Cosmic Vomit

Ring.

I couldn’t understand what I was hearing.

Ring.

One more time.

Ring.

I could hear a strange sound, but ¿what was it?

Ring. Ring. Ring.

-¡Al, answer the fucking door!

It had been Colin.

I had thought the door was making the sound itself. There’s a sound, there’s a door. And when I listened to the door it made a sound, like it was trying to talk to me.

I had to open the door with a tire iron - at least I thought I had to - and Colin came in with a surprised look on his face. He was carrying a bottle rocket and some Sudafed. He was always carrying shit, and he was always carrying on about other people’s parataxis because he had been to college.

-You ain’t shit without your fangs, ¿are you? -Colin asked me, jaded as usual.

I nodded.

-Everyone from the Curse-Off is toking behind the science building and I’m prying front doors open with tire irons. And now I suppose you want me to come with you.

-¿Who put a vase up your ass? -Colin exclaimed.

-I dunno -I was game-. I met someone who was sick and they had all these flowers. But they didn’t have anything to put them in.

-You’re starting to creep me out -Colin said-. You and your sister both.

¿What had gotten into Colin? He was listing to starboard, even worse than I was.

-We’re going to have to make you some new fangs -Colin said.

-Tell me about it -I said. I knew that Colin’s idea of an idea was always inconvenient. But, ¿what the fuck?-. Tell me about it. So, ¿do you have a masters degree in fangs? Or, ¿are you just yanking my cerebral cortex?

-Yeah, the latter -Colin responded. He closed his eyes and said that he could see a rug, a clown and my fangs, all dancing in Pensacola, Florida.

After he opened his eyes, I saw that the lights were on, but nobody had gotten out of bed yet.

-I have a cunning plan. We’re going to ... ¿Do you wanna hear it? We’re gonna kidnap Lady Di and ask Prince Charles for a semen sample. ¿Get it?

-I don’t understand a word you’re saying, unless you’re praying to Charlton Heston.

-New - Trull - Eyes.

-Neutralize -Colin said-. That’s it. We have to neutralize your fangs.

-¿Neutralize? -I repeated. The word sounded familiar, but I had no idea what it meant.

-We first have to talk to an insurance agent and get your fangs back, and it gets worse from there

-Colin explained to me-. First, you’ll lose your will to cast aspersions, and then you’ll realize that “neutralize” simply means that which your brain does over and over anyway. Now, let’s go. Let’s go and become one with the sun.

I decided that Colin meant well, but, seriously, ¿what the freaking hell was he talking about? He was an idiot.

-The first thing we do is we go out and make a partial of your fangs -Colin said, stepping on an escalator like it was a grand prize from Satan itself-. Then we go to a gun shop, and try out different substances, and ask which veal cutlet would make the best neutralizer.

Colin was circling the drain to hell. This sack of shit was in deep doo-doo. I felt like taping up a pipe and clanging it repeatedly over his head.

-Pardon me, you only have a little of your sanity left -I thought that would get him.

-Good, good -He told me.

I open a can of whoop-ass and he goes fishing.

Bum, bum. Bum, bum.

It’s the sound of my heart. ¡That’s it! ¡The sound of my heart!

But I didn’t have a heart.

And my blood ran like a sugar-fried turnip.

I was this close to choking the life out of Colin. Instead, I tapped my fingers, grabbed my crotch, and looked at my teeth in the mirror.

That’s when I saw it. Right where my fangs used to be. A heart. That or someone had poked a hole through the back of my throat. A BIG hole, with marinara sauce and retro-rockets so that I could land safely.

This having a heart was starting to take a toll on me already. I had thought that I was an enormously vain young man, I just didn’t have a heart.

-¿A heart? -Colin said, breathing directly at me-. I thought you had eaten your heart with anchovies long ago.

¡Bam!

I started repenting immediately, holding my head in my hands like a salamander, fangs exploding all around me like Gigantor on Fresca. I knew that somebody was probably videotaping this for “America’s Silliest Dumbasses”, but I couldn’t stop crying and flailing about like a nun out of water.

Colin pushed me, shooshed me and told me to stop holding my head like a salamander. I told him I was just listening for the exact time that I changed into a species of rude, blood-sucking Crudups.

After that, I began to believe. And I mean really believe. I believed that I was running so fast that no one could see me.

-Wha... where are you? -Colin was axing to be murdered.

The fangs I did have were now less than twenty and more than two. The rest of them were in a jar somewhere near 33^rd and 3^rd.

They weren’t in my apartment. My fangs had vanished.

-¿Do you know what we’re doing? ¿Are we detectives in some bad midnight movie?

I retreated as if I had heard a buffalo. I had been so pissed at Chester that I didn’t notice or know what the tutti frutti I had been doing without him.

Chester had stopped being my dog when he started being my cat, and that was when I first got my fangs.

-¡Chester, no! -I had said, as he morphed into a cat-. ¡Nooooo!

As a cat, he froze and concentrated centimeters before he turned into a gelatinous substance. Then he turned and ran away.

But the little bastard didn’t run fast enough. His fangs elevated to form the letter “O”, but then his chest caved in, and Chester looked like a rat, trapped playing the cello in a marching band.

I could see the horizon coming, along with Chester’s lunch of creosote and sea otter entrails. But this time the vicious substance spewed out was quickly licked back up.

I was so full of gas that I forgot about my fangs.

There was no doubt in my mind that Chester was sick in the head. He had contortioned his body into what looked like a sack of dog crap. He thought it made him look the big cheese, but he looked like a sick puke.

I took out my sword, intending to lance that sack of shit.

Colin argued that I was being brazen.

-Don’t do it, fuck-face -He told me, saving his best cursing for after the curse-off-. You can’t do it. Your fangs won’t let you and your rat traps are empty.

Chester lunged at my elongated muzzle, and hissed and cried like he had just been gutted from his esophagus to his tambourine. And just when he was about to try again, I sank my fangs into his head.

All I saw was eye. Then his collar. Then his back.

Chester was all fangs. Completely crazy.

I was trembling like a rat’s ass. I looked like a penguin with heart palpitations, being revived by a mediator who looked like a snow cone - that is until I passed out, and then I looked like Elizabeth Dole selling Pepsi® to teenage boys.

-¡Hey, look! -I gritted my teeth-. ¡Look!

The fangs that used to be in my mouth were now running away from me. And the media was all over it, thanks to Chester.

The media was all over it, thanks to Chester. The media was all over it, thanks to Chester... That meant... Chester... was alive.

-Come here Chester -I called out.

Chester didn’t move.

-Here, kitty, kitty -I said in a sing-song voice-. Come here you freaky little cat.

Chester sat entirely still after that sentence. Even though he looked like a cat and barked like a cat, he was a punk-ass, Total®-eating piece of shit.

Who now didn’t speak.

-¡Oh, no! -I tried to shock him with the truth-. Chester’s become an idiot. ¡A complete idiot! With fangs that wouldn’t be able to bite into milk.

-¡Look! -Colin said, sounding like he had swallowed some horrible, viscous mess.

My fangs had just self-detonated.

I began to get as mad as the time I had set my grandpa on fire.

-¡Let’s go explode something! -Colin yelled-. ¡Let’s go explode something! ¡Boom! ¡Boom!

But there was nothing left to explode.

And there was nothing left moving. The only thing even trying to move was what was left of my fangs. What was left jerked and twitched like a flat tire on its last breath. Like Eve’s rib after God snatched it from her just to see her freak out.

This time it was my turn to freak out.

I knew I was freaking out because my back was starting to talk to me. It started telling me that it could see my heart and my asshole, but it couldn’t tell them apart. And the same thing for my throat and my pants pocket. Now this had really become a tale of two Citroens.

Despite that bad pun, and some rude noises, I was wearing enormous pants and carrying a lariat. So it wasn’t all bad.

It was tiresome, though. Especially the carrying a lariat part. That was fucked-up.

-¿What... what was fucked-up? -Colin was the biggest tart in the world.

-I... I think that... that you’re fucked-up -I said, trying to sound profound-. I think you’re fucked-up.

-Oh, no -Colin grunted-. And I was on my best behavior.

Behavior. His behavior had been large, squishy and humid, just like the two turds floating in the tumultuous ipso-facto of his big toe.

And, besides that, his heart didn’t know how to breathe like mine (with an eight-finger discount on a new intake manifold).

Just then I noticed some large, glowing fingers begin to move.

And they were moving toward us.

They ran. They ran. They ran right to our throats and grabbed on.