Koqteese had just turned Detective Lobster’s car around when a small, slightly comical looking Ford Fiesta traveling in the opposite direction erupted into a ball of flames. The crappy lime green Fiesta lifted off the ground and tumbled through the air like a child’s toy. As it spun through the air a handful of people spilled out onto the blacktop.
People in baggy trousers and enormous shoes.
“Holy shit,” Koqteese said. “I have just forgotten all about taking you back to your apartment to get your glasses!”
“Glasses!” Lobster shouted. “What are you even talking about!”
Koqteese managed to steer their car out of the fireballs bouncing trajectory.
“You know,” Lobster said. “Ford makes one helluva basketball…”
“It is bouncing pretty high,” Koqteese said in agreement.
“Oh Jesus,” Lobster said as the flaming Fiesta hurtled past his window. “That’s not a basket ball, that’s a fucking flaming car!”
Koqteese decided to pretend like she hadn’t heard him—this would be her new way of dealing with Detective Lobster’s many short-comings. This was the same method employed by Lobster’s mother and father, as well as his first two wives (Rebecca and Sayshauna Ann).
“Pull over, we gotta see if there’s anyone left to pull outta that wreck,” Lobster said, banging his hand against the dashboard dramatically as he spoke.
“Whatever,” Koqteese told him as he slowed their car down.
Detective Lobster didn’t wait for the come to a complete stop—he was so badass that he leaped out of the car when it was still rolling to a stop. He’d seen that done in the movies and had always wanted to give it a whirl. Of course, what they don’t tell or show you in the movies is the wear that this tends to put on the souls of ones shoes. Detective Lobster could suddenly feel the pavement through the bottoms of both shoes.
“It was time to get a new pair, anyway,” he said as he stomped over to the wrecked Fiesta.
Though it was smashed against a streetlight, and consumed with flames, Detective Lobster could tell that this was no ordinary sub-compact. The rear fender was shaped like the backend of a goose, and the front of the car was bent to look like an enormous bird bill. Clearly this was some kind of bird-Fiesta hybrid.
Not that it mattered. The flames danced along the green paint job, licking away the frivolity like a fat kid licking an ice cream cone on a balmy July afternoon when the air conditioner is broken and he won’t shut up about being so fucking hot so his mother gives in and gives him an ice cream cone even though he’s just developed Type II diabetes and the State is going to take him away because she’s let him grow so enormously fat that it’s become a sick kind of child abuse.
It was kind of like that.
“Hey!” Lobster screamed into the flames. “Anyone still in there!”
“H-h-haaa!” a shrieking clown laugh sounded from somewhere inside the burning wreck. “H-h-haaa! This haahahahaha, this hahahah burns…”
Then there was a series of strange honking sounds. It wasn’t like the honking of a goose (which would have kinda made sense) but rather, it was like the sound of a deflating bicycle horn.
“Oh my gawd!” Koqteese said, shoving her heaving bosom against Lobster’s back. “There’s a clown in there! He’s fryin’ like a piece of succulent cod!”
“Take it easy,” Lobster said. “I’m canceling this fish fry.”
Without thinking, which was pretty much how he always operated, Detective Lobster dove through the flaming (broken) windshield and reached down to grab a hold of the burning clown.
“Hahaha…don’t try to save me…I’m done for,” the clown coughed. “Hahahaha!”
By this time the other clowns, the ones who’d fallen out of the Fiesta as it tumbled through the air, were limping towards the burning wreck.
“Chuckle-chuckle! Garsh, we gotta save Mr. Giggle-Pants!” one of the injured clowns said as he limped to the burning car.
“Stay back!” Koqteese said. “Detective Lobster will save your friend.”
“Well I couldn’t save him,” Lobster said as he leaped out of the burning Fiesta. “Poor bastard wouldn’t stop laughing…I couldn’t get him to leave the car.”
“That was Mr. Giggle-Pants,” another of the injured clowns said. “Always laughing…right up to the end.”
In the distance there came the sound of sirens.
“The fire department can handle the rest,” Lobster said, wiping the soot from his pants. “Let’s spilt before those bananas show up and start making trouble.”
“Hey mister,” one of the clowns said. “Did you say bananas?”
“Do you know about this gang of vicious, killer banana bullies?” Koqteese said, pursing her lips in a way that reminded all of the clowns, as well as Detective Lobster, of that fat boy licking his beloved ice cream cone.
“Those rubber heads have been muscling in on our territory,” the smoking clown said. He wasn’t smoking a cigarette; his clothes were singed and giving off little trails of jet black smoke. It was really distracting.
“The bananas are doing kids parties?” Lobster said skeptically.
“No, no, we’re cocaine smugglers,” the sort-of-still-burning Clown said.
“I should have known,” Lobster said. “That explains the red noses…”
“Those bastard bananas must have slipped a bomb under our Klown Kar,” the clown explained.
Lobster frowned.
“Why did you say it like that?” he asked the clown.
“Say what like what?”
“You called your clown car your ‘klown kar,’ that’s really very stupid,” Lobster said. Detective Lobster was a very good judge of stupid. This was because of Einstein’s famous theory of “Takes One to Know One.” This rule applies to a lot of people, in a lot of instances.
“I guess I was trying to add a bit of levity,” the clown said. “To a terrible situation. You see, that ‘s what we clowns do—we add levity to a terrible situation. That terrible situation is called ‘reality.’ You see, the world is full of chaos and pain, there’s nothing I can do about that. What I can do, however, is try to make both you and your voluptuous friend smile by wearing baggy pants…and calling my car a ‘klown kar.’ Is that so wrong?”
Another of the dazed, and injured clowns nodded in agreement and said: “We also sell cocaine…to help with all that suffering and shit…honk-a-honk-a!”
Detective Lobster grunted in disgust and turned away.
“Come on Koqteese,” he said, heading back to his car. “Let’s leave these Klowns to their Krime scene.”
SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:
DOES DETECTIVE LOBSTER PLAY POOL WITH AN UMBRELLA?
OR
DOES DETECTIVE LOBSTER DIG A REALLY DEEP HOLE WITH A SLOTTED SPOON?
VOTE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION!!!
