CONTINUING THE FIRST STORY: “HEY DIDDLE, DIDDLE, THE CAT’S ON THE GRIDDLE”

INTERLUDE: SVEN ABROAD

ven stood with one chubby clawed thumb cocked to the melancholy west wind. He had been hitchhiking for seven hours without luck, which wasn't entirely surprising considering that the nearest road was about four hundred miles to the north.

He held a battered backpack in his revoltingly cute little paw. The backpack contained three bags of Lay's Salt and Vinegar potato chips, four cans of Faygo Orange, four entirely amorphous Snicker's bars, two towels, a pair of Army-issue sweatpants that fit no one Sven had ever met, a compass that always pointed to true west-southwest, an Arrow shirt formerly belonging to George Custer, nine Swiss Army knives in various states of disrepair, an orange bikini top (34C), a 1973 Pennsylvania State Fair button, the world's oldest surviving grasshopper, and a copy of the Book of Mormon with every reference to the Lamanites systematically deleted.

Sven paused in his standing motionless to wipe the sweat from his sloping, criminal forehead. Realizing after a moment that wombats do not sweat, he contemplated Nairing his entire body when he got back to civilization, but settled for breathing a prayer to Joe Spooky, the wombat god of evolving sweat glands, instead.

Then he collapsed, landing on his backpack and crushing the world's oldest surviving grasshopper between the Book of Mormon and an incredibly huge and perfectly cut star sapphire that just happened to be lying in the dust behind him. He didn't even stir three hours later when the chartreuse VW van stopped beside him and the driver slung his limp body aboard.

PART TWO: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO CHARLIE DRAKE

X. The Grasshopper's Soul

The soul of the grasshopper stood before a dark and fearsome court. The judge was shadowed and clothed in great stifling robes, but he knew the judge was a grasshopper, too.

The grasshopper had been his forty-ninth incarnation. He knew the deal.

"Gary the Grasshopper..." the judge began, from behind his high bench.

"That's not my name."

"It's good enough. Now, Gary the Grasshopper..."

"No, it's not good enough. It's what that damned little kid called me when he shut me up in that jar with the nympho praying mantis. She kept going on about how I'd never want another woman after her. Was it so wrong, she said, to want a little interspecies companionship?"

"Gary the Grasshopper..."

"Just a little fun before dinner, she said --"

"SILENCE!"

The grasshopper's soul actually stopped talking for a moment, astonished. Then it spoke meekly.

"Could you please stop calling me that? I'd rather be called...Mordecai."

"The name of your rat incarnation?"

"Yeah. That was my favorite one."

"That would be the lifetime in which you single-handedly caused the deaths of fifty-seven thousand humans?"

"Hey, nobody told me it was the 14th century. How was I supposed to know I was bubonic? I was a damned rat, not Louis freakin' Pasteur."

The judge sighed a very arthropodic sigh. "All right, Mordecai. Satisfied?"

"Cool, daddy-o."

"Now, finally," the judge said with some relief, "finally, you have once again been found guilty of wasting yet another life granted you, and are sentenced to yet another incarnation. Mordecai, former rat, formerly Gary the Grasshopper, formerly Garrulous the Skunk, formerly Cindy the Wonder Bat, formerly Ssklettinenker, Greatest of the Lesions on John Candy's Ass, formerly a large green mango, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, you are hereby sentenced by this court to serve your next life in the harshest form possible."

"Mordecai, or, should I say, Hiram Stackpole Trout --"

"A fish? That's not so bad." "No, not a fish. You are to be Hiram Stackpole Trout, a human."

The screams of the newly-christened Hiram Stackpole Trout rang through the Halls of Judgment, utterly annoying the entire Celestial Hierarchy.

XI. Up to the Knee

The big-invisible-tree-frog-like entity stopped in its heroic attempts to split Mrs. Lester from crotch to sternum and cocked its head wonderingly. He could have sworn he'd heard a blood-curdling scream from some apparently non-floral dimension. Since he rather liked having his blood curdled and simply adored non-floral dimensions, he had half a mind to track down the screamer and make him keep screaming for an hour or so. Or maybe a day.

Mrs. Lester, however, had no intention of allowing him to stop. Sensing the pause in the action, she began violently kicking the inside of his colon. When he had begun screwing her, he had thought it funny that with her splayed legs and gaping womanhood she had looked like a big wingnut. Now, three days later, with his huge demonic Old Fella nearly to the bleeding point and her left leg up to the knee rammed up inside his sphincter, he was considering just killing her. Trouble was, she seemed damn near indestructible.

The phone rang, and he seized the opportunity to pry himself from her grip, fleeing in a split-second to his own very floral netherworld before she could make a move to reclaim him.

She sighed. Oh, well, he'd be back, she thought, and began to dig through the piles of TV dinner boxes and K-Y Jelly tubes to find the phone.

XII. The Failure of Tainted Love

Dances with Whores squinted at the small, round, radish-smelling man on his front porch. He reached for his shotgun, then remembered that it was back in his bedroom. At that moment, a large branch fell from the amazingly dead tree in the front yard, landing on and completely redesigning his visitor's near-mint Dodge Dart.

"I could've told you that was going to happen," Dances with Whores mumbled, stuffing an acid-laced Oreo up his nose. "Sorry."

"No problem, Mr. Whores." The man removed his fedora, revealing a huge purple topknot and a tiny birthmark in the shape of Uzbekistan. Dances with Whores stopped squinting and instead opted for staring balefully.

"I sincerely hope that you brought a lot of rum with you."

"No, sir. I'm afraid I didn't."

Dances with Whores would have slammed the door on the horribly clean little man, but the door had rotted off its hinges in the early days of the Apollo program. He settled for grabbing the man's nose and tapping out the drum line to "Tainted Love" on the Uzbekistan-shaped carbuncle.

"Sometimes…I feel I'd like to (DENT! DENT!) run away, I've got to (DENT! DENT!) get away, I want to --" the shaman sang nasally.

"STOP!"

Dances with Whores withdrew his hand with a kind of syphilitic-spider-monkey-like horror. "How did you do that? No one's ever stood up to one of my curses before."

"Mr. Whores, my name is Hiram Stackpole Trout, and I am here to talk to you about The Gospel According to Charlie Drake."

"But how-"

"I'm from Paris, Texas, Mr. Whores." He offered his hand, which did not seem to be attached to anything that was also attached to his body. Dances with Whores took the hand, stood uncomfortably holding it for a moment, and then offered it back to Trout.

"The Gospel According to Who?"

"Charlie Drake."

"Who?"

"Charlie Drake."

"Who?"

"Your mother, you loathsome sack of mucus." Trout pushed past Dances with Whores, but upon entering the house thought better of it and returned to the porch. "Just read this, Mr. Whores." He thrust a small green book at the rattled Indian. It was clutched in the disembodied right hand.

"Here. You forgot this." Dances with Whores gave Trout his hand back.

"Thanks. Damned leprosy…got to stay on your toes." He turned and walked away, dropping fingernails behind him.

XIII. The Entirely Unrelated Tales of Trout and Charlie

The trouble with reincarnation, Trout thought, aside from remembering every single life, was that they didn't bother to send you back in any kind of chronological order.

Trout, for example, had been born thirty-seven years before Gary the Grasshopper. It really screwed your temporal senses, he thought, and suddenly felt a tremendous compulsion to soak his head in a bowl of rum.

Strangely enough, he was the only one who seemed to have this problem. Of the three hundred or so repeat reincarnators -- those who took more than ten or twelve lives to reach Nirvana -- he was the only one he knew who remembered each and every lifetime. In addition to the ones the Judge had mentioned, he had been an albino duck, a California condor, a chameleon, three newts, a ferret, seven species of Galapagos finch, Pamela Anderson's original left breast, a housecat named Abacus, and abacus named Housecat, a Jewish lobster, seventeen vastly similar species of aphid, three sea urchins, a dancing bear, a squirrel from the north side of the Grand Canyon, and, in a grand display of cosmic irony and pettiness, the monkey who had ended the mango incarnation's brief fruity existence.

He'd never been a human, though. Human was considered a very bad assignment, one of those that seemed to last forever. As the world's oldest surviving grasshopper, his life-span had been nearly seventeen months. As a human, he was now thirty-eight years old, and could "look forward" to at least another twenty years. He'd contemplated suicide, but he knew that was a sure-fire way to come back as yet another human. So he made do with what he had.

What he had was Hiram Stackpole Trout, male, thirty-eight years of age, muddy dark eyes, pale skin, and hair that turned from one randomly-determined revolting shade to another every week or two; five-feet-five-inches, one-hundred-ninety-seven pounds, flat of foot and bowed of leg; widowed seven years ago, self-employed for the last five, freelance student of Judeo-Christian knick-knacks. And that wasn't much.

He'd found an amazingly homogenous variety of authentic imitation artifacts. In the process, he had become something of a legend in the field, both for his finely-honed ineptitude and for his fearless determination in thrusting that ineptitude upon the world of Really Serious Archaeologists. Tales were told of Indiana Trout from Gaza to Galilee, from Rome to Rehoboam. No risk was too great for his endless ambition and inexhaustible lack of talent.

Since embarking on this course five years before, he had slowly come to realize that he was never going to make it on his own miniscule knowledge, so he had expanded into the realm of the antiquities black market. At this he was more successful, finally securing his own personal Grail: The Gospel According to Charlie Drake.

Written in 1634 by Charlie Drake, a blacksmith and dentist from Cunderstown-on-Widdlesby, Cornwall, England, the book contained the stories, parables, moral truths, and other such things that Trout, as a religious man, had long since outgrown. Chiefly, however, it contained prophecy, allegedly by Vermaniah, the tag-along disciple. In the forward to the book's first-and only-edition (a single hand-written copy sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury), Drake related the tale (translation by Trout):

"In the year of our Lord 14 I was born the orphan son of a widowed silversmith. He raised me the best he could, being dead and all, but at the tender age of eight I struck out on my own to see the world and live as I could. I was immediately kidnapped, beaten, buggered, and sold into slavery in Galilee.

Having killed my master two years later, I set out again, this time carrying a great sword of bronze that had belonged to my master, who by that time had died. I was again kidnapped, beaten, buggered, and sold into slavery in Galilee. They also took my sword.

This same sort of thing happened twice more.

The fifth time I set out, though, I was a big, strapping man of fourteen, a man of the world with a quick mind and an arsehole of leather. Having decided to use my experiences for the benefit of my fellow man, I became a bandit, specializing in kidnapping, beating, buggering, and selling into slavery in Galilee.

Unfortunately, the first party I accosted was equipped with a rather large gentleman named Simon Peter, who cut off both my legs and kicked me into a ditch so that Christ could pass that way unmolested. As the Lord's Son passed, however, he spit in the direction of the ditch; by divine Providence the spittle fell upon the bleeding stumps of my legs, and they healed cleanly, even without leeches. It also cleared up some rather embarrassing itching I'd been experiencing.

And so I became a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, stumping along behind Him as best I could, and as I stumped I saw visions, usually in the bottoms of wine jars, but often in the very air before me. It is these visions that I have recorded in this book. And then I died, three years after our Lord's ascension, kidnapped, beaten, and buggered.

Then, in the year of our Lord 1634, I chanced upon a thing in the nearby stream of Widdlesby-out-of-the-Swamp that I found most strange. An ancient tuna leapt out of the water at me screaming, 'Vermaniah! Vermaniah!' I fell to the bank in horror as the giant fish willfully gummed my left arm.

When finally I had subdued the leviathan by means of tender words, a loving heart, and a large oak branch lying nearby, I noted that upon the side of the fish were printed words. Having, by the grace of God, grown illiterate by this time, I was nonetheless able to make out the words, 'Charlie Drake'.

Within the belly of the tuna I found a scroll of parchment bearing the testimony I now present to you. I submit that I am Vermaniah, the forgotten apostle, reborn, and that for this reason has the All-knowing God allowed me to bring these words to your sight."

Hiram Stackpole Trout thought it was a lovely story.

XIV. The First Cheesemaker

The moon hung low and yellow over the tiny shack, like a great levitating and highly radioactive ball of Velveeta. Within, a single figure worked feverishly, pausing only to gulp huge mouthfuls of cold milk.

The shack breathed smoke like a Cuban dictator. The smells of charred Colby and Monterey Jack mixed with the rancid stench of curdling goat's milk. The floor was covered in ancient and esoteric runes, circles of mystic power, and nigh-forgotten words of great puissance, all written with a carefully preserved brick cheese of great antiquity.

The smoke grew thicker around the central circle and the frantic summoner, halting her preparations. She stood tall and sang in a sweet, clear squawk.

"Lactosa no intolerencia…" The smoke grew thicker.

"Homogenizeii et Pasteurizeii…" She shrugged off her robe to reveal her pale, thin young body, sprinkled with bruises and pimples.

"Vitamina A, Vitamina D…"

The shack shuddered, showering shingles and slate on the shivering sorceress. Within the circle a form appeared, squat and short and evil-smelling. Ethel Fromage stopped singing and peered into the smoke, trying to discern what she had summoned.

It was composed of very rotten Limburger, approximately five feet tall and nearly as wide. Its beady eyes dripped a pus-like substance down its pock-marked cheeks. As she watched, fascinated, the thing's left hand fell off of its arm and landed in a wet green pile next to its left foot. Then the disembodied member sucked itself into the foot, and new parts grew where it had been.

"Who summons Pestilence?" it whisperingly gurgled. Then it saw Ethel, and the First Cheesemaker of the Apocalypse smiled.

XV. As the Cart of the Dungmonger

What a load of crap, thought Dances with Whores. He pitched the little green book onto a pile of sentient mold that had been growing beside his bed since the Berlin Wall fell and rolled to his feet.

The book, he thought, must be some sort of psychoactive glamour. There was no way that just any old book of prophecy could be so accurate. When he had thought, "What a load of crap," the Gospel According to Charlie Drake, Chapter 23, Verse 13, had read, "Then shall the Dancer with Whores say unto himself that these words are as the cart of the dungmonger." Ridiculous.

Still, he couldn't sense any kind of magic around it, like he could around truly enchanted objects, like, for example, bottles of Bacardi.

The thought of rum reminded him that he hadn't taken a leak in a few days, so he stumbled over the shambling mold and out the back door to the small pond he used as a bathroom. As he stood draining his lizard, he heard the phone ring beside him, which was unexpected, since he had left it back in the living room.

"Hello?" he asked. "Hello?" Then he picked up the receiver and tried it. "Hello?"

"Hello, Mr. Whores."

"Oh, hey, Erica. You ready to sleep with me yet?"

"No, not yet, Mr. Whores. The reason I called was to let you know that you should step away from the water."

"I'm still peeing. Why?"

She never answered, because at that moment a large bottlenose dolphin with an eyepatch and several flipper rings rose up from the scummy water and tased the Indian until he fell to the bank, twitching like an epileptic guppy.

XVI. The Second Cheesemaker

The moon hung low and yellow over the tiny shack, like a great levitating and highly radioactive ball of Velveeta. Within, a single figure worked feverishly, pausing only to gulp down the last few mouthfuls of cold milk.

The shack breathed smoke like a Cuban dictator and his poker-playing buddies. The smells of charred Colby and Monterey Jack mixed with the rancid stench of curdled goat's milk. The floor was covered in ancient and esoteric runes, circles of mystic power, and nigh-forgotten words of great puissance, all rewritten with a carefully-preserved brick cheese of great antiquity.

The smoke grew thicker around the central circle and the frantic summoner, halting her preparations. She stood tall and sang in a smoke-ragged rasp.

"Lactosa no intolerencia…" The smoke grew thicker.

"Homogenizeii et Pasteurizeii…" She hadn't bothered to put her robe back on, so she just stood there, her pale, thin young body sprinkled with bruises and pimples.

"Vitamina A, Vitamina D…"

The shack shook, shattering sheet-glass and slamming shutters. She shivered. Within the circle a form appeared, thin and shiny. Ethel Fromage stopped singing and peered into the smoke, trying to discern what she had summoned.

It was composed of cheap American cheese, approximately seven feet tall and very thin. Its shiny orangey-yellow skin was covered in even shinier plastic, and small pools of yellow oil collected in its extremities.

"Who summons Famine?" it asked in a high, slick voice. Then it saw Ethel, and the Second Cheesemaker of the Apocalypse smiled.

XVII. Kotanga Kutonga's Mourning Party

Erica Mann's husband, Kotanga Kutonga, Lord High Executioner of a Free, Independent, and Liberated People's Socialist Republic, sat on his porch and cried. The President of the republic, who was also a successful pig farmer, was walking by on his way to the mudbaths. Seeing his friend saddened in such a way, he stopped to see what was wrong.

The General of the Army, also walking by, saw the President and the Lord High Executioner deep in conversation and stopped to see what was going on.

Ten minutes later the Army -- both soldiers -- came looking for the General. They stayed to see what was said. They were soon joined by the Admiral and his sailor and the Ministers of Defense, Culture, Agriculture, Water, Water Buffalo, and Space Exploration.

In this way, more and more people were drawn to the house of Kotanga Kutonga. By midday, the entire population of the country was in his front yard, except for the Lord High Mapmaker, who was never let out of his cell.

The tale Kotanga Kutonga told was one of fiery passion and foul betrayal, of lust and deception and a thick black hood. We will not relate that tale here, because it's terribly interesting and would only distract you from the boring yet important parts of the story.

By sunset, the nation had fallen into its mourning ritual, which consisted of eating grubs and playing "Sympathy for the Devil" on small banjo-like instruments until sunrise the following day.

At 0147 local time, a colonel at an airbase just over the border in Cameroon was awakened by the Minister of Taxidermy doing his "Live at Altamonte" version. Annoyed, he launched a single aircraft, which strafed the assembled masses, killing the entire nation, except the Lord High Mapmaker.

XVIII. The Third Cheesemaker

The moon hung low and yellow over the tiny shack, like a great levitating and highly radioactive ball of Velveeta. Within, a single figure worked feverishly, wishing she hadn't drank all the milk before.

The shack breathed smoke like a Cuban dictator, his poker-playing buddies, and their extended families. The smells of charred Colby and Monterey Jack mixed with the rancid stench of very curdled goat's milk. The floor was covered in ancient and esoteric runes, circles of mystic power, and nigh-forgotten words of great puissance, all rewritten again with a carefully-preserved and very worn-down brick cheese of great antiquity.

The smoke grew thicker around the central circle and the frantic summoner, halting her preparations. She flopped down on a stool and spoke in a screeching croak.

"Lactosa no intolerencia…" The smoke would have grown thicker, but there just wasn't room.

"Homogenizeii et Pasteurizeii…" She was cold, so she put her robe back on, concealing her pale, thin young body, sprinkled with bruises and pimples.

"Vitamina A, Vitamina D…"

The shack, bored with alliteration, trembled, raining dust and wood chips on the frightened girl. Within the circle a form appeared, massive and growling. Ethel Fromage stopped croaking and peered into the smoke, trying to discern what she had summoned.

It was composed of very sharp black-rind cheddar, approximately eight feet tall with shoulders nearly as wide. Its warm waxy skin rippled and bulged as it clenched and unclenched its fist, looking around malevolently.

"Who summons War?" it snarled. Then it saw Ethel, and the Third Cheesemaker of the Apocalypse smiled.

XIX. The Fall of the House of Whores

Erica Mann had a look of nearly religious disgust on her well-formed face. She was wearing a very expensive suit specially tailored to show off her legs, buttocks, and breasts, but there was no one to see but the mold, and the mold didn't care.

She was picking her way through the archaeo- and mycological Wonderland that was the home of Dances with Whores. Cobwebs dragged in her exquisite hair; the carpet sucked lovingly at her feet. She was revolted beyond all ability to vomit.

She located the bedroom by the trail of rum bottles, all empty and apparently licked clean from the inside. She kicked one out of her way, and the leather of her terribly expensive Italian pumps peeled back, smoking. She started to walk into the bedroom when a voice stopped her.

"It's gone, you know."

She looked around the dim, musty room and spotted a vaguely manlike shape sitting on the corner of what could have, in some alien culture, been considered a bed. "What's gone?" she asked, reaching for the machete in her jacket.

"The book. Don't bother going for the machete, Ms. Mann." The shape heaved its shoulders and sighed heavily. "And don't ask how I know. It was all in the book."

"You mean The Gospel Acc --"

"Don't say it. You're not worthy."

"Screw you." She whipped out the machete and spun it expertly about her.

"Whatever," said the man, standing and turning so she could see him. She recognized him as Indiana Trout, the famed and leprous nonarchaeologist. He was holding a very impressive-looking gun in his left hand. The right was nowhere to be seen. They stood like statues, each unwilling to give ground; then, the phone rang.

Erica picked up the receiver, keeping a wary eye on Trout, and holding the machete like a great deadly soup spoon. "Hello?"

"Hello, Erica. My name is Murt."

"I thought you were dead."

"Only for tax purposes. Is Hiram there?"

"Yes, he is. He's pointing a gun at me right now. Would you like to speak with him?"

"No thanks. I've got to go torture the old Indian now. Take care, Erica. I'll see you two later."

"Who was that?" Trout asked when she had hung up. He had put his gun away; she did the same with her machete.

"Murt. We've got to go."

"Who?"

"Come on."

"Where to?"

"Paris, Texas."

They left, spinning the tires of her rented Mercedes in the swampy mud of the -- for want of a better word -- "driveway".

Within the house, the mold prepared to leave, burbling as it digested the book and Trout's hand.

XX. The Fourth Cheesemaker

(Author's note: For the sake of brevity, I've decided to skip all that crap about circles and Velveeta and pale thin young bodies and go straight to the halfway important part. I hope you'll understand.)

"Who summons Death?" it said in a smooth, cold voice. Then it killed Ethel, and the Fourth Cheesemaker of the Apocalypse smiled.