HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me! - Mykle Hansen [41]
“Here, pry his fingers. Mister Pushkin, you could still die if you don’t quit — ”
What’s that? Oh Christ no, don’t tell me the bears have a helicopter. It can’t be! They’ve got guns, trucks, radios, clothes, helicopters too … how long have they been planning this? Is this war now? The terrorist bear invasion finally happening? No, it’s impossible: bears are stupid. YOU ARE STUPID. Jesus, look out, it’s a chopper full of bears! They’ll crash, they’ll explode, they think the joystick is a Slim Jim! I’m not going up there, it’s pure death, no!
“Cinch him up, he’s jerking around still. Tell Evergreen to break out some plasma and keep him strapped. Ugch, that ain’t pretty … ”
No! No! Let me go! I want my car! I’m dizzy, I’m sick, I’m thirsty, I’m dead, I have botulism! Don’t eat me! Oh the sky is too bright and the wind is too loud and the rope is too long, but here comes the chopper, chop chop chopping up Marv Pushkin, to sell my meat on the bear market. Hah! Badda bing! Oh, I crack myself up, I crack up, I’m cracking, I’m going through the windshield with my positive mental airbag, I’m positively fucked, oh please, just cut the rope, cut it, I can’t, I’m at the end of it, my rope, ha ha! I’m so funny I’m so finished I’m so fucked, don’t you know? Don’t you get it? That’s the difference, mother-bearfuckers, that’s why you’ll always lose because a bear couldn’t tell a joke to save my life.
13
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
Forward, back.
Forward, freeze.
Back.
The bear problem … it’s out of hand. Way out of hand. They’re in the cities, they walk the streets, they drive the cars, they talk on the cell phones. They act like people, and it’s funny but I think they think they are people. And they think they can fool Marv Pushkin. That’s how dumb they are. They think they can skin a human being and wear him like a leisure suit over their flea-bitten bear bodies and I won’t notice the difference. But the smell betrays them. I can smell them a mile away.
Forward and back.
This whole zoo reeks of bears. Polar bears push clipboards and carts around the halls all day. Koalas change the sheets. Pandas peer in at me through that mirror on the wall. Oh yeah, nice mirror! You think I’ve never heard of two-way glass? Bears are so naive.
Forward … back.
But positivity wins the day. Check out my new ride! The luxury automated 2007 TDX-5 Freedom Throne, by Zipper, with executive option package and motorized tilt. They really call it that, a Freedom Throne. Bear humor. The big, particularly ugly and stupid panda who calls himself my Case Coordinator tried to snowjob me that the Freedom Throne was a gift from Image Team. Like there’s still an Image Team, like there’s still Ups and Veeps in the Merch building. That’d be nice. No, it’s all ursine squalor now: frolicking in the board room, shitting on the floor of the executive lav, chewing on the Aeron chairs, urinating on the PowerPoint projector.
Forward. Back.
Why haven’t they eaten me, you ask? Excellent question. Obviously I’m tasty and well-seasoned. Clearly I possess the tangy flavor bears crave. But I think they want something else from me. Information. They lock me up, they ask me questions, they put tranquilizers in my food, and now they give me this Freedom Throne. It’s part of some elaborate Good Bear/Bad Bear program they want