Dirk Destroyer Part 9 Chapters Four and 4

I think this is the ninth installment of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother. When we last left our intrepid crew (I’ve always want to write that,) Ono, has just encountered Lustavious Brachenhun, the libidinous, importunate (two more words I’ve always want to use,) Lightbringer, who has pegged her for one of his longer-termed relationships – perhaps an entire hour.

Chapter Four

Stuff You Learn

There are several tricks you learn if you live long enough. I have lived long enough to learn a few of them, and to identify several more that I have yet to learn. Some tricks come to you naturally, though the only way to learn others is to go to the right school.

Characters learn to fly in books from the childhood tales of Ffefferfoph the Bblupbblsuph (who hasn’t read that one?) to Jonathan Edwards Seagull Looks for Chicks. What does this mean? There is a trick to flying, and humans can learn that trick if they live long enough – or find where it’s taught.

The same is true for trans-dimensional transport, a common skill in many stories – so common that anyone who’s lived long enough would surely learn how to do it. It is a skill that Ono, at this point in the story would find very useful.

And also a skill I never learned.

Chapter 4

Lustavious Brachenhun

“You,” sang Lustavious Brachenhun with a catchy pop tune with a syncopated beat, “you may be the next one! You maybe the one-and-only of this hour! (or maybe one of two.)”

I disliked Lustavious Brachenhun on sight, but I admired his ability to make up a song extemporaneously like that. Dirk could do that – even when we weren’t unusually old. As a matter of fact, Dirk was doing that when we were children.

“You’re the Babe for my bed,” sang Lustavious, “and it better be soon or I will SWOOOON to the moon!”

All right, that section wasn’t so good.

Lustavious was tall. He was the tallest Light Bringer I’d ever met, and his hair was pretty amazing. His blonde coif was the equal of Luxcurious Bidden, and it wasn’t even stapled to his head.

As he got closer I stood up. Why do men always stand up when they are approached by tall men? Maybe it is to see if the other man is taller.

Lustavious was taller. I still stood. So did Ono with Swampy firmly rooted to her shoulder. She nudged me out a step and slipped behind me so I blocked Lustavious from her.

“Oh, hi,” said Lustavious. “You must be the brother of that conniving bastard we are going to blast into oblivion for all time!” He thrust out his hand. “I hope there’re no hard feelings.”

I found myself taking his hand, and even more incredibly, saying the words, “of course not; think nothing of it.”

“Jerrrrrrk!” said Swampy, sounding more bird-like than I’ve ever heard him before.

“We are all happy,” said Akwar in a disturbingly seductive tone, “to do anything you want, Lustavious. ANYTHING.”

I didn’t remember Akwar being in the room. She did what may have been intended as a bump and grind routine with a chair, which had it any free will, might have ended it’s chair existence right there and opted for cremation.

I put selective amnesia on my list of skills I needed to acquire.

“Noted,” said Lustavious, who had been fortunate to miss the more disgusting thrusts of Akwar’s routine because he was focusing on getting past me and into close proximity with Ono. He reached across my body and fastened his manicured fingers onto Ono’s arm.

Ono said something that might have been yelp, or help. I couldn’t be sure. Mage-e-not’s head was missing, though there wasn’t any food floating above his collar. I remembered my boast about just drawing the line and felt shame.

“Just a moment,” I said, and felt conflicted saying even that much.

“Yes?” said Lustavious, staring down his perfectly straight nose and over his strong chin to meet my gaze.

I trembled. I really trembled. Not even Lenny Bruise had made me tremble and that guy was pretty powerful when he wanted you to feel small.

“I don’t…”

“You don’t what?” asked Lustavious.

“I don’t know…”

“What don’t you know?” he sang in a suspended minor chord that sent shivers up my spine.

What didn’t I know? I didn’t know! I couldn’t think. My mind was blank, my knees were shaking. Something was important, but I had no idea what!

“I know,” said Swampy, and sunk his rat-muzzle beak right into Lustavious’ arm.

Lustavious bellowed, and within moments, seven Showr Rinn monks skipped lightly across tables, chairs, and people’s heads, surrounding Lustavious, Ono, Swampy, and me.

“A problem?” asked a slightly damp but glistening Lip Ton Tease.

For a moment we all stood there frozen. It reminded me of the day Grandpa McFarland caught Dirk and me smoking one of his cigars behind the potting shed. It turned out that Grandpa had no trouble with his ten and eight-year-old grandsons smoking, but he gave us each a whipping for not buying our own.

Grandpa loved his cigars more than his children or grandchildren, an attitude I’ve come to understand over the years.

Tease stood there watching us with patient intensity. Monks live for the moments when they can display patient intensity. Everybody else on the planet experiences either patient boredom, or anxious intensity. Monks hum for years to acquire this skill, then display it whenever they can.

Yes, monks love to show off.

Ono was the first to come to her wits. She ignored Lustavious’ bleeding forearm, and the bits of gore hanging from Swampy’s beak.

“You glitter and bubble, Lip Ton Tease,” she said. “Did you splish and swoosh?”

Tease turned his head in the pose that monks make when they don’t know what to say, but want to look wise. “Loofa brings wholeness to a shower,” he said.

“Ding dong,” said Ono. “You monks vroom.”

Tease straightened in a non-monk-like, but very guy-like way. For all his training, Tease was a guy, and Ono was a pretty female. Guys, be they 2-years-old, or about to fall in the grave, always like to impress pretty girls.

“Poop and boo-hoo,” Ono continued, “we can’t peep as you roar and rumble – to see you whoosh and jangle.”

A female novice, who though a female, may have been among that percentage of females who, like males, live for impressing pretty girls, said, “but you can watch us! I mean, it is permissible if you wish to observe and so find peace.”

“Ker-ching?” asked Ono. Her eyes, which I noted were a rather pleasant shade of green, fastened on Tease, like he was the great hero, and the bleeding Light Bringer was nothing more than a face – a face turning rapidly red – in the crowd.

“Yes,” said Tease, “Lap Er Gud, speaks truthfully – though training exercises here might disturb the peace of brunch. We would not harm anyone, but those who have not attained cleansed emotions might fear the fear that disturbs digestion.”

“Wham zing!” said Ono, accepting an invitation that was not strictly given. “May Swampy swoop and peep as well?” She gently slipped her free hand under Tease’s arm. Lustavious still held her other arm in his large hand connected to his large, albeit savaged arm.

Tease looked on Lustavious’ wound and produced a loofa from his robe. “You should clean that before you have it bandaged,” he said.

Lustavious let go of Ono’s arm who strolled out of the cafeteria between Lip Ton Tease and Lap Er Gud.

Maybe Akwar was right; she was a wizard.

A perfect drop of blood released its hold on Lustavious’ arm and hurtled out into space. Its shape elongated as it fell, whether stretching for the floor, or reaching back for its erstwhile home. Though it accelerated as it dropped, time slowed and tiny fragments of the drop refracted in the cafeteria’s sterile and unappetizing light. As the drop found oneness with the puddle below, twin crowns formed at the top of the drop, and at the point of joining. The first crown dissolved into harmony with the puddle while the second rapidly expanded its corona before rippling through the many droplets that had lost themselves in a completeness which was…

Yech. That’s what it was, a puddle of blood. I never much liked blood. I looked up at Lustavious whom I still detested.

“You need some help with that arm?”

Lustavious looked around sheepishly. Sheepish was not an expression his face knew well, and it didn’t suit him.

“I suppose,” he said, putting down the loofa as if it were a dangerous snake.

Mage-e-not’s head did not reappear until after we left.

Come back next week to see the doings in the broom closet! That came out wrong. I mean there is a broom closet involved, and stuff happens, but I don’t write “doings” very well. So come back next week to read the non-salacious events that occur in the broom closet.

(Way to go, Headley. Now nobody’s coming back next week.)

And now this message from one of my favorite sick song writers, Tom Lehrer

Chapter 6 Trouble in Taos Part 4 The Nuggets Fly

Here’s part four of chapter six of Trouble in Taos. This is a longer post because this is the action part of chapter. I once heard someone refer to the action part of the chapter as the nugget. Well, with Slimy, the action part is where people begin to lose their nuggets. If you want to see more nuggets fly, you can get this story on Amazon.

Slimy was good at diggin’ and good at killin’, but I never heard anyone say that he was good at anything else. So I didn’t hold out much hope that he was good at hiding. I didn’t hear gunshots right away, but I figured I would soon. Slimy could hardly miss with those shotguns, but unless his targets stayed in a tight group, I didn’t figure slimy had a chance of killin’ all four.

There was nothing I could do, and the piece of lumber in my hand was pathetic, but still I didn’t drop it as I followed the bad guys into Saint Frank’s.

Saint Frank’s was the biggest building in town unless you count the Pueblo. Unlike the Pueblo, which was a warren of Indian coves, Saint Frank’s was pretty much one large room. I didn’t see anywhere where Slimy might hide, but I also didn’t see Slimy, just Father Julio and the four men standing in front of Rutherford James’s casket.

“I am sorry, my sons,” said Father Julio, “but the viewing will not be until tonight.”

The casket was closed, though it had been open before. I could think of only one reason Father Julio was trying to keep those four fellers from opening the casket.

Now, Slimy would never have thought to hide in a casket, but Father Julio was a different type. Priests lived uncommon long for unarmed men wanderin’ in a land where bullets flew like horseflies. Might be the Lord protected them, but I was betting a clever thought or two had something to do with it.

“We’re here now, Padre,” said the ugly one, “so the viewing is now.”

Father Julio might be a clever enough fella, but his cunning, wit, or divine inspiration failed him under the pressure. He just stood in front of four armed men twice his size and said in a cracked voice, “I forbid it.”

I can’t blame Father Julio for losing his nerve. After all, he wasn’t much bigger than me, and that’s not big at all. I think he was trying to use the “they believe you when you’re angry” trick I thought I had invented a few minutes before. It didn’t seem to be working for him. Forbid’s not a great word to use with the “they believe you when you’re angry” trick.

When you tell four men, particularly four large men with guns, that you forbid something, unless you have five bigger men with bigger guns backing you up, the only likely effect is that they will want to do the very thing you forbid. They’ll probably want to do that thing even more than before, ’cause nobody wants a scrawny priest telling them what to do.

I know that’s true, ’cause Estevo told me so, and he was a good Catholic. He said it’s even truer of Catholics and nine-year-old boys than other folk, but the Catholics put up with it. 

 Religion, according to Estevo, is all about earning credit for doing things you don’t want do, and not doing things you do want to do. Obeying a scrawny priest you could knock over with one inebriated breath is a good way to get credits, even more if he shouts, “I forbid.” Estevo wasn’t too sure what the credits were for, except maybe heaven, which sounds like a place where nobody does anything they want to do.

Unless they like to play the harp.

I don’t much get religion, but I get what Estevo said about Catholics not wanting to obey scrawny priests. I’m not so sure what the bit about nine-year-old boys was about. It’s been a long time since I was nine, and I never raised any boys of my own.

So Father Julio tried to set his feet, but as I mentioned before, he wasn’t a very big man, and the fellers he was trying to block were pretty good sized. The padre kept his body stiff, but the four men moved him aside like you might a sticky door.

The casket was standing about a foot off the floor on a stand. I’m not sure where that stand came from – I didn’t make it; maybe all the churches have ’em – they’re just high enough so that the edge of the coffin stood at belt height. That is, belt height for me or maybe Father Julio, but considerably shorter than belt-high for these four monsters.

All four men reached down to lift the lid off the casket, and so when they saw Slimy lying there on top of Rutherford James, their hands were full of casket lid instead of something more useful for the situation, like a 45.

I still don’t know what I was doin’, but that’s the moment I decided to charge those bruisers, yellin’ and wavin’ my stick. I might have hit one too. I’d like to think I did, but it probably didn’t make much difference.

They weren’t so gentle with me as they’d been with Father Julio. The biggest one hit me in the chest with his elbow and knocked me back onto my ass.

The goon saved my life.

While the four men were either pushin’ Father Julio, throwing the casket lid, or elbowin’ me out of the way, Slimy was reaching for his shotguns.

I don’t know if Slimy aimed at each individual and unloaded four quick shots, or if he just held his guns apart and fired a single spread. Saint Frank’s has a high hard roof. It’s a precious loud place for gunfire. It sounded like Slimy was firin’ cannons instead of scatterguns.

From my perspective, one moment there were four tall men and one short man standing over a casket, and then the next moment they were all the same height, but only Father Julio still had his head. I sat there on the floor holding my ears, waiting for the boom to stop bouncing off those hard church walls.

When I sat back up, it looked like everyone was dead. The casket was blown back off the stand. Slimy and Rutherford were tangled together behind it. Father Julio was covered in blood from the neck up.

Costner's been in some good movies - but Silvarado is the only one where I liked him.

Things that are Creepy Part 4: Walter Bego

Who’s Walter Bego, some might ask. Others might answer (bless you) that he’s Slimy Beach’s best friend in Trouble in Taos. He’s also the managing director of Go Figure Reads – you know the company that hasn’t released THREE of my books that are finished. As to which Walter Bego is named after which; it’s hard to say. They look like they both were born before 1850.

By the way, the picture above is not an actual likeness of Mr. Bego – just the closest I could find on Google.

So Walter hands me this story. He wants to be a writer.

Betty Gattis

by Walter Bego

Betty Gattis pushed the point of her notebook’s spiral binding into my thumb, drawing blood.

“That hurt?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Thought so,” she said. Then the bell rang.

I left my books on the cafeteria table and went round the corner to the boys’ room. Eddie Franklin made to dump his cigarette in the urinal until he saw who I was. If I had been a teacher, he might as well have taken a drag. He would have been caught either way. I ran water on my thumb and wondered if I should rub the gritty powdered soap into it. The soap dispenser was caked with brown crusty soap stalactites. I decided against it.

“What you do to your hand?” asked Eddie.

“Betty Gattis,” I said.

“You too?”

I didn’t answer. I had less than three minutes to get to algebra, and my books were probably getting kicked all over the cafeteria by now. I pulled a paper towel and wrapped it around my thumb.

“See ya,” said Eddie as I left.

I only ever saw Betty in study hall, and only if I went to the talking study in the cafeteria instead of the quiet study in the library. Mom wasn’t thrilled that I didn’t get my homework done at school anymore, but like usual, as long as I didn’t say anything, she gave up on it after a while.

The first time I got the nerve to sit next to Betty she ignored me. A senior was telling her about his car – a ’70 mustang that he bought with mostly his own money. Betty didn’t seem too impressed, but she listened for a while. The senior went on about his “beauty,” and Betty stood up like she was headed to the bathroom. The senior kept talking, as Betty stood behind him. Then she bent down and grabbed the back legs to the senior’s chair. She stood, pulling the back of the chair with her, and sent the senior sprawling head first into the table.

“What the…” said the senior from the floor, stopping before uttering the word that would earn him certain detention.

“Mister Ward,” said Coach Fox, looking up from his training equipment catalog, “is there a problem?”

The senior, who must have been named Ward, ‘cause Coach Fox was pretty good with names, sat there on the floor for a second until it was obvious that Betty wasn’t going to put his chair back down for him.

“I just fell, Coach,” said the senior, getting up to chorus of giggles across the cafeteria.

“Alright,” said Coach, going back at his catalog.

Betty, back in her seat with no senior to torture shifted her attention to me. Her eyes were just normal brown, but something about them made me warm all over.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” she said.

I shrugged.

She nodded her head.

From then on, that was my seat – there next to Betty in F period study hall, and no power in heaven or the Archendale School Board could drag me from it.

So – is anybody wondering why Walter Bego creeps me out? What is it about dysfunctional couples that fascinate us?

And the obligatory You Tube video

Walter, seeing that people are actually looking at this blog, has decided to start a second blog for the more favored writers of Go Figure Reads: Stanley McFarland, Will Wright, or any hack he can find to work for nothing. He wants to name it Kitchen Drawer, Junk Drawer, Granny’s Drawers, some name like that. I guess that’s a coming soon event.

Let’s just hope there isn’t much of him on it.