SICK DACKEY’S TALES OF NECROPHILIA AND OTHER EXCURSIONS INTO SCATOLOGICAL SURREALISM
Don Grace
Why do you interrupt my long slide into decrepitude after all this time? Twenty years, twenty minutes, it is all the same in this place, this abode of the abysmally malignant, this repository of malformed psyches, this halfway house to hell. But I see that you are not the same as those who came before, but vastly different, vive la vas deferens. Come closer that I may expel fluids upon you.
No, please. There is no need to call for those nice very large young men down the hall and interrupt their erotic phantasms. Doctor Procto wouldn’t like it. Doctor Procto and his friends have taught us much, such as the many uses of asparagus and where to put and not to put our Long Things. Doctor Procto is an albino and eats lima beans for breakfast. Doctor Procto promised me that if I am good the Grand Canyon Nurse will visit me; however, if I am bad the Salt Flats Nurse will come. Some here say that the Salt Flats Nurse is really the Mammoth Cave Nurse, but that I know not of.
How do you like my little friends? They can’t see you, of course; I found them to be so much more agreeable after I’d eaten their heads. No, at the Institute I worked with sheep. Oh, they were so jealous of me there when I developed my Theory of Receptacles, which prescribes numerous methods of making unauthorized deposits in sperm banks and other unusual places, scarcely less disingenuous and exotic than my Theory of Anagrams, by means of which I calculated the exact number of anagrams of pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, and was able to spot the only group of four letters from which six words can be formed, delving into matters paternal, parental, and prenatal, as well as the nicest insect incest, only to find myself hounded by my erstwhile colleagues both bipedal and quadrupedal, confronting me with manic blind stares filled with terror and gentle remonstrance, waving their great swollen grotesque fallacies at me with both hands until finally, cowed, bewildered, and feeling a strong urge to urinate, I was forced to collapse in colonic consternation before the Throne of Subordinate Clauses and swear undying malfeasance to Sir Reality.
But I promised you a story.
It was in the fall of the year, a year in which no myths died, a day after the ignominious near-victory of the Washington Foreskins over the Green Bay Peckers. Splayed fortuitously across the excremental brown mud and putrescent yellow-green vegetation of an anonymous and unremarked Southern state, populated largely by dead animals in various stages of decay which would eventually go away by themselves, its only movie theater running a perpetual James Bomb festival featuring the titles For Your Thighs Only, From Russia With Ferrets, The Man With the Moldy Buns, and The Spy Who Shaved Me, and hoping in future to obtain the movies themselves, its lone park called the Field of Beans, the town of Infected Bottoms lay staining the environment like the phlegmatic expulsions of a tubercular leper with an oral fixation on Red Man and similar vegetable matter. Sprouting up like an unwanted extra limb from the eastern margin of the insipid burg was the sinister form of Balled Mountain, at the pinnacle of which crouched the monstrous decaying edifice known as The Balled House, which appeared to have been endowed by its creator with certain alienating features rarely seen outside the Slough of Despond, landscaped by Kafka and Lovecraft with plant species never seen at Disney World, the grounds stocked by a mad god with an inordinate fondness for reptiles, flying mammals, and animals without backbones and with more than the usual number of legs, and said to be occupied by third-generation ectoplasmic mutants mad from the farting crowd’s ignoble strife and exuding a corrosive teratogenic miasma.
Far below, in a smaller albeit better-lighted dwelling, a function of a nominally celebratory nature was in progress, a fete accompli as it were. The occasion was the finalized nuptials of a man and a maid of Infected Bottoms, attended by friends and relatives various and sundered. The groom, Felix, a pathetically enthused youth with haystack hair and apple cheeks, who might perhaps have been Donald Duck’s long-lost fourth nephew, swirled about the room between and among the guests, filling their wineglasses and emptying his own with equal carelessness, inspiring most of the guests to yearn for a strong need to visit the bathroom. The lovely bride, Wanda, shifted her shoulders uneasily as, with a look that might have been fondness or perplexity or an incurable disease, she glanced at her new husband, but not very often, spending much of the time staring with a wistful smile at the large picture window, recalling picnic lunches and bare-dumpling caresses on abandoned playing fields, in that pleasant past before life became real.
In the corner a tall ramrod-straight man with a scar beginning at the corner of his left eye and disappearing into his neatly trimmed beard scoured the proceedings with a well-practiced sleety visage. Count Monstrego von Basilar Whineskin was an old friend of Wanda’s deceased father. She thought of him as her Uncle Gorm; he thought of her in various ways. Upon being introduced to Felix he said, in a voice like razor blades being squeezed through a straw, “My sincere confabulations to you both.”
“Well, thanks,” said Felix. “I know I’m a lucky guy.”
The tall stranger smiled coldly. “I wonder if you truly realize the magnitude of your good fortune, or the vastness of the discrepancy between it and your worthiness of it, making with the fairest maid of Infected Bottoms the Beast With Two Backs, for the first time in your life spared the necessity of daily purchasing new underpants or of sowing your seed in the sewer.”
“What are you talking about?” Felix demanded. “We don’t have a garden!”
“Uncle Gorm is a foreign adventurer,” said Wanda. “He holds the rank of colonel in several east European armies. He was the sixth original Beatle. He is a scientist and owns a rabbit named Plunger.”
“It is said,” breathed a stout matron known for her nocturnal emissions, “that you have never been scared, and that you are a secret transvestite.”
“That is only half true,” replied the Count.
“What about The Balled House?” someone asked.
There was a quick intake of breath, and then an awed hush fell over the room. Outside a dog howled mournfully. On the edge of town an old man began retching uncontrollably into his tomatoes. Toilets began backing up in several states. Wayne Newton lost his virginity, but with what gender or species is unknown.
“I acquired that property several years ago,” Uncle Gorm replied.
“Why?” asked a cousin of Felix’s.
“It is the only place I have ever felt fear.”
“Fear, Uncle Gorm?” Wanda asked with a frown.
“Something monstrous and unnatural claims the interior of that dwelling as its own during the hours of the dark.”
“Are you saying the place is haunted?” Felix asked loudly. Some of the guests looked at Felix in surprise, and some looked at him as if they wished he would go away.
The Count impaled Felix with his glare. “Many years ago,” he coldly intoned, “I spent one night in that house, and as a result my hair turned gray overnight.”
“But your hair’s not gray,” someone pointed out.
“You cannot see all my hair,” the tall man rejoined.
“Well, everybody knows there’s no such thing as a haunted house!” Felix brayed.
The Count smiled thinly. “My naive young puppy, I suggest you not speak of things of which you know not.”
Felix’s jaw dropped slowly as he dimly began to realize that he had been rebuked. His mouth worked soundlessly and his body twitched like a frantic spider. “Prove it!” he spouted indignantly.
The Count began to unbuckle his belt. “We’ll take your word for that,” Wanda said quickly. “But tell us, Uncle, what happened in that house to scare you so?”
“I saw the naked souls of the damned,” replied the Count.
“That’s all?” shrieked Felix.
With a clunk a set of keys landed on the buffet table.
“This is my wedding gift to you, Wanda. The Balled House. A six-story sixty-six room mansion on thirteen glorious mountaintop acres overlooking the beautiful and scenic Balled Bottoms.”
“But didn’t you say it was haunted?” asked Wanda.
“Your husband asserts that it is not,” was the reply.
There was a pause as everyone within earshot thought about stating the obvious, but decided not to. They had all turned to look at Felix, who had gone to hand out potty favors to guests emerging from the bathroom.
“For fifteen years,” the Count stated passionately, “I have been the target of nonliterate japes from all of this town’s unwashed, scorbutic, vermin-possessed, cheese-eating, swollen-kneed, anus-sniffing, leg-lifting, culturally oblivious, hormonally malfunctioning, enthusiastically inbred, cerebrally challenged Kallikaks and Jukes and County Line movie rejects from the shallow end of the human gene pool” (and all present remarked how assiduously the Count refrained from glancing at Felix), “I who have served under three presidents, a king, two princes, a pasha, and a buccaneer, and been undressed by a princess, and who have fought a lion unarmed, survived twenty days at the North Pole on nothing but whale kidney and Doritos, played drums for the Indigo Girls, discovered the function of the SysRq key, removed his own gall bladder with a tuning fork, and traversed the desiccated wastes of Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Birdistan, Herdistan, Nerdistan, Wordistan, Turdistan, Absurdistan, Gonorrheistan, Onenightstan, Frankenstan, Alberteinstan, Diannefeinstan, Gertrudestan, Ikeeisenstan, and Abdul’s Truck Stop disguised as a professional Jew exploder on a diseased bipolar drug-addicted three-legged camel. It is intolerable.”
“What’s intolerable?” someone asked.
“That is why,” said Uncle Gorm, “I make a gift of this house to you, Wanda, provided you and your husband remain inside the house tonight from sunset to sunrise.”
“What if she doesn’t want it?” asked Wanda’s Aunt Moxie.
“Even if it isn’t haunted it’s bound to be a money pit,” another cousin said.
“I neglected to mention,” said the Count, “that a wooden box containing two hundred thousand dollars worth of gold coins is in the house. I daresay that would suffice to make one or two rooms livable.”
“But there won’t be a room in suitable condition to sleep in tonight, will there?” Wanda asked. “How long has it been since anyone’s lived there?”
“A very long time, my dear. However, should you agree to this undertaking, I shall send some people up to prepare a room. The house is quite safe during the day, provided one brings insect repellent, a first-aid kit, several pounds of garlic, and a really big bathroom plunger.”
“But Uncle,” Wanda asked, “must it be tonight? Our wedding night?”
“Of course not, my dear. What was I thinking? Would this Friday night be suitable?”
“I think Felix wants to watch a football game that night,” Wanda mumbled.
The Count grinned, showing his stained upper teeth. “Then it’s settled,” he said.
Ah, young love! Or something lying close enough in the emotional spectrum to pass for it. In the days and nights leading up to their nocturnal sojourn at the town’s least-desirable address, Wanda and Felix spent much of their time together, uncertainties discarded with clothing whenever and wherever suitable. When not with Wanda Felix could usually be observed behind the A&P eating doughnuts with his assorted callow friends. Wanda made several trips to the public library.
Friday afternoon Wanda and Felix in their Volvo began the long slow climb up the gravel road leading to the top of Balled Mountain. In the trunk were a suitcase, a cooler, and a portable radio. On the back seat were two burlap sacks of garlic and a shotgun. Soon after they began the ascent the oak forest prevalent in the area gave way to tall, spindly, unhealthy-looking hardwoods and conifers of a variety of not-readily-identifiable sorts. Leaves became sparser, thinner, duskier, spinier, and more misshapen. Halfway up it became cool enough to close the car windows. It was downright chilly when they pulled up in front of the brooding mansion’s oak front door.
Wanda searched her purse for the door key while Felix looked around at the creeping shadows, It would be dark in an hour. The key in the lock made a screech like the howl of a cat hanging from a post by its own ripped-out entrails. With a yip Felix stepped backward and fell off the porch into a low, sickly shrub. Felix was both startled and annoyed by this, and began to grow concerned when the shrub seemed unwilling to release him. Wanda stared at him, fearing that he would soon begin to complain loudly that he had fallen and could not get up.
“I can’t see! I can’t feel my hands!” cried Felix.
“You don’t feel your hands, you feel with your hands!” Wanda hissed.
Pause.
“I can’t see!”
“Open your eyes!”
Pause.
“I see everything twice!”
“Felix. We have to be in the house by sunset.” Wanda turned and began to twist the heavy doorknob.
“Something’s in my pants!” Felix cried.
Wanda grimaced and began reluctantly to tug on the huge lump of a doorknob. The massive door seemed equally reluctant to open. With much whining Felix extricated himself from the no doubt disappointed shrubbery, retaining mementoes of same in the form of twigs, both with and without leaves, inserted into various apertures of his clothing and in some cases having produced their own apertures. “You look like a porcupine,” Wanda muttered, as she and Felix slowly pulled the heavy door open.
As they slowly forced an ingress to the sepulchral edifice, they felt as if they were being bodily assaulted by a brutal relentless fist of air, as if a tremendous barometric pressure had built up within the dwelling and was now relieving itself, perhaps not so much air as the malodorous stupefying toxic gaseous by-products of fungi, slime molds, and other macroscopic or microscopic life or near-life feeding or otherwise acting biochemically upon the very substance of the house or its furnishings, the slimy wood floors, the rotting banisters, the worm-infested rugs, the heavy curtains suffused with dried animal fluids, the shambles of what was once a beautiful and valuable classic teakwood Chip ‘n’ Dale tea-table buried under a hideous crushing lugubrious meta-paradigm of moldering adjectives.
At least such was their impression.
After they stepped past the door into a blackness deeper than the bowels of a graphite mine on Pluto, Felix suggested leaving the door open, but this plan was thwarted by the door itself, which began slowly to close behind them, ending the process not with a bang but a click as the lock engaged. Wanda and Felix jumped. Felix moaned softly.
“The house must be tilted,” Wanda said. “That’s why the door was so hard to open.” Felix whimpered. Wanda turned on her flashlight, which just managed to subtly convey the impression that there was indeed a world outside her own body. She found her matches and lit an oil lamp on a nearby table. They were in a long, narrow hallway, long enough that the glow from the lamp failed to penetrate to its far end. Through an archway to the left was a room giving an impression of great size. Two closed doors could be discerned on the right.
“The stairway to the bedrooms should be at the end of this hall,” Wanda said.
“I’m not going down there!” Felix protested. “You can’t see what’s there!”
“Felix--”
“We left the garlic and the shotgun in the car! And the plunger!”
Wanda sighed. “Go and get them if you want.”
He wanted, but couldn’t, because the door wouldn’t budge.
“Come on,” said Wanda. They started down the hallway, Wanda carrying the bag and the flashlight, Felix carrying the cooler and the radio.
Squish.
“I stepped on something,” said Felix. “AAAAGH! IT’S A FROG!”
“Well, it makes perfect sense that a frog would be there,” said Wanda. “There’s no room for any more on the stairs.” The flashlight beam grudgingly lit a portion of the lower staircase, every square inch of which was covered with grimly staring frogs.
Stay with me. Here’s where it gets weird.
Wanda and Felix chose not to challenge the phalanx of frogs. Instead they passed through the archway to their left.
The fading daylight squeezing reluctantly through the high streaked windows revealed a cavernous, sepulchral, filthy main room, but not much detail. Along the front wall perched upon items of furniture of various sorts were several oil lamps, which Wanda proceeded to light. This illuminated the presence of several more lamps throughout the room. Wanda lit these also, despite the ever-increasing ghastliness of the room.
The room was roughly cubic and two stories in height. Cobwebs festooned all corners. Dust half an inch thick covered all horizontal surfaces, dust of a color and consistency with which it is not usually associated. A crumbling fireplace was on the wall opposite. A decrepit staircase held together by disintegrating yellow paint rose fitfully against the wall to their right. On the wall behind them were a number of mounted lemur heads. On the floor beneath the lemur heads were a fine pair of stuffed capybara, which everyone knows is the world’s largest rodent. The furniture sagged obtrusively.
One item they would have preferred not to have seen was a scarred, stained wooden table with a leather strap at each corner.
“Primitive tanning bed, I think,” said Wanda doubtfully.
“We’re not going to go up that staircase, are we?” Felix asked.
“Yes,” said Wanda, “but only one of us at a time.”
Upon reaching the top of the stairs they quickly found the master bedroom. It was clean, but the decor was unusual.
“I guess we should take off our clothes and get into bed,” said Felix.
“The room is so . . . odd,” Wanda sighed unhappily.
“The sheets are clean,” said Felix.
“Open the cooler,” said Wanda. “Let’s eat first.”
Later, observe our lovebirds, in the master bed in the master bedroom, Felix snoring like a baby wart hog. Wanda could not sleep because of the faces that kept appearing on the opposite wall. She could not decide if they were malevolent or just weird. A Mickey Mouse face with enormous wolflike canines. Dolly Parton. Ernest Borgnine. Someone wearing a Halloween skeleton suit. “Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten those mushrooms,” Wanda muttered.
When the pictures of Dolly Parton naked began to flutter into the room from an undetermined source, Wanda chose not to waken Felix. When they crept underneath the blankets, attached themselves to her shins, and began to murmur softly, she grimaced but said nothing. Then the bedroom door opened and a man-sized bat with the head of Ernest Borgnine entered the room.
“Well. Hello there,” said the bat.
“Oh,” said Wanda.
“My name’s Monty. I’m here to sew Felix’s socks to his nose.”
“He’s asleep,” said Wanda, “and I’m not sure where his socks are.”
“Oh, never mind,” said the bat.
“What’s that slopping noise?” Wanda asked.
“The winged skulls coming out of the bathroom toilet,” said the giant bat.
The window began to slide open. The sound awakened Felix, who opened his eyes just in time to see a man in a skeleton suit climbing in through the window. Felix yelped and pulled the covers over his head.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Monty. “Close the window, it’s freezing out.” To Wanda he said, pointing to the man in the suit, “He’s an albino.” The man in the skeleton suit folded his arms and said nothing. “We’re here to ravish your dumplings,” the bat added.
“What?” cried Wanda, clutching the bedclothes to her chin. Monty and Skeleton Suit began to move toward the bed.
“Now, wait,” Wanda gulped, shrinking back. “This bed isn’t big enough for the four of us.”
Skeleton Man reached beneath the bedclothes and dragged out a squealing Felix, whom he dropped unceremoniously on the floor. Felix quickly crawled under the bed and began to whimper. Wanda stared apprehensively at the two creatures confronting her.
“Hey, boney, guess what?” said the bat. “We forgot the whipped cream and sliced bananas.” The skeleton man clapped a hand to his forehead.
“We’ll be back,” promised Monty, as he and the Skeleton left the room.
“Felix!” Wanda leapt from the bed and knelt to stick her head under it. Ah, my friends, what a stirring sight, Wanda’s delicious derriere thrusting toward the ceiling, her lithe supple tender young flesh outlined by a diaphanous mauve negligee, her long sleek black hair cascading about her magnificent dumplings as she searched beneath the bed for her One True Love and Stalwart Protector. “They’re gone! Come out from under there, you cheeseater! We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Are you sure they’re gone?”
“Yes! And stop whimpering!” Felix began slowly to emerge, looking around warily.
“Who is that murmuring softly?” he asked.
“It’s the pictures of Dolly Parton naked attached to my shins.”
“Oh.” Felix began to crawl back under the bed.
Wanda grabbed his ear. “Felix, come out from under there right now or I’m going to leave you here with the winged skulls.” Felix quickly scrambled out from under the bed. Wanda opened the door a crack and cautiously looked up and down the hallway. “All clear,” she whispered.
“But what if we see somebody?” Felix whined.
Wanda closed the door and turned around. “Then they’ll see us, won’t they? So I guess we’d better try to avoid them.”
Felix began to tremble. “No-no. No. No-no. No-no-no. No, no-no--” Whack!
“YOU SLAPPED ME!” Felix cried out. Wanda then punched him in the stomach. While Felix stared at her in horror and attempted to regain his breath, Wanda searched the room for anything that could be used as a weapon. All she found were a chicken and a duck. She decided she might as well bring them along.
Slowly they crept down the stairs to the main room. As they neared the bottom they heard voices and approaching footsteps. “Quick, hide behind these stuffed capybaras!” Wanda hissed.
Here’s where it gets really, really weird.
While Wanda and Felix watched from behind the giant mounted rodents, the far doors opened and a procession of the most horrible hideous creatures imaginable marched into the room, singing a song about Wanda and swaying in time to the music. At the head was Monty, carrying a can of whipped cream. Next in the procession was the man in the skeleton suit, holding aloft a plate of sliced bananas. Among the gruesome monstrosities following were a child with her head facing backward and scabrous dripping sores all over her body who was carrying a pair of handcuffs, a woman with no skin leaving bloody footprints who was carrying a cattle prod, and a fat chubby-cheeked squeaky-voiced dork wearing an incredibly stupid-looking hat who was carrying a book entitled Sex For Dummies.
“Oh my God,” breathed Wanda. “What the hell is Garth Brooks doing here?”
Wanda and Felix attempted to sneak out on their hands and knees while the unholy gathering were facing away from them, singing:
"Wanda had a chicken
"She also had a duck
"She put them on a table
"To see if they would get it on
"The duck had had some problems
"The chicken lost the mood
"If they won’t put on a show for us
"We’ll use them both for food"
“HEY!” Dead silence. Wanda and Felix froze. “THESE TWO AREN’T SINGING!” Slowly they turned to behold the entire gruesome collection lined up and staring coldly at them.
Felix’s entire digestive tract began to warn of multiple system failures. “We . . .
“Don’t know the words,” he croaked.
“Well!” The giant bat placed his fists on his hips. Skeleton Suit did the same. A green scaly hunchback with no eyes or mouth and a nude Eskimo with his own entrails hanging to the floor from a gaping hole in his abdomen also copied the gesture.
Okay. Here’s where it gets really, really, really weird. Trust me.
Monty introduced the members of the gathering, pointing at each in turn. “ Mr. Green Beans, Beowulf and the Bard, Malignant Mouse, Demented Duck, Garth, Elephant Gerald, Desmond (that’s his Slough out back), The Licensed Putrician, Mr. Squeeze and Mr. Stretch, Parturito Slivey, and the Snake-In-a-Box.” Each inclined its head as it was introduced--that is, each that was physically capable of such.
“Pleased to meet you all,” said Wanda. “May we leave now?”
“Leave?” cried the bat. “I wouldn’t hear of it. You must stay with us a while yet. We’ll play some games.”
Felix began to whimper. “What games?” asked Wanda.
“Lay down the chicken and the duck first,” said Monty.
“No.”
The bat sighed. “Oh, very well. Wanda, to your right you see three doors, marked One, Two, and Three. Behind one of them may lie the box of gold coins and the passage out. Behind at least two of the doors there are neither coins nor a passageway, and possibly something extremely nasty. Select a door.”
“Three,” said Wanda, without enthusiasm.
“One!” hissed Felix. “One!”
Wanda shrugged. “One, then,” she said to the bat.
“Well,” said Monty, “just for fun, let’s see what’s behind Door Number Two!” Behind Number Two was Howard Stern sitting on a toilet with his pants down around his ankles. Appalled gasps rose from the crowd.
“How disgusting,” murmured the thing with the leprous third leg growing from its sternum.
The bat closed Door Number Two. “Would you like to change your pick now?” he asked.
“Yes. No. Yes. Why should we?” asked Felix.
Wanda’s brow furrowed. “Hmm. The probability of the way out being behind One was one-third. No matter which door we picked there’d be at least one other that didn’t have the way out, so showing us that Two wasn’t it didn’t change the probability of it being One. So if the probability of One is one-third, and the probability of Two is zero, then the probability of Three must be two-thirds, so we should change our pick to Three.”
“I knew we should have picked Three!” Felix exclaimed.
“But wait,” said Wanda. “That would be valid if the bat had told us at the beginning that no matter which door we picked he would open a different one that was not the right one. But we don’t have any idea what criteria he used to decide which door to open, or perhaps even to decide to open one. Maybe it was just a whim to show us Two. So all we’ve really learned is that the way out isn’t behind Door Number Two, and One and Three are still equally likely.”
“So what’s your decision?” asked Monty.
“Switch,” said Wanda.
“Huh?” Felix exclaimed.
“One line of reasoning says switch, the other says it doesn’t matter, so we might as well switch.”
“Door Number Three it is!” cried the bat. “Let’s see what’s behind Door Number One.”
Behind Door Number One was a darkness so deep it seemed to Wanda to be more than just the absence of light, to be a palpable force in its own right, a brooding, violent force reaching out to her, compelling her, seeking to engulf her. It seemed not so much that the dark was expanding as that the rest of the world was disappearing, and she felt herself being dragged toward the darkness, seeing nothing but the darkness, a feeling of bone-deep sickness and despair overwhelming her, unable to move or think but not quite capable of comprehending why, all her senses diminished except for her sense of smell, which registered an overpowering stench more horrible than anything she could have ever imagined, which seemed not just to assault her nostrils and lungs but to invade and sicken every vein, cell, and nerve of her being. For a brief moment she thought she saw something even blacker than the darkness reaching for her, then there was the sound of a door closing, and suddenly everything was as it was before the door was opened, the only remnant of the experience the memory of the horrible smell.
“Well!” said the bat, grinning. “Good thing you didn’t pick that door! Now let’s see what’s behind Door Number Three!”
Ah, friends, how to describe it! It was eight feet tall, six feet wide, and smelled like a Libyan sewer. Thick green pus oozed from a number of scabrous sores scattered throughout its matted, mud-and-dung streaked fur. Its breath could knock a buzzard off a shitwagon. It seemed to have more than the usual number of teeth; certainly they were larger and sharper than usual. It wore an earring, a gold chain about its neck, and a green leisure suit without the pants. It was blatantly male.
There were moans and exclamations of disgust from the gathering and cries of “Close the door!”
“Felix, Wanda, come collect your prize!” shouted a gleefully grinning Monty.
“But we don’t want it!” Felix sobbed. The cries of “Close the door, for God’s sake!” became louder and more numerous. The thing in the leisure suit gave the crowd a disgusted look and closed the door himself.
“Just a minute!” Wanda yelled. “What about the gold coins and the way out?”
“They were behind Door Number Two,” said Monty. “It’s probably just as well you didn’t pick that one, because to reach the exit you would have had to pass very close to Howard, and he was sitting on the gold coins. Besides, I never said I’d actually let you have what was behind the door you picked. But don’t be discouraged. You still have a chance to score big in our Prize Or Penalty round! Now, Felix, your question is: If it takes twelve hours to thaw a turkey and it takes six Indians in four canoes twelve days to paddle across the desert, what’s an anagram for the first infinitive in this sentence?”
“What?” cried Felix.
“That’s right!” exclaimed Monty. “Jay, tell Felix what he’s won!”
“Jeepers, Mr. Wilson, me and Tommy--”
“Never mind, I’ll tell him myself. FELIX, YOU HAVE WON SIX DAYS AND NIGHTS IN A MOTEL ROOM IN FANTASTIC FROLICSOME FORT LAUDERDALE WITH YOUR EX-WIFE, HER NEW BOY FRIEND SLAB MEGATESTES, AND ELEVEN VOMITING TWENTY-YEAR-OLDS! THERE YOU’LL BOARD THE S.S. GASTRIC PRINCESS, GABON’S FINEST LUXURY BANANA BOAT, FOR A SIX-HOUR CRUISE TO SAINT CLITORIS, THE ONLY INHABITED BAHAMAS ISLAND WITHOUT FLUSH TOILETS, WHERE YOU’LL STAY AT THE SHOVEIT INN AND DINE ON NOTHING BUT RAW PORK UNTIL SYMPTOMS OF TRICHINOSIS APPEAR!”
“Uh--”
“Wanda, your question is: If you see a rock and roll band composed entirely of leopards and the drummer uses American Sign Language, what’s the name of the band?”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry, Wanda, I’m afraid that’s not correct. The correct answer is ’One-Armed Human’. I’m afraid you’ll have to pay a penalty.” All the creatures edged closer expectantly. “You will perhaps have noticed that this lovely grungewood table has a leather strap at each corner, four in all, which not coincidentally happens to equal the total number of your wrists and ankles.” Wanda and Felix turned to run, but they were surrounded. As the things closed in Felix shocked himself by throwing a punch at Monty, but failed to experience the satisfying crunch of fist against jaw, experiencing instead the considerably less satisfying whoosh of fist against air, then the really not satisfying at all flight through the air and crash landing on a bookcase with a great deal of pain,
Wanda was screaming. She was strapped to the table, about which the creatures were doing a sort of dance, chanting loudly. Painfully Felix began to crawl across the room toward the frolickers, who paid him no attention whatsoever. He knew he’d heard Monty’s voice before. He was sure the Ernest Borgnine head was just a mask. Closer he crept, on hands and knees now. Closer and closer, still unnoticed. At just the right moment he leapt onto Monty’s back and locked his arms around his neck. As the creature shrieked and thrashed about Felix wrapped his legs about its middle and secured a firm grip on the bottom part of the mask. With all his strength he tugged and, just as the frantic bat-thing succeeded in throwing Felix off, the mask came off clenched in Felix’s hand as he fell to the floor. Slowly the bat turned towards Felix, revealing the terrible secret of its true identity. Shocked, Felix gasped in horror. Wanda fainted. Can you guess who it was? Can you possibly imagine? IT WAS I, SICK DACKEY! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Wait, there’s more.
After recording that wonderful story about Wanda and Felix, those nice visitors of mine left with their tape recording. But I left that happy home not long afterwards, by means which you need not know. I subsequently managed to acquire, by means which you really do not wish to know, especially as it is knowledge for which you will have no use, this same audiocassette which you are now diligently transcribing. I then added the part to which you are listening now, as I sharpened all my lovely knives (can you hear that in the background?), and arranged, oh so cleverly, that the tape would come into your possession. It was child’s play to acquire the means to enter and leave your dwelling at will, and thus to be present when you chose to transcribe this audiotape. Which you are doing now. As I watch. With my knives. Don’t think so? LOOK BEHIND YOU, ASSH
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