THE MONKEYSHINES CASE, ENTRY 8
Randy was explaining—agonizingly, if I’m being honest—about his life growing up as I timidly sipped some stewed brain bean tea, cobbled together by Randy from some recipe he half-remembered while regaling me with nostalgia so heavy that I almost called my psoriasis-riddled grandmother until I remembered that she was a hate-filled bag of sticks and dead.
Ostensibly, Randy’s lengthy yarn-spinning was in regards to the origin of his breakdown in the middle of my brain bean adventure, noticing as he did that certain mini-hotrods that had been snuck into our homebase were the exact ones his father had neglected to give him as a child. Moreover, to Randy’s mind-bending horror, each of said models looked to be carrying a figurine-version of Randy himself, waving from their respective open windows with a grin that could only appear on the face of a well-loved and incredibly-satisfied child. These were the cars he was crushing in fits of unspeakable angst while I was staring into the fifth dimension, which, it should be noted, was where god gave me the finger.
It was quick, but I saw it.
Regardless, Randy had lined up the remaining non-triggering mini-hotrods for us to peruse for clues after we finished our brain bean tea, and said clues were hard to miss: there was the little clown stapled into his despair-inducing ride, bent like a boomerang; there was the little cabbie red hot with rage beneath an accidentally-cracked windshield, all forehead veins and girth; and there I was, soaked inside-out with poison in the back of an ambulance, fighting for my life while flipping off god, which was an extraordinary likeness considering I hadn’t at that point come down with a case of the toxic stupids, meaning either that ambulance had been snuck in amongst the others while we were at the hospital, or someone knew how I generally reacted to poisoned god-sightings and took a chance.
Either way, it was impressive.
Among the other as-yet unrecognizable vehicles sat two of much interest: one was a seventies-style hippy van sporting a monkey paw decal that looked to our eyes like a three-fingered salute, a detail that proved that they, whomever they were, were most assuredly thumb-counting these monkeyshines, because that opposing digit was tucked tighter than a werewolf baby’s first bedtime under a full moon, and nobody tucks anything that tight unless they were aware of its potential for havoc.
Two was a hovercraft. It had recently been in the news, that hovercraft had, because it had been quietly but very visibly working its way around the nearby lake, looking for all intents and purposes like a predator hunting down its next meal, and despite the lack of a clarifying figurine, Randy and I both knew that if the owner of said hovercraft was in any way involved in this monkeyshines mess, we were, to put it bluntly, fucked.
We were hesitant to even make it make hovercraft-noises as we vroom vroomed the length of the carpet with the others; that’s how little we knew that Countess von Bang was to be trifled with.
I mean, we were hesitant but we did it. Randy made a fwoosh and it was incredibly satisfying.
