Slug Thumbs

There's really only one person I would turn to when a giant slug asked me to give it and its brood thumbs. I know, your first response is going to be Crazy Charley down at Crazy Charley's Thumb House and Various Prosthetic Limbs Discount Emporium, but what you have forgotten, my friend, is that Crazy Charlie was actually crazy and was trying to build a new Tower of Babel out of thumbs and plastic legs in back of the emporium. You must have seen it on the news. Anyway, I followed that story pretty closely and he ended up havin to go to court for buildin without a permit. He sunk all his money into that court case and went bankrupt. He moved away after that. I heard a couple stories about where he might be; either he's in a mental institution in Tuskegee or he's a famous avaunt guard artist in New York. No matter which of those is true, I can't really see me gettin a way to get the keys to the now run down and creepy CCTHVPLDE building so I can get in there and get myself some thumbs. So I definitely thought about gettin them thumbs from Charlie, but it just wasn't gonna work, so I went for the next best thing, I pulled out the old cellular phone and called up Charles Lindbergh.

The phone rang three times and then he answered in his usual way, "This is most certainly NOT Charles Lindbergh. Who's calling please?" He liked to keep his identity secret, you see.

"Mr...uh...Smith?" I thought I'd play along. "This here's Pat O'Neil and I got a request for you."

"Mr. Smith?!" He sounded scared. "Who's this Mr. Smith? I don't know no Mr. Smith!"

I guess I played along too well. "You're Mr. Smith, Mr. Definitely-Not-Charles-Lindbergh."

"Wait, back up a second. Who are you calling Mr. Smith and who are you calling Mr. Definitely-Not-Charles-Lindbergh? Is this a conference call? Did you put me on a conference call without telling me? Wrong number! Prank Caller! Prank Caller!" And then he hung up.

I turned to Alistair. "What was that?"

"Yeah," he said slowly, "that happens all the time. Just call him back. When he says 'who's calling', just answer the question."

So I did as instructed. He picked up again after three rings. Who consistently picks up after three rings, I ask you. I was always under the impression that two rings was the universally correct number of rings to allow before pickin up the phone. By the time you're on the third ring, you're pretty sure they ain't gonna pick up. Either that, or they been cuttin up some onions in the kitchen and your call made them slip and nick their thumb, not too bad, though. So they been spendin the first two rings runnin around yellin, "I'm comin, I'm comin, hold your horses!" while they wash their hand off and try to root though the junk drawer for a band aid. Then they grab the phone with one hand while they're openin the band-aid with their other hand and their teeth. That's why, when someone answers on the third ring, they almost always sound out of breath and like they have somethin in their mouth. But Lindbergh sounded like he'd just been sittin there listenin to the phone ring three times before pickin it up. Talk about a whacko.

But answer he did, "This is most certainly NOT Charles Lindbergh. Who's calling please?"

I was ready this time. "Pat O'Neil," I stated perfunctorily.

"Ahhh, Pat. It seems like ages since I've heard from you. How long has it been?"

"About 4 seconds, sir."

"Is that all? It seems longer than that."

"Yeah," I wasn't as prepared for this as I would have liked to be, "time sure flies."

"It sure does, son," he seemed ebullient, "it sure does."

"Yep," I concurred.

"Yes," he concurred.

Then there was an uncomfortable silence. I didn't know if I should continue the chit chat or if I should just jump right in to what I was asking him for. Luckily, he solved it for me.

"What can I do you for, there, Pat?" he asked.

"Well, sir," I stammered, "I'm standing here with some giant slugs who can lead us to McClawenstein."

"That's great news!" he belted out.

"Yes, it sure is," I agreed. "But they're requesting we do something for them first."

"Oh yeah?" he asked. "And what would that be."

"Well, you see sir, they want thumbs."

"Thumbs, huh?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes, sir," I explained, "they would like someone to give them thumbs."

"Well, that's easy," he explained, "just take them down to Crazy Charley's."

"Yeah, I thought of that, but they're out of business."

"Right!" he bellowed, "The Babel thing, if I'm not mistaken."

"That's correct, sir," I affirmed.

"That's a shame. I loved that place. What was that slogan they had? It was very clever..."

I remembered it well, "You can get an arm and a leg without spending an arm and a leg."

"That's it!" he confirmed. "Well, I guess I could rig something up for them. Do they want hands, too? Arms? Laser cannons?"

I covered the phone with my hand and addressed the slugs. "Would you like hands or arms to go with those thumbs?"

"No, thank you," they responded, "just the thumbs will be fine."

I returned to the phone, "No hands or arms, sir, just the thumbs."

"What about the laser cannons? Did you ask them that?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes a bit, "Hold on." Then I covered the phone again. "He wants me to ask if you want laser cannons."

"No..." the slug trailed off. "What kind of laser cannon?"

I asked this to Charles. He told me, "Pointer."

"Pointer?"

"Well, yeah, you don't think I'd give a total stranger my death ray laser cannon, do you? We can start them off with the pointer laser and then, as they show more responsibility, we can work them up."

When I made this offer to the slugs, they consulted for a bit. "No, thank you," they finally answered, "just the thumbs will be sufficient."

I relayed this to Charles. He agreed to see what he could do. We had to clear out of the 99 Cent store because they were closin. Sheriff Tom got the law to back off a bit by tellin them I was drunk and he'd given me a stern talkin to and I'd promised never to visit the 99 Cent store again, which was just fine by me. He made sure all the cops cleared out before Douggy and I loaded them slugs up on the back of the tow truck and took them back to the shop. They hung out for a few days in the body shop, during which time we found out their slime made a fantastic car polish. We started bottlin it and got ourselves a couple sales, which all went into a find for the slugs. We didn't know what the fund would be for, but we figured we should have some money set aside, you know, just in case.

About a week later, a box arrived at the shop. Jared was the first to see it, so he brought it in and opened it up, thinking it was cleaning supplies or something. Instead, there were several belts stitched together into a harness. On the back of the harness was a battery pack and a solar panel and on the sides were two perfectly formed little robotic thumbs. These thumbs were connected to baseball caps that shot out wires like a an explosion at Radio Shack. I took it into the body shop to show the slugs and they got very excited about it. Douggy and I spent the next 10 minutes strapping the thumb harnesses on and adjusting everything. When we were done, we stood back and looked at our handiwork. There stood 5 slugs wrapped around with leather belts, giant solar panels on their backs and wired baseball caps on their heads. On their sides, their robotic thumbs were wigglin away like worms on a hook while they presumably adjusted to the brainwaves of their wearers. Finally, they stopped flopping and whirling around. And I swear, the slugs smiled. I don't know how I recognized it as such, but it was definitely a smile.

"So," I asked, "what do you think." And, of course, they gave me a thumbs up.

Finally, a conclusion to the slug story!

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...."

How to escape when stuck to a wall by giant, meth-addled slugs

"When you say the beginning of the end," I asked from my slimy nest on the wall, "does that mean this thing is gonna wrap up soon? Cause I gotta be honest, here, I gotta urinate and I don't wanna do it in my pants. I am still wearin pants, right?"

"Yes," confirmed the slug, "you are still wearing pants."

"Well, I guess that's a good thing, you know, compared to the rest of all this that's goin on."

He appeared to think about this for a time. "Yes, I would say that's good for the both of us."

"Look, sir," I tried explainin, "the pants ain't the point. The point is I gotta pee here, and I don't wanna do it all over myself. So, either this story ends with me gettin unhooked from this here wall, or that happens now and I promise to come back and finish this story."

"Is there a third option?" he asked.

I pondered for a bit. "I guess the only third option would be me stayin here and peein myself."

"Um...yeah..." he nodded his eye stalks, "why don't you go ahead and do that one?"

"What?" I was, needless to say, a bit surprised. Now, like I says, I had myself a number of youthful indiscretions, and I may have, once or twice, been too tired or too moonshiney to get up and find myself a proper toilet. And I may have, in my corn liquor haze, relieved myself in a sink or two. And I might have, one time, accidentally peed on Douggy's bed. And it could be that Douggy was occupying said bed with a young lady. And it very well might be the case that that particular young lady had been makin googly eyes at Douggy all night and he was on leave from the marines and had had a crush on this young lady since we was all in 7th grade and this was his one chance to show her how he felt before he went off to who knows where for who knows how long. And, you know, theoretically speakin, she just might have been allergic to urine and broken out with hives all over and had to go to the hospital. But the whole story coulda had a happy endin when they were brought closer together by this tragedy and they eventually got married. On a side note, for any of y'all expectin to be best man at a weddin, if you need some advice on your speech, here's some: it's best you don't begin your toast with, "These two prolly woulda never got together if I hadn't peed on 'em." In my experience, at least, that doesn't set too well with the parents. Point bein, it's not like I hadn't wet myself once or twice in the past, but now didn't seem like the time. For one, I didn't know if this slime was water soluble or if I'd just be swimmin in my own pool. For two, it seemed like this story still had legs to it and I might be in for a long haul. And for three, There was all sortsa people around there; Douggy, Sheriff Tom, Aliastair, not to mention 3 of them giant slugs. The only way I could get myself to go with that many people and/or genetic mutants around would be if we was at a game or a concert and we was all lined up against the trough. This was sorta the opposite of that situation.

"No, I ain't peein myself here," I hollered, "so you might as well cut me down so I don't fill up with pee and shoot it out my nose at you. And hurry up, there, my back teeth are floatin."

He looked sheepish. If he were a person, he woulda leaned his head forward and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. As it was, he leaned one eye stalk down and rubbed the back of it with the other stalk. I wondered what the world looked like when he did that, but then I stopped because I got dizzy. "That's the thing..." he began, "we don't know how to get you down."

"Whaddya mean you don't know how to get me down?" I barked. "Is this your first time trapping someone with slime or somethin?"

"Well, no..." he trailed off.

"So then it ain't your first time gettin someone outta this." I was proud of my reasoning. "Just do what you did to get them others down."

"That's where we hit the problem..." he was lookin as uncomfortable as a butcher's kid about to tell his dad he's vegetarian. "Keep in mind that we've been hopped up on meth this whole time. Not by choice, mind you, but I was just getting to that. But, you see..." he looked around.

"Oh, just get to it, would you?" My bladder hurt and I wanted out.

"Well..." then he mumbled something.

"What was that?" I asked.

"We ate them all." The secret was finally out. "It's not like we'd really planned to. We were all hopped up, like I said, and under the mind control of McClawenstein. It was the only way we knew to deal with intruders. But now, well, we don't want to eat you. We want to set you free, but we don't know how."

Right then, it became too much. I got to that point where you've been clenching your muscles too long and they relax for just one second and you really hope not too much escaped because you think you can make it that extra minute it would normally take to do the run to the bathroom and you know that if someone's in there already, you're gonna kick that durned door in and pee on them. But in this case, I didn't have nowhere to run and I didn't know how long I'd have to hold it. then I heard this bubbling, sizzling sound. I looked down and there was a pinhole burned through the slime casing. Alistair and the slug noticed, too.

"Whatever you did, do it again," said Alistair.

"No!" I was maybe more defensive than was warranted.

"Come on, Pat," he cajoled, "just do it again."

"No!" I yelled again. "Absolutely not!"

"It's the only way," said Alistair.

The slug looked me in the eye and told me, bluntly, "If you prefer, I could just eat you."

"Oh, fine!" I gave up. But one of y'all is gonna have to get me some extra pants.

"There are some out there," Alistair pointed to the door.

"Nu-uh," I shook my head, "I ain't wearin no 99 cent store pants, the pockets on them things is full of lies and deceit. Get someone to go over to the dollar store to get me some pants. Over there, the pockets are filled with integrity."

"Fine," said Alistair. He called some squimonk together. They put on their person costume and went across the street to get me some pants. That costume ain't very convincin, but the people at the dollar store tend not to ask many questions.

Once that was settled, I told the slug, "You! Turn your eyes away, I don't want you watchin this!"

Surprisingly, he obeyed without another word. Now that I was in semi-privacy, I was ready. Weird thing is, it's hard to pee your pants, even when you try. I guess it's been so worked in that you don't urinate when you're clothed that it's hard to get around. I tried closin my eyes and imaginin I was at the toilet. When that didn't work, I imagined that I was writin my name in the snow. Finally, I tried thinkin I was on a high cliff, whizzin into the river below. I covered all the classifications of peein' in my mind; that's in, on and off. You see, that's one of the joys of peein standin up, you get to pee in things and make music while you're doin it, or you get to pee on things and feel like you're markin your territory, and you get to pee off of things like cliffs and couches, watchin your stream arc through the air like a coffee scented rainbow. I finally had to pull out the big guns and imagine I was peein at angel falls and I could see my whole stream at once. That did it. I let go in a flood of warm relief and shame. The bubblin and sizzlin told me that it was workin and soon I came crashin to the ground. Fortunately, the squimonk came back with their newly purchased dollar pants, which I carried with me to the bathroom and donned as soon as I'd washed up.

I come outta that restroom feelin like all the blood in my body had rushed to my face. This wasn't one of them situations where I could just tie a sweater around my waist and hide what I did. Everyone there knew and I knew that they knew and they knew I knew they knew. We just stared each other down like a group of gunfighters, no one sure who was gonna break the silence. In the end, it was Douggy wakin up that did it.

"Hey!" he yelled, groggily, "what the heck is goin on here? Get me down!" He started thrashin about.

"Douggy," I put my hands on his shoulders, "it's gonna be alright. You're gonna get down from there, but you're gonna have to get yourself down."

"How?"

"Well," I explained, "you ain't gonna like this, but..."

McClawenstein Gets a Distributorship (or: I can't believe I'm still stuck to a wall listening to a slug)

"It was a cold November day in Omaha when McClawenstein met with the ninja," continued the slug. "There had been some overtures previously. It began with an exchange of letters. Clan Platypus wrote that they'd been following McClawenstein's career since his accident, thinking he had potential. They went on to say they were impressed by his recent developments in the fields of ruthlessness and cunning. They offered to contact him further, to which he assented in the way of carnival folk; by sending them a corn dog covered with nacho cheese. Then, having concluded formalities, they began to communicate by text message. I remember the frantic idiocy of it well. The ninjas would write "Got 2 kill dis guy" and McClawenstein would respond, "ZOMG! Cl@w mks txt hrd! Defenstr8 him 4 me!" And it would continue like this well into the night. It seemed every four minutes the ninja would update McClawenstein on his assassinations and training while McClawenstein would respond with his experiments and shorts bursts about life in the circus, like "Oh noes! Frs Whll Brke! 8 dead. Lol :)" This time was a bit like a teenage relationship. When McClawenstein spoke to the ninja on the phone, they would always end with the "You hang up, no you hang up" bit. They weren't really concerned with speaking to each other longer, but they were both recording the conversation and neither wanted the other to hear the tell-tale click that the bug would make when the phone was finally disconnected. McClawenstein was especially sensitive about this issue because he had been cheap about buying his spy equipment and, in order to get a better deal, he agreed to carry advertising on his bug. Every time he disconnected a recorded conversation, his phone would proudly announce, "Thank you for choosing Record-O-Dyne Industries' Spy-O-Matic 4000 to fulfil your eavesdropping needs. We realize you have a choice in top-secret spy equipment and ask that, next time you need to secretly records a phone conversation, you will think of Record-O-Dyne and our Spy-O-Matic 4000." And that may have been acceptable but it would play a horribly annoying and catchy jingle afterwards that would get stuck in McClawenstein's head, slowly driving him mad.

"In a short time, the combination of jingle madness and sheer greed caused McClawenstein to ask Clan Platypus for a meeting. The wind blew scattered snow across the desolate Nebraskan landscape. All parties were bundled up well, so I didn't see any faces. Even us slugs were wearing the tiny sweaters and matching scarves made for us by the conjoined twins. They may have been hopeless drunks, but it didn't stop them from knitting tiny snowflakes and reindeer into our sweaters. In that field, shivering despite our tiny sweaters, we slugs were well aware of the horror to come. We watched the entire deal happen. Clan Platypus offered McClawenstein a distributorship. He would sell meth anywhere along his route he pleased. If he ran into trouble, he would have a ninja army on call to take care of it. He would start out with a 15% of all that he sold, with increases in that percentage based on performance. In exchange, he would have to meet certain quotas every quarter.

'It's funny,' said McClawenstein as they finished signing the contract in blood, 'my parents spent all their lives as teachers. They scraped and struggled every day to provide for me. But now that I've killed people and agreed to sell drugs, I'm going to make more in a week than they would make in a year.'

'What's funny about that?' asked the ninja.

'Well, it's just funny to me that it's more profitable to corrupt kids than to help them.'

'More money for you' replied the ninja.

'F'in A right, more money for me!' Then McClawenstein whooped and dragged his tail back to the carnival to soak in a tub of cast-off funnel cake grease, which he did on special occasions to loosen his tail joints and make himself shiny.

"As he fell asleep in the tub, we slugs decided on our course of action. We understood that McClawenstein was becoming more evil by the day. We held out hope that he would return to the halcyon days following the accident when he was happy to have people look at him and he tried to be helpful by opening jars and various other hard-to-open storage devices for old ladies. We longed for a return to the time when he would dream of playing the castanets; when he would walk into Red Lobster just to mess with the staff a little and then leave behind a $20 tip because he felt guilty. We needed him to be good again, and we felt we could change him.

"We began with a heavy slime-writing campaign. We started that night with Don't Do It! It took us 8 full hours to write. We learned from that we should not include serifs on the letters nor should we attempt to disconnect our trails in order to make the crosses on the ts look better. Really, by strictly adhering to the stylistic aesthetics of type makers, we were just making more work for ourselves. At the time, we thought the writing would me more convincing if it were shaped like dragons chasing butterflies and surrounded with a lush forest. Instead, McClawenstein got up in the morning, wandered into the bathroom, lifted his leg to release his morning gas, saw our writing, nodded slyly, called Susan, the ticket girl, into the tent, told her 'Susan, your cash drawer was 87 cents short last night' to which Susan responded with tears and begging, and then he grabbed her head in his claws, shoved it between his legs, expelled his gas with enough force to blow Susan's hair straight back like she just stuck it out of the window of a flying airplane. As Susan vomited all over herself, McClawenstein just laughed and told us, 'Good thing you didn't let me do that in private'.

"The next day, we tried reminding him of his childhood by writing Some Pig inside of a cobweb on his shell, hoping he would connect that to the tears he cried at the end of Charlotte's Web. Instead, it just prompted him to eat a sausage, bacon and ham sandwich. Then we tried Drugs Bad, Ninjas Bad after which he listened to Run DMC's Peter Piper in which the big bad wolf is, and I quote, 'not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good'.

"We tried every message we could think of, but nothing got through to McClawenstein. At every carnival stop, he would be approached by itchy, unkempt men and women that looked like they had replaced their bones with popsicle sticks. Every one of them was wearing a rock t-shirt of some kind or another and, in eight states of stops, I swear I only saw four teeth. He would sell these people anything from giant white bricks to small white vials. The more he sold for Platypus, the more he made for himself.

"He began to run out of things to spend all his money on. He ordered a whole new tent for himself made entirely out of gold cloth and sable fur. When that was delivered, he had it filled with gold coins, in which he would spend his days swimming. When the novelty of that wore off, he had his entire shell crusted with rubies. In fits of madness, he would stand under the noon sun shouting 'Who's shinier now, Helios, you douche!?' He drank the finest wines, ate the finest caviar and slept with the highest class of prostitute that would hire themselves out to a half-man, half-lobster with deadly gas; which is a surprisingly high class of prostitute. When the life of material goods brought by wealth became boring to him, McClawenstwein dipped into his own meth supply, and that was the beginning of the end for him."

A brief explanation

Hello, it's the author here. If you don't want to read a non-Pat statement, that's ok, just skip down to the newest story below. I just felt that I should write a short note about some behind-the-scenes stuff which is unrelated to Pat but is affecting Pat. I decided three weeks ago that I am quitting my job. It is not able to sustain me and my wife and I've come to the conclusion that it never will. I know this is just about the worst time to do what I'm doing, but I'm not getting any younger and I would really like to have children here some day soon. It's a pretty scary time for my wife and I, but we'll get through it. I'm not writing this to dwell on that fact, though, but to explain to you. I am spending about 3 hours a day looking for jobs. I am sending resume after resume in the hopes that my wife and I will land somewhere good soon. Because of that, though, I have less time and brain power lately to spend on Pat. This does not mean that I will stop writing. As I said before, writing Pat is probably as much a release for me as reading it is for you. All this means is that I probably won't be able to update as much and as regularly as I have been for the past few months. This will last until I find a job. Hopefully, that will only be a couple months. I will update as much as I can. I'll be honest, though, finding a job is priority number one right now.
Thanks for reading.

The Maniac McClawenstein and His Foul, Fiendish Flatulance

"And so," the slug continued, "McClawenstein discovered he had the ability to kill with his gas."

"That's unbelievable!" I burst out. "Not only is it unbelievable that he's got deadly gas, but that it's taken you so long to give a conclusion to that story. Seriously, it feels like it's been a week since you've said anything."

"And yet," countered the giant bag of slime, "I've just now finished speaking."

"Time's mighty funny that way," I pondered, "sometimes it seems like an afternoon can just go one forever. But then, when you're a kid, it seems like summer's crazy short. And then, when you grow up, it seems like your childhood was just an eye blink."

"You know, for us slugs, that's reality," he explained, "the eye blink thing. Our childhood is literally an eye blink. We are born with our eyes open and then, as we mature, we produce eyelids, which extend slowly down over our eyeballs. As we reach puberty, we can barely see out of our own eye anymore. A slug is not considered a full adult until we are able to gain the muscle power to open our eyelids again. If we are unable to do it, as my brother Roger was, we must wander the rest of our lives in darkness. Usually, again like Roger, one in this state ends up being eaten. Most times, they're eaten by a lizard. If they're like Roger, they'll blindly wander onto a lettuce leaf, be boxed up and shipped off to a restaurant somewhere and they'll be devoured by an old lady whose eyesight is worse that the slugs. And the worst part? The old lady will say it's the most delicious salad she's ever had."

"Ya know," I interrupted, "that's kinda funny."

He got pretty offended. "Are you mocking my brother's death?!"

I back peddled. "No, no, that ain't what I'm sayin. It ain't that kind of funny. It's funny in a 'boy, that's a pretty strange thing that he says and it compares to somethin similar to it in my head' kinda funny." He just glared at me, so I dove in head first. "There was this one time that we was all out for my grandma Lorraine's 87th birthday. What you gotta understand first of all is that ol' granny Lanny, as we called, her, was deaf as a post and blind as one, too. She had these big ol' hearing aids that she got in the 1920's. She was so proud of those hearing aids. They were the first of their kind, you know. None of us really thought she should be that proud of 'em. I swear, to this day, them was the only steam powered hearing aids I ever seen. She had to drag a wagon with her everywhere she went that had a big ol' coal furnace on it to heat the steam that turned a drum as big as a man and that somehow led through a series of pipes and tubes and gauges and whatnot into a diving helmet that she had to wear that somehow made her hear better. The worst part is that the whole contraption had to be manned by a crew of three; one guy to drag the wagon, one guy to shovel the coal and one guy to monitor all the gauges, so there'd always be three big guys following Lanny around. It wasn't the same three guys, mind you, because they'd work in shifts, but there were always three burly guys around. One time, I asked Lanny how she could afford to pay for all this and she told me this crazy story that she had an insurance policy that grandad's company bought them when he was working that covered all their medical expenses for life, and they didn't have to pay nothin at all. I know, I know, it's crazy, but I think granny went a little loopy there towards the end.

"Anyway, we went out for Lanny's 87th. We wanted to take her somewhere fancy, so we booked the most expensive restaurant in town. Lanny was very impressed by the Sizzler, but the staff of the Sizzler wasn't too happy with her. They asked her to leave her boiler and crew outside because they felt it would disturb the other guests. We had no choice, really, so we led my poor, deaf, blind grandma to her spot and ordered for her. When the salad came, we all saw there was a slug on her lettuce. Mom tried to wrestle the fork away from granny, but she'd been doin strength trainin with her boiler crew and wasn't nobody in that place that could stop my grandma from eatin her birthday salad. Well, right after that, dinner was pretty much over. We all got our food in doggy bags and skedaddled out of there."

The slug just stared at me for a time. Then he blinked slowly and drooped his eye stalks. "Are you telling me your grandmother ate my brother?"

"Well," I hemmed and hawed a bit, "I ain't sayin yes, and I ain't sayin no, but it seems a mighty funny coincidence. Especially seeins as how granny Lanny said the salad was the best she'd ever had, and she was at the Brown Derby when the Cobb salad was invented."

He stammered, "That's...did...I...I see. The past is past, though. We must all recognize that we are interconnected in ways we can't imagine. I only hope that Roger has had his eyes opened in the next world."

I was pleasantly surprised. For a second there, I thought he was gonna eat me in some weird family revenge scheme. It'd be just like the Capulets and the Montisquieus, but none of the Capulets ate the Montisquieus and I really doubt I'd fall in love with one of their members. I needed to diffuse this situation fast, it was really spiraling out of control.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I interrupted your story. Would you please continue?"

He looked shocked, which is hard to do when you ain't got no eyebrows, you're sitting on your mouth and your eyes are up on stalks. But then he continued, "Why we remained with McClawenstein after his cold blooded, warm air murder of the bearded lady is something I've questioned myself about ever since. Perhaps we were scared. Perhaps we knew not where we would find another source of algae. Perhaps, in our hearts, we're all weak and small. Regardless, we did not leave when we should have, and we paid a terrible price for it.

"McClawenstein remained as a sideshow in the circus for the time being. He did not know what to do with his new found power, so he bided his time and experimented. He began toying with different combinations of food; pork and beans, bacon and peanut butter, coffee and cabbage; to see what effects each would give his gas. He couldn't experiment on himself, and it was discovered that we slugs were made immune possibly from the radiation or possibly from another cause. So, to conduct his experiments, he built a collapsible cage in his tent and he began to kidnap people.

"It was a horrendous time to witness. Sometimes, his subject would only be put to sleep, some would die quick deaths and others, after he got a taste for the killing, would die horrible, slow deaths. The more he killed, the more sadistic he became. In a year's time, he was experimenting with different combinations of hot sauce and pickled vegetables in order to melt people where they stood. When the management got wind of his doings, they tried to fire him, but he was ready for them.

"He brought the managers into his tent, where they explained that the missing people were beginning to give the carnival a bad name. They patiently explained that, while they did not know what he was doing with the people, they knew he was responsible and that they would be letting him go. What they didn't know is that he had eaten a mixture of beans, broccoli, cabbage and eggs curried in a beer sauce, and had just released his sneak attack, the SBV, aka, the Silent But Violent. In some circles, it is known as the Silent But Deadly, but that doesn't rhyme, so those people are wrong to call it that. In still other circles, where ability to alliterate is held dear, it is the Triple B, or the Butt Bomb Bandit. Whatever you call it, the effects it had on management were too terrible to speak of.

"When they lay in a pool on the floor, all of the slugs were aghast. Our world began to tremble and we thought everything was collapsing. Alas, we were wrong. It was the laughter of a maniac that shook us. McClawenstein laughed and laughed and laughed. When he stopped laughing, he called out from his tent, 'I am King of the Carnival now! You will all obey me! Anyone who wants out, come in here and say it to my face!' After the first two laborers died, the others were cowed and McClawenstein was, indeed, King of the Circus.

"Then he met the ninjas."

The Slug Story

"Our story," began the slug through his squimonk designed box, "is a sad, sordid odyssey full of regret, betrayal, and fart jokes."

"Hey," I said from my slimy cocoon, "those are three of my favorite things in stories. Plus, since you got me stuck here, I ain't got nothin but time to listen to how y'all ended up in the back of a 99 cent store sellin meth. So, basically, you got yerself a captive audience here."

"Are you sure you really want to use that joke, Pat?" asked Alistair. "It seems to me that one's a bit overdone."

"You're right, you're right," I conceded, "How about, 'you've got my rapt attention'? Does that one work for you?"

"Nah," he scoffed, "you can do better than that."

"Fine!" I rolled my eyes. "How's about...lessee here..'Lay a trail and I will follow'...nah, that's weak. How about we try, 'I hope the humor's not too salty'? Oh, wait, I got it! 'Hurry up because I'm feelin a little...lethargic.' See, then you're playin on expectations."

"It's not great," Alistair announced, "but it will have to do for now."

The slug wobbled, "Now that you two have that settled, can we move on?"

"Yeah, sure, go right ahead," I woulda waved my arm in a welcoming manner if I coulda.

"There was a time," he began, "of which we cannot speak. It was before the change. We were not we. We were, but we were not what we are now. Some of us remember nothing of this time and some remember little. There was wetness, hardness and algae. We ate freely of the algae. We were not happy, nor were we sad. We just were. We seek to return to this, but we can not.

"Then came the change. The hardness broke, the wetness surged out, there was heat and then we were conscious. Because we were conscious, some were happy but some were unhappy. Those who were happy were happy to be happy. Those who were unhappy were unhappy to be unhappy. But we were all what we were, and we were incapable of being other than that.

"We began to know ourselves, and to know others of our kind. From this we learned of self and other. We began to know separation. From separation, we learned loss. We learned to want what we'd had and had no longer. We began to yearn. Then, we began to question. We discovered location. We began to ask where we were and why we were.

"The first question was difficult, the second was impossible. We do not attempt to answer impossible questions. We may sit with the questions, but we seek only depth, not answers. We were on a hardness. Yet the hardness was not the same hardness as existed in the time of not knowing. Some were on a hardness that remained, while others were on hardness that moved. We did not know which was which. To all, they were on the hardness that stayed, while others were on the hardness that moved.

"We began to explore. Everywhere we went was the hardness. In some places, there was gas. At one end of the hardness, the gas smelled unpleasant. We were later to learn that we were on a lobster-man named McClawenstein. Some were on his arms, some on his thorax and some near his pooter, from which he would expel mass quantities of gas.

"Upon finding out he was not the whole world, we began to communicate with our host. We learned his written language and drew words upon him while he slept. He did not take well to this. We did not know at the time that he, unaware we were sentient beings, thought he was simply growing algae in unusual patterns. We learned more of his language. We learned how to write sentences. Finally, to get through to him, we wrote, 'We can help you' on his torso. Finally, he became convinced that we, his lowly shell cleaners, were indeed trying to communicate with him.

"Slow rumbles came from McClawenstein. It was the first time we'd heard spoken language and we did not recognize it as such. He rumbled again and we felt we'd incited his wrath. But then he wrote and showed us one word only, 'How?'

"We had planned for this day and everyone was in position. We began to move in soft spirals around his shell, leaving our trails behind us. McClawenstein became inpatient and so slept. In his sleep, we covered him with our intricate patterns, making him beautiful. When he awoke, McClawenstein was covered with perfect spirals that reflected the light of heaven. He was so overcome that salty water began to leak from his eyes in a process we later learned was, 'crying'.

"We now know that McClawenstein was new to his position in the carnival at the time and was locked in heated competition with the bearded woman to see who would remain and who would go. With our help, McClawenstein began to draw larger crowds. With practice, we drew more and more intricate patterns. People were lured by the combination of beauty and revulsion they felt looking at this lobster-man with his glowing shell.

"After much time, the bearded lady was asked to leave. She came to McClawenstein crying after having much drink. She knew not where to go or what to do. Our host comforted her through the night, whispering sweetness to her. They locked in an embrace of love, which lacks the competition of slug love and so seemed uninteresting to us.

"As the large, hirsute woman lay sleeping, McClawenstein plotted his evil. He defoliated her face as she lay unconscious, thereby assuring that she could not possibly threaten his position in the carnival. Then, as she awoke, he sealed his victory in the only way he knew how, by giving her a dutch oven."

"Wait," broke in Alistair, "he gave her a pot specially designed to bake bread over a fire? How is that a victory?"

"You know," I told him, "for bein smart, you're pretty dumb. It ain't that kinda dutch oven."

"Then what is it?" he asked.

"Well," I explained, "a dutch oven is when you're in bed with a girl and you fart, then you push her head under the covers and make her take in your stink. Usually, they're fightin ya, so you gotta hold 'em down pretty good. It's generally best only to do that when you're plannin on breakin up with her anyway."

"That sounds horrendous," Alistair looked shocked.

"Oh, yeah, well it is that," I admitted, "for her! For you, it's downright hilarious."

"The bearded woman thought not," interrupted the slug, "McClawenstein discovered then that his pooty poots can be deadly when inhaled in massive quantities."

"You mean...?" I started.

"Yes, he killed her. He killed her with his flatulence."

And it only got stranger from there.