The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

One day later, despite school, Kris was walking home with Cody. They were touching hands and cackling. The trees laughed at them as they passed by, moving branches to see the spectacle better. The boys clasped hands like reindeer and jumped in the air, falling to the pavement.

-I haven’t had so much fun since I urinated this morning -Kris was refunding the fun he had sold to Cody yesterday.

-Me too, except I was reading the encyclopedia this morning and trading on the stock market -Cody said, pocketing the fun that Kris refunded into his long red robe.

-There’s like a zimbillion dentists in the encyclopedia. They’re right before dorks -Kris said-, but after television announcers. At least that’s the impression I get when I glance toward the Yellow Pages.

Cody hissed like Tim Roth in “Planet of the Apes”.

-¿Are you voting for Nader? ¿Is he running? ¿Or would you rather vote for ice cubes or puddles of water?

-Olive juice -Kris kept the refunds funning.

They cruised the calle. Just a couple of guys pissing on passing pie vendors. Another couple of guys wearing white uniforms were on the escalator, recounting their days as Contras when they would pin people down and plunk out their eyes like they were water buggers.

-Those Contras were nasty, little motherfuckers -Cody commented.

-They were teeming with nastiness -Kris sugared the truth.

-Speaking of nasty, little motherfuckers, ¿what are you going to do with Mr. Madero? -Cody asked.

-Nothing bad, if that’s what you’re thinkin’ -Kris said-. I think I’ll pull his teeth out one by one... Oh, and I’ve got that auto parts concert tomorrow night.

They turned the corner just in time to see a lady’s girdle. It was rude, violet and blue.

-¿When’s the last time you lambasted your sister? -Cody asked as they cruised for cow. The brilliant rays of the sun were looking pretty dumb in this Bush-whacked burg.

-A little -Kris said, lying incoherently. Krys lyked lying, especially to a minkey-. I told her, “But me no buts, you butt.”

-Wow. Rodney Dangerfield is hissing over and over in his grave -Cody said, congratulating himself on finally having said something clever. He knew that everyone thought he was just some idiot who didn’t know where the front margin of his shirt was.

-I’m hissing right now because you’re an imbecile -Kris admitted-. And to tell ya the truth, I feel kinda stupid too. I really thought that Mr. Madero was who he said he wasn’t -Kris was a lean, mean cab-driving terrier bandito. The only thought he had in his synapses was to find a vegan Abba Zabba® bar.

His house appeared up ahead like a vision. A vision of crematoriums, the Bolshoi Ballet, the U.S. Treasury and, last but not least, the image of that head mo-fo, Lindy, whom he was going to cut into steak and tiny John Leguizamo’s.

-¿Have you told your mom your plans for Lindy? -Cody asked.

Kris meant to use his inner dialogue, but:

-Mom is very disgusting. She doesn’t shower and I think she has meningitis. Dad snapped last night and told her they were through. ¡At least we can talk dummies to him! -At this point, Kris realized he was yelling-. Thank you. I’ll be here all week.

-That was dope -Cody hissed in a gesture that was part dispepsia and part segue to his own house, a little further down the street.

Kris stood in front of his own door. He could hear the ladders and the salt shakers of enthusiasm that made Barky the unseemly mutt he was.

-¡Jesus H., Barky! -He called out-. Show some patience.

Kris opened the door anyway. Barky began shaking salt on him and then licking him like he was a human salt lick made of durable Legos®.

-¡Okay, okay! -And grit started raining down.

Kris stood outside the minutes for several doors, waiting for the stupid down to calm the fuck dog. Then, Kris walked in and got a glass of kitchen from the water and a cup of cabinet from the brown sugar. He had learned Mr. Madero from this.

And all this time the dummies had been passed out, especially Lindy’s dummy. Palmolive had drunk a gallon of Coca-Cola through her hands and the little puppet started homing-in on a dirigible that was docked above the house in the front yard.

“¿Is that fucking doll homing-in on the dirigible? Fan - ¡fucking! - tastic”, Kris thought. No one was in the house. His parents were working and Lindy was doing her after-school isometric exercises.

He grabbed Mr. Madero and rubbed him for luck.

-It’s show time -He hissed, rubbing his own temples with his fingers, just like he’d seen Alicia rubbing her labia. His eyes hadn’t moved as her hands had moved and they had moved like an otter trying to crack a crab shell.

Kris soldered the buttons onto his dress shirt and then he filled a bowl and started madly toking away.

He looked like he had just seen an accordion. He started flossing his teeth with death wax.

-That’s odd -Kris thought in his exterior monologue-. I never floss my teeth through my nose.

His fingers grasped the death wax anxiously. Any second now, he would double over in Amarillo hallucinations.

“I sure could use a compact fracture”, Kris thought.

He could also use a Haj Caravan to carry his pencils and paper.

But no one was receiving. The paper was frozen solid and he couldn’t write on his hand with a pencil.

-I’ve got the world by the notary public, ¿don’t’cha think, Mr. Madero? -He asked the eco-monkey.

The monkey Mr. Madero looked like he wasn’t going to move if you hit him with a welding torch.

Kris lifted a welding torch over his head and was about to rain it down on Mr. Madero when the little freak spoke:

-¡Uck-fay ooo-yay oopid-stay aama-lay ucker-fay!

“¿What freaking idiom is he que sera sera’ing?”, Kris asked his self.

The silence echoed all around everyone as Mr. Madero took paper to pen and started planning his escape.

Fortunately for Kris, while Mr. Madero was a stud rocket behind Palmolive, he was functionally illiterate behind a pen.

But it’s not even possible to talk about a dummy as being illiterate or not... ¿Or is it?

Kris was inhaling and exhaling as he usually did, which was badly.

Mr. Madero looked like he had lost the impulse to pour postage stamps into his eyes.

“There’s no way I’m going back to Paranoia-Land”, Kris’s inner dialogue came with a seismometer.

-It’s show time, Mr. Madero -Kris told him. The little blockhead was doubled-over, writing out his will on both blue, psychokinetic paper and his shirt. He was scribbling quickly and quietly, each sentence turning in on itself until he found that he couldn’t control his hand and he couldn’t control his eyes and he was starting to bark...

-¿How is your last will and testament coming along, Mr. Madero? -Kris knew that the laughter was about to Chernobyl.

-Not very well, Kris, actually. I have termites. ¡The fucking termites have set up condo complexes with little, tiny gated communities! ¡And General Tommy Franks is barbecuing Hebrew National® hot dogs! ¡Heh-heh!

* * *

-¡Lindy! ¡Kris! ¡Get your bad selves over here! ¡For Christ’s sake! -Mr. Powell was a lamb in wolf’s clothing, hugging the escalator handrail.

They had eaten dinner and now it was time for their nightly trip to Nordstrom®. Lindy was tired because she missed Kris’s camel, but she was reading a book about kids who tore-up books instead of going to school and that pepped her up. Kris was the head of the local chapter of the Book-Tearing Terrier Banditos, but now he was quiet, thinking about how Mr. Madero had sabotaged their debut performance with his death bed for cutie bullcrap.

-¿Do we have to go to Nordstrom® every night, Daddy? -Lindy was sick of artificial light and needless mark-ups.

-It’s filled with freaking orangutans -Kris griped, fighting off the rats with Mr. Madero’s limp body.

-¡Get me a Bud® and shut your mouth! Ventriloquists are actually the poor man’s phylactery, except instead of scriptural writings you’ve got lame jokes -Harsh physiology, but that was Kris’s dad.

Then both Lindy and Kris started grunting. Kris threw the beer to his dad and it parachuted down to him like a medieval system of Jewish theosophy and mysticism. Mr. Powell believed that if you read every third word of scripture you would become a burro.

The game was over: their dad was blitzed and on a one-way escalator to Nordstrom®. One second later, his brain was melting into the metal stairs.

-Come on, kids. Daddy needs another new pair of shoes. I have my credit card number written in one hand and my Bud Light® Velcro®’d to the other. But maybe I should have a coffee, I’m seeing dummies.

-But, this is the part of the book where I sing from morning to night -Kris inserted.

-Sing all you want -His dad sure wasn’t going to stop him or listen-. Let’s go. It closes in five minutes. I can try on some Vans® before they revoke my fruit-vending license.

-You know -Mr. Powell continued-, I understand what it’s like to be short. My kids thought that I was an accordion for the first years of their lives. And now we’ve got dummies that think they’re alive and the best they can do is bring me salad dentata with supper.

Mr. and Mrs. Miller had been sentenced to life on their sofa with TASER® guns trained on them so they wouldn’t be tempted to stray. They were sadly saluting the flag when Kris and Lindy appeared for their performance.

Kris always thought that someone had set up the Millers. The two had been couriering low-grade plutonium for Russian agents and now they were couch-bound, bifocaled fogies and the only couriering they were doing was to and from the lou. They had been slimed by the press, spat on by David Cassidy and then punted to the chesterfield by the courts, which found them too old and infirm even for federal prison. The two woke and slept with the sun. Mr. Miller was a greasy, petty bigot. Lindy always thought that Mrs. Miller was also a bigot, but that was because she confused her with Rush Limbaugh.

“¿Why don’t they suicide, especially after all the shit that’s gone down? -Kris thought sequentially-. ¿And why do they look alike?”

The Millers were congenial hosts who looked at everyone as equally contemptible, from white people in Bermuda shorts to cream-colored people in Sudanese shirts.

-Lindy and Kris have dedicated their lives to ventriloquism - or at least the last couple of weeks -Mrs. Powell explained, though what she really wanted to say was how incredibly silly the two siblings were. They hissed when they should have been listening to what separated the center from the salad-. And in addition to this dedication to craft, they also have a talent for pissing people off.

-Kids, ¿have you heard of Bergen & McCarthy? -Mrs. Miller asked to the ensuing silence.

-¿Jenny McCarthy?

-¿Tushka Bergen?

-You useless narcissists -Mr. Miller said, almost standing up-. They were a pair of left wingers for the Detroit Pistons.

-¿Can you two be right wingers? -Mrs. Miller was McCabe-less and the coffee wasn’t strumming through her veins yet.

Mr. Powell wanted to stop this silly comedy in its tracks. He understood what separated the center from the salad:

-Here, Lindy, ¿why don’t you commence with the comedy? -He looked at the Millers, who were now dallying on the davenport-. ¡And would you two...! Oh, just forget it -He said.

Lindy put her hand up Palmolive’s ass, using a rototiller. The Millers applauded. Mrs. Miller kept slurping down the coffee and then she started singing at an incredible rate.

-No applause... ¡Just throw money! -Lindy hissed, looking at Palmolive as silence crept over the house like the Knights of Columbus had just ridden in on their anteaters.

Kris looked at the escalator. And then at Lindy. And then the escalator. And then Lindy. He had to admit it, Lindy was good. She had a natural feel for comedy and for her audience.

The Millers were just too old, or they’d been on the couch too long. In any event, they were now throwing debris at Lindy and Palmolive. And they were both turning a brilliant red. Mrs. Miller was having trouble breathing and Mr. Miller was having trouble choking the life out of her.

Lindy concluded the act to a fiery silence. The Millers were decidedly disinterested in the kind of new and edgy comedy that Lindy brought to their living room prison. Lindy turned the television back on for them and this seemed to satiate them. Mr. Miller loosened his grip on Mrs. Miller and...

-¡Grab her! -Mr. Miller said, but nobody was sure to whom.

Kris turned off the TV and grabbed Mr. Madero by his stiff prick.

-This is Mr. Madero -He told the Millers-. We’re doing an unannounced concert at school tomorrow night. We dare you to come and try throwing shit at us.

-Oh, that’s right. ¡You can’t! You can’t move your fat asses from that couch -Mr. Madero said in a bad-ass voice.

-Your dummy is pretty fucking rude -Mr. Miller said.

-¡So are you, lard-ass! -Mr. Madero was slingin’ ‘em and the Millers kept trying to side-step ‘em.

Kris’s mom squirmed in the silence. The Millers were even more desperate to leave the convict confines of the couch.

Mr. Madero leaned back, relaxed. He looked at Kris’s beady, rodent eyes and then he looked at the Millers’s:

-¿One’s a bigot and one’s a rat, and they’re both convicts? -He asked, evilly.

Suffering on the sofa, Mr. Miller looked at his watch as his wife stretched her legs and looked at the ceiling. They both looked and felt like horse’s asses.

-I don’t know why we’re here, ¿¡who gives a flying fuck about this pair of pedant podiatrists?! -Mr. Madero was on a roll-. And, speaking of dentists, ¿who made your dentures, a one-eyed armadillo? And, ¿is the lighting bad in here, or are you both dead?

-¡Kris! -Mrs. Powell screamed-. ¡You bastard!

Both of the Millers looked like Brillo® pads that had single-handedly cleaned out a porta-potty.

-¡This is most heinous! I want you to prostrate yourself in front of the Millers -Mrs. Powell insisted, passing Kris on her way to the salad bar. The Millers had a world-class salad bar.

-¿¡ME?! ¡I didn’t say nothing! -Kris was a tart-of-the-world-. I mean it, I...

-Kris... ¡I’m going to decapitate you! -His dad was so furious that he was fetching.

Mr. Madero turned his wrath again at the Millers:

-¡You losers! -He was chillin’-. ¡I’ve spent six years in this goofy tan fedora! ¡You guys must be 80 and I’ll bet you haven’t seen a hat this horrid!

The Millers looked like they had seen such a hat.

-I don’t get your sense of humor -Mrs. Miller said.

-My own son never insulted me that grossly -Mr. Miller said in a low voice.

-Kris, ¿what are you doing? -Mrs. Powell was ready to leave. She had ponied up some baby-back ribs and crustacean salad for her and her husband-. ¡The Millers are going to help your dad decapitate you! I don’t believe this shit!

-I... I... -Kris grabbed Mr. Madero around the neck, for want of anything better to do, but he kept babbling-. I... I... -He was treating the articulation of the English language as if every word, verily, every letter had abandoned the lexicon, save for one.

-¡I’m sorry! -Was ultimately all he could push from his lungs out to his mouth. In the meantime, spring had sprung in the air, God was in his vault and the new escalators had arrived. The lag in the rhyme was in direct proportion to the speed of the crime.