-------------------------------------
Chapter 4: Won’t Get Fooled Again
by Alex Behr
A breeze came in through the back window, for the wretched Plymouth Valiant Lestat was lying in lacked that important part of its anatomy after its present owner smashed it in with a baseball bat and tossed in Lestat. He couldn’t see what had happened to Lucile, because that strangely familiar person—who smelled like onion soup—had ripped his t-shirt into strips and wrapped it around Lestat’s eyes, smearing vomit across his face, and wound his pinstripe suit around him like a straightjacket.
Lestat reached behind him and felt the stalk of some limp organic matter, greasy and slick, like what he’d find at the bottom of his fridge’s vegetable bin after an optimistic houseguest had visited and brought some food for a stir-fry, when all they’d end up eating were meat burritos washed down with Mountain Dew.
“He’s grabbing those mushroom stalks,” a woman’s voice said. “The ones growing up from between the seats.”
“Like that’ll do him any good,” a man’s voice said.
The mildew from the ancient Plymouth’s carpet clogged Lestat’s nose like two oily sausages. Thankfully, the noises in his head had temporarily stopped, no doubt checked by the massive discomfort they—his peeps—his NBA All-Stars—were enduring. His cheek was pressed against the V embedded in the seat, and a rusty spring sticking up from the base of the floor supported the bulk of his head. Lestat wished fervently that this were all an episode taking place in the Star Trek Holodeck, though if it were, he’d populate it with Shannon Doherty look-alikes (before her current bout of plastic surgery), and not the farting idiots in the front seat.
They bumped and thudded down what must be a country road—swarms of bugs floated in and nested in Lestat’s hair. He heard a knock from the back again, and wondered if a rock had hit the bottom of the muffler.
“Think the barn is still empty?” a woman said. “I mean, if it isn’t, I mean, if there are horses and shit, then won’t someone come and feed them?”
“Can you hand me a fucking beer and shut your trap?” the man said.
I hate cows, Lestat thought.
The car swerved. The woman yelled, “Dinner!” The car jerked and Lestat fell down behind the front seat. Bile came up in his throat when his face landed in what his nose surmised was a pickle coated in flaky ketchup and pieces of burnt hamburger.
The front side door flew open. The woman laughed and Lestat felt a thud. A piece of road kill landed on his woeful back. An ear of a rabbit flopped against his neck.
“Hungry, Lestat?” the man asked.
How did he know his name? God, what Lestat would do for a hot bowl of phở with his brother, but Lance had left the States to direct pornographic Easter bunny movies in Uzbekistan.
Lestat had no idea how much time had passed when they stopped for good. They’d yanked his shoes off and forced him to walk barefoot over rough pebbles and dirt till they opened a barn door.
Finally, Lestat spoke. “Barney, if this is your idea of some prank before my promotion, you’re so busted. You’ll never make chief assistant at this rate.”
The blindfold was yanked down. He looked at his abductors.
They weren’t smiling. A man whom Lestat named Baldy was huge, with pink, rippled skin. He wore a metal breastplate, shiny black pants, and tall black boots. The chick held a tattoo gun and a set of dyes. Lestat dubbed her Fresh Thing. She had an enormous bullring through her nose and thighs that rivaled the size of Coit Tower (or “Coitus Tower,” as one of his voices, fully recovered from the car trip, called it).
“Look, either you back off from acquiring the Ikonos II satellite technology, or we’ll tattoo you with an image of Michael Jordan—with his jersey numbered ‘32’—on your forehead,” Baldy said.
Summoning all the might of every He-Man episode he’d watched as a kid, he swung his arms around and spun maniacally into the hulk of Baldy and slammed against his metal breastplate. “By the power of Grayskull. I have the power!” Lestat shouted. He clobbered Baldy in the ear and Baldy kneed him in the stomach. Lestat fell back into a haystack and grunted. He grabbed a fistful of straw and ran toward Fresh Thing, but Baldy picked him up and threw him over the stall and onto the udders of a sleeping cow, her nipples raw, pus-covered, and oozing.
Fresh Thing stepped through the pen door. The battery-operated tattoo gun whirred and purred like a first date. “Look, we can make it easy for you. We can number his jersey ‘23’ if you cooperate,” she said.
A shaft of light cut across the barn floor. Lucile, his love, his luscious lily pad, stood in the doorway and sang, “Oh God, I'm bleeding. Oh God, I’m bleeding. Oh God, you’re bleeding” from Godspell: The Musical.
Baldy countered with a robust approximation of Roger Daltry, “You Better, You Better, You Bet. You Better Bet Your Life!” He bounded toward Lucile with a hoe in one hand and the dripping remains of the rabbit in the other.
Lestat scrambled up a ladder to the hayloft and looked for a rope from which to swing. He was Abrek, the first Soviet monkeynaut, refusing to succumb to a metal hatch and choked fate. Interstitial, thrumming, tertiary, quirky—the voices in his head taunted and distracted him. The words felt like someone had force-fed him a plastic cupful of flat Sprite mixed with cigarette butts. His headache, his vibrant friend, had returned.
Lucile held the Valiant’s tire iron like she was a Crusader on the road to Jerusalem. He wanted to help her. Unfortunately, he was afraid of heights.
-------------------------
Chapter 5: Over The Top
by Charles Bush
On the barn floor Lucile and Baldy stalked each other, Lucile wielding the Plymouth Valiant’s tire iron, Baldy countering with a hoe. Lucile lunged at Baldy, but her tire iron glanced off Baldy’s metal breastplate, the only result an ear-shattering clang. Baldy pinwheeled his hoe down at Lucile. His aim was slightly off, but still he ripped the fabric of Lucile’s black halter top and etched a thin red line in her well-defined midsection. Music from innumerable Star Wars fight scenes bombasted in the background.
Meanwhile, up in the hayloft, Lestat, who had suffered from acrophobia ever since he could remember, peered over the edge. His throat tightened, his muscles froze. It seemed . . . so . . . high. Plus, there was no railing on the hayloft. Damn it, where was OHSA when you really needed them? Lestat knelt down, drew his arms and legs into his body, and curled up into a ball.
How to get down from this infernal high balcony, he asked himself. How did I get up here? By the ladder. But somehow it didn’t seem so scary going up. Going up I could just stand in front of the ladder and put my foot on the lowest rung. Now, from up here I can’t approach the ladder from the front. Somehow, I’ll have to swing onto it from the side.
Down on the barnyard floor Baldy and Lucile circled each other, impromptu weapons held high. Both were breathing heavily and grunting. Lestat had his eyes closed and his ears tuned to Lucile’s grunting – low, filled with emotion, coming from deep within her body, sexy as hell. I wonder if she grunts like that during sex, Lestat asked himself. He liked women who were big grunters. He felt his male member stiffen. He opened his eyes to search out Lucile. But in his lust he’d forgotten where he was – the hayloft. It was . . . so . . . high. His throat tightened; his muscles froze; and his male member went limp.
Below Baldy made a quick, unexpected move: He dropped the hoe, ran to a corner of the barn, and came back to face Lucile bearing a huge, sharpened ax. He raised the ax high over his head and prepared to crash it on top of the terrified Lucile’s skull.
Lestat realized he could no longer temporize; he had to do something and do it now. He uncurled himself, went over to the ladder, and decided to mount it from the left-hand side. He carefully, gingerly grasped the ladder with his right hand. With his left hand he kept a firm grip on the edge of the hayloft. Slowly, cautiously, he began to shift the weight of his body from the hayloft to—
TIMBER!!!
Unfortunately, Lestat’s fear of heights had caused him to hold onto the edge of the hayloft too tightly and for too long. He had pulled the ladder off balance, causing it to topple. Like a Ferris wheel with a terrified child on board, the ladder and Lestat slowly arced across and down toward the barn floor.
Reader, what follows may astound you. You may find it hard to believe. But would I lie to you? What possible motive would I have to lie to you? Please trust me, dear reader, all is true.
Lestat came down on the ax held above Baldy’s head, and came down on it at the precise fortuitous angle that caused it to deflect from its intended target–Lucile–and aim instead at Baldy’s head. The ax split Baldy’s head in two, like a fresh coconut at a Polynesian picnic. Baldy crumpled to the ground. Fresh Thing gasped and fled. Lestat and Lucile had won.
Lestat lay on the barn floor racked with pain. His head hurt. His neck hurt. His back hurt. His shoulder hurt. His memory of trading for Erick Dampier hurt. He was lying next to a recent cowpie. It’s sour, rotten smell hung over him like poison gas. Hard to believe, Lestat thought to himself. This shit has been through four stomachs.
Lestat looked up at Lucile, who was standing above him. Her ripped black halter top exposed one honey-colored breast. A tear in one leg of her tight-fitting white jeans offered a teaser of tawny flesh. She was covered in sweat; a thin red welt ran down her taut abdomen. Her hair was tousled, giving her the lioness look. She looked sexy. Sexy as hell. In fact, she reminded Lestat of someone. Who was it? Ah yes. Michelle Yum in “Sluts Gone Wild,” a porn flick he’d revisited just two days ago during a slow afternoon at the office.
Then the voices started again. Coming at him from all directions, as if from a circular firing squad. At first too many decipher. But as Lestat lay on the barn floor, breathing the fumes of the cowpie, throbbing with pain, assaulted by invasive sounds, he began to recognize separate strands in the cacophony in his ears:
His boss’ voice, a pompous male voice: “We need to re-message that we are focusing on becoming the leading enterprise software vendor with an emphasis on global outsourcing from the China market.”
A harsh, angry young male voice: “You / Don’t wanta fuck with Shady / ‘Cause Shady / Will fuckin’ kill you.”
A tired, hoarse, stupid male voice: “The issue is whether we’re going to cut and run or stand by our principles. I know what I choose.”
A frail female voice, filled with terror: “1758 Watershed Drive. Please help.”
A grating male voice: “This is Tom Shane, and you have a friend in the diamond business.”
“We need to re-message that we are focusing on becoming the leading enterprise software vendor with an emphasis on global outsourcing from the China market.”
“You / Don’t wanta fuck with Shady / ‘Cause Shady / Will fuckin’ kill you.”
“The issue is whether we’re going to cut and run or stand by our principles. I know what I choose.”
“1758 Watershed Drive. Please help.”
“This is Tom Shane, and you have a friend in the diamond business.”
Gradually the four male voices faded out and Lestat could hear only the frail female voice filled with terror: “1758 Watershed Drive. Please help.” Lestat slapped a hand to his forehead. What a jerk I’ve been tonight, he thought to himself. Not only did I fall off the hayloft, I haven’t done a thing for the poor woman at 1758 Watershed. She could be dying, and I’m just lying here cuddled up with a cowpie. Who am I? Is this who I am? It’s time I redeemed myself.
Lestat looked up at Lucile. “Could you do me a favor?” he asked. “Could you take me to 1758 Watershed Drive? Fast?”
Lucile wrinkled her nose. “Why there?” she asked. “You still haven’t given me one good reason. And don’t you think we’ve had enough high-risk activity for one night? One other thing: If you want to be Superman, I’d advise a little more flight training before you go out on another assignment.”
Lestat felt bile rise in his throat. “Just a minute,” he shouted. “Didn’t I just save your life? If it weren’t for me, wouldn’t it be your skull lying in two pieces on a barnyard floor, rather than Baldy’s. Don’t you owe me something?”
The fire went out of Lucile. She hunched her shoulders and cast down her eyes. “Of course I’ll take you,” she said, apologetically.
Lestat was torn between two emotions. Lucile’s sudden abjectness punctured the Michelle Yum fantasy he’d been working on. Michelle Yum didn’t do abject. But on the other hand, if he’d somehow managed to make Lucile feel guilty, if he’d gained the moral upper hand in their relationship, maybe he could leverage the situation into not just one but two favors. Lestat looked at Lucile’s bare breast, the rip in her jeans. He rubbed his groin.
“As a matter of fact, Lucile, it seems to me my saving your life should entitle me to more than just one favor.” He leered at her. “Say . . . two?”
Lucile blanched, swallowed and looked at Lestat warily. Eventually, in a tone more question than answer, she said, “Yes?”
Lestat looked at Lucile, drool seeping from both sides of his mouth. “Okay, two favors it is,” he said. He rubbed his groin again. “Did you happen to hear how the Celtics game came out tonight?”
-------------------------------------
Chapter 6: What Fresh Hell Is This?
by Jane Cullin
“This can’t be right.”
Morning seared Lestat’s dry eyes as he scanned their surroundings. Rubbing them with filthy index fingers felt like grinding sandpaper into his corneas. Really, it was excruciating.
Lestat rubbed harder.
The parking lot was jammed to near-capacity and it was only 9:02 AM. Lucile had eased into a remote spot. “It is right, Lestat. Look, on that wall, in big blocky letters: ‘1758.’ And you saw the Watershed Drive sign when we turned.”
He tried to come up a good omen from the numbers — pretty boy Rick Fox’s #17 Lakers jersey was no good, and he couldn’t even conjure up a 58 in the NFL.
Lestat was in no shape for superstitious numerology. He ached to the marrow of his bones, and his mouth tasted like he’d been sucking the pus-covered udders of the cow that had just witnessed their barnstorm. Or last night’s barnstorm. Whenever it was. Time was losing meaning. Worst of all, the voices were back, and loud.
Angry young male: “Reality is wrong. Dreams is for real.”
“Help me. Please, I need help.” There it was — the woman who had beckoned him to this address, and although now that they were just outside it, she sounded weaker.
Then a craggy voice lied, “Is Al-Qaeda working with the Taliban? Yes. Do we have clear evidence of cross-border activity? Of course …”
A familiar male crooned, “ — but not the Ikonos II satellite. Never the Ikonos.” His VP?
Another male insisted, “The Scooter Store believes you have a right to mobility — ”
“But on the desk is where I want you,” a guy moaned.
“Please.” The woman again. “Help.”
“Do you want to go in?” Another female, the one sitting beside him. “Lestat?”
Lucile. He turned to her, trying to keep his gaze above the impudent breast exposed during the fight, and now barely covered by a tiny half-sweater she’d dug out of the Tercel’s trunk. It was thin fabric, and the delicate profile of her nipple begged him to pause, linger. Maybe touch. Lick even, with a little red wine on his tongue.
No: Stay on task! But something about the sweater triggered a synapse from hours earlier, a disconnect he hadn’t dealt with. Yes, the sweater. She pulled it out of her trunk. The trunk she’d popped open after they’d left the barn. Bloody and exhausted, Lestat had noticed, if only just barely, two inconsistencies about the Tercel’s trunk:
First, it was loaded with neatly sealed boxes, strange in their symmetry and their pristine, brown sides. Didn’t cardboard boxes usually have markings, numbers, arrows — even the ones you bought at Mailboxes, Etc.? What was Lucile doing with this inventory of unmarked containers?
And second, Lestat was startled by this: you get a lot roomier trunk with a Tercel than you might imagine.
They hadn’t talked much as they fumbled their way from the country road back to the District, where Lestat’s Google map kicked in to guide them. Hadn’t relived the moment when Lestat parted Baldy’s skull, hadn’t talked about Lucile’s sudden reappearance during their strange, shared odyssey or about their failure to call in about missing a work day that had started an hour ago. They hadn’t even talked about Lucile’s impressive aria from Godspell: The Musical. Instead, they’d focused on getting here, to 1758 Watershed Drive. It was almost as if Lucile heard the voices, too, and shared his commitment to finding the woman who needed help.
Now Lucile watched him with that conviction and sense of purpose that had drawn him to her from the day they met. “Well, do you? Do you want to do it?”
Be 30, not 12, he scolded himself. Of course he wanted to do It, and he was revisited by the memory of Lucile’s sweet, heart-shaped ass bending into the Tercel’s trunk. But no! Instead, he had to do it. This. Absolutely had to. Lestat dragged his hand across a vomit-crusted mouth. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s go.” At least he could get some mouthwash here, and maybe some shoes.
1758 Watershed Drive was, after all, a Wal-Mart.
All Lestat knew about Wal-Mart was a blog slogan he’d stumbled on once: “Killing America, One Main Street at a Time.” Nonetheless, on a better day, he probably would have marveled at the stacks of Xbox 360 Value Bundles crawling toward Wal-Mart’s disturbing fluorescent lights, bundles priced at just $509.66. He might have paused at the new “Oliver’s Army” game for PS2, its holographic cover art glistening with the scowl of a familiar bald brute in a metal breastplate. Possibly turned backward the boxes of “Bamboo II: Revenge of the Jackoffs,” a favorite shopping diversion intended to pluck a few bucks out of the pocket of his least favorite celebrity. But this was not a better day.
Today, limping barefoot down an endless aisle, Lestat wondered if this was how a tour of the Grand Canyon would feel on acid. Shelves towered overhead, an omniscient voice announcing random bargains echoed off every surface, and shoppers plodded behind burdened carts like burros trained to silently stick a nose up the asshole ahead. Muzak snippets never quite reached their chorus, and the voices continued crackle through his pounding cranium. Urging him to — what?
“Do you know what we’re looking for?” Lucile asked.
Mutely, miserably, Lestat shook his head, no. He expected her to complain, or at least snort with frustration, but instead, Lucile silently matched his cadence as he trundled down aisle 174B. An occasional shopper tore eyes off the eternity of merchandise to give the pair a startled look. Lestat glanced down at his now-raggedy silver shirt and saw it was blood-stained. Lucile’s tight white clubbing pants were filthy with cow shit and a mung-colored spatter that Lestat very much feared might be Baldy’s brains. So he avoided eye contact with others, training his sight on their surroundings. Shelves, merchandise, grey vinyl floors — the voices were hissing and sputtering, and he wondered if he were hallucinating when out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Lucile’s lips moving, whispering words too quietly for him to understand. Turning toward her, he caught the profile of an expensively-suited man striding by, notable in that he had no shopping cart, and that he looked a little like — no, a lot like — Lestat’s VP, but —
“Lucile, did you see — ”
But she interrupted him. “Are you OK? Do you feel OK?”
They’d reached the end of the aisle. He paused, looking right to HOUSEWARES and then left to BOOKS. Was he OK? Books, in Wal-Mart? The voices offered neither comment nor direction, only a cacophony of static now, mingling with the store’s bouncy instrumental rendition of Brown Sugar and the sly announcer hawking Wal-Mart’s new line of organic hemp cereal.
“Ungh!” It escaped from deep in Lestat’s belly, without warning, when a searing pain shocked the tendons in his ankle. He crouched to grab his injury, banging his butt into the Wal-Mart shopping cart that had struck him. Jesus fucking Christ. Did he have any parts left unmangled? Would this torment never end?
“So sorry,” purred the figure behind the offending cart. Squatting on the floor, Lestat’s gaze climbed up past spiky heels, over black jeans straining to contain Coit Tower thighs, under a familiar nasal bullring to — the smirking face of Fresh Thing. He felt his cracking lips part, but not a sound emerged. How could she — what did this —
Fresh Thing spoke: “You shouldn’t have stopped.” She adjusted the strap of a large black shoulder bag, sagging under the weight of something bulky. Without another word, she pushed her cart in an arc around Lestat and Lucile, and veered to the left. Lestat stared after her, and the strange pointed bulk in her bag. Then his eyes landed on the gauche and glittery design on the back of Fresh Thing’s skin tight tank top: A red dragon. He’d seen just that design before, but where? Still, if that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t — but before he could complete the thought, much less speak it, Lucile headed off after the hurt-and-run bitch of last night’s torment. Lestat followed, two gimpy steps behind.
There was some sort of event in Wal-Mart’s BOOK section. A chain of carts and shoppers bisected the aisle and reached all the way to the front entrance. In several languages, unattractive people compared notes on camping out in line for days, waiting for — Lestat’s brain refused to process the details around him. He sagged against a shelf, shoving spines of Keeping the Rabble in Line and Profit Over People deep into the recesses of a metal rack never intended for books. The static in his head, cheery abortions of classic rock, incessant announcements, and now clanging carts and deafening multi-lingual chatter — Lestat pushed scabbed palms against both ears and closed his eyes, a vain attempt to block the sensory overload that suggested a replay of last night’s seizure. A small, soothing hand rubbed just the right spot on his shoulder, and he drew a deep breath, as if Lucile had huffed oxygen directly into his brain. He opened grateful if crusty eyes toward her, but her gaze pointed toward a massive banner overhead, straddling three aisles. She bit one corner of her lips and let the other side curl into the half-smile he’d come to associate with her appreciation of irony.
“Even here,” she said, still looking up and shaking her head a little, “Even after — last night, everything — you can’t escape your nemesis.”
The banner, in a font better suited to avocado prices, screamed, “Book signing today!” and in even bigger letters, “Welcome to LeLAND!”
The chuckle started somewhere around his injured ankle, burbling up through his exhausted gut, until finally, doggedly, it escaped his parched lips. Dropping his head, Lestat let himself tremble in quiet giggles, then shake, laughing, almost honking, out loud. It was laughter that said This is the last fucking straw, that said I’ve got nothing more to offer, that said OK, universe, you win, that said I quit.
It couldn’t be, but it was: Leland. Leland Motherfucking Chom.
It wasn’t enough that a year after the asswipe had left their company, critics were calling him the intellectual heir to Noam Chomsky — which was total bullshit — or that the son of a bitch had changed his last name from who-could-remember-what to ‘Chom.’ It wasn’t enough that he’d made a gazillion fucking bucks with ‘neu-fiction,’ as the New York Times insisted on calling it, or that he was a goddamned sellout with mall stores — mall stores — called LeLANDs, selling everything from audio-books to Bamboo-patterned t-shirts to coffee mugs bearing the author’s smirking fucking, well, mug. He choked on one last guffaw. He’d loathed the guy for swiping irreplaceable intellectual properties, had every reason to believe rumors he’d scraped off the top of the Chinese outsourcing — but it was Leland’s success that ate at Lestat like a festering, flesh-eating boil. The guy must have sold his soul to the devil.
Now, on the official worst day of Lestat’s life — possibly the worst day of any human life in the history of the universe — the asshole was here, in Wal-Mart, signing books, while a gravely disabled Lestat staggered through this miserable quest to save a life, and maybe his own sanity. What could be worse? What could possibly be worse?
Lucile nudged his left hip, nodding in the direction of a makeshift stage where his holiness, Leland Chom, grinned like the idiot he was at a pock-marked adolescent who topped the line of carts snaking through FEMININE HYGEINE. Behind Leland’s oily, adoring fan, and next in line — having wormed her way ahead of a sulking family of Hasidic Jews — stood a smirking Fresh Thing. One hand rested on the handrail of her empty Wal-Mart cart, the other deep inside her black patent leather tote. She stared straight ahead, as if on assignment.
“What the hell?” mouthed Lucile, silently, eyes darting from Fresh Thing back to him. He loved that he could read her lips, her candy-sweet, perfectly puffy lips. Even after an epic battle, no sleep, starvation and dehydration, and this ridiculous adventure he’d dragged her on — Lucile was at his side. His Juliet, his Guinevere, his Lara Croft. She looked wan, yet absolutely edible. Lestat hadn’t thought he had enough blood left in his body to pump his heart, but a surprising pressure on his fly told him otherwise. Maybe he was a superhero. Still leaning against the shelving, he raised a confident and manly arm to circle Lucile — until an acrid stench like rancid chicken soup buckled his knees. Jesus Christ, what a smell — could his own body possibly reek that much? He flapped his elbow back to his side and rammed his back against the shelves to stay on his feet, startling her.
“Wha — are you —” she began —
— when another nudge, this one in his right side, dug into a rib that was surely cracked. Lestat winced, then turned to the rheumy and bespeckled eyes of a middle-aged housewife who’d appeared beside him. She leaned into him with a familiar whisper.
“Please.” Her voice was hoarse with emotion.
The target of his quest? His long suffering victim?
“Help me.”
It was! Hadn’t she lived in his head for days? He’d take the sound of her voice to his grave! Although he expected a burning building and maybe more of a Fifth Element-type waif in distress, Lestat straightened to his full and slightly-below-average height and turned to her. He was here! Her misery would end! The woman’s eyes, heavy-lidden and teary, seemed to bore into his soul. Then she spoke again.
“Please. I’ve been waiting outside for two days to see him—”
OK, this had better be some kind of fucking joke. If this was about getting her an autograph from that hump of Asian guano —
“He’s in danger,” she gasped “I have an important message —”
Then she bounced her cart off Lestat’s injured ankle and collapsed on Wal-Mart’s grey vinyl floor.
--------------------------------------
Chapter 7: Packing Heat in Wal-Mart
by Melissa Hurley
Lucille and Lestat bent over the woman, fanning her face with a stray Bamboo pamphlet, but she didn’t stir.
“Do you think she’s dead?” Lucille voice sounded tiny and scared.
“I don’t know.” Lestat put his index finger against the woman’s lips, feeling for warm breath. Instead, he felt—nothing at all. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure the voices again, hoping one would tell him what to do next, but for once they stayed maddeningly silent.
“She looks so sad on the ground like that.” Lucille began to sob quietly. “It reminds me of New Orleans, all those dead people, floating around...”
Lestat looked at her, incredulous. Was this the same woman who had, only hours ago, faced Baldy with a tire iron? He shook his head. He had never understood women, with their myriad menstrual fluctuations. One minute they were chewing you out, the next they collapsed in a puddle of unchecked emotions. Hormones, he thought. But from the few previous relationships (if you could really call them relationships) he’d been in, he knew one thing: whatever the woman was going through, a hug was almost always the right answer.
So he stood up, pulled Lucille into his chest, and gave her a bear squeeze, shielding her view of the prostrate woman. Her tears wet his shirt-front and made him strangely—horny. Her barely covered nipple seemed to bore a hole through his metallic-silver Oxford and he reached toward the seat of her fitted white pants to cop a brief feel. But just then, over the top of Lucille’s glossy head, he caught a glimpse of something that made him gasp. On stage, only a few feet from Leland Chom, Fresh Thing pulled something long and black and metallic out of her leather tote bag.
Lestat had no time to think things through.
“Get down, Lucille!” he shouted, pushing her svelte form next to the woman’s body.
He would never understand exactly what occurred during the next few minutes. Despite a strong self-preservation instinct telling him to duck and cover next to Lucille (and give her booty a squeeze while he was down there), he found himself pushing forward through the crowd of fans, thrusting them aside so hard that their shopping carts clanged together.
When he reached the stage, it was as if some primal part of him had come to life. He saw the huge American flag rippling gently in a current from the air-conditioner and he knew just what to do with it.
They say, dear reader, that when faced with impossible circumstances, individuals are sometimes able to perform superhuman feats. After the fact, onlookers described what seemed unbelievable to them even though they’d witnessed it with naked eyes--a young, unassuming Chinese man wearing dress pants used a flagpole to vault himself at least seven feet in the air.
His body flew high over the stage, over the heads of salivating Chom fans, and took Chom himself down with a startling crash just before the first bullets from Fresh Thing’s AK-47 ripped through the space he had occupied.
Moments later, several members of Wal-Mart’s Secret Service, ever-vigilant for union organizers and rabble-rousers, stepped out of hidden closets in the store walls, each bearing a 357 caliber Glock. They say it was Edmund Rumsey, a 44-year-old commando who trained with the U.S. armed forces as a youth but now made a hell of a lot more money as a Wal-Mart employee (yet still couldn’t afford their corporate health insurance plan), who took down Fresh Thing with a single shot through her nasal bullring. The force of the bullet knocked her two feet in the air and six feet backward—witnesses later claimed it was “pretty cool” to watch.
And can you believe it, reader? Despite the 36 rounds of 7.62 mm bullets that Fresh Thing discharged before she was done in, no one was wounded (except Fresh Thing, of course).
Meanwhile, Lestat found himself looking down into the awestruck face of Leland Chom.
“Lestat, is that you?” Chom asked weakly, the weight of Lestat’s body making it hard for him to breathe.
“It is, indeed.” For the first time, Lestat wondered what the hell he had just done.
“I owe you my life.” Tears of joy spilled out of Leland Chom’s eyes, just a few inches from Lestat’s own pair. “And to think, all these years, I thought you hated me.”
“Hated you? Heh, heh, heh,” Lestat smiled, thinking fast. He knew this was no time for brutal candor. “Not at all, not at all. I’ve always, uh, admired you, buddy.”
“Well, this calls for a celebration! By the way, I hate to tell you this, but you smell like a barnyard. Shall we, uh, get up?”
“Oh, uh, certainly,” Lestat said, rolling off Leland.
As they stood, a surging crowd of fans surrounded them, reaching out to grab at bits of their clothes and skin. Many were middle-aged ladies with big hair and patterned sweaters.
“Oh, dear God, you’re alive,” they said to Leland Chom.
Leland encircled Lestat with his arm and took the microphone.
“Dear fans,” he cleared his throat. “A remarkable event has just taken place. This man, my old buddy Lestat, has risked his life for my own. Although I would never have suspected it before, this man is a selfless hero.”
“Hurrah!” The cheer sounded like the roar of the crowds Lestat had often imagined attended his fantasy basketball games. He felt for a moment like Larry Bird, and grinned from ear to ear.
Lucille pushed through the crowd to throw her arms around him.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. She smiled at him, her eyes shining with pride and, yes, unmistakably lust! Lestat grinned back a little lasciviously, his nether regions suddenly moist with excitement.
But then, beyond the fans, Lestat saw something that chilled him. The ominous pin-striped suited man was back, bending over Fresh Thing to pick up her discarded machine gun.
And once again, the unfamiliar primal instinct kicked into place. “Arrest that man!” he barked, his voice so deep and powerful that it almost scared him.
Almost instantly, fans had surrounded the suited man. Six or seven held him and forced his arms behind him.
“Let me go! Let me go!” the pin-striped suited man shouted weakly.
Leland Chom hooked arms with Lestat and strolled toward him asking, “Who the hell are you?”
As they neared the scene, Lestat gasped with recognition. “That’s—my Vice President!” he said.
“Yes, that’s right,” the VP hissed. “And, thanks to you, our company is now ruined.”
Leland turned to Lestat in confusion.
“I understand now,” Lestat announced. “This man’s goal is to become the leading enterprise software vendor with an emphasis on global outsourcing from the China market. Leland, your well-publicized friendships with Noam Chomsky and Al Gore and your growing popularity, coupled with your insider’s knowledge of our company’s strategy, was making him nervous, so he wanted to take you out.”
“I would have, too, if it weren’t for you,” spat the pin-striped VP.
Leland Chom’s face turned red, and he began to flap his arms up and down like a penguin. He strode back to the microphone and put it to his lips.
“Fans, the globalist-capitalist pigs are willing to do just about anything to further their cause,” he said. “Here’s an example for us all to learn from, in black and white (pin-stripes, that is)!”
------------------
Epilogue
by Melissa Hurley
A few months later, Lestat and Lucille lay side by side, completely naked, amid some sand dunes along Oahu’s spectacular coastline. Lestat’s now-soft unit rested happily against his thigh. Apart from a few gritty grains in his butt-crack, Lestat had never felt so content.
Following the death of Fresh Thing and the arrest of the pin-striped-suited VP, Leland Chom had made Lestat a partner in Bamboo Enterprises. Not only was Lestat earning gobs of money but, truth be told, he had gained a valuable friend. He would have never believed it, but he and Leland complemented each other so perfectly, like Tristan and Isolde, he often thought.
He and Lucille worked well, too. Despite the fact that certain “friends” claimed he suffered from the Groucho Marx Syndrome, something like never wanting to join a club that wanted him as a member, he had not tired of her at all. Hardly. Instead, they could never seem to get enough of each other and were always eager to try new erotic positions and locations; thus, these sand dunes.
And the voices in his head? Well, they had all but disappeared. Every so often the soft cadence of an Indian woman pontificated about the Israeli/Palestinian situation or postulated that Americans were such philistines they couldn’t differentiate a piece of Kobe beef from a T bone, but this amused him and he often wished the communication went two ways instead of one.
