I continued to follow the jawless ventriloquist dummy where he led me, but the river was treacherous and in parts uncrossable. To fill in the plot gaps: Tunbridge, last seen on the bus talking to Mmrma/Mortimer about the fate of his beloved Crackers, had disappeared at an I-95 rest stop. His return had something to do with Woody Harrelson but I'll leave that for another day or the chopping block. This was the entire day's output of November 18th, selectively edited for spelling.
"You were looking for me, perhaps?" Tunbridge spryly climbed down from the luggage compartment, where he had been listning this entire time ... and scheming!
"TUNBRIDGE!" All in attendance cried out with a gasp.
"That's ME!" Tunbridge pointed a thick thumb at his barrel chest. "Or is it?" He removed his tweed jacket and unbuckled his khakis to reveal that which nobody in attendance could have ever imagined in their wildest dreams. [Note: at this point the subsequent character steps out of the aforementioned character's skin. This a crucial plot development.]
"Great Senator Kennedy!" Tex exclaimed, to the general confusion of his fellow man, for, the more apropriate ejaculation would have been,
"CRACKERS?" Morty looked from one Crackers to another Crackers, and then back again. He examined each Cracker's wrist for watchband straps, and then remember his crackers had been keeping time with a pocket watch. He did a double-take unencumbered by spring action. His head-bone stretched out several inches from his neck-bone in exasperation. "Why, I , err ... who ... what ..." Morty fell as if to faint, but quickly righted himself with a nudge from his Crackers.
"Sweet pea, yesterday, I knew that someday this day would come, but today, I didn't know it wouldn't be tomorrow. I thought it would be next week or maybe right after the high holy days, or maybe on the third thursday of May in an odd-numbered year divisible by three."
Crickets chirped.
"Morty, this is my twin sistuh, Cheese."
"CHEESE?!" The townsfolk shouted.
"Let me take a pictcha!" Ernesto, presently catching Damon Runyon fever along with da rest of dese mugs, took a look through da lens and made a pickchah of everybuddy all smiles.
"--that's Siamese twin sistuh, sistuh!" declared Cheese.
"Make that Evil Siamese Twin sistuth, sistuh!" clarified Crackers.
"Specifically, Evil Separated Siamese Twin sistuh, sistuh!" clarified Cheese, who at this moment it is too bad is not named Butter.
Is there such think as Siamese triplets? Have Research and Development on that, please?
R&D: Author, you can write whatever you like. If you wish there to be Siamese triplets for the sake of a cheap pun, then there are Siamese triplets.
Author: Thank you, R&D.
Suddenly, another figure descended from the luggage compartment, mysterious, unkown, barefoot and pregnant with more questions than answers.
"-- Make that Siamese triplet, sistuh!" clarified Butter.
"Crackers! Cheese! Butter!" The assembled masses cried out all at once and at different times, and in varying states of hunger for snack food and spiritual healing and physical comfort and potatoes and gravy and pajamas and cranberry sauce. It was, after all, nearly Thanksgiving.
"That's right, aseembled masses," chortled Butter.
"I was born a freak!" cried Crackers.
"An evil freak!" pointed out Cheese.
"Whu? My sweet pea who is the dearest light oh my light and soul of my soul, aka Crackers - she was born evil?!"
Crackers hung her head sadly." It's true, Morty. The three of us, me, Crackers, Cheese, and Butter, were boin attached at the brains. Our dear muddah didn't know what was comin or how many! Labor was intensive and inefficient. The division of labor belonged to the people. Boy it was ruff gettin' around! We did cartwheels that would never end!
"I was the evil triplet always tryin' to drag my sistuhs into the paths of rabid wolves when I was safely ensconced in a cave. They were toin apart limb from limb all regulah like on a consistent and occasional basis of time and space. Why, their dresses were regularly in tatters like rags and such while I was in the finest of evening gowns even in broad daylight. Vera Wang designed my onesies! When Doctah K --"
"DOCTOR K! YOu mean Billy the K was a doctuh?! Well I'll be a separated Siamese triplet's sweetheart forevuh!"
"MORTY!" Crackers moved as to hug her sweetheart forever but first she had a story to tell - a tale of woe! "Well foist I gotta tale uv woe to tells ya." She chewed gum and talked at the same time. She was that evil. "It was Doctor Billy the Kay, moustachioed pimp bastard and world-class Siamese-triplet separating surgeon who took the awl to our triumvirate of vaudevillian devilry."
'I can't believe there are three of you!' Doctor Billy the K shivered in his flashbacking timbers of hirsute horror. 'Man, this will be a difficult operation.'
"So you can imagine from that flashback there that our confidence was not high in this sausage-fingered moustachioed man of medicine. Would yours have been? How about YOU?"
"Who are ya talki'n to Crackers, you'r talkin' to the back of the bus and tehre's ain't nobody there!" Morty fied.
"Oh yea! Well It was a marathon surgery, and ma and paw paced back and forth in the waiting room while Uncle Pat was praying that the devil had not visited upon our family this unholy trinity of us."
"And the ting is," interrupted Cheese, because she was evil not only in the ways of the Good Book but in the ways of the okay book, Emily Post's Ettiquette, which specifically addressed interruption of your separated Siamese triplet as a faux paw. "The ting is, as we were attached at the brain and such, the tissue we shared was continually comminicatin' all our thoughts and poisonalities amognst each other. I was born the goody two-shoes, ya know! I said my prayers every night and looked both ways before crossin' the street and said please and thank you. What a sucker I was!"
"And so was I!" Butter pleaded her case. "I was so pure and smooth like an Easter lamb. Crackers was so named because she crackered her way outta the womb!! So after the operation, imagine our collective surprise when me and Cheese - innocents both! - toined out the evil ones and Crackers got to be the goody two-shoes."
"Well I was a hookah and every ting," noted Crackers.
"Hay you're right - you were a vent of da night as dey say! Say Buttah, whadda ya think of that?"
"Gee I dunno about that Cheese."
"Well it was kind of indentured servitude and all, it's not like it was in my nachah - or was it?"
"Anyways," continued Crackers, who although she was now good and all, did not like to be interrupted, and grew redder and redder with each sister's interruption, shouted," HEY LEMME FINISH MY STORY PLEASE IF THAT'S OKAY WID YOUSE!"
Relative silence ensued, accompanied by occasional slack-jawed incomprehension, straight-mouthed indifference, eyebrow-raising malfeasance, winking impishness, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.
"Tank you!" added Crackers, proving indeed her goodness as a good triplet. "As I wuz sayin', umm, what was I sayin'? Well Doctor Billy the K having puhfoimed surgery on us, having all manner of lovers for hire mopping his brown at regular intervals and passing the scalpel when he asked for it, if ya know what I mean."
"What do you mean by that?" Said Tex, from whom we haven't heard a lot lately."I come from Texas, and they don't say that where I come from! In Texas!"
"Well cowboy," Crackers addressed Tex, who was not an actual cowboy but a shipping magnate who wore a cowboy hat and a string tie and knew where to get the best barbecue in Texas,"Do ya want me to drawr you a pictcha?"
"I sure love me some pictures. Why, back home in Texas, I got a lotta pichtchas on my wall. YEEEE HAWWWW!!!"
"Hey hey hey down cowboy, settle down will ya? I'll drawr you a pictcha later. After Doctor Billy the K was done with us and the last beads of sweat were wrung from his drenched moustache and eyebrows, we were kind of a little beholden to him."
"Is that why Billy the K stole you aweay from me at the movie show?"
"Movie show? What kinda talk is that? Movie show? What year do ya think this is, it's 1987 and yer talkin' like an old timer. Movie show. Sheesh." This was the evil Butter. She was mean and rancid, and was not available in your dairy section. She was ill-churned was this butter, milked from sour Bessie, the sourest farm cow on any farm there ever was!
"Ahem, If ye'll let me continue! Ahem. Billy the K changed our lives - but it weren't necessarily for the better!"
I wonder why - he's the greatest dancer ...
"Hey wait a minute, we already saw that flashback!" Morty pointed out this word padding device.
"So yer right!"
"So I visited the Indian years later, and when I told him 'How,' he said 'Fried," like he remembered me and everything!"
"Knock knock!"
It was a scene of chaos and mild confrontation erupting into occasional fisticuffs which escalated into World War. Famine and locuts plagues the world and her people, and the good and the bad alike, the separated Siamese triplets and Jo-jo the Dog-faced boy alike because enemies, brother attacked brother attacked the mailman. The nation would little remember what they said on the bus, but little will they forget what they did on the bus.
"Hey, wait a minute," asked Morty, pleading with the newly assembled guests to give him sixty seconds of their time for him to mentally digest their recent verbiage." "What have Cheese and Butter been up to all this time - besides pretending to be Tunbridge and whoever Butter was pretending to be."
"Carrot Top," clarified Butter.
"You mean you are the greatest prop comic in the woild next to Gallagher?"
"That was none other than me! Statue of Liberty!" Butter waved her finger as if she was holding a foam number one hand.
"You are Carrot top!"
"I toured with the greatest performers in entertainment history and had audience with world leaders and Barbara Streisand. Boy I was king of the Vegetable tops! I Lorded over Broccoli top and Kohlrabi Top and Cabbage Head. Lettuce head was my slave. Tomato head my window washer. Bok Choy top my chef.”
No comments:
Post a Comment