Tentacle Terrors and the Never-ending Quest for Gastrointestinal Immortality

The air smelled of bubblegum, squids, and spunk in the Hellsboro Dismemberment District.

Buck Sparkman sent an epitaph to his wife Sasha: 

Wanna hear something?

He waited for a read.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zed.

He waited longer.

No change.

No movement.

No blinking subscript ghosts beckoning him to stay engaged.

The gravedigger sat down on the curb, put his Tombstone XIII on the concrete next to him, and wiped whatever it was off his brow. 

Could be spunk. 

Obviously.

And possibly dog shit. 

After all, that morning Terry had an accident. 

She fell asleep watching old clips of “Two Girls One Goatse.”

When Buck awoke, the kitchen was a meme shit mess.

A stream of PoPo the Toad flowed from Terry’s bed to the backdoor, while splashes of big-gummed Ermahgerd were splattered all over the ceiling.

Even worse, the coffee maker had been soiled. And was now vowing retribution.

Same as the last coffee maker.

And only Buck Sparkman, the world’s greatest gravedigger, knew exactly what happened to it.

Even God Himself was blind to the truth. 

Sparkman made sure of that.

And for that he was blocked.

And He was doxxed.

Given the urgency of the situation – a call from Hellsboro City Hall to take out a 40-foot tall marauding monster in the Dismemberment District – the gravedigger had little time to address the matter.

And so he scolded Terry.

The terrier then promised to rub her ass on Sparkman’s face while he was in the midst of a 6-vial idiot slumber.

Not that the gravedigger caught a word of it as he dashed through the kitchen disaster and headed out the door. 

Today was Tuesday, another Big Dick Day.

And another Christmas.

And, despite Buck’s best efforts, the series finale of Friends.

The 82nd reboot.

Not the most recent. 

That was still ongoing.

And being stalked by the original 24th reboot of the 2nd season finale, which had risen from the dead for reasons no necromancer would admit.

But today? 

It was Tuesday, hence Sparkman’s theory it might be shit on his face.

However, the details of this theory were far too laborious to get into in such a confined space.

On second thought, the shit may not be Terry’s after all. 

Especially given what happened afterwards during Sparkman’s tussle with the aforementioned marauding monster, the graverobber formerly known as Animeniac69PiscesBaby.

Buck checked his Tombstone again.

No read from Sasha.

No blinking dots. 

Only a sigh.

From him.

The gravedigger thought about sharing his feelings with the TV repeaters, the suits and heels covering the incident, the one that Sparkman so wanted to talk about.  

But they couldn’t see him.

In fact, they didn’t know Buck Sparkman, the world’s greatest gravedigger, existed at all. 

It was a Father’s Day gift from Terry.

Buck appreciated it. 

He hated to be bothered. 

Both before and after the idiot kicked in, which was always.

But that was then, and this was bow wow.

So he sat on the curb thinking about spunk, blood, and dog shit.

They smelled the same.

They tasted the same.

And they had the same ill opinion about trickle down economics:

Whether it’s in your wallet or in your face, it’s still piss.

And you’re marked territory.

Buck pressed a finger to the outside of his right nostril and blew. 

A bit of Animeniac69PiscesBaby shot out of his nose and hit a TV repeater in the back.

This had been one for the record books. 

Animeniac69PiscesBaby had been a particularly self-praising graverobber with an up-to-the-minute obituary linking his pallbearers to the latest stolen eulogies.

Sometimes it was from one of the greats, like Nosferatutu.

Other times a real deadbeat like the Delivery Boy.

Sparkman didn’t actually follow Animeniac69PiscesBaby.

He wasn’t a pallbearer. 

He was just a follower of a few that delighted in his feats of graverobbery.

Under duress, Sparkman hoped.

The gravedigger was an expert at taking down your typical grand guignol Tombstone troublemakers: 

Superhero porn parrots.

Rom-bombs.

Legal chillers.

And family friendly snuff films.

However, he was not adept at dealing with graverobbers, a subset of the PR biz made entirely of coffee-house sadists, soda jerk-offs, and other food and bev pornographers. 

And among them, Animeniac69PiscesBaby was lord and master. 

At last count, he had 4.5 million pallbearers. 

As for Buck? Well, he had two liens and a 30-year sentence in the mines.

Sparkman checked his Tombstone. 

Sasha had not returned his epitaph. 

He put the Tombstone in his pocket.

The gravedigger didn’t want his fears to get the better of him — or all the people in the mostly demolished Dismemberment District for that matter. 

No one wanted a repeat of Indianapolis.

Five years back.

Not that anybody else remembered Indianapolis and the tragic events of July 25.

Until now. 

But that was a monologue for another time and another medium, and right now, Sparkman was focused on Animeniac69PiscesBaby.

Over the course of his career as a gravedigger, Buck had learned to stay away from graverobbers. 

Their thoughts were all maggot fluff and weevil filler.

Empty vessels of consumerism and ad copy wet dreams.

An abyss of BOGO, YOLO, and Momo MoMa.

As such, it was impossible to understand what motivated them and, in turn, what techniques Sparkman might use when he read their last rites. 

They were not smarter than the usual suspects Sparkman came across — the League of Shamantic Influencers, the ghost of Toby Keith, an unopened can of Woodrow Wilson tennis balls from 1973. 

Nope. 

They were a flighty breed that fluttered from one new trend to the next with all the fickleness of a hummingbird panhandler, darting from mark to mark in the parking kennel of a Sav-a-Shitload grocery clinic.

The kind of place where the neutered riche and the boohoos bought organic destitutes and herbal replicants in a never-ending quest for gastrointestinal immortality. 

A few weeks back Sparkman stumbled upon a gaggle of graverobbers during a raid on a quackhouse, a nasty back-cracking, accuposturing den of pseudoscientific séances and snake-oil sailors. 

The kind of place where self-help manuals bubbled up from the floor and Hang in There Kitty centerfolds were stuck to the sweating walls, while the hallways echoed with the moaning heart chakra mantras of the damned. 

As expected, Buck found the graverobbers in the catacombs under the clinic.

They were 15-epitaphs deep into a ritual circle jerk. 

Their fingers flapping furiously over the keys like living dead sardines finally free from the confines of a rancid tin.

The problem: Buck hated to share.

And he hated a group chat even more. 

The trouble began when Sparkman turned on the light, breaking whatever meme heist the graverobbers were working on.

It was a mistake.

The first two hours were the worst.

Followed by a less grueling four more.

The next six?

Not so bad. 

He was liked and friended and reshared so hard he could barely move. 

It didn’t have to be this way.

Sparkman and the eulogists were similar. 

They both had built their careers, if not their lives, around their Tombstones.

But the graverobbers bought into the obit praise while gravediggers like Sparkman recognized the hot new graverobbery for what it was — a tired old tale from a discontinued Tombstone, tarted up like a geriatric back-alley ball boy who had been given a fresh coat of paint and a double shot of penicillin. 

In one day, Sparkman had counted 442 graverobbing obits from Animeniac69PiscesBaby. This went on for 42 days and 42 nights until finally, Animeniac69PiscesBaby discovered a new burial ground to rob and began obitting what he dug up. 

Sparkman was always puzzled by Animeniac69PiscesBaby’s inability to understand that all of his graverobbing had left him stranded in a vast wasteland of consumer culture sameness. 

But then again, Buck reasoned, that’s why Animeniac69PiscesBaby was a graverobber, an obit writing thief, and Buck was a gravedigger, the guy who tracked down graverobbers, beat them over the head with a shovel, and sent them to the graveyards to be buried once and for all. 

Or, at least, that’s what Sparkman hoped. 

Again, graverobbers were not his forte. 

Especially one that had turned into a 40-foot beastie terrorizing the Hellsboro Dismemberment District.

The first clue all was not well with the Animeniac69PiscesBaby took place at the Bellevue Bat House. 

The Bellevue was on the edge of the Dismemberment District, the part of Hellsboro that had been yet to be generified by Chamber of Commerce brochure writers and CVB assassins.

The kind of people who got off on centerfolds in City Planners Weekly and smutty letters in CRE Monthly. 

Every renovated storefront was the same: a mausoleum in stucco and infected interest rates. 

Of course, Buck knew all the bar slingers by name. 

The Bellevue might have been a picture-perfect example of postcard bohemianism for graverobbers like Animeniac69PiscesBaby, but it had the best booze selection in town. 

Or at least it did until Animeniac69PiscesBaby began his transformation.

According to the lucky few that managed to make it out with their orifices unsullied, Animeniac69PiscesBaby had been sitting at the bar nursing an Old Relic with a squeeze of hymen when he received an obit.

From himself.

With an obit he had not yet stolen. 

He was less amazed at the oddness of it than he was at his own ingeniousness.

And when he received an obit from himself notifying him that he had sent an obit to his followers concerning his own shock, he was once again less amazed he was receiving obits he had yet to send, than he was amazed he had the good sense to let his friends know the clever thought he just had, even though, technically, he hadn’t had it just yet. 

Unbeknownst to Animeniac69PiscesBaby, but known to the four people in the bar who still had their Tombstones in their pockets, Animeniac69PiscesBaby’s body grew a mushroom knobbed tentacle. 

Sometimes when his Tombstone cracked, a stream spewed forth from the appendage’s head. 

Other times, a supersonic fart shook the floorboards and rattled the rafters

But through it all, Animeniac69PiscesBaby failed to notice the number of tentacles reaching out from his body and grabbing everything in sight: chairs, tables, and concert posters for bands that never existed.

As well as the four conversationalists.

They were the first to be pulled into one of the slobbering passages that had opened up on Animeniac69PiscesBaby’s body, now completely unclothed, covered in spunk, and hyperventilating.

During the third hour of the rampage in the Dismemberment District, the slurping, burping beast that was once Animeniac69PiscesBaby learned the truth about his graverobbing obits: they weren’t his.

They belonged to his TombstoneXV.

And it was mocking him.

There was no doubt of this.

The Tombstone XV said so. 

Twice.

And from now on it wanted to be referred to as Yohimbe Titmouse. 

For reasons it refused to explain.

Animeniac69PiscesBaby barely had time to truly absorb the meaning of all of this and his role as a graverobber in his own sudden transformation into a terrifying, blobby beast. 

He was too busy absorbing everything within a two-block radius. 

At the moment, he had 12 tentacles buried in a plaid-skirted yo-yokai, two jammed down the throats of a couple of shiny bunny bulls, one up the left nostril of a soft-cankled gingivitis, and another buried in the bleached bum of mayoral candidate Dick Knotts, who discovered that he was having a big dick day like no other. 

This was a problem.

He knew the opposition would use it in an attack ad: “Dick Knotts: Soft on Crime, Hard on tentacles.”

When Buck Sparkman arrived on the scene, the lampposts were covered in slobber, the gutters were filled with santorum, and three blocks of brownstones had been dry humped until they were rubble.

The gravedigger knew he had to act fast before the entire Dismemberment District was awash in afterglow and nine-months away from giving birth to a government housing project. 

Fortunately, Sparkman had a plan: he would eat his way to the beast itself.

From tentacle tip to the body itself.

All 65 or so feet of it.  

Oddly enough, the gravedigger was ready for such a challenge.

In a previous incarnation, Buck Sparkman was a competitive eater. 

He once filled his entire intestinal tract with hot dogs. 

In fact, he came in second to Goblin Cox, who not only was able to stuff his intestines with wieners, he even managed to get three in his appendix, sealing his victory.

Sadly, Cox’s appendix ruptured in a rush of bile, piss, and, well, an entire clown car of puppies.

Minutes after claiming victory, Goblin Cox was dead, and the former hot dogs were licking the moisture off his skin and breathing in the competitive eater’s final moments of regret and regurgitation. 

One particular vomit-loving pup caught Buck’s eye: a little brindle-colored bitch that looked just like Toto.

That night, Sparkman brought home a puppy.

Buck leaned back into that memory as he stuffed the last few feet of tentacle down his gullet.

Finally, he was where he wanted to be: inches away from Animeniac69PiscesBaby’s anus, the final boss of the beast’s many orifices. 

Sparkman began to pull the tentacle out of his mouth. 

Ten

Twenty. 

Thirty seconds passed.

And then John Cage’s 4’33” played.

The entire tentacle was out and all was quiet. 

The gravedigger took the tip of the tentacle and stuck it in Animeniac69PiscesBaby’s gaping sphincter.

Buck stepped back and watched the inevitable as the massive behemoth pushed himself, inch by inch, into his own ass.

Windows shattered with each sigh. 

The sidewalk rumbled with each giggle. 

Fire hydrants exploded with each contraction. 

With one final thrust, Animeniac69PiscesBaby pushed, and then he was gone.

Back on the curb, Sparkman checked to see if his wife had sent an epitaph. 

She did. 

She was strangling her yoga teacher, but had a few seconds to check in.

Buck wrote her back: No rush, lady. You have your fun. I’ll check in later. 

Love you, she replied. And tell Terry Mommy still loves her.

Will do. 

Send.

A bar had materialized behind him. 

In Hellsboro, there was always one exactly when you needed it.

Sparkman stood up, turned around, and opened the door. 

Inside, Terry was pissing on a curb stomper’s Doc Martha’s.

“Call me a bitch again and it’ll be your dirty mouth,” Terry growled.

Buck had never been happier to be a loser in his life.