flashlight attached to the ring, and illuminated the situation.
This wasn’t a grave after all. In the hole was a slide, like you’d find in a children’s playground, if the playground was in a mausoleum, and the children were all dead. Probably wouldn’t be a lot of kids begging to go to a park like that. Not the dead ones, anyway.
I gritted my teeth. There was only one way to find out where this slide went.
“Hey, old caretaker guy!” I yelled. “Where does this slide go?”
“Go to hell!”
“I told you, it wasn’t me. I had asparagus on my pizza. Does it smell like asparagus?”
“Go to hell!”
I rubbed my chin. Maybe old caretaker guy was trying to tell me that this slide went straight to hell. I didn’t really believe him. First of all, I didn’t see any flames, and there wasn’t any smoke or brimstone or screams of the damned. Second, hell doesn’t really exist. It’s a fairy tale taught by parents to make their kids behave. Like Santa Claus. And the death penalty.
Still, going down a pitch black slide in a mausoleum wasn’t on my list of things to do before I died. My list was mostly centered around Angelina Jolie.
“This
does
smell like asparagus, you bastard!”
A glanced over my shoulder. Old caretaker guy was hobbling toward me, his drippy asparagus mop raised back like a baseball bat—a stinky, wet baseball bat that you wouldn’t want to use in a baseball game, because you wouldn’t get any hits, and because it was soaked with urine and stinked.
I decided, then and there, I wasn’t going to play ball with old caretaker guy. Which left me no choice. I took a deep breath and dove face-first down the slide.
Chapter 7
When I was ten years old, my strange uncle who lived in the country took me into his barn and showed me a strange game called
milk the cow
. The game involved a strong grip, and used a combination of squeezing and stroking until the milk came. I remember it was weird, and hurt my arm, but kind of fun nonetheless.
Afterward, we fed the cow some hay and used the fresh milk to make pancakes. When we finished breakfast, we watched a little television. It was a portable, with a tiny ten-inch screen.
Many years later, my strange uncle got arrested, for tax evasion. So I have no idea why I’m bringing any of this up.
The slide was a straight-shot down, no twists or curve. The dive jostled my grip and my key light winked out, shrouding me in darkness, like a shroud. I had no idea how fast I was going or how far I traveled. Time lost all meaning, but time really didn’t matter much anyway since I’d bought a TiVo. Minutes blurred into weeks, which blurred into seconds, which blurred into more seconds. When I finally reached the bottom, I tucked and rolled and athletically sprang to my butt, one hand somewhere near my holster, the other cupped around my boys to protect them, not to fondle them, even though that’s what it might have looked like.
I listened, my highly attuned sense of hearing sensing a whimpering sound very near, which I will die before admitting came from me, even though it did.
I’d landed on my keys. Hard.
When I stood, they remained stuck in me, hanging from my inner left cheek like I’d been stabbed by some ass-stabbing key maniac. I bit my lower lip, reached back, and tugged them out, which made the whimpering sound get louder. It hurt so bad I didn’t even find it amusing that I now had a second hole in my ass, and perhaps could even perform carnival tricks, like pooping the letter X. That’s a carnival I’d pay extra to see.
I found the key light and flashed the beam around, reorienting my orientation. I was in some sort of secret lower level beneath the mausoleum. Dirt walls, with wooden beams holding up the ceiling, coal mine style. To my left, a large wooden crate with the cryptic words TAKE ONE painted on the side. I refused. Why did I need a large wooden crate?
Noise, from behind. I spun around, reaching for my gun, and a dark shape
This wasn’t a grave after all. In the hole was a slide, like you’d find in a children’s playground, if the playground was in a mausoleum, and the children were all dead. Probably wouldn’t be a lot of kids begging to go to a park like that. Not the dead ones, anyway.
I gritted my teeth. There was only one way to find out where this slide went.
“Hey, old caretaker guy!” I yelled. “Where does this slide go?”
“Go to hell!”
“I told you, it wasn’t me. I had asparagus on my pizza. Does it smell like asparagus?”
“Go to hell!”
I rubbed my chin. Maybe old caretaker guy was trying to tell me that this slide went straight to hell. I didn’t really believe him. First of all, I didn’t see any flames, and there wasn’t any smoke or brimstone or screams of the damned. Second, hell doesn’t really exist. It’s a fairy tale taught by parents to make their kids behave. Like Santa Claus. And the death penalty.
Still, going down a pitch black slide in a mausoleum wasn’t on my list of things to do before I died. My list was mostly centered around Angelina Jolie.
“This
does
smell like asparagus, you bastard!”
A glanced over my shoulder. Old caretaker guy was hobbling toward me, his drippy asparagus mop raised back like a baseball bat—a stinky, wet baseball bat that you wouldn’t want to use in a baseball game, because you wouldn’t get any hits, and because it was soaked with urine and stinked.
I decided, then and there, I wasn’t going to play ball with old caretaker guy. Which left me no choice. I took a deep breath and dove face-first down the slide.
Chapter 7
When I was ten years old, my strange uncle who lived in the country took me into his barn and showed me a strange game called
milk the cow
. The game involved a strong grip, and used a combination of squeezing and stroking until the milk came. I remember it was weird, and hurt my arm, but kind of fun nonetheless.
Afterward, we fed the cow some hay and used the fresh milk to make pancakes. When we finished breakfast, we watched a little television. It was a portable, with a tiny ten-inch screen.
Many years later, my strange uncle got arrested, for tax evasion. So I have no idea why I’m bringing any of this up.
The slide was a straight-shot down, no twists or curve. The dive jostled my grip and my key light winked out, shrouding me in darkness, like a shroud. I had no idea how fast I was going or how far I traveled. Time lost all meaning, but time really didn’t matter much anyway since I’d bought a TiVo. Minutes blurred into weeks, which blurred into seconds, which blurred into more seconds. When I finally reached the bottom, I tucked and rolled and athletically sprang to my butt, one hand somewhere near my holster, the other cupped around my boys to protect them, not to fondle them, even though that’s what it might have looked like.
I listened, my highly attuned sense of hearing sensing a whimpering sound very near, which I will die before admitting came from me, even though it did.
I’d landed on my keys. Hard.
When I stood, they remained stuck in me, hanging from my inner left cheek like I’d been stabbed by some ass-stabbing key maniac. I bit my lower lip, reached back, and tugged them out, which made the whimpering sound get louder. It hurt so bad I didn’t even find it amusing that I now had a second hole in my ass, and perhaps could even perform carnival tricks, like pooping the letter X. That’s a carnival I’d pay extra to see.
I found the key light and flashed the beam around, reorienting my orientation. I was in some sort of secret lower level beneath the mausoleum. Dirt walls, with wooden beams holding up the ceiling, coal mine style. To my left, a large wooden crate with the cryptic words TAKE ONE painted on the side. I refused. Why did I need a large wooden crate?
Noise, from behind. I spun around, reaching for my gun, and a dark shape
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