The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
Cannibal Mafia
6-23-2005

At a Saturday family barbeque. I have a pet dog living in my car and it's gotten the interior rather dirty. I accidentally kick over some dog food on the floor and the dog eats like crazy. That's when I remember I haven't fed it for five days.

I take all the seats out so I can clean it. Other kids take that to mean to take apart my entire car and take it to the store and then buy all sorts of accessories for it. No matter how much I yell and swear and scream that I just want a wash, they don't listen to me. They just push my exterior car parts around on a big shopping cart. Finally after I literally start slapping people around, they each listen and say, "Why didn't you just tell me."

Back at the barbeque in the middle of the desert. Eating some very good burritos. The father walks by and asks how I like the burrito skin. I say it's great. He shrugs and moves on. His son, still older, comes by and brags about how he made it out of the boss he just killed while running an errand. I take a couple more bites and then decide I don't want to eat human.

There are two ways out of the barbeque. One is through a night-time French town constructed entirely out of bricks, and the other is up a cliff that hadn't been scaled since 1935.

I sneak into the town first. The roads are a mess, being built of brick. Loose bricks everywhere. Buildings falling apart. Can't tell which roads lead through a ghetto or to salvation. Another man is with me, and he seems to know where he's going, except I think he's drunk. The son finds us and chases us. We find a firetruck and two firemen at the end of a fire scene. We start to explain when the son comes and shoots at everyone. My companion hands me a metal plate to shield myself with as he goes down. It blocks the bullet and I run.

I make for the cliff. I scale it. Looking up each step, it looks impossible, but I somehow find stuff to grab--a rock here, a root there--to pull myself up. He can't keep up with me and I get away to another town. I go into a store and talk to a little kid there, tell him about these lunatics. I sit down on a bench in the little novelty store. Just when I think everything's cool for a few moments, I shut my eyes and hear a click. The kid has fastened me to my bench. "It'll be okay, he says," and the son comes in the door. Everyone in this area is afraid of this family and do everything for them!

The man that was with me earlier, who got shot, he saves me. A bullet is sticking out of his forehead. We make it back to my car. My car is all rusty and has a recess in the front with watery sand and dirt and large rocks in it. Even huge chunks of chicken inside an exterior hood compartment. I didn't think the weather here was bad enough to wear it down like this.

I drive like a maniac, like someone who'd gotten any with too many crazy stunts in too many video games. I squeeze through cars inside tunnels and screech sideways past Mafia cars as my gun forward-mounte gun turrets fire. Mafia. Family. Some kind of Cannibal Mafia is what I'm dealing with and I'm going to end it.

With the enemy on our tail, we climb another mountain--just barely--and make it to some complex. My companion, he has super speed and can teleport every now and then, which is probably how he saved me before. He tires quickly, though, and falls to a volley of bullets. Me, I'm more normal, except I have a supercharged bomb. One shot to annihilate everything around me. I take a fall and use it to my advantage. I do what amounts to breakdancing on the ground as I fire bullets at my enemies. The boss draws closer. A green alien, lizard-like, with glowing orbs on his chest. I wear him down, waiting for him to attempt his self-heal, when he's most vulnerable. I see his blue charge, and I let my bomb go off. A moment before he vanishes into the ether, he congratulates me in a robotic voice.

Chilling in ER's place, watching Aliens on his TV with no sound. An alien starts to lick a woman, and I hear it. I look around the TV and ER is there with a record player and a candle, the hot wax of the candle being sliced by the turning record, generating a licking sound. How does he come up with this stuff?

posted by Phlegm at 6/23/2005