Help! A Bear Is Eating Me!

by Mykle Hansen

Meanwhile: the bear, he sleeps tonight. Ever since the big match he’s been curled up next to the car. He spent a couple hours licking himself earlier, that was sure something to see. It’s like the Nature Channel under here. I actually think he’s warming me up a bit with his body heat. Small consolation for what he smells like.

  A little-known bear fact: they reek! Somehow in all my research I never uncovered this salient info. They reek like giant sweaty socks full of pustulous ingrown toes, their piss smells like rotten vegetables and sulphur, they’ve got fish breath and their feet are caked with feces. I can’t believe I was going to eat one. As it is, I think we’re going to have to wrap up this bear in Dub-L-Tuf plastic garbage bags for the ride home if we don’t want to get pulled over for stinking. I sure hope Javier and his cute little kids can get the bear stench off my car. When I get home, when I get rescued …

  What is the holdup with that, anyway? Okay, thinking opti-pessimistically, suppose Baumer led Image Team out into the forest to look for me, and they were all eaten by bears. Suppose that happened yesterday. Still, Marcia and Edna would have stayed back at camp to pout and seethe. And being women, they would be cowering in a car, where I hope they’d have the brains to shut the windows and try not to smell like bear food. But at what point do they decide, when nobody comes back because bears have feasted upon their weak, indecisive entrails, at what point will they figure out the thing to do is to go get proper HELP? Search & Rescue, have you heard of them? Do you have any idea what they do? They search! And then they rescue! What idiot would undertake to search for and rescue me without the aid of Search & Rescue? Let’s say the girls wait for a whole day and then they finally go get HELP. So tomorrow will be the day, tomorrow morning, the sky will be full of HELP in helicopters and seaplanes, searching for me and my car. HELP has infra-red SUV detectors! HELP has smart binoculars! HELP has upholstery-sniffing basset hounds! I’m not even hard to find, just follow the tire tracks from camp to my car. There’s not even any searching involved, just follow the line in the mud.

  Oh look, it’s starting to rain.

  7

  BIGGER THAN BEARS: The Marv Pushkin Story!

  Chapter Seven: RESCUE AT LAST!

  The next morning as the first stinging rays of the Alaskan sun found me bravely dying beneath my mighty Rover, despairing of seeing ever again my sweet, loving office or feeling the warm embrace of my condominium, as I held back a mighty tsunami of tears with the last strength in my desperate eyelids, clinging boldly to my dwindling rations of hope … all at once I heard a sound, the sweetest sound I’d ever known: the sound of my own name, shouted out in the forest. A search party! Using a combination of loud coughs and elaborate beer can rapping, I announced myself to the Alaskan Forest SWAT Ranger Search & Rescue team. But as these brave men approached my position, I warned them (via morse code) that my ferocious captor would not easily offer up his trophy. Indeed, just then, from out of nowhere, the crazed predator I’d come to know as Mister Bear charged furiously at the phalanx of rescue professionals, his muscular thighs pumping with ursine fury, an ancient battle-snarl echoing from his inhuman, animal, mammalian, beary snout!

  They mowed him down instantly in a blistering hail of high-powered ammunition. “Don’t worry. Mr. Pushkin,” the bald-headed mustachioed Ranger-in-chief told me as he stuck his head under the car to survey my wounds, “the bear’s head is still intact, and I’m sure your Seattle taxidermists can patch up the pelt.”

  Then as the Forest SWAT Ranger Squadron Leader called back to base on his high-powered two-way radio, the other SWAT Rangers jacked up my Rover with military precision, being very respectful of the paint, and polished the mud and grime off the axle. Luckily, these Rangers were accompanied by a team of Search & Rescue field neurosurgeons who fit me with a remarkable pair of self-tightening “smart tourniquets”, the newest thing from Japan. They stemmed the loss of blood while preventing gangrene and gently massaging my raw, exposed neurons.

  “Oh Marv, you’re so brave!” oozed Marcia from Product Dialogue, looking succulent in a tight halter-top and shorts. She wore a dainty clothespin over her nose. “I just can’t stand the stench of those nasty evil bears! They swarmed over camp like bees! They ate Edna, they ate Harvey and Jim and the others, oh gosh it was awful! Hold me, Marv!”

  So I held her, and she felt good, damn good, her warm, heaving bosom, her trembling chin. I kissed her, and squeezed her ample posterior. “If I hadn’t been fixing my makeup in the truck,” she trembled, “they would have got me too! So I asked myself, what would Marv do? And I decided to drive back to the ranger station, and I brought the best Search & Rescue team in all Alaska! I can’t live without you, Marv, and neither can Image Team!”

  As Marcia clutched my hand in hers, the SWAT Rangers and their neurosurgical attaché lifted me onto a sumptuously upholstered stretcher and carried me over to have a look at Mister Bear. There, lifeless in the mud, lay my tormentor, the killing spark snuffed from him. This crumpled ball of meat and insulation had for nearly a week toyed with my life, my being, my very existence as a small Papillon dog might toy with a goat tendon. And yet, I felt no hatred, no anger. I felt only the soothing rush of relief and the bracing flush … of Victory.

  “Violence begets violence, my ursine friend,” I said. Then I borrowed a Benelli M2 semiautomatic shotgun from one of the Rangers and pumped a few more rounds into his lifeless body, while they took pictures.

  The doctors gave me an injection, a fundamentally excellent injection, an injection of pure health and restitution, pain relief and succor. Then the loud chopping of a Red Cross SWAT Ranger Search & Rescue helicopter began to macerate the air around us as its gleaming white belly of aerospace aluminum floated overhead. A life-saving hook was winched down to us, and the SWAT Ranger medics carefully secured my stretcher to it.

  “Thank you brave sirs,” I screamed over the howl of the chopper blades, “but what about those killer bears? Something must be done! They’re a menace to peaceful humans like us.”

  “You’re quite right, Mr. Pushkin,” replied bald, rippling, mustachioed, ex-Marine looking SWAT Ranger Jock Thrustsworth — ten year veteran of the Alaskan Bear Wars. “We’ve tried to live in balance with nature long enough. This time, nature went too far. As soon as you and your fiancé are safely out of here, I’m calling in an air strike to napalm this whole forest.”

  I agreed it was the humane thing to do. He signaled the chopper to raise the winch, but just then Marcia threw her warm, supple, heaving body on top of mine. “Oh Marv, I want to go with you! I hate this place!” she sobbed.

  “Be brave, baby. I need you to skin and clean that bear before this whole forest goes up in well-deserved flames. Here, you’ll need my Leatherman Super Tool.”

  “Oh Marv … I’m so hot for you!” she moaned, grinding against me passionately.

  “But Marcia … could you ever love a man with no feet?”

  “Darling, you’re in luck! A white male college basketball player died of food poisoning in Anchorage just a few hours ago. They’re saving the feet for you!”

  “See you at the office, butterbuns!” I held her tongue in mine, and then she let go and the winch lifted me higher and higher up into the beautiful blue Alaskan sky, up into the clouds. And then I knew, finally, that my ordeal was over and everything was going to be fine. Sure, I had grown and changed, learned some important lessons about life, had an “arc” … but I was still Marv, Last of the Pushkins, and I had prevailed. Knowing that, I closed my eyes and allowed sleep to eat me.

  The next morning I woke up lying in a cold puddle pinned under an SUV that stinks of bear piss. Shit. Nice dream, though. It could still happen.

  I’m bored, is the problem now. Three days under a car and I’ve already run out of things to do. I polished all the mud off the exhaust and the suspension and all the other weird car parts down here, frankly I did a much, much, much more meticulous cleaning than Javier and his family ever did. When I get home I’ll just point him to
this spot and tell him to make the rest of it like that. And I tried some stretching exercises, but I might as well stretch a corpse. There’s not enough room to get any kind of a real workout. I tried abdominal crunches and almost ripped my nose off on the oilpan plug. And then I passed out.

  If I ever do return to the Alaskan wilderness, I’m bringing more games on my phone. I actually played Minesweeper for an hour this morning, that’s how bored I am. Such a tedious game, and my fingers are so damn cold and numb I blew myself up every time. If there was one stupid cell tower anywhere in all of backwards Alaska I could not only dial 911 and be rescued, I could also download some new video games to play while I waited. Or ring tones. Or text messages. Or check my e-mail.

  Or surf the web for some porn. I haven’t been to MonsterBlackTorpedoes.com in weeks, I bet they have a new series up: video of negroes with cocks as big as my arm, stuffing it into the suffering cunts of tiny weeping blond women while swearing at them in gangsta rap lingo, calling them “ho-bags” which I’m sure they are. God, I miss the Internet. I never could find the kind of porn I really like until the Internet. I don’t go for just any old porn, I’m very discriminating, but there’s something really iconic and pure about MonsterBlackTorpedoes. com. Those women are skinny and pale, but the way they scream you’d think they’re giving birth, and you know they’re not faking it. It’s got to hurt, but they take it, because they want it. Or else because they’re junkies who need money for drugs, but still, they must want it a little bit, or else they’d get real jobs.

  Man, I’m frozen stiff. Literally. Several pints low of blood, but I’ve somehow got a hard-on that won’t quit. That dream about Marcia … oh, no wonder I’m horny, I haven’t boned Marcia in three days! I’m going through sex withdrawal. As if I didn’t have enough problems! When I get out of here I’m going to fuck Marcia in the ass so hard she’ll be cross-eyed with carpet burns. That’ll teach her to take three whole days to rescue me. Stupid whore. She’ll love it, too.

  Y’know, I would jack off right now just to warm up a little, just to kill a little fragment of this waiting … but what would Mister Bear say? Is he awake? Mister Bear? Hey bear! Are you around? No? Gone again? Probably off fucking some other bear. I read in my bear research that there’s between 2 and 5 female black bears for every male, because the males are hunted more, because they’re larger. So a bad-ass dominator like Mister Bear must get some sweet bear loving from the hot & heavy fem-bears out here. Oh yeah, humping a bear … that must be epic. The earth must shake. Give her some from me, my friend.

  But I can’t jack off, I don’t have a towel or anything, do I? It’s bad enough I crapped my pants, but if they find me with cum all over my jacket they might get some funny ideas about some gay tryst between me and Mister Bear. I can just see it: forensic evidence suggests that Mr. Pushkin was erotically drawn to the bear’s embrace. Like one of those Internet furry cartoon suit pervs. None for me, thanks. I mean, I appreciate fine furs, especially on Marcia, but when I’m poking Marcia I’m not pretending to poke Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

  Hello, Walter. How are you weathering the ordeal? Bloody but unbowed, I see. Shit, I must have taken a Viagra! That’s the only explanation for your sudden improvement in posture. Ooh, you’re warm and I’m cold.

  But no, I am not getting Marv-jizz all over my camel hair hunting jacket. The blood and the mud and the other stuff that Edna spilled on me, it’s just so un-Maxim, so non-Esquire. It’s decimating my image, it’s massacred my grooming. I strive to always look my best, but right now I look my worst, my absolute worst ever. I hate looking like this. Don’t I have a handkerchief somewhere? What have I got? Car keys, drugs, silver-plated executive ball-point pen, Leatherman Super Tool, drugs, Nokia picture-phone, drugs, iPod, earbuds, stashbox (full of drugs), some papers … here’s the Google Maps instructions from Anchorage to Noplace. One eight and a half by eleven sheet, white bond inkjet printer paper, folded. Walter, what do you think of this?

  A little rough. But it’ll do.

  Oh yeah. Marcia. Marcia in a halter top. Marcia in a fur thong. Marcia naked on her hands and knees, hair messed up, face in the pillow, hands clutching the carpet, and me behind her pushing my Monster Black Torpedo, laughing, making her take it, and her, whimpering, covered in fur, turning into a bear, growling … hang on, no, not that. That’s too weird.

  Back up. Just Marcia now. Yeah, beautiful Marcia. Her hot naked body. Her lurching nipples. Me lying naked on the bearskin rug in the executive lav. Her, turned around and squatting down on my Monster Black Torpedo, bearing down on it slowly. Oh it’s big, oh, it hurts, it’s too big, she wants to stop but I grab her ass and call her ‘ho-bag!’ and there’s a growl, and the bearskin rug comes alive and bites into her leg as she moans, and the blood, the teeth … oh, god-dammit!

  Bears. No, women! Other women. Lots of women. (Bears.) Tits, big round tits with tanning oil on them. Asses, slapping them. Thighs. (Bears.) Whimpering, gasping vaginas crammed full of Monster Black … Bears. Bears, bears, bears. Fuck, this is going nowhere. Walter, help me out here. You must know something I don’t. When I close my eyes I see Mister Bear in a bikini, Mister Bear on my desk, Mister Bear on the floor of the executive lav on a rug made of … me.

  Okay, calming down. Regaining control. So maybe now is not the time. Sorry Walter, you’re going back inside. I know you’re suffering down there little buddy, but things are tough up here too. Things up here are getting a little bit unreal.

  What did I take? What did I neglect to take? Maybe I’m going off my Septihone. It said on the bottle that disorientation may occur. I didn’t know they meant sexual orientation. Quit fucking with me, Walter — there is no way I’m having sex with a bear.

  8

  Bears ate everybody. Bears devoured Edna and Marcia and the members of Image Team. Bears swarmed over the Forest Rangers, ripped them apart like bloody cotton candy, seized their shotguns and marched on Anchorage. Right now they’re rising up against mankind, a ferocious bear battalion tottering on their hind legs, chewing a bloody swath through Canada on their way to Washington D.C. to eat the President. Eat the tiny bald humans, they cry. Eat them all! They are crunchy!

  That’s one explanation, at least. Pardon my mild impatience but whoever hasn’t rescued me yet is an asshole. Rescue me, asshole! I’m doing my part, I’m maintaining, I’m keeping my spirits up, I’m keeping my enemy distracted so you can sneak up behind him and blow him away with high-powered hollow-point slugs. Or bring a longbow if you want to do it Nuge-Style, I don’t care. But my supplies are running thin here, I’m completely out of Bud and Bud Light, I’m rationing the Diet Pepsi but I think maybe the NutriSweet is interacting badly with my medication. I’m getting the shakes, my legs are sending me way too much e-mail, and I keep seeing bear paws out of the corner of my eyes. My ass has cut off all communication. Bugs are colonizing my pants. Mosquitoes are laying eggs in my nose! Mister Bear himself has been gone all day and is still gone but I can’t disabuse myself of the premonition that more and bigger and hungrier bears are out there, nearby, looking for meat.

  HELP! Isn’t that the basic human instinct? The thing that sets us apart from the bears and the ticks and the fungus and all the other bastard wildlife that’s feeding on me? Humans help each other. Humans worry about each other. They don’t even do it because they want to, it’s a factory built-in, like lust or greed or anti-lock brakes. It’s Marketing 101, for Jesus-H-Christ’s-sake, the basic manipulation of feeling and behavior. I am missing, they worry, they desire to HELP. Ergo, they are here yet. Only they aren’t. And what the fuck is up with that? I mean, if I was a worrier I’d worry, but not being a worrier I’m just sort of confused and pissed off.

  If my rescue was an ad campaign it would be bombing, falling out of the sky in flames, crashing like the Chevy Nova in Mexico, and the clients would be screaming and the Veeps would be handing me my ass in an ashtray, and I’d be wringing my hair and wondering, why? And I’d almost certainly be firing som
eone. Lots of people. In fact, at this point I do believe there will be some firings. As a point of principle there must be, even if they do rescue me, some firings. (And they will rescue me, god dammit, or they’re going to be doing push-ups in a kiddie pool of deep shit.)

  Oh, and did I mention that for the last twenty minutes or so, the normally chatty insects have gone suspiciously silent? The frolicsome squirrels? They fucked off. The twittering Alaskan birds, they have flown, and buried in the exquisite silence, under the deafening drip of my fluid leak, I am hearing off in the brushy distance very occasional bear-moving-around sounds: twigs snapping, undergrowth being crushed, fish being farted. Somewhere off in the Alaskan muck, on the left, someone’s looking for a midnight snack.

  It’s not Mister Bear. Mister Bear is light-footed in the forest; you smell his breath, and then you hear his bronchitis, but never his footsteps. He’s not here, in fact he’s been gone all morning. Mister Bear, where are you at a time like this? I bet you’re balling some she-bear ho-bag on a bear waterbed in a sleazy bear motel, while I lie here like a duck stapled to the inside of a barrel. Thanks, M.B. Knew I could count on you.

  Did I mention that I hate bears? This is just not fair. Fairness doesn’t enter into this. I left a party-pack of tender, crunchy subordinates back at Camp Image Team — the official Alaskan Bear Baiting Station, remember, where the bears are supposed to congregate for meals. It’s an all-you-can-eat Homo Sapiens salad bar over there. But oh, no, that’s not good enough for the refined tastes of Alaska’s hoity-toity bears. Won’t Big Brown be disappointed when he finds out I’m the only jerky left. No more Spicy Chorizo, no more Slim Jims, just raw leg of Marv. A Marv Bar. Hey Bears! Are you hungry? Peel open a Starv-Marv!

  Maybe if I lie really still and try not to smell like anything, whatever it is won’t find me. Probably the wind is blowing in the wrong direction for whatever it is to sniff-o-locate me. Whatever it is, it’s making a racket. For all the faults of Nature, I appreciate the quiet. Whatever-it-is does not.