Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 5 "Krazy Klown Komedy"

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!!!

Ode for Jason's Funeral

Goodbye, Jason, my good friend,

A real funny guy you've been.

Never will I feel the same

When playing that Phase 10 game.

When drinking a cold Woodchuck,

I'll think how this really does suck,

Because you'll be in the ground

Where you shall not make a sound

Unless alive you've been interred . . .

But I doubt that's to be inferred.

We'll mourn and weep at your graveside,

Leah, Rusty, Spencer, and I,

Until we all just go crazy

And our worlds become quite hazy.

Your corpse we will then unbury!

(We, your friends, are kinda scary...)

Dying: Part 2

My first near-death experience is also one of my earliest memories. The exact year (and my exact age) is a bit fuzzy, but I know that I hadn’t yet started school. Growing up I was a very clean child. I didn’t like to be dirty, I still don’t in fact. Hand washing was something that my parents had no problem cajoling me into doing.

Still, I was a child and somehow one day, while washing my hands—I got a bit of liquid Dial soap into my mouth. I was probably touching my lips, which were always causing me problems as a child. My lips are big, they always have been big. In fact, they’ve always been the size they are now. So my huge pillow lips got in the way of my hand washing and I somehow got soap into my mouth.

The taste was bitter and clashed with the viscous sweetness the Dial projected. My nostrils and my tastes buds were flashing my little child brain conflicting messages. Was this Dial something nice or something awful, putrid even?

I quickly lapped up some water and swished it around in my mouth—but the damage was done. This part of the story is also a bit fuzzy, but for some reason I felt (with much certainty) that I was going to die. Dial soap went into my mouth, now I was going to die.

A timeline was also somehow involved in my eminent death: I was convinced that I’d die at the end of the day. Going to sleep would somehow magnify the poison of the soap, allow it to choke my heart and silence my lungs.

Despite the fact that I was facing such a dire predicament, I felt calm, relaxed even. I spent the rest of the day “saying goodbye” to things that I would miss once I was dead.

The crabapple trees outside in my parents front yard.
The sun.
The gray chain-link fence that surrounded our back yard.
The sky.
Clumps of grass.
The oozy leopard-print slugs that slowly crawled along the concrete outside our door.

Strangely, none of the things I said farewell to were people—like my parents or my sister Amber (whom I loved dearly). For some reason I was only preoccupied with bidding farewell to all the small, inconsequential things. The things I rarely gave even a passing thought.

At the end of the day I told my family goodnight (again, not “goodbye”), then I went to bed. I was somber, but not devastated. I wasn’t blubbering like that inmate you see in prison dramas—you know the one on Death Row who acts all tough, but then when he’s being dragged to The Chair he cries like a total baby.

“Oh! Oh! Oh please Warden! I’m sorry.”

I folded my arms over my little-boy chest and shut my eyes. I got bored waiting for death (which doesn’t always come when once expects) and ended up falling fast asleep.

In the morning I awoke!

I was alive!

By some miracle that I didn’t understand, the Dial soap had failed to kill me. And though it made no sense to think that I was going to die in the first place, I find it even MORE absurd to think that because I had survived the night I knew that I wasn’t going to die. To this day I’m astounded by the rules I’d given “Death By Dial Soap.”

Much like anyone who brushes up against the icy shoulder of Death, and lives—I was elated. I ran around the house, flapping my arms like a bird. The sky was clear, the air was crisp, and my hands were clean. I was elated to be alive.

A (Not) Ghost Story

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts—ITALO CALVINO

In between graduating from High School and graduating from college I worked the graveyard shift. I did this for two and a half years—eleven o’clock at night to seven o’clock in the morning, five days a week. Though I frequently griped about it, I actually sought this schedule out. The reason being is: at night there is simply nothing going on and you don’t have to deal with people.

Working an overnight shift as a security guard in the lonely streets of downtown Kansas City was both horrific and wondrous. The big, vacant office buildings and rusty industrial complexes seemed ripped from Hollywood horror flicks—and yet the closest thing I have to a ghost story from this period of my life happened one morning after I’d gotten off work.

When the sun came up, I’d go home, say goodbye to my family as they left for work—eat a quick bite and then go to bed until later that afternoon. Then I’d get up and go back to work or I’d go to night school, depending on what day of the week it was.

My one “ghost story” occurred after a particularly rousing after-shift meal of microwaveable mini-cheese burgers (with spicy Chipotle mayo). Upon finishing my greasy breakfast, I decided to take a leak and hit the sack. Instead of pissing downstairs in the basement, where my bedroom/bathroom was, I decided to stagger upstairs and use the houses “common” bathroom shared by all.

Hanging over the toilet was a little wooden shelf/cabinet-thingy. It was here that my sisters kept their girly make-up and a variety of gaudy plastic hair clasps. Also, sitting on one of the shelves was a candle in a frosted glass jar and one of those special “long barrel” lighters. As I stood there peeing into the bowl, the lower shelf was about at eye level.

Now, after being up all night one does get a little “punch drunk,” and sometimes a person in this loopy condition will do or say things that even they themselves cannot fully explain. I didn’t set out to commit a mysterious act, or cause any trouble. It wasn’t a mischievous scheme that I’d concocted that night while I stared blankly up at the square metal roof of the security booth that I lived in at the edge of the empty parking lot that I guarded. There was no malice or forethought involved—all I did, I did because I was trying not to fall asleep while taking a piss.

What I did: I reached out with my free hand and picked up the lighter. I flicked the flame on a few times, and then I lit the candle. Without a second thought I zipped up and headed downstairs where my bed laying waiting.



Nine hours later I woke up and found my house embroiled in controversy.

My mother and my father were having a heated exchange. Though I was still groggy, I was able to make out that one of my sisters had done something bad. At least, that’s what my Mom thought.

“I don’t know which one of them did it,” she told my Dad—who was leaning against the counter with a look that told me he was patiently waiting for her to finish ranting.

“But one of those girls did it, and I’m going to figure it out…”

When she was done, my father calmly told her who he suspected had perpetrated the mysterious ill-deed: “I think it was the ghost.”

Sitting down at the dinner table, I prepared myself for the fireworks. My parents were on opposite ends when it came to our house’s “ghost.” Every since we’d moved, my Dad had harbored suspicion that whenever anything went missing it was “taken” by a mischievous spiritual entity that craved familial discord. All sorts of things went missing—shoes, keys, important documents, and things that one rarely used on a daily basis but would need at odd/unexpected moments. Of course, the reason we could never find these things was twofold:

1. My sisters and I were not big on putting things away exactly as we’d found them.

And

2. My father, a compulsive-cleaner, would often scoop things up and put them away without really heeding what went where.

My mother, a realist not prone to the same flights of fancy as my father, wasn’t convinced that our house was haunted. As I sat there, listening to them bicker, I became curious as to what had happened. My sister Amber showed up and loudly proclaimed her innocence in a way that suggested she’d done so many, many times that day.

“Ugh, I didn’t DO IT!”

“Do what?” I asked impishly, glad for once that I wasn’t the one that had caused any trouble.

“Well,” my mother said with a shrug, “maybe it was Lindsey?”

Lindsey? This was too good!

Lindsey, my younger sister, never did anything that got my parents so riled up (to this day, I’ve never heard her swear—even though I’ve offered her a LITERAL cash bribe to say “ass” or “shit”). I was literally bursting to find out what she’d done, but I decided to play it cool. Sometimes when my Mom or Dad noticed how excited I was when one of my sisters got in trouble, they would shift some of their anger my way.

I wasn’t keen on catching any of this heat—so I waited. Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I once again asked what had happened.

“When I got home this afternoon I found a candle burning in the hallway bathroom,” my mother told me.

“I’m telling you,” my Dad said. “It was the ghost…”

My heart skipped a beat. Wait a minute…candle? Hadn’t I lit the candle this morning, when I was taking a leak? At first, I nearly confessed to the crime, and then I thought about it. Leaving an open flame burning while I slept downstairs wasn’t just dangerous, it was downright stupid. Admitting that I’d lit a candle, and then passed out from exhaustion was like saying “I’m a total idiot.”

Besides, for some reason I wasn’t even being considered a suspect—which meant that all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and I’d get away scot-free! On top of that, the sheer amount of vitriol being bandied about by all parties—both the accused and the accusers—was downright frightening. More so than any spook or specter could ever hope to be!

I decided to admit nothing.

When asked if I knew anything about the mysterious candle, and rather than lie, I gave a non-committal shrug. My baby sister came inside from playing for the night and whined that she too was innocent.

My mother later confided in me that she thought it was her anyway, and that she was angry that Lindsey had “fibbed.” Hearing this made my insides churn and provided me with an interesting mix of guilt and indigestion, yet I kept my silence. When I’d awoke that evening I entered a strange, new world where my parents household was split, divided like in the Civil War—between those who thought a ghost had magically lit a candle…and those who were pretty sure it was Lindsey.

Or maybe Amber…Amber might had done it, too.

I waited a for a few years to pass, and for the controversy to subside before confessing that I had, in fact, left the candle burning. The first person I told was Amber, my closest confidant. I expected her to laugh or shrug it off like it was no big deal.

Instead she twisted her face into a mask of angered-shock.

“Nu-uh! It was you?” she shrieked. “I’m telling Mom…”

My confession did more than get my sisters off the hook, however—it also killed my father’s greatest proof that a ghost really was pestering our household. Luckily for me, the statute of limitations on impersonating the undead is only six months...

Dying: Part 1

Nothing makes you enjoy life more like almost dying. Like most people, I have a pretty good existence—but sometimes I forget this. Little problems and daily annoyances start to accumulate, like a waxy build-up in your ear.

Almost dying is a like a big fucking Q-tip that goes in and clears all that gunk out. The moment you realize that you’re NOT going to die is the greatest thing in the world. Hands down. I’m not a real big drug person, but NOT dying is the kind of high that I WOULD sell my mother’s TV for. What’s so great about not dying is that, for a little while, all the normal shit that would normally get you down doesn’t faze you.

Its like “Oh, shit I have a flat tire…at least I’m alive!”

There are two times in my life that I can recall thinking: “this is it big-boy, your goose is cooked.” One time it was with my mother and sister—and the “Barn on Wheels.” The “Barn on Wheels” was a red Ford van that my family owned when I was in Junior High/High School. It was the car I learned how to drive in.
One time my Mom pulled over and let me drive around this lake near our house. The sky was clear; the pavement was dry—perfect conditions for a new driver to almost fucking kill himself, his sister, and his mother.

What happened was, in an attempt to make a left-hand turn across three lanes of traffic I gunned the “Barn on Wheels.” I mean I really gunned it.
Now, what you need to understand is—there are two reasons we all nearly died. One was my fault and one was my Mother/Ford’s fault. The thing I did wrong was get antsy and decided to make my turn even though the window of opportunity in which I could make it was very, very, very small. I should have just kept sitting there and waited for the traffic to die down a bit. But I was young, and I was worried about the little line of cars forming up behind me.



So I gunned it. And the van ALMOST tipped OVER.

Now this is where I blame my Mom/Ford. I blame my Mom because she was trying to teach her dumb-ass son to drive in such a large, awkward vehicle. I failed my driving test the second time because I took it in that van—I simply couldn’t parallel park that monster. And you know what? Neither could she.

But I blame Ford the most because that Van was a real piece of shit. For crying out loud, we called it the “Barn on Wheels” because it was this big boxy red-thing…on wheels. There was nothing aerodynamic about it. It was like the designers literally took a cube and rounded off the edges just…a…little…bit. Then POOF!!! They were done.

This how I imagine the design session went:

FORD ENGINEER 1: So we need a van design by four o’clock.
FORD ENGINEER 2: Crap, that’s like…two hours from now. What are we gonna do?
FORD ENGINEER 1: I dunno. Maybe we should get a lump of modeling clay and just see…
FORD ENGINEER 2: (Takes clay out of box) Well this looks pretty good already!
FORD ENGINEER 1: But you just took that clay out of the box…it’s still shaped like the box!
FORD ENGINEER 2: I know! Brilliant, huh?
FORD ENGINEER 1: I dunno…I feel like we should, you know…do something to it.
FORD ENGINEER 2: Look, I gotta take a shit. Just round the edges off and give it wheels.
FORD ENGINEER 1: What color should we make it?
FORD ENGINEER 2: Barn-ass red.
FORD ENGINEER 1: Sounds good to me.

Ford should be ashamed. This van was horribly unbalanced, the top was ridiculously heavy—and the only reason why we all didn’t die is because I stupidly continued to gun it. I feel like that if this happened to me today I WOULD die. I would know that a left-hand turn shouldn’t feel like that—like the world is all sliding over to one side. I would probably brake or jerk the wheel, both of which would have caused an accident.

Instead I stupidly gunned it.

As all of this was happening I was fairly certain that the van was going to roll—and we were all going to die. Once the world and van became right again, by some miracle of gravity, I didn’t feel anything but relief mixed with embarrassment.

To her credit, my Mom let me drive all the way home, which makes her braver than me. Once I got home, and I was alone, I felt very good about not being dead. For the rest of the day I felt like I’d some how pulled a fast one over on Death.

I’ve had a handful of traffic “near misses,” but that first one will always stand out to me. I’ll tell you about the OTHER time I almost died some other day.