Don’t Make the Mistake of Driving People Batty

Bernadette Cacca has the voice of an angel and the soul of the devil.

Peppi Cacca has the voice of a daemonic troll.

“I got a new gig! And it’s a national one!” Manteno communal narcissist Bern Cacca exclaims to her sociopathic husband and entremanure Peppi, mouth wide open as if to catch a fly.

“Lemme guess…your aunt got you on the front page of the Kankakee Sentinel again.”

Nope.

“More charity shows to make you look good, pretending to care while you don’t? You’re a really good actress,” Peppi emphatically tells his wife.

“Yeah, I know. Not this time.”

“Another recurring walk-on role for a show you can only see on one certain app?”

“Nope. This one is bigger!”

“I don’t care but tell me anyway, I have skunk-weed to smoke after my date with the bottle. Then I have to go harass our next-door neighbors.”

“Out of Warranty Experience hired me for their robocalls! Everybody in the nation will hear wonderful ME tell them their car is out of warranty!” Bern says with glee, then rips a fart. “Mmmmmmm. I love that smell.”

The sun has just gone down. Peppi pounds on the air vent cover to remove his dope from the stash he hides in the duct, rolls up a skunky joint and crawls outside.

“Git-git-git-git-git-git” the clowny Peppiwise calls from the manhole down in front of The Midnight Supremes’ black Victorian Gothic home next door.

“No thanks, you can keep your candy” says Gothic Diana Ross toward the sound coming from the gutter as she completes her late-night stroll.

A skunky stench emerges from the drain, but not from poop. This is a water drain.

“Git-git-git-git-git-git.”

“Do you have something better to do? I’m not interested and never will be.”

Peppi’s ego deflates as Gothic Diana continues to ignore his plea for attention and goes inside and starts band practice.

Gothic Diana Ross and the Midnight Supremes get ready to play, beginning with the number “Stop in the Name of Death.”

“Check-check, 1-2-1-2. Six Six. Why is this mic not working?” a frustrated Gothic Diana asks her cover band.

Diana opens up the battery cover. “Dead as a doornail.”

“Why don’t you bury them?” Gothic Flo jokes.

“We should have a funeral,” deadpans Miss Gothic Mary.

As the trio begins the dead batteries’ funeral rites, their ceremony gets interrupted by a phone call.

“Hey” answers Gothic Diana, putting her phone on speaker, hoping the band is getting called about a new gig.

“Don’t make the mistake of driving without a warranty…” the robocall commands. “This is the final call before we close the file. Press one to speak”

Click.

“I’ll press you, stupid moron!” Gothic Diana exclaims.

“She sounds familiar. Who is that?” Gothic Flo asks.

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Diana replies.

“Hey, methinks it’s that actor lady next door…the one who owns a port-a-potty business with her husband. Hey Mary, what’s her name?”

“Bern Cacca. She burns poop in their fireplace.”

“Ohhh, that’s why we smell her crap. Does she think it does not stink?” Mary jokes as the girl group erupts in laughter.

Gothic Diana walks outside her home to go for a brisk walk. She hears a sound off in the distance: “git-git-git-git-git.” 

“Oh no, not Peppiwise again,” Diana says to herself as she passes by another rain gutter.

The 5’10”, slender beauty in the black dress gets another cell phone call.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t make the mistake of going without a warranty…” 

Click.

“I’ll get a warrant alright, for her arrest!”

Gothic Diana walks over to the house of her Manteno neighbor Bern Cacca to give her a piece of her mind. However there is a line of angry neighbors queued around the street wanting to also have a word with Mrs. Cacca. They knock, to no avail.

“Git-git-git-git-git” emerges from the sewer drain.

“I don’t want to litter, however I have no choice” Diana says as she goes to drop the leaking, dead batteries from her microphone into the nearest gutter. Before she has a chance, Bern comes a-running.

“Git-git-git!” sounds Peppi’s mating call.

“Oh I am here, honey!” an attracted Bern Cacca says as she runs to her hubby hiding out in the sewer, jumps in and continues persuit.

Plop. “Oops did I do that?” Gothic Diana thinks out loud as she drops the dead AA Imbecells into the drain.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Peppi exclaims, barely dodging the battery acid.

Needless to say, Bern and Peppi’s romantic moment was ruined.

The crestfallen Caccas retire to their shack, but don’t bother to shower of course. After all, the couple that stinks together, stays together. As the King and Queen of the plastic throne drift off to sleep, sirens grow louder, and a knock is heard at their entrance…

Women, Wine and Song

Pop sales are slow. After brewing up some new ideas, Wally Green decides to it’s time promote his new wine line. Wanting to find a pretty spokeslady (or three) to help sell it, he calls up his girlfriend Bernadette Cacca. Butt, her smell phone keeps sending him to voicemail jail, so he calls up another act.

“It’s now Winesday, and I’m ready to get corkin’.” Wally announces.

“Introducing, Gothic Diana Ross & The Midnight Supremes!

The Manteno siblings open up with their number “You Can’t Hurry Death.”

Diana spies her number-one-stalker: vulnerable narcadoodle, Elvis impersonator and store clerk Robbie Hurlbutt.

“Oh snap, what’s he doing here? Doesn’t the store know I have a restraining order against his bum?”

Robbie goes right up to the promotional stage, and winks at the girls. “I got a hunka hunka burnin’ love for yoooouuu!” Robbie sings and starts dancing like a fool. The sisters put down their guitars and stop playing.

“Get bent, Robbie.”

Diana and the other two talented ladies shoo Robbie away, waving their hands like magic wands.

“But he works here, Diana!” Drugstore owner Wally Green says to the trio, making excuses of course. “Now make it rain, ladies!” Wally loves money almost as much as he does pretty ladies, just not their safety or well-being.

Robbie dances his goofy little self over to the wine cooler and shoves every single bottle into his little green shopping cart.

“We have an ICUP at the register. ICUP at the register.”

Before Robbie has a chance to whip out his ID, he has a clean-up on I’ll-Pee.

“Don’t get locked in the washroom!”

“Time to wash those blue suede shoes, now.”

“Elvis has left the drugstore.” After sharing a laugh at their creepy stalker’s expense, the black beauties start singing and playing their gothic cover tunes again.

“Stop! In the name of Death…before you break your crown.”

Meanwhile Wally assists Robbie cleaning up the aftermath from his sprung leak, because he’s good at losing slip-and-fall lawsuits.

Go, Bernadette!

“Oh no. Not her again. Hey, let’s sit down and hide out over there.” Before Gothic Diana Ross & The Midnight Supremes have a chance, their next-door neighbor Bernadette rips a big one, the sulphuric stench drowning out the delicious coffee aroma.

“Bernadette, you farted in my chair. That’s my favorite chair! Lick it clean.”

The three songbirds cackle in unison and wave her away, butt, the queen of the plastic throne Bern keeps her bum firmly planted in the fragrant coffeehouse chair, wishing she had a match.

Waiting by the barista bar for their iced caramel lattes, the Gothic Boss Ms. Ross and her sisters approached by a slender, 5’4”, 60-something blonde woman wearing cheater glasses.

“It’s smelly out there, take this.”

“Do I know you?” Diana asks the stranger.

“No, I’m Sybil Kibble. I’m in here every night and I got this picture from some weirdo named Jen. They said they liked your music and felt bad about some smelly morons next door to you. You’re from Manteno, right?”

“Thanks! This is nice for a change.”

“Jen said to keep it for good luck. Maybe it will ward off Barn-o-dette or whatever the heck her name is.”

After arriving home from the Bourbonnais Buckstars in their black 1988 Chrysler Conquest, the ladies go inside to practice their instruments. Gothic Diana Ross takes a break, walks outside to put out the waste bins, and spots her next door neighbor Mrs. Cacca standing nearby.

“Oh no. Eew. I hope she doesn’t bother me for the zillionth time,” Diana says to herself. She pulls out the talisman given to her by Sybil and puts it in her front jacket pocket.

Instead of running up the stairs of Diana’s slate Victorian house to verbally spam her about the Manteno Cantina charity crap only done to look good on the outside, the communal narcadoodle Bernadette instead waves at a bus passing by, hoping its smiling eyes would react to Bernadette’s wide open grin as if to catch a fly. 

In turn, the bus loudly “faaaaart-faaarts” like the truck from the American Freight commercials, one of the few things more annoying than Bernadette Moran Cacca.

Robbie Hurlbutt Thinks Gothic Diana is Supreme!

Gothic Diana Ross, lead singer of the Manteno band The Midnight Supremes, permanently yeeted her stalker Robbie Hurlbutt from her concerts. Since the self-proclaimed Number One Elvis impersonator Robbie Hurlbutt cannot creep his crush in person – or summon her using a Luigi Board) – he kisses her poster so hard slobber wets through the image of his wishful thinking, causing it to flop down onto his bedroom carpet.

I’m sure Diana doesn’t mind.

Somebirdy Needs Better Hobbies.

“Why are you wearing THAT? What is that thing in your nose? That looks awful!” a creepy – yet familiar – voice echoes throughout the the eaves of Gothic Diana Ross & The Midnight Supremes’ Manteno home, annoying the poor ladies who are just sitting down on their patent leather chairs minding their own business. Their stalker is back.

Wanting to find the source of their pest, the trio of slender black beauties climb atop the roof of their slate Gothic Victorian mansion, and briefly take in the view of their town. Illinois is full of small towns. This is one of them.

“Why is that stupid vulture asking us dumb questions and pooping all over her claws?” Gothic Diana Ross asks her bandmates about the bird trespassing on their grass.

“It flew into our wall today. Twice.” Gothic Mary deadpans.

A large nest is spotted, hidden inside one of the spires.

The shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture hurls more insults at the talented sisters.

“Your hair is full of rats’ nests! You need a wax! When’s the last time you had a shower?”

“That looks like Bernadette’s mom!” Gothic Flo tells the Ross siblings.

Gothic Diana has had enough. She looks Carla Rachella Amanda Medici Moran dead in the eye, only for the stupid bird to go into defensive mode. Carla pukes up all over the Ross sisters’ lawn. Feeling egged on, Mrs. Moran tries to make herself look bigger by extending and flapping her wings as if they were fists ready for a fight. She looks like a confused chicken.

“Here’s your rat’s nest!” Gothic Flo says as she chucks Carla’s second home clear across Kant Street into next Tuesday. The ladies don’t like squatters.

Carla flies up onto the roof, and starts making demands. She clearly has no concept of boundaries.

“NOW I CAME HERE TO TEACH YOU GUYS A LESSON! SEE WHAT YOU DID? NOW I DON’T HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE. YOU SHOULD BE THANKFUL FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME AND RESPECT YOUR ELDERS!”

“I’ll show you respect!” Gothic Diana Ross knocks the angry bird straight into the ground with a single punch, Carla’s long, pointy beak stuck straight into the grass. The inverted bird’s long, dark tail sticks straight up with her cloaca for all the neighbors to see.

The ladies share a deep belly laugh, and beckon their next-door-neighbor, the equally moronic Bernadette Moran Cacca to pick up her mother.

A Very Moronic Make-Under

It’s Sixth Grade Graduation time in Manteno sometime during the early 1990s.

Gothic Diana Ross’ mother starts a feud with her, because she had watched a few too many talk shows and wishes her gothic daughter would wear boring basic clothes like her.

“Why don’t you dress like all the other girls?”

“I am not the other girls. I am me.”

“Why are you wearing THAT? Why don’t you wear your NICE shirt?”

“I could go naked…”

“You’re not helping!”

“Whaddya mean I’m not helping?”

“You’re not going to Sixth Grade Graduation looking like THAT!

Wanting a chance to look good on film, Mrs. Diana calls up the Morans next door at 810 Kant Street and asks if Diana can borrow Bernadette’s clothes. They end up needing a massive hem, so Mrs Diana safety-pins the blue gingham dress and sends Diana out against her will wearing Bern’s massive un-gothic clothes. Bern goes to sling her arm around Di for the photo, and the rightfully embarrassed Diana shoves Bern’s arm away. Not to be dismayed from getting her way, the spoiled little brat Bernadette sneaks behind Diana and rests her arm on her right as Mrs. Ross snaps the photo.

Five Things Bernadette Cacca is Good At

Daily writing prompt
Share five things you’re good at.

Nevermind me – let’s talk about the Manteno, Illinois’ very own Bernadette Moran Cacca – a communal narc-a-doodle.

She sings with the voice of an angel and has the soul of the Devil.

A proverbial wolf-in-sheep clothing, looks are deceiving.

Bernadette does charity work, pretending she cares, just for the photo opportunity.

A port-a-potty proprietor, she burns the port-a-poopies in the fireplace after lighting her farts to spark the fire. She excels at gaslighting in more than one way, because you know, she’s a narcissist.

She is great at pooping and does it a lot.

A master of her domain, she is a swamp witch who is great at luring in unsuspecting men so she can have a Donner dinner party for one.

She excels in annoying her next-door neighbors Gothic Diana Ross & the Midnight Supremes burning poops and practicing her kazoo cover tunes. She is secretly pathologically envious of her neighbors because they are talented and beautiful. Meanwhile she continues to pump out sludge like this:

Bernadette M Cacca
YOU’RE THE BEST, Undead Greg! Great to see you!!! 
Undead Greg:
Oh my! This is so much fun. Bernadette Cacca is a goddess. We’re taking over this joint! Thank you for all the great music Miss Bern.
Bernadette M Cacca
You’re the GOAT!!! 
Undead Greg:
NO YOU!

Satan Unveils His New Welcome Sign.

As Hell’s Chief Operating Officer Satan unveils his newly procured “Welcome to Hell” sign — shown off by visiting intern Gothic Diana Ross — in-processing clerk for the newly damned Lucy Furr looks at her boss with visible dismay.

“Isn’t our new sign just peachy?” Satan asks Lucy as Diana continues to model by it, nearly getting hit a baker’s dozen times by the devil’s not-so-careful use of the pulley system.

“Couldn’t our money be better spent on improving working conditions? Hiring more people? Fixing the toilets?” asks the bully known for her tormenting of an autistic 20-something on their college trip to Italy.

“You have your own heated place for the rest of your life. Try being more thankful for the things you have,” Satan passive-aggressively demands of his clerk while sporting a devilish grin.

Meanwhile, communal narcadoodle Bernadette Cacca is still waiting to poop. All the other washrooms in Hell are closed for maintenance.

The Midnight Supremes: Stop, In the Name of Death!

Gothic Diana Ross and The Midnight Supremes sing a number during their “Stop in the Name of Death” tour. Diana tosses a feather boa into the audience. Her obsessed fan and vulnerable narcadoodle Robbie Hurlbutt knocks over a bunch of people to try and catch it, only for it to land in the hands of someone else: Robbie’s boss Wally Green.

Peppi Wants a New Drug

“Been drinkin’ again?” Manteno narcissist Bernadette Cacca asks her husband, sociopath and portapotty co-proprietor Peppi Cacca.

“Can you blame me?” Peppi replies as he takes another moonshine swig from a jug marked “XXX”. 

“I want a new drug,” Peppi thinks to himself, “one that won’t make me heave.”

Peppi Cacca knows crap is king, after all he and Bern own a portopotty business. Bored with binge-watching the Crap Me Outside Girl rapping on TakTik, Peppi starts looking for videos on how to get high on uTube. After scrolling through pages of unpredictable results, Peppi sits through a four minute commercial and watches a video filmed at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

“Plutonium tastes sweet” the presenter announces. 

Intrigued, Peppi asks YooHoo Answers in their Qanonsense section if Queue can tell him if snorting Plutonium can get him high. After all, Peppi believes everything he reads on the Internet.

Peppi goes to Wally Green’s and Bucketheads looking for plutonium to buy, but comes up empty. No 11 per cent off sale for him, no buy one, get one 50 per cent off (but never free) either.

Driving home, Peppi gets stuck at a light at the intersection underneath the I-57 interchange. Under the bridge he spots a wild Leona Krabalsky, the Kankakee town troll.

Peppi drives his crapmobile to the underpass, going through the red stoplight because he thinks the laws do not apply to him. Peppi rolls his window down and yells his mating call “git, git, git” to Leona. 

“I don’t want you and I am not for sale!” the elderly hag growls.

“You got some anything good?” Peppi clarifies wearing his turd-eating grin.

“I just might. What’s your pleasure?”

Peppi and Leona shake hands and Peppi peels out after chucking the brown paper bag into his backseat. Peppi rushes back home to meet wife Bernadette at their Manteno shack for dinner.

Bernadette and Peppi sit in their bedrooms, eat their Hardlees burgers and fries and belch a bunch of times. Bern lifts her leg and farts.

“Ahhh, that was a good one,” Bernadette says with glee.

Peppi takes his newly discovered rocks out the paper bag he bought from Leona.

 “Mmmmmmmmm…this is sweet” Peppi thinks out loud as he munches on the pebbles. 

Then Peppi pukes up his dinner since he was drunk. 

Bernadette walks in on Peppi tossing his cookies in their washroom.

“Hey, what’s up?” a nosey Bern asks her beloved Pep.

“Blecccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhh” Peppi repies into the toilet. 

“What were those cat turds doing in your bedroom? I need to burn them. Let me light a fart first to spark the flames and then I will watch them burn in the fireplace.”

Bern watches the glisten and pop, all aglow, gleaming like a twinkle in Bern’s eye. “Ooooh, that smell.”

Disgusted that Leona sold him fake Plutonium, Pep cooks up a way to make some cash.

Bern and Pep team up to make a mumble rap video. Pep raps and plays a single snare drum which fell off a truck, while Bern sings show-tunes while playing her accordion she uses to trick people on the internet into thinking she cares about charities.

The video fails to get monetized.

Bern makes a TakTik viral video lighting her farts and burning poopies in her fireplace which her fans adore. Then Bern runs out of poops because the neighborhood turd-burglar JB Martin stole them all.

Bern makes a collection of her own poops to burn since she needed more, and makes more TakTik videos, becoming an “influencer.” Companies offer to mail Bern free toilet paper in return for her becoming their brand ambassador.

As Bern logs into accept the free toilet paper, the Caccas’ fire alarm goes off from the unattended poopies burning in her fireplace.

The Manteno Fire Department rushes over to the Caccas’ house. 

Bern screams with excitement when the Waaaaaah Machines wail and fart as the firefighters rush to their house to put out the fire, clapping as they arrive.

“Hi guys, I really love those fart noises your fire engines make. Can I get one of those keen blow-horns for my house? I think they will go great with my accordion routine I do for charity and the Turd machine I mounted on the side of the shack to shoot at Gothic Diana Ross.”

“Shut up and leave, your house is on fire,” the firefighter warns Bern as the two Caccas walk away and watch their house burn, along with the poopies.