through giggles.
“Are you sure there’s no Germans around?” Muffin asked.
“Quite, they all got eaten up… I mean… they left,” said the hyena.
“Are you telling us the truth?” Muffin asked
“Gobs honest,” the leader said, “Gobs honest!”
“Did you say Gods, or Gobs?”
“Both those,” he said, “or the one that’s most honest, actually…” said the Leader. Knob sighed and sat down on a large pile of femurs, clavicles, rib-bones, skulls and Kaiser Whilhem helmets. The spear point of one hat stuck her in her left butt cheek and she squealed. This was not going to be easy, Knob reminded herself again. She hastily assumed the thinker’s pose, with a fist under her chin, when another large hyena stepped forward.
“Hey, Tim,” the other large animal began, “aren’t you forgetting about all the Germans in that cast-iron pot over there?” The other hyena pointed to a huge pot in the center of the soccer field.
“Idiot!” Tim, the leader, said. “There’s nothing in that pot - that’s where we put people that we are going to gobble up that we don’t feel are safe to eat raw…” Tim, disgusted at the other hyena, who was wearing a lobster bib with the lobster crossed out and two stick figures of dumb-looking girls drawn on it, frowned and shook his head at his friend, who he saw was winking and grinning. “You KNOW that, Eric!”
“Are you sure that that’s not where the German’s went?” said Eric, while stage-pointing at Muff and Knob behind his hand. “I mean… shouldn’t the girls go and climb in there and at least check?” said Eric, who was now pointing to the girls and then pointing to his open, toothy mouth.
“I’M TELLING YOU,” Tim the leader said, “THERE ARE NO GERMANS IN THAT POT…”
“Maybe we should go and see for ourselves…” Muffin began. She looked suspicious but at the same time comfortably convinced that the hyenas’ were telling the absolute truth.
“…HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY IT…” Tim said.
“Yes girly!” Eric said. “But it’s slippery, so you should put some of this salt and pepper on your hands and the rest of your bodies, just in case…” Eric held out two shakers.
“Yeah,” said another Hyena, “and you should take off your nasty, greasy long-out-of-fashion, clothes…”
“Good one Bob,” Eric said, laughing, “Yup, there’s probably not enough room for you, the contract-loving Germans AND your hideous, I mean… stylish clothes.
“I’M TELLING YOU BOTH…” Tim shouted, “THAT POT IS… EMPTY!”
“Are you boys just fun’in with us so to get us out of our dresses?” Muffin said, coyly. She raised her eyebrows twice and toyed with her stringy, dandruff-laced hair while throwing her head back in a non-sexy way. She had her plaid skirt off and stood now only in her shoes, shirt and heavily-stained naval-high military-grade underwear briefs. Eric yakked up a phlegm-ball the size of a grapefruit and Bob barfed twice and said the word ‘gross’ under his breath sixteen times.
“Yup,” Bob said while wiping his mouth, “That’s it…”
“Yeah,” Eric said while shielding his eyes from the two gals, “found us out all right… you… hot… broad.” Both hyenas began to laugh hysterically.
“WAIT, I GET IT!” Tim shouted. “It’s a trick to get them in the pot so that we can…” Tim paused as both girls, now each in various stages of undress, stared, wide-eyed, at him. “…so… we… can… have them sign the contract with the German’s in the pot…” he stuttered. “…and… we’re not going to put… the... lid… on real fast, either…” Tim said while winking and giving Eric and Bob a huge thumbs up.
“UD-CA E-BAY A RICK-TA…” Knob said, while re-buttoning her terry-cloth shift that in some eastern countries passed for a dress AND a tablecloth.
“HUH?” asked Muff. She was both confused and experiencing a totally clear moment of clarity. Knob, however, was coming to believe that there were, in fact, very few Germans in that pot, and, if there were some Krauts in there, she surmised, thought and gestated, that they wouldn’t in fact be the contract signing kind. She pulled from her pack her thermos and nudged Muff and whispered the words ‘get ready to AM SCRAY’ to the bewildered rotund behemoth, who, for her part, farted, which drove the hyenas back several feet.
Then, watching the receding tide of hungry-looking beasts draw away from the newly created green cloud, Knob seized the moment.
“RUN MUFFY!” Screamed the girl while whipping off the thermos’s cap. As the pair ran Knob littered the trail behind them with carpet tacks. She knew, as all people with a PHD in Starving Nature Animals do, that hyenas rarely, if ever, wore shoes.
“I’m depressed,” Muff said. “I liked that plaid skirt so much!” Muff was still wearing her shirt, shoes and military-grade underpants. She had not had the time to refit her dress, which stayed behind as the two fled the half-passed out, gassed hyenas. Luckily they quickly found a Über Cab and now sat, safe and sound, in the hellaport-teleport-airport and potato-pealing factory city-centre, albeit, sans their precious signed Marzipan contract… Lord Plebe, the girls knew, would be furious, and, he would also probably regret lending the girls his debit card.
“Well, I guess it’s back to the over-stocked pet store euthanasia graveyard shift for us…” Knob said.
“WAIT!” Muff exclaimed, “What if we sign the contract ourselves, in a German-like script, chock full of umlauts and edelweiss doodles?”
“Yeah,” Knob began, “but what do we do when the roaches are running rampant and no Marzipan arrives?”
Muff just sighed. “Is there a worse job than the graveyard puppy euthanasia shift?” Muff wondered aloud.
“If there is,” Knob said, “I don’t want to know about it…” She turned as a man, carrying a large poster-board sandwich sign with the words ‘Marzipan Contracts Signed Here’ on it, sauntered by.
“WE’RE IN LUCK!” Muff shouted. “Over here… hey mister!” Within seconds the girl had the man’s attention. It happened fast, because they were the only people in the airport’s health department condemned food-court. The man wore an ‘I heart Italia” sweatshirt and sported a hat that was an exact replica of the Roman Colosseum, albeit a bit smaller than the real thing.
“Ahh… Lookee-a here…” the man began in a heavy Italian accent, “Two-a girls, one-a in her underpants who-a lookee like they-a have-a Marzipan contracts like all-a over da places!” Said the man who introduced himself as Luigi, but than corrected himself and told the girls his name was really Steve.
“We have…” Muff began, but stopped as Knob shushed her.
“Remember,” Knob whispered to the girl, “…what Plebe said. Ears are everywhere and most people even have two.” Knob turned to the man, who had thick hair, a coal black mustache, olive skin and four inch neck hair that protruded from his shirt like a accordion-style medieval collar. He said he was a giant pygmy originally from the Amazonian outback, near Chad and not Italian at all.
“What if we DID have a Marzipan contract,” Knob began craftily, what’s it to you, BUB?” Muff started at the hard-as-nails way Knob used the word ‘bub’ on the Chadian. Muff watched as the man drew back, having gained new respect for the girl in the yellow polka-dot shift that in some eastern countries doubled as actual clothing.
“Well-a,” the man said, “You might have found-a that there are no Germans here to sign such a thingy - that apparently tasting good on the Starvation Plains turned out not-a to be-a in their favor, if you get my meaning. So… Anyhoo… I’m going to get my Marzipan contract sighed on the planet Blue-Balls, where the Marzipan flows like water in streams of chocolate…” Steve said. “I was told to watch for some gals that… well lets say theys brain is size of half-pea, and to compare my contract with theirs to see if mine-a compared favorably with their terms or if-a we need to draw up a gooder one…” The man frowned. “I haven’t-a said too muccho have I?”
“No, no, not at all,” Knob said with a wink and a thumbs up and a howdy-do to M
uff who was slyly giggling. “We’re also headed to Blue-Balls ourselves, to… um… have our… a… ‘Walnut’ contract signed. By the way do you know the way to San Jos… I mean… Blue-Balls?”
Sixteen-days of sitting and five-minutes of hibernation later, the girls found themselves pealing freezer-burn scabs and half-melted plastic wrap off their spongy bodies in the close confines of their Fridigaire hyperbole-sleep chambers. Knob noticed that HBO and wart removal were extra on the Far-From-Virgin-InterGalactic flight. Though Plebe’s debit card was going to take quite a hit, Knob felt that it was for the best - Gob willing, they would be bringing a signed Marzipan contract back to Lord Plebe after all.
The loud speaker blared ‘Welcome to Blue-Balls, sorry about the name, the mapmaking guy held a grudge against our rather Puritan-like First Lady’.
As Knob and Muffin traversed the pot joints, prostitution halls and beef jerky stands of the Blue-Balls Municipal Teleport-Airport, they ignored the hawkers, baulkers and squawkers waving their magic wands and promising the moon or at least an asteroid if the gals would browse their overpriced merchandise, and they soon found themselves again at a taxi-stand waving Lord Plebe’s debit card around.
Hover cars circled to and fro, but mostly fro, and people movers moved people. The high-rise skyline rose almost into the clouds and Blue-Ball’s triple sun made the day