Chapter 5
| The Story | The Authors |
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| The skinny fellow in the red shirt with the white cap stood looking intently at the shrapnel. He called downshore while running wildly, his feet nearly tripping over themselves, "Skipper," he called, "Skipper!" "What is it little buddy?" came the reply. | |
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"Skipper! Skipper! I see Ginger," yelled Gilligan. "And she's tanning her boobies! Yee-haw!" "Now you just remember who's Captain, little fellow, and what it says on Page 6, Article 3a in Barnacle Bill the Sailor's Nautical Rule Book: "The Skipper always goeth first, and sloppy seconds to the First Mate are given." So saying, the porcine Skipper lifted up his grass skirt and prepared to board the Shrapnel. Gilligan giggled like a idiot, drooling and rubbing his hands together and hooting like a Howler-Monkey as he looked on in moronic anticipation. What in tarnation is going on here? gulped the shrapnel. Just then there came the dull thwack of a shovel blade coming down on Gilligan's misshapen skull, followed, as if in response, by a similar, if fleshier thwack of a second shovel blade braining the lusty Skipper. Both bodies fell to the ground, and in their place qstood Dastardly Dan and Injun Joe. "Good," said Dan; "Yum-tum-tum." "Lunch," replied Injun Joe, "Yummy-tummy-tummy." | |
| The shrapnel gulped hard and blinked. When it looked again the two men had returned to their original form looming over him like skid row bats. Dastardly Dan snickered menacingly and twirled the end of his haphazardly groomed and curving handlebar moustache. Injun Joe scowled, the deep tan accentuating the long fierce scar that etched its way down his left cheek. The shrapnel was a bit uneasy, but there was no place for it to turn. Dastardly Dan sneer grew wider as if it were going to attempting to completely bisect his head. "Well, Well, Well, my fine metal friend, so we meet again at last." The shrapnel shuddered. "There's no Penelope Purheart to save you here, my friend." continued Dastardly Dan in a voice so icy that the shrapnel could see little puffs of steamy halitosis emanating from his nostrils. Hatrid burned in his eyes and a deep throaty growl emerged from Injun Joe's chest like a muffled chainsaw. | |
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"Everything to these two," said Dan, "Rin Tin Tin," "Became a mirage of Ginger," said Injun Joe, "Rinny Tinny Tinny." "So we decided," they sang out in unison, "That the time had come to eat them!" They paused for a moment as if to measure the Shrapnel's house, so very much like two children looking to an elder for approval. The Shrapnel nodded. "So we hope," they continued, "That you will consent to be our Guest of Honor at this important luncheon on this most hallowed of days...?" "And what day might that be?" asked the Shrapnel. | |
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"The pewfect day fow a nutwitious wepast of wascawwy wabbit!" spake Dastardly Dan and Injun Joe in their best (Seidel-trained) tandem, as they set about trussing up Gilligan and the Skipper on long wooden spits. This done, the fire was stoked to a roaring blaze. Apples were inserted into the mouths of Gilligan and the Skipper, carrots into their ears, sliced onions beneath their scaly armpits, and turnips and celery-hearts into their bottoms. When the presumed-dead Skipper emitted a groan, Injun Joe bashed him over the skull once more with the shovel. The force of the impact was such that the apple popped out of Skipper's mouth and rolled off a dense thicket of bamboo. "Damn it all, Joe, that was the last of the Granny Smiths," cursed Dastardly Dan, sweating up on his step-ladder, from whose heights he was basting the bound and garlic-infus'd Gilligan, who responded to the basting with hot, greasy pops. "Now get in there and retrieve it! And think, next time you go hitting somebody over the head with a shovel." "Fine -- next time I'll let you be the one to finish him off, goddamn know-it-all," muttered Joe, grabbing his machete and heading off into the bamboo. He never knew what hit him when the bizarre flying object came hurlting through the air and smacked him right in the kisser... Consciousness fled him as he fell to the forest floor with the sticky dregs of the banana-creme pie running and gobbeting down his front. "Drats," he swore inwardly; "Foiled again!" | |
| But this was no time for curses, the natives had returned and they were thursting for blood. Injun Joe sprang into life screaming at Dan to prepare for the imminent attack. "They're back!" he cried. "The treehouse! Get the treehouse ready!" Dastardly Dan unwillingly abandoned the nicely browning Gilligan to his fate and rushed for the rope ladder to their treetop fortress carefully threading his way through the many elaborate boobytraps that he and Injun Joe had set up along its path. Injun joe his eyes white with fear barrelled along behind knowing full well the fate that awaited him if he didn't make the safety of the treehouse in time. It is said that all of our deepest and darkest earthly fears emanate from a promordial undermind that links us with realities from the lives of our distant ancestors and these Stone Age natives bore proof to this. An ancient tribe they were, long cut off from the continent and forgotten for millenia, living totally unscathed by contact with anything that might be thought of as "civilization". They were the Bozoti. Their wide round faces painted for raiding in white with hideous grins and hair dyed orange and flaming red with compounds made by grinding the pulp of secret jungle plants. Their noses (the concealer of the soul in the Bozoti belief system) protected by sea snail shells painted bright red. They streaked through the undergrowth and everywhere Dastardly Dan and Injun Joe looked about them they could see flashes of their blue and white polka-dotted war costumes moving behind the protective cover of the foliage. Injun Joe tried desperately not to breathe for fear of accidentally ingesting some of the banana creme into his system as it oozed down his face. He had seen the grotesque tarentella that the poison in it caused when the Bozoti had caught Fagan off guard not long after they had been marooned. It had taken him nearly six hours to die as he laughed and giggled and twisted his way to an agonizing death. Injun Joe was not ready to join him yet. | |
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Foooooooooooooooosh! went the next deadly pie as it shot through the macaw-spangled jungle. Injun Joe and Dastardly Dan ducked with the sure, terrified reflexes of Westchester county deer. The pie exploded against the massive trunk of an ancient tree with a resounding splat! Injun Joe felt a chill run up his spine and sniffed the air, and found, with a shudder, that indeed his nose had not failed him as a bearer of bad news. He gulped. Dan nearly tripped over a huge root as he turned around to glean the source of Injun Joe's distress as they ran. He shot him a nervous, questioning look. "What in Goshen is it, Joe?" "We're goners, Dan -- they're shooting coconut creme now." | |
| "Bwuuuuuugh!" Vashondra let out a volcanic belch as she wiped the coconut creme off the corner of her mouth. "Damn, girl!" said Bitzy waving away the stench. "Get yourself some Pepto Bismol." "And while you're at it," added Lydia. "Get yourself to a Weight Watchers meeting. Girl, you have let yourself go!" Vashondra scratched herself and belched again, rattling the windows. "I know," she sobbed. "I just don't know what's gotten into me." | |
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Vashondra's face had turned a livid shade of purple. "S-stand back!" she sputtered at the others. "I'm a gonna blow!" | |
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Meanwhile, as Dastardly Dan and Injun Joe dodged and ducked the deadly barrage of banana and coconut creme pies, and Gilligan woke up screaming to find his spit-roasted limbs being devoured from his still-somehow-living body by the island natives (several of whom were having a food-fight with the bloody chunks of what remained of the Skipper's brain), and fell away into a second dead feint (which was lucky for him, because his skull would be the next they opened, poor Little Guy) suddenly the earth began to shake. "Woo-boola e-boli bonga," [trans: Holy fucking shit!] cried the natives, who up to that moment had been squabbling over Gilligan's succulent temporal lobe. They tossed the tiny thing back into the smoldering coals, leapt to their feet and dispersed to the four winds. Upstairs/outside, Vashondra's puffed countenance sped through a kaleidoscope of ever-changing but distinctly unnatural hues. Her vast stomach and bosom heaved rhythmically and she prepared to expectorate volcanically. Her friends cowered at the far end of the room, not daring to look, but -- knowing how momentously necessary this spell of upchucking was to be, chant-sang softly that venerable song of their bygone days in Girl Scout camp: Co-met -- It makes your mouth Turn Green Co-met -- It tastes like gas-o-line Co-met It makes you Vo-mit It makes you Vo-mit And vo-mit Some more... | |