“Not so!” he proclaimed. “For as our war of words waged on like two rutting cats in an alley, I was motivated to mount a new search for surviving sharks and this time I succeeded! Oh yes, the Nazi sharks are real, and alive, and hungry—for your attention, that is. Should you deign.”
Skinner’s eyebrows danced like caterpillars on LSD. They were filled with confusion and anxiety, but there was nothing but pure scepticism and bitterness in the eyes beneath.
“Uh-huh,” was all the learned school teacher replied.
“I invite you, before all the people of the esteemed Malik Bloom Show, to examine the sharks and, with a marine biologist of your choice—so long as it’s not Dr. Heisner of U Wisconson, to whom I owe a substantial sum—to determine their authenticity.”
Skinner himself stood up with a groan and declared, “I accept your dubious offer with a fake smile,” which indeed he did as he shook Beans’s cold, moist hand. “Now, if you don’t mind,” Skinner added with a slight blush, “I should still like to unveil this satirical painting I took the liberty of commissioning.”
Two production assistants emerged with an enormous, framed portrait of an anthropomorphic shark, its teeth gritting with masculine energy at the point of release. The shark’s beefy biceps bulged beneath an unnecessarily tight and homoerotic SS uniform. From the clouds, a mostly nude Hitler extended a totalitarian finger and regarded the scant cloud-cover on his genitals ambivalently. The shark extended a finger up through the clouds to the divinized Hitler, where the fingers touched in a nuclear Genesisplosion. The Creation of Nazi Shark, ladies and gentlemen.
The audience gasped and chuckled with embarrassment, while Skinner bowed gently in response. His coattails fluttered emptily like the dorsal fins of a sneaky flounder whose service is no longer required.
“That’s very amusing,” Beans noted, “but the Nazi sharks are on their way as we speak. Right now!”
As Malik went to the audience for comments, he casually noted, “It’d be a shame if they escaped en-route, though, huh?”
Chapter 3
Kevin Costner
This was the part, Jennifer thought excitedly. Like the chorus of an otherwise bland and forgettable song: the five girls arched their backs and thrust their chests as far forward as anatomy would allow, their arms supporting the smalls of one another’s backs. Like magnificent buoys of flesh—flawless, tanned flesh, except for that mole on Tiffany’s left tit that she has to keep plucking a black hair out of—they rotated their bodies. This manoeuvre half the team wanted to call the Circle of Cleavage and the other half—Jennifer included—had been calling the Titty Twirl. Now, the Titty Twirl seems to promise more than it really delivers, she admitted. But the whole team was cognizant that they scarcely had the talent to manage a circle. It was more of a Lopsided Ellipse of Cleavage. They had tits, not talent—if such a distinction should be made—and they thought they should play to their strengths.
They had done it. The titties had twirled. ‘You served me well, girls,’ Jennifer told her breasts, and not for the first time. Men, family, friends all let her down, but her lady-lumps were not just firm and fulsome—they were goddamn reliable.
The manoeuvre having been executed, the girls broke formation and came bounding hypnotically out of the frothing, white surf, Poseidon’s excited ejaculate. Their matching blue bikinis—except Susan’s, which was a slightly darker shade and this annoyed Jennifer to no end—fit their tanned assets like raccoons in a trash bag, struggling to escape and finally relinquishing to the smooth, conforming fit. Point is, they looked good.
As the fine bimbos emerged onto the white-hot beach, the sun beamed on their awesome, dripping wet bodies just as the Good Lord intended. Time slowed down, ‘cause, ‘Imma enjoy this!’ The erections caused were many and their individual tales cannot be told. Shades raised, trunks shifted, and wives armed their slapping hands. Droplets flew from the bouncing bosoms and others slid between the firm, round buttocks, never to be seen again. Oh, to be a water droplet.
The girls’ trajectory was, at any rate, to the flabby, Hispanic man in the comfortable shade of a massive billboard. It read, “Kevin Costner’s Free-Form Synchronized Swimming Competition.” The man had that sleazy look—the kind that tells you he’s found many uses for a cucumber and none of them nutritious. His stunning blazer and speedo combination does nothing to diffuse this impression. But he was the man with the microphone.
“Like to swim with your girlfriends and look good in a bikini?” the man inquired into the microphone, his accent no thicker nor thinner than a mild queso. “Sign up for the Kevin Costner Free-Form Synchronized Swimming Competition, sponsored by me, Kevin Costner. If you can float and have huge talents, you can win!”
As Costner’s monologue reached its riveting conclusion, the buxom babes, wearing trepidation upon their nipples, reached the stage/billboard combination. Jennifer, like the rest of her team, had no idea why it was important to them to win or even compete. She only knew that they’d showed up in bikinis with little knowledge of swimming and even less of synchronicity.
“How were we, Mr. Costner?” the giggling girls inquired. “Do we qualify?”
Costner gazed directly into the canyons of cleavage with mesmerized approval. These were tits unsullied by a multiplication table and they were the more expressive for it. Their qualifications were abundant, yes, and the color of a delicious flan.
“Do you ever,” he answered the tits. “Welcome to the competition.”
“So, what’s the prize if—”
The microphone swung to Costner’s mouth as he swallowed his excess saliva and resumed his focus on a reality not composed of mammary glands. He announced, “Free registration! Synchronized swimming, bikinis welcome, group action—come on, ladies!”
The girls shrugged and ran off, their breasts bouncing like crack-snorting midgets. Jennifer mentally winked at her breasts as they did, as if to say, ‘Win!’ And they winked right back, bucko.
Where they were going and what was the hurry didn’t much concern the impassive gaze of Sheriff Babbage. He wore a black overcoat, despite the fierce summer sun, his sheriff’s star pinned to the outside. He looked about ninety, if one was being generous. He’d probably have difficulty outrunning a turtle with Down syndrome. But no doubt his mind was sharper than a Hun’s bayonet.
Babbage ignored the girls running by him, more concerned with inhaling just the right dosage of cherry tobacco from his cob pipe. This was a man with priorities, clearly. Bad ones. But priorities nonetheless. He approached Costner at a leisurely pace, because leisurely was the only pace he had left.
Costner observed the approaching sheriff incidentally, as he watched the bikini babes’ buttocks and sought out new talent for his synchronized tit competition. Bingo! A bumble of blondes with full-on cantaloupes had clearly been inspired to synchronize their—
“Water Melons,” the pallorous Sheriff stated dryly.
“Yeah,” Costner answered agreeably, although they were certainly cantaloupes in his mind. “Aren’t they great?”
“Water Melons, Mr. Costner,” the Sheriff repeated from the side of his mouth not occupied by pipe. For a brief moment Costner was overwhelmed with his lifelong terror of telepaths, but then regained his senses as the Sheriff went on. “A swim team, I’m told. Five members. Four now. Missing one. Melanie Johnson. Know anything?”
“I don’t know nothing,” Costner exclaimed, perhaps a little defensively. “You suspect—?”
“Foul play?” the Sheriff answered, idly examining an old protein powder jar that had been converted into a ‘Tips For Boners’ collection. “Hmm. Don’t like suspecting. Suspecting’s for caribou and war criminals. More of an evidence man, myself. A little bit old-fashioned that way. Like you were the last man seen with the young lady. Like your shirt was in her car. Bit of blood on it, too.”
The sheriff’s deeply wrinkled, white face squinted harshly toward the sleazeball in the speedo as he set the boner-tips back on
the plywood stage. Smoke rose from his pipe as if from the teat of El Diablo. The old man didn’t sweat; his powdery eyebrows appeared to deflect all heat.
Costner crumpled into his green, plastic beach chair like a redneck’s beer can. He glanced around to ensure no-one was near enough to hear the tragic tale he would have to tell.
“It’s not as you think it, Sheriff,” he stated solemnly. “I pawed at her breasts like a burning monkey and her hand struck my face with the force of an overripe banana. Insulted, I went home, my pride as shrunken as my penis. But that was all, Sheriff,” he protested to those frosty eyebrows. “I went home and took care of business. Come on! If someone killed her—you know who…”
“I know nothing but facts,” Sheriff Babbage declared, dumping his ashes dramatically into the sand. So dramatically, Costner’s gaze was taken to the ashes as they blew and vanished into the dust, as life vanishes from earth and as bimbos disappear from bikini swim teams…
Chapter 4
The Bubblegum Queens
This was where they were today. In a cheap motel room wearing only bikini bottoms and t-shirts, as all hot girls in motel rooms must do. Where they would be tomorrow or the next day was to fate, the wind, and Edwina’s impulses. For this week, they were 1950s synchronized swimmers.
Two of the girls were lying on one bed, their shapely legs kicked up in that, ‘I’m going to do the crossword, but sexily,’ kinda way, while the other two sat facing the TV with their legs curled beneath them. The local news was covering that story about the Alsatian who nursed a pelican to health.
The hotel room door flew open. The thick-lashed eyes of all the girls turned to the negative space of the doorframe expectantly. The wait was over.
The fifth member and unofficial leader of The Bubblegum Queens entered the doorframe, a newspaper in one hand, an overflowing bucket of delicious, fried chicken in the other. Her Elvis t-shirt barely reached her thighs and the King gazed approvingly into the sexy hotel room. Uh-huh.
“Queens!” Edwina shouted, shutting the door behind her and pressing her plump buttocks against the cheap wood. “There’s a serious situation. So serious, I forgot napkins. The Shakatitt Shark.”
“Aw man, Eddie,” Steph cried, her June Cleaver hair bobbing dramatically, “no napkins!”
“Wait,” Andrea said, looking up from her sexy crossword puzzle (see?), “what’s a Shakatitt shark and can you deep-fry it?”
Edwina held up the newspaper, bearing the headline, “The Shakatitt Shark Strikes Again!”
“The Shakatitt Shark strikes again!” the news anchor stated. Mila finished turning up the volume on the local news and grabbed herself a piece of greasy chicken.
“It was on the DVR,” she explained taking a bite of the juicy, white meat. Such a delicious mix of spices and herbs—how do they do it?
“Yet another young woman has gone missing from the Shakatitt Beach area,” the female anchor declared in a husky voice that betrayed a life-long taste for whiskey. “Melanie Johnson, of the Water Melons synchronized swim team, has not yet been found following our previous broadcast. She is presumed dead, another victim.”
In the top, right corner of the frame, a photo of Melanie, a girl blessed with some honest-to-god tetherballs, was displayed. She will be remembered by the people of Shakatitt Beach as she lived: wearing a bikini that tried its hardest to support and conceal several pounds of pure boobage.
“Huh,” Nikki wondered. “They misspelled her name ‘Melony.’”
“Seems appropriate,” Mila noted, wiping fingers across her Ronettes t-shirt.
“As of now,” the anchorwoman continued, “four other young women have been identified as victims of the same killer known as ‘The Shakatitt Shark’ for the single, symbolic bite mark left on each victim’s thigh.”
Melanie’s photo was replaced at this point by a stock photo of a bite mark, in case the residents of Shakatitt Beach had forgotten what one looks like.
“Criminal profilers suspect the killer is a local of the Shakatitt Beach area. They warn all young women to exercise extreme caution when going out in the evening. Keep in groups or just stay in the house.”
Edwina looked to wipe some grease off her hand and instantly regretted forgetting the napkins. With her left hand, she grabbed the remote and turned off the TV.
“So there ya go!” Edwina concluded. “No-one goes out alone anymore. I could’ve been Shakatitt Shark bait!”
“It’s broad daylight, Eddie,” Nikki argued.
“Hey! Anyone could be the killer. Anyone. We don’t know. Could even be that Kevin Costner guy!”
Andrea nodded solemnly and bit a deep, meditative chunk out of her drumstick. “Y’know,” she said between chews, “I bet his real name’s Enrique Gutierrez.”
“But he changed it,” Steph added, “because he’s always been obsessed with Kevin Costner.”
“Sure,” Nikki agreed. “When he was a boy, his grandmamma would take him to see the same Costner films over and over. He’s seen Dances with Wolves seventy-four times!”
“But she died during their twelfth viewing of Waterworld,” Mila said.
Nikki nodded, dropping a meatless chicken bone back into the bucket. “And he’s been traumatized ever since. So becoming Kevin Costner, in a way—”
“—is the only thing that makes him feel whole!” Steph completed with the joy that always follows a great epiphany.
“Exactly,” Andrea agreed.
“That’s certainly possible,” Edwina acknowledged to her fellow Bubblegum Queens. “And need I remind you that Kevin Costner played a woman-stalking serial killer in Mr. Brooks? Meaning—if being Costner really is that important to him, it’s even more likely he’s the Shakatitt Shark.”
Altogether, the Bubblegum Queens declared, “Oooo.”
“Good point,” Mila concluded.
“Yeah, so, you see, this is serious stuff,” Edwina said. “Because, keep in mind, if any one of us dies, the Cherry Bombs are gonna win this competition. And that’s the worst thing ever. Right?”
“Right!” the girls agreed vehemently, their greasy fists raised high.
Chapter 5
The Cherry Bombs
“Yeah, so, you see,” Sherry explained to the Cherry Bombs as they devoured the pizza in their bikini bottoms and Ramones t-shirts, “this is serious stuff. If any one of us dies, the Bubblegum Queens will win this competition. And we want that like we want more frequent periods—am I right?”
“Right!” the girls agreed, raising their pizza slices above their neon, psychobilly wedges.
Chapter 6
The Changing Tide
In the golden light of evening, the wave appeared blue that swept the voluptuous floating body through a few strands of seaweed and into the surf. As the body crashed into the moist sand, one tit knocked helplessly against the other, a symbol of mortality.
Then she flipped over with the agility of a wounded gymnast and rejoined her bootylicious companions. They frolicked just off the surf, developing their swimming skills to just a few more steps above sinking. If they had any concept of synchronicity, they did not betray it. Any childhood swimming lessons they dutifully forgot. But enthusiasm and energy they displayed in abundance. Plus they’re pretty nice to look at.
“We’re totally gonna win this!” Florence told her friends with all the optimism of someone who’s always been rewarded for her good intentions or even for just being there. She clumsily stroked her way above a confused crab and gave gravity the ol’ one-two.
“I hope so,” Betty replied breathlessly, giving it her all despite her lifelong, chronic asthma, “the prize money is sweet.”
“Yeah,” Louisa agreed, struggling to master the fine art of not-sinking, “you can finally get your little bro that cancer treatment he needs.”
“Exactamundo,” Betty answered, flipping over for a backstroke, her taut abs tensing as they resurfaced. Betty always loved her abs. She named them ‘Arnold’ after a seal pup that
died in her arms once. It was that day that committed her to a life of charity, sit-ups, and nude calendar modeling.
Susan doggy-paddled around the others proudly, just as her mother’s string of sleazy boyfriends had taught her to do. She picked a string of seaweed from the depths of her DDs with a giggle. Somehow things always seemed to get caught in there! Crumbs, hair, drool, hands!
“And what’s left we can donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Society,” she said.
“Thanks, guys!” Tracy said humbly, “I don’t let it get me down.”
In fact, ever since she’d been diagnosed, Tracy had a new attitude toward life. She took joy in every day, every good smell, every funny joke, and just for being there, right then and there, with her wonderful friends in the wonderful air and the beautiful sun setting and the wonderful water! Gosh, life is great and even the disability fetishists have good hearts deep down, she was sure.
Betty gasped, not one of her familiar asthma gasps, but a decidedly startled gasp.
“What was that?” she exclaimed.
“Sorry,” Louisa apologized, “I’ve been gassy all day.”
“No,” Betty said, “I thought I saw something—something moving out there.”
“Gee, I hope it’s not a shark,” Tracy said.
“Couldn’t be. It was like a bunch of sticks or something.”
“There it is,” Susan shouted, pointing out to an approaching rectangular formation of shark fins like angry erections.
“I think those really are sharks,” Florence gasped. “A whole kaboom of them.”
“What?” Betty asked.
“Kaboom,” Florence repeated. “It’s the scientific word for a grouping of sharks.”
“I thought it was a school,” Tracy demurred.
“No, no, no,” Florence argued, “nothing bigger than a tuna can be in a school. It’s a kaboom.”
Nazi Sharks! Page 2