There he sat in appalled surrender
as every sort of fried everything was paraded before him on plastic trays. Why he had allowed his semi-bovine friend
(who wanted to be a semi-bovine more than friend) to drag him to this reptile
house, he would question until the day he died.
They passed before his horrified
eyes fried Yams, fried Pickles, fried Eggs (not normal fried eggs, like at
breakfast, actual hard boiled eggs battered and deep fried to a leathery
crisp), fried cabbage leaves, Fried Liver (the whole Liver), Fried bologna
sandwiches (again, not just the bologna was fried, this was a fully prepared
sandwich, battered and fried like those deceptively named fried eggs), fried
Peanuts for Pete’s sake, and something that he could only identify as a
battered and deep fried Cheese-Doodle.
Politeness (and not a little hunger)
persuaded him to sample a ware or two from this tray of arterial gridlock.
Across the table were Semi-Bovine
Andrea’s totally bovine aunt and uncle (related only by marriage, which
explained his constant staring at Andrea’s Semi-Udders), treating their plates
like troughs and leading the march of the breading straight to their
thighs!
Much more slowly, Krow brought one of the Tempura rejects (what it was
beneath the shell, he wouldn’t know) to his lips for a sample. Like the juice of an over-juicy tangerine
bitten into by an eager child, orange liquid spilled forth and stained his
three stooges tie. He grimaced, more at
the near-lethal salt content than the scalding grease-juice, and realized with
increasing terror that this was starting to make sense! Cows need salt-licks to survive! These people ate this rat ka-ka for their own
health! If it doesn’t kill you it…
addicts you, maybe. Krow
didn’t know!
Aunt Michelle looked over at him
through an incredibly doughy face, and asked “Soooooooooooooooooooooo?”
Krow swallowed hard and forced some
semblance of a smile through greased lips.
“Spicy.” he muttered, and a tear escaped his eye. It really wasn’t all that spicy, just so
damned bad, that Krow felt
like crying!
“Oh, thank you!”,
she said with a jumbo cheek-stretching smile.
“That’s a compliment, because I know you native
Americans just LOVE your spicy food.”
“Actually, I’m Irish!”, Krow said after finishing his
gallon glass of ice water (which they hadn’t managed to fry).
“Krow is
an Irish name?”, Uncle Audra asked.
“I was adopted!”,
said Krow, and refilled his water glass. Was there an antidote for salt and canola
poisoning?
Krow asked for the bowl of green beans
to have some sort of sustenance before they adjourned to the living room for
the grilling (frying?). He dipped the
enormous splintery spoon into the Smurf-adorned bowl and served up the content. He nearly gasped when he saw that each of the
green beans was individually breaded and fried.
They looked like boiled caterpillars!
Was there no end to this madness?
“You need some more salt,
“No… this is… “, Krow
couldn’t say “good” now could he? “I’m
fine.”
Big old Andrea kept alternately
trying to put a hand on his thigh, and trying to stuff fried watermelon rinds
into her cavern-like mouth.
Between trying to avoid Andrea’s
hooves and deciding how much his health should suffer for the sake of
politeness Krow was beginning to long for the days he
was interred in a Belgian Prison Camp.
He managed to swallow an item or two
(each swallow accompanied by a heart murmur). He tossed the occasional globber
behind his back to the family dog, Jabba amid cries
of “Isn’t that Elvis?”, or “Look,
The rest he just left there in that
primordial soup that no amino acid could live in without the universe’s tiniest
wet-suit.
“Full?”,
Uncle Audra asked as he reached a flab enveloped arm toward Trenton Krow’s McDonald’s collector’s plate!
“Uh… Full, yeah! Very Full!” Of
SOMETHING!, Krow thought!
Uncle Audra actually ate Krow’s leftovers on the way to the grease spattered
dishwasher. “You don’t even have to
pre-wash with this baby, Trent!”, Uncle Audra said as he loaded Krow’s plate on top of a heap of overfilled cups, plates,
and saucers full of grease.
Krow was scared! Real Scared!
In the velvet painting encrusted
living room Krow was asked, “So, are you and our
Andrea getting serious?”
Krow shook his head in minor
confusion. “About
what?” He pictured getting
serious about Paul Stanley’s Solo Tour, or about
trying to get Le Weaz out of jail, but not much else.
“About each other, silly!”,
giggled Aunt Michelle. Santa Claus had
no bowl of jelly like the shaking belly of Aunt Michelle!
Krow’s eyes widened as he contemplated
flight from this strange place.
“No… we’re… we’re just
friends!” Krow
wondered if his and Andrea’s species were even compatible. Ass! He hoped not!
“Oh, we hear different!”, smiled Aunt Michelle showing the teeth she wore like a
Great White!
Krow wanted to run, but his Semi-Bovine
friend Andrea had driven, and she had the keys.
Beasts of the size of Audra and Michelle were fast in spite of their
deceptive weight!
Uncle Audra had sneaked around to
Andrea’s side of the couch and began tickling her on the side… obviously trying
to catch a breast feel.
Andrea had told Krow
that her uncle by marriage had a little thing for her, but the idea was so
incredible, he was inclined to not believe this.
After seeing the shape of Audra’s
wife, Michelle, though, Krow figured that maybe he
would have a little thing for anybody.
The implications of this realization caused Krow
to pray that he wouldn't be tickled next!
“So… What do you do?”, Michelle asked Krow, eyeing him
hungrily! This made him wonder if she
was going to be tickling him? Was that the way this
worked? Was this some kind of fat people
orgy? Oh, Crap!
“I… I’m a cop.”, said Krow. This, of
course, was true, but he also was hoping that this would scare her somehow and
thus spare him.
“Ah… how exciting!”,
she said. Then her eyes widened and she
laughed, “An Irish Cop!?”
She laughed an enormity of a laugh
which shook the entire house. Krow grabbed on to the arm rest on the couch and adhered to
it for dear life! He only grabbed that
way, however, as Andrea was on his left.
Somewhere across the street a car
alarm went off, and not because of a break in!
Audra looked angry. “That damn car alarm goes off every time our
favorite comedy shows come on! What
gives?"
To Michelle Krow
said, “Actually I was raised by Sioux Indians, so you wouldn’t find any accent
like the traditional-“
“An Irish Cop raised by Sioux
Indians? Oh, ho, ho,
ho!” Michelle laughed harder, and
Krow actually felt the foundation crack beneath the
couch. Had he died? Was this his own
personal grease-trap of a hell?
The laughter abated and Krow pulled himself back to his seat, from the floor from
where he had fallen against the decibels of Aunt Michelle’s laughter.
Were this
Uncle Audra’s eyes
“I sure hope you kept your appetite,
Krow leaped to his feet, and grabbed
Andrea’s purse for her.
“We can’t stay!”,
he nearly shouted. “I have to… I need to
go and… “ he scrambled for a reason to jet, “I have to
go get exorcised!”
“Oh, that’s too bad!”, Uncle Audra grunted at Andrea’s milkable
breasts.
“Well, you have fun with that
exorcism thing!”, Michelle said, trying to get up off
the couch. It was like watching a turtle
try to get back on his feet from an inverted position.
Uncle Audra had the nerve to come
out of the kitchen with two foil wrapped trays of leftovers. “Here you two go. We sure can’t eat it all, so you two enjoy!”
“Are you sure?” asked Krow. “I mean… I think you could eat it all.”
The tray was thrust into his hand
and he took it, rather than staying to argue.
Krow was defeated, defeated by his own personal
Grendel of Grease.
As he and his semi-bovine friend
Andrea exited the deceptively quaint provincial house Aunt Michelle said,
“Remember this! The first time you come,
you’re an honored guest… the second time, you’re family!” And she smiled that horrid smile!
He ran to the car, removing Andrea’s
keys from her purse. As an afterthought
he unlocked the passenger side of her own car for her.
“So, what did you think?”, Andrea asked as they drove at Mach 3 from the worlds
scariest salt mine.
He glared at her and hissed through
clenched teeth.
“Oh, you’re mad because he was
tickling me, aren’t you? Don’t be
jealous!”, she giggled. In that giggle-jiggle Krow
saw Andrea becoming Aunt Michelle in a few short years. What had he ever done to make her think she
could score with the Krowster? Crap!
As he rounded a corner by a small
pond he tossed his leftover fried dung into the water, and sped away. He was gone before every fish in the pond
went belly-up in the pond, poisoned by the “food.” Which, incidentally, didn’t
take long to happen.
First he would drop off Andrea and
this car, then he’d get back into his beat-up, red,
1988 Mustang and drive home for a long, long, long shower.
And then… then he might just need to
get that exorcism! He just might. That and a stomach pump!
“The first time you come, you’re an
honored guest… the second time, you’re family!”, she
had said. Krow
shuddered.
He never went back! Never, never, never!