Lick Your Neighbor

by Chris Genoa

  “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 ba
d. 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

  3

  Step Back, Repulse Monkey

  Andie Alden sat at the kitchen table, sipping a martini as she gazed blankly out the window. She watched as Officers Ainsworth and Truax cautiously approached the maple tree. They could only see part of Mayflower Jenkins’ right shoulder and leg sticking out from the backside of the trunk. Not his head, or the lack thereof.

  With Ainsworth standing by, hand on gun, Truax reached out and poked Mayflower’s shoulder with his police baton.

  “Sir? Sir, are you okay? Do you need assistance?”

  After the fourth poke, Mayflower’s body fell over, and his severed head rolled out of his lap and into view. Truax threw his baton into the air and screamed like a little girl.

  Ainsworth took evasive maneuvers. He drew his gun, rolled onto the grass, and took aim at Mayflower’s head.

  “Freeze!”

  Glancing to the left, a few yards away from the tree, Andie saw Judy Stitch and Officer Gilly doing their best to ignore all that. They were doing Tai Chi. Andie believed they were in the middle of movement #21, “Step Back, Repulse Monkey.” However, since she hadn’t done Tai Chi since college, she could have been wrong.

  Andie picked up the phone and dialed Dale’s number again. His voicemail answered. After polishing off her martini, Andie texted Dale the following message:

  Tai Chi in our yard

  A skull rolls, making grown men squeal

  Time? Ha! Little left.

  4

  The Marquise of Queensbury

  The Oldsmobile sped past a faded billboard for Wild Willie’s Turkey Farm. The sign was overgrown with the surrounding bushes and trees, but the red and black lettering could still be read.

  Wild Willie’s Turkey Farm!

  1 mile on the Right!

  Proudly serving Duxbury for over 100 years!

  Famous Turkey Pies! Scrumptious Turkey Jerky!

  Free Turkeyback rides for infants!

  “Could you repeat that last part?” Dale asked.

  “We have to kill the farmer,” Randy obliged. “And by kill I mean make dead.”

  “I know what kill means.”
/>   “Oh really? Ever killed anything before, Mr. Iknowwhatkillameanos? Interesting last name you have there by the way. Is it Greek?”

  “Shut up, Randy. Of course I’ve killed before.”

  “Oh yeah like what?”

  “You know…bugs and stuff.”

  “Ha!”

  “Hey man life is life!”

  The Oldsmobile pulled up outside the rusted iron gates of Wild Willie’s. Randy turned the car off and immediately crawled into the back, tunneling through the mountain of junk. The turkey was back there with him, keeping watch out the rear window.

  Dale laid back in his seat and stared up at the ceiling. “Let me make sure I have all this straight. That man who was spinning around kicking the mutants knew Silas?”

  “That’s right.” Randy held up a crown of thorns, raised an eyebrow at it, and then tossed it aside.

  “And somehow your Dad,” Dale continued, “who was working for Ferdue, and Feathers, who was working for the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, were able to piece together this Auwaog mystery. Or at least bits of it. And in doing so they made the farmer guy mad, and he sent the Psycho Assassins after them.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Furthermore, the ninjas are the 386 year-old sons of William Bradford, John Alden, Miles Standish, and Edward Brewster.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And the farmer might be John Alden.”

  “Yep.”

  “So basically…I have to kill one of my ancestors.” Dale sat up. “Won’t that mean I would never have been born?”

  “We’re not traveling back in time, Dale. That would be ridiculous.”

  “Oh yeah because none of this is ridiculous. Did this Mr. Feathers character say anything about having to shove a wooden stake through the farmer’s heart?”

  “No,” Randy said. “But I imagine it wouldn’t hurt to bring a steak along just in case. I have one back here somewhere.”