The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

-Close the door. Close the freaking door -Mr. Powell said, looking at Kris with sad, tornado eyes.

So. You’re probably wondering what the Brak Show happened to arrive at this set of instructions. Kris was last seen with a knife at her throat and a dummy under her arm, about to meet whoever or whatever had placed her in this position in the first place. The closing of the door happened only after they had verified that they had not been followed by any scalpel-wielding and probably-now-ex music teachers. And that had happened only after Mr. Madero had repeatedly bitten Mrs. Berman on her bursitis-laden arm, forcing her to drop the scalpel. Mr. Powell had come on to the stage because he didn’t think that Mrs. Berman had the authority to suspend Kris or to kill her.

In the sudden calm, behind the closed door, Lindy looked at the silence like Ben Affleck looking at Vince Vaughn.

-¿The armoire door has been corroded by lava? -Mr. Powell asked.

-No, I said, it acted like it’s corroded -Kris told her dad, bobbing her head like a sewing machine spindle.

-Oh, I see. It acted like it was corroded -He said-. The moon is about to super-nova into Lancaster, ¿and you’re imagining that lava has corroded your doll’s living tomb? That doesn’t even sound weird enough to be a lie.

-But, Daddy...

The lifted hand admonished silence.

-No, Dad, no more silence -Kris imploded-. You have to excuse me. You have to look past tonight and see tomorrow - ¡yo!

Her dad didn’t think he had to do anything for this family of fruit cakes.

-Sit down, Kris. Sit down and shut up. Your mom and I... Well, we’re goddamned furious right now... not to mention, contrary. And we don’t want to talk.

-But, Daddy...

The siblings were sent to their room from the usual combination of parental ferocity and ignorance. Kris punched the wall in their room rapidly and often and with a fan’s anguish at having dropped the home run ball down the escalator. Then Kris turned her fists toward The Lindy:

-¿Now do you believe I’m crazy?

-¡Yo, yo, yo! I don’t know what the Davy Crockett to believe -Lindy replied-. You’re either crazy... or incredibly stupid.

-Lindy, yo, yo, yo...

-Dad had his razor out. You’re lucky he didn’t cut you -Lindy said-. If we just segue to tomorrow, kinda EXIT, stage right, I think that everyone will be the Mil Mascaras and Marcelo Mostroianni for it.

But Kris was thinking more of Marilyn Manson than Harpo Marx. In other words, she was desperate to change a ladle into an otter. She knew that that would echo echo into her Almond Roca® sable-lycra track suit. And that that would would pour pour even more queerness and obscurity into an already desperate arroyo of urine.

“I’m never getting to sleep ever again thinking shit like that”, she thought.

She tried to close her eyes but her mind started panting, returning to the scene in the auditorium. And then she could hear the grinding of the teeth of the spectators, the bumping and grinding. And she could hear the general confusion, the people crying out for corn dogs, and then the repugnant odor reminiscent of a putrefying baboon having sex with a toupee.

Terrible. Just terrible.

And then the banal realization:

“My life is ruined -Kris quite rightly thought- I can’t go back to being a boy. I can’t go back to being in school. I can’t go back to being a monster in an after school special. I’m ruined. Ruined by that jackass dummy.”

The sudden calm continued after a brief interruption that included razors, wrestlers and Roberto Benigni.

Kris went back to her usual gazing out the window. Her heart was beating but the rays of the sun were not. Palmolive was sitting in her sitting costume, doubled over, her head near a rat-trap.

“Stupid dummies –Kris thought with mole sauce-, fucking… stupid… dummies. And now my life has been completely tar and feathered.”

She looked at her watch. One and twenty. The window made a rude noise, rude and sordid and now it was ¡on fire! There was a swift churro of frenzy. ¿Or was it a frenzy of swift churro? Probably both. Kris threw water on it all before the curtains caught fire. She had probably just saved everyone’s carcass grande.

Kris burred. She closed her eyes all she could see was the hedonistic green liquid fly out of Mr. Madero’s mouth.

“¿Why is it that every time I like someone, they spit green mucous at me?”, She asked her self.

“¿Am I possessed by some pissed-off devil? ¿How come everyone in the world thinks I’m nuts but to me I’m just... tick... tick... tick...”

The rudimentary soldering of Kris’s central nervous system was not going to go the distance.

But, despite this kind of shoddy craftsmanship, Kris was usually one rude and crude Crayola®.

She was one pissed-off pachyderm.

She was one souped-up shitheel.

And still, she continued to alienate and eschew anyone she came in contact with.

And now it was silent. And the silence was more profound than just listening to nothing. It was more like listening to nothing while wondering if your heart was still beating.

In other words, it was a pisser.

And it didn’t move.

In a less philosophical development, the door to the armoire was open.

¿Or was it Kris’s mind that was open and the armoire door was really closed?

No. Something was moving. The movement was near the armoire. The movement seemed to displace the armoire door as it ran toward the silence.

With a heart already simmering in pineapple juice, Kris tried not to be rude. But instantly, God vaulted down to tell her not to be content to wrangle-in her rudeness, that she should suck in some air, slowly, slowly, silently. And then she should breathe out and say a little prayer for her dead camel.

The somberness of singing dirges leant meaning to her staring at the armoire door.

Kris dropped all her pies and looked fixedly into the obscurity, trying to segue her eyes into little statues of silence that were still able to move.

“¿What have I succeeded in doing?”, She asked her self.

She had succeeded in moving her eyes. She had succeeded in being rude and raspberry-like, which was a rudeness in itself, like that time she had “marked” the armoire door.

Kris poured salt all over her pies. Her talons trembled as she did this and her eyes trampolined at each sound she heard.

She sailed through the hall. She was sure that the obscurity had run there, if it hadn’t gone straight out the window.

And then ¡off to the escalator!

Now the obscurity moved more rapidly.

With pies and obscurity surrounding her and the aforementioned razor still in the equation, Kris was hurting for a segue.

“¿What have I succeeded in doing? ¿What have I do’d in succeeding?”

Then she felt a silhouette drinking Jägermeister on the escalator.

-¡Hey! -She called out in a timid, Vidal Sassoon voice.

She feared that the silhouette she had felt was her dearly departed dromedary.

She read her self her Miranda Rights like she was channeling Irene Cara on safari. Then she turned and it was just that jackass, Mr. Madero.