Well after me and Douggy got ourselves some honest pants from the dollar store across the street and a little coffee to refill our bladders, you know, just in case we needed to escape again, we was ready to settle down and hear the rest of this slug's story. I'm sure as heck glad we had that coffee, because these slugs, in addition to bein bags full of slime, also turned out to be bags of hot air. By the time it was over, I was ready to pee myself again if that's what it took to get him to stop talkin. I figure you may be tired of hearin them drone on about how hard their life livin on a giant lobster-man who sold meth for a bunch of ninjas was, so I thought I'd give you the short version. If you wanna hear the long version, I could prolly get them to record it or somethin and send it to ya, if you got about a hundred straight hours to dedicate to it, that is. The long and the short of it goes something like this: McClawenstein was broke and desperate so he had to expand his customer base. Me, I just turned to sellin shirts, and that worked out decently. This was the days before the internet did anything useful for anyone who did not go to MIT or Princeton or one of them other fancy schmancy schools that's buildin some sorta technical whirlygig that'll destroy all of mankind some day, so he didn't even think of makin shirts. Instead, he figured that, to get more people hooked on his stuff, he'd start mixin meth into the carnival food. He started by dustin the funnel cakes with it, since that didn't require no work. Then, he mixed it in with the cotton candy. After that, he performed his coup de grace and discovered a way to mix the meth in with the corn dog batter without it gettin all used up in the fryer. Course, no one knew they was eatin meth, all they knew is that carnival was the most excitin carnival they'd ever attended and they just had to go back.
McClawenstein started pullin in the money again. This time, he didn't blow it all on fancy livin. He blew it all on meth. He was apparently doin up to a pound of the stuff a day. The slugs say he was gettin more and more paranoid. Finally, one day, he snapped. He blamed the slugs for his condition and said they wasn't bein supportive of his needs. They'd just had enough and so they left. He was pretty broken up about losin all his friends in the world and tried to get them back. He checked himself into a recovery program and, after six months, walked out clean. But Clan Platypus wasn't about to let him go. They demanded their money and threatened him with death if he didn't obey. The pressure drove him back on the meth and began eating away at his brain. He started to blame all his problems on the slugs leaving, so he decided to punish them. Seein as how they was slugs, all this rigamorale had given them time to get almost to the door of his tent. They'd been discussin the issue for quite some time and had decided that they'd slam it on the way out. Sure, it may take them a couple months work, but their point would be made.
Before they reached the door, though, McClawenstein got his revenge. He tried to murder them by throwin salt on them, but, in his drug addled state, he forgot that he'd filled all his salt shakers with meth. I done somethin similar once when I put sugar in the salt shaker on accident. I wasn't sure how to handle it at first, but, before I could switch it, I found I sorta liked the taste of sweetened mashed potatoes. It took me about two months before I used up the whole shaker and, by then, it became so ingrained in me that salt was sweet that I started saltin my pancakes. Now, I'm all mixed up and I never know what I'm gonna get when I turn that shaker upside down. Last time, and I got no idea why this happened, it was flour. I guess, now that I've heard this story, I should be glad it wasn't meth. I ain't sure how meth would get in there, but funny things have been known to happen.
Blinded by drugs and murderous rage, McClawenstein dumped the whole shark onto the slugs. They started bubblin and boilin like your feet on the asphalt on a hot June day. They was smokin like that, too, but I'll bet they didn't smell nothin like bacon. McClawenstein laughed and laughed as they melted and spread out. But, unexpectedly, the puddles of goo they'd become just kept spreading...and spreading...and spreading. Soon, his tent had a giant slime carpet. This wasn't nothin like that big ol' slime carpet in the new Ikea catalog, either. First, it sure as heck wasn't Swedish. Second, it wasn't wrapped in a smooth, comforting, foot massaging space age material. And finally, it was slowly congealing into an army of giant slugs that were turning on their maker. As they moved, McClawenstein saw a mouth full of razor teeth concealed under their pseudopods. I just looked that word up, by the way. The meth had performed some sort of alchemy, turning the rug into an army druggy slugs.
Well, I don't know about you, but I panic when faced with an army of giant carnivorous slugs. That's the one thing me and McClawenstein have in common. Well, that and a traumatic childhood experience at the aquarium. I don't wanna talk about it right now, though. Let's just say me and that turtle still got issues to settle and his time will come soon enough. One of the things me and McClawenstein do not have in common is that I was never given the pager number for a member of Clan Platypus. If I had, it would make this whole find-the-clan-and-stop-them thing I been goin through a whole heck of a lot easier, I tell ya. McClawenstein used that pager number to call himself a ninja to come in and rescue him from the slugs.
When we got to this point, there was this whole big long description of helicopters and ninja fights and something to do with chains and I think there was somethin in there about a guy riding a dinosaur and then Jennifer Love Hewitt showed up and played poker or somethin like that. I gotta be honest, I sorta nodded of there, and I may have dreamed some of that up. The only things I'm certain about are the thing with Jennifer Love Hewitt and that the slugs got themselves wrangled, shipped off to Japan and trained. The Clan worked to find out the right amount of meth to give them in order to keep them docile but still aggressive enough to eat people. It took them many months, and a couple of arms, to get the formula just right. In the end, they became just stable enough for McClawenstein to use as laborers.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the raid. Apparently, when we busted in to the 99 store and started firin off donuts, the knockout gas countered the meth in the slugs' systems and gave them their thought back. They didn't want revenge on McClawenstein or anything, but they did tell us they'd help us stop this plague of meth in exchange for one thing.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Thumbs."
I didn't quite know what to make of that. "Thumbs?"
"Yeah," the big slug told me calmly, "opposable thumbs."
I couldn't help but ask, "Why do you want opposable thumbs?"
"We've been discussing it," he replied, "and we've decided what set humans apart from slugs are an ability to reason and opposable thumbs. We would like to be more human, and so we need thumbs."
"You...I....ummm..." I turned to Alistair, who just raised his eyebrows. "I guess I'll see what I can do...."
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