Chapter 7
| The Story | The Authors |
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| "Whah, I do declay-uh!" declared Boar. "Roguh Weavuh! We was wondrin'
what evuh became of yuh. Whay-uh've yuh been ol' horse?" "Well, it's long story but I'll be (mercifully) brief. I was shanghai'd to Death Valley where I was made to perform unspeakable sexual acts with a twenty mule team and a box of Borax, during which I lost my right hand." And Roger held up a gauze encased stump for all to see. "It was horrifying. Horrifying, I say! Then as my captor was taking me to New Jersey we were stopped by Gurn Blansten and his thugs and I was taken before Cardinal Richelieu where I was forced to denounce my faith in favor of catholicism and rat out all my friends." Roger buried his face in his hand and fell to sobbing piteously. "God, I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition." he cried. "The-uh, the-uh," Boar said comfortingly. "Nobody does." Roger composed himself and continued. "Anyway, after confessing, I was beaten mercilessly and thrown into this cell. I don't even know how long I've been here." "Well, considerin' that we'uh all still hungovuh, it appea-uhs to have only been a day." But before they all realized that it would take at least 3 or 4 days to drive to Death Valley from New York, Roger noticed that Anita was missing from the group. "Where's Anita?" he asked frantically. "We
didn't want to tell you | |
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Meanwhile, Jake, strapped immobile in a dentist's chair, endured the excruciating agony of an undeflatable erection within the spiked confines of the Iron Codpiece while the classics of erotic and pornographic film were shown on multiple screens before him. His eyelids were kept open ala Malcolm DcDowell's 'treatment' in A Clockwork Orange (said film being, in fact a key source of inspiration for the terrible dream with which the comatose, masochistic Jake was toruring himself)... Back in the projectionist's booth, trusty Mr. Tickles chuckled to himself at Jake's agonies and took full advantage of the Tooth Bitch's momentary absence to kick back in his chair, hoist his feet up, and enjoy a stale Macanudo. Cigar smoke coiled through the beams from the projectors, shot through with light and illuminated dust-motes. On-screen, Debbie did Dallas, the Pom-Pom Girls got their revenge by spiking the school water supply with LSD, while the aforementioned Malcom McDowell, now the Roman Emperor Caligula, hosted incomprehensible orgies. Jake drooled and moaned, shaking his head back and forth like an idiot, repeating "No no no no no" like the useless mantra it was to him... | |
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"Wait a minute," said Roger. "This story makes no sense. First Janice
is going to destroy the world, then the tooth bitch, and now the
spanish inquisition! What are we supposed to stop first?"
"Oh no," said the cat in the hat "Your question has made it clear to me, This is all one big conspiracy! We've got to stop them all at once Or else we'll fail worse than a dunce! "Oh dear," said Roger. He understood but somehow he was more confused than ever! | |
| "I'm certainly confused," said Luntho who suddenly appeared standing sideways in a door that probably wasn't there a few short moments ago. Luntho existed between dimensions and when things got really confusing he would pop in and confuse things even more. "Well, Roger, get used to me I'm here for a while and I'm sticking with you through thick and thin until another dimension becomes more confusing than this one." | |
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...but Luntho was yet another of the ten thousand shadowy figures
who stalked Jake's endless wet dream in grimy raincoats, exposing
themselves to virtuous young ladies on the subway platforms of Jake's
deepest desires. Many of them resembled his father, but (as with
most of us) it would probably have taken a hypnotist to get that
sort of truth out of poor Jake. In a very different corner of the reality which was slowly but surely being taken over by Jake's dream, however, similar events were transpiring between Cardinal Richelieu and Roger's own true ex-girlfriend Anita, who as we find her is being subjected to a vigorous interrogation by the Cardinal, a trio of beady-eyed, tongueless Jesuits, and a gleaming new Mach XXV Iron Sausage. | |
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...Or so thrashed about Jake's thoughts as he tried toleave his body
behind and retreat to the safety of his back brain.(Turning from
"Cockwork Orange" into "Brazil" in the matter of a few paragraphs) The pain was becoming excrutiatingly exquisite. In a sense jake was becoming aware of heretofore squelched chunks of sexuality that had been with him all along. The pain was becoming liberating, freeing him from all previous conceptions of pleasure and comfort. The Tooth Bitch smiled low to herself. It had not been in vain. | |
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"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" screamed Jake in his dream as Marilyn Chambers went behind the Green Door, never to return, and the Tooth Bitch tightened the straps on the codpiece; "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh" shrieked Anita as a cackling Cardinal Richelieu turned the gastroenterometers on the Iron Sausage from 6 to 8; The funny thing was, they were screaming in tune with one another. Or maybe it was not so funny after all. But there must have been something to it, because it was shortly thereafter that (a) the first in a series of glucose IV bottles hanging over Jake's hospital bed exploded; (b) the first in a series of deep cracks appeared in the wall of the cell containing Roger, Boar, the Cat in the Hat, and the two Things, and (c) an inordinate number of mermaid-sightings, in the East River, the Harlem River, and the lower Hudson, were phoned in to New York City newspapers. | |
| Lemon Curry!? | |
| "Yes, precisely!" hissed the Cardinal to Gurn, "Lemon Curry. Bring me at least a gallon of it. And make sure it's extra spicy." He turned back to the naked and bound Anita. "Now my pet, the fun really begins. Jake's coma dreams are truly reaching a fever pitch, and sometime in the next twelve hours the tiny membrane that holds his dream back from the rest of your Puritanical reality will begin to tear and there will be no turning back. Every ounce of pent up teenage hormones he's kept locked deep within the Iron Sausage that constitutes his tortured Libido will be unleashed like a hydrant. The very foundations of the Earth's crust will shake and crumble amidst the engulfing simultaneous orgasm of every creature living." And he let loose a maniacal laugh that echoed through the caverns. | |
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Roger, Boar, and the Seuss Trio listened to the Cardinal's maniacal
laugh reverberate throughout the cavern as they inspected the crack
that had opened up in the wall of their cell. As the chilling sound
faded, the group felt a collective sense of urgency. It was the
Things that came up with an escape plan.
"The situation looks pretty black
"Have no misgiving," And with that the two things scurried into the crack in the wall. | |
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It led to a passageway that ran behind the cellblock. With a quick
glance left and right the Things slipped out and paused. Left or right Or right and left which way to go to complete our quest To unlock the door our friends to free I hear a noise ! Flee! Flee! Flee! heavy footsteps resounded down the corridor. The Things slipped back into the crack just in time to watch Gurn and one of his hentchmen stomp past bearing two overflowing buckets of some sort of yellow viscous substance. | |
| Back in the interrogation chamber, Cardinal Richelieu sniffed the air with relish. "Aaaaaah, lemon curry! My absolute favorite! And soon it will be your favorite, too, my dear Anita, for you shall know nothing else in the world but the fiery, tangy delights of lemon curry! Clogging every orifice! Burning every pore! Stinging every square inch of your lovely pale epidermis with the ferocity of ten thousand jellyfish, twenty thousand nettles, a million pinches of the Morton Salt girl's salt on a trillion open wounds, quivering in agaony against the chill air emanating from my de-lovely new Iron Sausage..." The Cardinal hugged himself with delight, and continued to do so, even after Anita's spitefully hawked and spat loogie hit him square-on in his thin, vulturelike countenance... | |
| The cardinal was about to dunk Anita in the lemon curry when suddenly the Fictional Five appeared!!! | |
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Suddenly Mr. Tickles came and screwed the evil remote control's brains
out. He had vowed to screw the brains out of the next thing that
wrote about the Fictional Five. The Fictional Five went away. Without
brains the evil remote control could not work. Janice suddenly walked
out of nowhere in a daze. "What happened? Where am I?" Then she suddenly
figured it all out and went wherever the Fictional Five had gone,
where she was greeted by there enthusiastic cheers.
Anita sighed. Now she was free to focus on her bigger problems, like the sulphuric acid the Cardinal was putting in the lemon curry... | |
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Cardinal Riechlieu paused. "No."he said to himnself, "No acid, it
ruins the flavor." and with a childish giggle he began to slather
Anita with the lemon curry in big jammy smears. Meanwhile Thing One and Thing Two scurried down the corridor and trying to keep to the shadows. The caverns were a vast labyrinth of passages that strayed about like Boston street maps and never ending up in the same direction they began with. Keep your bearings On the cell Which way? Which way? I can't tell This way now And that way next Which way to go I'm quite perplexed But find it we must And then unlock it Whatever you do Don't lose that wocket! Admonished Thing One to Two in a hoarse whisper as they rounded another hairpin turn in the cave. In front of them a large wooden door bound with iron and from within the sound of slightly merrier hentchmen at their mess. | |
| At that very moment, Anita, slathered in big jammy smears of lemon curry, burst through the door at the other end of the corridoor. Startled by the sight of Thing One and Thing Two hurtling towards her, her squeal turned to one of fright rather than the laughter which had issued forth only moments before. | |
| Thing one and Thing Two came up and grabbed her and carried her off to the forest accross the city. They tied her up and left her sitting in a tree branch telling her to wait there for the three livered lily-wart. | |
| But it turned out that they had taken a wrong turn and they were really back in Cardinal Richeleau's room. | |
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...The spacious inner sanctum of the Grand Inquisitor himself, Cardinal Richelieu... Dark mahogany the color of dried blood dominated the room's uncharacteristically Spartan furnishings, a table strewn with papers and inkwells, a squat thronelike armchair, an immense canopy bed which smelled as if its sheets had not been washed in years, and a lectern bearing the great weight of an open, leatherbound, brass-hasped first edition of the dreaded Malleus Maleficarum, or "Hammer of Witchcraft," that most popular tome to which no memeber-in-good-standing of the Inquisition was complete without... | |
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Things One and Two bent forwards and read:
"But if, neither by threats nor by promises such
as these, the witch can be induced to speak the truth, then the jailers
must carry out the sentence, and torture the prisoner according to
the accepted methods, with more or less of severity as the delinquent's
crime may demand. And, while he is being tortured, he must be questioned
on the articles of accusation, and this frequently and persistently,
beginning with the lighter charges-for he will more readily confess
the lighter than the heavier. And, while this is being done, the
notary must write down everything in his record of the trial - how
the prisoner is tortured, on what points he is
questioned and how he answers.
"If the prisoner will not confess the truth satisfactorily, other
sorts of tortures must be placed before him, with the statement that
unless he will confess the truth, he must endure these also. But,
if not even thus he can be brought into terror and to the truth,
then the next day or the next but one is to be set for a continuation
of the tortures…"
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Thing One looked at Thing Two:
I think that this does not portend To which Thing Two replied with rare economy of words:
By the prickly pricking of my nape: And so they did, with the mutely curried Anita in tow, great wafts of turmeric and coriandor scenting her wake... Meanwhile, back in Jake's unending nightmare, the Tooth Bitch was having one foul day, and Jake and the hapless Mr. Tickles were, of course, being made to pay for it in spades. | |
| The Toothbitch was in the middle of inflicting unspeakable tortures (to her own immense pleasure) on the hapless and witless Jake and Mr. Tickles. Their howls of mortal agony were suddenly interrupted when a large material vortex opened up in the wall before them and out of it tumbled ol' Doc Smack. | |
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Ah, yes, Dr. Smack, that rake, that old goat! Cartoon stars whirled
about his wooly grey head... The years had not been kind to him,
the AMA had revoked his right to practice, and the benevolent white
lab-smock and gleaming caduceus had been replaced by greasy checked
pants and the epitomal dirty-old-man raincoat (Burberry or London
Fog, at least 20 years old and 3 three sizes too large; identifying
characteristics become more subtly impossoble to pin down after that...)
What his own ruination of his former self hadn't managed to corrupt and pervert, Jake's nightmare had taken care of... A thin spigot of drool extended from the Doctor's bewhiskered maw, wound in and among the fleshy ruts of his jowls, and ended in a growing wet patch on the front of his wine-stained T-shirt. When he saw the Tooth Bitch, his rheumed eyes comprehended only the female form, at which sight the charred circuitry and tinkertoy mechanicistics of his brain began to perform the only real task they were still capable of performing (years of irresponsibly glugging Woolite'll do it to you; so watch out, kids...) — In otherwords, he opened his filthy raincoat and flashed the Tooth Bitch. | |
| The tooth bitch gaped, her crudley painted red mouth gaping open, revealing no teeth. | |
| Her mouth transformed and melted into a smile, she laughed, a deep, dirty, grunting sound, and slowley began to advance towards Jake. She swung her hips as seductivly as she could, and the fat which hung off her stomach roiled and swung with them. Jake felt sick, but he knew what needed to be done. He had to escape this evil, he could not be a sex slave any longer. The Tooth Bitches grotesquely voluptuous body slid closer. Jake closed his eyes and he could feel the puffs of sulphourous breath as she stopped directly infront of him. With strength he did not know he possessed, he kicked out his legs and hit her in the head. She fell to the ground unconscious. With his toes he poked at her body and removed the knife she carried around her waist. Painstakingly he lifted it to his mouth (thank God he had been in gymnastics when he was a child) and then proceeded to cut the bonds that held him. He was free! He tied his ancient raincoat together again and ran out of the Tooth Bitches sex prison after giving the bag herself one final kick. He giggled as he ran. | |
| It was not only gymnastics which had helped him with is bodily contortions handling the knife away from the limp body of his captor. Jake was exceedingly fond of yoga. He used it to keep his body limber. His mind in shape. And his soul at peace. | |
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Only a mind as demented as Jake's could have convinced itself of a
lie of such grandiose proportions... Vanquish the Tooth Bitch? Why,
a girl might as well go to war with her own heart! Lifting her bruised self from the glass-strewn sidewalk of Jake's nightmares, the Tooth Bitch brushed dust and gravel from her vinyl miniskirt, sighed at yet another run in her nylons, and fingered the switchblade in the pocket of her leather jacket. Jake. Oh Jale. First she was gonna bitch-slap that nasty, naughty boy so hard his poor Momma would feel it! And then she was gonna remove the source of all these problems from inbetween Jake's skinny white legs. The Lord knew, she had tried, she had sweated over the boy's re-education, but Jake — well, some dogs are just born bad, as her Granny used to say. Ain't nothing to but but put them out of yours an' mine an' God's an' everyone's misery... | |
| So through the underground passageway Jake ran giggling. The Toothbitch ran after Jake, screaching and waving a cat o' nine tails. Dr. Smack ran after the Toothbitch, laughing maniacally and flapping his raincoat. Mr. Tickles ran after Dr. Smack, dragging the Iron Sausage with him. The vortex closed itself quietly. Meanwhile, Thing One and Thing Two had led Anita, all crusty with dried lemon curry sauce, to the the cell where Roger, the Cat Without a Hat and Old Mr. Boar were still awaiting a rescue. And just when you thought you could not keep track of anymore characters, who should show up out of the blue but that toothless old psycho hillbilly, Grandma Pearl! | |
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Now... Lest the dear Reader (that's you, sweetums) suspect us of so overwhelmingly cold and savage an act as the forgetting of Anita, let us return to her predicament. Our shapely heroine stands currently beneath a Mr. Neptune brand custom showerhead, scrubbing vigorously away at every squasre surface inch of her well-tanned epidermis, as the last of the deadly lemon curry swirls harmlessly away down the drain. Outside the bathroom she's so conveniently found (it's Cardinal Richelieu's private bathroom, of course, replete with a bidet full of holy water), that tender emembrane, i.e. the meningile wall between reality and Jake's nightmare (in all it's ill-directed lust) has finally been rent in twain... Dirty old men in raincoats stalk the underground passageways of Inquisition Central, goosing altar boys and exposing themselves to pious nuns... Persons old and young find new sets and unimaginable combinations of sexual organs sprouting randomly from all over their bodies, the backs of their heads, the crooks of their knees, the cavernous interiors of the what used to be nostrils, between their toes even... And with this bounty of new equipment, so to speak, comes the urge to learn how to use it, which takes practice, lots and oodles of practice, and so.... And so it is amidst the ensuing orgy that a breathless Jake burst in on Anita as she was towelling herself off after her shower. | |
| The funny thing about Anita was that she had alot of strange little phobias and anxieties. One of her worst fears was to be walked in on while towelling off after a shower. So profound was her fear that she kept a twelve gauge shot gun on a gun rack near the shower. When the uncouth and unsuspecting Jake burst in on her, Anita had grabbed the gun and shot Jake dead before she even realized who he was. | |
| She walked towards him crying as she came her eyes blood shot red she touched his arm hoping he would awake but he lay there dead his flesh white as a ghost. | |
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Jake felt himself leave his body and hover over it, every detail of
the room crystaline in its brilliance. He could hear the last gurgle
of the last few drops of lemon curry infused water slither down the
gold plated drain. Every uneven grain of the tile. The play of the
light from the cherub sconces on the sink fixtures. The weave of
the fabric of Cardinal Riechlieu's majestic purple bathrobe hanging
on the door by a nail from the True Cross. He could make out every
tiny hair and pore on Anita's naked back as she cautiously examined
his blasted carcass. Carcass? YIKES!!! It was then that Jake began to become aware of his own weightlessness. The ethereal nature of his being. He sent careful tendrils of his consciousness out to the places where his body had been and came up empty. He was free. He was free from his mortal bonds. Unleashed from his prison of flesh. He could do anything now. With a quick exertion of his will he passed right through the door and out into hallway. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! Jake shot himself through the walls of the caverns. Without any effort at all he could see all and be everywhere at once. And so Jake once again returned to the Cardinal's private bath. Anita was sitting on the floor leaning on the bidet. She was crying. A thick pool of hardening blood was forming out from underneath the corpse that had once encased and entrapped him. He was free. Anita was sad. He wanted to comfort her. Anita was crying. Anita was still naked. Every heaving sorrowful sob caused the pert little nipples of Anita's breasts to quiver slightly. In his hyperaware state Jake could feel every tear as it slid from Anita's cheek to her belly and down to tropics of his still as yet unfulfilled desires. The week spent under the Tooth Bitch's nefarious tutelege had not been utterly in vain. And there was still onething he needed to do before he shuffled off this mortal plane and into the light. He grinned inwardly. Anita was unclothed and unaware. He had no body for her to resist. This has possibilities he thought. Pulling his consciousness up to its full height Succubus Jake drew himself back to pounce on his helpless prey. Without a tongue, without a voice he threw up a hearty laugh and sprung on Anita. Only to misjudge the distance and his own lack of corporealness to pass through Anita, the imported Italian tile and the floor itself. | |
| Downward he flew. | |
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Back in the Chronic ward of the county hospital, the comatose lump of Jake's corporeal body, inactive for two decades, now suddenly twitched and stiffened, his atrophied wooden arms tearing away the sheets, rvealing his naked, tumuscent body, which began ejaculating great gobs of jism all over the hspital room, then emit one final, heartrending grrrooooan before the last life fell away from it and his heartbeat flatlined on the cardiac oscilloscope... | |
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...and the rip in the fabric of reality was once again closed. "Drat!" cursed some despotic space-tyrant, somewhere, gvuuming his kaunji kaunji in brnayajm-vjzzzz, having massed an army to invade our own universe through the hole in the space-time continuum caused by Jake's autoerotic despair. "If it weren't for those meddling kids..."
...Those meddling kids... While the rest of the world scratched
its head, picked itself up off the ground, looked around bewilderedly
for its clothing, and scurried home in shame and terror, looking
at the ground — but what had become of our heroes? The Cat in the
Hat and Old Mister Boar and Roger Weaver, still trying to escape
from their subterannean dungeon; Things One and Two, useless and
lost without their beloved master the Cat (rather like the linguists'
favorite play, The Two Dots of an Umlaut In Search of a Letter
to Modify); and Anita... | |
| standing in the golden bathroom wrapped in the Cardinal's robe watching Jake's corpse slowly dissolve with hiss and small cloud of green vapor. | |
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Things and One and Two finally found the cell where Roger, the Cat
and Mr. Boar were imprisoned. When they opened the cell door,
the things found the prisoners within greatly changed. In order
to survive in their subterranean prison, Roger, the Cat and Mr. Boar
had to drink from a puddle of polluted cave water. "Lookee there!" shouted Mr. Tickles with glee. "They've all got five asses!" "Why, yes. They are perfect creatures now." said the Toothbitch,who, having lost her tool of destruction (namely Jake), decided to quit the world domination business and move the whole group (Roger, Cat, Boar, both Things and Mr. Tickles) down to Jamaica where they could live out their lives in total ecstasy. Anita decided, after having murdered a man, to face her fear head on and conquer it. She now works three nights a week dancing topless at the Wild Goose on Century Blvd. in L.A. As for Cardinal Richelieu, he was excommunicated from the church and was stricken with gonohrea and never heard from again. | |
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