Hello Devilfish! by Ron Dakron Read Free Book Online Page B

poles were still standing! Almost as crooked as me when I ran at those dangling wires—force of habit, gotta smash them—waggling my arms and screaming my cute lungs out. Geeraa ! I think I woke maybe a half hour later with black sparks tattooed across my chest. “Blue mansu, blue mansu,” some meter maid shook me, “you alright?”
    â€œGet lost,” I snarled and lurched up. And what’s with the blue mansu ? Oh right—my skin. Blue Mansu Group is this Tokyo lounge trio that smear their heads with cerulean goo and play jazz marimbas—I swear I almost heard them in my scorched eardrums. So that’s it—really? I can’t even eat simple voltage anymore? Wah—why is the world against me? I just wanna kill it—and maybe get some pants. Which was mondo easy—I just found a wrecked alley and stripped the nearest Squidra victim who didn’t poop his drawers. Plus I copped a cool aloha shirt too—I’ve always wanted to smear Honolulu back into the roiling sea. I can haz nice Hawaiian Punch?
    Maybe a soggy mac-salad plate too—I was that famished. It was minutes since I last ate—and us Devilfish need mass grub. So what do these humanoids chow down on, anyway? They ain’t devoured each other for centuries. Luckily—or un—my new monkey nostrils drew me into this gigantor fish mart. Which wasn’t even panicked about looming Squidras yet—Tokyoites learned decades ago to work around whatever Gamera or US Air Force Corps rained death on their ducking skulls. Nope, they just kept on gutting trout and slurping eels—even as her whopping tentacles smeared the horizon into cement scrapple. Still, crowding into that fish bazaar would be pretty dumb. Yep—that’d be me, staggering into that packed perch mall, elbowing geezers and fishwives aside—and plunging my snout into a cart of butchered hake. “Yum,” I chewed up scales and gills that crackled like martyred locusts—till I’m yanked from my gory banquet! “Get out of here, thief!” some fishmonger raised his cleaver.
    â€œWhat you gonna do,” I giggled, “eat me?”
    â€œStealing! You’re stealing!”
    â€œSheesh, calm down,” I snatched a huge hake up, “or I’ll have to fish-slap you.”
    â€œEvil blue gaijan—go away!” he hissed. Good thing I didn’t know my own strength—cause it sucked! I could barely tap him with that clumsy hake. But I did muster enough entropic motion to smack my hand into his blurring cleaver—which chopped off my pinky! “You’re kidding,” I stared at the gushing stump, “ red blood?”
    â€œI’ll kill you—thief!” he raised that glinting cleaver again! While that thronged market chanted “Thief—thief—” and I did some quick math. Hmmm, let’s see—Squidra to the south, lethal monger to the west—better head east. Where? To the slums and hovels where the ragged stingrays go. Hello Devilfish! Won’t you take me to Buraku town?

/ 14 /
    Let’s looking for tropes! Mwah ha ha—today I’ll infest this hoary abolitionist potboiler called Uncle Tom’s Houseboat . With a Grade-A silly plot starring halibut slaves and incomprehensible massas. Seems what the Yankees really stole was their consonants— I doan’ know nothin’ about birthin’ no perch ! Anyway, our tale opens with Hammerhead Legree dragging a gigantor slave fish to de auction block. It’s Mama Stingray! She ripples with calico fat. “Please,” she moans, “forsake to sell us down that fetid river.”
    â€œMwah ha ha,” Simon rubs his fins, “we’s gwine to sell you an’ yo baby ray—bring that buck fish in heah.”
    â€œOh Mother!” I wail, twisting my chains and punching my gigantor blue tail through a mast. “Dear matriarch,” I weep flaming snot,