When Squirrels Attack

Predator Press
[COBE]

LOBO's insured, certified, signature only, earliest-possible delivery Fed-Ex lie unopened under my ashtray, sticky from soaking up Santa's blood.

Santa had certainly seen better days.

The years of steroid abuse alone would have been difficult for to me to correct. But Santa had two compound fractures that would never heal properly, and one was riddled with gangrene. Several digits and one eye had been lost to carrion-scavenging animals. Mad in his agony, Kringle frothed and spat, straining against the table restraints.

I take a shot of Wild Turkey, and then pour some on his dry lips. "The shotgun blast, it turned out, was the least of the problems, my old friend," I explained through the surgical mask as I resumed pulling the dark stitches through his thick, muscular neck. "You were grazed for the most part. You're a very lucky man. Sapphire has rarely been known to miss before."

"Ho ho ho," Santa wheezed weakly through broken, bloodied teeth.

And then he fell asleep.

Happy Yule Whatever

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Dear Santa,

I just heard you are still alive. Wow! They just don't make shotgun blasts and cliffs like they used to, eh?

Well, I just wanted you to know I've been a very, very good boy again despite these many years of neglect.

The following is a list of things that might be a great gift for, um, my nephew:

Aircraft Carrier
Weapons Grade Plutonium
Charlize Theron's non-restaining order protected Phone Number
Zombie Armor

Get Well Soon and hanks!

LOBO

Incoming Wounded

Predator Press

[COBE]

Last month was boring; I spent the whole thing sifting through the blasted concrete of Hawley Enterprises' former parking lot; always, more parts.

Always more parts.

Santa, on the contrary, starving and bloody, askew on the jagged rocks, had been driven insane by two weeks of insufferable agony. He was easy prey.

Always more parts.

Office Lunch Theft

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Due to the graphic nature of this post, I'm going to try and bury it; way under the "current", and well beneath the feeds.

This is solely for the people web-browsing that actually need this advice.

It is regarding office theft. In particular, the theft of people's lunches. I regard this as one of the lowest crimes you can commit against hard-working, honest people.

Now I understand that if you're hungry, you're hungry. Given enough time, you will take food if necessary, irregardless of the moral dilemma.

But I'm not talking about these people. I'm talking about the fuck that just doesn't bother to pack one for themselves. Does it every day as some kind of indirect 'payback' to the company. Does it because they feel 'entitled' to it.

That's the human locust I want.

Once alerted to this scum, Predator Press policy is clear: I'm to buy 99-cent hamburgers, burritos or tacos, and leave them in the refrigerator with well-concealed used condoms buried deeply in the center. Not obvious and on the edges or on top -our Charter is very explicit: "buried deeply in the center".

The nefarious 'activity' tends to stop rather abruptly.

Alchemy

Predator Press

[Mr. I]

For once, I'm with LOBO.

I'm answering the door clutching a $4,000 fake hooker head made by LucasArts, and a cocaine covered mirror.

Blasphemy

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I know this sounds crazy, but every year around this time my house gets visits from these teeny little ghosts, ghouls, devils, and Power Rangers, all demanding candy. And no sooner do give em candy and shut the door, and more of the little mooching pagan bastards show up.

Last year, even after I ran out of Tic-Tacs, this diminutive Godless hoard continued to swarm over my home relentlessly. I started giving them whatever I could find; cans of beets, maple syrup, beer, Tupperware lids, ketchup ... I even gave one a whole 5 lbs bag of sugar, in hopes diabetes might scale the vile dwarven hellspawn onslaught back a few notches.

And they kept coming.

On and on through the night, I am for whom the doorbell tolls: a cheery warning of yet another invasion by the insatiably greedy brood. My radio. My microwave. My television (that staggered the little bastard).

But this year, it'll be different.

I'm dressing as R Kelly.

High Tech Redneck

Predator Press

[LOBO]

The largest, most powerful and expensive industrial strength modern-day wood chippers all groaned and screamed to a violent halt when met with the RDO-engineered space alloys that make up Sapphire's seemingly soft, smooth flesh. This last one --the John Deere-- hissed and smoldered after violently blowing a hydraulic 200-ton counterweight; the keyboard melted to slag, and the electronics popped and whined themselves into a permanent, warranty-violated silence.

And, of course, everyone's pissed at me.

"You're an asshole!" she yells up at me, struggling to free her ankle.

"Well you're the one who keeps busting the machines!" I yell down from the control booth, indignant. "C'mon baby," I try vainly to reason through the smoke. "You're a wonderful person, and I really, really do care about you. I just want to be single for a while."

Wiping away a tear, she growls, "Then why were you pushing my head down with a broom?"

"You were dusty!" I repeat.

Blossom

Predator Press

[LOBO]

A well-tanned Babs enters my makeshift Palace-slash-Reception Area-slash-Dining Room-slash-Bedroom, wearing only a loincloth and a long, colorfully-feathered headdress.

The leggy, hardbodied beauty kneels and sets several small bags of Cheetos at my feet.

I think she digs me.

Before she can speak, I put a finger to her lips. "You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful creature I've ever seen, and an infinitely rare, treasured proclaimation that God loves men too. Before you even say a word, I must know your deepest and darkest delights, that I may bathe you in them for as long as we live."

"Mighty Lord LOBO," she says, eyes imploring as she rubs my mighty and lordly thighs, "I like tormenting, and then killing my former lovers,"

"Oh, that is so hot," I says.

"But brilliant, sexy King LOBO," she cries into my lap, "I must exact my revenge upon the killer of my former betrothed. Might you be so merciful as to allow me to toss her into a wood chipper as a gesture of your immortal benevolence?"

"Who, Sapphire?" I says. "By all means!"

Nearly Lost You

Predator Press

[Mr. I]

Well, it's been weeks since LOBO's ill-timed ending of the blog, and Dash has been pointing the shotgun at us the whole time.

Ethan and I have been on cellphones with Geek Squad guys hacking for the Predator Press passwords, ordering up Chinese, pizza and 'Happy Ending' massages, and bitching out Comcast.

Dash, completely emaciated, has been complaining that the shotgun is getting heavy.

So here we are.


***

"So what exactly do you want, Dash?" I says.

"LOBO."

"Why?" asks Ethan.

"BECAUSE YOU AND BABS HAVE NOW SPLIT HAWLY ENTERPRISES FIFTY-FIFTY. BUT LOBO OWNS ONE SHARE."

"That's right!" says Ethan. "I own fifty percent, and so does Babs. Now LOBO, weirdly enough, might have a controlling interest. Can you imagine the wacky things that might occur if LOBO and Babs hook up--?"

"Ethan!" I snap.

Just then a UPS guy showed up, cradling a cardboard box. "Package for LOBO," he says smiling, as he extends the brown electronic pad.

"I'll sign," I says.

"Uh, sir," says the guy. "It's a Code 6."

I look at the return address on the box, and recognize it. "Shit," I says.

"WHAT'S A CODE 6?" asks DASH, alternating pointing the gun at everyone.

"LOBO occasionally gets packages from ex-girlfriends," I explain, signing, "but his personal philosophy is 'If it's not mine I don't want it, and if it is mine, I'm not missing it.'"

"SO?"

"We just find it's more prudent to soak all these packages in a saline base to prevent premature detonation until such a time that we can jettison it into space," Ethan explains.

"BUT WHAT IF IT'S COOKIES?"

"It's not cookies, dumbass," says the UPS guy.

Dash motions him over, and fumbles with the whole pointing-a-shotgun-while-opening-a-package thing as the UPS guy flees. With two fingers he gingerly pulls the string on the package, and promptly blows himself into smithereens.


***

Ethan and I crawl out from the wreckage, even as cybernetic Brad Pitt legs --no longer united by a torso-- cross and clang separately to the ground.

Wheezing smoke and spitting concrete dust, we stand, brushing ourselves off.

"Look," I cough at Ethan, shaking my head. "We're just going to have to start screening LOBO's girlfriends."

Epilogue

Predator Press

[LOBO]

"Well, this is a fucking stupid way to end it," says Sapphire, examining the blasted, barren terrain.

As I put my arm around her waist, looking down from the plateau onto millions of awestruck and worshipful bug-eating naked women, a green sun begins to rise. Phil, soggy with dragon brains, purs and rubs against my ankles.

"Meh," says me ...

Unraveling at the Speed of Lies

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Santa cracks his overly-large knuckles, ho ho ho, as Scraps, the mighty mythic dragon circles overhead. And all I keep thinking about is that I'm late for the CPR training Ethan set up for me.

I fucking hate 'Credence'.

Santa circles ever closer, wiping his nose with his thumb.

BANG

I see white.

My vision returns, but I taste blood.

Santa, toying with me, sets up for a punch that will likely be felt by my long-dead Grandmother.

And then he's gone.

I realize I've just heard a shotgun blast. Looking over, I see Sapphire running towards me.

I look to where Santa was, and realize he has fallen off of the edge of the plateau, his body twisted in impossible angles on the jagged, naked-women crawling rocks.

"I'm programmed to love and protect you!" Sapphire cries, embracing me with the only hand free of a firearm.

"But you just killed Santa Claus!" I cry.

The Earth explodes.

With his mighty, mythic tail, Scraps was destroying the surface of the plateau, chunk by chunk. He screams in rage, bellowing fire into the sky.

Spotting my rather stellar an sparkly rock, he turns. There's a brief silence before the tail detonates the thing to dust, and he spins to closely inspect the electrifying ruin.

Suddenly, a little black dot darts out.

Sapphire and I watch in terrified fascination as the spot leaps onto the dragon's massive snout, dives into the soft, wet membrane of the beast's reptilian eye, and starts shredding.

"Oh my God," says Sapphire. "It's Phil!"

Scraps lands, rubbing his eye with a leathery wing for a minute. Then a few drops of Visine.

And then he went crazy.


***

After seventeen minutes of agonized rage, Scraps had succeeded in tearing his own head completely apart. He shit right there in the sky, and the coasted lazily into a broken neck on the ground.


This is The End.

Thank you for letting me be part of your laughter.

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