Read Lick Your Neighbor Online
Authors: Chris Genoa
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Alternative Histories (Fiction), #Science Fiction, #United States, #Humorous, #Massachusetts, #Extraterrestrial Beings, #Humorous Stories, #Comedy, #Thanksgiving Day, #thanksgiving, #Turkeys, #clown, #ninja, #Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony), #Pilgrims
Lick Your Neighbor (29 page)
17
Giving Thanks
Uncle Pookie sat at Dale’s dining room table peering closely at a steak knife. When he was satisfied that it was clean, he put the knife down and picked up his wine glass and held it up to the light. A grin spread across his face as the light illuminated a thumbprint on the rim of the glass.
“Waiter! Waiter!” he shouted, snapping his fingers.
Randy came stomping out from Dale’s kitchen. He was also sporting a shiny new black eye. Fist and jaw clenched, he walked over to the table. “What is it this time?”
“This glass is filthy. It’s
disgusting
. Do you really
expect me to drink out of this? I might as well drink out of a toilet filled with diarrhea.”
“It looks fine to me.”
“Fine? You call that fine? Do you not see the smudge? It’s the size of your ass. Huge. Do you know what a smudge is? It’s residue. Just listen to that word.
Residue
. It makes me nauseated just saying it. I don’t want someone’s else’s smelly skin oils on something that’s going to touch my lips. The same lips, sir, that I use to kiss my mother.”
“Now listen here, you little piece of shit,” Randy said, “I’m getting close, real close, to shoving that glass up your lily white asshole.”
“Ah ah ah. That doesn’t sound like five-star service to me. The perfect spleen of Saint Quadragesimus would not be pleased.”
Randy snatched the glass out of Pookie’s hand and stomped back to the kitchen. Pookie looked across the table and honked his red nose at Tommy, who was happily munching on a dinner roll.
Silas chimed in from Pookie’s right. “Serves that bastard son of mine right. What kind of a man loses a fight to a clown? Thought I raised him better than that.”
“A clown once stole my virginity, and he has yet to return it,” Judy said. She sat next to Officer Gilly, her eyes were glassy and there was a small speck of foamy spit that had taken up permanent residence on the corner of her mouth.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Pookie said to Silas. “Us clowns are a proud, noble race. Over the course of history many great men have fallen at our hands. Like my father, the late, great Captain Boom Boom Baggy Britches always said, ‘Cross a clown, time to frown.’”
Mr. Feathers raised an eyebrow as Pookie grabbed a dinner roll and tore a chunk off with his teeth. Feathers watched the clown gnash away like a wolverine before taking out a small, worn notebook and quickly writing down Captain Boom Boom’s advice. As Feathers wrote, Shi De Qian’s head materialized on the page, in the form of a pencil sketch. Shi looked over at the words Feathers wrote and frowned.
“Actually,” Shi said, “I believe the saying goes ‘Cross a clown, his panties turn brown.’”
Pookie leaned over, peering at the page. “What was that?”
Feathers slammed the notebook shut. A muffled “Ow!” was heard. “Nothing,” Feathers said.
In the kitchen, Randy went over to the sink and took off one of his shoes and socks. He poured a tiny dot of soap onto the sock, added some water, and then went about vigorously scrubbing Pookie’s glass.
“What are you doing?” Dale turned from where he was carefully placing a small handful of miniature marshmallows on top of a casserole dish filled with candied yams. He was trying to arrange the marshmallows so that they looked like a portrait of Ben Franklin flying a kite, and he was damn close to nailing it.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m washing that bastard clown’s glass with my sock.”
“You lost fair and square, Randy.”
“I know.”
“To a clown.”
“I know.”
“The least you can do is honor your bet with some dignity.”
“I am honoring it. Because I am a proud man. A man of dignity and respect. But if bozo asks me to re-wash one more thing I’m going to use my soiled underwear to do so.”
Andie came in from the backyard wearing a full-body silver fireproof suit and goggles. In her hands was a perfectly golden brown deep-fried turkey on a large metal skewer.
She flipped off her goggles and grinned. “This bitch is cooked! Let’s eat!”
Dale frowned and shook his head.
“You’re still not upset about the deep frying, are you?” Andie asked.
“No it’s not that. It’s everything else that happened. I’m not really in the mood for celebrating the Pilgrims right now.”
“Can’t you just forget all that for once? You’re about to sit down to a delicious meal with your family. Celebrate that. Celebrate being with the people you love. It’s called Thanksgiving, Dale, and you can give thanks to whoever or whatever you want. Who cares about what happened three-hundred years ago? What the hell does all that nonsense have to do with us and with this meal?”
“But it’s who I came from, Andie. If my ancestors were evil, what does that make me?”
“They weren’t evil, Dale. They were people just like you and me. They were good and bad. They were courageous and terrified. They were industrious and arrogant. They were wise and they were…”
“Dewberries,” Randy said.
“Yeah,” Andie agreed, “they were dewberries.”
Dale smirked. “I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I am.” Andie kissed Dale on the cheek and then placed the turkey onto a platter on the kitchen table. “I’m going upstairs to change out of this fire suit. Can you two manage putting the food out by yourselves?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. And don’t forget the custard cream sauce and caramelized bacon sprinkles for the bread pudding!”
As Andie darted out of the kitchen, from the dining room Pookie called out, “Waiter! Oh, Waiter! These dinner rolls are too hot! They’re damaging my precious taste buds! I need you to blow on them! Waiter!”
Randy grabbed the electric knife from the counter. “That clown’s head is coming off.”
“Wait, take the turkey in with you,” Dale said. “I know it’s silly but I don’t want to be alone with that thing.”
As Randy left the kitchen with the turkey and knife, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“
Hello, Mr. Bradford?”
“Speaking.”
“Mr. Alden, this is Officer Ainsworth of the Duxbury Police
.”
“Oh, hello, Officer. What can I do for you?”
“
I don’t mean to interrupt your supper, but we just wanted to let you know that Mr. Eberly has disappeared.”
“Oh God. How?”
“Not sure. He was in the hospital, unconscious, with two officers standing guard at the door. A nurse came out and said that his heart had stopped beating. But when the doctor got there, Eberly was gone. It was like he just vanished. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’m sure he’ll turn up. Anyway, I also wanted to let you know that there won’t be any charges against Mr. Tinker. We checked and there’s an old state law that says that a catapult is a reasonable response to a firearm. Who knew.”
“Well that’s good to know. What about the uh, farmers?”
“They’re all on their way down to Plymouth.”
“Plymouth? Why?”
“Psychiatric evaluation at Jordan Hospital. Hopefully those doctors will be able to convince those kooks that they aren’t really pilgrims. Oh and one more thing. It turns out that those four guys with the beaks must have been wearing some kind of masks.”
“Really?”
“Yep. On my way to call you, I stopped by to check in on them in their cell. And wouldn’t you know it, they all had normal human mouths. But they sure were acting funny. All of them were touching each others lips and teeth with their fingers as if they’d never seen a person’s mouth before. Bunch of wackadoos. Anyway, I figure they must have flushed their masks and contact lenses down the toilet when we weren’t looking. It’s just like my father always said, ‘Never believe a damn thing.’”
“That’s some sound advice.”
“Ain’t it though? All right then, just thought you should know what’s going on. We’ll find Eberly soon enough and then you won’t have to worry about any more of this turkey business ever again.”
“Thank God for—”
The sound of scraping furniture on the floor and people screaming exploded from the dining room.
“Mr. Alden? Mr. Alden? Is everything okay? I thought I heard screaming? Mr. Alden?”
Dale ran into the room and saw everyone standing as far away from the table as they could get. Tommy was holding onto Andie and Silas, Judy was clinging to Gilly, and Pookie and Randy were clutching each other. Feathers was the only one who still sat at the table, his eyes wide.
Dale’s gaze quickly settled on the thing everyone was trying to get away from. Curled up in the fetal position on top of the serving platter was a golden brown, perfectly cooked, naked, headless, body of a Native American woman.
Dale walked over to the dining room window and opened it to let some fresh air in. A chorus of horrified screams could be heard coming from almost every house in the neighborhood.
Andie joined Dale at the window. They listened to the screams of their neighbors for a moment before turning to each other. Both of their mouths opened, but no words came out. They stood there stunned like that until Tommy tugged on Dale’s sleeve.
Tommy looked up at his parents with tears forming in his bright, brown eyes.
“We can still eat the bread pudding, right?”
The End
About the Author
Chris Genoa is the author of
Foop!
He lives in Brooklyn, NY.