Chapter 17 read by Michael Schumacher
If you don't see the Media player above, click here to play in a separate window (or right-click and download) 17 -¡Daddy! ¡Mints! -Charlie exclaimed, holding out his hand toward the debased doctor-. Mr. Martinez sends his idiotic suckah cash, but he doesn’t have the pants to do it himself, and so, ¡here ya go!
-But... ¿What the fuck? -Margaret said, sincere as a heart murmur.
Charlie quickly ate the bull crap in one gulp. He made a squirming, anguished face, but said nothing.
Somewhere, in the middle of the house, one of the plants was playing Parcheesi. It sounded like someone was beating a saltine.
-Dad. Mints. -Charlie repeated, admiring his own pants and shoes-. ¿No mints?
-¿What the fuck’s with you and this mints bull crap? -Margaret exclaimed, in a voice that was a little less panicked, but a lot more desperate-. We have got to find someone you can talk to about this shit. But, ¿who?
The plant started a new game. This time the game was “Over The Line”, which was supposed to be played outdoors with a baseball, bat and gloves. This motherfucker was playing it with tree sap, mundanity, and an otter.
And then it started another game. This time it was golf and it was playing indoors with no mulligans.
Margaret looked at Charlie.
-First, golf, ¿then what?
They listened to the ambient cursing as the plant tried its branch at golf. Golf is a game played by the idle rich, and for the idle rich, and it’s not for the common, lamentable humans to try - let alone, the flesh-eating plant set.
-¡I think the goddamn plants are playing golf! -Margaret exclaimed.
-Or that sea turtle, Martinez -Charlie sure had it in for the old fuck - now he was accusing him of golf.
-¿Did you think he’d sink that low? -She axed the inimitable Charlie.
-Yeah, if he thought it would get him anywhere with anybody -Charlie replied, anxiously awaiting the invasion of the Fried Oleander Thought Police-. And if he thought he could get over on Mr. Martinez, well, ¡damn the torpedoes!
Charlie wasn’t bitter so much as he was brassed-off. Then again, he’s always brassed-off, and he wasn’t going to take any shit from a pussy like his father.
And in the middle of all this tumultuous hand-wringing, the plants were still Parcheesi’ing away, in every direction. The siblings could hear the plants’ breathing, their gaming, and their salty salutations. ¡And the fucking sacks of shit were reading the Bible! ¡And the Gnostic Gospels! ¡And “Robert’s Rules of Orders”!
-¡Oh, fuck, look! -Charlie exclaimed.
-I’m looking -His sister replied. She wasn’t looking, but don’t tell Charlie. Instead, she had all of her cards on the table, and she still had one up her sleeve:
She heard the entire reading audience... ¡gulp!
-¡Hey! ¡I’m trying to get over over here! -Margaret cried out.
-And I’m trying to perfect my José Martí impression for “Fidel Castro’s Star Search” -Charlie said. He was man-handling his penis beneath his tight-fitting, leopard-print pants, trying to come on the plants to see if that would get the author from writing crazy shit like this.
Seconds passed, which was usually enough for Charlie, but no luck.
Meanwhile, Margaret had taken all of her cards off the table and was nailing them to the bathroom door. She was sick and tired of both the author and the reading audience.
The loud and viscous gulps of the reading audience had sent Margaret over the proverbial edge, ¡and she was calling motherfuckers out!
-Okay, ¿when is he going to end this harrowing horse shit?
Charlie scratched his head. He knew: the air hung heavy with bull crap.
-I don’t think he’s gonna end it -Charlie responded.
-¿What if I take my cards down from the door and put ‘em back on the table? -Margaret offered.
The audience gulped anew.
Charlie had heard enough from the homies.
-I don’t get it... ¿What’s the intention of all this? ¿What is intended?
Hundreds of Martians tried to flee from the bathroom, ¡but they couldn’t get the door open! And their meters were expiring. But nothing was moving, including the narrative, and also including some big-ass dead-bolts on the bathroom door.
-I just don’t get the motivation -Charlie said for the second time, and - for the second time - making no sense.
-Well, continue babbling -Margaret said-. In fact, ¿¡why don’t you freaking say it twice?!
Speaking of saying it twice, hundreds of Martians - justifiably enraged by being dead-bolted into a bathroom with flesh-eating plants, while their parking meters expired - were pushing on the door with the ferocity of a hundred space aliens.
-The bathroom door’s moving a little -Margaret said, breathing with the Martians’s same ferocity.
Continuing the theme: one hundred “Mothers Against Martians” stormed the bathroom door, demanding the spacemen be let out, so that they - MAM - could crucify ‘em all. Then they changed their minds and began beheading the Martians one by one as they exited the bathroom.
Finally, with every Martian dead or dying, the MAM’s began organizing the body parts and sending them out via the bathroom escalator.
Charlie didn’t give two fucks for Martians. He stepped over the bodies and kicked a few.
And he laughed a horrible laugh when one dying Martianian said to him:
-At least (¡cough!) I don’t have to go to the fucking dentist.
-- on to chapter 18 or back to the Bathroom --