Bring Me the Head of Hunter S. Thompson
Reynaldo, the World’s Smallest Circus Bear, knew by a hair’s-breadth presentiment whenever she was about to ring him up. There was a certain warm, giddiness-inducin pulse on the other side of the call that signified one name and one name only: Gaga.
“Caught in a bear romance” blared from his circus-bear customized smartphone, with subliminals meant to curdle brains of eavesdropping FBI agents through the use of a sophisticated encryption system Reynaldo himself had conceived with the help of the LucasFilm people.
“Rey Rey here,” he said. Only Gaga was privileged to employ the sole nickname he allowed anyone to use. They’d had each other’s back for many years, and their friendship had even survived the whirlwind courtship and devastating breakup on the Spanish island of Ibiza, only a few hundred yards from the site of Nico’s death in a Bizarro bicycling accident.
“You miss her too, huh,” Gaga had said, her words trailing off.
“To be honest, I never really knew her,” said the bear wistfully. He was speaking partially of Nico, of course, but he could have been talking about himself. The whole thing had gone by in a blur, on an alternate timeline. Reynaldo once researched bear lifespans and found to his astonishment that his had somehow expanded 30 years past the demise of 99.9% of bears–except, of course, for the fabled ‘Bear Methusaleh’ of lore and legend–and the fact that he had actually known the deep-voiced Teutonic actress/singer/vampire pussybat during his undergraduate years at Brown (Bear) U. was something he simply accepted the way he accepted the fact that he could juggle chainsaws while negotiating a unicycle over a sometimes Nietzschean abyss.
He wasn’t about to swap out this timeline for another that, however more ‘normal,’ and lacking in danger, was sheer Snoozeville. Reynaldo wasn’t a risk-averse bear; in fact it was precisely that sterner stuff of which his particular flesh was heir that led to his longtime interstectine departmental war.
The Company had employed Gaga off and on since her debut, after they groomed her as a Julliard student, the same way they’d done Conan O’ Brien and countless others. She was flattered that the spooks believed the Germanottas were on the data dotta as far as having certain interspecies psychic mindlink skills, which was how she first encountered Reynaldo.
“I just got the call,” Germanotta said. The tension in her voice was poignant to Reynaldo, who’d known her in happier, simpler times and climes where/when the two cavorted like primal woman and bear, he sporting an enormous red chub, her nude except for her LED-enhanced mirror shades.
“Steadman?”
“Y-yes. And he sounded…”
“He sounded in a bad way. I know.”
“You always know, Reynaldo!” She sounded like a petulant Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
“Because a smol bear is an ordained magus in Thee Order Ov Unholy Flesh.”
“Well so am I, but my esp powers aren’t quite as developed as yours,” Stephanie said after a thoughtful pause. Or she had nodded off thinking of Nico and the lovely French language.
“If Nico hadn’t been an Amazon style Germanic blonde femme fatale, she would have reminded me of a young boy,” was what Reynaldo decidedly did not say. “Anyway the Russians want to derail this precise conversation, and where the Russians are, MK-Ultra can’t be far behind.”
“Just fuck that Zander creep,” said Gaga. “He kept calling me, wanted to interview me for that stupid magazine of his. So I consulted with Willem Dafoe. Willem told me to charge him. Now Zander’s gotten a second mortgage so he can get a loan to pay me for the interview, and I fucking told his dumb ass…”
“Gaga, focus, dammit. Look into my eyes and see who I am.”
“Lucifer, obvs, but ok, I see what you’re saying. Yes, Steadman was in a panic. Some Russian gazillionaire had Thompson’s head stolen. Again.”
“Dammit to hell,” burst out Reynaldo. “And I had a golf date with Bull Clownton. Hold on, I need to tell my secretary.” Reynaldo terminated the call, then texted an message to a well-worn address.
Ten Hours Later, FBI Field Office, Detroit, Michigan
Special Agent Lance Johnson had folded himself into several idiotic shapes examining the security footage. What sort of game was that bear or bearlike individual playing now? Everybody knew that Hunter Stockton Thompson had had himself…or the particulate matters of pure gonzo fiction that remained…shot out of a duo-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button. There was no whole head to have brought in a diplomatic pouch to a Russian gobsmackillionaire anyway. But he suspected that half the time Reynaldo and his pal Germanotta were up to metafictional shenans. At least, that’s what his instincts told him. Of course, his instincts were mostly wrong as shit.
“Let’s scramble some breakfast choppers aaaaand…” Johnson was on the nod again, drool-drilling himself into epic widescreen dreams of motorboating Nico like a madman while she slurred the words to “All Tomorrow’s Parties” in his ear as she transformed into a genetically modified vampire pussy bat.
Reynaldo, the World’s Smolest Circus Bear, fortified compound, Taos, New Mexico
“So what did you discover?” asked Reynaldo after an eternity.
“I think Hunter’s brain is fucking with us,” she said, snort-laughing.
“I would tend to agree,” said Reynaldo. “He’s good at that. I think that’s why we got along so well. Simpler, purer, less complicated times. Oh Gaga…”
“Oh, bear…the unbearable hotness of your being a smol circus beast who exploits himself for hard cash…”
“I’ve performed before royalty and reeking New Orleans gutterpunks alike,” said Reynaldo, his smol, furry body suddenly shaking with sobs as he realized that his youth would never return. “Hunter knew exactly what was about to happen to our world after 9/11, which was why…”
“Why he had himself cloned by German doctors,” said Germanotta, completing Reynaldo’s sentence.
“I miss the fuck out of Nico,” said Reynaldo. “Yes, she was an asshole, but she was OUR asshole, you know? She cared about nothing but her dripping black candles and turning her skin all butter n’ creamy soft from soaking in the dark tub all day…wrinkled as she was, she was our bitch.”
“I’m a free bitch, baby,” said Gaga. “And I choose domination by my favorite circus bear.”
“The world’s smolest,” said Reynaldo with a grin.
“Indeed, love, you make me weak in the knees.” Her phone buzzed. “Sorry, I need to take this,” she said.
“Hello, Beyonce? What’s shackalackeling, baby? I’m here with Smol Bear…oh, you got the call from Steadman too? Yeah, I agree, he needs to get out more. Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Long live Hunter S. Thompson, his clones, his brains, Nico Pussybat in her various incarnations…”
From somewhere in the far distance they heard the sound of a harmonium and a wet, queefy sound approximating a Germanic accent in bubblin’ tones.
“Thees song was Jeeem Morrison’s favorite song…eet’s called ‘Thee Ent.'”
THEE ENT
Horror Sleaze Trash 