Carlton Mellick III - Satan Burger

“I find your toilet most delectable,” he says. “It beckons me to sit upon it.”

Without asking permission, he sits, slowly, preparing for ultimate gratification… and a satisfying smile cracks the corners of his face. “Wonderful.”

Pause.

Mort says, “So you’re the lad with the bagpipes?”

“Ja,” Vod says, “and I’m so excited to release my soul into their shafts, and to become one with my music, that I cannot resist an erection.”

Mort’s face contorts, turning to Gin. “Wanna come with me to get the rent from John?”

“Get it yourself,” Gin says.

“I’m not going to John’s by myself. He’s… old.”

“Then take Vodka.”

Vod exclaims, “I DO NOT WISH TO LEAVE THE TOILET SEAT.”

Gin, sipping at the mega-drink, scratching a soft spot on his hip, and Mort, swinging a saber, pass an Abraham Lincoln midget as they stroll behind the warehouse.

They get to a fire engine red door in the back of the warehouse. A BIG doggie door covers half the entrance, with a sign reading, “Beware of Doggie.”

A questioning face emerges from Mort’s neck.

“That’s a big doggie door,” Gin says. “I didn’t think there were doggies that size.”

“Thought I told John he’s not allowed to have pets,” Mort says. “Arr.”

Mort hums the door buzzer.

Gin says, “Maybe it’s to scare away burglars and Mormons.”

Mort buzzes again. “He’s not answering.”

“But he’s always here.” Gin buzzes.

Pause.

Gin rubs his neck, sipping the mega-drink. “Look through the doggie door.”

“No, thanks,” says Mort, “I don’t want to see the doggie that needs a door that big.”

Gin laughs. “Afraid?”

“Arr!” Mort flips him off. “You do it.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Go ahead then.”

“I will.”

“Then do it.”

“I will.”

Gin bends down, scratching a breast.

“Then do it.”

“Shut up, I’m doing it.” Gin throws open the doggie door and looks inside.

But first:

Spin-feelings rush into Gin, giving form to a large orange structure in Gin’s head which is a living being quite like the cross between a tapeworm and an apartment building. This creature is the offspring of Gin’s hangover, and Gin’s head is the incubator, pulsating warmth. It takes twenty-four hours before it will leave into the outside world, and Gin will have to bear its pain until then. He gets this infant in his head many times a week from drinking too much hard alcohol — which, of course, is gin.

And with the infant/creature handing him a blood-rushing of the head, Gin doesn’t realize the doggie on the inside of the doggie door. The doggie being of a certain breed that no one has ever seen before. It is the John breed. Well, it is actually just John himself, naked and on all fours, growling with foam. A fat, bald, middle-aged man that thinks he is an attack doggie.

Then, just as an attack doggie would, John flies toward the intruder, splashing the mega-drink between them. And Gin screams out, flap-dashing down the street with the human doggie chasing him, barking.

And Mort bends down to pick up the rent money settled on the ground just within the door, inside of an envelope with two flowers and a pencil and four paper clips and some breakfast, and the bills have little smiles drawn onto the president faces in blue ink.

The naked doggie springs at Gin’s legs, thumping him to the ground, handing him a large number of claw-scratchings.

The Abraham Lincoln midget comes to save the young man from further injuries, rapping John-doggie on the scalp with a rolled-up newspaper, which angers the wannabe doggie, turning to Lincoln midget and biting his pant leg, thrashing it about.

Gin darts away.

Mort, from a distance, gives a cluttered face — a confused spectator watching John chase Lincoln down the street, barking and biting at his ankles.

Back to me:

I find myself reading a Mutilation Man comic book at a corner store/liquor store, and I’m not positive how I got here. Mutilation Man swirls off the page and hides under the magazine rack, which looks more like a transformer in my eyes.

Christian and Nan are searching the shelves for nice cheap liquor.

“What you want?” Christian asks, swarming his arm around Nan’s stomach.

“I don’t know. They’re all too expensive.”

“Just pick one. You can afford it.”

“Well, you’re hasty all of a sudden.”

“Bite me.”

She bites him on the chubby part of his shoulder and he screams a laugh. Then she grabs a bottle of Fork’s Gum for him.

“Whiskey?” amazed at her choice. She usually drinks butter almond rum.

Christian takes it to the cashier, a brown-haired, blond mustache-bearing man, who has never slept with a woman under the age of forty, who is now reading a newspaper.

Christian puts the bottle and his ID onto the counter.

The cashier looks up from his paper. “Eight even,” he says.

Nan throws some crumpled bills. The cashier glances at the cash and then tosses them back. “Sorry, I can’t accept this.” He goes back to his paper.

“Why not?”

“I don’t accept American money.”

Christian and Nan stare at him for a few minutes.

“How can you not accept American money in an American store?” Christian asks.

“For your information, this store isn’t in America. It’s in New Zealand.”

“No, it’s not. It’s in America.”

The cashier slams the newspaper. “Didn’t you read the sign?”

“What sign?”

The cashier jumps over the counter to the glass of the door and picks up a small piece of notebook paper with four words written in magic marker.

It reads:

WELCOME TO NEW ZEALAND

The he tapes it back to the glass.

“Real funny,” Christian groans.

“I’m not joking. The dirt underneath this store is owned by New Zealand.”

“Sure it is.”

“Hawaii’s not attached to the U.S., but it’s still considered part of the country.”

“Yeah, but Hawaii’s surrounded by water, not another country.”

“Hey, Mr. Man, I own this store and it’s going to be in whichever country I want it to be in! Actually, I don’t want it to be in New Zealand anymore.” He crosses out New Zealand and writes in another country.

Now it reads:

WELCOME TO VENEZUELA

The cashier is proud of himself. “There. Now we’re in Venezuela and you can’t buy that whiskey unless you have Venezuelan money.”

Nan comes in. Her expression says I’m sick of this .

She punches the cashier in the face. He screams straight to the ground.

“My tongue is broken,” the Cashier cries.

Nan takes the money and the whiskey, walking toward the door. “What are you going to do, call the Venezuelan police?”

The cashier bleeds.

As we leave the store, we discover that the sun is ready to go in for the night, heading back home to his wife and kiddies, who are all sit-waiting for him to come down to them with crab sticks and dinner rolls perched on their flowery kitchen counter.

On his way over the horizon, the sun accidentally brushes against a mountain range and catches the landscape on fire.

And as the sunset becomes a forest of flames and red-orange swirls with smoky demons crawling their way to the cloud people, and as the abstracted vegetation and forest creatures fall over in disgust, all that Mr. Sun says about his action is this:

“Sorry about catching you on fire. I’ll try to be more careful tomorrow.”

The warehouse spits a wad of throat-snot onto a passerby and then goes about its daily routine of sulking in its foundation. When the passerby insists the warehouse explain itself, the warehouse waves him away with a little wooden finger and calls him a log of boob poop.