Sunday, March 27, 2011

MUGGS ROLLIN' OUT. JIMMY ROLLIN' IN

Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damages. They said we were lucky. I don't know who the day crew thought we were. A few of them knew, but most had no idea. And a few bus loads of kids were due in later, so we were sweating. The monkey broke those special glass windows up where the diaramas were. He tried to get blood from the stuffed Cro Magnons and a family of low land gorillas. But when all he got was dust, that only made him more berserk. Then he went after two of the guards. You should have seen it. It was like one of them Three Stooges movies, running in and out of about a million doors. Slamming. Hollering. Pissing on the floor. Things breaking. All the vampires were home by then, so they're trying to corner him by the canoe exhibit in the Native American Gallery. Papa tries to 'throw' another one of his force bubbles around him, but the monkey's got a different sort of mind, or maybe he's just got a screw loose and it won't work. It just won't work. Jonathon tells the guards to shoot him, but only in the head, 'cause they figure even a vampire chimp must need a little time to regenerate. Well the first guy's hand starts shakin' so he winds up hittin' him in the ass. Monkey don't like no bullet up his ass, so you know HE becomes a target. And he runs screamin' just like a girl. Shriekin' and yelling. The monkey almost got him too. But Sarah grabbed the gun off the floor and squeezed off a few. Two of 'em hit that Mister Muggs square in the noggin'. Stopped him right in his tracks. He got this surprized look on his ugly face and he made a few sounds like a bird chirpin'. Then he keels over on his side, with his arms and legs twitchin' just like he was havin' a stroke. Which I guess, in a sense, he was. I mean some of them neurons had to get scrabbled up. But at least all the smashin' stopped. And none of the stuffed, fake, dead people in the diaramas were gettin' molested anymore. So, all in all, everybody was satisfied. Papa peels off a few more big checks for the museum directors. And Luna calls Doctor Franklin on her cell. She tells him she's got a vampire for him. One they can keep. One they can study. What she don't tell him is that it's a chimpanzee vampire. So the bureau speeds over in a special armored truck. They go to this garage in the back, where it's always dark and pull in. Muggs is sorta walkin' by then, so they throw a coat over his head and lead him into the back of the truck. Doctor Franklin had one of his 'criminal' sacrificial victims chained up in there too, incase the new vampire was hungry. You know the guys. The ones he gets from the prisons. No family. Nobody to ask questions. All nice and convenient. Well, they kick Muggs in and slam the door. Then the truck peals off and races back to the Bureau. From what we heard, when they got there and opened  the heavy door, the guy inside was nothing but a fleshy, bloody smear all over the interior walls. He didn't burn up in the blue flame, 'cause the monkey tore him apart first and THEN sucked the blood out of all the shredded pieces. I don't know how they handled that simian son-of-a-bitch. Who cares? But I know the vampires were glad to be done with him. Annie cried and kicked the walls and all. But Papa threatened to send her back to hang over the surface of the Sun, so she shut up. Then everybody just took a breath and settled down with one a their calming aroma candles. Smelled like an Istanbul whore house, but the vampires liked it. Jonathon shows Papa the paperback baby name book and asks him what he wants to be called. But the twentyeight thousand year old whatsis just laughs a little, grabs the book, opens it up to any page and looks. Then he says - Jimmy. That's it. I want them to call me Jimmy.....Baylah thinks that's hysterical. She says - Are you sure you don't want something a little fancier, like say Charlemagne, or 'Dook' or something?.......But he just shoots her a real dirty look, so she shuts up real fast. And that's it. He was Jimmy. All the familiars found out about it. They got him new checks and everything. When he went to meet with the real estate woman about gettin' us a new townhouse or something, he just shakes her hand and says - Hi, call me Jimmy.....So, now we got 'Jimmy'. Edith don't like it. She had something else in mind. Or maybe it was on somebody else's mind and she just picked it up. I don't know. Zebulon does not pay attention ALL the time. A dissembodied spirit can only do so much.....