7
The Sunday football rush is busy. If an order is fucked up, nobody cares. They still take the food. The customers are drinking and watching the Bucs’ game and don’t feel like waiting another hour for the right pizza. The bad news: no leftover pizza for Askew to take home for dinner. Due to the complete lack of leftover grub at the end of his first shift, Askew pulls into Barry’s Big Beef Palace drive-through, orders the #5 combo meal and plumps it up for an additional fifty cents.
And the Fast Food Gods are watching over Askew. It’s the type of thing people seem to say when something goes right: the (fill in the blank) gods were watching over me. The phrase is trite. It seems that every person attributes any given fortuitous result to a particular god or gods and the words lose all meaning and power. But, in Askew’s case, the Fast Food Gods really were looking over him. Coniraya, once the Incan God of the Moon, and Zotz, the Mayan Bat God, temporarily share duties as the Fast Food Gods until they get bored or something better comes along. Times are hard for ancient gods. Down-on-their-luck deities tend to take odd jobs until perhaps they come back into style or give it up and retire. Both Coniraya and Zotz were once powerful but were later relegated to obscurity with the steep decline of their worshipers.
Coniraya was known for fashioning his sperm into a fruit which a mortal woman ate and was then impregnated. When she learned that the child was Coniraya’s, she rejected him and fled, eventually turning herself into a rock. Potential worshipers are mostly turned off to worshiping him, as it is generally considered icky to eat his sperm. Given the choice, most people would elect the option of turning themselves into stone over guzzling a load of Coniraya’s fruity jizz.
Zotz is a giant bat-like being. The cave god. Foamy candies are named after him. He commanded as little respect as Coniraya once his people’s civilization disappeared.
After losing all potential worshipers, Coniraya mostly passed time by appearing to mortal women and having sex with them. He still liked to trick the ladies into eating his sperm and impregnating them. Zotz prefers straight up intercourse with mortals and is a prolific breeder. Occasionally his offspring are still discovered living in caves, malformed, demented and mentally impaired – the best known being the dolt-child known to most as Bat Boy who is widely considered to be a hoax created by a tabloid newspaper.
All clichés aside, the Fast Food Gods really were watching over Askew. The drive-through cashier at Barry’s Big Beef Palace is a sickly-looking boy named Simon. His face is blighted with lumpy acne and a variety of pointy metal things stuck through the fleshier parts. He lisps to Askew, “that’ll be four theventy-nine, Thir.” Simon’s lisp is not the stereotypical homosexual affectation. It is more the I-have-my-tongue-pierced-and-I-have-a-self-imposed-speech-impediment kind of lisp. The lingual barbell clicks against Simon’s chipped front teeth as he talks, making Askew cringe.
Askew hands a twenty-dollar bill over to Simon and receives $55.21 in change. Before he can even begin to pocket the overpayment, Simon hands out a large bag packed to the top with burgers and fries and every kind of greasy deep-fried morsel Barry’s Big Beef Palace has to offer. Flashing a big chipped smile and knocking tiny fragments off of his teeth with the barbell, Simon tells Askew, “thank you, Thir. Pleathe come back again.”
• • •
Zotz and Coniraya look down on their work. And it is good. They smile upon Askew and wish him well. “Do you wanna make a grill cook hock a loogie on a cop’s sandwich?” Coniraya asks his colleague.
“No. I think I’d prefer to go down to Earth to get some poontang,” says Zotz. “You feel like tag-teaming a mortal hottie?”
“Yeah,” smiles Coniraya, “I think we’ve done enough work for today. Let’s do it.”
“Groovy,” says Zotz. He flashes his pointy bat-toothed smile and stretches, spreading his wings. “Please just don’t try to get them to eat the sperm fruit again. I hate having to kiss them after they’ve had that in their mouths.”
8
Askew studies the sanguineous meat juice seepage that has soaked into the carpeting around the daypack Grundish left sitting on the floor before falling asleep. “What the fuck? It smells like raw meat in here.”
Grundish stirs, abruptly stands for a moment, his hand to his head, his vision tunnels down to a pinpoint and a load of head-rush dizziness kicks him right between the eyes. Gravity grabs onto the back of his shirt and yanks hard, dragging him back into his broken recliner. “Ugghhhhh,” Grundish exclaims, his hand still slapped to his head, trying to push down the rhythmic throbbing in his temples.
“You better eat something. You can take care of the mess later,” says Askew, evaluating his friend’s condition. “I knew you’d be in bad shape so I stopped off and bought us a feast. Even used all my tips on it,” he lies, handing Grundish a bag of unidentifiable fried nuggets. “I was thinking of you, Buddy. Have a bag of mystery nuggets.”
Grundish stares at the greasy breaded morsels. The nuggets stare back at Grundish. Neither knows what to make of the other. In an effort to understand the fried lumps, Grundish bites one in half and studies the piece. “This one looks like sausage but tastes like ham,” he says, still chewing his food, and pops the remaining fraction of a nugget into his mouth to reunite it with its masticated other half. Grundish holds the open end of the nugget bag toward Askew, offering him his friendship with a side of trans-fat-soaked, breaded mystery lumps.
“Naw,” Askew shakes his head and peers into the Beef Palace bag. “I gots me some a’ my own.” He extracts two bags of mystery nuggets and sets one on the coffee table beside a still-sleeping Turleen. He pulls out one nugget and sets it on the pillow just under her nose. The old lady stirs, nostrils flaring. A light trickle of saliva runs out of the side of her mouth, hangs briefly on her cheek, then drops and soaks into the fabric of the couch. Studying his own mystery bag, Askew pulls out a lump half the size of his fist and bites into it like chomping on an apple. His face twists. Confusion dawns on the features. His thumb and pointer finger probe the inside of his mouth, searching through the mushy mass of fried mung and extract a beak. Askew holds the beak twelve inches before his eyes and examines the tooth marks scraped on the curious bird part.[12] “Dammmn,” he smiles, “I got me fried chicken parts. And I thought I scored the jackpot with a giant corn-fritter.” The smile is less complete than before biting into the parts-fritter – a fragment is absent from the right front tooth.
“Damn, dawg. It looks like you chipped your tooth,” says Grundish. He pops a full nugget into his mouth. “Mmmm, corn.”
Askew’s tongue explores the rough edge of the chip, “Aww, it ain’t that bad. For all intensive purposes it don’t make no difference. So long as I can still hold a cigarette between my teeth, I can’t get too upset about it. “
“I thought you were gonna quit smoking.”
“I am. Next month. I can still puff away right now while I’m getting used to the idea, right?
“Yeah, I guess so.” Grundish grabs a fried salad roll-up from the bag and starts in on it. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that talk we had about the Fuckers.”
“The Fuckers?”
“Yeah, the Fuckers.” Grundish wads up the greasy paper from his fried salad wrap and throws it at Askew. The wad bounces off of Askew’s forehead. “Are you daft, Boy? The Fuckers. We talked about this two nights ago. The people that shit on us. The people that just don’t belong in society. Ms. Velda. The Buttwynns. Remember? The Fuckers.”
“Yep. I remember now.” Askew gets up and grabs two beers, one for himself and one serving of hair of the dog for Grundish. “Matter of fact, I had a delivery to Buttwynn, today.” He nods his head and smiles. “And I got the fucker.”
“What’d you do?”
“I shook his pizza really hard so that the cheese would stick to the top of the box. That’ll teach him to be such a shitty tipper.”
“Yeah, Buddy. I applaud your efforts. You’ve got the right attitude. But you’re puss
ing out. You need to do something more. Really show him he’s a Fucker.” Grundish chugs his malted brew. The throb of the hangover begins to back off. He dips a breaded frumunda cheese[13] stick in ranch dressing and shoves the whole stick in his mouth.
“Like what? I don’t want to lose my job.”
“You do two things for me and I’ll tell you what to do. Number one, go get me another beer. And B, put another mystery nugget under Turleen’s nose. That one you gave her is gone. She probably wants another.”
Turleen’s nugget is gone, even though neither Askew nor Grundish saw her eat it. And she is still asleep. Askew gently places another nugget under her nose. Again, the old lady stirs, nostrils flaring. Another trickle of saliva runs out of the side of her mouth, hangs briefly on her cheek, then adds more moistness to the already-stained upholstery.
“Well, here’s another beer. Now, you tell me what to do.”
“I can’t give you specifics. I can only lead by example,” Grundish says. “Like what I’m getting ready to do. Take notes if you like, and learn from the best.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m sick of the Fuckers in this trailer park. Every day I see those Fuckers out there, and they turn my stomach, you know?” Grundish stuffs two more frumunda cheese sticks in his mouth and chews, and thinks, and chews, and thinks some more. “We are probably the only ones in this trailer park that aren’t registered sex offenders. These people are here because they are despicable. And society has told them that there are only a few places they are allowed to be. And we’re hunkered down right in their midst because we can’t afford to be anywhere nicer.”
“So, what’re you gonna do about it?”
Grundish places a cheese stick under Turleen’s nose in the spot where the last nugget was. Turleen doesn’t stir. Neither Grundish nor Askew saw her eat the second nugget. But, it is gone.
“I’m gonna strike fear into their hearts. I’m gonna get payback for the people they victimized. I know Fuckers like these people. I saw them in the joint all the time.”
“You mean you saw people simular to these guys, right?” Askew asks. “I mean, you don’t recognize any of these people from prison, do you?”
“Mostly, no. But, uh...” Grundish’s nose wrinkles and his top lip twists up into a sneer. “You know that guy in Lot 49, right down at the end of our lane?”
Askew nods. “You mean the guy that stands out on the corner and tries to hand out balloon animals to kids?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy. I know him from the big house. He was what we called a gunner. You know what that is?”
“Naw. I don’t know that prison slang, man.”
“A gunner[14]...well...he’s a guy who stands in his cell playing with himself. He waits for people to walk by, mostly looking for women guards. But, it don’t really matter who it is. Other inmates, guards, whoever. And when somebody walks by, he really start to jack it.”
“That’s a gunner?” Askew laughs, and a chunk of fried something-or-other falls from his mouth.
“That’s a gunner,” says Grundish. “And, then there’s the snipers. They run up and try to shoot a load of spunk right on you. And that’s really more what that fella down in Lot 49 was. I think his name in the joint was Bumpy D or something creepy like that.”
“Damn, Dude. Did he ever shoot off a round at you?”
“Naah. No fucking way. I would’a split his wig. I’d still kind of like to, anyway. But I’m gonna do something a little different instead.”
Grundish takes the half-full can of beer that Askew set on the floor and chugs it to chase the rest of his pre-migraine floaters away. He picks up the daypack and pulls out three large packages of semi-frozen hotdogs that he pilfered during his last burglary. In a plastic grocery bag, Grundish loads up the hotdogs and several more cans of beer. “I’m going for a bike ride around the park. You might want to step out and watch some of this.”
9
Turleen sits cross-legged and her joints don’t hurt. Between her fingers dangles an extra-long cancer stick capped with a burning ember. Oh, good! she thinks to herself, I know it’s a dream, but this is the only time I’m able to smoke. She raises the cigarette to her face and notices that the hand is not wrinkled. The fingers are not bent into arthritic hag-claws. Instead of the liver spots she is used to, there are pinpoint freckles. She places the filter to her moist lips and pulls a deep drag from the smoke, inhaling it into both of her lungs. As she blows it out she doesn’t cough. She smiles, and the back of her neck and her forearms tingle. Damn, I love these dreams, she thinks to herself. Turleen leans back and rests her back against the park bench. The sunlight warms her face. A cool breeze blows streamers of bluish vapors from the fireball of her cigarette. She closes her eyes and pulls another hit from the smoke – holding it long in her lungs, enjoying the nicotine rush.
“Hello,” says the deep, warm voice that stirs Turleen from her tobacco bliss. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
At Turleen’s feet sit two dogs. One is a floppy basset hound with a wise face. The other looks familiar to Turleen, but she is unable to place it. She ponders the beast, searches her memory for evidence of the handsome animal regally posed before her.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” says the basset hound. “My name is Idjit Galoot. And this is my friend...well...you already know him, don’t you?”
“You can talk?” Turleen leans back and looks sideways at the dog.
“Well, yes and no,” answers Idjit. “You see, this isn’t my first contact with a human in a dream. My first contact actually happened a few years in the future, and I tried speaking with a Scottish brogue. It was goofy and I’ve since just decided to go with the voice and delivery that you are hearing now.”
“The future?” Turleen asks, still boggled by a talking dog and the concept of time travel, dream or not.
“Well, yes,” says Idjit. “Time in this realm is not exactly linear. Sometimes I pop into people’s dreams from years ago. Sometimes it’s far into the future. It really isn’t something that I have much control over. To me, it almost seems like some hack novelist’s lame literary device used to fit a character from a previous book into a new book, thus preserving the conceptual continuity of the author’s overall vision and giving a cameo appearance to a popular character. But I digress. Do you remember my friend?”
Turleen looks at the dogs, now over the initial shock that they can talk, and shakes her head. She studies Idjit’s friend. “You look familiar, you do. Maybe younger than you’re supposed to be. But my memory’s horrible.”
“You can’t place me, huh? What’s my motherfuckin’ name?” says the dog.
Turleen swivels her head back and forth in a manner which indicates the negative and suddenly feels uncomfortable. She sucks hard at the cigarette. The smoke rapidly heats up the filter. The hot filter burns her lips.
“You know me,” says the dog. “You killed me.”
“Stubs?”
“Maybe. Or have you killed other dogs?”
“No, I haven’t. Just you. And, I’m sure not going to apologize,” huffs Turleen, placing a fresh unlit smoke in her mouth and lighting it with the ember from the almost-spent butt she had already been enjoying. “You were going to kill me, you were. All cuddled up at the bottom of my bed, you were. We know what that means, don’t we, Mr. Stubs?”
“Um. I see your point,” Stubs concedes. “The thing that really sucks about it for me was that I wasn’t there to take you away,” he chuckles at himself and shakes his head. “You weren’t on my roster. I just liked your feet. They smell like meat.”
“Ah, hooey! My feet do not smell like meat, they don’t.”
“They do. It’s like that, and that’s a matter-of-fact. That’s why I licked them.” Stubs licks his floppy, pink-and-black mottled dog lips. “They also tasted like meat, which shouldn’t be so surprising. I mean, you are made out of meat, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. And please get your fr
iend away from my gams.” Idjit, interested in feet that taste like meat, licks at Turleen’s bare calf and slowly works his way down. She pushes the dog back with her other foot, strangely excited by the licking sensation. “Get back, you mongrel, or I’ll give you what for, I will. I’m not going to have dead dogs licking my stilts, I’m not.”
“I’m not dead, ma’am,” says Idjit. “I’m just here with Stubs to give you some advice. But, I’ll let Stubs fill you in on that. And by the way, your feet do taste like meat. Sort of like bologna with a hint of deviled eggs.” Idjit wags his tail, thumping it happily on the ground.
“Well, your feet are not the reason we are visiting you right now,” says Stubs. “I actually do have important business with you. But, uh, first,” Stubs eyes sparkle, he pants heavily and slobbers a little, “is that a fried mystery nugget on your leg?”
“Ah, applesauce!” declares Turleen, waving her hand in the air as if brushing Stubs out of the way. “You must be addled, Doggy Dog. There is nothing on my lap but...” Turleen looks down and is surprised to discover a fried lump of breaded matter sitting in her lap. The peculiar breaded lump ignores the conversation and pretends it’s elsewhere. “Why waddaya know? There is a mystery nugget on my lap, there is.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me that tasty morsel as a peace offering. You know, for killing me and stuff?” Stubs raises his doggy eyebrows and wags his tail.
“And then we’ll be Jake?” asks Turleen.
“If Jake is good, then yeah, we’ll be Jake,” says Stubs. Turleen grasps the oily nugget between her pointer finger and thumb and tosses it to Stubs. Stubs snatches the nugget mid-air and swallows it whole.
“And I’ll promise not to lick your delicious feet again if you give me that other nugget on your lap,” advises Idjit Galoot.
Grundish and Askew Page 5
