Being the story of two dogs and their desire for an apocalyptic treat

Flat on his back, Buck Sparkman stared at the sky. It looked like a TV turned to a living dead channel. 

Buck knew better than to grab a werewolf by the tail, especially after mainlining a half-gram of idiot, but he did it anyway. And he was bitten in return. 

The bites hurt, of course.

But not as much as the kick to the crotch. 

Or the broken ribs. 

Or the slipped disc. 

Or the wounded pride. 

Buck just got his ass kicked by something that was easily bested by fleas.

That said, what hurt most of all was the scratch across the face of his Tombstone XIII, Series 2BR02B. He’d have to seek medical treatment before the day was up or soon half the city would be howling at the moon and chasing candy-apple Ubers. 

Buck made a mental note to slip a silver suppository up his ass just as soon as he found a men’s room. Then again, he could do that right here, right now. 

Hellsboro was overrun with mummies, so a good wipe was always within arm’s reach. 

Like the one currently rifling through Sparkman’s pockets with its toilet paper-wrapped hand, stained with urine, shit, and dumpster sludge. 

The gravedigger pushed the mummy off of him and then kicked it in the anubis. 

It yelped. And retreated to its cardboard sarcophagi. 

Sparkman turned to his right and saw a bleary-eyed former pharaoh with a puffy, pus-filled face, brandishing a gold plated staph infection adored with the head of Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah. Friend or foe, Buck didn’t know. Nor did he care. Ramses Two was first in line at the electric boogaloo.

Buck typed a few emoji and a gif into his tombstone and waited. King Tut didn’t know what hit him. The Red Sea parted him in half, from his diseased nutsack to his maggot-filled head.

Nothing stood in the way of Buck Sparkman, the world’s most celebrated gravedigger, and a Bloody Virgin at the bar. 

Terry would be there for sure. Just like he always was, whether Sparkman was in Hellsboro or Tuney Town. Any bar. Any time. Anywhere. Buck just need to find where that was.

He tossed back another vial of idiot and sniffed the air. 

As usual, it smelled like asshole. But this time, he liked it.

Sparkman needed a silver bullet and he needed it now. 

***

Nobody remembers what makes the tombstones work. The fairies, the leprechauns, the nanobots, the carpal-tunnel hand of God. Yeah, you could crack one open and look inside yourself, but who knows what you’d find. 

A misplaced modifier.  

A hamster wheel designed for rodents with flat feet and Cockney accents. 

A snotty egg yolk that once took Pi out further than ever before, strangled it, and left its dead carcass in a half-dug ditch. 

Who the huck knows and who finn cares? 

It doesn’t matter. 

Nobody remembers. 

Not even Buck Sparkman, the world’s premier gravedigger. But he knows exactly when everything changed.

The fateful day was Cucumber 21 in a year of indeterminate vintage. 

The time: Somewhere between yappy hour and fourth meal. 

The place: Peru Nicholas’ apartment.  

Peru lived in two panic-room closet that grew out of freshly shorn field like a cancerous mole. It was surrounded by other growths, each one no different than the next.

The same upside-down mortgage. The same student loans. The same antidepressants and stool softeners in the medicine cabinets. It was a snuff film, but Peru called it home. 

As did her two pet poms, Jeepers and Peepers. 

They mostly just slept and pissed on their beds, although when they were in a spiteful mood, they dropped retaliatory shits behind the couch. 

Jeepers liked to do it on the air vent, Peepers on the rug. Neither were fond of wiping. 

With the last bit of credit Peru had on her Beeza, she bought herself a Tombstone I, then a novel little gadget that could replicate whatever the user desired.

Of course, all of this depended on the make and the model. 

Some could conjure up sparkly little baubles and trinkets, while the top-dollar ones could conjure up a Thanksgiving dinner. 

Regardless, its creations were always temporary. Much like last night’s virginity or yesterday’s presidential election.

Peru could’ve bought herself a top-dollar one. She didn’t. Instead, she bought a dozen of the most low-powered Tombstones she could. And then she invited all her friends over to her house for a feast like no other. 

When her guests arrived, they stepped up to clearance rack ‘Stones and thought about what they wanted to eat. The phones provided. 

They thought about what they wanted to drink and the devices gave. 

Needless to say, they feasted like kings, they drank like failures, and they obited every single bite and purge to the Cloud and beyond.

For the next three hours, Tombstones around the town rang out with updates from the debauchery. 

But all that came to an end in a rather abrupt fashion. First, Peru heard a rumble, a real below the belly gurgle, the kind that will make you break the speed limit on the way to a highway rest stop.

And then it got louder and louder. 

Little did Peru and her crew know, the world was about to shit itself.

One guest joked that it was Rodzilla. Another an alien invasion. And another, well, the reanimated corpse of the late, great comedian Chris Biggley on a crank-and-crack binge-and-purge at the nearest Fentanyl Feedbag All-American Buffet. 

Today, each one was part of the weekly news cycle, but then? Not so much.

But as much as Peru and the gang were having a good laugh, the laughing stopped when the walls of the apartment began to shake. 

Beer bottles fell.

Turkey legs tumble.

The silverware danced to a strange tune on the dining room table. 

And the poms? Jeepers and Peepers?

Well, they huddled behind the couch, each in their usual places, and clinched their sphincters tight. 

The revilers promptly ran outside. 

Outside on her front steps, Peru and her guests watched as they witnessed the seemingly impossible: two dog biscuits, each the size of semi-trucks, tumbled down the street, crushing everything in their paths — street signs, cars, and yard gnomes. The partygoers took off running when the modest two-panic room closet took one across the chin.

And just like that, Peru dreams went down. TKO.

It would be two weeks before State Farm broke out the smelling salts.

The dog biscuits came to a halt on Sammy Terrance’s front yard, ruining the savings-account sod that covered the 10-by-10 foot lawn he called a weekend, but all the neighbors knew as white beater and beer. 

His sprinkler system was a wreck, spitting up like a toddler on a merry-go-round, and his front steps were as jagged as a meth head’s teeth. 

Sam wept as he picked up the shredded squares of high-dollar turf with his trembling hands. The grass fell in feeble clumps to the ground.

In days, it would dry out. In a week, it would be brown and dusty. In a month, it would float away on the breeze.

But Peru’s dogs were happy. 

They pounced on the bits of pieces of kibble that had broken off from the monster-sized milk bones. 

Peepers cut the roof of her mouth on a particularly jagged piece. 

Jeepers vomited and licked it up, but not before growling at his fellow pom. 

It was then that everyone realized that Peru was nowhere in sight. The guests immediately began to call her name. 

Tom Duchamp found her limp body underneath an azalea bush in front of Peru’s now demolished house. Her body was motionless and stiff and wearing a see-through nightie. 

He clenched his fist, cried her name, and beat himself until the sky exploded with fireworks.

Claire Pyle ran into Peru two blocks over.

Although Peu was dazed and confused, she was holding two white chocolate pumpkin spice lattes and a bag containing what was advertised as an apple danish but in reality look like a sponge, and a used one at that.

They sat down to pow-wow the latest bestseller, a book about a newly divorced housewife who rediscovers her passion for life by sleeping with a younger man and finding a newfound love for selling My Randy Stallion needlepoint pictures on Etsy. 

Claire and Peru laughed and hugged and vowed to always be friends. 

Burt Plugh did not look for Peru. He had no reason to. He was too busy texting her about this funny thing that he just saw on YouTube. So hilarious. Like, literally, I’m dying.

Even Peru Nicholas found herself.

It was a task she had previously been unable to accomplish over the course of a decade-long diet of self-help mantras, exercise videos, and yoga pants. 

Finally, she was living her most authentic life. 

And all it took was the total destruction of reality itself.

But no one knew that then. 

And so, for the next two days, the sound of squeak toys echoed off the houses on this soulless suburban street, and the sky smelled like asshole.

Jeepers and Peepers had gotten exactly what they wanted.

Eventually, everyone else discovered they had as well.

And it was exactly what they deserved.