If that god damn stuffed bunny rabbit would just stop being a total fucking dick I would have a much easier time tell you about all the horrible shit that's happened to me this weekend. I swear to god, this is the last fucking time I'm going to even try to tell me story and if that bunny doesn't keep his fucking mouth shut I'm going to have to kill it.  So, are we in agreement, Mr. bunny?  Would it be too much  to ask of you, could you just stop being a total fucking asshole for five minutes?

Okay then, so it begins...

It all started Saturday morning, when I went to go get my hair cut at the Head Shed.  My hair had been overly shaggy for almost a month and a half, taking on a full blown 80's style hockey hair look.

"What is this shit?!?  Are you a fucking hippie?  Answer me, you longhaired freak!  Do you drive around solving mysteries with a couple of dykes and a fag? " I screamed at my reflection late Friday night.  Something simply had to be done, and a haircut was just that.

I walked out of the Head Shed feeling like a new man, back to my own self.  No more of that hippie bullshit.  It wasn't for me; I didn't have the hippie spirit.  For the first time in months, I looked the way I felt.  Small headed, aerodynamic.  It was great.

It was 11:30 on a Saturday morning, and I still had 90 dollars left from my Ebay check; I had recently managed to sell a lot of seven old “Flying Burrito Brothers” LPs to some poor bastard in Slovania.. Downtown Clinton was my oyster.  The pearl, I thought logically, was located somewhere within the murky depths of Co-op records, the town's finest CD and tobacco accessory store.  I had been keeping my eye on Frank Zappa's HOT RATS  for the past few weeks, and this was the first time I happened to have enough money to buy it when I happened to think about it.

I walked northward up the railroad tracks, all the way up to the main post office by Happy Joe's, humming "Peaches en Regelia" the whole way. The post office lot is where all  this shit started happening, as it is where I first ran into the goblins. They were disguised as humans, teenage boys.  Older than myself, but not by much, they were giggling as I walked past.

I hardly noticed them at first; I was blind to almost everything by newly found, shagless self-confidence, and determined to make a solid B-line to the Zappa CD.  My attention was to be easily gained, though, by the first person to bid for it.  The goblins must have known that.

"Hey, kid, come here."  The larger of the two goblins called after I had walked about  maybe ten yards past him.

I turned around, "Me?"

"Yeah, man.  Get over here!" The little one said. I remember his face well, he was disguised as a Mexican.  As a matter of fact, they both looked like Mexicans, but the little one was distinctly more Mexican than the larger one: FUBU jacket and pencil-thin goatee, the whole bit.

I walked toward them, figuring they were gonna ask me for a lighter or something.

"Man, what you doin' walking by the post office?"  The Mexi-goblin said, letting his high, whiny accent shine through greatly.

"I'm on my way to Co op."

"Co op, man?  That's some good shit.  You gonna get some good shit?"

"Umm, Zappa."  I said, trying to eek away without enraging the young man.  Mexicans have always put me on edge, ever since I was little.

"Where you going, man."  Piped up the large one.

"Well...I was just...uhh..."

I launched into some weird babble about my day, about why I had just gotten my hair cut, about how I wasn't a fucking hippie, and about "Hot Rats," I can't remember quite what I said, but I remember what the goblin's faces looked like while I was speaking.  One stared intently at a 93 Prism's bumper.  He might have been receiving goblin signals from it or something along those lines. It was very odd, too, because something within the bumper, something I couldn't see, made him laugh like a maniac.  The second goblin started laughing soon after the little one did, deep, throaty laughter. I stopped my story and took this as my cue to exit.

"Wait up, man.  You don't gotta be afraid, man." the Mexican said, as I was making my escape.  I walked back, prepared to bolt at any second. If there's one thing Louis Bunuel movies have taught me, it's that someone telling you not to be afraid is a pretty good reason to be afraid.

"Yes."  I said, still ten feet away from the mexi-goblin.  My back turned, keeping my weight on my front foot.

"Man, we're gonna give you the deal of a lifetime, man!"

I turn slowly around: "Deal?"

We was just in the post office, and we were buyin' stamps, man--"

"Huh, stamps."  The other goblin laughed.

"Shut up, man."  The Mexican insisted, he continued..."It turns out, we got too many stamps than we needed!"

"That's the truth, man."

"So, we gonna sell these stamps to you, little man, at a discount price."

"Discount?" I asked.

"Yeah, man.  Three fifty a piece."

"Stamps only cost 33 cents a piece."

"Yeah, man, but these are special stamps man!"

"What, like air mail?"

"Yeah, man.  These stamps will make your ass fly, man!"

"I don't really think  that I have any use for air-mail stamps."

The two goblins huddled together and started to talk and giggle.  I was only able to pick up a few words..."fuck"  "little pussy" and "whole blader." Once again, I tried to eek away.

Their huddle ended, and the Mexican goblin started to talk to me.

"What the hell you doing?  Get your ass back here, man! Okay, little man.  I'll cut you a special deal, man.  I'll sell you a whole sheet of air mail stamps for one dollar."

"One dollar?"  I asked---

--Just a second here.  If that little fucking bunny in the corner doesn't stop this shit right fucking now, I am gonna stop telling my story.  I don't need this shit!  I know, logically, that a stuffed bunny cannot be such a fucking asshole on it's own, as a stuffed bunny is not real. It's not alive.  It can't act on it's own accord. Therefore, someone or something must be controlling him and I beg of you to stop it! ...    ....    ...    ...Thank you

Okay, where was, I?  Yes, I had just been offered a whole sheet of air mail stamps for a mere dollar, an offer that I could not under any circumstance sainly refuse.
I gave the goblin a one-dollar bill, and he pulled out an entire sheet of oddly shaped, very tiny stamps out of a bag of at least thirty sheets.  It wasn't until I had the sheet in my hand and was almost turned around to walk away that the mexi-goblin let the catch of the deal be revealed.

"Okay, man.  Now, since we gave you the whole sheet, a one hundred dollar value for just one dollar, you gonna have to do something for us."  The little Mexican said.

"What?"

"You gotta lick the whole sheet now."  Said the larger one.

"Why?"

"Cause you fucking have to, man!  You can fucking just let 'em dry out and do it again for when you want to fucking use them." Said the Mexican.

"I'm not gonna do that."

"Then I'm gonna tell the fucking postman in doors, man.  He'll bust your ass for buying illegal stamps."

I stood there a while, thinking.  What harm could it have done...even if I were to lick all the stickum off the stamps I could still just tape them to an envelope... "If I lick these, can I leave?"

"Yeah, man.  You lick those man, your ass'll be home fucking free, man!"

I gave the sheet a quick once over with my tongue, but the small mexi-goblin said that wasn't good enough.  He demanded I lick each individual stamp for at least a second. It took a while, but I did it.  I walked off without saying a word.

I walked away confused, but not thinking much of the two goblins I had just met, or the large sheet of goblin eggs I had just been forced to ingest.  I hadn't any reason to think much of it, at least not yet.  Besides, Co Op still lay ahead.

I walked first to Recycled Sounds, where, as usual, I found nothing worth buying.  I always made sure to visit the used CD store before I went to Co-Op.  The reasoning behind this being that nearly everything at Co Op will be there two weeks from now, where as the same can't be said for anything decent at Recycled Sounds.  People dig through that store like modern-day grave robbers, they'll jump on anything the very minute it comes it.  I once was forced to give up a rare Radiohead single "STOP WHISPERING" because I had just spent my last fifteen bucks on Ron Geesin's “LAND OF MIST”.  With it's two dollar price tag the single went very quickly, and I vowed to myself to always check Recycled Sounds first.

I stopped for a drink at the Little Dipper; a small hard pack ice cream and Wonder Bread sandwich store run by a smokey whore, right between the two music stores. There I was side tracked by my good friend James.  We got a table and spoke briefly to one and other of our lives. He was, and had been, having relationship difficulties with his lady friend Sharon.  He told me of her behaviour, and of his, he got misty eyed, and then he left.

I finished my drink and then stood to make my way to Co-Op.  I felt fine until I exited the Little Dipper.  A good forty-five minutes has passed since my initial run in with the goblins.  The incubation period, or whatever, must have ended.

I remember vividly the short walk from Little Dipper to Co-Op.  I had this odd feeling, almost like the whole world behind me was just some sort of beautiful painting, a backdrop.  An odd sensation, to say the least, and certainly not the easiest sensation to describe.  Confusion almost, but without the fear that usually comes with it. I drew from the confusion a feeling of intense purpose and warmth.  It felt nice.   The world in front of me seemed eerily clear and in focus, like a brightly light scene shot on 16 mm film.  A halo of light surrounded most every object, I felt warm inside.

I walked into Co-op, and the strange halos surrounding each and every little object seemed to intensify.  Horrible tribal music was blasting, of this I was aware but not conscious. I knew the music was playing but I just couldn't hear it.  A beautiful white light surrounded every shelf, and the CD's themselves seemed to be breathing.  The tiny goblins, then just recently hatched inside my blood stream, had made it all the way through my circulatory system and into my brain.  The goblins very being within my head was giving me these euphoric sensations, displacing my synapses in a manner that resulted in chemical pleasure.  I think it was when they started to leave behind their excriment, or prehaps it was when they started to take an actual hold on my mind that they started to produce a very different effect than the initial euphoria.  It started when I made my way over to the Zappa section and found the copy of HOT RATS missing.  I ran up to the clerk and demanded to know what was going on, she was frightened by my brashness.

"What the fuck is going on here?"  I yelled, eyes staring through her and sweat pouring down my face.

"What?"  She replied, sheepishly turning down her music.

"Where the fuck is HOT RATS?"

" 'Hot... ... rats?'

"Frank fucking Zappa, where is it?!?"

"If it's not out there we probably never had it."

"Don't feed me that shit!  You fucking had it and you fucking know it!"

"Just a second."  She went to go check some little notepad that had the name of every CD recently sold on it.  The rare and bootleg CDs behind the counter started to move this way and that.

"Someone else bought it two days ago.  I can order-"

"Bullshit!"  I screamed "No one else in this shit hole town has ever even heard of Frank fucking Zappa."

"I can order it for you, if you'd like, sir!” She replied, starting to get pissy.

"No, let's can the bullshit.  I don't hate you, I have nothing against you.  Why is it that you have something against me?  Why don't you tell me what really happened to that CD?"

"I don't know."

"Stop fucking with me!"  I screamed.  "I am not a fucking nigger, and I demand better treatment!  End this charade right fucking now!"

 "Are you okay?" she said, gazing into me.  Her words trailed off into oblivion.

"What?"  I snapped back.

"You look really red and shit.  And your eyes are pointed two different ways.  Did you huff bleach or something?"

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean.  I demand a refund!"

"Dude you better get the fuck out of here and get some fucking sleep or something."

I twitched a bit, turned, and walked out.  The goblins inside me were growing at a rapid pace, and their effect on my brain was displeasureable to say the least. The outside world seemed the same it always had, yet completely different at the same time.  The beautiful halos had disappeared, the sky was breathing, and everything, everything seemed menacing.  I was scared shitless.

The next few hours are a complete blur, I remember most everything that happened, but the order in which things happened, and the context in which they happened is a complete mystery.  A mystery which I am now trying to piece together.

I remember I had an overwhelming, unexplained sense of panic.  My heart was racing and I had the same odd pressure upon my bladder that I get at ten thirty on a Sunday night when I have three accounting worksheets due on Monday. Pressure.  Intense mental and physical pressure, crippling me.   I think that it was the goblins trying to get me to return to some sort of place of reckoning where they were to exit my body and be allowed to grow.  The thing was that the panicky feeling almost seemed to feed on itself.  The more I paniced, the more I paniced, and the more I paniced: like the snowball the coyote rolled down at the roadrunner, gaining upon itself.

I remember standing over a dead cat in the road somewhere within the residential area around the high school (just six blocks or so away from Co Op).  I didn't feel sad, or disgusted, which would be normally be my only two reactions to seeing a poor dead kitty.  Instead, the goblins made me find some odd beauty within the deceased creature.  The whole "circle of life" concept seemed to be beautifully summarized within it.  For a moment, everything made perfect sense.   Then the panic would kick back in.  I made my way to the park by Trace's house and I remember sitting on a swing, thinking that would make me feel better.  I remember knocking on Pete Sign's door, and talking to his dad.  Pete's dad never liked me.

My clearest  memory is that of sitting in the Hy-Vee food court.  I had a slice of rancid pizza in front of me, sitting atop ten one dollar bills.  The woman who sold it to me kept scratching her head with her tongue and I had thought for a moment that she might be some sort of goblin herself, that she was well aware of the goblins which laid inside of me, and that she wanted to eat them.  The goblins inside of me, I felt, were my children.  Nobody was getting to them.

"You're not getting to them!" I yelled as the woman turned away to answer the phone.

"What hon?"  She replied, her reptile tongue having disappeared.

"Nothing." I said.  She was no goblin herself.  The goblins just wanted me to think that she was.  Those sinister little fuckers were up to something.

So, anyway, I was staring at the pizza. Contemplating what the fuck could have possibly been wrong with me, and coming up with the only logical answer.  And, shit...I forgot what happened.

I would just like to take a little break here and say "thank you" to whomever is controlling the little stuffed bunny.  You've managed to not be a complete asshole for like five minutes.  I can only imagine how hard that is for you, what with it being so tempting and all--  --What was that, Mr. Bunny?  Well ‘fuck you,’ too.

Anways--

--I fucking saw that, you little shit!  That's fucking it! You'll have to excuse me, I'm gonna go put this stupid fucking rabbit in the garbage disposal.

                                   ...     ...     ...     ...
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                                                                                                                                 ...     ...     ...     ...     ...
Okay, back to it.  I decided to just put the bunny in the freezer rather than clog up the garbage disposal. It's a perfectly cute little stuffed animal, and when the creature that is controlling it dies or grows tired of tormenting me it'll go back to being a regular stuffed bunny.  Stuffing it down the garbage disposal would have just been silly.

I was sitting in the Hy-Vee eatery, staring at a slice of pizza.  I wasn't hungry; the very thought of food made me sick.  I must have spent a good twenty minutes just staring at the pizza, asking myself why I had bought it.  My thoughts strayed back and forth from the pizza, to the goblins, to miscellaneous shit, and then back again. The only term I can possibly think of to describe what was going on in my head is "thought frenzies."  I would semiconsciously, feverishly elaborate on an idea for a brief period and then quickly move on to another.

My heart had settled, the panic had been quelled by introspection. I planned on simply sitting there until whatever it was that was happening to me settled down.  The thought of sanctity filled me with a golden inner peace.  Sitting while thinking at a pace faster than light was quite fun, and Hy-Vee wasn't going to close for another ten hours.

This golden serenity, however, was simply not to be.  My beautiful trance was to be shattered by the person  referred to by my peers as "The Can Man."  Clinton, due it's fine accommodations for those born with an extra chromosome coupled with intense water and air pollution, is filled to the brim with mentally disabled people. They roam the downtown area like cattle every afternoon shopping and sitting on benches.

Aside from the pools of urine often found in the seats of the city busses, and that big black one that jerks off while waiting for the bus, very rarely do the town tards bother you or get too annoying.  "Can Man" was the only one of the bunch that I can say I have ever felt any sort of compassion for, though.  I don't he's a full-fledge retard, he was probably a man who had a stroke or something, and as a result of said stroke, lost his day-to-day competence.  The city provides room, board, and a job only to those handi capped who were born their disability, so this man makes his living picking up cans he finds on the street and returning them for deposit; five cents a piece.

The good people at G. Raker Pepci Distributing had stopped charging deposit on sales of their cans on May 1, 2000.  The result being a drastic cut in the poor bastard's income.  "Can Man" had been falling down a noticeable spiral over the past few weeks. He’d been snippy of late, where as he used to be cheerful and friendly.  I'd seen him screaming in the street a couple times.

I noticed him taking a seat halfway across the cafeteria from me.  He was holding a 20 Oz. bottle of Sprite and he took a seat directly under the elevated television set.  He opened his bottle and stared up at the TV, the local news was on.

I launched into a pity-laced "thought frenzy" about the can man, but the TV soon caught my attention.  One of those Taco Bell dog commercials was on and seemed very interesting.  The local news came back on in all its glorious pathiacy.  Local news is one of the saddest facets of American culture; stupid, stupid people sitting in a depressing looking set, mechanically reading cue cards while mispronouncing the names of countries, and all the while making themselves out to something bigger than they are.

Sorry, I digress.  I don't what it is about local news, it always manages to depress me and piss me off at the same time.  I can't describe how it does it either, just something that gets on my nereves.  Anyways, I always thought the weather report to be the only tolerable part, and that just happened to be what was on.

The anchorman said something along the lines of "Sure is looking hot out there, huh' Jerry?"  And then they cut to the weatherman, an obvious weekend replacement.  He looked to be fresh out of high school.  He was nervous.  He didn't make his forecast seem believable.

He went through the whole 'jet stream' thing.  Then he went on to the day's highs and lows.  This seemed to have pissed can man off... the next sequence of events happened in slow motion.

Can Man stood and raised his arm to the screen.  "Liar!  Liar!" he screeched at the inept weatherman.  "Liar!  Liarrrrrrrrrrr!"

He started screaming and flailing his arms about. I could see tears streaming down his unshaven face.

People started to gather and stare. Some started to laugh. I could see myself staring at him from outside my body.  I looked fucked up.

Can man stood atop his table and started to yank down the TV.  He first grabbed hold of it and pulled back, but he lost his grip while thrusting backward and fell off the table flat on his back.  He was determined, though.  Bleeding from the ears, he got right back up and slammed his lunch tray into the screen, smashing it.
I stared at the smoking screen for a little while, the smoked seemed to dance.  I must have been staring for a long while, actually, because my next memory is that of realizing that the whole cafeteria area had cleared out, save for the can man, two Hy-Vee personnels, and a uniformed police officer.  Can man was holding a fork to my head, and I hadn't even realized it until he had dragged me off my booth.  The officer had a gun pulled.  I was scared shitless.

That's about where the coherency stopped.  I started to cry.  I tried to explain to the officer the can man's situation, and I begged him not to shoot.  His hostage negotiation training must have not gone much past telling the hostage to shut the fuck up.

They tackled can man after trying to reason with him for about a minute.  He didn't make any attempt at me with the fork, but that fat bastard cop twisted my ankle
while he was beating the shit out of the poor man.  Can man just kept yelling: "Liars! Liars!  Liars!" and crying.  I limped out the emergency exit and ran for as long as I could, not caring where I was running, only caring that I was running.

I found my self in the South Clinton projects on a swing in the middle of a dirty little park.  The panic had returned full-fledged.

I could feel my pulse pounding, and I thought my heart was going to explode. Every time I tried to calm myself down the pounding would just increase. This was probably from the goblins growing too fast.   I realized that pretty soon they'd grow too big for their shell... holy jesus, pretty soon the would crack through my skull like a baby chick breaking free from an egg.  Fuck!  I was thinking at a thousand miles a second to find some way, any way to prevent this.

I only managed to stay on the swing for about five minutes, I knew something had to be done and sitting still was not it.  I walked off.  The walking soon turned into running, and before I knew it I started to scream again and ran off screeching into random, dirty residential streets looking for help.  The houses all looked the same and started to spin.  I got so desperate that I started to violently knock on random doors, screaming and crying for help.  I waited at each door for three or four seconds after knocking and then ran off to next.  I must have knocked on ten doors before getting an answer; I was welcomed into some sort of goblin hell hole by a goblin disguised as a twenty-year-old white trash girl.

The goblins inside of my head had lured me into the meeting place.

"Are you okay?" She asked me, a golden halo surrounding her.

"No."  I said, calming down, but still breathing heavy.

She led me into her front room.  Several goblins were waiting there for me, watching a transporter device disguised as a TV.

"Who's he?"  A goblin disguised as a topless white trash man asked the woman who had brought me in.

"I think he's freaking out or something.  I watched him through the window, he was knocking on doors and shit."

"Whoa, look at his pupils." a goblin piped.  His peers seemed impressed.  Dilated pupils must have a sign that the eggs were about to hatch, I reasoned.

"Get these fucking goblins out of me!"  I screamed and threw myself on the floor.

The next thing I remember is waking up in an upstairs bed in a dirty looking room. The bed had a certain feel to it where I knew I was upstairs just by the texture of the bed.  I got up, and then blacked out again.

Blackouts.  Horrible, horrible blackouts sorrounding the next bits of consciousness.  Nothing, nothing is worse than having absolutely no memory of your actions, save for snap shots you remember here and again.  I remember be gathered with some goblins in the room and snorting nutmeg off of the small of a large black woman’s back; Janis Joplin was blasting-- black out.  It was almost like I was watching myself from outside my body, almost like I realized I would have no memory of my deeds, and I may as well go to town.  I finished the disgusting nutmeg ritual--black out. I watched a depressing 1970’s pornography on a very old colour TV--black out.  I poured Drano on a family of mice--black out. I drank Shasta--black out. When I remember these incidents now I am screaming blood murder at my self from a far the whole time.  Perhaps I wasn't inside my body?  Perhpaps it was the goblins making do all those horrible things.

 It was the Shasta that did it.  I tried with all my might and was able to regain total control over my body. I started screaming at myself and screaming at myself, and eventually I managed to re enter, if you will, and start screaming.  I stopped once I had regained my senses.  I didn’t want to start freaking out and have the white trash goblins assume something was wrong.  I wanted them to think everything was a-okay, so I could plan some escape.  The goblins didn't seem to take much notice in my screaming.

“Hey, man.  We should huff some fucking butane, man!” one of the smaller male goblins said right after I had re entered my body. His peers agreed.

“Great idea, man.” I said in a stumbling voice as I backed toward the exit “I’ll run on down to Hy-Vee and pick some of that up.  Great idea.”

“Man, we got a whole fucking case in the garage, man.” Said the little white trash goblin again, not looking up from his Shasta to notice my backing toward the door.  I just kept moving slowly and surely.

“Garage!  Yes!  Well, I best be going out to the garage, then.  Shouldn’t I?”

“Man, you need a key.”

I screamed like a whore and tore down a bookshelf by the door. I broke through the front door, I mean I fucking broke through it like Bugs Bunny, knocking out a perfect outline of myself in the otherwise sturdy door frame.  I ran through the front yard, hopping the chain link fence. I started to run north as fast as I possibly could.  There were lots of dogs barking, lots of children screaming, and four white trash goblin people chasing after me. The first two blocks were the hardest; that’s when they were throwing rocks.  I was only struck a couple times, in the back and with littler stones, the goblin's human shells didn't have strength enough to thrust large bolders.  When I started running through people’s back yards they had to stop with the rock throwing.

I have never run so fast in my life.  The world in front of me became one of them Star Wars warp speed colour blur: the whole bit  with the animated lights stretching out in front of me and everything.  The goblins managed to keep up, those bastards could run.  The chase was brief, eight blocks or so. I made it through the aqua duct and back into main stream Clinton.  They froze right before the bridge like the fucking headless horseman.

I was making a B-line toward Hy-Vee.   I made it across I-30 fine, though I narrowly missed getting squished by a semi. I ran through the vacant field quick as a whip and straight on into the Hy-Vee parking lot, where I was promptly blindsided by a Plymouth Duster going, I have been informed, twenty miles an hour. I don't remember anything past hitting the bumper, but I guess I actually flipped all the way to the back of the fucking thing.

I woke up in this hospital bed. Doctor Shikashakan, a man who I trust very much, has assured me that the goblins in my head died upon impact with the Duster.  I am, mentally, feeling normal again.  Aside a mild concussion, a bruised rib, and severe dehydration, I seemed to have survived this shitty fucking weekend.  If that bunny would get his ass back in the goddamn freezer, I just might be able to get some well-deserved rest.
 
 

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