by Unce, Bo
I pondered this. Did I take after my own father too? Well, of course I did, I was my own father. But I thought back to my original father, the one who'd died choking on shit in a septic tank. How much was my life just a shadow of his footsteps? Sure, I was the one who'd become a god. But did the apple really fall that far from the tree?
Koochy finally swiped at some valve and his helmet emptied its contents on the ground. Pieces of his tongue and leaking brain material followed the high-pressure stream of vomit, but the horror of his face remained safely hidden behind his mask.
"Jeez, Koochy," I blurted. "Well if you have the munchies after that, sorry but I ate all the chips." I stared at the pile of puke. My stomach was getting a little queasy too, now that I thought about it.
"Guys! Where should we go?" Alphonso queried anxiously, waiting for orders. "And it smells terrible back there! It smells like... Yvonne! HA! High five! … guys?"
Alphonso's sorry excuse for a joke fell flat.
"Too thoon, mutha thucka," Koochy spat.
The thought of Yvonne and the pile of vomit was really starting to get to me. I felt rumblings in my fat, hairy belly. I looked down and realized I still wasn't wearing any pants. I felt sweaty and chilly all of a sudden.
"Uh oh," I announced. I leaned over, ready to spill my guts into the putrid pile in front of me, only to realize at the last moment that my issues were on the other side of my digestive system.
"UNNNNGH," I vocalized uncontrollably.
Unfortunately, nothing came out.
I had been thoroughly prepared to blast a nuclear shit-storm of potato chips out behind me, but instead my intestines just rumbled and felt full.
"Oh no," I thought. I was constipated.
Instantly, I was taken back to my awkward youth. A large part of my unparalleled awkwardness stemmed from my bowel issues. I remembered sitting alone at grade school lunch with my cold bowl of macaroni and Metamucil that I had brought from home. My stomach wasn't great to start with, and now I had added in being dead and about ten pounds of olestra. Who knew when this toxic junk would come spewing out of me?
I was a living dirty bomb.
"You 'kay, P?" Koochy had managed to wipe himself clean of all the obvious chunks of bodily discharge and now turned his attention to me.
"As okay as I'm gonna be right now, I guess," I nodded to him. Not really feeling like getting into a discussion of my intestinal abnormalities, I left it at that.
"A'ight den, playa, thtay up!" Koochy thumbed me on the back, heartily. "Ay, Althontho!"
I stifled a laugh at the lisp he had developed.
"This is your Vice Admiral Alphonso Ro-" Alphonso started to introduce himself for a third time over the ships sound system.
"Ay, quit dat thit, 'thonso-faced motha thucka!" Koochy interrupted him. He walked the ten feet that separated the Vice Admiral from us. "Yo, where we at, bitch? Damn! Yo' ath look like thom kinda damn burned ath raithin, son! Eww!"
"Hey Koo- whoa! Man! What is that thing on your face?" Alphonso was visibly shaken by Koochy's mask and the ship swerved slightly as a result.
"Chill, 'thontho," Koochy admonished.
I sensed a leadership vacuum in our recent actions. I didn't know what to do, but I knew that to be a leader meant I had to do something.
"Alphonso! Take us down!" I ordered. Yep, that was certainly something.
"You mean land at the hospital? Right over there?" Alphonso asked, pointing to a large building almost directly below us.
"Uhh, yes. That's exactly what I meant," I confidently proclaimed. I looked around to make sure that everybody had heard me do my leadering.
Alphonso brought us roughly down onto the hospital's dropship-pad located on its roof. Shitbarf would have done a much better landing job, I reflected sadly while looking at the mess on the floor.
A flock of hospital orderlies rushed up to us, shouting things inaudibly as the engines were spooling down.
"What?" I blared over the external loudspeakers. Alphonso lowered the rear door.
A cacophony of confusion erupted from the medical workers as they barged into our vehicle. "Who's hurt?" "Why didn't anybody call in about the medivac?" "What's your Good Man insurance number?" "What the fuck is all over the floor?" "Oh my god!"
A few of the nurses fainted when they saw my dick-arm.
"Ay, you like dat thit, don'tcha!" Koochy laughed.
Alphonso poked his head out from the cockpit cabin. "Hi folks!" he greeted them merrily. "Uh, Good Man insurance numbers, uh. I'm the Vice-Admiral of this vessel! I work for the Good Man, so I don't need insurance, right? I hereby order you to treat my injuries! I mean, our injuries!"
"Alphonso," I hissed to him quietly. "When they look up your army stuff they'll know you're AWOL!"
"Preston, shush, I'm in the navy!" he corrected me. Then he cleared his throat loudly in front of the hospital people. "I am a Vice-Admiral! Don't you know who I am?! Fix me up and make me beautiful! I mean, make me handsome like, uhh, like I used to be."
"Nah, do muh!" Koochy shouted over him.
My teammates were arguing to get first treatment. I considered my dick-arm, nub-feet, and the plasma rifle I was still holding, then said nothing.
I noticed one of the workers had more epaulets on his uniform and had more charisma than the others. "No, only I have the power of life and death here," the chief medical official stated bluntly. "We need to apply a triage process."
"Triage muh dick!" Koochy told him. "What'th your name, bruh?"
"I'm Doctor Franz," the well-coiffed man stated. "But that's just 'Doctor' to you."
"Look! At! Muh!" Koochy said, ripping his helmet off and showing his vomit-coated, festering face to the shocked medical professionals. "I be thixin' to get dat thixed, Thranz!"
"Look, I didn't go to medical school for forty-seven years to NOT get called 'Doctor'," Franz restated angrily. "You WILL address me by my proper title, mister."
"Or wha'?" Koochy challenged.
"Look, we're just here to get some medical treatment," I started to say. "Let's all just calm down, okay?"
I was always trying to calm down situations. Why did I always have to settle Koochy down? I was a god. Who was some doctor to tell me what I could or couldn't do? Maybe I should start standing up for myself. Maybe I should take charge and be a real leader. Yeah... yeah! I thought to myself.
The doctor smiled at me and started to say something but I slammed my dickarm in his chest.
"Fuck you! I'm not going to calm down!" I yelled, immediately contradicting myself. I waved my gun around wildly. "You think you have the power of life and death here? I'm fucking Jesus! I've killed, like, hundreds of people!"
"Dat'th right, thon!" Koochy was amping me up. "Tell 'em, P!"
"I've had a really fucking bad week! My best friend, my brother standing right here, he died! And then I let his family die! I mean, his family died!" I changed my story on the fly.
"Wha? Unngh!" Koochy affirmed. "Let 'em know wut time it ith, kid! My boy P ain't no thuckin' joke!"
"We can't even find a pair of glasses for him and his brain is leaking or something and he's got a lisp! I got sexually assaulted by some kind of cheerleader cult! It was horrible!" I went on. "I'm pissed that I had to go into a Limbotron!"
"Dat'th word, thpoken word thtraight droppin' knowlige like nuthin'! Dith kid ith thuckin' thilthy! Right hurr!"
"I just want to have one normal interaction with other people. One single back-and-forth exchange with another human that doesn't end up in more prophecies and death and mutated or mutilated body parts and vomit and shit and semen everywhere. Is that too much to ask?" I asked. "I mean, really? Come on!"
"Drop that thit on tha one, thon!" Koochy started to beatbox and make preparatory breakdance steps, like he was about to throw down if our ship's floor were covered in cardboard instead of vomit.
Doctor Franz backed away, stunned. "Look, I don't even know you people," he professed. "You seem like you don't even
have insurance anyway. I don't have to fix up anybody without insurance."
"OHHH thnap!" Koochy yelled. "You a thuckin' bitch-ath thucka-ath thucka! Ay, you put a thick burn on dat honky, thon! Muthucckin thtreet thide reprethent!"
I couldn't understand Koochy at all now but I was still getting amped up.
"Yes! In your faces!" Alphonso shouted. Now I was less amped up. Undeterred, I pressed on in the heat of the moment.
"Koochy!" I yelled. "Gimme a harder beat!"
"Awwww yeetth, dat'th howth we do!" Koochy plugged his compute-pad into the ship loudspeakers and bass boomed.
"What in the world is going on?" Franz worried, still backing away.
I started to move back and forth to feel the groove, then started a braggadocio toprock cross-step that clearly intimidated the doctor.
"WUT? WUT?" Koochy yelled. "Drop it, thon!"
I dropped into a sick six-step and a series of sweeps and flares, using my plasma rifle as a prop in my breakdance solo. I danced around on the vomit-coated floor and pivoted on my dickarm to spin around and around like a helicopter.
"OHHHHHH!" Koochy added.
I jumped onto my back, did a freeze move in the vomit and finally used my huge prehensile dick to do a no-hands, no-legs kip-up. My victory in this impromptu dance-off was almost complete!
"Fuck you, Doc!" I shouted as I landed upright on my ankle nubs. They slipped in the slick foulness coating the floor and I fell forwards, spinning. I tried to combine it with another kick step and flailed out pathetically. Koochy's beat screeched to a halt with the scratch of a record.
At that moment the dirty bomb latent in my intestines detonated.
Ten pounds of olestra-laden potato chips were unleashed with the fury of a thousand sharts. The brown mess rocketed out of my asshole, spinning me around. Undigested lipid-filled feces flew outward in a spiral of filth that coated everything within a hundred feet.
I was still holding my plasma rifle and accidentally squeezed off a burst. The report of the rifle was echoed by a few remaining bubbly farts that nudged me across the dropship.
I collapsed in my mess, exhausted. I couldn't even raise my face off the floor. I heard screaming and people running away.
"Koochy... did I win?" I asked, softly in the sudden stillness.
"Ya, thon. You thuckin' thlayed dat ath, propa like!" Koochy answered with a tone of admiration. "Muh brutha throm anutha mutha! Lookit dat!"
I opened one eye and blinked out some of the muck, and saw Doctor Franz holding his innards in with his hands. A stray plasma bolt had punched straight through his abdomen, bringing superheated feces with it. How could I have had diarrhea and constipation at the same time? I thought, looking at the evidence embedded in Franz's sternum.
"Yo' ath got therved! Unnngh!" Koochy triumphantly declared.
Franz's eyes looked at me with utter, absolute confusion, as if he didn't even know how to do a windmill. He coughed up some blood and expired. I had to admit it was the most lopsided dance-off victory I'd ever achieved, even as a god.
"Um, okay," Alphonso said hesitantly. "So we should go into the hospital now?" He looked at the walls and the ceiling which were covered in vomit and shit. "I don't want to pilot this ship anymore."
I looked down at Dr. Franz, who had fallen to the ground but had not died, as I had previously assumed. He was curiously inspecting the gaping and mortal wound he had sustained.
"I... I can't b-buh-believe it," Dr. Franz was stammering as he ran his finger along the inside of the cavity that had just been carved into his torso.
"You beth buh-leave it, bra!" Koochy closed the distance between their faces to a matter of centimeters. "Unnnghh! Ain't nothin' hol' uth down, ya hear' muh?"
Adrenaline was still surging through my body. I should have felt terrible about accidentally shooting Dr. Franz during the course of my shenanigans. But I didn't. I had witnessed so much killing and caused so many deaths over the last year of my life that I had become jaded. What did death even mean anymore now that Marcus and I had both overcome it? All these other people who got killed and stayed dead - they must really suck at life.
"So, are you going to help us or what?" I asked, demanding of the collapsed Dr. Franz who had still not quit living.
"This... this can't be happening," Dr. Franz continued. "I... I have been waiting... for this..."
Having seen so much death, I had a suspicion that he was not speaking like an individual whose next move was his last. There were no other nurses or hospital personnel visible on the landing pad with us.
"Man, get tha thuck outta here," Koochy dismissed him and stood back up. "Yo ath ain't waitin' tho thit! Come on, P. Leth ride."
My conscience was tugging at me. Another split second of indecision and I made up my mind to earn some positive karma. I chuckled at the thought; as if I could possibly ever atone for my multitude of unforgivable acts. I supposed I could just pardon myself, since I was god and all.
"Come on," I offered Dr. Franz my hand. "Look, I'm sorry about shooting you... by accident!" I quickly added. "Let me help you get inside."
"Man, thuck dat thucka-ass docta! Get wit' it, P!" Marcus beckoned to me impatiently.
Dr. Franz started to extend his hand to take mine, but at the last second he jerked back away from me. The manner in which he withdrew his hand was not normal.
In fact, it looked like a dance move.
"Wha?" I was on the verge of questioning when all was revealed.
Time shifted.
I was no longer standing, offering my structural support to the injured doctor. Instead, I was now standing in a surgery room, surrounded by medical equipment, surgipods and several new faces. My own face was thickly coated in hot gore but I did not feel any pain. Was this someone else's guts that were splattered over my visage? The only thing I did feel was quite a bit of muscle soreness. As if I had been exerting myself vigorously for hours. I was covered in sweat and my heart was pumping hard.
The feeling of time running backward gripped me. The carnage covering my face was uncannily sucked away and back into the head of Dr. Franz. His face looked comically bloated as its ragged, torn flesh zipped itself back together. Now his face was fully recovered and his expression was one of extreme confidence. By the way his body was gyrating, it was obvious to me that he was hip hop dancing. The hole that I had blown in his torso had been covered with gauze and bandages.
We weren't alone. Koochy was standing behind Dr. Franz, leveling a large-barreled plasma rifle at the back of the dancing doctor's skull. Looking to the right and left, I saw several buxom, scantily-clad nurses who were moving in perfect synchronization with Dr. Franz's rewinding syncopation. I noticed they were using bags of blood and globulin as pom-poms. The lights in the surgery room were flashing and spinning in ways most unbecoming of a medical facility.
Dancing backward, out of the surgery center, our group moved backwards down the wide hospital hallway that I could see led directly to the landing pad where we had started. The passageway was at first crowded with onlookers, but as we drew closer to them their faces disappeared into the many hospital rooms lining the corridor. With only a few feet between us and the doorway, the backup dancing nurses also withdrew into rooms. Their nominal nursing uniforms flew up from their crumpled places on the floor and slid back onto the lithe bodies they had been covering as they stepped backwards into their respective rooms and out of sight.
We reversed our way out onto the landing pad, where the GMS-KJH86 was still idling. Its turbo engines were sucking up jet thrust that they should have been expelling, had time been running forward. Dr. Franz was un-bandaging himself, still popping and locking as he did so. I could tell he was talking to us, but I couldn't understand what he was saying while trapped in my future memories.
The atmosphere around me began to shine and reverberate in the way that signaled to me that my vision was coming to a close. While this particular future had not been very terrible at all given the total scope of m
y life, I wasn't really in the mood to watch a re-run of Dr. Franz's performance. Thanks to my power of prognostication, I already knew where the surgipods were, as well as the hot nurses. And I needed to get to TK fast.
The world was back to normal now, and time resumed its inevitable progression towards the events I had just witnessed. Dr. Franz, still mortally wounded, was somehow regaining strength as his dance moves became more confident and pronounced.
"I have practiced...ughhnnn" his quiet words were almost inaudible due to the blaring bass still pumping out of the GMS-KJH86. "I... knew my chance would... come...."
Running out of ideas, I fell back to what worked last night. Desperately, I called upon my holy name.
"JESUS CLEVELAND!" I roared, excited to see what happened next.
Instantly, the early morning light was choked out. Ominous, Armageddon clouds billowed into existence from seemingly nowhere, filling the heavens. A new sensation entered my mind. I felt more powerful than ever. As if all I needed to do was will an occurrence and it would come to pass. Humorously, I imagined Dr. Franz transformed into a steaming pile of goo. If only it were so easy.
SHAZAAM!
Lightning streaked down from the dark heavens and incinerated Dr. Franz where he had just managed to reclaim his standing posture.
"Whoa!" I shouted in shock.
Three more tree-trunk-sized bolts of lightning struck in the exact same spot in rapid succession. Now, the disintegrated Dr. Franz was completely obliterated. A smoky crater in the landing platform's steel-reinforced concrete was all that remained of his Hippocratic oath and musical intent.
The menacing clouds rolled back into non-existence as quickly as they had appeared. The morning sun now kissed the horizon with the promise of a new day. Doves and blue birds flew up from the side of the building in great flocks as they spread out in the sky. The harsh music beating out from our ship had suddenly gone silent, so the sound of the birds tweeting became all we could hear.
"Daaaamn, thon!" Koochy brandished some gang signs to show his approval. "You mutha thuckin' tripple murdered dat docta dude! Yo ath wath col' as ice when ya buthed a cap in hith ath. But den yo ath call down da holy judgement on dat dude! CRACK! Kilt yo ath!"
