The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

-¡Hey! -The hand was inside the puppet head. Kris gritted his teeth and tried to talk without moving his vulture-like lips.

Lindy was used to suppressing her hopes and dreams, but she wasn’t about to suppress her lips from moving for no dummy.

Kris took the tire iron from his zafu-induced hands and showed it to Lindy.

Moonlight sauntered through the window, illuminating the room and leaving an indelibly British stain on Lindy.

-¡You PILLOCK! -She cried out.

-¡Not me! ¡I’m American! ¡I’m an ass-wipe! -Kris insisted. But his voice sailed through the air like a penis hitching a ride on a Vidal Sassoon tumbleweed.

-¿¡What’s that salty taste on the bathroom towels!? -Lindy exclaimed with the sensitivity of a dad-. Really. ¡Jesus Christ! ¿Who’s in charge of tar and feathering around here?

-¡Not me! -Kris replied, meting out small doses of Ritalin® to his camel.

-¿What are you giving that poor, fucking dromedary? -Lindy asked, trying not to acknowledge the camel’s existence-. ¿Why don’t you give some love to Palmolive?

-No, I... Um... You know, you’re a piece of work -Kris told her, and flew at her like his hair was on fire, reaching for the window.

Lindy side-stepped him:

-You’d better not light my hair on fire with that shit.

-I’m going to bed. Fuck you -Kris said courteously. He had rope and he knew how to use it.

Lindy returned to sitting with a dummy. Later, without getting dirty, she’d grab Kris’s camel and make it tell her the secret of the camel toe.

Kris was only newly regular, so he sat on the commode, looking out the window. The penultimate hubris was that now he cared for a dummy. But his brilliant eyes came with a situation comedy life. And a Fiji Mermaid who didn’t know her fin from a hole in the ground.

“¿Why am I pretending that my life has some meaning?”, Kris asked his self as if his floating the Niña, the Pinta and the Self-Importantaria weren’t cost-effective enough.

He subscribed to “Ricardo Montalban Monthly” and to “Sense and Komodo Dragon Daily” - and that was for his camel. Later, he’d vote Bob Costas “Most Likely To Be Tortured” and barbecue lamb over a Fiji Mermaid fire.

But on special occasions, he’d look at himself more deeply. On these occasions he’d close his eyes and tap on his head three times, imagining a distorted sunrise and then laughing when the word “meaning” floated by.

Meaning.

“¡Hah!”

Meaning.

“¡Hah, hah, hah!”

Cayenne pepper was sure to follow, so Kris shouted “Incoming!” and started writing the word “corpunzel” in pencil on a quesadilla. The cheese squeezed out. The cheese was very perverse and very persnickety.

But, ¿what would make cheese persnickety?

* * *

During the full moon afternoon, Lindy and Kris sat fuming in school despite the fact that school was out and they were supposed to be singing in the Pasta Primavera concert. It was already 5pm by the time they legged it home and the apparitions stopped appearing, telling them their dad was running the car in the closed garage.

-¡We’d better get our All-Tempa Cheer® asses over to the garage today sometime! -Kris exclaimed, but first he needed to stop by the kitchen to tell his mom a joke he had heard at school.

-So I’m dying - suiciding - ¡¿and that jackass Kris does WHAT?! -Mr. Powell said, as the cold goo sat congealing in his cerebellum-. He’s totally ruined the only half day I have off from work.

-¿Was the joke at least funny? -Lindy asked.

-¡Abominable! -Mrs. Powell contested-, it was about some other dad who was about to die from deep-freezing his cerebellum.

-I heard that one when I was in school and I laughed my eyes out then -Mr. Powell said, trying to wipe the grime from every fiber of his being-. That’s just super.

-¿Didn’t it just slay you to the core? -Mrs. Powell asked and then she sat on her hands and tried to eat a great, big bowl of Meow Mix®.

-Oh, Jeez -Lindy scoffed, opening a bag of nachos and sucking on a liter of Coca-Cola®.

-¡Yes! I’ve got them right where I want them: singing rude songs about Yugoslavians -Kris said-. But very sad, rude songs. I think if these idiots thought about something other than their ovaries or their testes, but NO, we have to think about our dicks all the time, because that is the tradition.

Mr. Powell stopped by the bathroom, whipped out his dick and started urinating all over the sink and the floor, his eyes as big as lorries:

-¡I can pee wherever and whenever the fuck I want! -And his lame ass passed gas to prove the point.

This did not impress the wife.

-Moron -She grunted, sucking on the cab end of a dojo.

Kris took the escalator and found his face crushed on a milk carton. He was so tired that he started writing on the wall “Lindy and God sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes vultures, then comes baggage, then comes NOTHING NEW.”

But, as his thoughts floated through the window, so did his attention span.

He was gyro-sobering into a miasma, and the only thing ahead of him was one helluva surprise.

-¡Oh, no! -He was a gringo with a sombrero, a bolo tie and a lag bolt body.

Kris raised his hands to his mouth and knew that he couldn’t see what he couldn’t believe.

Palmolive had seated her silly self in front of the window and was watching the sun set like she had done it every day. And she had sent out e-mail to have other dummies join this sunset insurrection.

She raised her hand like the door on a DeLorean.

-¿What’s all this pretend shit? -Kris said in a dummy voice.