Sloughing Off the Rot by Lance Carbuncle Read Free Book Online

are you here? Why me? What can you tell me?”
    Three Tooth laughed gently and a tear leaked from his eye. He waved his hands in the air, beckoning his compadres. All of the men but Two-Dogs-Fucking slowly rose to their feet. With his big toe, Crazy Talk poked at Two-Dogs-Fucking’s ribs, waking him and eliciting a machine-gun-like burst of laughter from the fat man.
    “Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha!” went Two-Dogs-Fucking’s grating guffaw. In response, Alf the Sacred Burro got to his feet and walked away with his usually-erect ears pinned back flat against his head, his irritated bray sounding not unlike the laughter that prompted him to move.
    And Two-Dogs-Fucking’s friends echoed his laughter, “Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha,” finally breaking into their own genuine laughs, satisfied that they had sufficiently mocked their ridiculous companion. Throws-Like-Girl, Crazy Talk, and Heap-o-Buffaloes meandered over to Three Tooth and John. Alf stumbled along behind them, trying to keep his distance from Two-Dogs-Fucking lest the man should break out in laughter again. And, not yet on his feet, Two-Dogs-Fucking rolled around a bit, like a turtle flipped on his back. Flopping his arms ineffectually at the ground in an effort to sit up, Two-Dogs-Fucking eventually succeeded in getting all of the way to his feet and ambling over to the others.
    The mongrel tribe of desert scurves standing before John was as motley a crew as he could expect to see: an Indian, a Chinaman, a Melungeon and two blond surfer-types. All of them but Two-Dogs-Fucking dressed like Native Americans. And the Melungeon, wrapped only in a too-small bath towel, reinforced the bizarre impression with a hearty greeting of “Halloooooo,” his voice starting out deep and rising to a ridiculously high warble.
    “What is this? Who are you people?” asked John
    The tears leaking from the tall Indian’s eye belied the three-toothed smile on his face. “We are the lies you have told, the promises you have broken. The helpless and weak and weary that you have ignored and abandoned. The children you have failed. We are the shame that you have suppressed. We are your low self esteem. We are your self-loathing. We are your sadness.” And the donkey stood next to him, nudging his head at Three Tooth’s hand for a scritching. The oily tear tracks running from Alf’s eyes gave him a look of sadness to match that of Three Tooth.
    “Don’t listen to them, Johnny. They’ll turn you inside out with the trip they lay on you,” shouted Santiago from the midst of a congregation of dirt-rats. A writhing blanket of diseased rodents covered his lap and the ground around him. “They speak with forked tongues and will only bring you down. They will manipulate your emotions and fuck your brain.”
    “Do not listen to him,” said Three Tooth. He watched Santiago snap the spine of a dirt-rat and toss it on a growing pile of carcasses. Speaking to John but raising his voice to be heard by Santiago, Three Tooth said, “He’s not competent. You cannot trust the counsel of someone who is incompetent.”
    “I’m not competent?” shouted Santiago, frightening the dirt-rats and sending them skittering for the safety of their burrows. “You bet I’m not competent. If you’re competent, there’s a lot to do. People expect things of you. Give you responsibilities. You better believe that I’m not competent. And because of that, I don’t have to do nothing. All I do is what I want to do. I shit and piss and eat and drink. I fuck blumpkins ‘til I’m dehydrated and stark raving mad. And nobody tells me to do shit. I do what I want. I live where I want, fella. I live on the ground. I live on the earth. I’m aligned with the scorpion and the wolf. And that’s the way it is. I’m not competent. I don’t want to be competent. But I’ll tell you what, Johnny, you’re better off hanging with me than that sorry ass crew.” He turned his back to Three Tooth and commenced his efforts to attract more