“Okay, okay…sit down.” As Pumpkinhead sat down at a corner table in the coffee shop, Captain H threw his sandwich on the plastic tray and continued, “How do I communicate with the little green men?”
“Little green men?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey dude, did Jezebel sell you some of that liquid acid? That’s to be taken in small doses, you know. I hope you didn’t slurp that down.”
“Don’t be coy.”
“Coy?” Pumpkinhead picked at his hash browns. “You sure you mean coy?”
“Yeah I mean coy; you know like a wise-ass.” He took another bite of his sandwich.
“A wise-ass is just a wise-ass. If you’re coy, then you’re a bashful, or a shy wise-ass.”
“But you’re still a wise-ass!”
“Only if you use that particular adjective in there, otherwise you’re just a demure person.”
“Stupid?”
“Huh?”
“Stupid….a stupid person. Like, ‘that guy skipping across the street is acting a bit demurely’.”
“Because he’s demure, he’s stupid?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Being demure has nothing to do with stupidity. Did we go to school in the same country?”
“Demure means stupid.”
“Demure means coy!”
“Not all stupid people are necessarily wise-asses, Pumpkinhead! Like the jerk off skipping across the street, he’s just a stupid ass – not a wise-ass.”
Pumpkinhead stared at him as he chewed his food, “How do you find your way home at night, anyway?”
“Let’s get back to the little green people.”
“Leprechauns? They’re not real.”
“The Martians!”
“Oh…the aliens.”
“Yeah, whatever you wanna call them.”
“Aliens. Yeah, now they’re real. I know because I’ve seen them.”
“I know you have. That’s why I need to talk to you. You see, Muffin Man told me that Rad told him he was talking with Mahdakis, who told him that Floyd had just told him that he and Pumpkinhead, that’s you, had seen Squid. Is this true?”
“I’m not sure what you just said. I got lost after Rad…But I have seen Squid recently, if that’s what this is about.”
“That’s what this is about.”
“Yeah, he said he’s not of this Earth anymore, dude.”
Captain H grabbed Pumpkinhead’s wrist, “What does that mean? What did he mean by that? Not of this Earth? Is he a ghost? Is he gonna come after us and kill our families and rape our house pets?!”
“Calm down dude, will ya? Get a hold of yourself man!”
Captain H took a skeptical bite of his soggy hash brown, “What are they about, Pumpkinhead? Why are they here, and what do they have to do with us?”
“Dude! Are you serious, man? The aliens brought us here millions of years ago; they dumped our ancestors off on this once desolate planet like bags of outgrown clothes.”
“What are you saying?”
“Dude, the first people who arrived here were criminals from outer space somewhere and no longer any good to their communities, and therefore were dumped off here with no feasible way to return; they were prisoners.”
“What about Adam and Eve? Prisoners too?”
“Oh come off it, will ya? For that mater, what about Santa Claus?”
“Hey! Jesus Christ is my lord and savior, Pumpkinhead! Don’t speak ill of good people like him and Moses and so fourth.”
“Well which is it? You’re talking about two different books now.”
“Society as we know it starts with Jesus Christ, everyone knows that. We are his children; not some filthy, slimy Martian people’s. That’s why when Jesus was born, the calendar date starts on zero; we build from there. That is the origin of our existence.”
“What about Adam and Eve, then, all those years ago?”
“Okay, good point.”
“Mm-hm,” Pumpkinhead took a sip of his ice coffee, “And what about all the other shit that happened before him?”
“It wasn’t done properly; it doesn’t count because it didn’t work; it’s like we got a do-over when he was born.”
“More like the Romans forced some shit on the world because they were paranoid about their own existence and survival.”
“Hey! Don’t knock the Romans!”
“Aren’t you like Indian, or Black, or something?”
“A little of each; but I still respect the good book.”
“You know that ‘good book’ is what drove the Europeans over here to slaughter the fuck out of your Cherokee ancestors, who by the way, put stock into the belief in alien life form.”
“They did?”
“Oh yeah, it’s well documented. And, that ‘good book’ is also what the Europeans thought entitled them to go to Africa and make slaves of your other ancestors, because the followers of that ‘good book’ believed that anyone else, or any other race of people who didn’t believe in it, were inferior and therefore, they should be conquered and converted. And if memory serves correct, back in those dark ages, most of that African continent had very different beliefs….and still does! So pardon my confusion about your love for Whitey and the ‘good book’.”
Captain H gave consideration and said in a rather hushed tone, “Fuckin’ European scumbag bastards; I got to start reading more stuff.” Then, opening his arms as wide as possible, he focused an obsessed stare up towards the ceiling and, with veins bulging out of his neck and forehead, he yelled on the top of his lungs, “KILL ALL THE WHITE PEOPLE!”
© 2013, 2014 Mark Rogers
(Book III)
(A Retrospective)
You must be logged in to post a comment.