Read Barbarian King Page 24

manicured lawn below his cleated Oxfords. The haze gradually gave way to the sight of the eighteenth green at Augusta. Groping in his shirt pocket he had magically found a pack of Kool cigarettes and had lit one up. He now saw he had a Titleist all teed up. Cigarette hanging from lips, driver in hands, he addressed the ball as he had seen the pros do on TV. Straightaway he was distracted by something approaching in the mist. He had turned to see a golf cart unexpectedly appear from the fog and a man shouting something that sounded like, “Playing through!”

  The cart was headed straight for him running full-tilt-boogie with the former president, IllyBay, in the driver’s seat.

  “Playing through!” the goofball yelled, again.

  In the dream he had responded by shouting back, “Oh no that shit ain’t getting in front of me, again!” He had leapt aside out of the path of that speeding cart, had prepped his driver at the same moment for a mighty swing of his magical club.

  IllyBay was just starting to yell a third time, “Playing...” just as the President’s driver came whistling around. The last word the former president had uttered was, “...through,” before his head was knocked clean off by the mighty strength and immeasurable impact of his thunderous stroke. Head cleaved asunder, Clinton’s coconut went sailing down the fairway even as the headless corpse, blood gushing everywhere, continued on at the wheel of the cart before finally coming to a rest after falling into a water obstacle.

  Without warning IllaryHay had appeared at his side...smiling, fawning all over him, murmuring all sorts of lovemaking grunts and moans.

  His mighty strength had torn her loose from the clutches of that horny toad; the spell that bubble-nosed sex addict had over her had been broken. She was now all his!

  He had then unconsciously snorted the air, his nostrils expanding, his curiosity increasing as he picked up the faint redolence of something that was curiously familiar. So faint it was almost indistinguishable from the rankness of his cigarette. The pale funkiness was at first tantalizing, but then grew more repulsive. The stench was at first almost like the sweetness of a bathed girl perfumed, clean, shaven, but slowly began to remind him of a safari he had once taken to the savannas of Africa and of the tribes herding their water buffalo...and of the colossal amounts of dung that followed in the creatures’ wake.

  “Strange,” he had said in his dream, “what could that stench be?”

  BamaOay had continued to feel the soft caresses of the babe by his side and was pleased by the tender softness of her caressing strokes, but that abhorrent fetor, it continued growing and the bombinate of humongous flies were now coming on the scene. Without warning there was a female’s raspy voice that shook his peaceful setting. He looked shockingly in the direction of the guttural resonance of vocal cords at the thing now by his side only IllaryHay was no longer IllaryHay!

  “Nooooo!”

  No, the female clinging tenaciously had turned into Moose Breath and she was humping the sunlights out of his hairless leg, as if she were a male dog!

  King of the Jackasses

  The Street Wall Times-Journal-Post - U.S. stocks ended significantly higher with the announcement of the President’s disappearance today. Gains pushed The Dow Jones Industrial Average up 1,200 points on the news, or five percent, to a record high. The NASDAQ Composite Index also rose seven hundred points to reach an all-time high. Across the globe stock and commodity exchanges have responded to the news in a similar fashion.

  After some time of almost incoherent dribble and chanting BamaOay was able to deduce a few things about this unusual territory and its primitive inhabitants. All in all, and in other words, nothing about this dimension made any sense, not coming a single bit close to resembling the nature preserve called Cumberland Island. He came to believe that he had travelled through some sort of portal into this dimension...a world widely known by its inhabitants as Hoot’Shaland. It was a land made up of towering snow-topped mountains two of which rose higher than the rest and gave the place its name. Somewhere lay a great ocean, inhospitable, cold, blue and full of serpents. Beyond the range of mountains was a land dominated by demons; sheeple with a different appearance, including bigger heads, no protruding arches that acted as sun visors, were also not cannibals and worshiped the elephant. They had to be the big-headed ones the pointed hat fairy had mentioned in his dream.

  The Little Hoot’Shalanders had been waiting for their king to arrive for a long time, awaiting the day when the prophesies said a weird-looking man would come bearing the mark of their idol, a Jackass. This outsider would unite all the tribes of donkey worshipers and defeat the demons called “Round Heads” and to add them to the tribe’s menu.

  For the moment the President sat on a straw mat in the chamber. The flimsy bark walls rustled in a cool, billowing breeze. The two men were alone; Moose Breath had made an offer to take IllaryHay on a tour of the village. Both she and IllaryHay were now somewhere in the township taking in the wonderful sights.

  Moonbeam paced the dirt floor like a person deep in thought before speaking his mind. Moonbeam's apparel would have satisfied the vanity of any Amazonian people. His tunic was of deer skin with chicken bones sewn into it as a fashion statement. Girdled at the waist was a snake skin belt. He took a seat across from the President exposing his crossed, wooly, brawny legs and revealing his wide feet tucked inside some dry-thatched sandals of coarse, tree bark sporting some Morning Glories hand picked that morning by his adoring wife.

  The conversation between the two would have sounded ignorant and bewildering to many back in the real world, but here their discourse was both ordinary and normal.

  "Let us proclaim you ‘King’ over all the Jackasses! Let those demons feel the shame we have long felt at their hands. All the clans will join you and you will dwell among us, make barbecue, and rule over everything between the mountain peaks and the great sea."

  BamaOay nodded in slight agreement. "There is no nobler land on earth than the territory from which I have originally come, but I must admit that what you say has truth in it. My Kingship in my world was coming to an end. Should I return to that place I would be nothing. Here, if what you say is true I can become master of this world.”

  “Yes, yes, lead us...lead us to war...lead us to victory...lead us to Valhalla.”

  Suddenly, a distant woman’s cry shook the surroundings!

  A-ieee!

  Moonbeam seemed to take no notice.

  “Wait, wasn’t that someone screaming?”

  A-ieee!

  “Yes, it could be I suppose.”

  Screaming was a normal everyday occurrence in this sex-riddled society; just as the constant wailing of ambulance, police and firefighters’ sirens in any major metropolis. The citizenry of Big Hoot’Shaland were used to hearing cries of joy at all hours of the day and night.

  Rushing back into the shanty he returned within seconds in a crouch, ready to strike with women’s driver in hand hunched over as if ready to lash out like a cobra; he had become a barbarian, again. Glaring intently in the direction of the distressed cry he now heard another shriek from the forest followed by a terrible roar. The scream had come from just beyond the wall.

  Moonbeam stepped from his quarters, not for the screaming, but to see what the BamaOay was doing. He caught sight of BamaOay and watched with humor etched upon his face as the barbarian dropped into a stalking crouch of a hunting minx and set about to stealthily edge his way toward the wall.

  Taking advantage of the cover of the huts the President darted from one shack to another in an attempt to escape detection, looking like some kind of fool to Moonbeam and those villagers going about their daily affairs.

  Another panic-stricken, breathless screech rose from the woods, but again there was no response from the villagers.

  BamaOay approached the wall at as rapid a clip as he could, then managed to scramble up the wobbly ladder to the crudely-constructed palisade in his golf shoes. Once situated he looked o
ff in the direction of the woman’s whaling; she was still lost to sight, but sounded as if she were making for the main gate running from the left to his right somewhere in the woods. The President wobbly stood facing the grey and dark shadows looming beyond in the woods. BamaOay’s eyes were slits of dark fire peering out for some small hint of movement...his bang bang club at the ready. Was this another attack of hemorrhoids, or something else?

  The sound of a crashing noise heightened his senses soon followed by a girl screaming, “Demon dog!”

  Emerging from the woods beyond the wall she started running toward the main gate.

  “Demon dog coming!”

  That announcement had finally gotten the villagers’ attention.

  BamaOay quickly noticed that most, if not all, were quickly making tracks for their huts and securing their animal-skin doorways once inside.

  “Cowards,” he murmured to himself.

  The forest was now alive with the noise of breaking foliage. Whatever it was that thing was just behind the lass by the sound of it.

  BamaOay now heard the shouting from the witchdoctor. He looked briefly to see Moonbeam waving frantically for him to come to the safety of his lodge. It was too late.

  Breasts flapping everywhere, terror in her panic-stricken eyes, running with the grace and ease of a gazelle, the distressed cavewoman raced through the