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16

Margaret spent the day in the sun...

¡Start again!

Margaret spent Sunday passed out on her bicycle, with Diana and a didgeridoo of Border Collies looking on. The Border Collies had traveled from the Batistuta Nebula to retrieve a tennis ball that had inadvertently been thrown to earth. The earth was blue-green-orange, but the Batistuta Nebula was now a fiery briss of burned-out flowers and black and white Mapplethorpe photos. It was no stretch to say that the Batistutans were pulling out their hairs. They had been patiently waiting to fly their asses out to earth to retrieve the spit-soaked ball when the whole nebula was set on fire by the Christian right. Fortunately, the Border Collies knew Margaret and were able to get on the last flight out of that lovely, if no longer extant, massive fur ball.

And now they were all lunching together at Diana’s house, the two girls hurling tomatoes and salad at the Border Collies in a sick attempt at “education”. Then they regressed to Margaret’s house, where they thought-up and delivered crude and heartless jokes about the fate of the Batistutan Empire.

Dr. Berger was pushing his car into the garage at the exact moment that Margaret and Diana were riding their bicycles into the garage. There was a big crashing noise - like, “¡BOOM!” - and they were all in the garage, including the Batistutan Border Collies.

-¡Good news, chicas! -Dr. Berger exclaimed, and then, at the sight of the alien autopsy dogs-: ¡¿What the fuck!? Nevermind. Good news: ¡Your mother thinks she’s an airplane! ¡I’m going to the airport to watch her land!

-¡Oh, that is just stupid! -Margaret exclaimed, and kicked her dad right in the Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Margaret and Diana said a prayer using their hands and then fled to the house.

“I am so stupid”, Margaret thought. “I thought Mom was having shit notarized, and all this time she’s been an airplane, I’m going to have to have a long talk with my self. I’ll just explain to my self that... not everyone... is a... fucking psychopath like Dad”.

There was all sorts of interesting shit to read in the Berger household, but the two girls were listening to Dr. Berger’s disco records instead. And Diana had brought her dad’s selection of lesbian porn tapes. The porn was slated for the 3 o’clock hour because Diana had piano lessons at 4 and didn’t want to be knuckles-deep in her pussy when 4 o’clock came around. She’d have to sail out of the house without washing her hands, jump onto her bicycle and scream:

-¡Give my salutations to your mom from my pussy! -And then pedal desperately, like Two Gentlemen From La traviata.

Margaret stayed in the house, thinking about the distant Border Collies, questioning whether they even existed in this dimension or if she was just going as crazy as her mother. The fire that burned inside her was flaming out of control. She was dead set on reading a book on installing dead trees into the middle of alive gardens.

Instead, she opened the kitchen door. Charlie was lying dead on the floor.

-¿Where’s the Comet? -She asked without irony.

-¿The Comet? -The now alive boy asked from the floor-. I dunno. ¿Why? ¡Hey! -The reanimated boy was now very animated, though still lying on the floor-. Mom’s coming home today. If she doesn’t get here within the hour, I don’t have to lay on the kitchen floor all day.

-That’s terrific, Charlie.

-I have a penis and you don’t have any Comet. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes and I’m off this floor. ¡Gone! ¿Do you wanna lay here with me?

-Sure? I do, Charlie -His sister responded. Well, it was one way to pass the time. The other way was to obsess about the abrasive cleanser-. ¿Is it in the garage?

-No -Charlie responded-. I already told you where it is. ¡It’s in the bathroom! He uses it as plant repellant. Nineteen minutes, now -Nineteen minutes and he’d get to stop staring at the ceiling-. I can’t wait to get go outside and rifle the neighborhood trash cans.

-Hey, Charlie, she’s gonna be here in ten minutes -Margaret called out, desperate to piss-off her brother. Call her “Margaret Dubya”.

But then the cantankerous contrarian had a thought. “I’m not going in that bathroom alone. Fuckface’s comin’ with me”.

-¡Get up! -Margaret screamed at Charlie-. Dad’s fucking with you, again.

Charlie quickly jumped up and they were soon on the bathroom escalator, the air turning callous and humid as they neared. And just as quickly, they were surrounded by the blinding lights and bulbous plants of the bathroom.

The plants were reclining suggestively, extending their leaves lasciviously, and primping like they were African Violets. Margaret tried to ignore them. She slapped Charlie upside the head to help her focus, and kept her eyes fried on the prize: Comet and fucking with Charlie’s head.

Some plants were leaning on their own jugular veins. Some plants were juggling soccer balls. Others were just trying to catch some z’s. Charlie was the first to look for the plants’s vulnerabilities.

-I know I can take these plants -Charlie said.

-Yeah, I heard that you can kick like a motherfucker when you’re lying on the ground -Margaret said, rolling her eyes in a show of plant solidarity.

 

Charlie, rodent that he was, began to suck down coffee straight into his rat-ticular septum. It quickly made him paranoid.

-¡Margaret!

-¿¡What now!? -His sister asked and then she backed off a little-. ¿What is it?

-Look at this -Charlie said, suddenly suave. He was pointing at plant shit and jumping up and down like he had just seen his own hands being cut off.

Margaret watched her size ten shoe connect with Charlie’s size 12 ass. And then she set his blazingly blue pants ablaze.

¿The pants that tried way too hard to be blue?

With pants like that and a tired, sore ass, Charlie was only sad that he didn’t... ¡also have blue suede shoes! Despite his pants, his tired ass and his lack of blue suede shoes, Charlie was still a sad lad of the lowlands.

-¡Hey! Watch where you’re slingin’ the bull crap -Margaret said.

Charlie held out a hand full of bull crap, while in his other hand he held a bag of fish heads.

-¡I don’t beee-leeeeve it! -Margaret Victor Meldrew’d.

Charlie’s hand trembled as he held the meaty bull crap, along with the fish heads, and the bill of sale for both. The Bull Crap Store had rejected his... well, his dad’s credit card, and started calling him names until he came up with the required cash.

-It’s from Mr. Martinez -Charlie said, glancing at the crap in his hand-. It’s his version of poetry.

      -- on to chapter 17   or   back to the Bathroom --