A Boy, His Dog, and a Snuffberry Pie Bloodbath

Finding Snuff Village was easy, despite the diminutive size of the Snuffs and the respective size of their houses.

All you had to do was follow the stench of musty mushrooms, post-pubescent tomfoolery, and the lingering stench of rotting YOLO FOMO. 

And if your sniffer was on the fritz, you could also follow the bright blue Snuff droppings, a paper trail of high-grade blotter flaccid, empty cans of End Dust, discarded tanks of dancing gas and obnoxious oxide, and credit card receipts from Trustafarian Express.  

Despite that, Buck didn’t have any qualms with the Snuffs and their daily hedonistic activities disguised as religious rituals. 

At three butt-plugs high with their pastel blue skin and dew drop beanies, the Snuff’s were, to put it simply, cute. 

And Sparkman wasn’t the only one who thought so. 

So did grandmas and grandpas, precocious pre-teens and tumble dry toddlers. 

But most of all, Sassy, the 5-year-old daughter of our hitman hero Buck Sparkman and crisis actor wonder wife, Sasha.

Sassy had all the figures: Paw Paw, Porky, Smarty, Hardy, Helpful, Chef Snuff, Dental Dam Snuff, Jeffrey Dahmer Fan Snuff, and, obviously, Snuffette. 

She was everyone’s favorite. 

Especially Sassy. 

Still, she had to go. 

Snuffette, not Sassy. 

The Snuffs.

They all had to go. 

Things weren’t so good on the Casa de la Sparkman. 

The rice maker was cutting itself again.

The hair dryer fell asleep in the bathtub.

The smoothie maker had fashioned an effigy of Buck out of Q-Tips and string cheese.

And Sparkman had the suspicion that the water filter and air fryer were plotting to kidnap Sassy and sell her to the doomsday prepper freezer chest in the garage, who would thaw her out for sellable scraps during the dark days of the rear end of times.

To make matters worse, there hadn’t been an office shooting in months, so Sasha Senior was treading water in a sea of negative profit. 

However, most concerning was the fact that Sparkman’s clients had developed a disturbing allergy to paying their bills thanks to the economic downturn.

Some blamed the Rebel Ants.

Some, the Demon Cats. 

But Sparkman knew that neither was the true cause. 

The truth was that some people are just assholes and during tough economic times those assholes tighten, keeping all their shit to themselves, with nary a drop trickling down to Sparkman and the other serfs living paycheck to paycheck.

“Tree,” Terry shouted.

“What?” Buck said as he walked right into a low-hanging tree branch. “Shit.”

“Quiet,” Terry replied. 

The dog’s ears perked up.

And the gravedigger’s nose twitched. 

The smell of Snuffberry pie was unmistakable.

It’d been 16 days since Sparkman was bitten by a werewolf, and he still had been to the doctor for a silver bullet suppository. 

The next full moon was less than two weeks away, so the clock was ticking.

Sparkman wasn’t worried though. 

He didn’t worry about much of anything.

Thanks to the idiot.

“Shhh,” Terry said. “You’re monologing again.”

“Sorry,” Sparkman replied.

Terry’s ears were at attention.

Through what seemed like an impenetrable wall of tree and underbrush, he could hear the Snuffs at play.

It was the sound of social media influencers in flowery crowns and freshly cemented veneers, psychedelic urinal breath mints, and burning kerosene-drenched inhibitions.  

Of course, this meant one thing: they were hosting a music festival.

The kind where the mornings began with a skinny dip in a stagnant pond of brain-eating amoebas and tetanus shots.

The daylight hours were filled with the sounds of overflowing portajohns choking on their own excess.

And the nights an endless day-glo drum circle of stillborn beats and sock-hop glitter bombs. 

But then again, that’s what Snuffs do. 

Every day of every year.

It was all part of their philosophy of living for the moment. 

Unfortunately, those moments were coming to an end at the hands of Buck Sparkman and Terry the Terrier. 

“Buck,” Terry said, quietly yet sternly. “Your thoughts. Keep. Them. To. Yourself.”

“My bad,” Sparkman said.

The two hitmen continued the march to Snuff Village. 

As they did, the music got louder and louder. 

Buck could feel the bass rumbling across the ground and up his legs and into his stomach. 

He felt woozy. 

In situations like these, Buck was grateful he suffered from tinnitus. 

With the theme to Star Cars ringing in his ears, he could barely hear the music.

And in just a few minutes, their screams. 

God bless, George Lupus.

***

“They’re all dead,” Terry said. “Good work, Sparkman.”

Buck tossed back the vial of idiot and looked around. 

Smarty’s brains had been splattered by a rock.

Helpful’s hand was lodged in Hardy’s hindquarters.

Paw Paw Snuff’s head had been squeezed until it had popped like a tick.

And Chef Snuff was face down in one of his beloved Snuffberry pies. 

Sparkman made a mental note to grab a few before they left. 

Sasha loves them with ice cream.

The cairn spoke: “You’ve got a little Snuffette in your hair.” 

Sparkman reached up and grabbed a glob of wet blonde hair and blue flesh. 

He unfurled the skin and stared into Snuffette’s face. 

Buck threw it at the dog, landing on the top of his head with a splat.

“Happy Halloween,” Sparkman said.  

Terry shook. 

The bright blue face went flying, landing on Chef Snuff’s now-deflated souffle. 

Buck’s Tombstone cracked. 

He looked down at the device and ignored the epithets issuing forth from Terry’s muzzle. 

It was Sasha.

And judging by the length of the epitaph, something was wrong.

Very wrong.

“We have to talk about Sass. She’s refusing to eat her shit sundae. I’m worried. Should we call a doctor?”

Now, Buck was of the opinion there were three kinds of people in the world: Those who wanted their shit to taste like chocolate ice cream. Those who liked it to taste like, well, shit. And those that liked a nice swirl of the two flavors. 

Sassy was none of these. 

She didn’t like shit sundaes at all — not with broken cherries on top, crushed nuts, or whipped cream. 

This was indeed, troubling.

“Buck,” Terry barked. “We’ve…”

“Hold on a second,” Sparkman said, as he made the shush sign to Terry, even though nothing would be said.

He was painstaking writing a message back. 

For the good of all mankind.

On any given day, Buck Sparkman spent exactly six hours, 17 minutes, and 39 seconds, correcting the collection of epitaphs he sent out each day. 

As the world’s most prolific, and some would say, powerful, gravedigger, Sparkman knew that the slightest mistake in penning a message on his Tombstone could have reality-altering consequences. 

The most notable error in Sparkman’s career occurred when a stray epitaph about  Wreckx-N-Effect’s 1992 hit single “Rump Shaker” was autocorrected, leading to the election of former reality TV star Donald J. Trump and dead gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur to the office of presidency and vice presidency, respectively. 

That dreadful era is now known as the Pax Killuminati.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Buck wrote. “Give the pissing nuggets a shot. She liked those last week.”

“Good call,” Sasha wrote back. “Love.”

“Luv,” Buck replied.

“Now, where were we?” Sparkman asked.

Terry turned around, his nose to the ground. He’d caught the scent of something.

“What is it, boy?” Buck said. 

Terry replied in a soft growl, “I think it’s….”

Buck’s Tombstone cracked again. 

“Hold on,” he said.

The cairn looked back, shook his head, and kept sniffing. 

The scent of something unnerving was on the wind.

It was Ilsa, the office manager at Sparkman’s Mortuary and Pawn: Ahab was back, and he was looking for his white whale: the month’s rent. 

“My bad,” he wrote back feebly and waited for her response.

Five minutes.

That’s how long Sparkman watched the three black dots appear in succession and then disappear, five minutes of his life he could have spent, well, doing something else.

Finally, he received Ilsa’s lengthy epitaph.

It was riddled with profanities and emojis, Satanic incantations and cyanide-laced gifs, all explaining in rather precise detail that not only was this was the third time in three weeks that Ahab had shown up for a missed meeting with Sparkman, but that Ahab currently had a rather rusty harpoon pointed directly at her mouse-using hand.

Buck wrote back with hope and timidity: “Sorry.” 

Sparkman could think of nothing better than that.

And besides, all the snuffberry pies were getting cold.

“Dammit, Buck. Shut your pie hole,” Terry snapped. “Someone is following us.”

Mmm, pie.