The darkest secret of Piggleyland

 

     I woke up to an enormous roaring wind and screaming from the passengers on all sides of me, but it wasn’t the emergency exit. The window next to the pale man who had been sleeping next to me was entirely broken out, and loose objects were flying all around me in the air and whisking out the window; plastic cups, in-flight magazines, cellophane bags containing three miniature pretzels each. The oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, and the stewardesses were staggering around.

   I noticed, suddenly, that the pale guy in the window seat was holding a red and yellow-polka dotted Mauser pistol. He was also holding onto his seat and struggling to keep from being sucked through the window, and now that his face was clearly visible, I could see that he wasn’t just pale, but bright white, except for his nose, which was bright red. He was a Nazi Klown. He had used his gun to shoot out the window, probably accidentally, because clowns are clumsy.

     I got hit in the head with a small plaid carry-on bag, but it bounced off my head and stuck in the window like a cork. There was still a lot of noise from the screaming passengers, but the wind died down. The carry-on bag crumpled slightly, but it looked like it might hold for awhile. The Nazi Klown sprang out of his seat, across me and the kid with the earphones, to land in the aisle, and screamed:
     “Do ve haff your attention? Atchung! You vill not schtruggle und you vill follow mein orders und nobody vill be hurt! Zis is der hijakking, und ve haff  kontrol of zis plane!”

     Other Nazi Klowns emerged along the aisle of the plane, waving weapons. The pilot and copilot, colorful guns in their backs,  were marched down the aisle to the back of the plane, and though I couldn’t see all the way to the front from my economy seat, I was pretty sure that there was a Nazi Klown in the cockpit. The plane banked sharply to the right, changing course.

     “Ve are goink to der top-schecret location but zere iss no daencher unless you rezischt. Zere vill be schielenche, und no tokking.”

     The Nazi Klowns were shedding the trenchcoats and hats that had concealed their colorful outfits. Hundreds of colorful balloons inflated spontaneously, making it difficult to see down the length of the plane. I had no idea how the clowns made it through security, as they were all heavily armed with candy-colored World War II weaponry, but now I was less surprised that the gun in my pocket hadn’t been noticed. It was pretty small potatoes compared to the rifles and grenades that the clowns were holding.

     There were a couple of minor outbursts from excitable passengers, but nothing that required more than a cream pie to suppress, and there ensued a long silence, broken only by the beeps and toots of the clowns.

     We seemed to be heading West, now, and continued so for about an hour. The kid next to me, who was in his early twenties and dressed in lots of shaggy layers of Earth tones, apparently could pick up radio stations on his earphone apparatus.

     After conspicuously checking to make sure the Nazi Klowns were far enough down the aisle that he wouldn’t be heard, he whispered to me, “The radio says that flight 734 out of Florida has been hijacked by confirmed Al Qaeda agents.”

     “Oh, sure, anyone could tell that these clowns are Al Qaeda,” I replied, quietly.

     “No, seriously,” the kid said seriously, “The radio says they have footage of the hijackers and they’re bearded and swarthy and they’re probably Islamical…”

     “I have never seen a swarthy clown,” I said thoughtfully, “bearded clowns are also rare...”

     He blanched suddenly, “now the radio says that the President has just issued a statement indicating that flight 734 just went down… in the Atlantic as brave civilian patriots battled the terrorists with bare knuckles …sacrificing ourselves so that no more innocents should die in buildings hit by hijacked airplanes like on nineleven. …And Lulu Bricious will be singing a song at the memorial tonight on TV.” 

     “Well, we are descending. But we’ve been heading away from the Atlantic for quite awhile…” we were flying right at the sun, which had almost completely set. I could see, over the seat ahead of me, through the window in the next row forward, a dry desert landscape. Texas, somewhere, I expected.

     The clowns got excited as the plane erratically dropped altitude in short dives and swoops. The passengers screamed and the clowns beeped and whistled. Suddenly the Nazi Klown who had been seated next to me started running for the front of the plane, pushing balloons out of the way, yelling, “Vich Klown ist doink der flyink? Don’t be tellink me it’s Blitzo again! Blitzo vill not be able to land vissout kraschink!”

     That was about when we hit the ground. I don’t think the landing gear was down, because there was a horrible shock, and then the plane bounced up and did a sideways cartwheel, and the cockpit, wings, and tail of the plane were all torn off, and then we hit the ground again, a tube full of people open at both ends and rolling over and over at about 90 miles an hour over what seemed like very bumpy ground, with balloons popping all around. After a while the rolling tube slowed down, then stopped, and we were hanging upside down in our seats. I managed to resist throwing up, but a lot of people didn’t.

     The Nazi Klowns, none of whom had been belted, were battered senseless by being flung around the plane, those that hadn’t been forcibly ejected from the holes at either end of the plane. I don’t know where the cockpit of the plane and Blitzo ended up, either.

     I got my belt off then helped others down for awhile. It didn’t take too long, and there were remarkably few injuries, unless you counted crumpled Nazi Klowns scattered back along the furrowed marks that the plane had left in the ground. It was dark now, and getting cold. There was a complete cloud cover, so it grew blacker by the moment. Soon everyone was out of the plane, huddled in a mass of about a hundred people, looking out over a barren desert landscape. There were some small fires burning in the distance, where the engines had landed. I started walking Northeast.

     “Hey…wait!” yelled the informative kid with the earphones, “Somebody’s sure to come to rescue us out here!”

     “That’s exactly what you should worry about, considering that you’re supposed to be at the bottom of the Atlantic,” I replied, “I expect that there were more clowns waiting for this plane,” and I started running. I looked back, and saw him start running off in another direction. And other people started running, too. Most of the crowd scattered out into the desert.

     I hadn’t covered much more than a mile when I saw lights popping up over the horizon directly ahead of me. Some kind of vehicles were headed in the direction of the plane crash. There was a small rocky outcropping nearby, and I dove behind it as the headlights grew closer.

     Five clown fire engines, seven clown ambulances and eleven clown military Jeeps roared out of the black night and sped bumpily across the desert, weaving and honking, absolutely covered in screaming clowns. Twenty-three clown vehicles can carry like 275 clowns.

     As they passed within fifty yards of the rocks I was hiding behind, a couple of clowns jumped or fell off a fire engine, and began circling around in clumsy reconnaissance, bumping into each other and falling down with little provocation. Both had old German brass-crested firefighter’s helmets on, and long yellow raincoats with big swastikas and iron crosses. One carried a lime-green Thompson machine gun, the other had an oversized axe.  In the dark of night, the darker accents of mouth, nose and eyes were reduced to black holes in their ghostly white faces.

     I moved around the outcropping and found, to my surprise, that I was crouching on a metal grate. Quietly, I hooked my fingers through the grate and pulled. There was a little resistance, but then, with a very small scraping sound, I managed to lift it. I couldn’t see what was below. It seemed to be some kind of a shaft. I couldn’t see anything but blackness down there. It didn’t seem to be a sewer, from the smell. There was a steady draft of air coming from inside, bearing with it an antiseptic scent. Some kind of ventilation shaft, I supposed.

 

     The Nazi Klown firefighters were circling closer. I lowered myself into the shaft and crawled into the tunnel in the direction that the draft was coming from, so that I wouldn’t be visible directly under the grate. The tunnel was about two feet square, so it was not spacious but easy to crawl through. I didn’t go far at first, but then the clowns ended up standing directly on the grate, telling knock-knock jokes to each other and trying out various hand buzzers, whoopee cushions and squirting flowers and I knew that they might keep it up for hours. I crawled further along the shaft, intrigued by the distant sound of voices now echoing toward me. It was so black, and I was careful to feel ahead of me to make sure there were no sudden drops. The shaft slanted steeply down into the earth, and I had crawled what seemed like a hundred yards before I began to see a faint gray light ahead of me.

     The light came through a grate in the side of the shaft. I was looking through into a large laboratory room, where four Nazi Klown doctors were fumbling around with smoking beakers of colorful fluids. There were big vats inset into the walls, and weird thin forms, like long, slightly fleshed skeletons were suspended within them in blue liquid.

     “You put too musch of der giraffe leg in der lascht von. Der proper ratio should be just offer shixty perschent of total height iss leg.  You left no rhoom for der schkinny malnourished torso. Iss legsh right up to der tits, und no tiny belly, vich cannot be vorking for der low-rise jeans in dis sheasons’ runvay show. Phillipe Bloomphier vill be verklempt! Ve muscht make another.”

     “Vell, der gnu eyes zat you shplisched into her triangular head ver alscho far too big und vet.”

     “Zey are schupposhed to be vet, for der schmeary teary addict maschkara look zat iss all der rage in Milan zis year.”

     “Bot zey are scho large zat zey had to be mounted on der schides of der head like der lizard or fisch.”

     “Zees detailsch isch schlowing ush down too musch! Ve schtill muscht produce drei more Tlatchtli players, und fifteen more models. Also der news anchhors. At leascht vis ze news anchhors, ve only haff to vorry about der area from der solar plexus up.”

     “Are ve goink to giff ze anchhors der legs of der caterpiggle like lascht time? Zat vas scho funn-ee!”

     “Ven does der new plane off subjects arrive? Ve are short on shpleens, also thighs.”

     A third doctor entered the room, and smiled broadly at the others. “I am pleashed to announce dat der new brood off Schuclklin’ Lascheyhocksh haff been shcucessfully implanted in der vomb of der Fuehrer. Vould zat mine own boddy vould accept der grafting off der schwein vomb, so zat I vould schpare our beloffed Fuehrer der agony off der birfingk proschess.”

     “Ja! All off us vould gladly do it, but only der Fuehrer’s boddy doss not rejeckt der grafting. He is der perfeckt clown, pure off mind und boddy, vater to uss all und now also he iss der Holy Schweinmutter, Heil!”

   I was going to go back, but I just had to look a little further. The room that the third doctor had come from should also be vented into the shaft, up ahead another thirty feet or so. I crawled ahead, quietly, and peered through the next grate..

     The room was dark, and it took a moment or two for my eyes to adjust after the strong lights of the laboratory. There were just two clowns in the room. One was bald on top with a fringe of green hair, and small glasses, wearing an electric blue SS outfit. The other was a wiry clown in a neat purple uniform with a peaked visor cap, riding boots and jodhpurs, which he was pushing down around his knees. He was easy to recognise, even with the uniform, and the greasepaint, and the toothbrush moustache and nose. His stomach seemed to be swelling as I watched, and he hunkered down on the linoleum and grunted, and small wet squeaking things began to drop from his ass, as the other clown bent down to gather them up in a pail. They looked like piglets, but with pink tufts of hair, and their skeletal structure was anthropomorphized. It was a new development. The President of the United States breathed heavily as he birthed around twenty of the little oinking things.

     “Dammit, Dick, -ooof.- I appreciate the importance of this service –unk- that our administration provides the business community- phhooof- but let’s get the Pork Consortium to jack the price up on these Sucklin’ Laceyhocks, if demand keeps up, and production remains limited to just what I can put out -Awk!- all by myself.”

     “Yes, yes. We’ll see. I’ll try to call Moreau this afternoon to see how the last round of swine womb grafts went. He had three new prominent clowns that he thought were likely candidates for successful transplant, but I haven’t heard from him in a couple days.. I wish he’d work faster, but how do you tell that to a man that’s a hundred and sixty years old? He’s very set in his ways. I can barely get him to wear the rubber nose. I’ll be back in a minute for the second litter, George, these are maturing so fast that they’ll be too big for the bucket in a moment.” He went out through another door with the bucket.

     I just turned around carefully, and crawled back the way I’d come. The dark tunnel was not comforting, and I could hear bad noises behind me, and I felt bad and creepy about things in general.

 

     When I reached the grate that led outside the firefighter clowns were nowhere in sight. The night was black, black, and starless. I set off again in a direction which I hoped was Northeast, and after about five miles I came to a road and began to follow that.

     The signs on the road indicated that I was just outside of Crawford, Texas, heading West towards Waco. I kept going, ducking out of sight when cars went by, and eventually there was a busy little rest area with a gas station, a Mo’ Nuts Donuts, a Sloppy SlurpDawg Drive-Threw,  and a Ye Bacony Grille. I went into the restroom to clean up as best I could. One of my sleeves was torn at the shoulder seam, and my hands and knees were black with dirt from the crawl through the ventilator shaft. I washed up,  put my head under the faucet for a few minutes, then dried my hair a little under the electric dryer, until a truckdriver came in and looked at me funny. I was very tired. The adrenaline from earlier in the evening had drained away, leaving me shaky and frail.

     I went and slid a cafeteria tray down the counter at Ye Bacony Grille, delicately groping at shredded carrot and cherry tomatoes with tiny tongs behind a cloudy plastic sneezeguard to assemble a large green salad from their salad bar. I got an iced tea, and nine Kornbread Muffettes.

     “Whut kine o’ meat ‘n’ gravy yuh want with thet?” asked the counter jockey at the gravy bar, resplendent in his visor and striped apron. I declined both meat and gravy, and paid. I was back down to $8.75 left in my wallet.

     I sat at a booth, and shoved the food mechanically down my throat. There was a clock on the wall: it was a little after Midnight. I wondered if Vampirella and the kids had heard about the flight going down. I wondered if Brick Marrow was over at the Quonset consoling them. I wondered if I was about to throw up.

     I wanted to call home from a pay phone, but under the circumstances, with the stuff I’d seen, I thought it best not to establish an electronic trail so close to the site of the plane crash. A cop car pulled up outside, and I got up and walked out one door as the cops entered from the other side of the food court. Out in the parking lot I headed for the big trucks idling out towards the dark perimeter of the halogen lights that illuminated the rest area, and found a double-trailer tarped truck with no-one in the cab. I hoisted myself up and slipped under the tarp unobserved, expecting to find gravel or dirt, but the freight was sparkly. It was rhinestones, so I was fairly sure the truck would be headed towards Nashville.

     I heard the door of the truck slam just then, and the truck lurched away from the rest stop, quickly reaching excessive speeds on the highway going, as I hoped, North and then East. The noise was amazing, and the ride was bouncy, but after a while I burrowed down into the rhinestones and fell into a fitful sleep, or maybe I just passed out. No dreams, anyway.