Lick Your Neighbor

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Lick Your Neighbor Page 11

by Chris Genoa


  I looked around. No one else was near enough to have heard the Grampus speak, so I couldn’t confirm if I was hearing things or not. So I looked down at the Grampus and said, “Pardon?”

  “John, it’s me. It’s William,” said the Whale. “William Button.”

  After a good chuckle, I informed the Whale that he was grossly mistaken. “William Button was a man,” I said. “You, sir, are a fish. Furthermore, William Button jumped Ship last month. I saw him go under with my own eyes. He’s dead.”

  “But I don’t feel dead,” said the Whale. “I feel pretty good actually. Top notch!”

  The Grampus looked up at me with these precious little black eyes, bright like a child’s. Then he somehow wiggled his tail, which wasn’t even attached to the rest of his body.

  “Watch me swim, John!”

  “Listen here, Whale. You are dead. D-e-a-d. Dead. Is that clear? What would God think if he saw you carrying on like this when by all rights your body should be still and cold? And dead or alive you shouldn’t be talking. You’re a Whale, you fool. Are you perchance possessed by a demon? Because if you are I will have no choice but to say good day to you, Sir.”

  The Grampus looked hurt and confused by this. He blinked away tears and said, “But I’m not dead, John. I made it ashore. I told you dewberries I would. It was much further than I first thought, and at one point I thought I would surely drown. But then something wonderful happened. Just before I sank, a bird landed in the water in front of me. This bird was unlike any I have ever seen. It was about the size of a seagull, only it had long blue and silver feathers instead of white ones. It also had the head of Mr. Ely.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The bird’s head, John. It looked like a tiny Mr. Ely head, only with a yellow beak instead of a nose.”

  I kindly informed the Whale that Mr. Ely was a dear friend of mine, and that he’d better watch what he says about him unless he’d like a swift slap across his blubbery cheek.

  “I tell you it was him!,” shouted the Whale. “I know that you didn’t see the Mr. Ely Bird with your own eyes as I did, but you must have faith, John. All is lost without faith! The Bird asked me if I wanted to live, to live like I’ve never lived before, and I said yes of course I do. Instantly I felt like I could swim faster and deeper than I ever dreamed. So I went under the sea, John. And let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve been a fish. There’s no land down there, no property, just endless open waters. And there are no laws, just the Fishy Five Formula for Fortitude. Eat, swim, fight, procreate, and sing!”

  The Grampus rocked his head back and forth and sang.

  With a jingle, bang jingle, bang jingle, bang jingle

  With a jingle, bang jingle, bang jingle, hi ho!

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  The Grampus suddenly became angry. With one blink his eyes went from bright and innocent to dark and deranged.

  “John, do you know what happens to those who deny the Wonder of Disorder?”

  I was quite terrified by the Evil look in the Whale’s eyes, so I replied.

  “No I don’t. What happens to them?”

  “They are reincarnated as lightly soiled undergarments and distributed to poor people in Wales!”

  Just then a boot came smashing down on the Whale’s head, squishing it to bits and silencing forever the Grampus who thought he was William Button. I looked up, and there was Mr. Ely, with a most grave look on his face.

  “The sun can do spongy things to a man’s mind,” he said as he shook whale guts off his boot. Then Mr. Ely slowly turned and walked off back toward the rest of the group.

  I don’t know what to make of this. Was the sun playing tricks on my mind? I hope I’m not becoming beetle-headed from the stress of living on this Ship. Later I asked Mr. Ely if he too saw the Grampus speaking. With a grin he said he only saw me speaking to it. Perhaps I need more rest.

  —John Alden

  14

  The Perseverance of the Twinkie

  A FIREMAN STEPPED CAREFULLY THROUGH THE wet, flame-scarred rubble that was the Duxbury Times building. A bit of yellow color peeking out underneath a pile of black rubble caught his attention. He reached down, picked it up, and saw that it was an unwrapped Twinkie. In mint condition.

  “Holy Mary Mother of God. Jimmy! Get over here and take a look at this! It’s a miracle!”

  Jimmy stopped winding the hose and sulkily wandered over. “What is it, Tony? What’s your goddamn problem?”

  “Hey, cool it. I just wanted to show you this Twinkie. It must have been over a thousand goddamn degrees in here. Everything’s completely toasted. Except for this fucking thing. It doesn’t even have a smudge on it. How’s that possible?”

  “Let me see that.”

  Jimmy appraised the Twinkie with an eye that had seen countless snack cakes over the years. He squeezed the spongy cake, and it bounced right back. He smelled it, taking its sugary sweet chemical aroma deep into his nostrils. It certainly seemed to be in perfect condition, but there was only one way to know for sure.

  Jimmy broke the cake in two and gave half to Tony. They toasted each other and stuffed the cake into their mouths. As they chewed, Jimmy’s gaze went distant, focused on something far beyond the here and now.

  “You know what I think?” Jimmy asked, as a glob of white cream popped out of the corner of his mouth.

  “What’s that?”

  “I was thinkin’ maybe we should cover ourselves in Twinkies before we go into a fire.”

  “You mean like glue them all over our bodies?” Tony asked. “From head to toe?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tony popped the last bit of Twinkie into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  “You know what,” he said, “that’s a damn good idea.”

  Jimmy wiped the gob of cream from the corner of his mouth and stared at it. “I’m also thinkin’ that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t be eating something that can survive a raging inferno.”

  Tony stopped chewing.

  “Yeah maybe you’re right.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jimmy and Tony stared at each other. Tony with a wad of cake mush in his mouth and Jimmy with a glob of white cream on his outstretched finger. In the silence that ensued one could almost hear the faint sounds of two stomachs whimpering as the first few chunks of Twinkie reached the end of their respective esophagi.

  Jimmy licked the cream off his finger. “Na fuck that, these things are delicious.”

  Officer Ainsworth passed by the high-fiving Jimmy and Tony, toward Truax and Gilly who were standing a few feet away. They were crouched down around something that looked like a huge burnt loaf of bread. Truax was poking the object with his baton. Ainsworth stepped over a pile of rubble and made his way over to join them.

  “Whatcha got there, boys?”

  “More like who we got here,” Gilly said.

  “That’s a body?”

  Truax used his baton to turn Margaret’s charred head toward Ainsworth.

  “Must be the editor,” Ainsworth said. “Margaret. This was her office.”

  “How do you think she died?” Truax asked.

  “I’m going to go with death by fire,” Ainsworth said. “Judging from the fact that she looks like my wife’s meatloaf.”

  “Hey I like your wife’s meatloaf.”

  “That so, Truax? Want me to get you a fork and bib so you can go to town on this charred loaf here? I’m sure there are plenty of crunchy bits in there, just like my wife’s.”

  Truax swallowed. “No thanks.”

  “So what do you think, Ainsworth?” Gilly asked. “Foul play?”

  Ainsworth rubbed a finger in some ash and sniffed it. “The fire chief says he thinks the place was doused with gas. If that’s true, then you can bet it was someone she knew. It always is in cases like this. Perhaps even someone who works for the paper. Gilly, see if you can get a staff list for the Times, including any freelance writers. Let’s see if any names ring a
bell.”

  PART II:

  TURKEY IN THE HEY!

  1

  A Chill in My Loins

  Excerpt from the diary of John Alden

  Rendered into modern English by

  Dr. Theodore “Mayflower” Jenkins

  January 30, 1621

  It has been many weeks since I have had time to write, and for good reason. We have been terribly busy building a Village so that we could leave the damp, filthy Shiteflower once and for all. During this time a villainous Darkness has fallen upon me, and I fear that I have become cursed. The bitter Winter has set in, freezing our wet clothes so solid that they feel more like armor than cloth. And after many days in tight quarters, with meager provisions, sickness is everywhere. Not even Governor Bradford has been spared. Only six of our member are strong enough to leave their beds and care for the sick. And here is the curse part…I am one of the healthy ones!

  Oh I’d give my right arse cheek to fart around in bed all day and have some other dewberry fulfill my every wish and desire. All day long it’s nothing but…

  “John, my throat is terrible sore. Bring me a cup of beer.”

  “John, get me ready for bed. Remember, I prefer to slumber in the same manner as the good Lord brought me into this world. Nude, with my arse in the air.”

  “John, do you need something to do? Well, I saw you sitting there with your head in your hands and I thought you might need something to pass the time. I thought, well, what better way to pass the time than helping a chap change his soiled undergarments.”

  “John, we’re bored. Terribly so. Sing us song and give us a jig.”

  At least I have Mr. Ely to keep my spirits up. He too remains healthy, and often he will tend to the sick, even when it is my name those dewberries call out. Just this morning, William White cried out, “John, come quick! The Devil is sitting on my chest! He’s taken the form of a snickering rat! And he has a tiny mustache, John!” I got up to see what the feverish fool was going on about, but Mr. Ely put his hand on my shoulder and said that he would handle it. Friends! That’s what we are.

  So thanks to Ely I was able to get some much needed rest. I fell asleep, and when I awoke Mr. Ely was standing over me, staring at my face, like an angel. How friendly! I asked him how William White was doing, and Mr. Ely said that he was doing much better.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “He died.”

  Oh well! White was a bit of a pribbling rump blossom anyway.

  That brings the number of deaths this month to eight, with many more close to joining them. If this keeps up, by winter’s end I will have nothing but Mr. Ely and a pile of corpses to keep me company. With the way these people plod around, with their pinched mouths and mean eyes, whether they are healthy or ill, I’m not sure if that would be a bad thing after all.

  We have settled on high ground by the bay, where there is a great deal of land cleared and hath been planted with corn no more than two years ago. There were some empty Indian huts on this land, which Captain Standish promptly ordered to be burned down. If the Indian occupants return, asking what happened to their huts, Standish devised a plan to tell them that we never saw any huts here, and that perhaps they have the wrong hill? Then we’ll whistle and ignore them until they go away.

  When I am not tending to the sick, the rest of my days are spent in backbreaking labor with the other healthy men (including Captain Standish, Reverend Brewster, Mr. Ely, and two others who I prefer not to name because they are a couple of fat-kidneyed canker-blossoms, and I don’t want to waste any ink putting their names down on paper. So instead I shall call them Ratsbane and Giglet).

  We spend our days chopping down trees, dragging them back to the Village, and then building houses. So far we have one large common house and a separate house for the sick. The building of the Village would go much quicker if Standish would let me build my beaversaw invention. I even drew out a finely detailed diagram that clearly shows how perfect the idea is, and yet he still insists on us exerting ourselves to the point of exhaustion with crude axes and saws.

  I don’t see how anyone could look at this diagram, for even a second, and then go back to using a normal saw.

  —John Alden

  2

  The Lost Art of Turkey Cookery

  Andie ran out of the house to meet her husband as the battered, egg-covered station wagon rattled into the driveway. Dale was out of the car before it even stopped rolling and ran to embrace her.

  With his eyes closed Dale crouched down and squeezed his wife tight around the waist, with his head on her stomach. If only he could somehow be absorbed into her body like a slice of peach suspended in Jell-O. Then Andie could deal with all this chaos while he slept comfortably inside her gelatinous warmth.

  “I want to go back,” he said.

  “Back where?” Andie asked.

  “Back into the womb. Let me in.”

  “Wrong womb.”

  “It’ll do.”

  “What happened out there?”

  “Ninjas happened,” Randy said, as he struggled to crawl onto the hood of the car.

  “Be serious. This is no time for jokes.”

  Dale looked up at Andie. “He is being serious.”

  With one hard tug, Randy pulled the sword out from the roof, nearly falling off the car as it came free. After he regained his balance, Randy held the sword high and said, “Whoso pulleth out this sword from this Oldsmobile is rightwise king, born of Duxbury.”

  “Dale, what the hell is going on?”

  Dale let go of Andie and took a deep breath. “There’s no time to explain. Actually, there is no explanation. Where’s Mayflower?”

  “By the tree. I went out to make sure those cops took down the noose, and there he was.”

  Randy lost his footing and slid off the car roof, nearly impaling himself on the sword when he hit the ground. He popped up quickly as if nothing happened and said, “Don’t worry, sis. We’ll take care of it.”

  “Are you coming with us?” Dale asked.

  “Oh no.” Andie slowly backed up toward the house. “The backyard is dead to me.”

  Randy lead the way as he and Dale crept along the side of the house. Randy held the sword out in front of him, ready to deliver a hit, a very palpable hit, to anything that crossed their path.

  “Why are we being so stealthy?” Dale whispered. “He’s dead.”

  “While it is true that the dead usually don’t attack the living, it is also true that sometimes, when you least expect it, they do.”

  “What?”

  “Zombies.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Dale huffed.

  “Are you telling me that after what you saw today that you believe, with utmost certainty, that there isn’t a zombie Mayflower shuffling around your backyard right now? Close your eyes. Close them! Good. Now imagine your yard. What do you see? You see a shed. You see a tree. You see some leaves on the ground. You see a noose. And you see zombie Mayflower staggering around, don’t you? Don’t you!”

  “Oh God I do!”

  “And what’s he doing?”

  “Well, he was twirling around and spraying blood out of his mouth like a sprinkler. But now he’s doing a reverse crab walk.”

  “And how does that make you feel, Dale?”

  “Like you should go first.”

  With the sword leading the way, Randy and Dale crept around the side of the house and the tree came into view.

  As promised, Mayflower’s body was on the ground, leaning limply against the tree. It sat behind the tree, facing away from the house, making it barely visible from where Dale and Randy stood. All they could see was an arm and a leg poking out from behind the tree, but that was enough for Dale.

  “So that’s what a dead body looks like. Huh. Fascinating. Welp, I’m outta here.”

  “We should get a closer look,” Randy said, grabbing Dale by the arm. “There could be clues.”
<
br />   “I thought that dead men tell no tales?”

  “From this distance we can’t even be sure that he is dead. For all we know he could lying over there with blood spurting out of his eyeballs and in need of assistance. Ready?”

  “No.”

  Randy pulled a flask out from his jacket. “Me neither. But this will help.”

  Randy took a swig and handed the flask to Dale, who sniffed the bottle and had the sensation that his nose hairs were smoldering. Some of them, in fact, were.

  “What is this stuff?”

  “Bathtub gin.”

  “You made it in your filthy bathtub?”

  “Of course not,” Randy said, “My bathtub leaks, it would never work. That’s just what it’s called.”

  “Fine.”

  Dale took in a big mouthful of the gin.

  “I made it in the toilet.”

  Dale choked as the gin went down his throat, leaving a path of lava-like destruction. “Goddamn you,” he sputtered, “I’ll bury you. I swear I will.”

  “Relax. I cleaned the toilet first. With bleach. And no, I didn’t use the toilet when the gin was in there.”

  “Where did you piss and shit?”

  “In the bathtub of course.”

  “Great.”

  Randy took another swig. “Onward.”

  Randy pointed the sword at the tree and crept slowly forward. Dale followed behind him, so close that he might as well have been riding piggyback.

  When they reached the tree, Randy stuck his foot out and tapped Mayflower’s arm once. No response. He tapped twice, this time harder. Nothing. He hauled off and kicked the crap out of the arm over and over again.

  “Stop it!” Dale yelled. “He’s obviously dead.”

  “Right, right. Of course.”

  Randy gave him one more swift kick just to be sure.

 

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