This tale appears as bonus material in the Episode 8 Act I of Customer Buttcheeks!

“Sometimes man… I’ll tell ya, sometimes, my foot travels back in time…”

The lines on the track were blurring.

Right on schedule.

The other drivers…

What other drivers?

I am the only extant driver.

The engine is making a bearded growl.

The instant I need them, my fingers are glow sticks.

I don’t care.

The track is a vinyl record set to 1547 RPM beneath the rubber footpads of the living machine.

A semi-familiar knocking in my chest.

I had a heart once.

Then she took it.

On my lips the petals remain; Psilocybin grown in a modified fanged pitcher plant with a methylenedioxy-tinged fluid chamber.

Something else rests below my nose, aside from my mustache.

A burning stump of…

Nicotine? No.

The smoke feels too chunky.

I don’t care what it is.

It’s doing its job exceedingly well.

The track is curving now.

I turn the wheel to ensure the integrity of my adherence to the flow.

I am the only driver.

The lights and crowd noise…

Thank God that’s over.

But they will be back all too soon.

My left foot is complacent.

In it’s stocking, the congealing sweat and carbonated heat don’t seem to faze it.

The right foot, however, the right foot is simply overwhelming in its eminence. Others doubt their self-worth in its presence without even realizing it.

The beast can roar because of this foot.

Trails have been blazed, mountains conquered, deserts trounced; truly this appendage has impacted an innumerable amount of people through the ages.

But I wouldn’t know for sure.

I only guide the flow.

A very small corked jar of sand from a desert the other 95% of me has never been to sits on the dash, mocking the absence of my corporeal majority.

An inspiringly small sprouted redwood burl dangles from the rear-view. Lab tests indicate a New Albionese origin. The time I’ve spent in New Albion included no trips to Mr. Muir’s Woods, nor any other redwood vein.

Then there is the scar.

It still hurts sometimes.

The 12th Century, carbon dated, Mongolian arrowhead is now my necklace. The wound, being on the sole of my right foot, doesn’t hurt right now.

And yet, when I am fulfilling my sworn duties as Commander-in-Chief, I become numb from the knee down. The pedal remains engaged. I, as Vehicular President, merely guide the flow.

There is only the flow.

I am the only driver.

*

100 Laps pass.

I need more.

The glove box is open.

I didn’t open it.

Yes I did.

The flower buds crunch and the competition melts.

I am the only driver.

*

Another hundred laps.

Another quivering mouthful of lysergic flower buds.

The breeze clots and turns my hair into an anemone. Clown fish stream from the vents in the dashboard. I feel their gentle symbiosis in my follicles. My bench seat is the sea floor. Powerfully vermillion shrimp with electric rainbow accents are cleaning the area to my right.

The curve in the track changes nothing.

Finely tuned, 155 BPM, poly-rhythmic, drum kit destruction, awash in intricate cascades of eroding guitar, keeps my mind sharp and all the trains running on time.

*

Another hundred laps.

I yell in mistaken anger.

A miniature hive greets me from the glove box.

I am suddenly incredulous.

An engine revs, a horn blasts, and the words “Sic Semper Tyranus!” climb into my machine through the roar; another driver is making an attempt at the Presidency.

I yank the Hive and its base from the compartment.

A second misguided outburst makes the Hive collide with the dashboard. A very large hornet is now liberated.

The eyes are what get me.

It knows how to hate me.

Out of all other options, I laugh.

The stinger breaks the skin on the right rear of my jaw. Having embossed his seal, the yellow fiend expires.

I skipped the funeral.

My head is now a bullfrog’s. I can see the bulbous lower lip in the rearview. Despite the weight, I can still breathe and harass.

A gate opens and the track morphs.

I am now overlord of the Common Man’s road.

What I assume to be onlookers bray at me at nearly every turn.

My face is on their T-shirts. Why? Oh yeah…

A sign says the flow has taken me down a street called ‘Post’.

Saying the word out loud makes my teeth crisp; I feel a definite finality in the sharp cut that the finishing ‘st’ provides.

My term in office enters the Lame Duck phase.

Where the track was once dark absence, it now lay illumine. A cavalcade of refracted light establishes a route to the finish line.

In the side mirrors, only a paltry reflection of sport. The false Wilkes Booth has been neutralized.

*

The home stretch.

The apiary venom intensifies.

The right foot is waning.

The earliest traces of ant appendages are felt.

A turn.

A second turn.

An incline.

A hairpin-turn exercise around Union Square.

A long, drifting, third turn onto Kearney.

*

The machinery creating the flow that I merely guide continues functioning unabated.

*

The dead hornet tumbles and rattles in the eternally empty passenger foot well.

*

The swollen double-bass drum solo creating an avalanche from the shamelessly obese sub-woofers bolsters my bravado.

*

The final eleven blocks before the Broadway ascent.

My lower lip claps against the wheel.

I can feel a plasmatic heat around my eyes.

Synapse and tire rotation are superbly balanced.

Brown creatures, perhaps made of clay, pour from the vents. Their red eyes seek to condemn, but I refuse.

Shock!

Where did he come from!?

Another driver beckons.

How dare he!

I reach to my stalwart glove box. A fistful of erythroxyl-phlox. My teeth grind the grass and unfeeling coats the maw.

More prickling agony from the right foot.

Not yet!

My eyes claim that the person attempting to infringe on my right to the office of Commander-In-Chief is none other than Omar ‘Slick’ Babatunde. The sweating leather-bag-of-a-man’s bulbous cantaloupe foot was causing immeasurable suffering to the gas pedal.

Slick Babatunde’s sparkling green and black 1944 Leyland Tiger bus drops its gauntlet with a cyclopean sneer.

I accept the challenge and express my equally strong demand for satisfaction.

I deploy my emergency thermos. The hot and lumpy mixture of amphetamines and psychoactives goes down like a cup of hot mice.

At last, the flow is made manifest.

Searing pain.

My right foot is bleeding.

Sharp, burning agitation burrows its way into my calcaneus.

Can Slick see the flow?

His cracked crimson eyeballs and drooling orifice indicate a solid perhaps.

He honks his horn.

Wait, maybe he didn’t.

I honked.

With reckless impunity.

The passengers riding with Slick begin to accost me. This is odd as I was present for when Slick had the seats of the once beautiful bus torn out, and large engines put in. Their words don’t make sense.

Just then, the degree to which Slick is simply stuffed into the driver’s cab, overtakes me. I am struck by the absence of free space in his cab. All nine of his cocoa-colored chins are mere nanometers from the wheel. I’m not sure if he knows, but there are two bloated puffer fish trying to pass as his eyes. The coral reef and accompanying ocean has sloughed off of my existence and settled onto Slick’s bus, displacing the babbling ‘passengers.’

The flow shudders, signifying the end as nigh.

My once elegant leather shoe, with its buckle so satisfyingly polished, is now corpulent with plasma. The burrowing pain has stopped, but the burning weight remains.

With the end so close, I must jettison all distracting interest in the oceanography taking over the attempted juggernaut that is Slick Babatunde.

He inches closer.

I reject his advance with prejudice.

He cannot have my victory.

I reject the fine I have just incurred for bumping his vehicle.

I merely abide by the flow.

I reject the usurper as a whole.

I am the Commander-in-Chief.

Our bumpers collide and form a shaky alliance.

I lose my demeanor and lash out; my firm, outlandish, repudiation of their coming together only adds to whatever Slick is experiencing.

My right foot lurches from the accelerator and clamps onto the brake. I spin the wheel to the east and send myself across the Victory line.

Slick is beside himself.

Seeing two of him makes me sick to my stomach.

A force extricates me from the controls.

I am floating on a sea of my people.

Camera flashes.

A kotinos slithers onto my head.

Now, I stand erect on a stage.

A portly trophy is presented, and I reassure it with a kiss.

Darkness is a lead blanket.

I can only feel my smile.

The crew chief appears.

Congrats.

The blanket is so warm.

***

The screen wipes.

Graphics fill the viewing area.

Remixed Gangsta-Swing-Step blares.

The show begins.

“What a finish! Typically the Stoned Reaper finishes all alone, but Babatunde would not go down quietly,” Magnus Leuwenhoek opened the trailing live broadcast of the UN Global Sports Network’s coverage of the World League of Intoxicated Automobiling. His blonde pompadour was famous, and his cohost made it visibly evident that she hated it.

Footage rolled of Rudi Como’s 1961 Eureka Landau, drenched in the glossiest black paint with neon green flame accents, drifting sideways across the finish line. The bumper had temporarily entangled itself with Slick Babatunde’s, reminding most of two stags caught alongside each other in the forest.

“I’d like to start by thanking the city of San Francisco for allowing the race and its unusual format,” Rosalina Montevideo gave a close-lipped smile and nod. Her large, sharp, nose drew ones eye, but her own apertures never failed to fight back.

“Yes after the lap portion, things really heated up in the Rally-style finish, right Rosalina?”

“Psh, we watched the race together!” She said with a stout look of disgust for her longtime TV partner. I hate his hair!

“…Yes, we certainly did,” Magnus cleared his throat. “Continuing our coverage of Rudi Como’s record setting 14th straight win, why don’t we take a look at his approved Schedule of Ingestments:

· Erythroxylum coca

· Trimethoxyphenethylamine

· Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

· Methylenedioxymethamphetamine

· Caffeine

· Nicotine

· Tetrahydrocannabinol

· Et al.

“Oh my Rosalina, did you notice the ‘Et al’ at the end of his list?”

“I certainly did,” she said as she stiffly fought his pallid gaze. Her long straight black hair poured over her shoulders and back like a mute waterfall. Wide-eyed and revolted, she smoothly continued, “I was not aware he had earned the privilege to mix in binding agents and flavor modifiers that may or may not improve cooperation of substances.”

“Truly his doctorate has proven to be a boon in regards to his success in the WLIA.”

“What about the other drivers?” Rosalina sighed, reassured herself, and made the slightest facial rejection of everything that Magnus stood for.

“…Chet Fescue wrecked at the onset of the rally portion…” Magnus continued his broadcast.

In the attic of his awareness, Magnus had placed in a readily accessible steamer trunk his concern regarding a recent attempt at pitching woo. The trunk’s contents would tell a story of flowers and a beaming white chocolate and edible diamond-dust corset sent to the new lead MASSBALL anchor, Orchid Nkemdiche. She was tall, dark, and Namibian; Magnus’ desire made manifest.

Rosalina, though, was a bit of a hater. She simply could not stand interoffice romance after her falling out with a Key Grip and his Best Boy…

“…He was pulled, using the Jaws of Life, from his mangled red 1997 Ford Taurus.”

The clip rolled.

“Oh… That looked pretty bad…” Her shock was genuine.

“That it did Rosalina. But I do believe the dislocated thumbs up he gave as he was loaded into the ambulance did inspire a modicum of hope in his fans.”

Another clip, this time of crying Fescue Freaks, as they are commonly known.

“’Dirty Rita’ MacFarlane was really the only other driver that may have at any time threatened Rudi’s lead,” Magnus sucked something out of his tooth and winked as the camera cut away to corroborate his testimony. “During the lap portion, they were neck and neck for a solid 200 rounds. When the gates opened and the Rally began though, from the film it looks like she was trying to light a tobacco product, filthy habit, when she wrapped her 1976 Chevrolet Nova around that poor, poor oak tree.”

“Yeah!” Rosalina stormed into the broadcast. “Pending toxicology, she could be liable for a Botanical Desecration fine. Here’s what she had to say:

‘I came ‘round the firsht hairpin and, outta habit, I tried ta light my tradishnal Rally ‘bacco when that fnuggin’ shree juss came outta nowhere…’

“She looked pretty baked in that interview, Magnus.”

“That she did Rosalina. How far the mighty have fallen, eh?”

“Man, I remember when she had that five-race streak only two years ago!” Rosalina’s eyes bulged with reminiscence.

“I think it’s her legendary ‘Rally ‘bacco’… filthy, awful stuff,” Magnus screwed up his face in revulsion.

“Tell me about it!” Milquetoast. “Next week, we’ll be calling the race from Olde England,” Rosalina pivoted to camera B. “Do you think Rudi will be able maintain his renowned balance of focus and intoxication long enough to defend his title for a record-setting 14th straight win? What about Slick Babatunde?”

“He came pretty close today Rosalina,” the blonde, fizzy-eyed, sportscaster continued bearing his hulking teeth.

“…Uh oh, breaking news folks, the living legend, the Stoned Reaper himself, Rudi Como, has already been listed as Probable for next week, pending a… what did you say Jerry? An emergency surgery to remove a musket ball?” Incredulity reigned on the set. “Yes… Ok… Folks they’re telling me in my ear that I indeed read that bulletin correctly. Somehow, someway, Rudi Como managed to get a musket ball of some kind lodged in his foot during the race… make of that what you will.” Magnus rolled his geodesic eyeballs in obvious disbelief.

“Y’know Magnus,” Lecher! “The UltraNet has a bevy of theories regarding Mr. Como…” Rosalina was an avid poster across several so-called “lunatic fringe” message boards. Besides this, she was also an extremely high-ranking member of the infamously paranoid and destructive fan club, Como’s Clones.

“Don’t start with that again, it just doesn’t make any sense. C’mon, the man is a star in a league centered on operating an automobile while intoxicated. I take a lethally-sized grain of salt along with whatever these racing professionals say.”

“…All right Magnus. Whatever helps you get to sleep at night…” Rosalina regarded her co-anchor in the same manner one would while engaging a child who just swore belief in the gestational abilities of Mary Toft.

“Up next, we turn our attention to the endless and all-consuming world of PolyMatic Football…”