Transcripts

You can find transcripts of all the episodes below:

E01: Bethany Muerte

Narrator

On Tuesday, April 14th, 2009, Delilah Gray walked into a restaurant, ordered a falafel clean and dirty, and entered a secret back room with a red leather briefcase, but that’s beside the point right now. Similarly, this is not the story of a man with a duck’s penis. He is a normal man, well built and handsome, with a big head of hair and fabulous beard, in fact – the only different thing about him is that he has the penis of a duck! But as I said, that’s his story and not ours. 

Let’s regroup. 

It’s raining a mean green rain: the kind that only falls in the movies. After an extended walk through the lingering delusion zone, Gus empties his pockets on the table: a scrunched up brown paper bag, a candy wrapper, a sandwich crust, an empty coffee cup. His phone, wallet, and keys are nowhere to be found. Shit! So many dumpsters on the way. 

He’s been distracted. It's not every day a severed head falls at your feet on the sidewalk at noon. (thud/squelch) 

It has only happened to him twice before, though the first was at a quarter of 12, and the other was only half a head, and not the left or right, in case you were wondering, but the top: everything above the bridge of the nose, dead eyes frozen in a lazy wink. But today’s severed head is different. There’s something amiss about it, besides a body, of course.

But let’s start with a casual smattering of facts. His name is Gus Tulip, though not so long ago it was Jensen Cake, and before that, Rufus Nails, and it was once Digger Mett ... But that’s not important. So long as you remember that his name is Gus Tulip and he’s a dick  –  a private dick! 

Gus just took on a new case, and it’s a doozy. Couple days back, or was it six, man by the name of Dops Fabulon stops by the office with his syphilitic cat. He walks as if he’s riding a tiny bicycle - Fabulon, that is, and not the cat. He owns several self-service and drop off launderettes and there are rumors it’s mainly for the worn panty sniffing opportunities. 

What we know about him for a fact, is that when he was 28, he bit off his own finger by accident, thinking it was a French fry, and that he actually has a vomitorium in his house, like the Romans used to have, and uses it often, you know, to purge after binging. Oh, he also makes guests pay to use his bathroom, like in European train stations. He has an old woman with a perm collect 50 cents at the door. 

Anyway, Dops Fabulon spins one hell of a yarn…

Dops Fabulon

She won’t eat meat unless she kills it herself, so I had to keep sending her out back to the chicken coop with my cricket bat. She ended up staying with me for over a week, just till she could get her papers in order, and she could rejoin her sister in Italy for their great aunt’s funeral. In all that time, she only ever let me kiss her on the cheek, but to within a centimeter of her mouth, and with full on, sloppy tongue, for a good 30 seconds. Marvelous times, yes. Marvelous!

When her documents came through, I personally drove her to the airport and put her on a plane with fond farewells and a promise to visit her in Naples over the summer for authentic pizza and multiple pick pocket violations in the narrow shaded streets, but the very next day I saw her going by in a bus, just two blocks from my place, with a different hairstyle and different colored eyes, but it was her alright. The following day, I saw her again at my local café, through the window, eating escargot on the terrace, but by the time I got out there she was gone – I admit, I did stop for a Pimm’s cup and round of croquet on the way. 

The day thereafter, I spotted her once more, on the CCTV of the sidewalk outside my flagship launderette, wearing a clown costume and heels, smoking and swigging wine from the bottle. She put the butt out on her tongue! Yes, she was in disguise, but it was definitely her. I can declare this for a fact, even though, around this time, I confess, I was dosing regularly with 5MEO DMT. But it was assuredly her each time, or if not her, it was certainly she. 

Now, even though this was all most curious, I would have thought little of it, but the very next day I went for my usual mediocre scones and sausage with under seasoned gravy at my local bistro. I usually get my own booth, but this time I was seated at the communal table beside a man who looked exactly as I looked 20 years ago, down to the pencil mustache and three chipped teeth. I had to do a double take. A younger doppelganger, if you will. Later in the week, when I returned to the same bistro for my regular bland chips and chicken with weird sauce, I was again seated at the communal table, this time beside a man I imagine I will look precisely like in 20 years, down to the unsightly brown mole, yellowish skin, and unruly nose hair in only one nostril. An older doppelganger, this time, you see. 

Naturally, I struck up conversations with both the men but each claimed not to speak English and neither seemed struck by my likeness. I left feeling anxious. This confluence of odd events is no coincidence, you see. There are conspiracies afoot, plans, hierarchies, backs being scratched. Nasty, things afoot, I tell you. Nasty!

Narrator

Yeah, this last line betrays his upbringing. Dops Fabulon isn’t really posh. That’s not even his real name, by the way. It’s something like Dennis Potts. His father was a dockworker and his mother a wet nurse to the criminally insane. 

Fabulon is an obnoxious creature, and Gus doesn’t know how much of his story to believe – 12, 33 or 68 percent, but he takes the case anyway. Dops gives him a contract to sign, pronouncing it cunt rack, as if describing a place to hang vaginas. It comes with a decent advance, the bulk to be paid on delivery, but another chunk up front for expenses: tips, bribes, tacos, chloroform, moonshine, etc. It ain’t a bad a deal, and it was never much of a choice. Times are tough, money short, and he has bills to pay, debts to settle. Besides, there are worse things in life than obnoxiousness. It is a known quantity, and familiar quality, and one Gus has no problem working with – no problem at all. 

But lets take a quick break now because, this portion of the program is brought to you by Limboland.

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Narrator 

OK, we’re, back. So, the first obvious lead for Gus to follow is the dame, Bethany Muerte. It’s probably fake, but that’s the name Fabulon provided, along with some recent photos. Gus looks them over now. He’s an astute and intuitive observer, and they have plenty to say.

For example, straight off the bat, it’s obvious that Bethany Muerte is a risky road crosser with a penchant for poorly cooked rice. Clumpy. Stolid. Clingy. Yum!  She is damn good-looking, mark it down, and robustly sexy, but any fool could tell you that, and we only rely on foolish opinions 5/8ths of the time here. 

Seriously though, she’s one hell of a dish.  In every photo, she looks directly into your eyes in a deeply personal way, as if you were alone together in a high-end hotel room, in the very first days of a passionate love affair. Her smile can make you adore acapella, detest perfectly ripe avocados, and invite you to make a large, blind, can’t miss investment in the Lithuanian property market through a friend of a friend. 

In fact, in every way, Bethany Muerte is a tight, delicious, perfectly proportioned dame. In the one photo, at the abattoir, that flap of ass curves so perfectly below her jeans shorts, that you can finally just shake your head and give up on making sense of the world, because nothing that smooth and ideally proportioned could exist in a world you pretend to understand. But Bethany is not only about that ass. It’s formidable, and just plain preposterous, for sure, but when viewing her in totality, perhaps dramatically from above, zooming out via skillful drone operator, there is so much more. In every photo, it’s as if a Dutch master painted her. The light just seems to sit on her that way. 

Now, Gus is a professional of sorts, with a job to do, so he drinks gin and studies the pictures further till they whisper, gossip, tease, and then shout. And so, it becomes clear that Bethany is, for example, skilled at walking through dense festival crowds holding multiple beers without spilling a drop, and also, adept at eating crunchy cucumbers softly in crowded rooms, while acquaintances nap on couches nearby. 

Ms. Muerte can’t remember if she’s ever been to Rome and she doesn’t care. She is the type to dig under several pieces of rock sugar to get the one she likes best – the type to eats kiwis like hand fruit, skin and all, and not only kiwis, mind you, papayas too! (No! surely not papayas!) Yeah, papayas too!

The low down on Bethany Muerte is that while she might not always know someone, she always knows someone who knows someone. It’s clear she’s as fond of sadness as she’s ever been of glee. She's got major baggage, sure, but it's all Samsonite, Tumi, and Rimowa. She prefers starting fires to starting families and is always disappointed when the soup of the day is pumpkin. Ms. Muerte is a hooligan in mascara. She’ll fuck your great uncle and like it too, because, damn it, she appreciates a touch of droopy foreskin now and again. Yes, many are haunted by their personal demons; but she searches them out and invites them over for meatloaf and grits (nutloaf for the vegans). In fact, she’s mighty upset she hasn’t done nearly enough with them yet.

Anyway, that’s what Gus Tulip gathers from an initial peek at the photos, and though it’s a good start, it’s not enough. Yup, it’s time to pay another visit to his number one informer: a man with a read on all the goings on in town, and all around; the snitch with the never ending itch: the one and only Pedro Beans. 

There’s absolutely no time to waste- every second counts. He must get to Pedro right away… 

But first, Gus Tulip has some business to attend to. Just a couple of pressing personal matters, you know. For starters, he has to cook some more K. He’s running low, and at his level of intake, cooking your own is the only sensible thing to do. 

In the afternoon, he does a few lines, drinks three Negronis, and stops by Eight Vice Larry for a few quick clips from his custom built tazer. Then, before that buzz wears off, a visit to Madame Dijon, and one of her girls, with a few drinks after at The Alamo Rose just to settle back down. Yes, Fabulon’s advance is coming in handy. 

…

It’s after midnight, the next day, when Gus knocks on the heavy trapdoor leading to the basement where Pedro has recently taken up lodging. It’s hot down there: hot as a ham fresh out the oven but then left on the counter for an hour to rest. 

As usual, a stack of radio scanners, receivers and interceptors are chattering away. Pedro has grown a goatee and put on twenty pounds, but his motor mouth has lost none of punch. 

Pedro

I can’t believe you working for Dops Fabulon, man! I seen him last month. He talked to me like a crow. Like a dirty, dirty crow, always giving to me the stinky eye. I’m telling you, that man, he is a pervert. A low down stinky pervert. He salts his nipples, man. He masturbates to the sound of melting cheese. I would not be surprise if he has anal psoriasis – in fact I am astounded he have never been convicted of gross negligence!

But, hey, man, you know that riddle, that tongue twister: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood? 

That shit’s been in my head man. Like a ear fly, you know. Like a mosquito in the brain. And it really made me think, you know, like, how much right.? Like precisely or even inherently. How much wood can this motherfucker chuck? It’s not a simple question: there is many paramaters to consider. So many variables to take into account. It’s kind of like a paradox, right – or maybe its more like an anomaly – anyway, it’s really and existential quandary. A significant challenge to the way we structure our reality!

No, but Dops Fabulon. He’s no good man. That man, he eats soup with no bread – I’m telling you: with no bread at all. That’s just plain uncivlized, man. And he wears socks in the shower man: totally naked but with socks. And you know what else I heard? I heard his penis smells like a walrus – a fucking walrus!

But forget all that man. You didn’t come to Pedro to talk about Dops Fabulon’s penis. You wanna know about Muerte. Well, lucky for you my friend, I know a little something about it. For the right price, you can know about Muerte too.

-THE END-

 

EO2: The Chubby Quiche

Narrator

It was the first Friday of the month at the Bukake Dawn Retirement Refuge, and that meant Unclean Johnny was coming over with his bag of custom dildos, vibrators, and buttplugs. Long term resident, Faye Palmette, of suite 13B, was particularly excited, having bought a new backless floral ensemble for the occasion, but all that is beside the point right now. 

This is also not the tale of Danny Wombat, a failed taxidermist from Pensacola with a gammy leg, who found a lifetime’s worth of discarded birthday cards, all addressed to a man named Fritz, in the dumpster behind the donut shop where he worked and took them home to study. 

There were 403 of them (Happy Birthday, Darling! / Congratulations / Trees is made of wood!) spanning 64 years (Hip Hip Hooray / Enjoy the adult diapers / And many more to come) written by 112 people (Party on rockstar / Much health and happiness! / God, I wish I hadn’t quit drinking / I like dudu)

But almost half the cards were from only three women, each named Elisabetta. Danny would end up meeting all three Elisabettas, falling in love with one, buying an Alpaca farm with the other, and crippling the third in a sledding accident that may or may not have been planned but alas, that is Danny’s story and not ours. 

Instead, we rejoin Gus as he continues to navigate the epileptic landscape of international intrigue and chunky mayhem. In case you forgot, his name is Gus Tulip and he’s a dick, a private dick. Gus is hot on Bethany Muerte’s trail – or maybe hot is a bit of a stretch – more like kind of warm – let’s say, the temperature inside an attached wooden leg.While a contact at the Bureau of Advanced Metadata, Intrusion and Collusion, or BAMIC, looks into a tip Pedro Beans provided, Gus has several other leads to keep himself busy with. He’s on a tight deadline, and cant waste any time, but unfortunately, he’s just downloaded all six seasons of Gossip Girl, and cannot leave the house before binge watching the first three – mostly on speed. 

Unable to sleep, he spends an hour wondering which of his childhood friends that he hasn’t seen in years might have died in the meanwhile, a half hour trying to guess the number of times he has attempted to drink from a bottle with cap still on, and conversely, tried to unscrew the cap from an already open bottle, and a few minutes resenting having become a guy who puts fruit in savory salads. Moving on to yesterday’s paper, a headline reads: “Deadly Tomatoes Batter Southern US States” – oh, wait. God, he really needs to fix his eyes. 

Finally, On a Tuesday afternoon that feels a lot like a Sunday morning, Gus enters The Chubby Quiche: the café, where Dops Fabulon claimed to have seen Bethany Muerte after she supposedly flew back to Italy. With dirty walls and a fair dose of charm. It’s a lively establishment, positively bubbling with conversation. (The scab I pulled off my scalp had legs / She cries for dead snails / Underneath not overneath, this is, what I say / …the wrong shade of orange)

Gus makes his way past the bar, through the dining area (if left untreated it could spread to the lymph nodes) and onto the terrace where he nabs one of the last free seats. At the table beside his, Brad Habits and Paloma Reade are on a date. Brad is excellent at getting away with saying ‘that's fascinating,’ now and again to women while not listening to them at all. He only ever has unprotected sex, as a rule, but makes up for it by always wearing a condom when jerking off. He sits there, fighting the urge to escape to the bathroom to take and send a dick pic to someone, anyone, using his new app, PeckerFramer Professional Suite, available wherever you get your apps – use code- tulip101 for 20% discount, that’s tulip101 for 20% off. Paloma is a long legged gal who often wonders what happens to the single ants she sees in cars that have driven many miles away from picnic spots. She likes wearing all red to white parties, and walking across tree trunks that have fallen over streams, 

but her absolute favorite thing in the world is putting folded napkins under table legs to stop them from wobbling. Unfortunately, theirs was level and totally secure upon arrival. (I am a man of your word / Oh he’s desperately prolific.)

At the small table to the left, eating alone, is Verlenka Bell, a 43-year-old Russian woman from Northern Australia. Verlenka has the distinction of being the person who has swum obliviously by the ends of box jellyfish tentacles the most times, by the smallest margins. On twelve occasions, to be precise, she could easily have ended up dead, while tens of others have in fact been killed, or maimed, after single short dips in the sea, taken on a whim.

It might interest you to know that Al Yonana, a 51-year-old American man living in Panama, shares a similar distinction, having unknowingly stood closest to the head of a fer-de-lance the most times without ever having being bitten. Others, who took a single false step on the first day of a tropical holiday, have not been as lucky. Injected with the viper’s complex hemotoxin, limbs have suffered the ravages of necrosis, and hearts have seized up to beat no more. 

But that aside was just for comparison, and Al is connected in no other way to the scenery of our plot. Back on the terrace, at the table behind Verlenka’s, two men are in minute twelve of a  four-day argument about the ears of a deer, and at the wobbly table beside theirs, the most annoying person Fumiko LaRoux has ever met is telling her in stunning detail about the most annoying person he has ever met. But of course, Gus is totally unaware of these facts – he only knows what he can see, sense, and process in the lazy matinee of the here and now. As he watches and listens, hunting for clues and seeking out anomalies, he can only note various details, for example, about the two women sitting at a table across from his. One, wearing layers of gray, has a small mouth that looks transplanted from another face and smiles as if making fun of someone else’s smile. The other: short, thin, and bookish, and dressed modestly, gives the impression of being someone’s daughter rather than a self-determined individual. She has the type of face you struggle to remember even while still looking at it. At the adjacent table are five men. One looks very much like a guy who might kill a friend in a poorly thought out prank that goes terribly wrong. Another’s face seems permanently stuck in that awesome moment when it sees itself on the jumbotron. And another surely has a dedicated barber only for his pubes. Is there anything sadder than a bunch of middle aged men all out together, as they are every week, settling for one another, and for the bland beer that makes them fatter daily. For filling that space so readily with the same conversations, the same tired jokes and repeated high fives when they must know that for years already, life has plateaued at a level well below any distant bygone peak, and that the steep decent will soon start in earnest. Is there anything sadder than a–

(interrupted by) Stumpy 

Oi oi. You alright? Welcome to the Quiche. I’m Stumpy, and I’ll be your waiter today.  Don’t know if you’ve ever been here before, but just to remind you, here at the Chubby Quiche, we specialize in economy class airplane food, but served down on the ground, and dishes that is fit for leathery small intestines. Also, heavy stews served on flimsy napkins, and leftovers of the food you haven’t ordered yet. But allow me to tell you today’s specials: 

For starters, we have a lovely bucket of tough old beef and gristle in broth with soggy crouton - that comes with a duo of unfresh spinach. We are also serving a bowl of spaghetti made up exclusively of noodles three elderly ladies tried to slurp up into their mouths but then clumsily bit off, back onto the plate. Two dessert specials today: first, a classic egg shell mousse with grape stem, cherry pit, and split curd, and secondly, only this week because of the fleeting seasonality, we are ecstatic to be serving a proper grondle of line caught limes. 

Of course, you must try our signature velvety mashed potatoes littered with fish bones especially selected to get stuck in your throat. We send scouts to all the major fisheries to source only the most pointiest of produce. And if you’re proper hungry, I can highly recommend the Crusty Maritime Platter at only 99.89 excluding taxes and surcharges. It is very special. So, you get one whole lobster tail shell and half an empty claw, a squid tentacle that washed up on shore last week still not entirely rubbery and preserved perfectly afterwards in formaldehyde, then, the slobbery leftover soup from three kilos of moulles mariniere eaten just yesterday, but never refrigerated, an enormous helping of steamed shrimp legs and antennae drizzled with garoupa scales and mussel beards, twelve desiccated corn husks, and all the fish bones you can jam into your gums. After that feast, only one question could possibly remain: exactly how much monkey hair do you want in your crème brûlée?

Narrator

Now, Gus isn’t really hungry, so he just orders a medium brackish gray water with plastic straw guaranteed to float to the top and settle horizontally on the surface; then he starts asking questions. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s his very own waiter that provides the only intel worth pursuing. Stumpy suggests he talk to a man sitting inside, a regular by the name of Benson Karoo

Stumpy

If anyone knows anything, Benson will. 

Narrator 

So that’s precisely what Gus does. But first, let’s pause here for a second because, this program is brought to you by… 

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Narrator

OK, we’re back, and also back inside the restaurant.  (He just wants to be not respectable / You have never ever seen this before)

As it turns out, Benson Karoo, aged somewhere between 28 and 82, is, as the crow flies, half South African, a third Canadian, and a sixth Corsican, but with strong Ayurvedic, funkadelic, bulimic, and Megatronic roots. Benson smells a touch of open sore. Sitting there, palms on table top, he wears a persistent look of exasperation, as if he’s constantly being asked to hold the door for someone rushing to enter his apartment building, while not knowing if that person actually lives there, though he really should by now. Anyway, Benson Karoo is happy to talk, as long as Gus keeps topping up his liver parfait mojito, and the man certainly has a way with words. 

Benson

I was very depressed when my sister died: not because of it, mind you, but at the time I heard, and the six months prior, just sitting in my underpants in front of the TV, watching Ellen eating marmite from the jar. Ag, I’d built such strong fortresses with the sorrows I’d collected through the years. (4 x 3 is 98) But you don’t want to know about my predicaments, hey! You want to know about the lady. About Muerti. Well, lucky for you, my bru, I know a little something about her, and now, you can know about her too.

Narrator

Benson smiles weirdly, behind his hands, like a Singaporean girl using a toothpick.

Benson

But let me start at the beginning: Her wasn’t Bethany Muerti back then; it was Gail Gaberone We were two of the sixteen recruits invited to attend the prestigious Fungus of Babylon Program for Cunning Youths, or FuBubuPiCY, which was understood to be an entry point for a life of international espionage. I started strong as a wildebeest, but soon found out I wasn’t cut out for it and dropped out to begin my career as an incompetent puppeteer. I made the decision after the mid term exams. We were split into groups and made to solve problems while observed by squirrels, and I could not perform. I won’t go into detail, but the lingering memory is one of cowardice and prolonged constipation.

Narrator 

Gus studies Benson’s visage once more. Now, it speaks of a man who has spent an unpleasant evening wearing clothes soaked in another man’s urine

Benson

Anyway, during those first weeks I had the chance to spend time close to Gail, in the field and in the dorms, learning a great deal about her: At all times, her face seemed perched on the precipice of great knowing laughter, while simultaneously also warning of some grave impending doom. She had the wholesome look of a farmer’s daughter, innocently stirring a big iron pot on the stove barefoot, yet, just being near her sometimes made you feel like you’d been stabbed in Alaska, in the winter, and were lying in the snow, alone, waiting to die, unsure only if the bitter cold or jagged wound would ultimately secure your demise. I remember, she planted special broad-leafed ferns outside her bedroom so the drops would sound nicest when it rained. She slept on floors as comfortably as dogs do and her farts smelled of freshly baked bread. She kept expensive things in cheap bags, cheap things in expensive boxes, and insisted on fine dicing all the vegetables for the chili with a machete. Said it tasted wrong if you used another knife. 

Ja, one could not help falling in love with her, and I guess I did too - though love is a word abused - an impractical, oppressive word, that tries to cash post dated checks. In life as in puppetry, strings is always getting tangled. Wherever you go, there is ants dragging earthworm pieces back to nest.

Narrator

Benson picks his belly button and sniffs it long and hard.

Benson

After I left, things got dark for me for a while. I used to go for a close shave at the Sicilian barber around the corner and insult the guy’s mother relentlessly while under the straight blade. That was my Russian roulette. I was disgraced for quitting the program, and didn’t keep in touch with the Fungus gang, but I heard Gayle went down with foot and mouth disease soon after, as if one or the other wasn't enough. I lost track of her after that. So imagine my surprise when I saw Gail here at The Quiche after all that time! I recognized her right away. Her buttocks is still bloody ridiculous! She, on the other hand, did not recognize me but maybe that’s to be expected given the eight surgeries I’ve had since to look exactly like an upper class Austrian woman who has spent five decades in her home tanning bed and then had three facelifts and one botched rhinoplasty.

Narrator

As he listens, Gus notices a rather large spider hiding in the petals of dahlias on the table between them. It seems to have only seven eyes.

Benson

With the painful memories and the bad blood and all, I chose not to approach her. I just observed and listened, bathing once more in that magical voice. And I think you will be very interested to know she wasn’t alone. She was with a man – a rather distinctive chap, in fact. There was just something weird about the guy, and not only that his one eye was smaller than his other eyes. He was well built, wearing a loose tank top, and had the word ‘slut’ tattooed in large letters down his right arm, ‘opportunist’ down his left, and ‘Macarena’ smack bang on his forehead. When motioning to the waiter for the check, he signed his entire signature carefully in the air. No quick tick or squiggle. He even dotted the i’s. From what I could tell, his name rhymed with juice box.

Now, I didn’t catch everything they were saying because half way through a woman sat between us and started practicing her saxophone, but I know they were working on something together, a special project of some kind, and I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the Unusual Inventions Convention. They mentioned that more than once – maybe even more than twice! 

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I ordered a grondle of line caught limes, and I'm I'm the type to enjoy my grondles alone.

Narrator

The seven eyed spider retreats back into his flower. Hmm. The Unusual Inventions Convention. Looks like Gus has plans for the weekend, after all. 

-THE END-

 

E03: The Unusual Inventions Convention

Narrator

March 10, 2012, Slowdrive, New Mexico. Dudi Cruze sits in court, waiting on a judge’s ruling. Dudi pulled off an elaborate prank in which he disguised himself as a as a tree and came alive to scare passers by on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, one of them jumped backwards into traffic and was killed by a bus. The courthouse walls are pink, the charge is manslaughter, and the judge looks very much like a man just waiting to become a sperm donor to a lesbian couple he doesn’t even know yet, but that’s all beside the point right now. 

This is also not the tale of Ned Bafuette, a 32-year-old accountant from Calamity, Wisconsin, who has a dog growing out of his chest, and not a small one, like a pomeranian or teacup yorkie. No – this is a Neapolitan mastiff veering slightly left out of his ribcage. Only the head and two front legs, to be clear, though slobbering away. 

But none of that matters at the moment, because as I mentioned, that’s Ned’s story, and not ours. Instead our narrative picks up again at The Silky Fig the discrete but superb Bordello, where Gus is right this minute, negotiating with Madame Dijon about his prospects for the evening. 

Madame Dijon

So, I guess you’ll be wanting Daiana again, honey goat? She is our spiciest scotch bonnet, after all.

Narrator

But Gus doesn’t want Daiana again; he wants a girl with a far less creamy cave. At 200 an hour, he prefers not to splooge in three seconds, you see. And Gus does have a point. Daiana is known throughout the twin highlands, the copper plains, and moist outer boroughs for having a perfectly baroque vagina, and how could anyone from this time period be expected to deal with such a formidable fissure and maintain any level of dignity? (True / u-hu / sure / I hear you / yeah, that’s right!)

In case you need reminding, his name is Gus Tulip, and he’s a dick, a private dick. You might also recall that he’s on a case, and one humdinger of a case too. In fact, his client, Dops Fabulon, called just a few days back to check in on his progress.

Dops

Tell me the good news, Mr. Tulip, and don’t spare even the tiniest of smelly morsels.

Narrator

Being a callous, and sneaky bastard, Gus managed to finagle another hefty lump sum for ongoing expenses from that call. Said he’d been forced to buy a new suit, you see, with the requisite matching tie and shoes. Said he’d had to bribe six men, four women, three lawyers and one stubborn orangutan. Said he’d had to make a small investment in a high end moonshine distillery to get close to a man who could best be described as having never needed any adjectives. Gus insisted each of these things was essential to the case – all lies, of course. He immediately spent half on pharmaceuticals and took the rest out on a joyride to all his favorite haunts. First, a visit to Nine Vice Larry to get a proper tazing. It don’t really count unless shit yourself a touch. Then, it was off to Cougar Boobs for a few bad drinks and some fisticuffs with the local teenage judo dojo, before swinging by Nani Rascals for some goulash and a spliff.

It was some time between 4am and Thursday, when Gus finally stopped by The Silky Fig for anyone besides Daiana. And here, now, he takes madness for a spin; he digs a deep hole and fills it up with sin – its simply time, to let the ogre in. 

Gus wakes up a day later with a hangover so well developed it not only has a name, personality, and distinct mannerisms, but a rich backstory and range of conflicts too. This is a compound, purposeful hangover that has already chipped three front teeth stumbling down the stairs, made an underage cousin pregnant, and killed a one legged man just for speaking out of turn. But that’s simply how things go when you just done low, so hard, for so long. 

(Sung): He done low. He gone done did done gone did it again, he done low… he done low

When Gus finally gets a handle on Tobias – oh, that’s his hangover’s name: Tobias Winifred Legume – it’s time to get to work. His contact at the Bureau of Advanced Metadata, Intrusion and Collusion, or BAMIC, has finally gotten back to him on that tip Pedro Beans provided.

Pedro Beans (flashback)

Do yourself a favor man: look into an enterprise called Manbun Incorporated. I heard Muerte used to work for them on and off before The Great Vinaigrette Embargo of ‘17. I’m telling you, man, there is something unprincipled about that entity, something positively unscrupulous.

Narrator

BAMIC’s intel is pretty damn interesting: Turns out Man Bun Inc. is the R&D arm of Wife Heart Manufacturing, which is a division of Fun Bird Pharmaceutical, which is a subsidiary of Blue Dung Industries, which operates under global conglomerate and umbrella entity, No Flush Holdings. (OK, fine, but what about all of that?) Well, as it happens, Fun Bird Pharma also owns Rat Hat Industrial, which has an independent Science and Innovation branch called Push Karamba Technologies, and it’s here that the strands of intrigue begin to intertwine, because guess who’s gonna be at the Unusual Inventions Convention? Guess who has secured a primetime booth?

That’s right: Push … Fuckin … Karamba (no way!) So, yeah, off to the convention it is.

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…

OK, welcome back. It’s good you are here, because Gus has just arrived at the Unusual Inventions Convention – in fact, he’s stepping into the large, busy hall right now.

(announcement): Welcome to the 10th annual Unusual Inventions Convention. Witness the future today, or yesterday if you drop by booth 79b. Visit the Slow Regeneration Fields and the Chamber of Suppressed Deceit. Volunteer to have your arms removed and replaced with giant fruit bats. Please, snoop around, and see it all, and don’t forget to stop by one of our food fabricators for some negative calorie noodles or an organ donor kebab 

It’s a massive space filled with endless booths, where presenters young and old, humanoid and android, are promoting their inventions with gusto: We have created a device that gives fomo to mofos and turns mojo into the / May I present, Descriptionnaise – spread it on anything and it tells you what it is / Behold, the Encyclonepedia: destroys villages with words alone, but only when used in their proper forms 

There are simple creations, like fully disposable recycling, umbrellas for children with huge craniums, and pork juice silk (feels like bacon on your skin!)

And there are complex innovations: We have spliced the DNA of a fish with that of a candy bar. We have swimming pastilles too / This is a gender ambiguity ray. We have also developed a gender fluidity bathtub, and sexual orientation dissolution tablets 

Several booths are offering real-time demonstrations: Hello, Mister. Are you familiar with the Next Generation Personal Hot Sauce Bot? 

Gus walks on along a busy central aisle. (Slurpees. Giant Amniotic Slurpees. Only 12.95. Buy nine and get 8 percent discount on the 10^{th /} Be a safe escalator user. Look left, right, and through before crossing the vacuum ducts.)

For a while, he gets stuck behind an old, slow couple walking hand-in-hand, who are stuck behind an even slower, older couple walking hand-in-hand in front of them. But eventually gets by, and carries on into the bustling hive of invention. 

Here at Greedy Pussy, we breed cats with eleven lives and not the customary nine / Wear this bracelet while you sleep and the color brown will be removed from all your dreams / With this device you can actually eat your words and get nutritional value form them. We also have edible hats for lost bets / Please mind the gap between the train and your anus. No Children in lifts unless accompanied by a walrus / Step right up, walk no further, check it out.

Gus lingers for a while at a booth offering the very latest in advanced tazertronics and other bespoke shocking pleasures – 

Behold, our Full Body Shock Suit, engineered purely for fetish-based purposes, hmm. This entirely customizable suit will give you an experience far beyond anything your standard, every day tazer can provide. You feel the electricity inside, around, and all over you – dagnabbit, you basically become a bolt of lightening. So, What are u waiting for you knuckle headed potato brains. Get your Full Body Shock Suit right now, for just 109.99 only today, and only here, and definitely not in the alley behind Big Cucci’s Seafood and Grill on Wednesday at noon for much, much cheaper. 

Gus makes a quick purchase and walks on, heading deeper into the jam-packed venue. (Nibbling funkus. Get your nibbling funkus here. 1 for 6, 2 for 10, 3 for 5. The best nibbling funkus you’ve ever had / We take your regrets and turn them into sou / You play with me)

According to his fair trade, cold pressed, single origin map, he is approaching Push Karamba’s booth. Will he finally see the infamous Bethany Muerte in person? Will he finally see, first hand, whether she actually keeps macaroni and cheese in her purse, eating fistfuls of it when peckish? Whether her eyes truly recall a sunbeam breaking through the trees to scatter morning mist, and whether she really smells of the best mistake you’ve never made? No. He won’t, because he has found the booth and Muerte is not there. Instead, there is a man … um ... manning it. 

Gus moves in for a better view. The man is muscular, and has the word Macarena tattooed in bold letters on his forehead. His nametag reads Jonas Stinkwolf - that doesn’t really rhyme with juicebox does it? (no, uh-uh, not at all) It is a sleek, swanky booth featuring a console and two large glass pods. A curious mob has gathered and soon, Stinkwolf speaks. 

Stinkwolf

Hello, ladies and gentleman. How nice to have you all here. You may be familiar with Push Karamba’s innovative work in the field of alternative energy and renewable resources. For example, we were able to harness human twitches, spasms and muscle cramps to create a simple combustion engine. We also collected the energy released when a heart is broken, removed the impurities, and used it as fuel for vegan ice cream trucks in Reykjavik.  Yes, there are many other examples of this business, but that is not why we are here today—no, not on your life, no. We have recently gone in an exciting new direction and this is the work we want to share with you now.

Narrator

As Gus listens, he notices someone in the crowd on the far side of the crowd. Someone who looks eerily similar to him – to Gus Tulip, Private Dick, but female, older, shorter, skinnier, paler, balder, and with much larger ears. Seeing him, she turns her back and leaves, and though Gus quickly pushes through the spectators to where she was, she is nowhere to be seen. 

Stinkwolf claims Gus’s attention again. 

Stinkwolf

Yes, good people, we have begun to experiment with organic content replication – with the duplication of living organisms!

(Voice form crowd) Oh, so, it’s cloning? You’re talking about cloning?

Stinkwolf

Let us not call it cloning, shall we. That is so lacking in poetry. So vulgar. This is not a laboratorium. We are not jabbing bunnies with long pointy needles, or repeatedly slapping the scrotums of donkeys. Our work is clean, painless and super snel. We are blending biology with magic. We are conducting the orchestra of life itself. 

(Voice form crowd) Oh, OK. Got it. Yeah, that’s totally different. Carry on. 

Stinkwolf

But it was not always been smooth sailing. We conducted thousands of tests with all kinds of materials and there were so many strange and creepy failures along the way. For example: we put a strong young bull in pod A, and in Pod B appeared a deaf old goat with erectile dysfunction. When we used a fierce and healthy crocodile, out came a tiny lizard with tuberculosis and poor motor skills. We had similar problems with food items. For example, We put in a Lobster Thermidor and out came a tuna sandwich that someone with an abnormally large mouth had taken a bite of and then dropped on the floor and stepped on, twice. Also, a perfectly cooked, medium rare Wagyu beef medallion became a rotten skirt steak covered in fungus and infested with fly larvae. Maggots everywhere. So yucky!

Narrator 

Stinkwolf walks to the console and stands behind it.

Stinkwolf

But we have ironed out the kinks- if anyone is good at ironing out kinks, it is me. Dr. Jonas Stinkwolf. In fact, we have had some major successes lately, world-altering results, and that is what I will demonstrate right now. All I need is a volunteer from the audience. 

Narrator

Stinkwolf looks around casually till he settles his gaze firmly on Gus. 

Stinkwolf

How about you, sir? Would you like to be part of something truly extraordinary? All you have to do is step into this Pod.

-THE END-

 

E04: The Cross Pod Express

Narrator

June 12^th, 2005, 11.10 pm. Omar batch rushes from his own wedding party and takes a taxi home to eat the 5 tubs of yoghurt in his fridge expiring at midnight.  But that’s beside the point right now. This is also not the story of John Godpuppet and Nora Pazzle, two English friends in Berlin for Halloween who are dressed up as Japanese tourists dressing up for Halloween in Rome. Nor is it the tale of Julie Rygo, who pushed a wheelchair over busy sidewalks and up steep gravel roads for a full half hour before realizing her sick grandmother had fallen out somewhere along the way. 

No, our narrative picks up again at The Unusual Inventions Convention  where Gus has found the booth he was looking for.  

In case you need reminding, his name is Gus Tulip, and he’s a dick, a private dick .Yes, we rejoin Gus just as Dr. Jonas Stinkwolf is about to demonstrate his cutting-edge organic content replication system. All he needs is a volunteer from the audience.

Stinkwolf

How about you sir. All you have to do is step into this pod. 

Narrator

Gus doesn’t know why he volunteers. Why do people get calf implants, text drunk, or spend their only holidays with extended families they despise? Maybe, on this particular occasion, it has something to do with a junky’s need for a fix, with the musk of an elephant bull in musth, or merely with a man’s innate urge to know what’s around the bend, and how to use it to self-destruct. 

But we are not in the speculation business. Here, we don’t ask why, we work exclusively with what.  Here, we only deal with facts, just as Fortune 500 management only deal with the bottom line. Here, we can only state, with any certainty, that Gus is drawn to the pod, and deeply so. Somewhere in the depths of his mangled frontal lobe he feels it is his singular destiny to enter its dense domain. That there is something in there to find and eventually spoon with, perhaps on a filthy couch while watching Doctor Phil.

And before you could say ‘June buggy plumpkin mac n cheez’ Gus has raised his hand.  Before you could even order a grondle of line caught limes, he finds himself stepping into the Pod, a guinea pig in a thick glass jar that reeks of lunacy and mothballs. 

Stinkwolf

Oh, wunderbaar, yes. A super prime time volunteer to send from Pod A to Pod B, and totally of his own accord, of course. No mind games or tricks of any variety involved here. All the cookies have been accepted, as well as that super long privacy statement no one reads. Yes, I have never seen this man before, and don’t worry, there is less than 58 percent chance of terrible lifelong deformity once all is said and done –  all mathematical equations have been tested by Matt Damon from Good Will Hunting. (Electronic sounds of pods activating) Here we go!

Narrator

The pod door closes with an eerie click. A mist rises, the glass turns opaque and the world outside disappears. It no longer has shape, it no longer has sound. Time has become fickle, and mass frail and corrupt. At once, Gus is a whale stranded on a beach, a falcon diving for a dove, a moth trapped in a web, and a gibbon swinging through the dawn. At once, all is terrible, wonderful, pliable, broken and redeemed. He is the victor and the slave. The captain and the pawn. And as the fog now clears, he sees, that he is hurtling through space. 

(Old timey steam train sounds become louder, and there are sounds of ticket stamping) 

Conductor

Tickets please, ladies and gentlemen: get your tickets out please, Thank you.

Narrator

Gus gives her his ticket. Wait, where did that come from? 

Conductor

Thank you sir. and welcome aboard The Cross Pod Express You’re set all the way to Pod B, no transfers. no hassles, no smelly man tax or light surgery. Please do remember to collect your dead skin cells before leaving the car, and refrain from licking the wall sausages.  

Tickets, tickets please. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, tickets please. 

Narrator

Gus is sitting beside a large window. Outside there is nothingness, but a nothingness that hums, one that knows, with a color you’d like to incorrectly call purple. The Cross Pod Express moves at great speed through this void, along a track that snakes backward to beyond where the eye can see. There’s a row of hand drawn moons in the distance, and clouds of dancing multicolored gas, and a floating stream of thick red goo runs alongside for a stretch, but for the rest, there is only space. 

Gus looks away. There’s a cold sadness out there – a closeness to death he can no longer feed, but inside the train it is lively with a kind of busy warmth, even if tinged with a dash of mad distress.

(Small lougey musical interlude) (Announcements)

Doppleganger, Mr. Earnest Doppleganger, please pick up line 6 for a collect call form yo mama. 

Paging miss Gaberone- miss Gayle Gaberone. You are expected in meeting car nine. 

Narrator

A food trolley makes its way along the aisle. 

Stumpy

Oi oi. Can I interest anyone in an on board meal today? May I suggest our wonderful starter: what we do is we get 20 large extremely fresh prawns, cut the digestive tracts out of them, and then throw the prawns away and serve only the poopshutes, on a tasting spoon, with badly burnt toast. Or perhaps you’d simply prefer our signature 2 day old huevos rancheros - always a crowd pleaser. We are also ecstatic to be serving, only today, and only on this very train, a rollassis of moop, with a lettersnot blanneece and a dollop of flob gelee. 

Narrator

This is not your usual train interior.  There is standing room as well as sitting room but the seats are arranged in no particular order, facing no particular direction, and there is no consistency in their size, shape or appearance. There are several passengers traveling in Gus’s car. One is wearing two sacks of potatoes as earrings (Idaho). Opposite her, a bald man with dandruff reads the label on a can of beans. His nose is so red, with so many ripe blackheads, it looks like a strawberry – wait – it is a strawberry! To his left, another man has a full grey beard entirely entwined with extensive hanging ferns that seem to be sprouting from his nostrils. A chipmunk sits on his shoulder, eating the walnuts it stored in there for the winter. A woman in a tube top has a gaping wound in her shoulder from which a perky stop motion caterpillar sometimes pokes its head. She smiles, flashing a double row of sky blue teeth. Though each is so outlandish, they all recall people Gus has seen before but can’t quite place - each an echo of a memory that’s lost to time and space. 

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Narrator

OK, back to the Cross Pod Express. 

Announcement

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, fiends and fabrications, and welcome aboard. If you care to look outside on your left you’ll see the last six women you did wrong, and on the right, the true shape of your deepest regret. We will be arriving at our next stop, Pod B, in just as long as it takes a dying man to realize his wife never loved him. 

Narrator

Gus now looks at the passenger closest to him. The guy’s face is in a state of general disrepair. It brings to mind a once grand and proud family manor abandoned in The Great Depression to be ravaged by wind, rain, termites and rot, now home only to roaches and rats, darkness and decay. Noticing Gus looking, the man comes over and introduces himself. 

Fulky

Mandrake Fulky, pleased to be making your acquaintance, noticed you over there while I was over here, or is that a vice versa situation—never you mind, over matter, if you will. 

Narrator

Fulky smells a bit off, but only slightly, like when you’re surprised to still faintly smell last night's Mexican food on your fingers. 

Fulky

Now will you look at that lady’s hambag–I'm still surprised they make bags out of ham. Of course, most of the world is unnecessary for most of the world, but, say, have you seen my rectal thermometer?

Narrator

Fulky looks like he is gleefully eating a chocolate pudding as he speaks.

Fulky

Did you say something? Sorry, but I’m Deaf in one ear, and blind in the other. Now, did we meet before–my apologies, I’m not very good at remembering names or faces, and you can add Objects, dates, addresses to that list. I’ll admit, I can never quite remember just how many children my mama had. Terrible to live wanting terrible things, though, ain’t that a fact, and by the way, whats the ETA for PTSD? It’s NYU asking for MTV. My good friend Bethany would know, - oh you should meet her- She has just the most audacious derriere, and her perfume somehow reminds me of the days I still cared about my life. I thought she’d be riding with us today, in fact, but I see her neither here nor there, nor anywhere in-between.

(Announcement): Paging Mr. Fulky and Mr. Juicebox, Mrs Fulky and Juicebox, please report to the latrine for a spanking. 

Fulky

If you’ll excuse me then. Mighty fine to meet you, mighty fine indeed. 

Narrator

And Mandrake Fulky was gone.

The Laughers that Fall

You must ignore him. Mr. Tulip.

Narrator

They seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

The Laughers that Fall

Mandrake Reginald Fulky is no character to engage with at will, like a daily vitamin pill. Oh no, not at all.

Narrator

They are tall, and thin, with maroon capes, bowler hats, and horn rimmed glasses with no frames.

The Laughers that Fall

But allow me to introduce ourselves: we are The Laughers that Fall. I am laugher Gertrude, and this is laugher Mike. We used to be The Laughers at Fallers, but we felt shame and changed our ways, for we also fall, feel pain and suffer injury, fracturing ribs and rupturing Achilles tendons, and we too desire not to be laughed at, so now we laugh, and also fall, but never, ever, laugh at the falling. We always speak for one as we do for all, for we are The Laughers that Fall. And we have a message for you: Beware of Stinko Fist. He is not as dead as you imagine. Not nearly as dead in fact. And he is keeping tabs on you, very much so, and has plans for you too. We have the same agenda, Mr. Tulip, and share a common foe. Stinko Fist must not succeed and you, like we, must feed the free. 

So tell me, Gus Tulip, why are you searching for all you cannot find? Why eat the lemon but not the rind? Why are you looking under paper rocks, and why must you sit on a throne of dirty socks? Yes, he cleans his gun in the sun with a bear, waves hands in the air like he actually cares. But of course, there are endless riddles on the wall, and no one true face, in place, to break your fall. You must be careful Mr. Tulip. You must resist the song of the sliding snail, and the urge to open your neighbor’s mail. You mustn’t let your house become too dusty, or pick your nose after cutting chilies, no matter how crusty. For we need a man on the outside.  A man who is touched, and rude and damaged and lost. A man like you, Gus Tulip. A man like you.

We will make contact again, later, in the outside world, where we can control the circumstances better. As it is, we have already stayed too long. It has not been easy to hijack this transmission, and it is dangerous for us to be here. They are everywhere, always watching, and our intelligence suggests, she might even be on board today. Wait, oh god, is that her? Could it be? We must go. We must run. But remember: beware of Stinko Fist, bewaaaare of Stinkoooo Fiiiiisst! 

Conductor

Tickets please, get your tickets out please–oh, Good afternoon Ms. Muerte. I was wondering if you were riding with us today. How lovely to see you, and may I say, you are looking stunning as usual. Will you be alighting at Pod B today, Ms. Muerte, or traveling further into lingering delusion zone? 

Narrator

Gus jumps up out of his seat. The conductor is a ways down the car and he hurries toward her, but the aisle is suddenly crammed with burly passengers holding bulky luggage and he struggles to get by. Now, a man on a unicycle rides towards him with a llama, and behind them, a lady has set up a Three-card Monte table with a crowd gathering around. 

Gus tries to push through, but he is caught up in the throng. He is poked and prodded and someone bites his ear. Someone else shoves him and he stumbles and falls, but he does not hit the ground, he goes right through the floor! 

(sound of vast empty space) 

The Cross Pod Express zooms along, and away, as Gus floats off into the nothingness.

 

-THE END-

E05: Stinko Fist

Narrator

One day when he was tired of all the killing, Ben Bufo sold his house, left town, and started over, down in Massapequa County, trying his luck at the failing rubber plantations - But that’s beside the point right now. This is also not the story of a man who just missed the only bus that day, to miss the only boat that week, to miss his grandfather’s funeral, because he just absolutely had to stop and get a waffle.

Nope, our story picks up again inside Gus’s apartment, where he has just woken up in a state of general befuddlement after sleeping deeply for an unknown number of hours. Oh, incase you need reminding, his name is Gus Tulip and he’s a dick, a private dick! (Gus Tulip jingle)

Now, we may not have covered this before, but Gus lives in a small studio above a stinky tofu factory in a structurally damaged building between a chemical waste dump, weapons testing ground, and nuclear power plant. He has lived there for a while, since before growing his third and fourth nipples, in fact. Here, Gus awakens on his hard, lumpy mattress, with a host of aches and pains throbbing callously through his head and down his spine, a severe lack of memory, and an overwhelming sense of loss. He sits up, opens his bedside drawer, then snorts, smokes, and swallows half his stash. Heading to the bathroom to pee, Gus is surprised to find an octopus in his toilet bowl, still alive. Of course Gus keeps him. Puts him in a bucket, calls him Bertrand – Come on! What would you have called him? Sinbad? Wait, that’s aint half bad, actually. Yeah, that’s definitely better. 

The bathroom mirror reveals a filthy, emaciated man with a scruffy beard, and skin the color of washed up corpse. These are just the facts, and he accepts them as they come, but his recent history is a mystery that is harder to unravel. 

How long has he slept? How did he get home? Where did Sinbad come from? Why do people like The Walking Dead? 10 seasons? He doesn’t get it.

As Gus sits in his underwear drinking warm single malt and Diet Pepsi from a plastic mug, memories seep muddily back to mind like tides in mangrove swamps: stepping into the pod, vast open space, a train, a conductor, and a southern man named Fulky. Muerte had been close; he had felt her, sensed her, heard her, but had not reached her. She had eluded him again, and then, he had fallen.

Gus pours all his remaining Amphetamine, Ketamine, Benzodiazepine, and Charlie sheen, onto a plate, cuts it all together into a gargantuan, unholy cigar of a line and snorts it in one fell swoop, so that his eardrums rupture, his eyelids shrivel and crack, his sphincter cramps up, and a part of his cerebellum necrotizes, and only then does he remember the message he’d received: beware of Stinko Fist! But beyond that, its all a blank.

A second surprise awaits Gus in his fridge beside the leftover meatball sandwich he is about to devour: n envelope full of cash, mostly twenties and tens, half of which smell like manure. And there in the fridge is his phone too, somehow fully charged. Screen says its Friday, six full days after the Unusual Inventions Convention. And what do you know, there’s a voicemail – Beep.

Hilario Gable

Hello pork chop—may I call you pork chop —thanks, pork chop.You may call me Gable, Hilario Gable, and you may think of me as your new benefactor. My colleague and dear acquaintance Dops Fabulon was unexpectedly called away and has asked me take over from him in this very loose narrative. So please carry on as normal. You will find sufficient cash in this envelope for all expenses, and as a token of good will, I have also extended a modest line of credit for you with your local dealer, as well as at Madame Dijons, in case you have a hankering for top of the line pudding. I trust this is all in order, so don’t let me down. I will be in touch again soon… pork chop. Gable, out. 

Narrator

Hmm. Whatever. As long as he gets paid. Since Gus still is, by some definition, a Private Detective, he checks his phone’s photo library for clues about the days he lost. And photos he does find. There’s one of a turtle riding a skateboard and one of a man in lederhosen drinking milk straight from a cow’s teat. There’s a short video of a lady opening a large box to find a perfect replica of herself, and one of a guy playing scrabble with three doppelgängers. Theres a saved Simpsons porn gif featuring Marge and Duffman and a pic of a fellow with boobs on his ass and butt cheeks for a bosom. Then, there’s a series of photos of Gus with an unfamiliar woman with a shaved head. Her Expression is ever changing, as if she is more than one person, and her face is hard to describe. Here, she looks like she just broke off a 5 year affair with the only man she ever loved so she could try and do right by her family, but there, like her favorite jam just came on in the club. Here, like someone who just found out her dad had had a brother who was murdered, but there, like someone trying to hold in a brutal fart at an intimate dinner. In all the pics she also looks like the type who'd be ok with being a sales rep for a new anxiety drug that hasn't been properly tested and might cause strokes. 

There are photos of Gus and this woman sharing a bowl of ramen, picking the lock of an old fishing box, holding a glowing blue orb, trimming a bonsai, and of the two of them out at sea attaching a radio transmitter to the tail of an albatross. 

He does not remember this woman, any of these events, or anything further, besides one single phrase that pops into mind with a stubborn echo: The Gossip Crow 

This day is certainly full of surprises, and soon there is another. As Gus opens a can of tuna into Sinbad’s bucket, there is a knock on his door.

But let's pause here for a message from our sponsors. Because, today’s program is brought to you by….

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Knock knock knock

Gus opens the door to find two tall thin men in maroon capes, with bowler hats and horn-rimmed glasses. 

Laughers that Fall

Good day, Mister Tulip, and good day to you. Allow me to introduce ourselves: We are The Laughers that Fall. I am Laugher Bentley, and this is Laugher Franz 

Narrator

His nose is pointy and crooked, as if it got stuck on a hook while he ran by

Laughers that Fall

We were once The Cranky Preachers who Wore Sandals in the Snow, and for a brief period in the 90s, The Constipated Clowns who Stole Cheese, but we adapted, changed our ways, and our name, to follow the true call - rebranding globally, which wasn’t easy given our complex franchise model. Anyway, we always speak for one as we do for all, for we are The Laughers that Fall.

Narrator

They both touch wrist to forehead as Gus lets them in

Laughers that Fall

I do believe, you met our colleagues while inside: Laugher Gertrude and Laugher Mike. But it was not safe there, where there was no space to care. She was close, and they were watching – yes, the scorpion had raised her sting. But who knows about these shapeless things, carried in on the back of a whispered whale, or in a yak’s butt crack, and sure to cause mild heart attacks. 

Narrator

A fly lands on Gus’s one hand, and at the same time, a moth comes to rest on his other 

Laughers that Fall

And now, Mr. Tulip, we have another message for you. Maybe three or maybe two. Dops Fabulon was not suddenly called away… he was murdered. Decapitated, in fact, and fed to stray cats. Fabulon was not who you imagined, oh not at all. He was but a pawn in a game engineered by the name we both know as goblin, nemesis, mastermind and fiend: the man with mushrooms growing form his armpits. He who hates the sound of the rain and of oceans. The Butcher of Pupi. The Smooth Defecator. The Garlic Jehovah. He needs no further introduction, not to you and not to we, for there’s none other it could be but Stinko Fist.

(Stinko Fist Jingle)

Stinko Fist - he’s not from this dimension

Stinko Fist - he loves One Direction

Stinko Fist – he’s got fourteen toes 

Stinko Fist - and he’s the number one foe

Laughers that Fall

Yes, Our intelligence suggests he has been a very busy boy since you once shared a history and a special bond, and since you presumed him dead. After taking an entry-level position at Man Bun Incorporated before The Great Wasabi Embargo of ’13, he quickly climbed the ranks, first as Donkey Punch Director at Fun Bird Pharmaceutical, then as Chief Punk Scoundrel at Blue Dung Industries, before finally accepting the role of Supreme Kaizer Motherfucker at global conglomerate and multifarious powerhouse, No Flush Holdings

I think one calls that upward mobility 

Yes, Stinko Fist has been up to much and most of that much has been no good. He is the driving force behind many shady new ventures, like Chaos Harvesting, Affection Degradation, Flesh Eating Paranoia, and Portable Psychoses, and has taken a close personal interest the cloning work of Jonas Stinkwolf at Push Karamba – in fact, some say they were lovers for a dirty weekend. But that’s beside the point right now. 

Narrator

Bentley makes a face as if he’s eating live hornets

Laughers that Fall

For we have gotten wind of a filthy new endeavor involving No Flush Holding’s Advertising, Marketing, and Copywriting sector. There is something utterly rotten going on, but we know not exactly what. That’s where you come in Mr. Tulip. That’s where you come in. Use your skills as a private dick to infiltrate, accumulate, and formulate an hypothesis. It is of utmost importance to us all! Or everyone will surely fall – oooh, I like your octopus!

– THE END –