Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! (11 page)

I’m tired, though. I need to take a little nap, while I’m waiting for the drugs to come on. Rest up for the action.

HUNTER AMPUTATES OWN LEGS TO ESCAPE MARAUDING BEAR. My god, the film rights will be huge. Brad Pitt can play me. John Goodman can play Edna.

Very tired. Nice to finally get tired. Quick nap. William H. Macy as Mister Bear. Or they can use computer graphics. Or a trained bear.

Can you believe they train bears? BRAD PITT AND WILLIAM H. MACY DEVOURED IN STUDIO BEAR CATASTROPHE! Hah. That’d be funny.

Bear bad. Sleep good.

11

Then, like a dream soft and moist, Marcia from Product Dialogue comes to me, squeezing in under the car to warm me with her hot, needy body. She has on the fur coat and hat I bought for Edna, and nothing underneath. She climbs on top of me, pushing me into the mud, she pulls apart her coat and crushes her twin pleasure zeppelins in my cold stubbly face. She’s hungry. She rubs up and down against me like a cat, lubricating her crotch with the dark brown Ranger Steve’s Bear Bait on my pants and coat. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open in an O, her tongue protrudes slightly as she sniffs my neck, my face, my hair. Now she rips asunder the buttons on my Ralph Lauren flannel-cotton outdoorsman shirt, scraping my chest with her long nails. Now she is biting my ear. Biting it hard. Oh shit, Marcia from Product Dialogue just bit my ear off. She raises her head above me and the bloody ear drips in my eye. Oh baby! I am hard like a two by four. She grinds her hot sex taco against my tweed hunting crotch, clawing at the reinforced zipper, shredding the tweed, freeing my mighty Monster Black Torpedo which springs up and slaps her in the face. Her eyes grow large with addicted need as she begins to lick the juice from its massive brown tip. She stretches her jaw out wide like a snake to fill her mouth with my cock, and bites down hard, gnawing on my big Slim Jim like a Papillon gnaws on a tennis ball. She rips off a few inches, chews heartily and swallows.

“Spicy Chorizo … oh yeah!” she moans, taking another bite. I feel no pain, only sex, only unbridled animal lust. Her bait-greased nipples slide up and down the shaft of my abbreviated but still astonishingly huge member, and I know very soon I’m going to ejaculate several pints of blood in her face. “Take off the coat, baby,” I moan. “It’s impossible to get that stuff cleaned.” But now the fur is her and she is the fur, it grows from her nipples and her belly and her face. “Do you like it, Marv? I took the hormones just like you said.” She licks my face with her long ursine tongue and howls as she mounts my love-jerky. Her fur is thick and soft as ermine and she radiates heat. “Baby I’ve been so cold,” I tell her, “what took you so long?” She growls playfully and bites off my nose.

The grinding, the slashing, the pulverizing accelerates but just before I can release what few fluids remain within me, the Rover’s engine turns over and roars to life. Slowly it drives off of us. I look down at my mangled, missing legs, but all I see is fur. I wiggle my toe and a fuzzy paw answers me. I have bear legs now, and bear feet — negro bear feet! Oh shit, this is just too strange. I stand up, waving my hands and sniffing the air. I can walk! It’s a miracle! Negro bear feet will do for now, I’ll have to get them changed later though.

I feel a strange craving for nuts and berries, but first things first. My Rover accelerates away into the brush. I sprint after it, bear-quick, faster than Jesse Owens, Michael Jordan and Colin Powell combined. I leap onto the roof of the Rover and peer over the rack into the windshield. Inside, no surprise, it’s treacherous Frankie Baumer and aggravating Edna … but what’s this? Baumer is wearing my camel hair hunting jacket and my driving glasses, and on his cuffs are my M.L.O.T.P. cufflinks! And Edna wears Marcia’s camo halter top and headband, and a thick crust of Marcia’s makeup. And her god-damn Papillon dog Wagner is on her lap, gnawing on the Oxford leather armrest and scratching flea eggs onto everyplace. Edna studies the map in her right hand, while with her left hand she massages the inside of Baumer’s pathetic thigh. I choke back the urge to vomit; mustn’t ruin the paint.

And what’s that behind them, piled high in the cargo area and the folded forward back seats? Piles of multicolored fur, some claws, some heads, all sticky with gore. It’s a big pile of dead bloody bears, brown and black. On the top of the pile is a baby black bear no larger than a two-year-old child, its small innocent bear face twisted into a death-snarl of agony. It wears leather motorcycle clothes and cracked reflective sunglasses. It’s Bomber. Baumer killed Bomber!

Clutching the roof rack with my hands, I smash my bionic bear feet through the windshield. Edna and Frank scream as the car spins out of control, slides off the road and comes to a precarious stop on the edge of a steep ravine. Frank jumps out of the car wielding a shotgun, but I’m faster. Before he can aim I leap, somersault and land on him, slashing his face off with my bear claws. “You killed Bomber!” I scream. He shoots wild, unable to see, but then I am upon him, biting his hands — he’s even got my fucking Rolex! — until he drops the gun. I drag him to the car, remove his suede chukka boot and begin to eat his delicious almond-scented foot.

But then out of the car leaps Wagner, grown now to the size of a huge husky, clutching the chewed up, slobbered-upon, tooth-perforated remains of my Rover’s passenger right-hand armrest in his mouth. Fucking dog! I run to kick him but he leaps up and locks his jaw onto my arm, simultaneously wagging his tail and blinking at me with those cute puppy dog eyes. I hate that! I gouge his eye with my other thumb and he yelps.

Edna, standing beside us, complains: “Marv, be gentle with Wagner! He’s just playing.” Now blood streams from my forearm as Wagner scurries behind Edna’s feet, chewing innocently on the passenger-side airbag.

“You stupid cow! You useless bag of tits!” I scream. “Your damn dog ate my car! Your damn boyfriend killed my bear! All you do is ruin everything! With your complaining and your condescending, your whining and your tittering, and your not ever dying!”

Edna looks sad and regretful. Wagner, too, is curled up on the ground with his paw over his nose, avoiding my gaze. “Oh Marv,” she sobs, “I’m sorry, Sweet-ums.”

“You ought to be sorry! You were supposed to die years ago! You have a congenital heart defect! I wouldn’t have married you if I thought you’d live so goddamn long!”

“I didn’t mean to ruin your weekend, honey.” “Well you did a bang-up job, I gotta say. Spilling bear bait all over me, shooting me in the hip, not dying …
Frankie
… how do you do it? What’s your secret?”

“I’ll just die now,” sniffles Edna contritely.

“Oh I
wish
. That’s what you always say.”

“You’re going to have to learn to take care of yourself sooner or later, Marv.”

“Oh please. You sound like Dad now.”

“Sorry, pudding. Okay, I’m dying. Bye.” And then she dies — just falls over like a bag of groceries, lands face flat in the mud. Wagner whimpers and licks her, but she doesn’t move. She’s dead.

Wow. That was easy. It never occurred to me to just ask.
(Note to self: read up on Power of Asking.)
I look to pick up the shotgun, but it’s gone, and Baumer’s gone, and now Edna and Wagner are gone too. Good riddance! I walk to the Rover, my ticket to freedom, I put my hand on the drivers’ side door latch … but now I’m really
craving
, actually, some nuts and some berries. I haven’t had nuts and berries in weeks. And now that I’m free from the cacophony of stink that I’ve wallowed in for days, I can actually smell something ever so slightly nutty around here someplace. Mmmmmm. Nuts.

So I follow my nose into the forest, which is just lovely to traverse when you’ve got bear feet, inside Armani slacks and Prada loafers. Finally, I’m looking my best again. I look fantastic, sexy and clean. And ahead through the boughs of giant cedars and bushes on the forest floor I spy something impossibly beautiful, the glowing sign, the cathedral-like windows, the tiny parking lot: it’s a 7-11! I feel tingly all over, and a tear comes to my eye. Convenience, how I missed you!

The electric eye trips the doorbell as I enter and scan the aisles for nuts. What an oasis of beauty! The sounds, the colors, the flavor shapes! The sweet buzzing of the fluorescent lights and the soft, soothing harpsichord and trombone rendition of Wild Thing floating from the overhead Muzak speakers. The hot, tight-breasted babes of the beer and cigarette advertisements, and the cigarettes, and the beer.

The store is crowded with woodland creatures. A pair of jackrabbits have climbed up on the beverage counter to push a Big Gulp cup under the Slurpee dispenser with their heads. Squirrels crawl through the magazine rack. A deer clatters his hooves on the controls of the video game in the corner.

And who would be napping behind the counter but my old friend Mister Bear! Looking sharp in an 4XL polyester 7-ll uniform shirt and matching paper hat! His little employee tag reads: BEAR. I’m proud of you, Mister Bear. You have embraced consumer culture, you’ll have no trouble adapting to the Alaskan de-naturalization program. Bears are resilient creatures indeed.

My saliva draws me to the brightly lit Nut and Berry display. Roasted macadamias! I’m so hungry. I grab every nut on the rack. Each nut is individually wrapped with a serving suggestion and UPC code. I pile the nuts on the counter, along with a 40 ounce bottle of berry-flavored malt liquor, a pack of Camels and a copy of PLAYBEAR. Mister Bear looks up groggily from the floor.

“Hey, Mister Bear! Remember me? It’s Marv Pushkin!” But Mister Bear shows no recognition, he just lazily scans each nut one at a time with the paw-held laser UPC scanner and drops them in a plastic bag. Beep. Beep. Beep. This will take forever. Beep. I tap my knuckle on the counter and gaze idly at my left wrist. Beep. One of the nuts won’t scan for some reason, and Mister Bear has trouble entering the code number on the ten key pad of his cash register. Beep. He scratches his head and yawns.
(Note to self: don’t hire bears.)
I notice on the register that these nuts are not cheap. I reach for my wallet, but my pants are gone. Looking down I see only my underwear and my furry bear legs. Beep. Oh, how awkward. I’ll have to hike back to the Rover and dig some cash out of the dashboard mini-safe. But … I’m
so
hungry, and the sweet aroma of the nuts tortures me, so close, so delicious … I’ve got to have those nuts!

Quick as a subliminal advertisement I snatch the sack of nuts and the 40-ounce bottle off the counter and dash out the door, into the woods. I hear an alarm — Mister Bear must have tripped it — but I sprint with my amazing bear feet, faster than Maurice Green or Mister T., deep into the dark woods, until I can no longer hear the claxon. Then I tear open the bag and stuff the individually wrapped nuts in my mouth, wrappers and all. I chew, chew, chew, they are so delectable! I swallow a little bit of plastic but who cares? In moments I’ve eaten the last of the nuts and spat the cardboard out of my teeth. I’d like to wash it down with some berry flavored malt liquor but without my Leatherman Super Tool I can’t remove the bottle cap. And I’m still hungry. Oh, so very remove the bottle cap. And I’m still hungry. Oh, so very 11 … but no, I can’t go back there now.

The forest is my snack bar. Wafting on the breeze I can smell raspberries, almonds, trout, cafe au lait, pizza, everything a person could need is here, somewhere in this forest. I only have to follow my nose. I choose raspberries, and set out to find them.

I’m finding it’s easier to master the terrain if I walk on all fours. But as I amble along the forest floor I find a curious swath of broken twigs and crushed vegetation, and at the same time I catch whiffs of both fresh bacon and Marcia from Product Dialogue perfume. Interesting. So I follow this trail a short distance, and ahead of me on one side of the trail I see a black lump. Could that be what I smell? No …

I get closer and I see an inert pile of black fur and fabric. Oh dear. It’s Bomber again. Still dead, lying face down. Only he’s not wearing his motorcycle outfit any more, he’s wearing a tiny bear version of the polyester print 7-11 shirt that Mister Bear wears at his job, and a matching hat. He’s been crushed to death, and a muddy tire print runs down the length of his back. Oh God, this is really sad, this is gross and awful … oh, poor Bomber, don’t you know better than to run out in the road?

Now Mister Bear is here beside me, a fat tear forming in the furry corner of his eye. He sniffs the dead bearchild, lays down beside him, puts his face in his paws and whimpers like a sick dog. I cry too. Who wouldn’t? Poor Bomber. He was so young, he had so much potential, he could have gone to college or joined a circus or been one of those trained acting bears, or maybe even gotten a job in a zoo. But I look again and that’s not Bomber lying flattened in the dirt, it’s my little brother Jimmy, with a bottle of Toilet Duck in his hand, flattened by a truck.

“Mister Bear,” I scream, shaking my weeping, disconsolate furry sidekick, “Are you going to take this? I’m not going to take this! We’ve got to find the fuckers who crushed our families! We need to make an example of them! That’s what Justice is all about! Are you with me?”