by Unce, Bo
"Damn, son," Koochy sneered. "Cain't nobody live without dat social media. Ain't a life worth livin' no hows." His dead eyes looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then came to a decision. "Hashtag Felix ain't shit! Uploaded, muffuckaaa!"
I was stunned at Marcus' boldness. "You can't eat your compute-pad this time! You're like a digital personal assistant still, you're not in an analog body! What if Felix comes to get you?"
"Den let him come! I ain't 'fraid o' no sucka ass hackmasta who cain't even fight me hisself."
Alphonso wailed and stared up at the ceiling, as if another giant mech or some fiery doom was going to come crashing down from orbit. Seconds ticked by and nothing had happened yet.
"Lookie hurr, I got some likes arrready! Damn ho, you fine," Koochy muttered, poking at his compute-pad.
"I guess... I guess we're okay then?" I asked rhetorically.
The doorbell rang.
"I got it!" announced Alphonso cheerily. He ran to the door.
"No, wait!" I shouted, running after him. Alphonso opened the door and I saw an incredible sight.
On our doorstep was an oversized, heavy-duty mobility scooter. It was festooned with gaudy, tasteless decorations and had eight off-road wheels, four of which were flat. To its front, back, left and right were cargo attachments, each holding multiple ten-liter bottles of soda. The reinforced seat was stained with innumerable unidentifiable splotches.
I was flabbergasted. The seat was at least six feet wide and looked like it could support several tons. But instead of a human riding the scootypuff, there was a compute-pad mounted on the seat, apparently showing a live video feed of something. I couldn't immediately identify what I was looking at, but when I saw what it was, I recoiled in horror!
The compute-pad was showing a human face, engorged in fat and idly chewing on something. Its eyes were almost hidden by drooping folds of swollen tissue coming down from its forehead. I couldn't see a discernable neck, it was just like the flesh started at its ears and sloped downwards until it was cut off by the edges of the screen. Actually I couldn't even see its ears. Makeup was caked on, like a clown trying to look sexy. Wispy green hair was pasted on its forehead with greasy sweat.
"Holy fuck!" exclaimed Alphonso, leaping back. He regained his composure. "Where were my manners? Hello, how can we help you?"
The face stared at us dully. Its eyes were like the sad eyes of a cow, except hidden by more fat and showing far less intelligence. It looked off-screen and made a motion that set its neck-area jiggling. Some purple skin sores showed in the neck folds and I shuddered.
"Hello fellow Old Cleveland resident," the compute-pad said. It looked like whatever was operating the scooter wasn't even talking; it was playing a recording of itself talking. How fucking lazy was this thing?
"Would you …" the recording took a break to wheeze several times. "Would you like to donate to the Cleveland Jesus disciples organization?" The recording coughed up some phlegm. The mound of flesh stared at me soullessly through the screen, chewing.
"What the fuck?" I exclaimed. On the one hand, it was great that my disciples had started a grass-roots movement. On the other hand, I'd never heard of this organization and this wasn't a great introduction.
The lard monster on the other side of the connection turned to press another button, launching the next part of the spiel.
"For a small monthly payment," it gasped, "you can crowdfund me and I'll buy a book of coupons." It laboriously continued, "Then I'll use the coupons for food and send some food to the children of Old Cleveland. Then they'll sell the food to the homeless and use the profits for Cleveland Jesus."
"How does that make any sense?" I asked. "Why wouldn't I just spend the money myself?"
The face on the other side stared blankly. I guess it didn't have a prepared response for this.
"Yo, P, check out dis ho on CumTube.com yo," Koochy said, walking up behind me before glimpsing what was on our doorstep. "Oh shit, what the FUCK is that?! Damn, homie we need some guns wit' da quickness!"
The face on the other side saw Koochy and lit up, as best as a face like that could light up. The eyes opened wider by another millimeter, sending jiggles around the rest of its moon face. Its maw stopped munching and instead vocalized some live sounds rather than using the recording.
"Dinny! Dinny Aurelius!" It caught its breath, smacking its lips. "Is that you?"
"Yah, and who be askin'? Whafuck?" Marcus replied. I hadn't heard that nickname in a while.
"It's me! Yvonne!" came the reply. At last I could match a gender to what I was seeing. "Remember me, sweetie?"
"Yvonne? Nah, I only knew one Yvonne," Koochy replied. "Straight busted nuts up in her, dat shit was tight, yo! Peaced out like ten years ago, unngh! Hope that ho be stayin' fly. Stay fly, ho."
"Dinny. Marcus, listen. That one night we had..." it panted. "I'll just say it. You have a son."
Koochy's jaw dropped. It literally finished rotting off and fell to the ground. "Whaaaaaaaa?" came a cry from his suit speakers.
"Hahahahaha!" I laughed. "Koochy I knew you liked them thick chicks but damn!"
Koochy grabbed his jaw and shoved it back in place, then thought logically. "Bitch, you ain't Yvonne! Yo' ass as tight as a garbage bag full o' rotten cottage cheese!"
"It's baby weight! A mother's body is a treasure!" Yvonne rasped back. "You're... you're triggering me!!"
"Dat shit was ten years ago! You ain't in no fo'tieth trimester!"
"Marcus, look." The screen above the scooter flashed a progression of pictures: a slim, sultry white girl with a big ass sitting on Koochy's lap. Then Koochy on the floor passed out with smoke curling from his nostrils. Then the same girl resting her hands on a baby bump. Then the girl surrounded by empty tubs of ice cream, butter and mayonnaise. Then the girl with her hair dyed green and purple. Then the girl sitting proudly in her first mobility scooter.
Holy shit! This was really Yvonne! I thought to myself.
The pictures continued, also showing a small boy turning into a much rounder, more rotund boy. Then Yvonne at a feminist rally, using her scooter to bulldoze weight scales and diet books into a laser incinerator. Then Yvonne with a poorly-overlaid label of "now an online activist!", the picture showing her lit by a compute-pad screen and behind piles of pizza boxes. Over time Yvonne's green hair was getting thinner, and her makeup got more and more outlandish, leading to her current "smiley face drawn on a thumb"-like appearance.
I couldn't look at the pictures anymore, I was getting nauseated.
"This is a tactical and strategic disaster," Alphonso announced, invoking his Vice-Admiral voice. "Let's kill it!"
"Nah, Alphonso," Koochy said somberly. "Dis be the mutha of my son."
"Stay right there! I'm coming over in person!" Yvonne warbled. "I'm bringing Junior. You got anything to eat? You're the hosts, I'm the guest!" The motorized scooter backed up and drove away.
I shut the door. "Koochy," I started. "How did that thing find us? We're in the middle of fucking nowhere! This is Old Cleveland for crying out loud!"
"Fuckin' Felix Navi Dod. Gotsta be. That fucka's probly laughin' his dumb ass off. How he run up on Yvonne anyways? I ain't got no chil' support on file!" Marcus paced around the room angrily. "Muffucka ain't never fight a clean fight by his own damn self! We ain't got time for no baby momma! But sheeit. Dat be my son, kid. Shit is scraight serious mane, I see how you be feelin' all the time now. Damns."
"What? Oh, uh... yeah," I faltered. What had become of my children/siblings? Baby Sienna? That mutant-brain brother of mine, Ralph? How exactly did I be feeling all the time?
"Well," I counseled Koochy. "If there's anything I've learned from being my own son, it's that you can't blame yourself for what you do as your own kid. I mean, that is some deep shit, man. Think about it."
"P, what tha fuck, mane? You on some ganja you ain't tol' me 'bout? Sound high as fuck, kid!" Koochy accused.
"I'm just saying," I continued. "When one day yo
u are your own father and want to have sex with your mother, and your other son and brother has a lisp of some sort, you'll understand."
"Sheeit. Cain't understan' yo' ass. Maybe I gotsta get my brain fixed up, son. Downlo' some skills!" Koochy said, getting agitated. "Dis surgipod suit needs juice! I gotsta wear the juice! Gimme dem lemons!"
"What?" I queried. "Never mind. Yeah, we need to fix you up and get Marcus back. So this house, it has power. Is that enough? Can you plug your fingers into the wall or something?"
"Unngh, powah makes me mo' betta but --"
"Wait, plugging your fingers into the wall heals you up?" Alphonso asked desperately. "I'm dying here! You did this! Look at me!" he almost screamed, pointing at his blisters.
"I meant --" I started to say.
Alphonso practically leapt at the nearest ruined wall. An electrical socket was dangling by a few wires and he grabbed at them.
BZZZZT! Sparks flew from Alphonso's hands. The house lights flickered and then went off completely. Alphonso twitched violently and fell to the ground gritting his teeth and drooling.
"Muthafucka! You need a damn suit! Fuck's wrong wit' you?" Koochy shouted at Alphonso. "You a dumb!"
"Urrrrrg," Alphonso grunted. "Urg."
My confidence in our team's ability to successfully get through Old Cleveland was falling. I noticed Alphonso's shoes were smoking slightly and his hair was standing on end.
"But damn, yo' hair be on fleek, kid, it ain't nappy none. Shit be snatchin'!"
"Th-th-thanks," stuttered Alphonso from the floor. "I... I shouldn't have done that. I wasn't myself. G-guys, I'm really tired. I think... I think I haven't slept since Putin's party. How long has it been? I usually have a siesta. How do you guys do it? I'm just..." he trailed off, softly snoring.
I pondered this for a second in the dim morning light. Neither reanimated bodies nor gods needed sleep, I supposed.
"Sheeit," Koochy lamented. "No juice! Dat fucknut broke the wi-fi too! Cain't see if any hos retweeted muh shit! Bitches be hoin' and we gots no bandwidth!"
I heard a slow, heavy pounding on the front door.
"Who is it?!" I yelled.
The pounding continued, getting louder and more urgent.
"What the fuck? There's a hole in the wall right next to the door!" I screamed in response. "What's wrong with you?"
The front door completely collapsed and an enormous mobility scooter trundled through the newly-made opening, crushing various potted plants that were unfortunate enough to be in the way.
"Nobody answered the doorbell! I was waiting out there!" Yvonne bleated without introduction. She was even more hideous in person, and I was immediately hit by the smell of rotten forgotten food and fold-mold. "Is the power out? Just so you know, that means we're going to have to eat all the food in the fridge before it goes bad. Junior, get to it!"
A smaller scooter appeared from behind her immense girth and a chubby young boy drove inside, crashing over broken pieces of lumber and drywall.
"Junior, fetch me a soda," Yvonne ordered. "Put it on my eating shelf. Oh, and say hi to your dad."
Koochy stared at the marshmallow-like child rolling by him.
"Damn, son. You my son, son," Koochy greeted him, earnestly. Koochy looked over the small mobility scooter laden with snack pockets and then threw up some incredulous gang signs. "Whafuck's wrong wit you, kid?"
"Bluuuh bluuuuuh," the boy said.
"That's right! Nothing's wrong with him!" Yvonne wheezed. "I homeschooled him myself. He takes after his mother's genetics, and we're proud of who we are! I'm a big, beautiful woman!"
I looked askance at her.
Yvonne held her strong woman smile for a few seconds and then burst into tears. "Stop body-shaming me!! It's triggering!" She glared at Koochy. "It's your job to make this a safe space! FUCK YOU, DINNY! Junior did you fetch my dinner yet?"
I was flabbergasted at this invasion of our household. Koochy and I had been roommates here in the OC suburbs for a few minutes before she came into the picture, and we'd had some really good times on our own. I reminisced fondly back to when we first moved in, when Marcus had told Alphonso to eat a dicktoe. I smiled sadly to myself. Those blissful moments were just distant memories because now his baby momma was ruining our vibe.
"Marcus, I think we need to talk," I said.
"Whateva' you need ta say, just say dat shit. My fam'ly can hurr whateva' I hurr," Koochy replied.
"Well that's what I want to talk about." I struggled to find the words to tell my friend. "This situation... I can't handle it. She has to go," I blurted.
"Fuck you, P! She my baby momma! I lo--" Koochy started, then chose another word. "I lik--" He tried again. "She aiigh-- Damn! She uhh. She be there. Ay, you cain't talk shit, you fucked yo' own momma!"
"Yeah, but I wouldn't fuck THAT with Alphonso's dick!" I yelled back.
Alphonso stirred at the sound of his name, then groggily opened his eyes. "Aaaahhh! What the hell is that?! Oh. Oh, hi Yvonne," he finished, mumbling.
"Look at her!" I exhorted, continuing my tirade to Marcus. "Why is she wearing a tank top? It looks like a tent and it still doesn't cover her gut. She has like six armpits! She has extra tits on her back. Her stomach and belly button look like my ass when I'm taking a shit!"
Koochy moved his not-even-attached jaw as if he were going to say something, and then looked at Yvonne and reconsidered.
"You're just perpetrating patriarchal standards of beauty," Yvonne blathered. "Someone big boned like me would of starved to death if I didn't --"
"What did you say?" I interrupted her.
"I would of starved to --" she repeated.
I cut her off again. "You idiot. It's 'would've', not 'would of'," I clarified. "Have you never read a book?"
"Well, mister, that's what I said. 'Would of'! Who are you to say you know what's right, anyway?" Yvonne said contemptuously. "Are you a doctor? Hmm? Are you? No. I don't even know you. You're just some guy who lives with Marcus. A short guy. I would never date a short guy, you couldn't handle this sexy bod anyway. And your just mean."
"What?"
"Your mean!" she repeated dumbly.
"My mean what? You're an idiot!" I hollered. "Oh wait, let me rephrase that, your an idiot."
"You just said that. Whose the dumb won now?" Yvonne laughed.
"I... I can't deal with this," I sighed. We needed to get some power and bandwidth and get back to TK and all of this wasn't helping. If Felix had planned this stealth attack on our effectiveness by sending Yvonne here, it was a brutally damaging ploy. The hackmaster was always the puppeteer behind the scenes. Felix's fingers were in everybody's pie, it seemed. But soon, I thought... soon my dicktoes would be in his pie-hole for a change.
"Koochy let's go find another house," I proposed. "One that's not destroyed by ice slugs and then short-circuited by a clueless guy who has no friends."
"Yeah!" Alphonso added.
"Unngh, son! Ay Yvonne, dat's a nice scooter you got thurr. Got dat towin' capacity. Muffuckin' torque like wha? Hook dat shit up to the whip outside! Den we be havin' tree fat ass white bitches pullin', not just two!"
"Bluuhhhh," said Junior.
"Dinny, you funny," Yvonne said, in an accent that mimicked her rediscovered ex.
"Girl, I ain't kiddin'. Get yo' ass out dere an' work it!" he commanded her. She blushed in return.
I rolled my eyes. Great. Now I had two Koochys to deal with. And one of them had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
"Come on, you guys. I want to get out of this suit," I looked through the window. "I see a big commercial dock-looking-thing over there."
"Ahh, hell yeah, my boy! Dey prolly got some damn sat-lite network shizz and one a dem power cores as a backup... fo' I smack up! Kid! Unnnghh," Koochy's repulsively decaying form waltzed around in front of me as he sang his street slang.
Our most bizarre troupe departed the decimated mansion and slowly staggered our way a few hundred yards to a well-lit, s
mall market which was bustling with business. It struck me as odd that no one seemed to have noticed our messy arrival into their neighbor's home, which was clearly noticeable from this distance. I turned back and looked to where we had come from. Small fires had broken out all around the house and were growing steadily. Our great ice slugs seemed to be watching apathetically from a safe distance, and I felt they appeared amused.
"A'ight den, y'all," Koochy advised. "Lis'en up. We fixin' ta be all up in dis here place like maggots on some cheesecake, ya hurr me?"
"We should probably hit the power cores first, huh?" I asked him.
"Aw hell nah, son," he scorned me through the compute-pad protruding from the side of his suited corpse. "I'mma need ta show y'all my final form, ya know what I'm sayin'? If I'mma heal dis here body. What tha hell ya think?"
I nodded. "Of course."
The ice-front store was bustling with business on the inside. On the outside, few customers were visible. Those that were went visibly out of their way to avoid any contact with us. I imagined what we must look like as our ragamuffin posse staggered up the stairs to the entrance. Yvonne's all-terrain tires crunched a path through the concrete.
"Goodmas season, already?" I thought to myself as I threw open the doors to the store and was greeted by holiday melodies. Christmas had been outlawed ages ago, when the Good Man banished religion to the outer colonies. The global economy had become dependent on the commerce bound to the religious-rooted holiday, so Obama came to the rescue with Goodmas: the patriotic, consumption-focused winter holiday period observed over three months every year.
"Bluhhh! Bluhhh!" Junior was excitedly waving a flabby arm in the direction of the festive lights decorating the interior of the commercial site.
"Yea' son, I'mma buy you lil somethin', no doubt!" said dead Koochy as he petted his boy on the head, while I shook mine.
"First, doh," he continued. "Gotssa get muh mu'fuckin' hair on scraight, ya know wha' I'm sayin'?"
Koochy led us into the store, which was quite a bit smaller on the inside than it had appeared from the outside. It was filled with long aisles, which were stuffed with items of a colorful variety. Shoppers, heavily bundled in winter-wear, were thickly clustered and hustling about. It was going to be hard to blend in, I realized as I looked from side to side at my companions.
