The Mystery Science of Harsh Millennium Files, Part 5
"It's.........JOE DON BAKER!!"
weeps Servo, his hopeful utterance drowned out by the insatiable
turbulent bellows of the Maw That Walks.
"Oh sweet Heaven!" gasps Mike, whiplashed between joy
and horror, unchaining himself from the drill press ready to stamp
him into a wheel hub, and blessing the sacred name as thundering
footfalls crash across the continent.
"Nnnnnnnrrrrrrrmmmmmuuuuuuuuuuunggggggg," roars the
Monument of Meat.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," despairs a distant Santiago,
his thwarted and muffled screams resembling the collective and
keening Bee Gees with their lips in a vise.
"Grab your butt cheeks and hang on!" yells Crow, envisioning
fault lines lacing the firmament as the entire western hemisphere
parts at the seams and sinks to the earth's core.
"I shoulda sold my soul to *this* guy," thinks Emma.
"My career just went into the toilet," thinks Richard
Simmons.
"NNNNNNNRRRRRRMMMMMUUUUUUGGGGGG," rumbles the god of
Malta, the staggering, yet ambulatory Prophet of Paunch, baggy
and lazy-eyed in porcine pulpiness, "Where's this Omar clown!?"
"This is better than exorcism," observes Frank Black.
"I'm switching my holdings to Haagen Daz," thinks Scully.
"I'm road kill!" hollars Bobo, diving out of the way
and released from Santiago's cyber-edict that he spin mud off
eighteen-wheelers at a truck wash in Des Moines.
"We're saved!" warbles Gypsy, lurched around by the
seismic anomaly like a skydiving squid.
A suddenly recorporealized Thomas Hobbes wakes up, checks his
parts, and wonders why Sarajevo is being attacked by the Pillsbury
doughboy, as the Legend of Lard proceeds to hollow out and torch
the former navel of global domination into a smoking ruin that
Gorgo herself would find repellent even if it were littered with
trussed up and ready-to-fry sniveling offspring.
"Shelly, what did you say to Joe Don?" asks a gleeful
Mike, joining Mulder in plundering the couch cushions for spare
change.
"I planted a rumor in 'The Drive-Thru Gourmet Newsletter'
and the 'Win This Brewery' website that Santiago was cornering
the market in canned hams," says Shelly, her little nano-body
expanding to the size of pollen.
Our friends, of course, waste no time in taking advantage of their
restored freedom. Brain Guy flops Pinocchio's torso into a castered
glass bowl and wheelies him off to find Inga's personality.
Pearl, grinning like a carved pumpkin, and with no competition
in the global domination racket, checks out the possibility of
getting bus service to the castle, while rescusitating a limp
Bobo like sledge-hammering a furry tea bag.
Scully marries Servo, enjoying the community property wardrobe
and gaining a majority interest in toaster strudel, now traded
on NASDAQ.
Crow defrosts Santiago's many victims, employs them in rebuilding
the gasbag's fortress, and converts it to a high-tech soundstage
for 'Win Ben Stein's Money'.
Emma adds 'hostage' to her already lengthening resume, as Mulder's
pals down at Chucky Cheese celebrate his finally growing a hair
on his scrotum, sending him a congratulatory cuisinart from Sears.
But before everyone marches off to enjoy their fresh vocations,
they gather around a now narcoleptic Joe Don, snoring and prone
like a beached Himalaya, his overhanging strata of flesh twitching
and quivering and as impervious as diamond. All assembled link
arms, and, with reverent awe, sing the 'Joe Don Baker Theme Song'
(to the tune of 'Oklahoma').
"JOOOOOOOOOOOOE Don Baker,
Not Tom Cruise nor Connerly-ly, nope.
Where no swill de jour
Nor hooker's secure,
A grub mug but our only hooooooooooooope!
JOOOOOOOOOOOOOE Don Baker,
Sloshing noggin perpetually stewed,
On a six-pack gnaws
Resolute as 'Jaws',
Yet, our hero, Joe Don, we love yoooooooou!"
"Is this a happy ending, Frank?"
asks Catherine's ghost.
"Happy ending? There are no happy endings," sighs Frank
Black, shaking his head. "Unless we take up surfing."
.............The End.