Bernadette, You Can’t Handle The Truth!

“Oh my gawd, JB, stop holding your fork like a shovel. You look like someone from the backwoods,” Manteno’s very own Bernadette Moran Cacca berates her Poopy Groupy and secret lover JB the neighborhood turd burglar right in front of her husband and co-entremanure of their portable washroom business.

“Now why are you eating that with your hands?”

“Two words, “Finger foods.”

“D’aaah-is it made from real fingers?” Fellow Poopy Groupy Undead Greg Schneissder asks Bernadette as he slithers over to the table.

“No, horses’ ovaries. That’s what hors d’oeuvres means in English,” Bernadette claps back.

“That’s not true!” JB argues.

“Yes it is!” the confidently incorrect Bernadette argues with the turd burglar in a recursive loop. The family that poops together, stays together.

Yet, communal narcadoodle Bernadette graces the cover of the Manteno Sentinel again for her charity work playing accordion and kazoo show-tunes at the Manteno Optimal Club. Her aunt, slumlord, and shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture Sonya Moran helped get her the press about some upcoming event crap. No wonder people want to yeet her.

Prepare the trebuchet!

YEET-O-MATIC!

Konrad’s Got a Big Ol’ Bag.

Former wrestler, entramanure and charity show-tunes do-gooder-just-for-the-photo-op Bernadette Moran Cacca is busy slurping down her breakfast burritos at the Manteno Cantina, as part of her personal campaign to promote regularity. Last week she bragged to her fan club, the Poopy Groupies, about her constipation.

“Did you know they re-made ‘Yo Mama’s House’ into a full-length feature film?” Bernadette asks the random stranger seated at the table next to her.

“Huh?”

“You betcha. And I’m in it!”

JB the Turd Burglar walks in with Poopy Groupies club president, Aunt Sonya Moran, and Bern’s drunken husband Peppi.

“You’re a national treasure, Bernadette!” JB exclaims.

“Bernadette for president! Feel the Bern!” screeches her aunt Sonya, a shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture.

“You’re no Bernie Sanders!” chuckled a stranger from across the cantina.

Konrad Teirant is foaming at the mouth at his Bourbonnais business.

“This guy is a hot mess. Our janitor called in again! Imma gonna done post his job alrighty.” Konrad Teirant, mad that he can’t keep good cleaning staff, prints out a help-wanted sign to be posted on his Cinema-13 multiplex:

“Now hiring cleaners. $7.50 an hour, experience preferred.”

“Kids these days don’t wanna work!” Konrad whinges as he hangs the signs all over his cinema property and at bill-collection company Credit Recovery Associates (CRASS) in Kankakee where he is in charge of cooking the books, err, working as their Controller.

Bernadette Cacca can’t wait to see her face on every silver screen in the county. She buys tickets for every showing of “Yo Mama’s House,” in every single movie house, excited for the opportunity to take selfies at every single showing, so she can brag “I’m on every screen” in her Fakebook feed.

It’s opening night at Cinema-13. Bernadette sits down in the row right up front so she can see her mug grow as big as her ego.

A rumble takes over her belly.

“Oh crap.”

Bernadette tries her best to hold it. 

More rumbles make waves through her intestines, heaving her flesh increasingly as the minutes pass. She can’t wait any longer, so she runs for the washroom.

“It smells like rotten eggs and death over there,” box office clerk Bratley Teirant says as he points toward the ladies’ washroom at his father’s business. “I’m expecting a mushroom cloud to emerge any second.” Bratley ducks and covers.

Bernadette causes a cinema-wide brown-out at the spectacle, courtesy of her overflow error. The raw sewage floods well beyond yonder and into the electrical system powering the projector, sound system and the point-of-sale software.

Konrad has to think fast and on his feet. He dons his waders and books it to the ladies’ washroom to do doo clean-up dooty.

Mr. Teirant emerges from his outdated washroom carrying a big bag alright – just not full of money.

“What are you doing in there? Can’t you get things right? You childish little man!” his wife, 7 foot tall dumpster clown Madeline Topolla-Teirant shouts at her 5’4” hubby.

“Ha-ha!” Bratley laughs and points at the people who gave him his genes. He’s not very bright either. 

Dirty Deeds Done CHEEP.

Albion, Indiana millionaire, narc-a-doodle and shapeshifting humanoid turkey vulture Sonya Marie Smith Moran cannot connect the dots why her tenants at her low-income apartment complexes across Northern Illinois and Indiana are complaining about her code of misconduct and lack of empathy. She had issued hundreds of embellished and flat-out false lease violation notices, hoping to collect a crapton of funny money from the false flags.

“Why would they expect me to come out acting like a barista?” 

“Because baristas are nice to their customers and generally happy to see them,” her assistant Justin Brown “JB” Powers replies.

“Why do so many residents have cats? I don’t like cats. They should be used as test objects. How do you spell puke?”

“P-U-K-E”

“I thought that was ‘puck’.”

“How do I submit this resident complaint into the company software so HUD can’t see it?”

“Press F4.”

Sonya Presses F then 4.

“Why won’t this go through?”

JB sighs and walks into his office.

“Is this that Area 51 virus again? I just used 50 milligrams of data and already I need to clean out my cache.”

Sonya takes the day off early to go hiking; she climbs up the mountain near the country club in her nighty and poses for photos after she gets to the top of Mount Stupid. Then she heaves up the roadkill she ate for lunch, lightening the load so she can fly back home.

Indiana Fair Housing has caught wind of Sonya’s malarky and therefore sends out one of their own inspectors to do Sonya’s properties, knowing she cannot be trusted to do it right. The Lizzie Borden-like landlord thinks is is a great lessor but she is just a hack.

Sonya escorts the inspector into an apartment for the annual safety inspection. The large kitchen light fixture is out, the room is dark.

“Do you have a lightbulb?” Sonya asks the rightfully puzzled tenant.

“Lightbulb?”

“He needs to see to do his inspection.”

Burrstone flips a switch and turns on another light.

The inspections carry on and just as Indiana Fair Housing’s team suspects, there are many discrepancies. They confirm that Sonya has been issuing false lease violations to extort and harass her tenants. The lead inspector leaves his clipboard with his findings by the office door because Mrs. Moran has already flown the coop for the day.

The craptor sisters Carla and Sonya Moran stalk their prey, hoping to find out who has tipped off Indiana Fair Housing, after they stop for seafood because they are bored of eating roadkill. Then they pee all over the place.

“Cat pee? What cat pee? I don’t even have a cat?” tenant Jim reacts after reading landlord Sonya’s Fisher-Price lease violation posted to his door.

“What is her obsession with pathological lying and pee? Strong odor of cat pee when she followed in the pest control guy. Yeah…no. I am incontinent and she smelled MY pee because that cokehead woke me up and I did not have a chance to change my pull-up!”

“Lease violation because dirt on the floor. It’s winter in the Midwest. Who doesn’t have dirt on their floor?”

JB Powers, Midwestern turd burglar and assistant to Sonya Moran steals pooch poops from Manteno lawns on his break. Suddenly he strikes gold: a poop box. He feels he strikes gold when he pirates the home colonoscopy return box from the unsuspecting person’s porch.

Two blockchain blockheads – Robbie Hurlbutt and Pat Splatt – want to get on the bad money bandwidth bandwagon, so they visit Manteno communal narcissist, bog witch and self-proclaimed “port-a-potty empress” Bern Cacca at her Manteno home to get down to business.

“You’ve heard of food pics, right? Now look at this: recycled food pics!” Bernadette exclaims as she opens her turd-vault gate to the two potential prospectors, walls lined with Bristol Stool charts in different designs which her hubs Peppi had picked up from various dumpster jobs over the years.

Pat and Robbie heave before they can leave and take a powder to Kankakee.  

A wild Undead Greg Schneissder emerges from Bernadette’s basement poop coop, belly full.

“Hey, you’re eating up the profits!”

“That’s amazing, Grace!”

“My name’s Bernadette Moran Cacca, and don’t you forget it!”

A persistent knock is heard at the Cacca residence at 810 Kant Street in Manteno, Illinois.

“JB!” The two poopyheads Bernadette and JB share an embrace.

“Look what I brought ya honey puddin’.”

“Just for me, awww, you’re such a poop god!”

“How much can I get for it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can mine a lot of craptocoin from this preserved poo. No formaldehyde needed! You can save that for your turd-machines.”

“Oh no, I’m not paying for it. You should just donate it to me.”

“How’s work going?”

“Work? Good. We just opened up the Manteno Cantina. I can’t wait for those tips to just rollllllll in!”

“How about the port-a-johns. How’s business?”

“Crappy.”

“I know. How about I give you this box of poop which fell off a truck and we will go into business together mining craptocoins.”

“You got yourself a deal!”

Sonya Moran returns to her Albion, Indiana headquarters on Monday after a long weekend making donuts in the sky. The millionaire scumlord checks her texts, voicemails and emails, deleting everything. Why check your messages when you could just delete them? Ahh…the power of voicemail jail.

Sonya sits down in her loafy chair at her massive cherry desk. Two imposing women in suits show up and open her unlocked office door. 

Sonya gasps.

“Hello, we are from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for our meeting. Are you Mrs. Moron?”

“It’s Moran. You need to make an appointment to see me.”

“Did you get our messages? We sent you five of them. We are here to investigate multiple complaints we received regarding unfair treatment of your tenants.”

Before she has a chance to fly away, the shapeshifting malignant narcissist Sonya transfigures into her vulture form, only to fly into a wall. As the bird-brain lies on her office floor stunned, the investigators look through Sonya’s resident files. 

“Just as we thought. We have all the evidence we need. Here’s our card.”

The HUD investigators drop their card on Sonya’s desk and it slips off, falling onto the floor.

“Pick that UP!” Sonya demands of the ladies dressed for business, who leave in silence.

Sonya’s phone blows up a couple minutes later. A woman sings her message on Sonya’s office voicemail which can be heard on speakerphone.

“Hi! I’m Bernadette. You might know me from my accordion covers for charity at the Manteno Optimal club and a few random walk-on roles for an app-only television series! Well I have a special offer for you! Craptocoin is the hot new thing and ours is sizzling! Call us now!”

“Wait! Wait! Don’t hang up!”

Hoping to score a deal from her favorite swamp witch — niece Bernadette – the president of Bern Cacca’s fan club The Poopy Groupies is too stunned and woozy to answer the phone. 

Meanwhile a certain tenant — television news reporter Kitty Bee — can be seen giggling and dancing, laughing at the fallen tyrant who had previously harassed her.

She had witnessed the entire incident, can you blame her?

Carla & The Candy Factory

“I am so tired of sticking my beak up animal butts to slurp out all the entrails. I want some chocolate! Why does everyone else get to have THEIR ice cream?”

Shapeshifting humanoid vulture Carla Rachella Amanda Medici Moran hatches a plan and flies down to the swamp where her love-child, bog witch extraordinaire Bernadette Moran Cacca swims and devours the living when she’s not burning port-a-poops nor doing charity cover songs just to look good.

“Hey, do you want to go with me to the Egon Spangler Candy Factory in Ohio? That’s where they keep all the dum-dums.”

“No, it’s not nice to call people a dum-dum…” the holier-than-thou Bernadette Cacca snarks as she rejects her mother’s offer and bites the head off a man whom she just ate for supper.

“Fine. Don’t come to ME when YOU want a favor!” Carla squawks as she flies away.

“What an idiot. First Sonya breaks into my apartment, moves some stuff around, then she pees on my bed. Last year she posted a nastygram on my door accusing me of stinking up the floor from cat pee. The litter-box had just been scooped and there was no smell. If she poops out another fake lease violation, I am going to scream. Then I’m gone done report her to the Illinois Fair Housing Department. I’m done with her shenanigans.”

So go the postings on Manteno People and Places. Albion Places and People. Musings Around South Bend. This is not her first rodeo. She owns apartment complexes all across Northern Illinois and Indiana.

“Yeah, last year when the guys came in to do the bug inspection, they broke my shower-head. Then Sonya had gone and issued ME a violation!”

Complaints continue to pour in.

“Come in” Sonya Marie Smith Moran says, beckons, then gets up to close the door.

“Yeah I’m here to pay my rent.”

“Name and apartment number?”

“Edith Smith, apartment B240.”

The tall, slender, shapeshifting humanoid vulture taps away at the keyboard with her talons.

Edith can see from the angle at which she is standing in the tiny, closed office that there is a flash-note on her account. 

Sonya’s assistant, JB the Turd Burglar comes over and looks at Sonya’s screen, craving Evansville brains after a long day stealing turds.

“You’re late.”

“I just got the bill Friday and it’s due today.”

Sonya’s eyes get really big.

“OK I am just gonna stand here and watch this interaction to make sure it’s copacetic.”

“Here is my check. I’d like my receipt.”

“You overpaid.”

“I would like my receipt.” Sonya prints her receipt and Edith walks out the door.

“She did not seem as biligerant and obnoxious as it says on the computer.”

“If it’s who I think it is, she made my last assistant cry,” Sonya projects.

Edith cracks the door back open pokes her head back in. “No that was two assistants ago. That was Erick, and he’s an idiot. He deserves it.”

“Put in that she eavesdrops too.”

Edith walks away, lets the door hang, and laughs in Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dumbs’ faces. “You guys are morons. You need to get better hobbies! Maybe you’d sleep better!” she cries out sarcastically, then looks away, strutting her stuff like she’s living her best life — because she is.

“What’s this?” JB asks as he holds up a blue and white winter hat with the words “Be Nice” embroidered all over it.

“It fell off a truck,” Sonya snarks as she puts the hot hat onto her hard head.

“Time you asked for a refund!” JB jokes as he points at his boss, who does not look pleased to say the least. 

JB leaves his job for the day and drives his Turdmobile over to his favourite singer’s house. No not Gothic Diana Ross and the Midnight Supremes, thankfully for them.

“Bernadette!”

“JB!”

“Hey I got something for ya, honey puddin’!”

JB shows Bernadette the hat his malignant narcissist boss ripped off a tenant and puts it on his communal narcadoodle lover’s head as he walks in the door.

As the two sit on the couch to chill, JB’s former boss – and Bog Witch Bernadette’s other lover – Undead Greg Schneissder emerges from the washroom. Bernadette, the self-proclaimed “piano dominatrix” gets up and gives Greg a stern look. Hey poopy-brown eyes say it all.

“I flushed this time!”

“Did you wash your hands?”

“Don’t nag me, lady.”

Undead Greg spies his employee JB sitting in his seat. “Hey, wanna go over to Evansville and eat some friends? I mean some fried brands. Brains. Excuse me, I’ve had too much of your spicy fecal matter again.”

“I’ll do anything to get out of Manteno.”

After losing all but two dollars in the local mini-casino, Carla soars over to the factory in Northwest Ohio hoping to satisfy her sweet-tooth, only to discover they don’t even make chocolate there.

Hanging her beak in disappointment, she tries to raid a mini-mall ice-cream shop in Sandusky, only to be chased out by the customers grossed out at the sight of a vulture with a six-foot wingspan invading their space.

After doing some fluffy sky donuts across Ohio and Indiana, Carla goes looking for a vending machine. Sadly the only ones she could find take CryptidCoin — not to be confused with Craptocoin.

The shapeshifting humanoid vulture busts the door open of a highway convenience store down in southwest Indiana. “Ah finally, some chocolate ice cream with peaches, licorice and oatmeal raisin cookies! My favorite kind!” Carla thinks to herself as she wolfs down the entire half-gallon. She savors her last bite, only to puke it all up outside.

“Get away bird, or I will call the cops! Stop stealing our crap!” the clerk demands of the bird-brained thief. Carla had tossed her cookies and ice cream out of fear. That’s what you do if you’re a vulture. 

Undead Greg and his buddy-pal JB have just got their fried brains at the annual festival in Evansville, Indiana. JB chows down when suddenly Greg’s plate is swiped by an unseen force. He slams down his fists and starts making off-color remarks.

A certain vulture can be seen in her natural habitat, eating dead stuff off a plate.

“Wow, that’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen all day,” Cierra Glitchmore says to her wife.

“You’re surrounded by people eating brains,” April Fool-Glitchmore deadpans.

Then Sonya empties all over the ground and her feet the caustic waste of her previous day’s feast.

“Have that lady arrested!”

Sonya causes a public freakout, cameras naturally rolling, including those of the Evansville television station covering the brainy event.

“I pee freely. I poop freely. I’m a bird. I go wherever I want to. You can’t discriminate against humanoid shapeshifting vultures! Do you know who my niece is?”

“Umm, never heard of her,” Kitty Bee reports.

“Carla? What are you doing here?”

“And this is history in the making. As you just saw this…umm…human vulture thing just…well…make a mess where she probably should have not gone. Evansville police have got the woman, bird person in custody. Man, it’s been a day. Reporting live for Evansville TV, this is Kitty Bee.”

Lipstick On a Moron

“The Lifft driver you get sure makes a difference. It was like getting upgraded from Undead Greg Schneissder to Gothic Diana Ross!” Sybil Kibble tells her ma JoAnn “JK” Kibble as she sets down her phone.

“The LeBaron done broke down again? Why don’t you trade that thing in?”

“I’d probably have to pay THEM to take it off my hands.”

Sybil exits the house, waving to her mom whose bum is parked square in front of the television in her basement apartment, decorated with her school-bus parts collection. Sybil cares naught about her mother’s decor, as long as her rent check made out to Sybil does not bounce she’s cool. 

The blonde, bespectacled 60-something collections supervisor goes to rage mow, she takes pride in having the greenest lawn in Kankakee. Two angry birds circle above her, arguing as they do donuts in the sky, taking a massive dump on Sybil’s head before she has a chance to cut the grass.

“It’s stalking season!” shapeshifting humanoid vulture says to her wingding sister Sonya, and then they fly over to a certain house in Manteno.

“An absolutely epic weekend in Bradley. Had the ENORMOUS pleasure of reading a terrifically colorful role in a nearly sold-out benefit reading of dear old friend JB’s wonderful play, HOW TO STEAL TURDS, along with a stellar cast (including BRILLIANT CARLA MORAN as my mom) and many visits to the ER for my rear with friends from far and near. Wow. Here’s to—“

“Hi daring!” Carla calls out to her daughter loudly bragging about lawd-only-knows-what to her drunken, sleeping husband Peppi, empty jug marked “XXX” just beyond the reach of his flopped out arm.

“Join me at Kankakee’s Best Low-Budget Apartments TONIGHT, 5:30-10pm!  I’m donating 10 percent of what I make tonight to The Flat Earth Society.”

“No thanks, honey. Not now. Did you wax your chin yet?”

“I’ll go! I wanna ring the bell! I wanna ring the bell! Can I ring the bell?”

“Of course Aunt Sonya. Come on over to my charity auction down at Kankakee’s Best and hear me play kazoo covers of OKLAHOMA!”

“How dawg! Ooooooooooh!” Sonya sings, poorly.

“AND, I am donating an autographed picture of ME to the charity auction!”

“Ooooooooooh!”

“Does this lipstick make my beak look big?” Carla’s bird-brain wants to know. “Just be honest.”

“Maybe they will auction off something to help you with your Mamma McRageFace. Come on DOWN! We’ll have a BLASSSST,” Bernadette exclaims with her tongue hanging out her mouth wide open as if to catch a fly. Then she farts.

JB the nighborhood turd burglar and his lover Bernadette Cacca are swinging their interdigital clasp as they walk down the aisles of Big Deal electronics store. 

“I miss the days when I could just type “format see colon” to wipe out a store’s computer.”

“You can format my colon any day, Justin,”

“That’s Jay.”

“Let’s go find some crap to get into,” Bern says to JB, one of many tools she has on her side.

CRASS Chief Cooker of Books, multiplex owner and Emcee of Moronic Half Assets (MHA) Konrad Teirant begins the bidding for the charity auction. Of course, bog witch Bernadette Cacca had to show up, as she will do anything to look good and cover up her real-life lack of empathy.

“What is that, a TV?” a citizen asks Emcee Konrad.

“Noooo, that’s a signed photo of Bernadette Cacca!”

“Who?”

“I signed it myself!” Mrs. Cacca brags.

“I’m sure you did. Now don’t panic, don’t be alarmed. This here car alarm was done been donated by Mr. Brandon Dixon, owner of Brandon’s Imbecile Machines! Let’s go! Get those bids in!”

“Now here’s a steaming pile of something, this mystery bag was donated by JB!”

Bernadette’s nose wiggles with interest.

“And here, how clever! A bottle of dehydrated water donated by Mr. Wally Green himself! I bet it has no calories!”

Awkward silence fills the room. Very awkward.

“What is this? I bet it’s essential, that’s right a bottle of essential snake oil donated by the Krabalsky sisters Doris and Leona!”

“And last, but not least, two tickets to see a matinee of your choice here at Teirant Cinema-13! Remember this goes to a really good cause! The big bags you help raise will help the manager of Kankakee’s Best Low-Budget Apartments get a raise!” Emcee Konrad points over to his wife and dumpster-clown, Madeline “Madwoman” Topolla-Teirant.

“I mean you got to have solid leadership, and she is really solid! Yuk Yuk Yuk.”

The seven-foot, 350 pound clown is not impressed.

Bernadette begins to sing and play accordion.

Sybil Kibble has been hanging out at a certain coffeehouse on the regular. A month or two ago she had overseen shift manager Carla Rachella Amanda Medici Moran verbally abusing her staff, making fun of them for spilling drinks so she decided to leave a review:

“I spoke to the staff and told them I have their back and that if she does it again, everybody should get together and ask Carla how would she feel if she spilled a drink and we all made fun of her.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Carla put her hands on a staff member while she was using negative humor making fun of them. I let the staff know that I had their back but this time this woman seem to be more aware of by standing up for them because she waited on me right afterwards. 

Well tonight it happened again. I wanted to complain about it but Carla was the only one on staff who was in charge. Oh my God all she did was argue with me.  She said she would hand my comments to Kankakee Police and I would be prosecuted for ‘defrimation of character.’ Nobody should abuse their staff like that. Don’t go there if Carla is working, she’s the shapeshifting vulture with the blonde hair.”

Konrad Teirant tries his best to hustle the donated hunks of junk.

“Last chance to bid on this lovely bottle of dehydrated water, generously donated by Mr. Wally Green himself! Did you know that he was born in Deerfield? It’s their loss because Kankakee is lucky to have him!”

More awkward silence fills the room.

“And sold, to absolutely nobody because nobody bid. Last we have this mystery bag, what is this? If I said then it would not be a secret right? Yuk yuk yuk. I’ll start the bidding at ten dollars. Just ten smackeroos will get you this brown bag of fun!” 

Bernadette raises her hand

“Ooh we’ve got ten, now who will do twenty?”

Undead Greg Schneissder awkwardly hoists his arm.

“Twenty, now who will do forty?”

“ME, PICK ME!”

Okay, 40 from the young lady in the “Peppi’s Portapotties” shirt.

The bidding goes back and forth.

“Two thousand dollars to Greg. Going once, going twice…sold!”

Bernadette raises her arm again.

“It’s too late. Sold to the zombie dude. Now get this thing outta here.”

Undead Greg takes the bag of poo and chows it down. He eats turds to stay alive instead of brains.

“Now pay the lady $2000.”

“Buurrrp.”

Shapeshifting humanoid vulture Carla Moran is busy filling out an order form for Quack Valley Cosmetics, using her beak and blood from a recent carrion meal.

“Hey, you’re getting blood all over it. You just wasted a perfectly good order form, now you should be ashamed of yourself,” Carla’s bird of a feather and fellow shapeshifting vulture Sonya guilt-trips her sister.

“Nevermind!” Carla exclaims with the wrath of Satan. She stirs up a hornets’ nest which attracts the local murder of crows.

Sybil Kibble stops on Kant Street to text, right out front the Cacca homestead where mother Carla and aunt Sonya are bickering on the lawn like three-year-old children.

The massive flock of crows poop all over Carla and Sonya as they caw, caw, caw.

“Now look what you done!”

“Look what you done!”

“I gotta go to work tonight and now I have to shower all over again.”

Sybil Kibble laughs her bum off watching the bird-brains argue who is the biggest moron, then she drives away in her newly-repaired LeBaron giggling and feeling giddy that the nasty coffeehouse supervisor finally got some crap handed to her, errr, dumped all over her.

“You spilled poop all over your shirt! Now go clean that up!” Sybil shouts out the window and then drives away to her home in Kankakee, looking forward to that rage-mow.

Why Does Your Love Hurt So Much, Sonya?

A voice sweet as honey, her striking personality leaves you with that bitter aftertaste and you don’t quite know why.

“I’m Bernadette Cacca! It’s my pleasure to play for your The Manteno Optimal Club musical theater sing-along! I will livestream here on my personal page every Tuesday from 7:30-10 and Saturday from 5-7:30 during the 3 week The Manteno Optimal Club hiatus! The Manteno Optimal Club will be back for Season 2 on Oct 12! Follow me for details! And always on Instaspam @BernCacca (except tonight – TOILET ISSUES) Comment with requests!”

Bernadette Moran Cacca wants to open up an arcade in Manteno. No, not a slot-machine room like “Winnie’s;” rather, a video-game arcade. Hoping to sell more Craptocoin, she will only accept her funny money from the gamers. 

“Just think, my WONDERFUL customers will HAVE to pay in Craptocoin, mined the old-fashioned way by ME!”

“Git-git-git”

“Oh not now, honey. I have business plans to make.”

Butthurt by his wife’s disinterest in his mating call, Peppi Cacca claps back:

“You know, hon, if we can convince the developers at your favorite strip mall to put in that much-needed crossing signal, we can profit by providing the port-o-johns for the job. Let’s say we write a proposal and submit a bid if they accept.”

“My aunt Sonya will tell YOU about all the things I do for this community! I volunteer my time playing multiple accordion covers of popular show tunes for the Manteno Optimal Club!”

“She is also Optimus Prime.”

“Yeah, and Sonya is running for mayor. She knows the owner of that consumer shopping center. Back in 1991, he saw someone going down the road who owned one.”

“What about that Poopy’s you always wanted to open?”

“Stop causing so much drama, Peppi,” Bernadette gaslights her husband.

Bern goes down and applies for credit at the local loan-shark office and gets approved. According to her ex-lover Damien Hurlbutt, sharks eat poop, so Bernadette is not surprised they approve her credit.

“Scary” Barry Reynolds’ former “President of the Office of Belonging” at the Mathew B Johnson School of Intrepid Arts, Sonya Marie Smith Moran, is running for mayor to complete his failed agenda for the college takeover of Albion, Indiana.  

Some of the things Sonya is wanting to do are abolish cats and pitbulls from being allowed in the town limits, open a charter school to be run by the college with city funding and close the nature trails and centers to anyone without a “membership” paid in full with Craptocoin. Bog Witch Bernadette Cacca will collect tolls and eat anyone who refuses to comply. Yum, cannibalism.

She’s planning to do drug raids on houses she’s thinks are drug houses, just for fun. What better to do when you’re bored?

Sonya also wants to abolish the local low income clinic because she’s pro-life. However, she’s running as a Democrat. Since when did common sense matter to a narc-a-doodle, anyway?

Sonya Moran knocks on the doors of all the Albion residents, including the people she’s ticked off most every Saturday at between 1 and 2PM hoping to harass them, since they have blocked her on all social medias and don’t return her letters. She even sends them birthday gifts hoping to con them via guilt into sending her a thank-you card. She really wants hard to win over people who want zero contact. 

“You’re prejudiced against the poor, humans, flora and fauna. You don’t even like cats. Who hates cats?” Kitty Bee says as they laugh at the silly moron running for office.

“I have black friends. I’m not racist.” 

Kitty rolls her ebony eyes and lets the door hit the wannabe politician on the way out.

“Narcs be startin’ somethin’…and it ain’t no picnic,” the broadcast journalist says to their girlfriend.

“I’m walking away from you now!” Sonya snarks as she walks away from another uninterested voter. “Oh hello. Get out there and vote!” Sonya tells another stranger on the street with her usual forced-smile.

“I was sitting there when the log emerged” Bernadette Cacca details her newly-formed-turds (NFTs) on the phone to her lover JB, the neighborhood turd-burglar, then she hears a knock at the door.

“Hi Manager. My daughter wants to play Running in Manteno, where do we put the quarters?”

“You can get some Craptocurrency from me.”

“What?”

“Our games only take Craptocoin. I will gladly exchange! I just mined some now!” Bern says as she wipes her buttocks.

The father waves his hand in disgust as his daughter giggles, the family walking out the joint.

Kankakee junk-emailer, sociopath and petty criminal Pat Splatt will do anything to make a buck. He is hoping to get rich enough to someday implant a diamond in his forehead. 

While leaning against the wall in his chair, scraping the internet for contacts to spam about his payola scheme for content creators, Pat gets a call.

“Hell, Satan speaking.”

“Is this Patrick Oswald Splatt?’

“You’ve got the POS.”

“This is Sonya Moran. I got your email today and want some bots.”

“Hey babe, I can hear the smile in your voice today. I am your moneymaker!”

“Yeah. I want to become the biggest PooTuber on Earth. My name is Sonya Moran. You have heard of my niece Bernadette Cacca right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“She was on the front of the Kankakee Sentinel. You DO live in Kankakee County, right?”

“What can I do ya fer?”

“I am running for office here in Indiana. I want to make a channel where I make videos where I pay my BIGGEST fans just for subscribing and watching. But I don’t people to think I am bribing them. Just like my EXTRAORDINARY niece Bernadette, I want people to SEE the acts of charity I am spending my busy day doing. Why be nice to people if nobody can see it? I do a LOT for this community.”

Pat begins to nod off.

“With your assistance, we can build a botnet to pad my followers, and argue with ANYBODY who disagrees. Hello?”

Snoring is heard.

“Hey babe, I think you’re hot.”

“Oh hey babe. What’s that about getting together?”

“Just seeing if you’re paying attention. I want to hire you to make a network of pretend followers so that real people will also look at me give all that money away, and do good deeds for the community. I am running for mayor here in Albion, Indiana and I intend to win!”

“You sounds like my kind of person!”

Sonya Moran is really on a mission to bully her residents out of her complex at Prairieland Country Club Apartments For the Disabled down by the Albion mills into leaving, because she is a complete and utter troll who has zero empathy. Compassion, what’s that? 

Complaints have been pouring into the Department of Housing and Urban Development that she has been issuing lunacy letters falsely accusing her low-income, disabled tenants of violating their leases. How would she feel if she were in their place? I feel confident some of the people would gladly trade their chronic pain and bladder problems with her so they can have better lives. Oh, and she hates cats.

Sonya knocks on her residents’ doors at 9:30 AM to remind them that she is running for office, saying it would be unacceptable to vote for someone else, because she plans to own the housing committee. Must be a thing to live in fear. After all, she is a wussy little narcissist. 

Jade Utica is not having any of Sonya’s crap. After getting unwanted knocks on her door, waking her up after a rough night battling her brain disease, she is not about to sit down let the so-called “Do-gooder” bully her into homelessness. After chatting with her neighbors about the junk her landlord left on her door, she finds out she is not alone.

Meanwhile, Sonya’s PooTube channel has been getting thousands of followers and commenters every day, thanks to Pat Splatt. 

“I just know I am going to win this election,” Sonya says to her campaign donors at her rally. “If they don’t cry for me, I will give them something to cry about!”

Bernadette Cacca and her Poopy Groupies cheer in conformance.

Front: Bern M Cacca, Back: JB the Turd Burglar, Sonya Moran, “Undead” Greg Schneissder, Peppi Cacca

Undead Greg Schneissder gives a speech:

“This is the best thing. I have constantly and continuously been moved and inspired by the inventive, communal ways citizens found during the darkest days of the lockdown to seek out the light, keep connecting. 

The thought of two people, across time and place, creating one thing: so beautiful to me, on its own. But to see it come together, in one room, the beautiful moment, both optimistic overture and grand, grand finale. What a lovely symbol of perseverance, of hope fulfilled. What a metaphor. What a tonic. What a reminder. I was unprepared for how moved I would be by this story.

The only thing *not* at all surprising about it? That Sonya Moran was involved. So let me also love on her for a second: in that weird way that all of Albion is all just a small town after all, I walked into a bar this past Friday, where Bern was celebrating a friend’s birthday, surrounded by the beautiful, lovely, joyous people that she seems to attract (birds of a feather and all that), and she gave me THE. BEST. HUG. And a greeting that made me feel like the only person in the world. 

A friend of hers asked if I were an actor or singer, and I think I mumbled something like “I wish.” What I should have said, “No, but when I am in the company of Sonya, I am a STAR.”

As people watch Greg’s gushing, comments pour into Sonya’s PooTube channel:

“You need to remove your twitter post about my friend. Especially when you were selfish enough to do what you did and then block her. Because she is the only person who matters! Look at me, I’m a troll who crawled out from under my bridge because I need to get a hobby and I hate myself.. I don’t appreciate the way you treated her.”

The cheers of support from Sonya’s bootlickers are interrupted by some breaking news:

“Kitty Bee reporting live from Albion breaking news. Indiana officials and a spokesperson from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development have accused Albion landlord Sonya Moran of discrimination and harassment. Residents have complained that Mrs. Moran has been accusing them falsely of violating their leases, failing to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and even threatening to evict them. We will bring you more news as it develops. Back to you.”

TO BE CONTINUED