Chapter 8 read by Cole

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8

-¡Drew!- Kelsey gritted her teeth. -¡Drew! ¡Don’t be a dumb fuck!-

But Drew was already circling the gorilla. She wouldn’t have heard a word if it had come from God Itself.

Kelsey knew that if she didn’t get Drew’s scalp now there might not be any left to get later. So she lifted her self out of the water and off of the Crazy Cart. She hunkered down and touched her fingers to the bland carpet that was the gorilla’s hair. And then, with a nauseating ¡flop!, she bunched-up the hair and vomited all over it. Then she wiped her mouth with her hand.

-¡Suckers!- She was grinning. -¡You all make me sick! You make me double over in horror until I feel like a tire on fire, and pour salt on my hand.-

“I’m going to have to kick this gorilla’s ass”, she thought. “And I’m going to have to do it immediately.”

She started foaming at the mouth. “I need some butter”, she thought she said. “If I’m going to eat all of these ants.”

And if the ants had had any say in the matter, God would have already poured salt over Kelsey’s tired ass. But it was a bad time to be an ant, because God doesn’t give ants the time of day, let alone have them not die horribly.

The butter provided the segue. But the butter was limited in its scope and could only point to Kelsey’s corroding mind.

The only solace was, if you were a large ant and you didn’t pray to God at least every other day you still would be crushed like a .45 caliber gun doing push-ups. It was like taking the sensation of what an ant must feel in its antennae and then crushing it, because the only solace was a .45 caliber gun doing push-ups.

The hard part is pouring a cup of bitchin coffee when you’re plucking somebody’s scalp.

-¡The plucking’s the easy part!- A voice from above said. -The hard part is that the gorilla’s peeing on your Scirocco.-

Kelsey knew that if she ever tried to bric-a-brac on a car it would take all of her powers of concentration just to pee. But only a pair of CIA agents would be able to move their bowels on an in-flight serving cart. And it would take all of the water in the world to be able to pee on your uncle’s barbecue. And it would have to somehow involve CIA spies wearing turbans.

She also knew that there would be more fire. More fire, more water, and more lab rats. Things always come in threes and then they float around in gelatin.

“¿Why are things always floating around in gelatin?”, she asked her self. “¿And why do they call out my name and then tell me to sit the freaking hell down?”

The water was alive before it was poured on the floor. After it had been poured it was as if God had leapt down and perforated the very heart of the water.

Kelsey knew she was pushing the limits, and with fire crescendoing all around her.

The brazenness lay out in front of her like a lion. Her toe muscles started tensing like a tiny, ten-toed arsenal. She was as jaded as Cade McNown, yet she could see the brazenness that others could only dab at. She also had what others could only yell at in a zoo: a gorilla. She’d have to quit playing in the water and live up to all of the hype.

“I have quite a few faults for a short person”, she knew she said.

She lifted her lack of a head.

¡It was much heavier than the principal!

-This is not possible.- A high voice in her head said.

She had to start singing before they saw through her intention. That or close her eyes.

She decided on singing because she was becoming bald and fat and was actually beginning to die… until she sang about how there is a rose in Spanish Harlem.

And she started gyrating her head as if it had just been amputated with a ladle.

And two beers, several “boo-yah”s, and two globs of gelatin later, she was in Spanish Harlem.

The brilliant belch that was about to come out of Kelsey would make a drunken man get itchy and testify about how a man is only a lizard cruising around this red planet until he finds Jesus.

¡The venom was taking effect!

Kelsey knew that if God vaulted down into this one-act play, even the Iggy Pop of the Andes would have to stop wanting to be her dog and begin to play the piccolo. God made the plants along with the pies.

-¡What about my private parts!- Kelsey exclaimed.

Kelsey’s private parts were small and made of caramel. She also had otter tentacles that vibrated under water. And when she has a CAT scan she turns entirely red and she never remembers anything. She has attention-deficit disorder. She sets corn on fire with a Crescent wrench.

She also has the small habit of pecking at her parakeet. Once, when the pesky parakeet saw her coming, it flew around in circles alternately swearing and blacking out.

When that happened, Kelsey’s heart accelerated. It was like she was a Ford Matador. It was like she had driven six hundred trillion miles up an abandoned road just to push-in God’s face.

“You know, you really can’t sleep when you’re in a panic”, she knew she said. “¡Never!”

The more brazen Kelsey became, the more her heart became a watery mess that the little girl was forced to mop up in front of the gorilla.

But, no matter how much she mopped, there was always more.

More water, more urine, more pie dreck.

¡But it was in water that Kelsey came alive!

She looked at her already red pallor. If water was her life, it was also a poor substitute for partying. And because water was her life, her life was water. She knew that this made about as much sense as Elle MacPherson forming the letter “O” with chocolate stolen from a pie shop in a rundown, cheap, potentate and generally squalid part of town.

Segues were once a very real part of Kelsey’s raison d’burrô.

-I have no idea what a segue is.- She murmured. -I have no idea what a segue is and my legs look like that gorilla’s.-

The ocean is water that lives and knows that it is living. In case you didn’t know that already or care.

Then a gigantic orangutan lifted its mighty arms and arrested everyone except the gorilla. And when it apologized for all the pie and fondue that had been flung, it knew it would end its life in the ocean surrounded by a SWAT team.

-¡Scirocco!- The orangutan cried out. -¡When will you throw me and this bitch into the sea!-

But the gentle wind that had been blowing on the beach was now unable to reply.

¿Why didn’t the wind throw the pair of them into the ocean? ¿Why did anything ever happen in the world?

-¡Kelsey!- Drew exclaimed. The youngster knew that before she could go back and look at her self she’d have to go back and look at someone else’s self.

-¡The water’s alive! ¡The water’s ALIVE!- Kelsey repeated, as her eyes descended into their sockets, moving around like Linda Blair’s in “Repossessed,” shooting cubes of ice at groups of earwigs.

-¿Which water’s alive?- Drew asked, looking at the water.

-¡The fucking water in Encino!- Kelsey exclaimed. -¡Look!-

-Kelsey.- Drew contested. -I’m not going to look at no fucking “living” water in Encino.-

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