-Strange – 2 Pages –
“You slimy sack of fish shit!” Deputy Ploggard slammed his hairy fist down onto the grey metal table which separated the two men. His hand landed with such force that it left a fist-shaped dent in the middle of the table. The noise which followed echoed off the flimsy steel like a thunder effect from old time radio, reverberating off the tiled walls of the interrogation room. “I’m onto yer game, you.”
Jerry Duke, startled by this sudden outburst, jumped backward, jangling the handcuff chain which kept him fixed to a kindergarten-sized green plastic chair. “Excuse me? I, I uh… ahh…” Duke stammered incoherently, uncertain what it was the officer was getting at. He immediately commenced an internal cataloging of his various sins.
“You think yer foolin’ me?” Ploggard struck a match against the tarnished badge pinned to the chest of his blue uniform and lit a long menthol cigaret. “Well, you aint foolin’ shit!” He exhaled a plume of bluish smoke into Jerry’s face. “I already know you done it cuz you hate Abe Lincoln. It so much as said so right on the warrant issued for your arrest. Yer all kinda wrong, you no-good pinko pipsqueak sumbitch!”
“Ahhmmm, I uh…” Duke stared up from his tiny chair dumbfounded. He was looking directly at his own right eye which was swollen shut by a tremendous hematoma exactly the color of gay pride. He winced at the sight of his injury which emanated back at him from the deputy’s mirrored sunglasses. A trickle of nervous urine seeped from his shriveled urethra.
“Whatsuh mattuh boy?” the deputy smiled, tracing his dirty index finger around Jerry’s thin pink lips. “Aint tawkin’, eh?”
“Arrcckkk, what the… ugh…”
Ploggard plopped himself down on Duke’s lap so that they were chest to chest and proceeded to grab him round the neck with both hands. “Oh well then tough guy, howzabout this?” Keeping a grip on his prisoner’s throat, deputy Ploggard stuck his spit-wetted finger into Duke’s swollen face, pushing clear down to the eyesocket beneath.
“C’mon, goddammit, what the hell are you doin’?” Jerry could feel all the blood and pus being forced out of the injured area.
“Kyee-ououaahhh,” the deputy hissed and spit into Jerry’s face.
A fountain of foul, blackened blood erupted from beneath Duke’s eyelid. The blood washed up, blinding the eye which burned even more when he tried in vain to open it in an effort to vent the blood flow.
Behind him Jerry heard the room’s single door open on its rusty hinges, then it suddenly fell with a dull metallic thud against the bare concrete floor.
“Aahhh shit,” Ploggard moaned, looking up sheepishly from his position perched on his prisoner’s lap, gently misted by a fine sheen of sprayed blood droplets.
The gentleman who entered walked around the room to the far side of the table. Jerry could see the man was wearing a black velour suit, and the star he had pinned to it had six points, as opposed to the Deputy whose peeling silver star only had five.
“I hope you’re my lawyer,” Jerry managed to say, looking the deputy in one eye. “Because we’ve got one helluva false imprisonment, police brutality suit.”
A non-committal “Hhmmm…” was all the the stranger would offer, unbuttoning his suit jacket. The man had a magnificent Nietzschean mustache which he wore heavily waxed in the dance hall handlebar fashion. He had skin the sick yellow color of wet fingernails and he was carrying a hard cover book which had no dust jacket. He sat the book down on top of the newly minted dent. Jerry squinted his good eye at the spine and and did not like what he saw. “The History of Fisting” by Dr. Henry Tibeau. Finally the stranger opened his mouth, speaking with a thick French accent.
“Bonjour gentlemen, I ah, apologize for intruding upon your uh, romantic dalliance,” he reached a hand out to help the deputy up from Duke’s lap. The blood immediately began flowing to his sleeping lower limbs which felt as if they were being poked with a thousand tiny pins.
“Monsieur Jerry Duke, no?” He now reached a hand down to Duke who reluctantly offered his one free hand in return. “My name is Henry Tibeau,” the gentleman smiled and proceeded to crush Duke’s hand with a savage grip.
“Yes well,” Tibeau looked down at Jerry with obvious distaste. “Perhaps you are wondering why exactly we have brought you here, eh Mnsr Duke?” Behind Tibeau, Deputy Ploggard made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, holding his hand up for Jerry to see. Then he pointed his other index finger at Duke before using it to thrust in and out of the hole he had made.
“Ahem,” Jerry cleared his throat and then paused a moment to gather his wits. He wanted to make certain his voice remained calm, which was not an altogether easy task given the circumstances at hand. “Indeed, the thought had crossed my mind.”
“Well Mnsr Dipshit,” Tibeau spoke while reaching for his inside jacket pocket. “Wonder no more!” He threw a wet sock puppet onto the table which landed with a loud splat. “Perhaps you would like to explain this, huh?”
Jerry Duke stared at the sock puppet monkey laying there on the table. He appeared to me to be a man somewhat confused. Then the overhead fluorescent light glinted off a greasy dollop of vaseline which was stuck to the monkey’s button eye. “Oh god,” Jerry muttered, struggling to his feet, “My great puppet theater protagonist, Yeknom Meloga, star of the critically acclaimed, one-puppet show, Tob Shebe Goyim Harrog.”
“Now you will tell us precisely what is meant by all this, uh, how do you say…” Tibeau paused, searching for the right words.
Jerry’s calm facade broke. “What’s the idea? I mean, Jesus Christ, where the hell did you get this?” Jerry reached his right hand across the table, the little plastic chair dangling from the handcuff attached to his other wrist.
Ploggard approached Jerry smiling, an arc of ominous electricity dancing on the end the stun gun held out before him. “Sitcher ass back down boy, a’fore you can’t sit at all no more, you got me?”
“Yes Mnsr Duke, sit that big white ass of yours back down in the chair. There will plenty enough standing for you later on, eh, you can believe me about that.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Jerry was still on his feet, nearly shouting now. “What the hell are you doing to my star?”
“Take a good look, Mnsr Duke,” Dr. Tibeau picked up the wet sock puppet in a gloved hand.
“Take a good close look and consider very carefully what you have to say?” Tibeau swung the heavy wet sock and struck Duke across the face.
A spray of foul sock fluid and blood flew in an arc across the room.
Tears blinded Jerry Duke’s one good eye.
