Kiss the Chef

The chalky hand pushed the lid off the steaming pot in a frenzied effort to escape. The lid, however, clattered to the kitchen floor and alerted Mary of the attempt. She came running in, armed with a metal spaghetti strainer.

"Back in the pot!" she exclaimed, bashing the strainer against the scrambling fingers. "Back in the pot!"

The hand gave up all hope and fell with a splash back into the scalding broth. Mary clanged the lid back on the pot and placed a heavy bound cookbook atop it to weigh it down.

That settled, she stepped into a frail pair of pink slippers and trotted down to the end of the driveway to her slanted mailbox, victim of one too many drive-by baseball battings. Awaiting her inside was a brown package. She checked the return address, which was given as Penderghast's Cereal Museum. She couldn't remember being affiliated with any such place. She was strictly an oatmeal girl herself. But it was addressed to her, no mistaking it.

She brought the package inside and laid it on the kitchen counter. She cut the twine which was tied around it with a pair of shears. The contents of the boiling pot was making a racket again and she bellowed at it to keep quiet. She stripped off the brown paper and took the lid off the box within. Inside was a large quantity of packing excelsior, of which she was allergic. Holding one hand over her mouth and nose, she dug through it with the other, keeping as safe a distance as possible. Her searching hand encountered nothing underneath the excelsior but more excelsior. She made a few passes, but it seemed to her that someone had sent her a package of nothing but packing material. What kind of a sick joke was this?

Irritably, she turned towards the stove and the pot with the noisily writhing thing inside.

"I said be quiet!" she snarled and viciously cranked up the gas jet.

Marigold Mary

Marigold Mary, quite contrary
Her earthenware filled with bones
Rocking her chair on the terrace
As the aching old floorboard groans

Her legs are varicose webs
Her toenails gnarled and grey
A droplet hangs from her nostril
On a cold St Valentine's Day

Her shovel is tarnished with rust
On second thought maybe it's blood
Someone leans out of the cupboard
And falls with a lumbering thud

She rushes inside like a shot
And packs them back in with a kick
She bolts the cupboard securely
Fastening it with a stick

Out in the garden her roses
Feast on the rich fertile soil
Made from the remnants of those
Departed from this mortal coil

Beautiful and Deadly...

In every small town, there is a sweet old lady, long bereft of her own family, who turns her attention towards the needy and the orphaned, the sick and the weak. This woman will bake pies until the sunrise, walk miles to deliver someone a carton of eggs, spray antiseptic mist on the smallest of abrasions and wipe away the thinnest tear with timeweathered hands.
Mary Gold was not this woman.
Mary Marguerite Goldmundson was the last in a line of would-be opportunists who had settled in this area long ago. Several generations back, when there was nothing here but dirt, no sound but the wind, no activity but the occasional bird falling from the sky of exhaustion or boredom (whichever cramped the wings first), Mary's great great afewmoregreats grandfather had come in search of his fortune. Gold. Aztec gold. Incan gold. Mayan gold. Maybe a little Visigoth gold. It didn't matter to Marshall Mundson. He had a vision of exceeding wealth, and it drove him to the far corners of the earth. In this case, the plot of land that would one day be known as Villa Sicko. In Mary's words, it was an heroic tale of bravery and visiondom. In most people's minds, it was more a case of 'where's grandpa? Oh, no, don't tell me you left the door open and now he's wandered off into the wild again'. It was somewhere in his immediate line that the 'Gold' began appearing in the family name. It was, apparently, the closest they ever came to the precious metal.
Generations came and went--there was a big game hunter who spent his time reconstructing jack rabbits to look like gargantuan werebeasts, a woman who claimed to have gone mountain climbing one afternoon with a statue of the virgin Mary, and a young man who claimed that the Holy Grail had been given to him by an Indian priestess, but when we put it to his lips, it contained hot soup, and he dropped it instinctively, causing the priestess and the grail to disappear instantly.
Mary, unlike her illustrious line, was a florist, and really a very good florist. Her home and land looked like a botanical garden. Even in the harshest weather, she could find a way to keep her flora thriving. But if her homestead was the garden of Eden, she was the serpent. Unlike the aforementioned sweet old maid, Mary was chronically nasty to people, and wholly unpleasant to be around. It was only out of desperation that Penny Detroit had called her in to handle the flowers at her husbands funeral, which is a story for another day.
Of course, rumors surrounded Mary, some up to and including that she had actually been responsible for the deaths of the townsfolk whose proceedings she had decorated, not to mention the wayfarer and the passerthrough. It was said that she used a very special kind of plant food to keep her garden as healthy as it was--human remains. None of this had ever been substantiated, understandably...these were only rumors...of the more...likely nature.

As a boy, Rabbit Ears hadn't known his father very well. When he would ask his mother why his father was home so seldom, she would reply that as sheriff he had an important job in the community to fulfill. He kept the bad people out of town, she would say. Who were the bad people, he wanted to know. Anarchists, she answered, and tucked him into bed.

Sheriff Detroit had a remote cabin in the mountains west of Villa Sicko where he often retreated to relax his mind and smoke a lot of peculiar substances. Mankato had been the only other who knew of the existence of this mountain retreat, and now that he was gone, no one knew where to find Detroit when he went away on these mysterious outings.

Detroit would lay on a cot for hours at time staring across the valley, watching etch-a-sketch patterns in the clouds, and wondering what had become of his life and who was he to judge others and why there weren't any good theatre productions in town anymore. He found himself growing infinitely fascinated by the minutest of details. The flight patterns of a tsetse fly could keep his mind entertained for hours, as could the steady drip of melting snow on a nearby rock outcropping. On long afternoons he even imagined he could hear his beard growing, and there was no one to dispute him. When he would finally return to town, everyone was struck by how serene he had become. But they didn't understand.

Before settling into a premature retirement of Amos and Andy reruns and afternoon naps, Bends' father Mankato, better known as Mank, rode sidesaddle in Sheriff Detroit's legendary posse. Their mission was to bring the law to remote patches of the Calliope Desert, and in doing so they struck fear in the hearts and boots of illegal fur trappers and ostrich egg poachers who dared set foot within their jurisdiction, which included such roughneck towns as Frothings, Villa Sicko, and the nefarious Pesto South.

Mank was the jokester of the bunch, always ready with a quip. Sheriff Detroit favored him above all his other men, as much for his good nature and generosity as his sharpshooting prowess. Detroit yearned to bequeath him with a fitting nickname, but the ones he tried on for size—Deadeye Mank, Deadeye Finkelstein—just didn't seem to lend him the dignity he deserved. That was possibly the only thing Detroit left unfinished when he left this mortal coil.

One time, Detroit and Mank were huddled atop a bluff overlooking the smoldering campfire of some notorious cattlerustlers. They were sharing a smoke, pondering the shootout that would occur the following morning, knowing that every shootout might well be their last. Detroit looked over at his friend and colleague, looked him up and down a good solid minute, then he said:

"Mank, if you was a woman, I'd do you right about now."

The shootout the next morning went well. One of the bandits lost two fingers when his pistol backfired. One of the sheriff's men got a hole shot through his canteen. The rustlers were rounded up and brought back to the Villa Sicko jail. The cattle were returned to their rightful owner. A week later, Mank resigned, citing emotional turmoil, and headed east to raise a family and get religion.

It was around then that Sheriff Detroit's opium problem started to attract notice.

Metamorphosis

Rutherford "Bends" Finkelstein was what you might call a 'product of his environment'. Most people who know him as the sweet, portly janitor of the cereal museum assume he earned his nickname from his continuous doubled posturing as he kept the displays spotless. They weren't entirely off. Some of the adults in town remembered a bit further back when he liked to be known as 'Father Finkelstein', running a wayward boys mission about 20 miles North of V. S. These people assume the nickname came from his continuous reverent pronepraying. They were not entirely off either. But only the oldest, most competent members of society would likely recall at this point, the true delineation of Rutherford's nickname.
As a child, Rutherford had had some spinal problems, an early form of meningitis one might imagine, which caused him to walk with a hunch, probably as a way of easing the pain. Over time this grew fairly more pronounced, until the boy had to crane his neck back all the way to look you in the face. Rutherford's father, Mankato Finkelstein, was so ashamed at his sons' deformity that he forced him to spend most of his time in a small shed in their back yard, only allowing him out to relieve himself in the river that wound through the rear of their property. This concealment persisted for 13 years, until Rutherford was 19 years old. One day, while relieving himself on the bank of the river, his foot pushed loose a large stone from the silt embankment, still mealy from a recent rain. With his weight being so far forward, Rutherford could not brace himself, and went over the edge, dropping the 4-5 feet into the shallow waters of the Coruscant River.
There was a sharp pain in his back as he landed with a splash. There were many rocks beneath the water of the river. Several decades ago, there had been a quarry here, until the settlers had forced the waters through. Fearing that he would never walk again, Rutherford began to flex his fingers, then his toes, then his arms, growing in confidence as each part responded. Finally, cool water, running through his hair and in his ears, Rutherford pushed himself up onto his feet. He blinked once, twice in disbelief. He was looking at the brush along the top of the embankment. Inclining his head slightly, he saw the branches of trees, the roof of his house, the clouds peaking through the treetops. Somehow, the fall had straightened Rutherford's back! Without thinking, Rutherford pulled himself from the waters, climbed the loose dirt wall of the embankment, and headed to his shed. Standing at his full height of 5'10", he wondered how he had ever fit in such a shrunken little hovel. It was oddly emotional as he grabbed his only possessions from the tiny room: a crucifix, a shoe horn, and kerosene lamp [Rutherford had been using these as part of his shadow puppet shows based on radio Bible stories which he heard from his parents' window through the thin walls of the shed].
Before leaving, Rutherford stopped to grab a shovel from the much larger, nicer shed where his father kept his tools, carried it through the kitchen, past his mother who hummed unnoticingly as she did the dishes, and into the living room where he woke his father from an afternoon nap with a jawmincing gongslap to the face. His goodbyes said, Rutherford dropped the spade and hit the road, looking the world, for once, straight in the face.

Deeply engaged in his rapture of vintage breakfast cereals, Vino was unaware of a slip of paper which fluttered out from the pocket of his double stitch parka as he reached for a handkerchief. It was discovered later that evening by an overweight custodian named Bends, who spotted it beneath the display for Lazy O's. Here is what was written on the paper:

6 Leontopithecus rosalia (Golden Lion Tamarin)
2 Ateles belzebuth hybridus (Hybrid Spider Monkey)
1 Panthera pardus orientalis (Amur Leopard)
11 Leopardus pardalis albescens (Texas Ocelot)
1 Ailurus fulgens (Lesser Panda)
2 Gazella cuvieri (Cuvier's Gazelle)
4 Cervus eldi eldi (Manipur Brow-Antlered Deer)
3 Lynx pardinus (Iberian Lynx)
31 Chinchilla brevicaudata (Short-tailed Chinchilla)
7 Burramys parvus (Broom's Pygmy-possum)
2 Lasiorhinus krefftii (Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat)
1 Gorilla gorilla (Gorilla)

Vino, well aged

"...brute, with the original marshmallows. Enter the mixed-up, crazy world of halfsies, where the king wears half a crown and walks with a hop..."
So went the oddvoiced bark for Penderghast's Cereal Museum from an old dogtrack loud speaker, the only salvageable remnant from the once renowned dog track 'Canker Downs'. An earthquake had managed to ingest every square inch of it about 23 years ago, just long enough to begin a second generation of postboom indigents, worksearchers and memorymongers. Any town that has even been through an economic collapse could relate. Which was the reason that Vino Penderghast had taken that lone doublebarreled bullhorn from the rock and rubble, why he had fixed it to the roof of an abandoned laundry store, why he had taken a hobby and turned it into a veritable forest of delights for all ages to frolic in. If Disney could do it, so could Penderghast.
The storefront displayed a solid wall of already faded cereal box covers, patched together in a flawless mosaic, all rare and hard to find, out of print brands: Croonchy Stars, Fruit Brute, Apple Yo's, and many other forgotten breakfast mainstays. It prevented sunlight from entering the museum (with the exception of two tiny beams of light, cut from the Fruit Brutes' eyes, which he kept covered when he was not keeping surveillance, when the ultra-rare family was stopping by for a nostalgic glance at his displays), which gave the museum just the feel Vino was looking for--a dark, drab windowless kitchen, complete with dirty floors and hanging bulbs. It was just as he remembered it from his own childhood. Minus the raging alcoholic mother who threw hot bacon at him if he dared wake her before 1pm on the weekend. It was in the midst of this chaos that he drew close to Captain Crunch, Tony the Tiger, The Diggum Frog, and countless other cereal icons.
The aisles were narrow and lined with plexiglass topped pedestals, each one carved with a different base insignia, presumably to match the style and personality of the cereal it displayed. Inside the plexiglass were bowls filled with cereal, baked and glazed like pottery, although what Vino used was more like vinyl shrinkwrapping. In place of milk, which would have spoiled long ago, a urethane-based epoxy resin was used, which, when dried thoroughly, took on a smooth, milky look, the perfect compliment to a permanent exhibit of rare and wonderful breakfast flakes. For Vino, it was the realization of a dream.
It was also the perfect cover for his real business: endangered species fur trade.

Rabbit Ears

Rabbit Ears, the sheriff's son, had no sense of coordination. So he practiced his ballroom dancing in the hayloft, where no one could scoff at his ungainly pratfalls. A splintery pitchfork with rusted tines usually substituted for a human partner. A fool for superstition, he kept an owl pellet in his forward trouser pocket for good luck. He earned his nickname from his ability to pick up ancient Indian radio signals through his abnormally elongated ears, twisting his neck to fine-tune reception. He usually had to climb onto the barn roof or to the top of a tall tree for a clear signal. Others his age thought him an oddball and were often spooked by his peculiar behavior, but few could dispute that he returned from these strange listening sessions with a discernable knack for prescience.

An attraction to mischief led him to sometimes dangle over the edge of the hayloft and urinate on the barn animals below. This particular prank once resulted in his losing his hold and plummeting to the floor of the barn. He wasn't injured in the fall, but then a horse named Spree who'd had enough of his descending pissery stepped on his ankle with her full weight. To this day he still walked with a twist in his step.

Now, while practicing a particularly tricky box step move, he suddenly froze, ears quivering, brow furrowed. In this pose, he almost resembled a hare that smelled a predator was near. He leaned out the hayloft opening, grabbed hold of a latticework and hauled himself up to the barn roof, nearly missing a rung midway. Crouched on the roof, facing north-northeast, he listened intently to a grainy voice from the past. Far in the distance, in the empty socket of a canyon, concentrated moonlight set fire to a hidden moonshine still.

The Graffiti Priest

There was a stranger in their midst. Everyone in Villa Sicko knew it. The whiskeybreath slingers sharpening their talons over the bingo table knew it. The porcupine girls holed up in the bordello knew it. The dusty bellhops with their lopsided mustaches and mercenary fingers knew it. The bloated bankers on Carnival Street with their spats and their hollow walking canes stuffed with rolls of banknotes knew it. The horsekeeper with boils on his face and eyebrows like sagebrush knew it. In fact the only one who didn't know about it was Sheriff Detroit, who lay stone stiff in a pine box behind the apothecary shop. He was too wrapped up in issues of mortality to pay much heed.

The Graffiti Priest had arrived the night before, made his mark on the wall of a chickenshack on the outskirts of town. In the morning most of the chickens were found scorched to death, their ruined eggs still smoldering. Wolves were blamed, but no one believed it. His second mark he made on an oak tree often used for community hangings. He dipped his fingers in his paintbucket and flicked searing bullets of hellfire against the bark, where they ran in long jagged scars and rivulets. The scars seemed to form some kind of cryptic glyph which no one could make heads or tails of. But something told them if they could, they wouldn't like what they saw.

Tales of the Cracked Onion

Hear ye, hear ye! What we have here is an experiment in literary form. An epic novel to be written by mad collective. The rules are there are no rules. Once a suitable entrance has been established, each member will be able to come along with their arsenal of graffiti spray & write away. Each blog entry will be considered a chapter. The chapters will probably not depend on a linear interpretation. Who knows what will happen. This could be a coming together of spiritual kinship or complete rampant godless nihilism.

Don your greasepaint & stay tuned for the stage to be set.