Aunt Bee Wields Butcher Knife
by A Candy-Colored Clown They Call the SandmanI walked into the Mini-Mart this morning to buy some Preparation H for the hemmorhoids on my feet when I noticed Aunt Bee from the 'Andy Griffith Show' behind the counter baking apple pies and humming 'In A Gadda Da Vida'. As I approached the counter, she whirled around, frothing at the mouth, wielding a butcher knife above her head.
"You must have some pie!" she insisted in her lilting sing-song voice. I dropped my package and ran out the door, nearly colliding with a careening taxi. I pounded on the cab's rear passenger as he screeched to a halt, and jumped inside. "Where to?' he asked. Before I could answer, he turned his bald head around and I noticed that he had no face--just a hole where his nose should have been. I screamed, and rolled out of the moving cab and struck my head on the curb where I remained unconscious for several minutes.
I am shaken awake by Mel Torme wearing a greasy, sleeveless denim Hell's Angels jacket. "Where can I score some crank?" he sings to me in an operatic tenor. I shrug my shoulders, focus my eyes, and stagger upright. I thank him and slink away. I stumble down the street into a Burger King and order the new "Bosom Buddies"--(whole breasts from stunted Cornish hens with artificial nipples attached) and a large Coke. As I sit down, I notice that all the patrons are wearing green Star- Trek-like jumpsuits and have vibrating metallic plugs extending from the back of their necks.
"What's happening here?" I ask the lady the lady seated at the table across from me. She smiles, and then projectile vomits yellow-orange chunks onto my table. The chunks immediately become animate and form themselves into a likeness of Joe Pesci's head. "What's so funny?" he demands. "Am I a clown? Am I here to amuse you?" I edge away from the table and run out of the restaurant.
I enter my house, and everything seems normal, except that all the furniture has been replaced with Victorian antiques, and a strange family is seated at the dining room table eating what appears to be a mass of wriggling tentacles, claws, and hooves. They glance over at me momentarily, and then resume their slurping and chewing. I run upstairs to splash some cold water on my face and attempt to regain my composure. I lift the lid on the toilet seat and I am startled to see John Cleese's head grinning up at me. "I would like some cheese," he said, with a hint of irritation. I slammed the lid down and ran to my bedroom to cry.
After several minutes, I stare down and notice, growing on my knees, the thick black eyebrows belonging to former presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis. As I'm seated on the foot of my bed, I hear a shuffling from below, and out from between my legs on the floor slides "Grandpa" Al Lewis, dressed in full 'Munsters' regalia. However, he is manically spouting Dennis Hopper's lines from 'Blue Velvet'.
"Where's my bourbon?" he demanded. "Don't you freakin' look at me!" He grew more menacing by the moment. "Daddy's coming home!" He slapped me across the face. "Don't you freakin' look at me!"
I ran out of the bedroom toward the kitchen with him shouting after me, "I'm gonna send you a love letter! Do you know what a love letter is? It's a bullet from a fuckin' gun!"
I grabbed the phone, sweat streaming off of me in rivers. I noticed the sweat sizzling and burning holes as it struck the white kitchen tile floor. I frantically dial 911 and wait through an eternity of rings until finally a voice answers, "Mayberry Sheriff's Department." It was Don Knotts. Before I could speak, he said that Aunt Bee was on her way over with those pies.
9/13/97
[Writers] [Birdhouse]