The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

-¡No... I can’t freaking believe this! -Kris had been so sure that Mr. Madero was a virgin. The expression on Mr. Madero’s face was burned into Kris’s memory like a Forget-Me-Not® bouquet from Lindy.

-¿¡What the fuck was that?! -Lindy gimme’d.

The two siblings suddenly stopped being silly. Kris grabbed Mr. Madero, uncoupling the two desiring dummies. It was like separating two kids from their Slim Jims®.

Kris gave Mr. Madero to Lindy and examined him curiously, looking for his penis. ¡But it had vanished faster than their parents’s incessant babbling!

After he got the dummy dressed, Kris gave his camel a back rub. His beloved pet was pale and as tense as if he’d just seen two dolls fucking.

Lindy was grouchy and didn’t notice that she had pissed on Palmolive’s shoes. She was an edgy comedienne and an honors student, but the sight of two dummies in a steamy clench had her thinking suicide.

-Kris... ¿What have you been teaching Mr. Madero? -Lindy whispered.

-¿¡Say what, you!? -Was Kris’s fake surprise reaction.

-Look, what I want to tell you is that this is as close as Palmolive and I have been and if you think that you and your dummy are gonna fuck that up... -Lindy started to say.

-¡Oi! Just one momentito -Kris replied, airing out his voice, reaching for new heights and then tumbling down some old ones.

Lindy looked at her brother, feeling the bumps on his head. After wiping the smirk from her face and suspenders, she said:

-I didn’t intend for this to happen. I introduced them, but I thought they’d just be friends. Now look at Palmolive. Her self-esteem has been destroyed.

Even though his shoes were extremely silly, as was his zoot suit, Mr. Madero was actually pretty suave, as long as you treated him like a baby. If you even raised your hand to him he would demand Lunchables® and not touch the cheese sandwich you’d just made for him.

Kris had heard what her sister was about to say all right. The total pariah said:

-Your dummy is diabolical.

-¿What did you just say? -Kris had missed his exit.

-Nothing -Lindy replied, totally freestyling the sarcasm-. I... I’m a little sure that I said something, but I’m not sure that what I said was what I’m sure of -Lindy confessed as the sun turned red in the sky and she tried to see the whites of Kris’s eyes.

-Me too -Kris admirably said-. I may be ugly, but at least I don’t pass gas and blame Mom.

Lindy was really bad about passing the buck on passing gas. If she couldn’t blame Palmolive or Kris’s camel, she’d blame it on the rats that she was sure had begun infesting their house.

-Yes. I believe that we must act decisively -Lindy replied-. It’s what makes us all lunatic nut cases.

Their mom was chilling on Kris’s camel, reading Stephen King. Their house was obscure, which was an exception to what it usually was and that was wrapped in yellow police caution tape with green laser beams forming triangles that hovered above it.

Mrs. Powell would superstitiously throw salt on the lawn whenever her two children appeared with the media in tow.

-¡Hey!, check it out. This book’s as lame and predictable as our house is obscure and wrapped in plastic.

-¿Who are you talking to? -Kris asked, meaning to be an asshole, in a voice that only a penis could decipher.

-She’s reading that macabre shit that blows and blows yet again -And that was Lindy.

Mrs. Powell boasted that she had stolen the book.

-¿What do you think of that?

-You’re as fucked-up as Mr. Madero -Kris said-. And he’s not even a real part of this cozy existence.

-¿Huh? -Mrs. Powell’s eyes did a 360. She had served up her criminality on a plate and no one was eating off of it.

-And if you try to strangle Palmolive again -Lindy informed her mother-, you’ll be digging your own grave right before I throw your limp and lifeless...

-¡You ungrateful bastards! -Mrs. Powell was in a foul mood, and she lifted her hand toward her eldest child-. ¡You’re all bastards!

-But, Mommy... -Kris said, pulling out his PEZ dispenser.

-Get me my tranquilizers, kids -Their fatigued and less emphatic mom said-. I’m gonna sing my self into Petri Dish Land.

-Not out loud, though, please -Lindy interrupted with a news bulletin.

-But I have to -Mrs. Powell said when she meant to snort-. You two have completely hastened my early demise with these ventriloquist dummies of yours.

-Mom, ¡for Christ’s sake!

-I want to be the parent again -Mrs. Powell insisted and she didn’t care if the King novel was a mess of cheap scares and outright clichés-. And I’m not digging my own grave. And I don’t want to hear a peep out of either of your jackass dummies. If there’re problems, I want ‘em resolved before I die.

-Mom, listen, you’re being a real...

-¡And! if you can’t resolve any capricious comedy immediately, then I’m killing the dummies. I know. I know what you’re thinking -Mrs. Powell was tired and her love light had long gone out-. It’s been real -She said.

The kids had no remedy for what ailed them. They fumed in silence and poured themselves into the corridor.

Kris tied tuber roses around the entrance to his room. He was so tired that he was going to ask Mr. Madero to strangle Palmolive. He had almost stopped breathing when he saw the two dummies toe-to-toe doing the talcum powder shuffle.

-Mom’s not much of a reader -Lindy said sacrilegiously, turning her eyes and her nose up. And there was Palmolive sitting on the windowsill, smoking a cigarette.

-I think I’m asleep and this is all going on with my eyes closed -Kris reasoned the reason of the Republicans.

Kris then saw Mr. Madero and he was sad but, by the look of his pants, still rigid... “Hey” -Kris thought-, “when I looked he was as dull as a butter knife”.

-¿Ya know what? I’m gonna take Mr. Madero down to the armoire and machine gun ten billion holes in him -Kris said thoughtfully.

-Good idea -Lindy said, petting Kris’s camel-. But if you get one hole in the armoire, Mom’ll kill you.

-¿What’s an armoire?

Kris looked at his dummy and felt remorse. He couldn’t understand what had provoked such a violent reaction in him. ¿What could it have been? Oh yeah, the two dummies on his cello, flailing at each other like Jerry Springer guests.

But when he looked at Mr. Madero he could only see his pint-sized eyes, his morbid insensitivity and his sinful life.

Kris was not without sin, so help him Medea.

“Just one more time. One more time and that jackass is fire wood”.

He took Mr. Madero to the armoire. Later, with a grunt, he’d take Mr. Madero and pour Noxema® into his head and shake him until he was instantly taller. Kris slammed Madero’s head repeatedly into the armoire door until he heard a click. Then he turned him over and slammed his head some more.

Half-dead and seemingly tranquil, Mr. Madero sensed that Kris was a little perturbed. He was wrinkling his shirt and he was rolling his eyes in what seemed like brazen drunkenness. And then Kris cut off circulation to his Yago Sangria. Actually, other than tearing up his zafu pillow, nothing really got to Mr. Madero.

He was, however, desperate, temper-tantrum-prone, banal and somnambulant. If he could just open the window he’d be okay.

The house was calm like a humidor is calm. And a humidor is not calm. Fatigued and kinda quiet, maybe, but not calm and certainly not tired and ready to fall asleep.

Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z.

Perhaps the house spoke too soon. Its eyes were heavy. They looked like two clarinets sitting silly in front of open windows.

And there was Palmolive sitting exactly where Lindy had left her - head first in the trash can.

So let’s see what we’ve learned in this chapter: Mr. Madero, with the brazenness of a red-headed stepchild, laid wood to Palmolive. We learned what a right dumb-ass Kris is. And we learned that if you juggle all of these elements, you’ll have an extraordinarily upsetting experience.