something’s coming,” mumbled the President.
The thicket was violently agitated, she now clutched the President's arm hard. Ignorant of most things in the world she knew that no animal she had ever seen could have shaken the brush like that...well maybe an elephant.
"It must be as enormous," BamaOay mumbled, echoing her thoughts. "What the Devil..." His voice trailed off in stunned silence.
Through the thicket was thrust a head of the nightmare and lunacy. A gaping maw bared two rows of glistening white teeth setting off a pair of bucktooth incisors; above the frothing mouth a wrinkled, flat snout. Small, beady eyes like those of a satanic creature only a thousand times magnified stared unblinkingly at the petrified humans. Blood dripped from those two insanely large choppers.
The pug nose head of the creature was block-like and as mighty as a man’s and sat on a squat, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly skinny legs. Its black snout sniffed the air, while its small, stubby tail twitched back and forth nervously. Someone had put a pair of pink, costume, bunny ears on the creature’s noodle and had to piss it off even more.
"Back up the sandbar, quick!" snapped BamaOay, shoving IllaryHay aside to put her between him and the four-legged menace.
With snapping jaws the mistreated canine came hurtling onto the beach as they fled to the safety of the disappearing sandbar running like leaves blown before a storm.
IllaryHay glanced backward as she trundled after BamaOay, the titan was rearing up its head fearsomely with stubby tail waving here and there. The sight sent panic racing through her. The critter seemed more gigantic than ever.
"Get your pepper spray ready!"
The beast stopped at the ocean edge and began running back and forth, avoiding the surf. The huge-headed beast barked furiously out at them, as they looked on for a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed by pristine, white sandy beach. Its eyes flaming, the giant suddenly ceased its barking, dropping to a seated position and set about scratching like the mangy, flee-bitten cur that it was.
The seconds passed like hours, all the while the fiend was now prancing back and forth, snorting the air and staring unblinkingly at them, barking all the while.
“At least we’re safe for now.”
She shuddered, "How long do you suppose that thing will stand there?”
“How should I know?” answered the President who now noticed the half-buried skeleton. “That’s a little odd.”
“What?”
“This skeleton, especially the head doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“What do you mean?”
He used his driver to move the skull to get a better look. "This fellow has fangs, almost like a lions only longer.”
“How would you know?”
“I use to vacation in Kenya. There are no bones broken, maybe the sharks ripped whatever it is to shreds.”
“Fuck that thing,” she responded, walking over and kicking the skull clattering across the sand, “what about that goddamn dog over there and how are we going to get past it and back to the lodge?”
“That bulldog has got to be owned by the local folks,” responded the President, “and if so, chances are good that they are some of our toothless voters. I’d say all we have to do is sit and wait. They’re bound to hear all that barking.”
IllaryHay looked at him blankly, her resentment somewhat forgotten. She was fighting down the surging pangs of hunger. She had proved her reckless courage a thousand times before in wild melees against the hundreds of floozies who had come after her man. She had trampled those saucy bitches like no one else could, but now the prospect confronting her congealed her blood. A few threats, some slashed car, or bicycle tires, a few broken windows, all in the heat of a court battle was nothing, but to sit idle and helpless on the bare spit of vanishing sand besieged by a monstrous canine...the thought sent ripples of panic throbbing through her.
"That bastard eventually must leave, right?" she asked helplessly, “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get more than a little hungry.”
“That’s an odd thing to say. Where were you planning on going, the local diner?”
“I spied someone having a cookout to the west, the rising smoke of a campfire.”
“So.”
“Did I fail to mention the heavenly hint of barbecue, too?”
“Well, that helps. How far away do you think it is?”
“No clue.”
“A hundred yards, a half-mile, a mile away?”
“Damnit, I said I don’t know.”
“I suppose it can’t be that far off, not if you could smell the cookout.”
IllaryHay changed the subject, “How long do you think that mutt will hang out there?”
"I can’t say, keep in mind a dog like that has been trained to hunt,” the President paused, adding, “but I suppose we should be grateful for one thing.”
“What?”
“It at least appears to be afraid of the surf."
BamaOay spoke imperturbably, but with the trembling, growing need of a smoker. Save for these nicotine cravings, he could endure a situation like this with a coolness impossible to a person like IllaryHay. If only his Secret Service Agent had not run off with his one-and-only pack of Kools.
"Can’t we just wade along the shoreline and get away that way?" she asked desperately.
He shook his head. "I thought of that only the surf is really too big."
The President now took a seat, prepared to wait things out and began doodling with the sand.
"Then, what the fuck are we going to do? Are we going to sit here pulling out puds, until we starve like that?" she pointed to the half-buried skeleton. "I won’t do it! I’ll walk down to the beach and spray the living hell out of that bastard, first!"
He looked up with a glint of admiration at her blazing eyes and tense shaking of that canister of pepper spray, but realizing that she was in just the mood for such madness, he let none of his admiration show in his voice.
"Come on," he grunted, “you would only get hurt doing that, have you seen the teeth on that thing? Those powerful paws? Those bunny ears it’s being forced to wear have to be upsetting it even more than normal. We will get out of this jam, we just have to wait...wait for someone back at the lodge to notice we’re missing."
She made no reply. She was terrified, a sensation that was new to her.
Time passed, the sandbar slowly disappeared around the two, that damn fiend from Hades sat on the beach waiting to have a go at them once the encroaching tide forced them back to the white strip of sand.
So, IllaryHay stood next to the President who was now intent on building a sandcastle. Neither the strange skeleton, now getting covered by the waves, nor the bastard mongrel on the beach seemed to disturbed the President and his thoughts.
She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed no way out of their mess and BamaOay seemed to be concerned only with his sandcastle, which was now beginning to take on the shape of a relief of himself.
Golf Lessons
The Bahama Post-Times-Chronicle-Journal - Bahamian scientists have discovered important clues surrounding the Trianglodylians, that this culture believed in another dimension and the ability to be transported to that alternative reality, either through drugs, or some cataclysmic force of nature. Scientists continue their research into these odd beliefs and of the alternative universe this primitive culture called “Hoot’Shaland.”
The President suddenly stopped short, frowning now at the telltale signs of sharks and their dark shadows making their presence seen near the shore break.
Sharks! he thought to himself. What a blasted fool I am not to have thought of those killers before! Where the hell is the security team?
BamaOay looked back at the great brute squatting on the beach intently watching them with frightful patience. So too, might a primordial beast have glared at his ancestors cornered on a fast disappearing spit of land in the dim da
wn ages of time. BamaOay responded with, “Okidoky” and a cough, then stood to a take better look around. Time was running out, that canine and now sharks. The President had an idea he had been mulling over.
“IllaryHay, it looks like we’re going to have to do something.”
“Well hell, it’s about time.”
“Let’s get a little closer to that dog.”
“What’s your plan?”
“You’ll see.”
As the two strolled as close as they dared, it made the canine restless. Rising from its haunches it lashed out hideous barks all the while snapping the air, those bunny ears flopping with the motion of its gigantic head. BamaOay watched the creature warily with a penetrating eye reached into his belly bag. Taking out a Titleist the President carefully placed it on a slight rise in the sand. He next set about going through the motions of addressing the golf ball.
“You’re going to try and hit that thing?”
“Got a better idea?”
“No.”
When a good player sets up to hit the driver he, or she invariably does so with a good, wide stance and with the ball positioned opposite their left heel. The wider stance helps position the person’s head from the other side of the golf ball—exactly where it should be. In his case, his legs too long, his shoulders too narrow, the President had a wider than normal stance, so the ball instead of being positioned opposite his left heel was centered between his two widespread legs.
Weight distribution favors the back leg and the back should be bent a little to the rear. In his case weight was evenly spread and BamaOay was hunched
Barbarian King Page 4
