Dreams in a hole in the ground
Trespassed before January 1, 2012.
My melanderous little trip to the North Pole to slay the muldersome Santa Claus and steal all his toys was canceled this past week, after I learned that it was already Christmas Day when I blarghed that “I would make it to Santa’s workshop at the top of the world by Christmas Eve.” Even if I had used the fastest, most efflubious rocket-sleigh that I could steal from the local United Spates Air Force base, I wouldn’t make it to Santa’s Workshop before the hoary old gnome crawled back into his burrow and went into his eleven-month hibernation once again. So, there being no point in rocketing myself to the North Pole, I picked up my reddest Sharpie and crossed off the bergrumptuous plan from my ceiling calendar.
Needless to say, moments later there began much wailing and gnashing of teeth, bawling and crying, throwing and breaking of things, and attempts to set my palatial abode on fire with whatever accelerants I could find close at hand.
And needless to say, I failed at that, too. There was no gasoline, no kerosene, not even a bulbous tank of propane to be found. I couldn’t even get my lighter to light. The voices banging around in my hollowed-out cranium wasted no time reminding me that I fail at an awful lot of things, on a near-hourly basis, and that both Fate and Luck hate my guts (although Panic and Lunacy seem to have quite the teenage crush on me as of late).
Belching, I scratched my ponderously dense testicles and moved my mind onto another topic. What was past was past (and had passed), and much like passing gas, if one merely held one’s breath and slowly edged away from the sulphurous cloud, the past could be smoothly avoided—and blamed on someone else! No one need ever mention my cataclysmic attempt to reach southern Moravia again. I know that I certainly won’t.
Unfortunately I eased away a bit too far, and carelessly, for I fell into a hole in my living room floor and wasn’t able to find my way out until Friday. And moments after falling into that hole, Fate—giggling in her sadistic, girlish way—reminded me that the coming Slatternday was the last day of the vaunted year 2011. And furthermore, Fate would have it, the day after that one was New Years Day: The first day of the year that followed 2011, commonly known as 2012 c.e.
“Holy crunk! I have parties to attend!” I squeaked. “But I’m stuck in a hole in the ground!”
Zippy corrected me: I was stuck in a hole in my living room floor.
Panic reigned; I ran around in tight little circles, bouncing off of the walls of the squarish hole that I had apparently cut in my living room floor years ago and had somehow forgotten about. After several hours of furious, squirrel-like scurrying, I sat down on the cold, cement floor of this odd hole and pwee-pwee-pweed my brains out. I slept, and I dreamed: A dream about burglarizing an old man’s basement and stealing all the women’s dresses that he had in boxes down there, then coercing a reluctant Captain Picard to jump out a ground-floor window (a second time, no less) so he could join me in a walk around an urban neighborhood.
The second day in the hole was boring, uneventful, and bland. Not as boring, uneventful, and bland as that spate of boringly bland uneventfulness back in August, but still boring, uneventful, and… bland enough to make me want to hang myself from the copper and PVC pipes that I had discovered running the length of the ceiling of this curiouser and curiouser hole in my floor. After sixteen hours of nonstop blandiosity, I slept once again, and I dreamed: A dream about a gaggle of knobby-nosed Chinese geese, numbering eight in number, as they honked and hissed their way around a muddy field full of anthropomorphic foxes dressed in revealing outfits. Some were dressed in even less. It was at this point that the true meaning of “yiff” finally visited itself upon my Pnårpy axons and ganglia, and I swore that I would never, never again mention the abominable term again in this docile & perfunctory little blag.
I squirmingly brøderbunded my way back to wakefulness and discovered that the Third Day in this pestilential hole had begun.
The aforementioned Third Day began with the urgent need to poop—a need so urgently urgent that it gave me no chance to even attempt to dress it up in florid, purple-hued prose before it burst upon the scene and demanded that I blargh about it at flunce. I had to pee, too. But I found myself in quite the predicament: Despite all the piping & fitting that I had discovered in my groping & stumbling about this hole in the ground floor, there seemed to be no plumbing down here that I could use to service my two sudden, urgent needs. I decided my best course of action would be to argue with myself:
“But I haven’t even eaten anything liquid nor drunk anything solid in days! Why do you harry me so with these suppurthine urges?!” The purplish floridity was back, I noted with satisfaction.
Naturally there was no answer. I sat down on the cement floor again and pweeishly waited for the day to end, reassuring myself that—but for the curiously common counterexamples that plague my existence—all days end. I got up, I paced like a caged animal, I banged my head on the cementy walls, I sat down again. The day still didn’t end, so I did it all over again. And again. Finally a need to go #3 joined my needs to go #1 and #2. I wasn’t even sure what #3 was, but I knew that the urge would go unanswered too, so long as I was trapped in this hole beneath my living room floor… smoots away from my collection of barefoot Alyssa Milano and Britney Spears photographs.
Time passed like gas; I felt my eyelids finally winning the battle against the eyeballs beneath them, and I knew that the day was, at long last, ending. The day ended—would another begin? I slept twice again, and I dreamed: A dream about the upcoming pwesidential pwimawies, and my hope that Elmer Fudd, pwesident of the United States fwom 1953–1961, would claw his way out of his gwave early next week and win in the Iowa caucus, twouncing all the other candidates in an wondewous display of filibustewous gwanfalloonewy. Another shimmering gnute popped into existence and interrupted my dream of the Fuddster reconquering the United States and ushering in a glorious golden age of American Dingleberry–Hampsterism. The gnute reminded me that zombies couldn’t run for the presidency, so that left only one question in my mind: Would the winner be Ron Paul? Or RuPaul? And, other than these two colorful characters’ use of the same flavor of groinrinse, was there even a difference?
Upon waking I realized that the horrid need to go #4 was now rearing its ugly head, joining the chorus of urges that were already swimming around inside my girthy body and demanding relief.
I lay flat on the floor of the hole for the entire day, staring into the pitch blackness that I believe was “up” and praying to the voluptuous insect goddess Strahazazhia Kalamazoo-Kintaki-Meeps that no grues would schronk on by to devour me. As the hours tick-tock-tack-tucked by, I slept thrice again, and I dreamed: A dream about trying to pack an alpaca into a suitcase and sneak him through an airport security checkpoint without getting bonked over the head by the guardsquirrels. The dream ended with me whirling like a salad spinner on its highest setting in order to distract the security rodents and make my escape (atop the besaddled alpaca, of course). My mad gyrations were soon replaced with the succulent spinning of a dancing Alyssa Milano, clad only in three slices of pepperoni—pepperoni which soon fell victim to centrifugal forces and presented no further obstacles to my orphulent oglings.
Friday morning tromboned its ungrulious arrival just as my eggluescent dream of Alyssa’s insane, spiraling dance had been joined by four out of five of the Spice Girls and Chloë Moretz: My newest femjoyous little obsession. I squawked mawkishly, writhed, wriggled, and woke up with an annoyed start. I cursed Friday and cursed the light peeping in through the cracks in the wall where it met the ceiling. Blearily I rose onto my haunches, stretched wretchedly, and then stood erect.
“Wait… light?” I mumbled turgidly. It wasn’t pitch black in this hole anymore, I realized. As the slivers of light grew in intensity, changing from sickly, cold blue to stunning golden-yellow, I was at last able to determine what sort of hole-in-the-floor I had fallen into. The mystery of its cementy, cube-like nature and all the curious appurtenances upon its walls and ceiling was now solved.
I was in my basement.
I yerked. I was even more mortified than that time I had confused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Benjamin the Nettin’ Yahoo, that bantamweight pugilist who had so skillfully demonstrated the meaning of his peculiar nickname in a world-famous slug match against the Punchin’ Llama in 1987. Looking around to ensure that no one was watching, I casually sauntered toward the cellar door and made my exit as smoothly as I could right out into my back yard. Beyond a few cockroaches, some rats, a handful of mice, and the horse I kept down in my basement since last month, no eyes witnessed my awkward departure.
I learned that it was Friday upon slithering blithely back into my palatial home (through the front door) and staring down my ceiling-calendar (through my front eyes) until it finally confessed that the day was Friday—not yet Slatternday, but not still Thrudsday either. I relaxed and spent the day plotting and scheming which New Years parties I would invite myself to tomorrow, and how I would go about inserting myself into them if I met with any resistance.
Friday ended. Slatternday arrived in all its slatternly wonders and, after finally plugging several persistent plot holes in this week’s inscrutable narrative, I finally finalized my holiday itinerary.
As the Sun sank below the horizon, I donned my finest pepperoni-patterned leisure suit, blackest bolo tie, and fuzziest burnt-umber fez. At precisely six by the clock, with a bag of fresh-cooked pincer monkey wings in hand as a burnt offering, I knocked on my new neighbor’s door, intent on crashing his party first. There was no answer after the first fifty-seven knocks; I peered in through the front window and saw the lights were out. No one was home. I took a step back and saw the note taped to the door. It was inches from where I had been pounding on the wood mere moments before, and it read:
I’m out looking for my lost cat again. Party canceled. Mr. Van der Woobie is having a party next door—why don’t you go harass him for a while?
I squeaked in glee: I had planned to crash Mr. Van der Woobie’s party at seven by the clock, but now I could get there an hour early! I squealed like a redheaded and befreckled little girl still in her pigtails and then scootled across the street to Mr. Van der Woobie’s house, only stopping because the front door was closed and locked and I wasn’t in the mood to break down any doors today (or break my nose trying).
I knocked. Fifty-eight times.
“I’m here to crash your party!” I tootled, cross-eyed, as the door opened. The host of the party himself had answered the door! He was wearing a stereotypical old man’s nightclothes, including striped pajamas, a floppy nightcap, and even a cape and cowl made out of authentic duck skin. He sneered blearily and started to protest my appearance on his doorstep—nay, my very existence he was protesting—but I would hear none of it: I pushed him aside and barged into his empty, darkened parlor. I ignored Mr. Van der Woobie’s indignant spluttering and looked about the room. No one was around. It almost looked as if there was no party going on at all, but I knew there had to be one in here somewhere. I started opening closets, tearing open drawers, tearing down curtains, and tearing up every tearable article I could lay my grubby little paws on. I howled for added effect and after a few seconds worked up a good mouth-frothing, too. Old man Woobie just watched, agape. Somewhere, a dord borked and Britney Spears noisily painted her toenails.
“Ow! Hey!” I threw my hands up in defense and fell to the floor as Mr. Van der Woobie suddenly came at me with a broom, doing his best to live up to his reputation as a crotchety old man—in fact, the crotchetiest old man this side of the Whatanagawatchee River. Realizing I had only one option, I chose it: I grabbed the broom out of his hands, broke it in half over my knee, and then ate the handle. Right there in front of him I shoved it down my gullet, splintered end first. He took 2½ steps back and went back to gaping and watching mutely. I had won again! I went back to spinning in circles, merrily singing Justin Bieber tunes to myself, and blithely ignoring Mr. Van der Woobie once again.
Suddenly Mr. Van der Woobie injected himself into my party-crashing once again, this time pointing a large, long-barrelled revolver directly at my head. He cackled like the wrinkly old codger that he was as he aimed. I yerked and decided that I was due at my next party-crashin’: Seven by the clock had come 48 minutes early. I turned tail and ran like a man–squirrel on angel dust.
Old man Woobie a safe distance behind me, I rolled on up to the hilltop residence of Richard Dreckers Sr., grandfather of trained assassin Samuel Dreckers and even grumpier than four Van der Woobies spliced together into some sort of human centipede. I hootled and tootled at his door, but there was no answer there either. I bagged dogs and passed burritos (and gas) as I waited for eight by the clock to arrive, when I planned to go visit Ravna Olegg-Thorssondóttir, my ex–hoosie-fessed little skeetch-truncheon.
She wouldn’t answer her door either, so I went to my nine b’clock appointment 53 minutes early: The bus station down at Doodlesworth Plaza, where I planned to manfully panhandle for an hour, for I needed money to feed my ravenous gnome addiction and I had spent my last shekel last week on that pepperoni-patterned leisure suit (and matching socks). The panhandling went better than planned; it took a whole 17 minutes for the authorities to arrive and escort me off the premises.
Ten b’clock arrived, and I wandered the streets, casually eating the change I had earned through my in-your-face panhandling efforts. As eleven b’clock finally made its way into my life, I finally made my way to Loquisha’s apartment on Grimpley Street. Thoughts of entertaining myself with Loquisha’s sandaled brown feet whirling through my addled little mind, I pressed the buzzer to her apartment and waited—hesitantly I pressed it, I must admit, since this visit to Loquisha had followed so long a train of failed visits tonight that I was sure that its caboose would spell my doom. I half-expected a meteor to come flaming out of the sky and crash through my skull as I let up on the buzzer button and waited.
The door opened and sure enough, it was my little brown Loquisha! She was wearing my favorite dress—the one with no gnomes printed on it, and, unless I missed my guess, it was one I had stolen from that old man’s basement in that gorgothine dream I had had. I grinned in goonflayvination. Loquisha even had my favorite pair of revealing sandals wrapped around her efflubiously lubricious little brown feet. She grinned in goonflayvination, too. We went upstairs.
Oh, how we went upstairs! And what we did upstairs! Oh, ho ho ho! Oh, that glorious night, that wonderfully eggluescent, lubriciously efflubious, paternosteringly goonflayvinatious night! What persimmony rorblings took place! What underdunkerous flunkery! I won’t say much more, but I’ll tell you one thing: Those sandals didn’t stay on for long… and neither did that gnomeless little dress either! Unholy, ungrulious noises never before made by male- and femalekind erupted from the bed cushions; neighbors whined and complained and banged on walls, but we only answered with more squealing and squawking, howling and growling, and barking and neighing. We shook the floors, we shook the walls, we shook the rafters and beams and joists. We almost shook the whole apartment building right down to its foundation, oh did we shake it so! And when the whole sweaty, grunting affair was over, we did it again!—and again!—and again! Squish, squish!—honk, honk!!
Woo-hoo-hey! Goodnight, dear readers! Your dear leader is off to slay the dragon again! Woo-hoo hoo-hoo-hoo hey!!