The Land of the Cheddar Monster Vivisectionists

-Let’s go out on the terrace -Kris said.

-¿Huh? -Lindy said, secure in her role as imbecile.

So they stood there, surrounded by themselves for hours. In the meantime, the world kept spinning and they officially had no plan for getting the dummy into the armoire.

-We’re going to do it. We’re gonna separate that fucking dummy from this fucking planet -Kris explained to her sister, who was picking a winner and opening a window-. ¿Why don’t we just vacate this lot and join a new house?

-Yeah, that’s the ticket. I don’t know -Lindy’s replies cancelled each other out-. I’m singing like a poodle in a Doberman Pincher bar -She looked at her watch and then at the moon. The moon was telling her that it was 3:30pm, but her watch said it was drug stabbing time and that she’d better get working on the Ford line-. I’m thinking we just need to have our parents deported -Lindy said. And the world was reflected in her eyes.

-I don’t get it -Kris said to her-. ¿How do we get our parents deported? And, ¿how is the fucking world reflected in your eyes? I’ve looked into your eyes a hundred times and all I ever see is a dull sheen. It’s like no one’s home. It’s like desperation time, the lion’s out of its den and it’s looking for the mayor of this fine city.

-I get the mayor analogy, but, ¿¡what the fuck is the rest of that shit you just said?! -Lindy exclaimed, gesticulating her head towards the armoire. Her head always gesticulated towards the armoire, even before it was inhabited by some rabid grifter/rapist doll that needed putting down by any means necessary

-Excuse me, I’m wanted back on earth -Kris said with revived clarity-. You should visit us sometime. There’s no parking and the food and the air are horrible, but I think you’d like it.

Lindy knew extreme voltage when she felt it and she felt it coming from that dummy and it was making her double-over in laughter.

-I can’t even make my self look at Palmolive. ¿How come we have the most interesting but maniacally goofy dummies?

-Ssshhh. I told you, come visit us -Kris said impatiently-. ¿Remember? ¿Bad food? ¿Shit for parking?

Minutes later, the two ninja tail-gunners were sliding down the escalator and right into the middle of the obscurity. Kris had grabbed a mallet and, with the brazenness of a tree squirrel, started protesting furiously that Mr. Madero was wearing her scarf.

They legged it down to a part of the house where they could hear everything that went on inside it. Like the time they had listened in horror as their parents...

Silence.

Lindy opened the front portal and now they were sailing out into the silence.

They tried to pretend that the air wasn’t fricking freezing and smelling of french fries. They picked up rocks and began throwing them. Soon the brilliant Powell Rock Garden was converted into the not so brilliant Powell Dirt Mess, which the moon reflected off of like a lemon meringue pie. Pulling the herbs up had just been a moment of weakness. But trampling the petunias with their tennies was an act of wantonness. An act their parents surely would wish they’d done backwards: ¡sse not naw!

Kris left the mallet and Lindy and the silence, the lentils and obscurity, and opened the garage door. When she did, immediately out slunk a dentist who, with a family of Gypsies, had made the Powell garage her home.

One second after they all had filed out, a great palm pame pover Pris.

-That bastard -She said into her Sony® tape recorder. A record of this nastiness would prove extremely silly.

Kris looked out at the street where people walked by her patio in the diretion of the Latino vote. She picked up more rocks and flung them at the moon with the hope that the moon people would look down, see the lumber about to catch fire and send down a llama. Everything suddenly seemed clear, even the obscurity and even her sense of purpose.

Enlightened, Kris put the mallet down, but she wasn’t ready to put down the monster terror that she was about to ladle out.

-This is where the obscurity caves in on itself -She said, articulating the genetic structure of mountains and synagogues-. We pull a dentist out and the world pushes a tapir in.

-¡The lesbians have arrived! -Mr. Madero said in amazement, listening to the Dental Hygiene Hour on his radio and now sporting a spiffy scarf-. And it doesn’t look like they’re leaving any time soon. ¿Do you like my scarf?

-Come in here before the obscurity caves in -Kris said, as her sister looked on in dumb amazement at the dumb dummy-. We’re going out to get some Sanka®, yo.

Lindy ordered the sausage and butter platter with a side of dental floss. Hey, it was Kris’s treat. The house special was scented fries and hummus. A waiter came floating down from the moon, obscuring even the obscurity.

-¡Can I take your order, sahib! -Mr. Madero exclaimed, thinking he was funny-. If you let me take your order now, I’ll be happy to cast you out into the obscurity later - no extra charge.

Mr. Madero had transformed from a raving lunatic to a raving lounge act.

-I wish this obscurity would cave in and get it over with -Kris said impatiently.

-I’m caving in faster than this fucking obscurity -Lindy replied, having already caved in to the sausage and butter platter-. ¿How do we even know that anything’s caving in?

-Very deep, Lindy -Kris said-. Yeah. ¿Where’s my mallet? Ah, there it is. Now, come over here Lindy and sit down and start caving in.

Lindy started to move, but, at that same moment, her sarcasm monitor started beeping. Kris was crestfallen, but she could see the crest of the wave in the distance, moving, gaining speed and lacerating anyone in its way.

-I.. think.. you’re.. being.. sarcastic -Lindy said extremely slowly-. ¿Are we going to inter Mr. Madero or are we going to take a mallet out and silence your sarcasm?

-¿You think I’m sarcastic? If our mommy was here, she’d cut off your hands with a machete -Kris prayed she could find her gun, but a steaming plate of mocha java arrived and, instead, she got out her ladle.

Lindy could be a mean son-of-a-bitch:

-You’re more useless than the U.S.

-That’s because that fucking dentist took my mallet -Kris said-. That and a plate of mocha java are the only two things that saved your facile ass from a frenetic beating.

-I know a carpenter who could administer that beating for ya -The dummy chimed in. The mallet was in his hand and he was cursing like a Cosa Nostra cost accountant.

-That fucking dummy ain’t dead -Lindy rotated her sausage and butter platter so she could better attack the butter.

-I’m getting fucking desperate -Kris replied with a solemnity borrowed from the memory of her recently-deceased camel’s horrific murder-. I know I’m getting sentimental, but ¡you fucking KILLED my pet camel! ¡I’m sorry if I can’t keep straight who or what is alive in this horrible Pilates® nightmare!

-All of the pieces are beginning to come together, if only in a surreal and orally hygienic manner -Lindy said, followed by a Grecian Pie Alamode sliding down her gullet-. It’s not my fault that Mom and Dad don’t believe in God. Things would be a lot less scatological if they believed in something other than Takeshi Kitano.

-¿Would you push your palm into the obscurity? -Kris asked.

Lindy was having none of it:

-Yes -She said, somewhat nonchalantly.

-¿And would you close the garage door? -Kris knew she had her sister cornered.

-Ssshhh, I’m sleeping.

Well, cornered but not coerced.

-There’s no school tomorrow -Lindy said-. I’m sleeping until Tuesday.

-¿¡How can you sleep!?

-I close my eyes and pop some Xanax®.

-I’m so agitated that every fiber of my being wants to be placed in a burlap sack. Not only that... ¿Lindy? Lindy... ¿Have you been deported?

No. Her sister had taken too many Xanax®es and was dreaming of Fido Dido® and his quesadilla-eating centurions.

Kris knew what this meant: She’d have to close the garage door herself. Or call a technician. She couldn’t summon the ghost of Mike Cuellar. It was too cold. In fact, it was so cold that the humidity in the air had gone on strike.

After deciding on a fair price, a technician came out and closed the garage door, but not before trying to get Kris to spend the night with her. Kris said she’d rather sleep.

The machine sprang into action and, by 8:30am the next day, the garage door was closed. Despite being tired and desperate, Kris was also at a loss as to why the window was open and - ¡god fucking dammit! - ¿why was that fuckface Palmolive staring at her like she had just seen a fire?

It was a new day and already Kris was grinding her teeth. She had ground two enormous cavities into her front Venus flytrap teeth and her back John Deere teeth had failed to get the vote out for John Kerry. All of that, plus the events of 9/11, still had her pounding back Jello shots and Apple martinis. All in all, she was just plane-terrified.

She asked her self what her fear of flying was rooted in, and she realized that it was really a morbid fear of Erica Jong’s writing. Her writing was so serious that it moved morbidly into the realm of the esoteric.

Kris started snoring. She wasn’t actually asleep, but she was actually sounding like a bulldozer idling.

Lindy, on the other hand, was profoundly asleep and her alarm clock was set for Tuesday. Kris just left her to dream about punching out batters from a pitching mound in the sky and then getting tragically run over by a blimp.

-Good morning, Mommy -Kris said, walking into the kitchen and adjusting the quesadilla-eating centurions’s batting order.

Mrs. Powell, who was sweeping up lava pieces from the kitchen floor, had clumsily tried to hide before Kris could see her. Kris was so surprised at her mom’s behavior that she suppressed it into a deep-set expression of fury.

She was just about to release her fury when she saw more than a mess on the table.

-¡Oh, fuck! -Kris’s fury at her mom was cast aside when she saw that wooden fuck, Madero. He was sitting on the table like the silly jackass he was, his hands on his crotch. His head looked like he had tried to commit suicide by sucking on a tree and he smelled like rotting meerkat.

Kris grabbed the dummy’s hands and moved them from his crotch, her face a picture of Dorian Gray.

-I think what we have here is a clarity that no podiatrist could ever approach and that is ¡get this fucking doll outta here! -The regal Mrs. Powell shouted-. ¿¡Do I have to tear you limb from limb, Kris?! -The regal Mrs. P said with the ferocity of a lava lamp.

The dummy just leered at Kris and moved his hands back to his crotch.