Babble Noir
a really short and stupid novel 
by Livewire

See, I was never the sort of detective to work harder than I had to.  That’s why I invented trencheralls.  They’re like overalls but with a trenchcoat built in.  At a moment’s notice I could go from naked and unconscious on the kitchen floor to fully dressed in seconds.  I was clever like that.  My name is Thundercrunch.  Jake Thundercrunch.  Private eye.  

I was washing dishes at the local diner.  Work had been slow and I needed the forks.  This dame walked in with gams like a  couple of Packards passing each other in a street race. My God she was fat. As she rumbled to a halt, I started to wonder what brought her to my doorstep.

"Why haven’t you finished those dishes yet?" she asked. I tipped my hat back and said, "Sweetheart, I'll ask the questions here."

"I'll have you up on charges of sexual harassment!" she bellowed. "Toots," I replied, "You couldn't get sexually harassed in a bar full of blind sailors. Now do you have a case for me or what? I'm a busy guy." By way of demonstration I polished a spoon in the drying rack.

"You're fired!" she fired. I picked up my briefcase, then I grabbed a handful of forks and waved them in her face as I walked out. She called the cops. But I had hidden the forks pretty well so without any evidence they decided not to charge me.

I went back to my office, located in the back of a local dress shop. It was run-down and technically was the office of the dress shop, but it was in a good location, it had a desk and a telephone, and they only tried once to ask me to leave before they called the cops. I rammed a fork into my hand and that put an end to the complaining. They just kind of started crying and left the building. And then the cops came. And now they were pretty sure that I had something to do with the fork case. But I laid down some quick double talk and got out of it.  I had to leave the building though.  I sure do miss that office.

I knew I had to stash the forks someplace safe.  Someplace no one would ever find them. A stiff like me can't afford no safe deposit box, so I taped them one by one to the underside of a bus station bench. 

Finally, I got a case.  A guy walked in to the bus station just as I was taping up the last of the forks. I was considering killing him because he knew where my loot was hidden, but maybe he thought I was just searching for gum. I decided to test the waters.  "Welcome to my office.  Can I help you?" I asked politely.

"No.  Get the hell away from me, you used-gum-chewing psycho."

Good, I had fooled him. I pretended to chew a mouthful of gum. "Gum Enthusiast: That's me. But I'm also a detective.  You look like a man who could use a detective."

"I'm calling the police."

"Look here, pal," I said warmly, "The police can't do nothin' for you but put your name on the blotter. You need the help of a real private dick."  I tipped my fedora gently so he could see that I was indeed a Seamus. "Jake Thundercrunch."  I reached into my trencheralls for a business card, but all I had was a hamburger patty I had pocketed the week before during the case of the Oh God I'm So Hungry Because I Have No Money Because I Haven't Had a Case for Weeks, but had forgotten it was there. I started to gnaw on it while we continued our conversation.

"Sure," he replied hesitantly, "There's a guy who's been bothering me. Real nut case. In fact he's in this room right now, wearing a fedora and weird pants." 

I was getting real tired of his jibber jabber, and was beginning to consider socking him one in the face garage when he suddenly changed his tune. 

"You know, maybe I could use your help," he said while rubbing his chin.  I one-upped him by patting my head and rubbing my tummy.  He continued, "My name's Jerry, by the way.  Jerry Jerry.  About a year ago, I started  noticing I was being followed.  By a car.

"This car would tail me from the moment I left home in the morning, until I came home at night," he was still rubbing his chin, "And it was still there when I looked out the window when I went to bed."  His chin-rubbing had become quite vigourous now and his facial skin seemed to be getting irritated.

"One day I went out for a walk, and casually noted the plate number as I passed it.  I couldn't see anyone inside," his chin-rubbing hand was now vibrating too fast for the human eye to see, like the wings of a hummingbird. "I contacted a guy I know with police connections.  He got me a name.  Monsanto J. Robotcorn."  A wisp of smoke rose from his chin.

I was interested now. "I assume you looked him up.  What did you get on him?"

Jerry Jerry had worn away some of the flesh on his face and hand, and now there were bones grinding against jaw. The bones started to glow red. "Zilch. It was like the guy didn't exist, apart from his vehicle registration." 

"And that's what you want me to find out?" I asked, as I noted the last detail in my notepad.

"You betcha," he replied, as his head burst into flame. "Tell me why this guy is following me, and there's a cool five large in it for you."  A little girl somewhere behind me started crying.

Five thousand (assuming he wasn't some kind of wisenheimer planning to deal me five large fish or something) was more than I had seen in the last 2,097 days. I was a lousy detective, truth be told.  In fact up until the week before, I didn't even know I was a detective.  I thought I was a dishwasher in a filthy diner.  Life is funny that way.

"I accept," I said to the smoking ruin of his skull, which had exploded hot brain all over the bus station walls.  I shook his hand (the one that wasn't a charred stump) and set out to identify his stalker.

It didn't take me long before I got my first clue. A billboard across the street from the station said proudly in blue and red, "Re-Elect Monsanto J. Robotcorn for Governor". Seemed that his efforts to remain incognito had been in vain. The alarms and fire truck sirens faded into the distance as I walked away.

I decided to take the direct approach, and went to the governor's mansion. It had some sort of contraption of rows of vertical metal poles with pointy tops all the way around it, so I couldn't get in. I noticed a section of these poles where some of them could swing out of the way and a car could fit through.  In fact it was happening at that very moment.  I ran to the car and grabbed on to the two door handles, standing on the running boards, as the car sped away.  The house faded away in the distance.  The car swerved from side to side as it sped down the street, but I held on to those door handles like they were sausages made of solid gold. 

The car continued like this for about four hours until it ran out of gas. When it finally sputtered to a halt alongside a farm, I put the two golden sausages in my pocket and confronted the driver.  "You must be in some kind of trouble to run like that," I challenged.

"I," said the driver, "Monsanto J. Robotcorn, am in no kind of trouble. You, sir, are the one engulfed in the abstract concept known as trouble." 

"How do you figure?" I asked, "I'm the one with a weapon."  I held one of the golden sausages in my hand and pushed it forward, hoping the bulge in my clothing would resemble a sausagey gun. 

"You don't fool me with that door handle," he guffawed, pointing to the golden sausage in my pocket.  "I on the other hand have a most powerful weapon indeed.

"You see," he blathered, "I own this farm next to which we have parked. All this corn is mine to do with as I please.  And what I please," he paused to cackle gleefully, "is to roast you alive."  He suddenly refined all the corn into ethanol, loaded it into a massive flamethrower, and started torching everything in sight.

I was in a pickle. But I opened its bumpy little cucumber door, jumped out, and quickly came up with a plan.  I patented my trencheralls and made a million, billion dollars.  With all this money, I bought an army of ninjas and fireproof ninja suits for them.  I ordered the ninjas to stealthily kick his candy ass from one end of the countryside to the other.  He managed to burn a few, but before long they had killed him with shurikens and fugu.

As he lay poisoned, dying on the dirt road, I heard him sing a Johnny Cash song, but with the words all changed to something I didn't understand.  It turned out to be a magic spell that summoned aliens that were hiding behind the moon. Twelve flying saucers descended from the sky and hovered above the farm. They tractor beamed him up into their ship, but just as Monsanto J. Robotcorn disappeared into the spinning metal saucer, a squadron of biplanes came out of the clouds and started machine gunning the aliens.  The flying saucers were suddenly full of holes and green alien guts were dripping out those holes. The saucers started wobbling and fell out of the sky like frisbees that have just hit the head of a dude who wasn't paying attention to his frisbee bros.

They clattered to the ground like big quarters, and then the biplane pilots kamikazed into the farm, but parachuted out of their planes at the last second.  They teamed up with the ninjas and together they punched and kicked the saucers until they were all dented and wrinkly like used aluminum foil. They started to look for the body of Monsanto J. Robotcorn, but suddenly he rose up out of the rubble, and assembled the wreckage of the saucers into a giant robot with his mind. The giant robot stomped all over the pilots until they were totally pulverized. The ninjas were harder to stomp but eventually it got them all too because even ninjas get tired. 

It was looking pretty grim, when suddenly a massive army of monkeys came forth from the forest. They were all carrying beakers of acid, which they threw at the giant robot when they got close.  Before long, the acid started to dissolve the robot.  First the legs fell apart, so it was just a torso with arms crawling around on the acid-covered ground. Then, the monkeys targeted the head of the robot, which was where Monsanto J. Robotcorn was hiding. There was so much acid, it started eating into the ground. By the time the shell around Monsanto J. Robotcorn had opened up, there was a deep it in the Earth.  The monkeys were all out of acid, so they just headed back into the trees. I think they were howler monkeys.

The robot torso was teetering on the edge of the pit. Monsanto J. Robotcorn had emerged from the robot head and was trying to balance his weight on the top of the robot to keep it from falling. I knew I had to do something. I reached in my sock, pulled out the fork that I hide there for self defence, and hurled it at Monsanto J. Robotcorn with all my might. I missed, and the fork fell into the pit, which was now full of lava because the acid had eaten a hole to the centre of the Earth. 

"Ha ha!" called Monsanto J. Robotcorn. "Not only have you failed to kill me, but the election is now over and I am governor again! If you kill me now, it's gubercide and  the penalty for gubercide is death by shooting you into space." 

He had me there. I didn't want to die in the vacuum of space.  I had almost lost hope, when out of nowhere came rom-com veteran Paul Rudd zoomed up on an ATV. "How can I help?" he asked.

I pointed at the robot. "Look here.  We need to push him into the lava, if you catch my drift."

"Can do," said Paul Rudd as he revved his ATV. He started spinning his lasso, and roped an antenna on the head of the robot. Then he tied the end of the rop to his ATV and rode around to the other side of the lava pit. He gave it as much gas as he dared, trying to pull the robot off balance.  The robot teetered and wobbled, but still hung on. In a last desperate move, Monsanto J. Robotcorn yanked off the robot's left arm, and threw it at Paul Rudd.  It didn't make it that far, and fell into the pit.  As it fell, it snagged the rope, and both the giant robot and Paul Rudd were pulled into the pit.

I ran to the edge of the pit and yelled, "Paul Rudd, no-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

"Don't weep for me," he replied peacefully. "I go to my rest knowing I have given my all to save the world, and there is no better death for a man."  He smiled as he sank beneath the lava.

I wiped a tear from my eye, but then I remembered that I still had a fortune in forks waiting for me back at the burned out remains of the bus station, and a golden sausage in each pocket. Life goes on for Jake Thundercrunch.

ENDSAUCE00Babble Noir                        Livewire            Mistigris           20141017$1