THIRTY-FIVE: SIXTH DREAM OF STAR TOWN

When your sunset is your sunrise, you best close to open all your eyes. When your goodnight is the good morning, you might see this as a warning. When your hello is most good-byes, it might be the time to die. It might be the time to die and time to live alive all over again, or time to be a good friend, or time to be a bean fried.

Celebrity She-Cyclops has no end of friends waking her up from her week long morning of drunken surrender. There is Crazy the Nick and Marleen and Bettie and Star-Crossed Turkey King, and even Lon Lonson and Squirts, who aren’t so testy about permits this sorry morning, and I could go on and on and list the names for you, so I will. I’ll do it in proper list form.

Dartboard R. Zaporozhye

Quails A. Gamecock

Retaliatory M. Cleavers

Iceland M. Chubby

Sucker R. Christian

Milton C. Salvos

Minimal K. Composty

Tinkering G. Advocated

Safetying M. Clogs

Malices T. Demeanor

Acton E. Buylwark

Pigeonholed H. Buchanan

Unruly H. Forewoman

Brainage S. Wasteland

Astigmatic J. Uproariously

All of these and more were pressing and touching and looking over and looking on of She-Cyclops on this wake-up morning moment, and they just wanted to say what they just wanted to say in the first place.

Lon Lonson even came up, and he had got his hat in hand. He wanted to make it very close up clear, so even hangover Cyclops could understand.

“It’s Scrunchyface, and you ought to be able to say a thing or two, for he used to be the roommate of you,” said Lon Lonson.

“He’s a sayer that he’s the mayor, but he isn’t the proper mayor, he’s a usurper with his Scrunchyface the Megalorapter thing.”

And the other room town people smiling standing under the steeple say similar things, about all the watching, and the zero tolerance for hopscotching and the surveillance and the unplaisance of the big cardboard face with the speaker in its tweaker.

And speak of the devil but the devil dares to speak. It’s that mega voice in surround sound and it’s got to talk all around town. And it talked so big, and it talked so now. Holy cow, it was Scrunchyface the Megalorapter in the cardboard loudspeaker flesh!

If cardboard could walk, it would walk while it talked. It could walk up to the people pile and then with its gigantic cardboard face, give out the largest and strangest of smile.

“Hi, People of Star Town,” comes the voices times five hundred of Scrunchyface the Megalorapter. And it’s the voice in your pants, or it feels that way, wet.

“Hello, Scruchyface the Megalorapter,” say the shivering shaking stinking quaking and forsaking people of Star Town. But they say it so small you can barely hear it from cardboard tall.

“Scram!” said the cardboard cowboy face of Scrunchyface the Megalorapter, and he gets his way, and the town scatters like crabs.

Hangover Cyclops scrams with the men and ma’ams and jars of jams under the counter in the corner where she encounters Rack and Zack.

“Cyclops, you must go and then you must come back,” said Rack and Zack. “You must go to surgery war and come back as something capable to attack with a whack and a thwack that!” and they point to the cardboard giant.

And Cyclops knew that she had a new mission.