River of Tears

I was on a wagon train with McDougal in the early 1840's. We were attacked by panthers somewhere near Oklahoma. There was a whole brigade of them -- I don't know, maybe 40 or so. Well, to be honest, they weren't all panthers. There were also a bunch of foxes, zebras, goats and chickens mixed in there. They were led by a single heavyset Guatemalan striding a twin-engine Buick Leviathan (coupe).

Of course we were traveling light as hell back in those days and were protected only by our wits, superior strength, and an army of 11,000 French schoolchildren packing bazookas and a pound of c4 each.

So goddamn McDougal freaks out on me. Starts ripping at his shirt and crying. Just crying like a damn baby.

McDougal cries tears of blood.

And in great quantities.

Within about eight minutes he cried enough blood to form a river. A river of blood that washed away everyone and everything within a 60 mile radius. I only survived by building an ark out of whiskey barrels and moth balls.

I sailed that river of blood for 60 years until it finally dumped me and my boat into the mouth of hell.

When I got there, goddamned McDougal greeted me with a warm smile and a hundred dollar bill.

"Why you gotta cry so bad?" I asked him.

He didn't know.

He never does.

Delirious Mangina

McDougal wrote this song last night and demanded I post the lyrics here. It's not a song as much as it's him screaming these words while banging away on a rusted Frigidaire with a boat anchor:

I live in a sock
Broke down jock
My hair is taunt
On this wicked October jaunt

Pig tails and ice cream dreams
Muffling the one-eyed stripper's screams

Missing three teeth
On the back of my neck
Constables for peace
And I'm a burnin' wreck

Missed on the free government cheese
Asked the wizard, can I have some please?

Magic cheese on a crisp fall night
One of my parents was not white

My heart is black from all these pills
Chemically solving society's ills

Rabbits live in my left shoe
And ain't much more for me to do

Crap on a rat
Eat my hat
Growing fat
And that's where it's at
That was blood I spat
On your black cat

Leaves are turning
Heart is burning

And it's with this devil I dance
Too tight - these pants

~~~~

The man's gone over the ledge into the black abyss. I haven't seen him in this state since Laos in '74. I fear he's nearing his end.

Flat Feet

I met McDougal when he was on recruiting duty in Jackson, TN.

I was going to be a Marine until McDougal broke every bone in each of my feet with a stuffed miniature schnauzer, then gouged out my eyes with an ivory Buddha paperweight, and crushed my larynx with a trowl.

Eleven months later, when I was released from the hospital, McDougal greeted me in the foyer.

When I asked him why he'd done that, he just laughed and laughed and laughed for a long time.

When he was done laughing, he stabbed my dad in the cheek and bit my sister on her stomach.

I was going to be mad until we found out my sister had a bleeding ulcer and McDougal had saved her life.

"Lacey," he told me (though my name's Jim), "There are friends you meet and know for a short time, and some you know for a lifetime. Other's you know at the right time."

That was the last time I saw McDougal.

Mother *&^$)%%#

I was that guy. That guy in McDougal's last fight. 1987. Motherfucker was a mad rabbit puncher. Punched my kidneys into my chest. I couldn't breathe. My lung had collapsed. Mom was in the crowd and I cried out to her, but no sound came through the blood and collapsed lung. And I looked to her, weepingly, and notice -- she's cheering. The bitch is cheering for McDougal.

Fishing for Miracles

McDougal saved my life in Panama City in the late 70s. I was about 8. McDougal couldn't have been more than six. We were working a shrimp boat that ran up and down the Gulf Coast 20 hours a day. We worked cheap back then -- oblivious to child labor laws and to the doubts of our elderly caregivers.

About a year into our shrimping venture, I caught syphilis from a Tallahassee whore and slipped into a maniacal state. I'd knifed the first mate during a heated game of Go-Fish (the only game the captain permitted us to play aboard his vessel). I called for an eight, and the first mate denied ownership of such a card. We were playing with a marked deck, so I knew he was lying. At first, I let it slide. But when on the very next turn, that bastard requested an eight from me, I lost it. Ran his belly with an 8" filet knife. He bled out over the period of about six hours, then I tossed him overboard.

When we pulled into port, the captain notified his widow, and she went into a rage. Attacked me with an aluminum bat she kept in her Dodge Omni. Beat me within an inch of my life. I was so blitzed on seafarer's moonshine and fevered delirium that I didn't even know who she was at the time. I thought she was a giant shrimp and the Omni was a vessel designed and built by aliens in the mythical city of Atlantis.

I put up no defense, and was resigned to accept my fate.

Thank God for McDougal, who upon seeing what was happening, charged the scorned widow and choked her to death with a 4-foot strand of 150-pound test fishing line.

I was severely wounded and had slipped into a state of shock. McDougal loaded me into the Omni and rushed me to an emergecny room ... in Atlantis. There, I was healed. Plus, I was given a third eye at the base of my spine.

God bless McDougal and the magical mermen surgeons of Atlantis.

Do Bears Shit in the Woods?

"Bears, Terry. Those are bears."

I wasn't sure who this Terry character was, but I knew what bears were.

And if they were in McDougal's kitchen, that wasn't good.

Especially since we were on his cabin cruiser in the middle of fucking Lake Eerie.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes," McDougal said. They must have followed the trail of all the blood and garbage.

"They can swim?"

McDougal bit his tongue to stifle a laugh. "Of course not, Jonesy. Don't be absurd."

"Then how the fuck did they get way the hell out here?"

Boats.

The fucking bears up there have their own boats.

Fortunately for both of us, McDougal had a couple of leftover bear traps and bloody virgins in his back pocket. Those stupid fucking bears dove right in after them when McDougal tossed them overboard.

But what we didn't know until 90 seconds later is that they'd rigged the boat with explosives. They blew the whole boat into tiny bear-sized pieces. McDougal and I made it out fine, but it was a long swim back to shore. Also, it didn't help that we were pursued the entire way by bear frogmen.

I later told McDougal, "I didn't even know they made such a thing."

"Don't be such a faggot, Percy. God makes whatever the fuck he wants."

That McDougal is right.

Jesus, I've been such a Goddamn idiot.

Agolo-kuluk Lak-shini-tuk Et-kat Mats-jaro-alik

In case you were wondering, one day I opened my car trunk to find McDougal humping a Rally's short order cook and her peek-a-poo. I had a job interview in ten minutes, so I yelled at the D and slammed my trunk, inadvertantly getting the peek-a-poo's neck caught in the trunk latch and spraying tiny-dog blood all over my suit. This infuriated me, and it didn't help that I heard a muffled mix of the Rally's girl climaxing and McDougal laughing at me from inside the car. I said fuck it to the job interview, turned and walked south-southeast, and never had another job after that day.

A few days into the walk, McDougal comes puffing up behind me. I don't mean puffing like he was sorry and had run to catch up and make things right between us, get me that job, and let me do the Rally's girl, I mean puffing like taking massive hits off an ice bong packed with Afghani Hashish while sitting in a chariot made of dolphin bones and old 386 motherboards. Two eskimos held the chariot aloft, and they in turn sat atop two surprisingly fast walruses.

"Fine day for walking," he mused, and pulled out a deck of cards. One of the Eskimos kind of staggered and started to fall. In one lightning fast move McDougal beheaded him, chained the Eskimo's second-born son to the falling handle of the chariot, buried the Eskimo's remains in his homeland, sang a moving dirge in his native Anuit language that brought everyone (myself included, I'm not ashamed to admit) to tears of bittersweet joy, and dealt me five cards: three down, two up.

I took a look at my cards and felt my chest tighten. I had 1 ace down and an ace and a queen showing. The other three cards were a yellow 5 and a blue Skip from a deck of Uno cards and the instructions for an altimeter. I knew I was sunk. McDougal laughed the same laugh that had hit me so hard back at my car trunk, and I hopped up on the Eskimo chariot and took a nap against his big strong arm.



Long story short, we captured the entire White Army of early 1900s Prussia, the Rally's girl had a baby nine months later named Tom Cruise, and I of course forgave McDougal completely.

Mrs. McDougal

Let me see a show of hands, who was at McDougal's wedding? You? You? OK, yeah I remember you, and you. Well, for the couple of dozen of you that weren't there let me try to set the scene:

We were all strapped into a line of Ford Fairlanes and getting the mandatory tattoos ("Mr. and Mrs. Motherfucking McDougal") around the circumference of our necks, and the wedding was supposed to be in one hour. McDougal is trying to follow the rule about not seeing his wife before the wedding, so he's smoking a mixture of crack and Applebee's Onion Rings, and he was beating the shit out of anyone within about 40 feet of him. So everyone's kind of hunkered down in their Fairlanes.

At some point I'm hitting a nitrous balloon pretty heavy to ease the pain of the neck tattoo, when all of a sudden McDougal lunges up and shouts to the Devil. I mean To the Devil, because the Man in Red is standing right there, fashioning a Ford Fairlane of his own out of charred souls and licking flames. The Devil looks up, sees how fucked up McDougal is, shrugs and looks at us the way you look at a man who's hotass wife is so drunk she's rubbing your cock with her foot under the table, and puts his arm around McDougal.

"McDougal," he vomits, "you got another thing coming if you think you can marry my sister without a bachelor party from The Prince of Flames," and all of a sudden the entire wedding party, tuxes and all, magically appear in a shitty shake joint in south Philly.

McDougal is too fucked up to notice, and everyone at the church (now about 6,000 miles away from where we all are) is too wrapped up in Mozart's Andante Cantabile to notice we've all disappeared. Next thing I know, I see that crazy son of a bitch (McDougal, not the Devil)* eating two Philadelphia roofers alive. They are screaming and blood is everywhere, and I'm just completely speechless. Not that I hadn't seen McDougal eat people before, I'm just seeing the mess all over his tux and thinking about showtime at that church in less than an hour.

So I'm thinking, "no way McDougal's gonna pull through on this one, this time he's really done it." We spend about another 45 minutes watching fat shaved Philly girls strut their stuff, and McD finishes off the roofers and passes out on the stage.

Now the Big Man is laid out in his own puke, and the Devil's brothers-in-law are laughing at him in a way that makes me uneasy. This wakes him up out of his stupor, I see his eyes lock as he realizes the enormity of the situation, and he jumps up and sacrifices them and a bouncer to the Prehistoric Nordic God Ba:äl which gets us all a free ticket back to the church with 2 minutes to spare.

When the music shifts and we hear our cue, I whisper to him, "McD, your tux!" and he looks down and sees all the blood.

And you know what that crazy fucker does? Strips me naked, throws me out into the crowd as a diversion, marries that hellbitch wife of his before anyone sees it, and plants a goddamned fig tree in the middle of Monroe, Alabama. And that fig tree is there to this day, still putting out figs.

* the Devil was actually glued to his cell phone half the night dealing with some new "pod installation" or some horseshit down in Hell over the weekend; I was pretty disappointed after all the shit I had heard about the guy.