by Unce, Bo
"Heads up!" I called out, and Alphonso turned just in time to catch the putrid frozen specialty right in his face, his mouth open mid-shriek. He fell over and plowed up a heap of snow, skidding along the ground to come to a stop. I held my breath in the sudden scream-free silence.
The gigantic snow slugs bumped into each other, lost track of what they were doing, and then puttered along idly. Alphonso cowered in a fetal position between the huge beasts and they narrowly missed him to either side.
I hopped down the roof hatch and opened the forward door to bring Alphonso in as the sled slowly approached him, then shut the port to keep the wind out. Alphonso was shaking and shivering violently from the cold but dragged himself along the floor with a determination I'd never before seen in him.
"Hey, you need help there, champ?" I asked.
"N-n-n-n-nnn-nn-n-" he stammered through chattering teeth.
Finally Alphonso reached the taskboard and with a spasm of effort he moved the ALPHONSO GETS THE MONSTERS sticky note to the "done" column, then he collapsed.
"Hot damn, that sucka-ass sucka actually finished a task!" Koochy observed as he came back in the crew compartment. "Goan get it, homie."
"Marcus, I think he's got hypothermia or something. Look at him, he's turning blue!" I worried. "We should get him out of those wet clothes maybe."
"Oh yah? So why don'tcha get butt nekkid and snuggle all close like?" Koochy mocked loudly. "Dis ain't no voyage of the mimi shit! Warmin' up with yo' dicks in yo' asses, haaah!"
"Well, I wasn't suggesting I'd be the one to do that. Maybe you would though...?" I probed.
"Bitch my core body temp-er-a-ture be close to ab-so-loot zero," Marcus enunciated unnecessarily. "Ab-so-loot, so I gotta come up on some loot! Cain't be hangin' wit no zeros. Fuck up some commas, kid!"
My scientifically minded friend did have a point, at least at first. Marcus' dead body heat wouldn't help Alphonso recover.
I looked around the cabin for ideas. How could I warm him up, without touching his pasty ass? Aha! I saw a pile of papers on the ground in the corner. I picked up the discarded sticky notes. "NEE? FIX" "KNEE. FXI?" "ARM. FIX!" the first few read. Holy shit, did Alphonso really need to retitle his one fucking task this many times? As if any triage team would prioritize his goddamn knee injury.
I grabbed an armful of post-its, rushed back to Alphonso's shivering body and dumped them on top of him.
"Koochy, do you have a lighter?" I asked. "Gimme, since you don't need it for your brain-weed."
"Yah, son!"
Marcus passed me a diamond-encrusted disposable plastic lighter. I flicked it and set Alphonso ablaze. Flames immediately licked up to the ceiling of the cabin and thick smoke filled the chariot.
"Oh shit! It wasn't me!" I yelled reflexively. I started kicking and stomping on Alphonso to put him out, grinding my dickfeet into his face.
"Aaaaahhhmmmmpfff!" Alphonso yelled, muffled by dicks.
"Shut up! Can't you see I'm trying to save you!?" I shouted back.
Marcus picked up a sheaf of flaming sticky notes and hurled them out of the roof hatch. They fluttered down a ways in front of the enormous snow slugs. I lost my balance as the sled started moving again.
"Scrrrrrrr!" Koochy declared. "Pedal down! In my fuckin' 'rari, son!"
"Good idea!" I said and threw some flaming tasks out as well. The sled picked up speed in whatever direction we tossed the fiery backlog. Soon the fire inside was reduced to just a few comforting warm embers, but Koochy and I continued to burn sticky notes and toss them ahead of our vehicle.
Alphonso was no longer shaking and turning blue, but was a blistered bright red and sobbing instead.
"Owww," he whined. "Did I... did I do okay? Did I save us?"
"Yes," I told him. "I'll never doubt the can-can system again. Now we are in control of our destiny, moving forward with high velocity, and we can use our tasks to change direction and react quickly! We are agile!"
"Can you... can you get me.. into the... surgipod, Preston?" Alphonso gasped with much effort.
I looked around the sled interior but didn't see the healing chamber of which he spoke.
"It's... it's... over there..." Alphonso raised a blistered, shaky finger and pointed at a one of cryo-tubes against the wall.
"Damn, son," Koochy scathed. "That ain't no damn surgi-pod, dat's a damn cryo-tube! Don't you be knowin' tha difference seein' as how yer a damn Vice-Admiral and all?"
"But...but... it.. healed me, Koochy. It literally healed my knee," he explained.
"Mane, get tha fuck out wit' dat shit. Yo' ass what'n hurt fo' shit," Koochy dismissed Alphonso's experience.
"No, Koochy, it was, like, really bad. Really bad. I saw some drops of blood and everything," he continued.
"Ay P, get this crispy ass critter out muh face. Ass-face-ho', I deal wit' yo' ass when we get ta da OC," Koochy turned his attention to me. "P, ya need ta get out ta tha front of tha sled and hang some damn heat out in fronta dem icy bitches!"
I looked at Alphonso's sorry state and reflected on Koochy's request.
"Uh... how about I don't do that," I declined. "Can't we just keep using these burning sticky notes? Or, can't you do some kind of hologram stuff or something fake?"
"Use yo damn eyes, son. We fixin' ta run out deese damn stick-ass notes!" He gestured at the rapidly shrinking pile of small yellow pads by the can-can board. "We needa get our shit su-stain-aboh!"
He was right, of course. Old Cleveland wasn't yet visible on the horizon and we had only another few minutes of fiery sticky-notes left. Alphonso wasn't in any kind of state to go back out on a mission. I regretted being cavalier with his frostbite. Dammit, I missed my future remembered powers. If I still had them, I would know if the next adventure may be my worst yet.
"All right," I told Koochy, dourly. "What do I need to do?"
"Yeah, P! Das my boy! Oh shit, P. You needa hit deese sick ass brain-WAY-ves befo' yo ass go out dere an' get in it, ya know what I'm sayin'?" Koochy coughed through the compute-pad.
I rolled my eyes.
"No thanks. I'll need my head on straight if I'm going out there. But, what am I doing out there?" I asked him again.
"Take dis broke ass pole from in here," Koochy pointed at a piece of the chariot's ceiling that had fallen onto the floor at some point during all of the recent turmoil. "And take dis gripa energy cells I wired up," he handed me a small sack. "Put dat shit on dat pole and go put it out on tha fronta this yoke lookin' thang I done put on dem ice thangs."
Despite his impossible grammar, I got the gist of what he wanted me to do. It was genius, really. I snatched up the bar he had pointed out and stopped at the door to look back at Koochy and the charred Alphonso.
"Wish me luck, guys," I nodded at them.
"Man, get yo ass out dere," Koochy bade me farewell.
I jumped out of the sled and landed with ten dull thuds as my dicktoes struck the ice. The... what had Marcus called them? Mollusca maritimus! were very impressive creatures to behold. Creeping stealthily, I walked between the beasts. At times, my face was inches from their slimy, oozing bodies.
Their bodies looked like whale blubber trapped within a translucent, oil-sheened skin that was quite porous and weeping profusely. I wasn't sure what the thick and sickly tinted fluid was that was streaming freely from the thousands of orifices in their hulking forms. As it whisked off of their bodies and hit the icy ground, it bounced once and froze in mid-air, creating beautiful and elaborate crystalline structures behind them, wherever they went.
"Gross," I whispered and tried to maneuver so that as little of their excretion as possible splashed on me.
I reached my goal: the heavy duty yoke and harness that had impossibly sprung from hidden compartments in the front of the sled, ensnaring these two beasts of burden. Working nimbly, feeling almost fully recovered, I attached the long, slender pole I had brought with me to the rig binding the bleeding snow slugs. Once it was fully extended and set in place, i
t stretched out in front of them a good twenty feet. The small sack of energy cells that Koochy had given me were firmly affixed to the far end of the pole.
After giving it a small shake to ensure it would hold, I turned to make my way back to the sled's door. Before I could take my first step, something strange happened. The large, mute creature to my left leaned in affectionately on me. It reminded me of the large stray dog that used to come around the DQ back when Whiddington was still alive. Whenever that dog wanted to be nice to me, usually coinciding with me being in possession of a comestible of some sort, it would press itself gently against me. Sometimes to the point of both of us falling over.
Was this thing coming on to me?
It made a distinctive thumping noise that was almost a rattle, not quite a purr, as it pressed its hideous flesh into me. I was now coated in its thick, white emissions. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant feeling, I realized. Feeling suddenly very friendly myself, I reached out my palm and intentionally touched the building-sized slug for the first time. It shuddered fiercely as our skins made contact. Instantly, I bonded with the creature; feeling linked in both body and mind.
Quickly, I turned to its kin and placed my other palm on it. The same reaction occurred and there I stood, feeling godly once again. A midget, dick-footed messiah, flanked by two gargantuan brutes, coated in ill-looking phlegm.
Feeling more confident than ever, I lifted one of my feet and let my phallic toes find their way into the many lubricated holes that covered the animal's body. After repeating this task on the right side, I began to climb steadily up between the frigid slugs. My toes made disgusting squelching and schlocking sounds as they slid and popped in and out, powering my ascension.
"P!" I heard Koochy come over the external loud speakers as I emerged near the top of the monsters. "P, what tha fuck you doin'?!"
I waved back at him to signal I did not need saving.
Once atop the creatures, a single thought crossed my mind and I gave it volume.
"Go!" I commanded, pointing the direction we had been going. I hoped this was the direction we should continue going.
My latest disciples complied and we began sluicing forward with surprising speed. I dug my dick-toes in tight and had no trouble standing on top of the enormous critters that pulled Putin's badly battered sled across the frozen lake Erie, ever closer to Old Cleveland. The sun was finally breaking through the fog and clouds of early morning, and a blazing ray of its holy light pierced the sky like God's wang. It found me like a spotlight, and for a moment that seemed to last for minutes, I was framed in brilliant orange sunlight. Truly, a god among men, and a sight to behold.
"Onward! Onward, my frosty brutes!" I howled into the empty early morning. So cold was the wind that it sliced at my face like a long ribbony razor as we tore across the great ice sheet of Erie. Stoic, I did not so much as blink at the stinging of the prolonged polar gusts.
"P, we killin' it, son!" Koochy's voice, amplified by the external loudspeakers on the chariot, was barely audible over the roar of the wind and the swoosh of my giant mounts on the ice. "How tha hell you doin' dat, mane? You like some kinda ice slug whisperer, some shit?!"
I laughed from a place of absolute confidence.
"I... am... CLEVELAND JESUS!" I announced loudly with a smile on my face.
The slug monsters were moving much faster at my urging than they had been when we were taunting them with flaming can-can tasks. I estimated we were speeding along at around forty miles per hour.
Now that the sun had fully risen, the last of the morning fog and the heavy, low hanging clouds were dispelled. The skyline of a decaying twenty first century old-world city loomed before us.
"Koochy!" I called back over my shoulder. "I can see Old Cleveland! We're almost there!"
"Yeah, son!" he responded via the loud-speakers. "I can see dat shit too!"
A new dawn was upon us. I felt invigorated with optimism, ready to take on whatever challenges lay ahead.
"So why are we going to Old Cleveland again?" Alphonso complained over the open mic. "Cleveland sucks!"
I could imagine Alphonso back there peering morosely over the ruined can-can board, looking for some priority memo detailing why Old Cleveland was our destination. He was not a true believer yet, even though he had been blessed by the touch of my godly dickfeet. Soon this would change, though... all would bow before me! We were going to get Marcus fixed up, maybe even find his glasses, get TK, and then beat the Good Man!
I sensed a Zen-like feeling of being, tossing my head back in unbridled enjoyment of this blissful state. My dick-toes were squelching in and out of the various orifices they rested in as we bobbed along, and the feeling gave me contentment and a sense of belonging.
We were nearing the suburbs. I coaxed my slug-drawn carriage closer to the shore to look at the approaching signs of civilization.
"Ay! We best goan get some powah!" Koochy reminded me. "Looky dere, those rich fucks gots deyselves some shit!"
I looked at the lakefront properties ahead of us and saw that the widespread ruin of downtown Old Cleveland had not extended to the McMansions that had enveloped the outer boroughs. A few of the larger homes had iced-over docks and frozen swimming pools, but were still brightly lit and had arrays of satellite dishes on their roofs.
I willed my trusty beasts onwards to the shore. A door opened on a nearby mansion and a resident came out, waving at us. I waved back. The locals were friendly! Might it be that not everything was terrible?
He waved more and more frantically, then ran inside the house and returned with a large tube that he rested on his shoulder as he dropped to one knee on his lawn.
"Drop to your knees, I am come!" I announced ahead of my chariot's wave of slimy emissions. It looked like I was going to have another disciple soon; Old Cleveland was going to be a great place.
"Preston, I think we should slow down a little bit," Alphonso chimed in. "These slug things are bigger than freight trains and we're on ice you know," he blathered.
"Forward!" I declared triumphantly. We raced ahead to my follower's abode.
I looked and saw the local resident still kneeling reverently towards me. A flash of light was followed by a streak of smoke erupting from the snow-covered yet still perfectly manicured lawn. An explosion ripped into the side of my starboard-side ice beast. White goo showered me, sending me stumbling back.
"Nooooo!" I screamed. How could my newest devout disciple have forsaken me?
I struggled to keep myself upright as the mounts bucked and tore at our makeshift reins. The two behemoths crashed ashore, sweeping aside a moored pleasure yacht in their trek towards the lakefront mansion, as if they were two fat white girls and the yacht was between them and the fridge.
"Aww snap!" Koochy hollered, seeing the ice slug roll over the Old Cleveland citizen. "Dats whatchu get!" The local homeowner was mushed into pieces and our trail of goop and crystalline structures changed from white to a ruddy pink, right before the two beasts crashed into the residence itself. Finally our sled came to a grinding halt.
"We have arrived," I said to no one. I climbed down from my large friends and patted them fondly, especially the one who'd borne the brunt of the missile impact. To a hulking beast of that size, the missile must have felt only like Alphonso's scraped knee.
Koochy and Alphonso dismounted from the chariot and walked over to what remained of the estate. Some small fires were visible inside the ruins. It looked like the ice slugs had destroyed the garage and guest houses, but the main structure was still standing. The entrance was surprisingly untouched, albeit surrounded by gaping holes in the walls.
Alphonso went to the front door and knocked on it.
"Anyone home?" he shouted. Alphonso rang the doorbell a few times and stood there patiently for a while before turning to us. "Guys, maybe we should go down the street instead?"
I stared at him for a moment.
"Eat a dicktoe!" Koochy jeered, pushing Alphonso aside with a
straight-arm to the face and entering a large hole in the foyer. "Yo' dumb ass can goan walk do'-to-do' like some fuckin' vacuum cleana' salesfuck, bein' all like 'I'm Alphonso, I suck dick like dese here vacuums, lemme show you', you sorry ass sucka ass..." Koochy trailed off talking to himself as he went deeper into the building.
I followed him inside. "Hey Marcus, this house is pretty nice!" I said, marveling at the luxurious decorations and tasteful design touches. "I bet it's worth a lot to the owner, even in Old Cleveland! Well, before we trashed it. And killed the owner."
"Fuck yeah, P. Dis shit is bomb dot com," Koochy noted. "Speakin' o' dat, I best get up on the wi-fi! I don't gots my hackmasta skills down-loaded on the down-low yet, they still be up in da clud, but even bein' dead like dis I can still hack dat sucka ass wi-fi admin password, unnngh!"
I let Marcus do his thing, watching him poke at his attached compute-pad and fiddle with wires. Then he walked to the kitchen and unplugged a toaster.
"Dis righ'chere be dat internet o' thangs! Muthafuckas never be firewallin' them appliances, son!" He stuck two fingers deep into the toaster and lights flickered back and forth. "Damn right!"
I'd been out of the loop for so long that I had no idea what was going on in the outside world. Was the Good Man still enforcing the compulsory buy rate? What had happened to the millions of people we'd left stranded in New New York? What were the trending hashtags on the blews?
"Marcus, are you connected yet? I really need to catch up!" I yelled, louder than I wanted to. At that moment TK could wait a little longer, I just needed to see if my selfies had gotten any more likes.
"Sheeit, kid, sit yo' ass down. I gots ta be all up on it first, yahurr? Hashtag big Kooch, back in effect, like whaa?" Koochy swiveled his attached compute-pad so its decrepit 4k camera was focused on his decaying face. "Unnngh!" he said, throwing gang signs up.
"Hey, I don't mean to interrupt," Alphonso said. I was surprised he'd made it inside. Maybe he'd picked the lock on the front door or something, or more likely it was just unlocked. "But Koochy, don't you think you should stay off the blogosphere for a while? Remember what happened last time?"