!”

  Coogler clubbed the man silent with the butt of his rifle.

  Cage—God love him—started rising from behind the pinball machine to help his friend. I pushed him back down. “No,” I said. “You’re too important.” I’ll admit I was also thinking about the check he’d given me, if I ever lived to cash it.

  Coogler saw me peeking above the pinball machine.

  “Get your ass out here, Levine. Me n’ you got unfinished business.”

  I hesitated; hell, I put down roots.

  “You make me come in there and fetch you out,” Coogler said. “Everyone dies.”

  Walt said, “Better do what he says, Reggie.” I’d like to think he was considering the safety of his patrons, and not just his own ass.

  I looked at Cage and said, “How’s the hero going out in a blaze of glory work for an ending?” I took a deep breath and then forced myself up from behind the pinball machine, projecting an aura of fearlessness that must’ve been about as convincing as Cage’s hair. I squared my shoulders, sucked in my gut. Broken glass crunched beneath my boots as I strode through the bar.

  I glanced at Walt, Eliza, Lou and Marlene, silently saying my final farewells. Walt was stoic. Eliza’s eyes glistened with tears. Lou crossed himself. All I could see of Marlene was her big chunky butt sticking out from under the table.

  I stepped outside through the shattered glass doors.

  The smoke ghosted away to reveal Coogler.

  Life as a fugitive had token its toll. He’d lost a good dozen pounds, shrinking from superheavy- to plain heavyweight. His face was haggard, his cheeks bearded; his circus strongman mustache was ragged and drooped like a Mexican bandito’s. His shaved scalp had grown out into a frizzy ‘fro that might’ve raised eyebrows among his Brotherhood brothers. His clothes were filthy and he clearly hadn’t bathed since he’d gone on the lam. The smell of him, he could’ve passed for the Bigelow Skunk Ape … only armed with an assault rifle.

  “Good to see you, Reggie.”

  “Wish I could say the same, Coogler.”

  Coogler dragged the pilot to his feet. “Get this bird started.” The pilot climbed unsteadily into the cockpit. The engine roared. The rotors started turning. Coogler grinned at me. “Come fly with me, Reggie. Let’s fly, let’s fly away.”

  I shot an anxious glance at the chopper.

  “We couldn’t do this from down here? I ain’t much for heights.” Hot air ballooning above a burning car dealership had done little to cure my phobia.

  “How are you about being knee-capped?”

  He fired a few shots at my feet and I did a terrified moonwalk and said, “Let’s go for a ride, sure, why not.”

  Coogler herded me into the back of the bird, the rifle barrel jammed into my spine. The passenger cabin was plusher than my apartment. Coogler and me sat facing each other on white leather seats, me with my back to the pilot, Coogler with his gun leveled at me. “Take her up,” Coogler barked at the pilot.

  The chopper lifted off the ground and began a slow vertical ascent. The pilot was clearly stalling for time. For all the good it did me; I couldn’t see a way out of this. The best I could hope for was that Coogler killed me quick.

  I said, “Where we going?”

  “On our honeymoon.”

  I must’ve misheard him over the rotor noise. “Say—say what?”

  “You ain’t much my type,” he said. “Not as pretty as my Billy-boy.”

  “Sorry to hear it. But, hey. Plenty more fish in the sea—”

  “But you’ll do in a pinch. ‘Course, we’ll have to operate first. Get rid of your pecker and those big brass balls of yours. And there ain’t no money for no surgeon no more—you saw to that—so I’ll just do the best I can with a knife.”

  He leered at me. “You ever been someone’s woman, Reggie?”

  My heart started thumping and I swallowed hard. Being de-dicked was gonna seriously hamper things with Sue and me. “Now wait a minute—”

  “What’s the problem, Levine?” He reached across the cabin, grabbed one of my man-tits and twisted it hard. “Hell, you’re half the way there already.”

  I yelped and slapped his hand away and crossed my arms across my chest self-consciously. “Castrating me isn’t gonna bring Billy back!” Not something I ever expected to hear myself saying.

  Coogler bashed the rifle stock into my wounded thigh. My stitches split like shirt seams and I roared in pain, clutching my thigh. Blood soaked through the bandages, and the leg of my pants. “Don’t you dare say his name!”

  From the corner of my eye, I clocked Walt and Cage scurry from the smoking ruins of The Henhouse, and take cover behind my new Wideside.

  Of all the trucks, in all the parking lot, they just had to choose mine.

  Walt watched Cage’s back as Cage unspooled the steel cable from the truck winch. I hoped like hell they weren’t planning what I thought they were.

  Coogler caught my anxious gaze and glanced down from the chopper.

  “Is—is that Nicolas Cage?”

  I told him it was indeed.

  He shook his head, as if he’d thought today was fresh out of surprises.

  Then he sprayed a rifle burst down at Cage. “I hate your fucking movies!”

  Coogler truly was a monster.

  Cage and Walt ducked for cover behind my truck. Bullets Swiss-cheesed the doors and shattered the windows. The hood cover tore away and went flipping through the air; it looked as if the painted pterodactyl was taking flight. The tires burst like balloons and the truck sagged to one side with a dying sigh of air.

  I felt emasculated, even before Coogler took my cock and balls.

  5.

  * * *

  As the chopper continued its slow vertical ascent …

  Cage finished unspooling the cable from the winch.

  The steel hook at the end of the cable was like a grappling hook.

  “You really think this’ll work?” Cage said.

  “Nope,” Walt said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it won’t. But Reggie’s gotta know we tried.”

  Cage twirled the cable above his head like a cumbersome lasso. Before the chopper could climb too high, he released the cable and let it fly. It snaked through the air and the hook snagged onto one of the skids with a metallic clang.

  Walt and Cage exchanged a glance of surprise.

  “How ‘bout that,” Walt said.

  Then he hit the brake on the winch.

  The cable snapped taut, yanking the chopper like a kite on a string.

  6.

  * * *

  Coogler was thrown from his seat, tossed across the cabin towards me. I grabbed the rifle barrel and twisted it away. He fired off a shot, deafening in the enclosed space of the cabin, and I screamed as the red-hot barrel branded my palm. The bullet ripped past my head, punched a hole through my seat, the pilot’s seat behind it, the pilot’s back and chest, and finally the windshield. Blood spattered the Plexiglas. Cold air devilled inside through the bullet hole. The pilot gave a gru
nt and slumped over the controls. The chopper went into a wild tailspin, engine squealing as it spiraled sickeningly towards earth—

  7.

  * * *

  I gasped back to consciousness, tweezed my eyes open, and found myself sprawled in the parking lot. The crash must have hurled me from the cabin. I’d blacked out for a second or two, or I’d died, and hell was The Henhouse, which I wasn’t ruling out. I looked around, but couldn’t see Coogler anywhere. With a little luck—lord knows I was due some—he’d died in the crash, and died hard.

  I squinted to see through the thick black smoke billowing from the wreckage of the chopper and—

  My truck …

  The chopper had landed on the roof of my truck, pancaked it flat. The Wideside was wearing the whirlybird like a rakishly angled hat, the still-roaring rotor the hat’s razor-sharp brim.

  Well, I knew how this went; next the fucking thing would explode.

  Before that happened, I started bellying away from the wreck—

  Something roared behind me.

  I glanced back and cried out in horror.

  A bloody-beaked pterodactyl was swooping down at me from the sky.

  I rolled on my back and shielded my face with my arms.

  The pterodactyl smashed against my forearms with a metallic clang.

  Coogler was alive and well. Clutching my truck’s ripped-off, shot-up hood cover. Clobbering me with the sheet of metal like a Heel wrestler bludgeoning a Baby Face with a folding chair. As he clubbed me with the hood cover, all I could see was that damned pterodactyl, swooping down at me, again and again, like a Harryhausen stop-motion monster. As I raised my arms to defend myself, the beast’s beak really was bloody now, my crimson handprints smearing the hood cover.

  Coogler hefted the metal to land another crunching blow.

  I lashed at his knee with the heel of my boot.

  Coogler roared in pain, and hobbled back, dropping the hood cover to clutch at his knee, the metal crashing to the ground like a club comic’s cymbal. I staggered to my feet, my wounded leg screaming in protest, my thigh soaked with blood where the stitches had split. I put up my dukes and beckoned Coogler in.

  But Coogler didn’t fight by Queensbury rules.

  He charged me like a bull, ducking under my punches, wrestling me into a tight embrace. He locked his forearms around the small of my back, clutched his wrist with his other hand, and squeeeeezed me like a nut in a nutcracker. The breath fled my lungs in an agonized wheeze. He tightened his grip, hoisting my feet off the ground. I heard the cartilage in my spine popping like bubblewrap. I flailed my arms and slapped at him pitifully. He laughed in my face. I smelled his rank breath. The lucky sonofabitch: Breathing.

  “That’s it, Reggie!” I heard Walt cheer. “You got him, son!”

  Like I was holding my own, and not being slowly crushed to death.

  8.

  * * *

  Walt and Cage had scrambled to the downed chopper and were trying to free the wounded pilot from the cockpit. The cockpit door had buckled when the chopper crashed. Walt and Cage were wrenching at the warped metal like starving men at a sardine tin. Inch by inch, they levered the door open.

  The rotor roared above their heads, buffeting their clothes, and Cage’s hairpiece, the tails of his mullet flailing wildly in the windstorm—

  Then the toupee tore free from his pate with a sound like Velcro.

  The rug soared towards me like a magic carpet.

  I stuck out my arm and snatched it triumphantly from the air.

  Coogler’s eyes widened in shock.

  With a wheezing battle cry, I whipped the length of the mullet around his neck. Had Cage been wearing a more conservative hairpiece, I would’ve been a dead man for sure. With the last of my strength, I wrenched the mane of synthetic hair tighter around Coogler’s throat—just like my old sparring partner, the Backseat Strangler had taught me. Now it was a war of attrition; could Coogler suffocate me, or snap my spine … or would I garrote him first with Nicolas Cage’s hairpiece?

  Coogler’s face flushed red. He started hacking for breath like a dog choking on a chicken bone. Spittle sprayed from his bluing lips, spattering my face. But this was a death match, and he kept crushing the life from me with every last ounce of his hate.

  I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. My head felt fit to burst like a zit. Darkness clouded the edges of my vision. The blood roared in my ears even louder than the chopper rotor.

  Still squeezing me to death, even as he was choking, Coogler started staggering towards the chopper’s roaring rotor. He meant to hurl me into the blades. Juice me like fruit in a blender. I pulled tighter on the ends of my makeshift garrote. The synthetic hair was beginning to fray like old rope. It looked like it would snap at any moment.

  Then Coogler’s death grip suddenly relaxed around the small of my back.

  For one horrifying moment, I thought he’d hurled me at the rotor.

  I felt myself falling … slipping down through the slackening ring of Coogler’s arms … and then I dropped to the ground like a linebacker at the scrimmage.

  I took a quick breath—

  Coogler clutched at his throat and sucked a great gulp of air—

  I hoped he enjoyed it; it was his last breath.

  I sprang up and slugged him with a left hook to the gut. He folded like a deck chair. I jacked an uppercut under his jaw that hurled him back through the air … and straight into the threshing teeth of the rotor blade. It was like a magic trick; one minute he was there, the next he wasn’t. POOF! And he was gone. Except it was a sight more grisly than just POOF! There was a sound like a wood chipper grinding a log, an ear-splitting shriek, and Coogler vanished in a violent red spray. Viscera drenched me like I was front-row for Shamu at SeaWorld. Coogler’s death’s head belt buckle skittered to the ground like a hubcap thrown from an auto wreck. Then there was a pop and flash of sparks as the chopper’s engine finally crapped out. The rotors slowed to a creaking stop. Chunks of dripping meat clung to the blades like a cannibal shish kebab. A literal red mist drizzled down over the parking lot.

  I glanced across the lot and saw Walt and Cage, with the rescued chopper pilot’s arms slung around their shoulders, all of them gaping at me in horror.

  “Holy … fucking … shit …” someone said.

  Might’ve been Walt.

  Might’ve been Cage.

  Hell, it might’ve been me; I’d gone a little blood simple.

  Eliza, Marlene, Lou, and the other survivors, emerged from the ruins of The Henhouse.

  Everyone staring at me; no one saying a word.

  I stood there staring back at them, teetering for balance, still clutching Cage’s hairpiece like an Injun with a freshly peeled scalp. I was covered in Coogler from head to toe. Globs of gore slopped on the asphalt like I was sweating red jellyfish. Mopping the blood from my wild eyes, I turned towards Cage and I dredged up my voice, and I croaked:

  “THE END.”

  STORY NOTES

  * * *

  A few readers have told me they enjoy reading my story notes.

  The rest of you have remained utterly silent on the matter; I can only assume you consider these stories behind the stories to be self-indulgent blather. Rest assured, you can safely close this book without missing anything. Thanks for coming, and don’t let the cover hit you on the ass on your way out.

  OK, they’re gone; let’s talk about them …

  I had a helluva time writing the first Reggie Levine misadventure, Damn Dirty Apes, thought the character had legs, and decided to revisit that world.

  I’d be lying if I said there was any real method behind the madness of Tijuana Donkey Showdown, but these are some of the elements that inspired me …

  I started with the idea of an actual mule being used to mule drugs. But, me being me, a mere mule wasn’t gonna cut it. So I made my mule an adult entertainment animal, and the star of a Mexican ‘donkey show.’

  How far did I take my rese
arch? I hear you ask. Did I actually witness a live donkey show in preparation for this book, in order to give my readers the gritty realism they have come to expect from the author of titles like Jesus In A Dog’s Ass and Of Badgers & Porn Dwarfs? Alas, I was unable to attend a live donkey show; although Gabino Iglesias assures me the offer remains open when I next visit the States. However, in the name of art, I did investigate this particular paraphilia at notorious bestiality website, Rustler. (The site has since been shut down pending the outcome of a lawsuit issued by Larry Flynt; curious parties should contact me personally for the video(s).) Rest assured, I was thorough in my research … And that it was not my proudest wank.

  For Coogler and Billy’s drug-smuggling scheme, I solicited the advice of my local veterinarian. (That was an interesting conversation. Initially, I think he thought I was proposing an actual drug deal.) To my surprise, he agreed that it would be possible for a donkey to mule narcotics, and for the drugs to later be removed as described in the book—on a strip club pool table, with whiskey used as anesthetic—and for the animal to survive the operation. Admittedly, I took rather more poetic license than the fine details he described, and I would advise drug traffickers (a large part of my readership, I am told) to consider other means than a jackass for smuggling your product.

  The inspiration for Randy-Ray Gooch’s allergic reaction came from a documentary I saw about counterfeit laundry detergent dealers, also known as ‘bucket sellers.’ It was a fly on the wall documentary in which we followed an overzealous Anti-Counterfeit Agent (think David Brent with a badge and gun) as he busted a dirt-poor bucket seller brewing bootleg Tide in his garage to sell at swap meets. This was a full-blown arrest involving hut-hut-hut SWAT team, K-9 unit, choppers, you name it—Seal Team 6 didn’t have such resources when they took down Bin Laden—all to collar this one poor schmuck. Playing up to the cameras, the Agent in Charge started giving the bucket seller a hard time. Like the guy was a heroin pusher selling dope to school kids. “You ever seen the rashes this stuff gives people!” He reminded me of Frank Oz in the movie Trading Places: “Angel dust! You ever see what this stuff does to kids!” The entire operation was so overblown, and peculiarly American, that I found it hilarious, and it eventually found its way into the book.