The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro

back on the bar stool. The alcohol I had consumed wasn’t enough to get an embryo drunk, and unless I started turning tricks behind the bar, I was going to remain broke, sober, and thirsty.
    Patti, on the other hand, who was two beers away from residing in an alcohol-induced coma, announced to the bar via the PA system that all one hundred fifty people in the bar were welcome at his house for his birthday party after the bar closed.
    His roommate Chris, however, missed the announcement, since he was cornered by a woman who had snakes wiggling out of her head, a woman that I recognized as his ex-girlfriend, Medusa.
    I watched them. Her hands flew about viciously, several times coming dangerously close to his face, and her lips beat together as quickly as the hands of a clapping monkey. He wasn’t saying a word. He stood there, dazed and mildly confused, waiting for the chance to escape. Chris glanced over at me with anxiety written all over his face, and I shrugged my shoulders. There wasn’t much I could do.
    She finally took a breath, and he beat it to the bathroom, which I thought was a smooth move. But when he peeked his head out from behind the door, there she was again, animated, angry, and yelling.
    He walked out of the bar with her following inches from his heels as she barked at the back of his head.
    It was last call, and I had sorely missed the boat. I accepted the fact that I was not going to get another drink, Whorie Laurie or not.
    The bar was emptying out, directions to Patti’s house were being screamed through the gray smoke of the bar, and I headed for my car across the street.
    As I pulled out of the parking lot and stopped at the traffic light, I glanced to my left, and there was Chris again, shaking his head as Medusa screamed at him.
    I rolled down the window. I could hear her now, her voice screeching like a rape whistle, flames shooting out of her mouth.
    I did the only thing that I could.
    “Hey, Chris,” I shouted. “You need a ride?”
    “Hell, yes,” he said and ran across the street and jumped into the passenger seat.
    Undaunted, Medusa charged into the street, where we were held captive by a red light. She marched right up to my side and boldly stuck her head into the open window, flooding the car with bellows and thunder.
    Chris calmly reached past me, hit the button on my door, and the window began to climb. She was still shrieking like a vampire caught underneath the sun as the glass grew higher and higher, higher and higher, until the pane stopped at the skin of her throat, and her head was stuck.
    It didn’t bother her; it didn’t even daunt her. She kept roaring through the threat of decapitation, she could not move, and Chris desperately wanted to finish the job. I fought him for the button as the window zipped up and down, up and down, until I finally managed to smack the palm of my hand against her forehead, dislodging her skull from my car window.
    The light had turned green. Medusa was still attached to us with one of her head snakes writhing above me, still caught in the window. I pushed the button again to release the serpent, and she took that opportunity to rear back into the car like a furious grizzly, her jowls dripping with rabid saliva and her eyes the color of burning coals.
    Christ Almighty, she’s going to eat us, I thought as I punched the gas pedal and tore through the yellow light as she took one last final swing and body-slammed my car.
    We hadn’t traveled farther than fifty feet when circus lights began to blink in my rearview mirror.
    “Oh, no,” was all Chris could say.
    I pulled into the Mobil station at the nearest intersection and stopped the car. Officer Barney Fife strolled over and stuck his head into the window, which was still dripping and smeared with Medusa’s sputter.
    “Do you know why I pulled you over?” he questioned.
    I shook my head.
    “You had that girl’s head stuck in the window,” he informed me.
    “I know,” I answered.