all but illegible. “So, not to let the cat out of the bag or to say too much about your you-know-what secret mission to get the Germans to sign the secret treaty to provide us with decades supplies of tummy bursting Marzipan to save the planet from the roach empire who think that just because they survived a nuclear war that they can just thumb their black noses in our face and don’t let this contract fall into any ITALIAN hands to prevent a bidding war on the planet Crack-Cake and come back here with it signed and don’t get eaten by wild animals or take candy from strangers or eat ten pancakes and go jogging in Death Valley in the summertime, bummertime, skip to my loo my darling...” The panting, wheezing lord said. “…in goes the good air… out goes the bad air…” he whispered. Soon he was huffing into a paper bag. After collecting himself and getting two hundred dollars for passing GO, the good Sheppard continued.
“The first thing the German’s are likely to do is to cover you with gravy,” Lord said. He pranced to the other side of his T.V. tray table and slunk heavily into the Barc-o-lounger. “Then they’ll push you out into the wilds of ‘The Starvation Plains’, which may or may not contain a hungry animal or two, or two hundred-thousand.” Muffin fainted, Knob spit up a small amount of oatmeal and Plebe coughed a pink blob into his hand. “Just saying,” He continued, “there’s been a drought, you know… but they might not even be hungry anymore - maybe they found some Snickers bars or something…or there might not be any animals there at all, or there might be lots,” he said. “Anyhooo, that’s why I’m giving you this hot sauce.” Plebe pushed a large bullet-shaped glass container toward the girls. It was half-full of red stuff. On the label it read: ‘Muy, Muy, Muy Picante Diablo Diarrea - No Bueno’. Knob blushed, Muffin burst a pimple and Plebe signaled for a NFL touch-down. “Use it to counteract the effects of the Germans’ gravy. Good luck and Gob’s Speed.” Plebe immediately turned from the girls. He put his fingers in his ears and began chanting, “‘I’m not listening, La, La, La…”
After four hours of coffin and dead groundhog scrambling, Knob had the two of them out of the EBYC-S and into the clingy, smoggy, tepid air of Earthphat. The streets were deserted. The looming gray buildings and debris-strewn lanes held a quiet foreboding of things to come and portents. Knob pulled out the envelope Plebe had given them. She slid out a debit card and two plane tickets for the planet Crack-Cake. That they were stand-by, one-way, coach seats not by the aisle, did not amuse her. She also noted that their flight left in a half-an-hour.
Knob quickly inventoried their survival packs. In hers were two half-eaten beef sticks, a map of Marineland Aquatic Park, a thermos full of carpet tacks, a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses with one lens missing and a gas can with a sizable hole in the bottom. Knob grinned to herself; she knew the best way to be prepared was to be prepared. “I’m ready for anything,” she said to herself. Muffin thought she was being spoken to and replied, “Twice on Sundays.”
Pushing their battery-dead Sedgways before them, Knob couldn’t remember a time when she was more excited. Funny thing was, she thought to herself, she couldn’t remember her memory lapses either - they would have to complete their mission on grit alone, she decided. Finally, they arrived at the teleport and municipal airport and Chinese laundry city-centre. The girls locked up their dead Sedgways using coat hangers and a sign the said, ‘¡Peligro™!’ and walked into the automatic sliding glass doors, which had failed to open. The sign taped to the glass said, “PUSH’. Muffin pushed Knob. Knob fell into the gutter which held an inch of brackish water on which floated a used bandaid. Knob looked incredulously at Muffin and shouted, “The door, idiot, push the door…!”
Soon they were handing their tickets to a clerk. The man, in a military cap adorned with an emblem of Rotini Pasta, stuck his hand out. “Marzipan contract, please…” he said in a heavy Italian accent. Muffin started to grab the contract from Knob when Knob pulled away.
“Ex-Nay On De Ontract-Ca…” said Knob. Muffin qweefed, Knob gave herself a dirty Sanchez and the Italian guy wrote down and slowly began decoding Knob’s super-stealthy spy-speak, known only in the highest ranks of the upper echelons of spy-ville as ‘Pig-Latin’, which she knew was invented by the Three Stooges and all but impossible to crack.
Looking up from his paper, the clerk with the Italian accent nodded to a guy standing to his other left. The man to the clerk’s other left held a sign that read: ‘nod if they have the contract’. Knob looked to and fro, from the floor to the ceiling, and then noticed the man with the sign and the clerk nodding profusely.
“They may be on to us…” she whispered to Muffin.
Soon they we both seated in the middle seats of a Super-Sonic Interstellar YZ80 Screaming Yellow Uber-Zonker-Jet. Knob looked out the small portal shaped window to watch the propellers turn. Faster and faster, they spun into invisibility while next to Knob, Muffin slowly unfolded her air-sickness bag.
Having only barfed six times, Knob thought Muffin handled the flight to Crack-Cake well. Their jump to Super-Fast Super-Space Light-Speediness had been delayed due to an encounter with an imploded Black-Nebula whose matter was so dense that a ladle full would weigh more that the whole planet of Earthphat, so they were sixty hours late, but at least they had made it, Knob thought, and besides, she mused, that’s one super strong ladle.
Making their way along the conveyor belt people mover crawl-way by standing motionless, Muff and Knob awaited their fate at Crack-Cake. Above them hung portraits of the great leader of the planet, Ralph. Signs everywhere warned travelers against Venereal Disease and Timeshares.
They knew they were embarking on a dangerous mission with lots of hazards and perils and other potentially nasty stuff. They would have to hook up with Germans - the same people who thought rotting, heavily vinegary shredded cabbage was great stuff - the same people that thought thick, stiff gray leather shorts were the height of fashion - the same people that thought sausage with lots of grizzle in it was yummy - the same people that thought that tiny half-egg shaped air-cooled engine-in-the-back death-mobiles were great transportation - the same people that thought… well… you know… the genocide thingy of the past … was… well… Anyhooo, Knob thought to herself, maybe they’ve changed, she hoped, she signed, she farted and she felt a little better. This, she thought to herself, was not going to be easy.
After Security, Customs, Immigration, Visas, Vaccinations, Permits, Vouchers, Currency Exchange, Colonoscopies, Fees, Taxes, and a two-hour Yoga session, the pair were finally on the curb hailing a taxi.
“Germanville,” Knob said to the driver. He was a rotund fat man that appeared much, much skinnier than he was in actuality. She sighed and Muffin made a ‘yaak’ sound. This, Knob pondered, was just the start of the very beginning, and, she knew, it wouldn’t be over until the very end, finishing part.
To their great astonishment, they found Germanville deserted. The only beings occupying the main street of Whilhem Strasse De Guttenberg Snitzelhoff Drive, were, oddly enough, Knob saw, animals.
Raw, rib-showing, blood-caked, furry and sometimes cute, mused Knob, animals. Knob knew that they had to be careful around the Starvation Plains mammals, so she pulled out Plebe’s hot sauce and splashed a generous amount under both armpits. After screaming and dancing the Watusi, she did the same to Muff, whose pupils instantly became the size of coffee cup saucers - still, Knob noticed, the girl held her piece until she finally shouted an obscenity loud enough to shake the leaves on a nearby elm tree. She and Muff then approached a large contingent of Hyena who were lounging next to an abandoned soccer field and defunct knockwurst factory. Weeds grew rampant and wild around the field, with the lone exception of an area around a picked-clean giraffe skeleton - there the grass, in a wide circle, was short, albeit stained red.
“Howdy,” Knob said to the wild pack. “Ve Gates,” she uttered. The hyenas looked at one another and laughed and laughed, and laughed. Knob and Muff stared at the creatures - neither thought the situation was all that funny, but still the hyenas laughed
and laughed. Then, after laughing some more, a big brute of a guy approached.
“What-up, sister?” the animal, who Knob fingered as a leader because of his hat that said ‘Leader’ in embossed gold letters, asked in a heavy Brooklyn accent.
“Point us to De German Volks,” Muffin said. It was a guttural purr, said with a gravely voice. Knob handed Muff a throat lozenge and stepped forward.
“Are there any Germans here?” Knob asked. The hyenas giggled. These guys sure like to mirth it up, Knob mused. To tell the truth, Knob thought, she was tired of musing so much but it seemed like a musing kind of day. “You know, the kind of German that likes to sign contracts and stuff?” Again the girls were met with nothing but laughs and giggles - ‘what kind of hyenas are these?’ Knob wondered.
“Not like we have a Marzipan contract or anything, we just like those kind of Germans…” Muff said. It was a tame shout issued in a covert whisper through a veiled croak. “So, are there Germans here or not?” Muffin asked. The hyenas laughed. Knob sighed and wondered how such scroungy-looking animals could find anything so hilarious.
“None,” said the hyena leader
Muffin and Knob's Special Adventure Page 2