A Tabloid Fable

“Ha, ha, ha!” roared Needleman as he burst into the room.  “Ha, ha, ha!”

          “Desmond,” said Murray, swiveling from his artwork.  “How was Aruba?  And why are you here so late?  I was just staying to finish up this panel—”

          “Ha, ha, ha,” repeated Needleman, looking wild-eyed and feverish.  “I’m laughing, Murray!  Do you see me laughing?”

          “Well, sure I see you laughing, Desmond.  So—”

          “So call it off, O.K.?”

          Unsure how to react, Murray kept his expression neutral.  “Uh—what exactly was it you wanted me to call off?”

          Needleman pumped a thumb at the ceiling.  “That,” he said.  Sure, Murray had heard the ruckus upstairs.  So the cleaners were having themselves a hoedown.  Who cared?

          “Come on now, Mur,” Needleman puffed as he bent closer.  “It’s me, Desmond, yourcollaborator on this rag, remember?  I understand, I get it, I’m not pissed or anything.  The old fart goes on vacation and you set it up—”

          “Set what up?” queried Murray, genuinely puzzled and not a little bit intimidated by the beet-red rictus only inches away.

          Needleman found a copy of The Weekly Globe.  “This,” he said, slapping the tabloid down on the table.  “Them!”

          “Them?” Murray aped, not knowing what else to say.  He picked up the paper and pretended to study it.  “Uh—them who?”

          Needleman thrust a quivering digit at the photo adorning the cover.  It showed a pair of enormous dogs, saddled like horses and ridden by two miniature men in western garb with ten-gallon hats.  Murray didn’t get it.  This was a gag shot of the O’Ryan brothers at a Missouri rodeo, taken in the ‘50’s—one of thousands the paper kept on file in its Vault of the Absurd.  A headline over the picture declared: TWIN COWBOYS RIDE MASTIFFS TO WORK.

          “Yeah?  So what?”

          Then Needleman was dragging him into the hallway.  As  they neared the elevator, Murray reached for the call button but Needleman pushed his hand aside.  “No!” he hissed in a spray of spittle.  “That’s how they come up!”  The two men took to the stairwell. 

          On seven, Needleman opened the door a crack to peek out.  “Quick!” he said.  “I think we can make it to my office!”  It was dawning on Murray to check for the hidden stash of Jim Beam when they drew even with the first cubicle.  “Ha, ha, ha!” said Needleman.  “Ha, ha, ha!”  Inside were two canines—and perched atop each was a tiny buckaroo, grinning from ear to ear: The O’Ryan brothers.

Murray looked at the Globe he held, then back again.  It was them, alright.  The only problem was that the twins would be in their eighties by now, and these boys hadn’t aged a day…

          “Howdy, tenderfoots!” the pair sang in unison, twirling wee lariats above their heads.

          Murray’s neck-hairs stood to attention.  He was weighing the advantages of fainting when Needleman made a gurgling sound, took hold of his chin and steered it sideways.  Loping toward them was Abraham Lincoln.  He wore an embroidered yarmulke, a starched white shirt and khaki trousers.  Over one pocket was a placard proclaiming TEL AVIV TOURS, opposite a matching name tag: ABE.

          “This guy’s great,” said Needleman, a little too enthusiastically.  “Where’d you find him?  Central Casting?”

          Murray advanced a page in the tabloid and there he was, under the banner: BELOVED PRESIDENT REINCARNATED AS ISRAELI TOUR GUIDE.

          Honest Abe came closer and drawled, “Are you fellers on the bus for the Holy City?”  Then he noticed something behind them, and his own jaw dropped. 

There was an odd set of squeaking noises.  Murray and Needleman exchanged a glance before turning slowly around.  Standing in the aisle were a half-dozen, bright-green aliens with enormous, almond-shaped eyes.  One of these spotted them and his eyes got even larger.  Squeaks became shrieks as they ducked around a partition.

Needleman stuck an elbow into Murray’s ribs.  “They’re perfect!  Where did you—how did you…  You didn’t, did you.”

          Murray shook his head gravely as he held up page three: SPACEMEN OCCUPY OUTHOUSE was the heading above a snapshot of these same extraterrestrials.  The two men leaned far enough to see a door with a crescent-moon clap shut.   

Needleman gave vent to his feelings.  “Nyahhhhh!” he howled, the blood draining from his face. 

          Murray seized him by the shoulders.  “Desmond!  Get hold of yourself!”

          The elevator bell froze them both in place.  They listened to the door slide open.

           “Don’t look,” said Needleman.

          “I have to,” said Murray.

          “I know,” winced Needleman, and they spun their heads.

          First out was the SUMATRAN FROG BOY, a dollop of slime deposited with each hideous bound.  Next came the THREE-HEADED TURKEY (gobble, gobble, gobble) and then MUKLUCK THE HUMAN PINCUSHION, swords and daggers sprouting in all directions—though by this time the partners were in full flight.  They didn’t actually see Elvis in the maid’s outfit, but his baritone rendition of ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ was unmistakable…

          Needleman slammed the office door and threw his back against it.  “Alright, Murray,” he blurted, “I can take it.  Tell me what’s going on.”

          Murray spread the paper out before him.  “They’re all here, right in order—”

          They regarded one another, then collided in an effort to turn the page.  Their gasps were punctuated by the chime of the elevator.

          “Lock the door!” screamed Needleman.  The two men were dragging the desk in front of it when the first shambling footsteps sounded in the hallway.

          “The file cabinet!” shouted Murray, and as they wrestled with it a forearm the size of a golf bag flopped over top of the wall.  “Hurry!” added Needleman, which in calmer times he would have recognized as a superfluous admonition.

Finally the barrier was in place, and when the pair stepped back to take a breath the door was smashed inward and desk and cabinet tossed aside.  And there, hulking, heaving, drooling and deadly stood BIGFOOT, exactly as Needleman had described and Murray had drawn him.  The proud parents harmonized in a scream.  In the next instant there was a flash, and where the brute had been was a blinding-white, linen-clad figure which seemed to hover in the void.

The two men’s gazes met, then descended together to the Globe.  Murray flipped to the back cover.  And sure enough, there he was, comforting the inhabitants of a tiger-ravaged village: ‘One moment He was standing among us,’ the caption read, ‘and the next He was gone—and the great beast along with Him!’

          The apparition began to speak—or rather, to impart words directly into their craniums: “While a measure of ordure may rejuvenate the soil,” said the voice, “an overabundance will just plain stink.”  Then a palm was raised in farewell, and the figure floated away from them like a bubble on the breeze.  When it entered the waiting elevator, there was a coda: “They say that a word to the wise is sufficient.  I have granted you gentlemen thirty-one.”  It ascended now, disappearing from the head downward while the cab itself—doors wide open—remained in place.

          Silence reigned as the poleaxed duo found themselves alone on the seventh floor.

          Needleman was first to recover.  “You know, Mur, I think this weekly of ours has run its course.  What do you say we change gears?”

Murray thought it over.  “Good idea, Desmond.  Something entirely different.  A childrens magazine, maybe. Puzzles and rhymes, lots of color…”    

This story appeared originally in Eureka Literary Review