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The room cleared out when someone
threw open the doors and shouted, “Dinosaur Ghosts are destroying the Heritage
Foundation!”
As the crowd poured out of the
auditorium, individual statements could be overheard such as, “Wow, this I
gotta see,” and “Who had Heritage Foundation in the pool? My money was on CPAC.”
Soon the room was empty except for
Helen, who was methodically gathering up her things, and young Stumpy Wilkinson,
who now approached her.
“There’s something else you should
know. Something I forgot to tell the
panel of liberals.”
“Make it quick,” Helen
snapped. “I’ve got work to do.”
“It’s not just dinosaur ghosts we
have to worry about.”
“What are you talking about?” Helen said,
unable to conceal her annoyance.
“There’s another monster,” Stumpy
continued, “one completely separate from the dinosaur ghosts. It’s from a different era. If my calculations
are correct, it will arrive in our time within the next few days.”
“You best start making sense, Ass
Boy,” Helen said. She wasn’t sure why
she called Stumpy Ass Boy. It just came
out. All things considered, he had a
normal-sized-and-shaped posterior, and his face was not at all ass-like.
“Have you ever heard of the
missing link?” Stumpy asked.
“You mean an undiscovered species
between human beings and apes?”
“Oh yeah, that is what that
is. Okay, this is slightly
different. This is a species between
human beings, monkeys, and monsters. I
called it the Monkey Man Monster or MMM for short.”
“A Monkey Man Monster?” Helen
said, shaking her head. “Is that like Bigfoot?”
“No. The Monkey Man Monster, or MMM
for short, has surprisingly small feet. They’re quite dainty.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“I’m afraid they are very real and
they are very dangerous. Not the feet, though. Just the rest of the monster.”
“And is the Monkey Man Monster
also eating republicans?”
“You mean the MMM? Inconclusive.”
“Then what what exactly does the
MMM do?” Helen asked.
"You mean the Monkey Man
Monster? Let me put it this way. Just as
the dinosaur ghosts have come back from extinction in order to take revenge on
conservatives for their over reliance on fossil fuels, the MMM, or Monkey Man
Monster--really it’s whichever you prefer--exists primarily to whack the shit
out of people who don’t believe in evolution. Probably with a big club.”
“Republicans are really having a
rough month.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“I don’t have time for this,”
Helen said. She had packed up all the
gadgets she needed to do battle with the dinosaur ghosts, but then remembered
that she had forgotten to change outfits, so she had to unpack everything again
because the outfit she wanted to wear was underneath all the doodads. She then went into the nearest women’s
restroom and changed clothes.
When she returned she was wearing
a virgin white dress, cut low in front to reveal her cleavage, and cut short on
bottom to reveal her thighs.
“Whoa,” Stumpy said, drooling a
little.
“Now I’m ready.” Helen said.
“What are you going to do?” Stumpy
asked her boobs.
“Well, if I’m going to sacrifice
myself, I figured I better dress the part.”
Stumpy continued to stare at her
boobs.
People filtered into the
auditorium again, chatting about the spectacle they had witnessed. A
paleontology grad student ran up to Stumpy excitedly. “Dude, you missed it. Dinosaur Ghosts totally ate the building
across the street.”
“You mean it’s over?” Helen
said. “Where are they now?”
“The dinosaur ghosts? I don’t know. They took off,” the
grad student said to her boobs.
“Damn,” Helen said, leaning over
slightly, just for the hell of it. “I
guess my plan will have to wait.”
Less than twenty four hours after
the collapse of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin “Grammy” Graham, 72-year-old
founder and CEO of The Crafty Craftsman, now with 372 locations nationwide,
stood in the center of his latest triumph, the soon-to-be opened Worldwide
Bible Theme Park and Creationist Museum in downtown Kansas City, Kansas. Years in the making, with no expense spared,
the series of interconnecting structures, rides, and exhibits was guaranteed to
be the new favorite vacation destination--a Mecca of sorts--for some of the
most devout and willfully ignorant upper-middle class fundamentalist Christians
in the country.
By far, the most noticeable
feature of the park was the one hundred foot-tall replica of Jesus’s head (the
white version), known informally as Mega Jesus. The sign out front featured a painting
of a regular-sized Jesus with a word bubble pointed at his mouth, which read, “See
the world through the eyes of Mega Jesus!”
How could any visitor, young or old,
fail to climb the spiral staircase along the inside of Mega Jesus’s neck, leading
to the immaculate tongue where they might kiss the inside of his cheek, gaze at
his majestic tonsils, or have a seat on one of sixty four perfect pearly
whites. A short elevator ride through
the nasal passageway would lead them to the ocular center, the brilliant
cerulean eyes of Mega Jesus, where for only twenty five cents, they could look through
telescopic sights and literally see what Jesus sees--pretty much the whole park. After that, why not take a quick dip in one
of several tear ducts (bathing suits required), or, for a few dollars extra, go
for a full baptism? Ministers would be
standing by.
And this was just the
beginning. Someday, Grahammy hoped to
erect a body to support the giant head.
Expected to rise some one thousand feet in the air, if all went well,
people from every corner of the state would able to look into the distance and witness
the holiest skyscraper the world had every known.
Of course there were many other
attractions to which visitors could avail themselves. Children could play games like ‘Beat the
Devil’ and ‘Seat of Judgment’ or enjoy any one of the many wonderful rides such
as the ‘Siege of Jerusalem’, the ‘Carousel of Locusts’ (“Look Mommy, I’m on the
plague!”), ‘the Cain-o-nator’, or sit back and enjoy a ride on the ‘Exodus Train’,
which just seemed to go round and round.
Teenage couples were encouraged to
take a spin on the ‘Chastity Belt’, a giant spinning cylinder in which the
couples were separated, strapped down, and then spun around until they were too
sick to act on their basest impulses.
But perhaps Grahammy’s favorite
attraction was the Old Testament Creationist Museum, featuring wax figures of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Moses parting the Red Sea, Aaron
sacrificing a lamb, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and Daniel in the lion’s
den. It also featured state-of-the-art
three-dimensional digital representations of each of the six days of
creation. Grahammy imagined one of his
new employees barking, “Step right up and see the universe created before your
eyes!”
Grahammy was certain, however,
that the museum’s appeal would stem mainly from the Noah’s Arc Exhibit. Children would love to play on the
still-massive scale model arc, ride the backs of stone elephants and
crocodiles, and behold just how many animal statues Graham’s designers had
managed to cram onto the thing.
Graham and his partners had debated endlessly
on what to do about the dinosaurs.
People had no problem believing that Noah could fit two of each of the
nearly eight million species of animals on Earth on a structure that measured
300 cubits by 50 by 30, but Noah himself must have asked himself how the hell
he was going to fit all those dinosaurs on his already crowded
boat. After much prayer and
soul-searching the Lord had evidently given him the go-ahead to nix the
prehistoric beasts. That’s why, in
Graham’s replica, he had submerged all the dinosaur models up to their necks in
the surrounding whirl pool and positioned them to stare up at Noah, silently
begging him to let them on board.
Everyone knew what happened after that.
Graham stood on the Arc, and
wrapped his arm around the statue of
Noah. This was truly as close to
Heaven as a person could get in this wicked world, and in a few hours the rest
of the world was going to know it too.
He only wished the right wing of
the Supreme Court hadn’t recently been
eaten by dinosaur ghosts before they could rule on his case. In Billinglsy VS
the Crafty Craftsman, Graham had hoped the court would decide once and for
all that a company could claim a religious exemption from contributing a share
of health insurance premiums to homosexual employees. His argument: by helping to keep gay people
alive, he was in fact contributing to their lifestyle, a notion he found
unconscionable. Now, he was almost
certain to lose the case.
He tried to push the negative
thought out of his mind. Today was going
to be a grand day. Soon the gates of the park would open and Graham would be
surrounded by a comforting throng of like-minded individuals.
Staring in the direction of the
park gate, he failed to notice the water churning below him in an unusually
aggressive manner, nor did he observe the emergence of two great beasts who had been denied
a place on his arc. A shadow fell over
him then, a pair of shadows, that cast him into their darkness. Slowly he turned, and his expression became a
mixture of horror and confusion. He’d
prayed this wouldn’t happen. Not
today. But here they were. Dinosaur Ghosts, and...Were they holding
hands?
go to chapter 11
go to chapter 11
