The Way of the Raccoon
The raccoon placed his paws on the table. Above him, a single naked lightbulb swayed.
“Cigarette?” asked Detective Joe Oroborus.
“Man, you guys are old school. No thanks,” said the raccoon.
“According to a witness statement, you were last seen in the vicinity of the thermite bomb attack wherein…”
“Hello? Excuse me? Do I look like I’m capable of setting off thermite?” He directed their attention to his paws. “Opposable thumbs, see any?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Thank you.”
“Not so fast, clever Sam,” said Joe’s partner, Sweetback Glide. “Also according to the witness, you’re an anthropomorphic fantasy character. Gripping never poses any obstacle for you guys. Am I right?”
“Well…”
“Oh, lighten up,” said Joe.
“You lighten up.”
“Fuck you, man. Just, fuck you.”
“Excuse me,” said the raccoon, “but aren’t you two taking the Good Cop/Bad Cop thing into new and perilous territory? And unless you have any actual evidence against me, I demand you release me. I have garbage to root through.”
“The last time you rooted through garbage, it was under your alter ego ‘Dr. Racky,’ and it was medical waste…specifically, embryos. You were planning a new race of gene-tweaked super-raccoons with opposable thumbs. Admit it! Admit it under oath!”
“Know the rules of evidence much?” asked the raccoon.
“Huh?”
“You heard me. I demand to speak with my solicitor. This outrage has gone far enough. This trial is out of order. This whole proceeding is whacky to the 9th degree. Justice! Justice!”
“You can’t handle the justice,” said Glide.
“I’m not saying anything until you hook me up with some justice,” said the raccoon sulkily.
“But we’re straying from the point,” said Joe. “We need to focus on the main theme, not this pie in the sky malarkey. You, sir, are a rootin’ tootin’ criminal of the first water!”
“Objection!” screamed the raccoon. “I so fucking object!”
“He’s got a point,” said Glide. “We need to stick to the facts. Nothing but. I shared a cell with a raccoon once and they’re very factual.”
“But…”
“I was on the inside for a very specific reason, undercover, to expose that gang of anime characters…the Big Eyes Bunch. They were planning to hold the manga genre hostage unless their demands for panty porn and tentacle action were met in spades. I mean literal spades.”
“But that’s just…overtly surreal,” said Joe.
“Spot on,” said Glide. “You’ll make a fine detective one day.”
“One day? I was doing detective spade work in the garden of earthly delights long before you poked about in your mother’s womb…looking for the good nutrition angle. I was…”
“Crap, utter crap,” howled the raccoon.
“What is it now?”
“I’m walking right out of this pop stand and you can’t stop me. Then I’ll keep walking until I find some garbage, and if it does happen to consist of embryos, so much the worse for the sting operation, because…I’ll make those clones anyway. I’ll hybridize, I’ll gene-tweak, and I’ll keep going until I have that army they warned you about in the slammer. Yes, doggo frens, I’m talking about the last army you see before you wake up in a pool of your own freckles…rubbed off forever…”
“The mind boggles,” said Joe suddenly. “This suspect is a lot weirder than both of us working together, very hard and very fast. He’s got it all over us. I say we pardon him and let the next set of detectives work the clones over.”
“Very good, sir.”
A sudden tendency to microfinetune quantum reality resulted in the outsourcing of this story temporarily to Swedish biker cranksters.
Horror Sleaze Trash 