Kankakee, Illinois’ number one Elvis impersonator, Wally Green’s drugstore clerk and vulnerable narcadoodle Robbie Hurlbutt has a huge crush on Midnight Supremes lead singer Gothic Diana Ross who isn’t remotely attracted to him, plus she has a boyfriend. He wants to make a huge impression on her because he does not understand the word “no.”
She has a gig coming up soon and he is scheming to find a way to connive his boss, store owner Wally Green into letting him hang up her show poster at work to promote her music as he thinks it will somehow make her like him.
”Hey Robbie, have a look at these paper towels I invented just for my store: Half the size, twice the cost. All the frustration when you go to rip off a sheet, thanks to me!” boasts a balding, squat, rotund Wally Green as he tips his fishing cap.
“I know, boss, let’s put them on a groovy display table near the front of the store so the suckers — I mean customers — will think they are getting them on sale.”
“Great idea! I am glad I thought of it!” Wally exclaims with glee, throwing his stubby arms into the air.
“Well…now that I, boss, thought of such a splendid idea, I have a favor to ask. This band is really a gas and I want to hang up their poster for their upcoming show at the store,” Robbie says to his superior with bedroom eyes, dreaming of Miss Gothic Diana Ross, the only Boss he could ever want.
“Naw. Get back to work. I need you to make production metrics this time. Start selling people some pills they don’t need.”
Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) Lead Debt Collector Sybil Kibble comes into Wally Green’s Drugstore to buy an iced coffee and a bag of dog biscuits for lunch as she forgot hers at home.
“Ehh. Out of order again. Must be that half ply toilet paper,” Sybil thinks out loud.
“The washroom is on the blink?” Robbie asks, aghast.
“Yeah and I am in a hurry!” Sybil shouts as she makes her way over toward the men’s room.
“Do not go in there!” Robbie commands Sybil.
Sybil walks by Gothic Diana Ross in the men’s room, who is looking in the mirror, applying her jet-black eyeliner. She pinches a huge loaf in the stall next to Wally Green, who is busy whizzing away in the urinal. Sybil flushes but does not clean up the mess on the seat, flinging the door wide open with her arm. She makes a beeline for the sink and spots Diana sarcastically chortling away at the Gothic Diana Ross and the Midnight Supremes poster on washroom wall.
A befuddled Robbie struts into the men’s room.
“I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME IN HERE!” Robbie shouts at the women. “THIS IS THE MEN’S ROOM.”
“Get back to work, Robbie, the ladies’ room is closed. Take down this poster while you are at it and apologize to our customers.” Wally Green tells his employee Robbie.
“I am sorry IF I offended you.” Robbie smirks.
“Get lost!” Diana and Sybil chant in unison at his non-apology as they leave the bathroom.
Sybil buys her lunch and drives back to work.
Wally sells loads of paper towels and Robbie is put on temporary janitorial duty until he improves his customer service skills. But don’t lock him in the bathroom. He thinks he is Elvis.
Twelve turd machines left. Someone stole eight of them!” Bernadette growls angrily and proceeds to mount not one but four turd machines, including one she aims out her kitchen window directly at Gothic Diana Ross’ slate Victorian house.
The next day, Gothic Diana Ross briefly steps outdoors to check her mail.
“Bang bang, you’re dead, fifty bullets in the head” Bernadette sings as she cranks the turd machine, firing at Diana and missing every shot. Diana makes it inside, unscathed but angry.
The dusk is hitting Manteno, Illinois. Before she has a chance to slither into her bog, a certain village trustee gets into it with a disabled veteran. Having no shame, she will do anything to put others down. The swamp witch emerges from seemingly nowhere.
“Why are you taking pictures?” Bernadette Moran Cacca bothers someone minding their own business, enjoying the sunset. Ennui and lack of narcissistic supply has given her the cravings for attention of any kind, good or bad.
“I live here. Nice night.. Nice to meet you. I’m Shanna.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s me, Bernadette, I went to school with you.”
“Oh hey, you’re still in Manteno?”
“Now you see the real me! I don’t like you. Now keep on walking.”
“Now if you disagree with the fascist council member that also runs the Optimal Club, you will be shut down and shut up,” Gothic Mary, member of the Midnight Supremes tells Shanna.
“Oh hey, I remember you Mary, what’s up?”
“She used to get mad at my sonic sneezes that I cannot control and then peel out her driveway yelling the N-word. I had told our classmates but nobody would believe me. She was much more prejudiced than I thought but pretended to be an ally who cared about other cultures, and people in general. She actually had said she got a better ‘gold star bisexual’ to taunt me into taking her back, thinking I’d get jealous. First she was bragging on about how perfect things were going between them, that I was ‘too sensitive’ to give her what she wanted, and how she will change and mold everyone in town into something special. This town has always been great and would be even better without her and her Craptocoins.
“Who’s that smelly dude over there in the baggy clothes? Is he a meth-head?”
“Hey Greg! I hear they sell fried brains down in Evansville, Indiana,” Shanna yells out. Gothic Diana Ross joins Mary and Flo in giggling.
“Okayyyyy…In America there are three mountains in regions where it snows on top of the river and in other regions it is 180 degrees because mountains control temperatures backward towards chemtrails. Unless we make inflatable artificial bounce mountains on the face of the Moon base to control the weather, we will always have these weather problems which can be changed in five minutes. Brains? Brains branes brainnnnnnz…”
Undead Greg Schneissder wanders down to Indiana to find himself one…if only.
Greg heads to a truck stop to make a pit stop so he can empty out his toxic waste and then immediately refuel. While browsing the store, Greg shouts over to a man microwaving a packaged sandwich, “Don’t open that microwave until after it stops beeping!” The trucker just shakes his head and begins to pry the plastic upon plastic from his late night meal. “You’ll get radiation poisoning if you open it too soon. It’s in the manual.”
Greg comes up empty and eats some poopies instead, left behind some man who didn’t flush down the brown.
Ragged and scrawny as ever, Greg continues walking down to Evansville, after hitching a ride on a manure truck and sleeping in the back.
“Closed for rest and reset? What’s that?” Greg says aloud as he pounds on the window, breaking the glass. The burglar alarm goes off immediately as Greg climbs in, loiters around the restaurant looking for a seat.
“Doooooes this TV get the Aaant & Ding Show?
Undead Greg walks toward the basement to look for the cooler full of chilled brains only to fall down the stairs, crumpling into a bag of bones, a waft of dust smelling oddly like cheese puffs fills the building. Yum.
Owner of Schneissder’s Sewer Service, Manteno moron, sociopath and zombie Gregory Albert Schneissder thinks his crap does not stink.
This 62 year old fartknocker sports a head full of salt and pepper hair, usually covered up by a ball cap. His eyes glow red and he eats brains for dinner.
Gregory is Chronic; paranoid people will steal his stash, Greg flashes his dime-bag full of perfectly cultivated buds on the bus when he is spaced out on coke he snorted while coming down off a weed high. Yes, he is that dumb.
This Miami Dolphenergans fan gate-keeps in Fakebook groups. Greg brags about his biggest life achievement, having seen someone in 1991 going down the road who owned one. The one-and-only 1988 Chrysler Conquest – just like the one Gothic Diana Ross drives – Greg witnessed the most important event in his life and tells everybody about it.
Undead Greg stopped driving due to DUIs; he lost his license before the slow-burn-virus took over his undead corpse. Now he can only watch people going down the road who own one. He is butthurt because he no longer can legally hunt down the living driving his Ford imbecile machine, covered in obnoxious decals, bearing wheels way too large for the body.
Ableist as it gets, Greg audibly harasses disabled folks on the bus, stalking them in cafés. He thinks they should work and accuses every disabled young person of “faking it” and tag teams with his BFF Pris Dixon to bully strangers since he is a scared wuss with no life.
Bern Cacca’s biggest fan, Greg made a BernCacca Fans facebook account.
He desperately needs a hobby (besides devouring the living). Manteno residents hope he gets one soon.
Narcissists want to buy your time…so they can waste it…over and over without paying.
Gothic Diana Ross is busy minding her own business at her specialist’s waiting room up at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. A routine follow-up appointment, Miss Ross would rather be home having fun singing with Gothic Flo and Gothic Mary, instead of waiting in a crowded room full of strangers.
An hour passes by and Di still has not been called.
“Hey, I’m Greg Schneissder. Are you from Manteno?”
”Ummm…” Diana rolls her eyes and looks away from the undead Greg,
“I saw one of your shows, you ladies are so beautiful and talented.”
“Pat is one of the coolest guys around! I hang around him and Bernadette Cacca.”
Diana freezes from panic, already nervous awaiting her lab results.
“Don’t. Mention. Bernadette.”
“Oh why? She is the the nicest person around! And so famous! I see her picture in the paper a lot. She’s a celebrity. Wasn’t she on that Human Body Odor Channel show?”
Diana rolls her eyes.
“How can you say anything bad about her?”
“Stop.”
“I am gonna complain. You are harassing me now. Nobody talks bad about Bern Cacca!”
Di looks at the lady across from her.
“I am sure he was just trying to help.”
“Really? Just…no.”
“How do you know?”
“Just leave me the feck alone.”
“I am gonna just leave. I can’t be at this office where people talk badly about other people!” Greg whinges as he storms down the stairs.
“Deeanna?”
“It’s Diana…grrr.”
Diana grabs her patent leather sack and follows the medical office assistant to be roomed.
It begins to rain, the clouds taking a massive whizz all over Northern Illinois. Thankfully Diana merges her black 1988 Chrysler Conquest onto 90/94 safely and avoids rush-hour traffic to head south on I-57 toward her home in Manteno. Mind clear from a clean bill of health, the slender gothic beauty slides into her canopy bed, the silky black sheets comforting her as she drifts off to her internship in Hell.
Two hours later, Diana wakes up in a panic, startled by a moron who thought it would be cute to crawl into her bed.
“You know Diana, your music would sound better if you articulated your words better.”
A stunned Diana looks over.
“You forgot to lock your door, hon.”
“Get the freak outta my house and my bed!” Diana screams at the top of her lungs and chases out the bored poopy-burner and communal narcadoodle, next-door neighbor Bernadette Moran Cacca.
“How dare you talk bad about my beloved Bernadette!” Gregory Albert Schneissder screams at Diana about the crowd-pleaser for whom he created the Fakebook account “BMCacca Fannn.”
Diana slams the slate door to her Victorian Gothic home.
Gregory slithers over to Bernadette and the pair head upstairs to Bern’s bedroom.
“Can you just, like, not fart in front of me?” Greg asks his date Bernadette Cacca during their date netting some flicks while hoping to chill.
“No, honey.”
”You don’t fart on stage at those charity events where you sing and play kazoo requests to raise money for the Manteno Optimal Club and for Ukraine.”
“No need to gas-sleight me!”
“You gaslit me!” Greg retorts.
“No, I mean, I need to fart. Farting is healthy. I will implode if I don’t rip ‘em when I need to.”
The swamp-witch Bernadette lifts her leg and her bum goes boom.
A wild Gothic Diana Ross appears in the foreground.
”Heave-ho! Where are your enablers now? Bwa ha ha ha ha!” The Gothic Boss Miss Ross interjects as she yeets the communal narcadoodle Bern halfway down the staircase, and the Midnight Supremes chuck her bum-licker Greg, spocking the pallino down the stairs.
“You left your front door open…” Diana addresses the undead mess spilled all over the basement floor with a smile.
”What did those stairs do to deserve that punishment?” Gothic Mary jokes as the Midnight Supremes leave in amusement.
“Uhh, a little birdy told me she was last seen near Area 51 in Nevada.” Bog witch, entramanure and communal narcadoodle Bernadette Moran Cacca says to her shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture and self-righteous narc mother Carla.
“Who? Was it my cousin Jackie? He flies by all the time but not once, even once, ever says hi.”
“Who’s that?”
“Oh you know him, you met him when you were five at grandma’s house.”
“I have no idea, it was just a rumor…”
“I’m picking up all this stuff here at her house…”
“Oh wow, ma, anything for me? Anything worth beaucoup bucks?”
“Nope. Everything I’m picking up I’m THROWING OUT!” the angry bird says with great pride (but not the good kind). Why couldn’t I get a free trip to Area 51?”
“Maybe she got a job there, I dunno…”
“I’ve applied there over and over, and heard nothing. Why does SHE get to go there but not ME? MUST BE NICE.”
Feathers ruffled, Carla Moran starts flapping her wings and cursing.
“Maa, y’know I have you on speakerphone.”
“Nevermind!”
“Why don’t you come down to the Manteno Optimal Club and compete in our poetry slam?”
“You know I hate poetry, and it’s a long way from Eastern Indiana”
“Oh come now, it’s for a good cause!”
“We’ll see…”
“I’d love to see my mother again. Won’t you do it just for me? You do love me right?” the hag gaslights.
“Okay! Okay! Okay! Enough!”
“Great see you Sunday.”
“Roger that!” Pamela Frickfrick laughs to her twin sister Becca who has been eavesdropping on her neighbors from across the block.
“Our newly installed Frickfrick towers are working pretty darned good I say. When are your grandkids coming over, Becca?”
“Today. Can you watch them?”
“I gotta work at Credit Recovery Associates. You know, that CRASS job I got a few months ago.”
“Isn’t it illegal for bill collectors to call on weekends? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“You’re a CRASS bill collector too, you should know!”
Pamela storms out the door of her Manteno home and wanders on over to see what kind of dookie she can stir up over at the house of Cacca.
Bernadette is sitting upstairs pooping and singing a song of stupidity, therefore Pamela seizes the opportunity to do something even crappier. After all, it’s all a competition for these bored bitties. “Oh look a bowling ball!” Pamela hoists the lawn ornament from Bernadette’s house over on Kant Street to hers on Ken Street so it can grow legs.
She rolls the ball, striking her garage wall, sparing her from having to buy one herself. Then she goes out on another Moronquest.
Pam spots the slate Victorian mansion of Gothic Diana Ross and The Midnight Supremes. “Oh how handsome, a knight in shining armor. I think it fell off a truck,” Pamela thinks aloud as she hauls the decorative swordfighter over to her home to live instead. “Maybe I’ll dress him up to look like the king instead, the King of Rock and Roll!”
Pamela drives over to Wally Green’s to hopefully buy gaudy jewelry, a blue-black wig and fake sideburns to decorate her new man. Wandering around the store, two clerks circle around her asking eight times each if she needs help, despite her having said no the first time.
“Oh shoot-a-darn. I forgot to get my meds, where’s the pharmacy hun?”
The clerk points his arm toward the back of the store and a large cartoon of Wally’s silly grin.
After waiting in line for 25 minutes, Pamela finally makes it to the pickup window.
“Pamela Frickfrick”
“Sorry, we’re still working on it. Give us 20 minutes,” says her crush, Kankakee Elvis impersonator and pharmacy tech Robbie Hurlbutt.
Mrs. Frickfrick wanders around the store to buy some crap she does not need, only to circle back to her number one singer.
“We have a P and C at Pharmacy. Pharmacy, we have a P and C.”
“What’s that?” Pamela asks Robbie.
“Someone’s just dropping off a specimen over at the lab.”
“OK. Now tell me, do you have vaccines for FIV?”
“FIV? You mean HIV.”
“No. FIV. It’s a disease that cats can get and I don’t want to catch it.”
“Umm, we don’t have a vet clinic here, sorry ma’am.”
“It’s for me. You sell shots here right?”
“Of gin?”
“No, I don’t drink any darn alcohol. I just wanna shot so I don’t get FIV.”
“Lady, you can’t get FIV from cats!” a passerby shouts, then shakes her head as she walks away.
“Robbie, you are the sexiest man on earth. Don’t you know anything about what you sell? You are smart for your age.”
“Ummm, I am 47. I grow the same boogers as you.”
“You need to respect your elders! I am 74 and a lot older than you. Get me the manager now!”
“I AM the manager,” Robbie lies.
“Well imma gonna done call ICE and report you for being friendly to migrants when I go home. I am no longer your biggest fan!” Pamela breaks down and cries all the way across Kankakee County.
Meanwhile Keysha, Aaliyah and Cedric are playing in their gramma’s house. “Where did she get this bowling ball?” little Keysha asks her siblings as tries to lift it.
“I dunno, but let’s see how much damage it can do on this knight!” Cedric says, grabbing the 12 pound ball as he begins to throw strikes.
The two girls run into the backyard.
“Oooh, legos!” the kids cry, as they tear apart the red-and-white antenna array.
“A prize inside! Is this a radio?
“No, it’s just a dumb baby monitor.” Gothic Diana Ross tells the kids, having walked over looking for her missing lawn ornament.
“Hey kids, where’s your grandmother?”
“I dunno.”
“Is she home?”
“No.”
“Is anybody home?”
“Just us…”
Concerned about the thefts — and more importantly — the kids’ welfare, the Gothic Boss Ms. Ross calls the police.
The Kankakee police eventually locate Pam walking along the sidewalk somewhere in Bradley, carrying a red metal container.
“Are you Pamela Frickfrick?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Where are you headed, ma’am?”
“I had forgotten to fill my tank when the yellow light illuminated and I’m looking for a filling station.”
“Where did you get this bowling ball?” the cop asks as she shows her a photo from her phone.
“It rolled over one night when he had storms. Why?”
“And this metal knight?
“Oh he walked over to my house. I promise I did not steal him from his girl. I didn’t do anything.”
“Nope, you didn’t. We dispatched an officer to your home to find three children abandoned.”
“This is not fair! I’m a senior citizen who pays your salary! I know the mayor!”
“We know the mayor too,” the policewoman says as she handcuffs the town Frickfrick and reads her Miranda rights.
(This story dedicated to a special friend who loves cats).
Kankakee drugstore clerk, covert narcadoodle and self-proclaimed Number One Elvis Impersonator Robbie Hurlbutt spies his number one crush Gothic Diana Ross riding the bus. Hoping to impress her, like a peacock shaking his tail-feathers, Robbie flexes by doing pull-ups on the railing. Diana looks away, trying to hide her laughter.
Robbie continues flexing at the bus station, dancing around like a moronic fool as the rightfully uninterested gothic beauty Diana falls asleep, waiting for the Midnight Supremes to pick her up.
Still not aware of the kind stranger returning his ciggybutt cartons, a second person calls out:
“Hey Greg, you forgot your cigarettes.”
Greg grabs the two red packs on which he had been sitting. No longer able to drive, the newly undead Greg had taken the bus to meet up with his lover, Bernadette Cacca at the Manteno Optimal Club where she is performing charity pop covers just for the photo opportunity.
Bern drives Greg home after the gig. Both get lost, not just because someone told them to scram. Fighting over directions, Bern wags her finger and tells her Poopy Groupie “I told you so.”
“What am I going to do with all these NFTs?” asks a puzzled Bernadette.
“What’s an NFT?” the newly undead Greg asks his partner-in-stench.
“Newly formed turds, my turd vault is full! I want to burn them, however they will go bad by the time I burn them all! The craptcoin market is in the toilet!”
Greg gives Bern his trademark devilish grin.
“What about formaldehyde? Don’t you load that into your turd machines?”
Bern folds her arms, turns away from her lover Greg, and walks upstairs to crap.
“You sing like a dying cow!” Bern Cacca yells out her washroom door at her next-door-neighbours The Midnight Supremes, as she pinches a loaf and then burns it in her fireplace. She has unleashed The Kraken.
Enraged, Gothic Diana Ross directs her bandmates so crank their amps up and engage the Marshall Stacks.
Bern peels out her driveway.
Patrick Oswald Splatt is busy in his Kankakee basement, developing his newest useless invention, when a certain Manteno entramanure rings his bell.
“It’s my new killer-app. Siri-al-Killer.”
“Yeah, what can it do for me?”
“It is a virus, designed to mimic Siri. Only it is seriously plotting to kill you.”
“You’re awesome!”
“Thanks. I know.”
“Yeah. So am I, that’s why I want to hire YOU!”
“Young lady, what can I do ya fer?”
“I need to unload my Turd Vault.”
Awkward silence fills the room.
“Your…what?”
“My inventory’s getting stale. I use newly-formed-turds (NFTs) to create Craptcoin. The market really stinks right now and I need to clean out my product.
Pat giggles. It has been a long time and he feels good to laugh at someone else’s expense again.
Pat and Bernadette make a food baby together:
Pat’s junk email go into circular files across the globe. Meanwhile, the craptocoin market falls further into the bowels of the abyss.
Desperate, Bernadette sends out this flyer. She made it herself:
Bernadette slides into her shack, waves to her husband Peppi high off stinky skunkweed, and runs down her basement stairs, nearly falling down and smacking her big mouth on the concrete. She disarms the gate and the two Turd Machines guarding her massive Turd Vault, only to find her precious turd-collection missing.
“Oh no, where did they all go! I bet it was JB the Turd-Burglar, he stole my crap, I just know it.”
Bern’s smell-phone rings, playing her favorite GG Allin song.
Before she has a chance to answer, she spies Undead Greg sitting in a corner of her basement.
“Hey. My turds are gone, Greg!”
“That’s greeaaat.”
“How is that great?“
“They were delicious,” the undead Greg tells his fartner Bernadette. “These things keep me going. Unlike other zombies, I don’t neeeeed to eat rotting flesh. Recycled food is goooood-forrrr-yooooou and tastes better tooooo!”
MoronicArts 
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