Robespierre’s Rules of Order and the Lord of the Blue Hairs

Buck Sparkman darted up the steps to Sparkman’s Mortuary and Pawn like a man in danger.

And with good reason.

Each step was a trap door, a potential pitfall into a horror realm of cybernetic cinnamon-scented alligators, queefing quick sand coywolves, poisoned-tipped lawn dart snakes, and a very thorough member of the U.S. Customs Bureau.

A razor-sharp pat down was sure to ensue.

But the trouble didn’t stop there. 

The office door was an ever-evolving mental puzzle, one involving belligerent combination locks and malicious booby traps, each one with a penchant for mockery.

Once passed that, there was the area rug inside. 

It craved one thing and one thing only: the will to live. 

To step on it was to face all of your fears at once.

All of your failures.

All of your regrets.

All of your grade school embarrassments.

Especially that time you sharted in gym class and subsequently caused the terror alert to change to Code Orange.

As bad as these were, and they were the worst, each one was a mild irritation compared to the wrath of Sparkman’s Mortuary and Pawn office manager Elsa Enomoto. 

One ill look from her could fell a double-decker elephant and turn a ferocious Toblerone tiger into a chocolaty chew toy.

These were the dangers Sparkman faced each and every time he went to the office.

These were the reasons why today was the first day in three weeks that he had bolted up the steps to Sparkman’s Mortuary and Pawn.

But on occasion, the risk to his life was necessary.

Like today 

Bills were due. 

But before Buck got into that horrible business, he needed two vials of idiot. 

Maybe three.

Which is why he did four. 

Just in case. 

Buck Sparkman tossed the now-empty vials and sat down at his desk.

It was still not the right time to address the bills.

He had his mind on the future. 

Particularly, that moment when Arson Whales’ check went through. 

He too was running late.

So Sparkman did what he normally did in circumstances such as these: he pulled out his Tombstone XIII and began reading the latest deluge of epitaphs, minus the junk.

The Tombstone XIII chewed up spam and spit it out on the floor. 

It pissed on phishing scams and shat on Ponzi dreams.

It strangled hustle culture gigachads in their sleep and committed multi-level matricide to the sound of Peruvian flutes and self-help aphorisms.

Buck found a few interesting items of interest, most notably: a clown car had crashed into a bus carrying the entire cast of “Freaks: The Musical.”

This, in turn, sent a stampede of pinheads, geeks, bearded ladies, and creepy clowns into a nearby apartment complex, triggering a city-wide Pennywise panic and the fear that the It had finally hit the fan. 

He added it to his must-see list. 

Unfortunately, there were bills, and bills meant work, and work meant accepting an assignment from Hellsboro City Hall.

Like this one:

The Chalmers Calhoun statue had a case of pneumonia, and the Hellsboro Preservation Society wanted it cured.

Stat. 

Much to Sparkman’s gingham collar dismay, the Preservation Society was composed of silver-backed blue hairs and bifocal bow ties, each one a member of the local aristocracy. 

In other words: the enemy. 

Although Buck didn’t normally associate with the broken hip and gold-trimmed adult diaper crowd, he had little choice but to take their money and solve their problems with a smile. 

Not only did Chalmers Calhoun found the Preservation Society with his own hard-earned inheritance, he was the town’s most celebrated authority on Robespierre’s Rules of Order, an ability he displayed with a restrained fervor in the normally dull meetings of the Preservation Society. 

And when he did, two-thirds of the old blue hairs in the Preservation Society felt their sandpaper snatches go moist, while three-fourths of the bow tie bifocals felt a fire in their sad sacks they hadn’t felt since Tuesday.

And in Hellsboro, everyone was gay on Tuesday. 

Which was a good thing, because Tuesday was a mandatory Big Dick Day.

And everyday was Tuesday.

It was a vicious cycle.

Some might say the same thing about Preservation Society meetings.

The debate over the old Owl Creek Covered Bridge ended in a mangled mess of mutual masturbation and touchy-feely tomfoolery. 

Although Sparkman wasn’t there for that, he’d seen the animated Korean TV reenactments. 

They were so depraved his Tombstone shut down in shame.

Still, stopping Calhoun from coughing up his lungs on the tourists and the pigeons was simple enough. 

All he had to do was grab a can of chicken noodle soup out of the pantry and a highly controversial episode of “Silver Belles.”

You know the one:

Perpetually horny Daisy bought a much ballyhooed dildo from Shanghai that vibrated in Mandarin and glided over her private parts easily as a tank in Tiananmen Square.

Everybody talks about it.

Even 35 years later.

Which was about as long as the can of chicken soup had been sitting in the pantry, well before Sparkman moved in.

That would surely take care of the statue’s woes.

But the sullied state of the Chalmers Calhoun statue was only one of Hellsboro City Hall’s concerns. 

They’d also had sent him a notice that a missing white woman in Hellsboro, Panty Pool, had disappeared while podcasting about a missing white teen girl in San Sangre, Polly Pants, clear across the country. 

The teen, Polly Pants, had been found weeks ago, safe and relatively unharmed — that is if you didn’t count the new Hello Kitty tattoo on her left arm that played That’s What I Call Muzak XVIII and a drop-out Band-Aid husband who played never-ending marathons of Womb Raider and scratch off lottery cards on the other. 

The podcasting Hellsboro housewife, Panty Pool, had yet to be found. 

Or at least somewhere outside of the family basement where she had crafted crime-scene dioramas of the country’s most notorious crimes.

Each one illustrated all the possible scenarios in which the murdered white women in question were taken and subsequently molested and murdered, all lovingly detailed using Creepy Pasta brand noodles, single-batch glitter glue, book club My Randy Stallion stickers, and dime store pubic hair. 

Twice a week, Panty Pool sent photographs of the crime scenes along with a pair of soiled panties – hers – to a random address in hope of stirring up interest in the crimes. 

Her actions alone led to three Nutflix true crime series and an overwrought NBO movie. 

Sasha had watched them all. 

Enjoyed them in fact. 

They inspired her as a crisis actor. 

But Buck didn’t care for torture porn.

And for good reason.

The quarterly budget had him by the balls. 

And the gravedigger was left with no choice. 

He had to cut them off, his balls that is, if he ever hoped to get out of his office alive.

Laid out across his desk, flat on his back, Sparkman reached for a pair of scissors. 

The Super Bong XXI commemorative coffee cup in which he kept the clippers, along with his poison-tipped pens and throwing staplers, moved two inches out of the way. 

The hippie on the side of the mug blew smoke in his face and laughed. 

Sparkman made a note to himself to erase Woodstock from the history books, something he should have done a long time ago. 

In this case, he’d have to wait until after lunch.

Sparkman could feel the hanger coming over him like a 21-bukake salute. 

If he didn’t eat soon, something would be irreparably broken. 

And that could be the Super Bong coffee cup, the bygone idealism of the 1960s, or the final five seconds of the hit sitcom The Wander Years. 

Sparkman snipped away at the budget, cutting office supply expenses, doughnut bonuses, and mid-afternoon rim jobs. 

The end result wasn’t pretty. And there was all too much blood. 

But at least the budget was under control. 

For this month. 

The next was a different story entirely.