On the Perils of Ingesting Xanth

or

Weasels and the Homing Instinct

Keith had been in the bar for, oh, about thirty or forty weeks, he guessed. "Heck of a foncerence. X windows my love."

Ken was in much better shape, having managed to consume all the nachos from the neighboring table in a nose-wrestling match with a local cabbie. "Say, Keith! Look at those two foxes!"

Keith, who had licked about three toads too many at a vendor hospitality suite earlier, and who had been getting free drinks from several local girls vying for his attention, finally managed to reorient himself in the indicated direction. "Where? Who? Ya mean that BIG guy wif the fro???"

"No, man. Over THERE! See, they're MOVing, man."

"Far out. How do they do that? HEY! YOU FOXES! GITOVERHEREASEC!"

"Hey, be cool, dude."

The "foxes", after conferring a moment, grin and head towards Keith. Ken's mouth hangs open. Keith slaps a toad across Ken's tongue. The "foxes" arrive, all smiles.

"Hey. I'm Tony and this is Daryl. We're in town from Atlanta. Where are y'all from?"

Ken moans, starts batting at something on Tony's ear, and Keith stands up suddenly. "Sorry, y'all. I was talking to those OTHER chicks over there. But my friend Ken, here..."

"Hey, not me, I'm a happly married dude, ya know? I mean, I got a wife and a few goats...kids, I mean, to sink off the coast of Maine, uh, what WAS that, Keith?" Ken ceases batting Tony's ear, and begins pulling lint from his bellybutton, which he drops into the picante sauce. "Darn bat guano's everywhere...", he whispers ominously.

Tony's eyes go wide. "Hey, WOW. Like, where'd you get that toad, man?"

Daryl huskily whispers, "We haven't done any bufe in a while, babe. Wanna head outside?"

About this time, Keith notices explosions nobody else seems to see. He jumps up, knocks Tony & Daryl to the floor, pushes Ken into the trucker at the next table, and yells at them to get down. Grabbing a fire extinguisher, Keith begins to hose down everybody around, screaming all the while, "Ware the nukes! Ware the nukes!" and "Die, mommie skum!"

The trucker, who didn't realize Ken was pushed into his lap, is holding Ken about a foot off the floor by his ears. Ken is imploring, "hey, momma, I mean, like, snot MY fault, I mean, like, that cabbie just flew away and the starburst overdrive threw me here!" The trucker has one of those "you gonna die" looks in his eye. Suddenly Ken screams, "SNAKE!" and stares at the trucker's lap. The trucker laughs, looks down, and sees a 6 foot python crawling up the chair and over his thigh. He feeds it to Ken, who doesn't mind as the snake seems to grok him.

"You stop that, you, you, bully!" Daryl plants a 3" spiked heel in the trucker's belly. With an "oof!", he drops Ken, who begins contentedly gargling the Spanish National Anthem, while downing yet another Dos Equis.

Tony, meanwhile, has had her blouse ripped off by a local macho man, who finds to his chagrin that Tony is, indeed, a woman. His wife and Tony each grab an arm and dump him into the lobster tank. Grinning hilariously, they march off arm in arm to buy each other a drink. An especially large lobster bites Mr. Macho on the nose and won't let go. Mr. Macho, after about 30 seconds, realizes he is underwater, and comes out of the tank coughing and gagging, still with a lobster nose. Many eyes follow Tony to the bar, but nobody seems too interested in actually trying to get too close.

Keith, meanwhile, has lost the fire extinguisher and evaded the people he soaked. Standing on the bar, keeping the bartender at bay with a crutch, he ignites a beehive hairdo on a Tammy Faye Bakker clone, cackling all the while about sending the evil aliens back where they came from.

The officer knocks the proferred shoe from Keith's hand. The girls are edging towards the ladies' room. Without a word, Keith and Ken are dragged from the bar, thrown to the floor, and picked up by their feet. The cops carry them to the hotel atrium (this is the 2nd floor), and toss them down onto the concierge's desk, where they land with a brisk SPLAT!.

"Where's our wives go???", they bellow. Everyone looks at the ceiling, and says nothing.

Keith and Ken, too tanked to have been hurt, try to get a date with the concierge, but she wallops them in the head with a passerby, and they collapse. Two days later, they awaken in the Atlanta City Jail with mammoth hangovers. "Where are we?", Keith groans.

"And why?", Ken muses aloud.

"Rats. How'd we get back here? Does this mean we missed part of the conference?", Keith intoned while shaking his head back and forth gently, trying to get some infantrymen out of his ears without annoying them.

"And why?", asked Ken smugly, knowing the armored divisions currently manouvering in his sinuses could take out the guards at any time.

Everyone just stares and says nothing. Perhaps it's the toad sticking out of Keith's shirt. Perhaps it's the fact that Ken is wearing Tony's skirt.

"Among others," smiles Daryl, "toadyism, cross-dressing, and shooting a fire extinguisher in an inhabited dwelling without a license, which is a felony with you being from out-of-state and all."

In preparation, they go to Junoir's Fancy French Fried Cuisine and celebrated by ordering everything on the menu.

Last updated: 17 Aug 1994

Copyright 1991-1994 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved.

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