Jackpot

"Never once did I care to know what that pea-picker's brother was thinking.  I told you before all about that pea-picker and the things that he did, so I rightly do not have to digress and share any further thoughts about him, now, do I?  Of course not, honey child.  You just sit right there and sip that sweet tea that Mister Packy brought you.  He did not bring you any sweet tea?  Dreadful!

Mr. Packy! Please bring our guest a sweet tea...and be swift about it!

I do apologize, honey child.

Now then.  Where was I ?  Oh yes, I was sharing thoughts about the pea-picker's brother.  Well, I do guarantee that the day that the pea-picker was released from the county pen, his brother was bound and determined to fill his brother's cell, as it were.  The only thing he wanted to do...the only thing he had any stomach for...damn, the only thing he had any heart for was seeing to committing a crime so as to keep up the family business and the name, you might say.  So he went out and bought a length of chain and a shotgun that very day.

Sweet heavens, but that pea-picker's brother had breath that smelled like fecal matter.  It smelled so very much like a septic tank that no one ever felt fit to argue with him - they would take one whiff and let him have his way.  So it was that he managed to borrow Old Man Donovan's pickup truck and cover with the story that he was going morel hunting in the dark and needed some way to carry a few friends.  Dumber-than-dirt Donovan let him have it - partly because he believed the story and partly because he didn't want to stand face to face with that bowel stench.

The boy waited until nightfall and closing time for that gas station down at the crossroads.  He pulled Old Man Donovan's truck right up to the place, put one well-placed shotgun blast through the glass doors, reached through and turned the lock.  In he strolled, exhaling a great breath reeking of rectum.

The pea-picker's brother looped that length of chain right around the ATM that was inside, secured it, and then secured the other end to the hitch on Donovan's truck.  He hopped back in and gunned that mother.  That old ATM busted free of where it was, busted through the doors and came skittering right out next to a pump.  That pea-picker's brother was just a-dreaming of all the meth he could buy with all the money in that ATM, and he knew with that much meth that he would find himself a little lady outside the Wal-Mart.  You know what I mean.  He wasn't gonna' be lonely, if you know what I mean and I certainly believe you do.  Ladies love a man with that much meth, even if he has breath that reeks of a diseased colon.

Well, honey child, having freed the ATM from its moorings, the damned fool didn't know what to do, and when the Sheriff arrived he was still trying to wrestle the whole thing into the back of Donovan's pick-up truck.  Sheriff Morgan laughed so hard that he pissed himself and forgot to handcuff the poor bastard.

It was either the laughing or the pea-picker's brother's breath that made him forget. I am inclined to believe that it was his breath, honey child.  I guess every cloud really does have a silver lining.

A Century of Dreams

Sanguine Sanny woke up in a rather marinated state and looked at the mushrooms growing outside his window.  They were red.  More accurately, they were reddish-brown, and Sanguine Sanny was sure that these mushrooms indicated where the little people dance.

The little people. The wee folk.  You know what I mean.  Of course you do.

Sanguine Sanny rolled out of the urine-soaked sheets of his bed and wrapped a tapestry around his naked frame.  He toddled to the window and surveyed the wonderful field and the vast, vast number of reddish-brown mushrooms.  Donning his fez, he walked out into the bright daylight and began meticulously picking mushrooms with a bobby pin.  One by one the mushrooms made their way from the grassy meadow where the little people dance into Sanguine Sanny's salivating mouth.  It was Pavlov all over again, except with no dogs, no bells and no meat powders - only the saliva.

It took only a few minutes for the pain to begin in Sanny's abdomen.  In another minute or two it was excruciating, but Sanny continued his fungal feast.  The bobby pin darted faster and more deftly as he went, and the reddish-brown mushrooms flew down the poor fool's gullet at breakneck speed.  It was only a small voice that made him pause.

"You damned fool," said a wee man in wee bell bottoms, "those'll get you sicker'n a dog."

"Tap, tap," went the bobby pin, and the wee man in bell bottoms fell to the ground unconscious.

Sanguine Sanny vomited a great column of chunky, reddish-brown gastric juice. "No leprechaun with bad fashion sense is gonna' tell me what to eat," he said, wiping his lips.