The road to Hell is paved with morons.

“You love to have a conniption right before going on family trips! Sometimes you even sabotage them! Sonya is gone now, having never understood what we all went thru. I will never forgive you for what you did to us!” bog witch Bernadette Moran Cacca yells at her mother, shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture, self-righteous narcadoodle and sterile supply clerk Carla Moran who puts the rage into rage-cleaning.

“You know that guy Greg Schneissder you used to romance on the side?”

“Don’t bother telling Peppi, he ain’t gonna care!”

“Well, I also fooled around with Undead Greg.”

It’s the early 80s. faux wood paneling painted black, dark green shag carpeting and brown floral sofa with matching loveseat.

Carla and Greg are watching “The Aaant! & Ding! Show.” Greg hands Carla his empty cup, his entitled mindset expects Carla to not only read his mind — but also do whatever the feck he wants with that stupid cup that he could have done himself.

Carla gets the clicker — a literal clicking remote control with 14 loud plastic buttons, attached to the television set with a curly telephone cord — and tries to change the channel. The two lovebirds get into a pecking match over the TV show and then Greg complains about Carla having spent 19 cents on a can of beans. Roll that beautiful bean footage!

Carla storms outside to smoke a cigarette.

Greg whistles at Carla like he’s calling a dog in an attempt to get her back inside, however she flies the coop, never to return.

Greg’s flashbacks continue to haunt him all the way through the smokey black tunnels until his descent terminates, wrinkly butthole to the cold rocky floor. He is greeted by a 69 foot creature with glowing red eyes, surrounded by flames.

“I see you made it back. GET IN LINE!”

Undead Greg arrives at the back of the 666 mile long of other newly damned. “Hey, you look familiar,” Greg calls out through the echoey halls to intake clerk Lucy Furr.

“Since I’ve been here before, can’t I jump the line?”

“No. There are millions of other people ahead of you. Your visit is important to us. Please continue to hold.”

“I want the manager then.”

“Satan’s busy now.”

Undead Greg stirs up the other condemned souls, egging them on, trying to take over Hell like countless evil souls before him.”

“You rang?” Hell Incorporated Chief Executive Officer Satan says over the intercom from his basement C-Suite.

“Just let me jump ahead. You know me.” the dead-again zombie and once-corporal narcopath demands.

“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”

Satan’s voice echoes throughout Hell’s entrance chamber, his corporal-stench-morning-breath mixes with the rotten-egg aroma blasting from his massive bum, instantly blowing Greg to the back of the line.

Satan makes some of his employees — usually megalomaniac world leaders and billionaire CEOs with a history of subjugating human beings — work every day without a break in the boiler-room call center, kind of like the one at CRASS but worse.. Sometimes he just throws in regular morons like Undead Greg, Demanda Broccoli and Smokey Ashe to work along side the snooty rich suckers like slumlord Sonya Marie Smith Moran. The call center is always open because the gates never close; neither does the country club.

Half the floor makes calls interrupting people’s suppers asking dumb survey questions and selling them crap they don’t want; the other half makes calls to medical patients hounding them in a recursive loop about the same appointment at least six days in a row, even if the people expressly ask them to stop calling because they don’t consent.

A lot of people block the 666 area code to stop the incessant calls. The autodialer uses Artificial Idiocracy (AI) to spoof the number on the caller ID so the damned bother as many people as possible. Every day those souls are randomly assigned to one call center branch or the other, so they never know which one they’re going to get.

The recent arrival, Divided Healthcare CEO snobbily complains to Satan: “I don’t like this job. Put me somewhere else. Don’t you know who I am?”

“No. Does your daddy?” Satan replies.

“Get me out of this job. I’m too good for this work. I’m in charge of a trillion dollar corporation you know!”

“No, I’m in charge of you now, ya doofus!”

“I quit!”

“I don’t want any freeloaders around here! You should be thankful you’re not out on the street starving in the cold! There are so many people worse off than you!” Satan gaslights, behaving like a typical toddler-minded narcissist.

Hell Incorporated call center staff continue to complain to the CEO.

“Well I tell ya what. We have positions open in the jagged rocks and boiling excrement pits…

The former health insurance CEO sighs…”I’ll take the bubbling poopoo pits.”

Demanda Broccoli Gets Chopped!

Bernadette Cacca, her husband Peppi and Demanda Broccoli all have one thing in common: Ennui.

“I saw this broad over here, had to go around her…Hi, I’m Demanda, I’m a friend of Mexico, he’s my brother,” she says to Bernadette, extending her hand to shake, holding a beer in the other. Bernadette pauses…then clarifies:

“You mean you’re a friend of Peppi’s.”

“I don’t have no friends. I tell a secret, three people know then I gotta kill both of them,” Kankakee debt-collector and humanoid vegetable Demanda Broccoli tells communal narc-a-doodle Bernadette Cacca, before walking over to her secret lover/sociopath Peppi Cacca, while they’re all sitting outside the Cacca’s Manteno homestead drinking and smoking skunkweed.

“Does Mexico have the Spanish flag?”

“No, they have their own flag, Demanda.”

“Who has the Spanish flag?”

“Umm…Spain”

“Where is Spain?” Demanda asks, guzzles even more beer from her plastic cup and then steals some moonshine from Peppi’s flask.

“Dude, you stank!” Demanda makes fun of her side piece.

“Time to burn some poopies, honey!” Not to be out-stinkified, Bernadette plays a sour note on her butt-trumpet, then lights a match.

BOOOM!

Demanda gets so blown away, her florets, stem chunks and crown make a mess all over the Cacca’s front lawn.

“Mmmmmm! Veggies for supper! I will sure done get regular now!” the bog witch cackles as she picks up the pieces of Demanda.

Demanda Broccoli Needs To Be Told “No” More Often.

Kankakee’s newest Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) debt collector, member of “The Haggs” band and humanoid veggie Demanda Broccoli runs around the office asking her co-workers to sniff her feet.

“Get back to your cubicle, now!” Team Leader Sybil Kibble commands.

Demanda goes back to her cube, but not on the phones. When Sybil isn’t looking, she walks over to the supervisor cube, and scrawls on her marker-board, “I love Damien Hurlbutt!

“No! Get back to your workstation and on the phones! Now!”

“OK-OK-OK-OK-OK” she snarks. Then she runs over to the executive suite and rips a fart that would make Bernadette Cacca envious.

“Did someone light a stinkbomb?” CRASS Controller Konrad Teirant asks.

Sybil Kibble spies her loose subordinate, grabs her by the crown and hauls her back to her seat.

“This is your final warning. Do some work. That’s why we pay you to come in. You DO want money, right?”

“Oh, that’s how it works…”

Sybil just shakes her head and walks away as Ms. Broccoli dons her headset.

“Credit Recovery Associates, Demanda.”

“Hi, this is Bernadette Cacca. Can I pay my bill in craptocoins? I just mined them myself…

The Garden of Dearthly Delights

The Manteno Cantina reviews start to pile up all over social media:

“False advertising! They tricked us into thinking we were attending a Gotion protest when it was really just a stupid talent show. Plus those ‘free tickets’ are not really free because they have a two-drink minimum!”

“Bernadette is one of their many talented performers. She plays the same two-hour set, refuses requests, then demands craptocoins! Come by on any day but Tuesday or Wednesday and enjoy the non-Bernadette singers.”

“The smelliest washrooms in Kankakee County since the dog-food factory closed down.”

“We’re losing business again. Why is it always the same eight people here?” the president of Bernadette Moran Cacca’s fan club, The Poopy Groupies, aunt Sonya Moran asks.

“Maybe we can hire that Hurlbutt kid to do his Elvis act.”

“Nahh.”

“How about we do some remodeling? And a name change? Nobody will know the difference,” suggests Poopy Groupie and neighborhood turd-burglar JB Powers.

“Not a bad idea. I’ll notate that.”

“I don’t know, Sonya, maybe we need more advertising?”

“Yeah, Dorian. That’s a wonderful idea! Woooooh!” Sonya exclaims a bit too hard, holding her brown note a bit too long.

Dorian begins to sing with excitement.

“Oh honey, don’t quit your day job.”

“Umm…Bernadette, my day job IS advertising and design.”

“Oh I mean keep going with that. I am sorry IF I hurt your feelings,” communal narcadoodle Bernadette gaslights in her typical fashion. She has the voice of an angel and the soul of the devil, leaving that bad taste in your mouth but you don’t quite know why.

Text alerts go out to every member of the Manteno Optimal Club via their CrapApp:

Kankakee Idol! Watch and sing along with the best Kankakee County singers, right here in K3! Watch our singing  competition from the comfort of your own home on Cable Access 19, or be a part of the audience in Manteno. Get your free tickets now! Another crappy show brought to you by Peppi’s Portapotties! Bernadette and Peppi Cacca are King and Queen of the Plastic Throne!

Signage has been plastered all over Kankakee County featuring the big cheesy grins of the judges, craptocoin emojis, and this text:

Tomato Karen & The Haggs
“They’re Coming to Take Me Away”

vs 

Wally Green
“Fart Your Birds”

Judges:

Bernadette Cacca
Sonya Moran
Dorian James

With your host, Konrad Teirant!

The day arrives. Emcee Konrad Teirant, one third of Moronic Half Assets and chief cooker of the CRASS books, hopes to make a big bag tonight.

“Live here, this is your host KT on the TV. Tonight at the Manteno Cantina, we have a real salad bar! We also have these ladies! Give it up for Tomato Karen & The Haggs as they sing “They’re Coming to Take Me Away!”

Tomato Karen Napoleon, Demanda Broccoli, Becca Frickfrick and Jamie Turnip try their very best to sing and play their poorly tuned instruments. As the crowd plugs their ears and Bernadette plugs the toilet, Tomato Karen’s ghastly wail raises in pitch and insanity – hitting a high C toward the very end – barely. 

“Thank you for that, whatever that was. Now let’s hear from our awesome judges. Bernadette?”

 “You guys are the GOAT! It’s a wooooooooooo from me!” Bernadette’s mouth opens wide, tongue hanging out as usual.

 “Why am I craving tin cans right now? Oh, speaking of can…” Bernadette runs off stage and straight to her favorite room to mine more craptocoins because she can. It’s potty time!

“Sonya?”

“The Haggs rule this composition. It’s a woo-hoo from me!”

“Dorian?”

 “This song is too repetitive.”

The crowd erupts in boos.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over. It’s a yeah, no from me.”

Sounds of the disappointed crowd magnify.

“Speaking of boos, be sure to stop by our bar for our awesome drink specials!” Konrad spamvertises the already mad crowd.

“Butt, be sure to text us your votes on your smell phones! 815-555-FART.”

“Thank you Bernadette. You look awesome!”

“No, you!”

“You’re a national treasure Bernadette. This next guy is a real hoot! Tonight we present you Wally Green!” The bulbous, squat, 60-something enters the stage wearing a horizontal striped polo shirt, a fishing cap, and a cheesy grin.

“This one is for alllll the single ladies out there. Wally taps the microphone, causing ear-piercing distortion in the public address system.

“Fart your owls, fart your cockatiels. Let them fly away, let them fly for free. Don’t hug your dog, don’t kiss your cat. Love is what I got so give it all to meeeeeee!”

The three judges look at each other in wonder, confusion and astonishment.

In unison: “This is the dumbest thing we saw all day. It’s a heck-no from us!”

“Be sure to lock in your—“

“No nevermind, the razzy has already been awarded. The loser of Kankakee Idol is, Tomato Karen & The Haggs! Congratulations, you’re the only act we’ve seen that’s worse than Wally Green!”

“This is Konrad Teirant signing off…ooh is this thing on?”