Toad’s wig was askew. A retreating wave of blonde leaving hairless sweating skin in its wake. The stoat fucking Toad’s slimier ass didn’t seem to notice or care.

Toad’s wide face—wide with horror, wide from tadpole-tail–like twists in his genetic code—banged against the baize of the pool table. A wet green O was slowly filling in each time his slobbery open mouth kissed it.

“Do—you—know—whom—you’re—fucking!” he managed to shriek during an especially vicious series of thrusts.

“Yeah, some green-skinned bitch who can’t sing,” grunted another stoat who stood on the other end of the pool table frantically jacking his prick, as slick and as red as a clown’s patent leather shoe.

“High—Olive!” shouted Toad in reply.

“Hi, Olive, yourself, cunt,” the stoat said as he shot at Toad’s face.

“My—eye—my—eye—not—green—olive—my—eye—my—eye—it—burns!”

Sccchhhreeeeeeeeechbangbambambambambambambambamsplash.

Toad was going a hundred kph down the wrong side of the road—Damn, Yanks, have to do everything their own way and that’s why I love them!—toward the glint of fallen gold steaming from the asphalt in the hot slanted light of the mid-afternoon sun. The faster he sped the farther it retreated. Till it leapt in dazzling flashes from rearview mirror to rearview mirror on the row of bikes parked in front of the bar known and feared far and wide as The Wild Wood. Toad squinted, blinded by the fierce light, raised his hands to his eyes, and slammed into the first bike. As they toppled like a set of $10,000-a-pop dominoes, Toad hurtled, limbs flailing like an epileptic starfish, over the twisted steel and rubber bleeding gas, into a gravel-rimmed containment pond.

Toad kicked and flapped off his leathers before they dragged him into murky depths forever. Naked, he floated to the surface. He rolled over and spat water and gulped air and choked on both. Even without opening his eyes, he could see the white hot sun. And then a large shadow passed across the lids of his eyes. It circled back.

“Bird of prey! Bird of prey,” Toad screamed and splashed out of the water and ran for the cool dark of the treeline. He punched at branches of trees and tore at green choking leaves of that plant with the name of some African animal he’d shot on safari once—Kudu? Kudzu?—as he rushed toward something that looked like shelter. It was a circle of campers, huddled close together. What do they call them here? A park of trailers? Before he could answer, a voice croaked from behind a screen door, “Ruby? Ruby, is that you?”

A face that resembled a painter’s palette, thick with freshly squeezed oils, and surrounded with metallic red curls peered through the mesh before it was swung out from behind the door. The face shielded its eyes from the sun and looked hard at Toad. It leaned forward and the rest of its body followed until the unnaturally ripe breasts nearly rolled up and over the tube of pink cotton keeping them and a little bit of the torso covered.

“Shit, girl. Deek’s gonna gut you if he sees you looking like that. What’d I tell you about going out of the trailer without your face. Hell, girl. You all right? You’re soaked. And buck naked as the day your mama spat you out! I don’t even wanna know how. Just git in here. Deek’s been asking where you got to? Soon as he hears you’re back it’s payday. And you’re gonna have to be on your back all day if you don’t want him beating you all night. Well, don’t just stand there, staring all bug-eyed at me. Git in here and let Krystal clean you up. C’mon, girl! I got a john in half an hour and I ain’t gonna make him wait just cuz you’ve been out joyriding.”

The painted face, the red curls, the round breasts, the pink cotton, bounced up to Toad. Long nails pinched his skin as the hand they grew from pulled him inside the trailer.”

“I’ll be back with your smokes, Shugah,” Toad drawled, stretching each vowel into a slow-motion aria. He pushed against the door, and the wall of heat that greeted him with a gut punch secured the leopard-print sundress to his skin with a thin paste of sweat. He staggered under the weight of the hour-from-setting sun. He teetered from atop the heights of his heels. He took each lower step as gingerly as if he were dipping his entire foot to test the temperature of his evening bathwater.

“Take your time, Ruby,” Krystal hollered after the door banged shut. “And don’t come a-knockin’ if you see the trailer a-rockin’.” She cackled and the trailer sounded like a coop of demon chickens.

“Girl, you know I will,” Toad warbled back in his sweetest sing-song voice. He was delighted that he’d made it to the bottom of the steps, soaking from every pore, but alive.

Toad tried to walk a foot on the loose gravel in his heels. Each step twisted his ankles. Pebbles crammed their way into the opening of the shoes and under his toes. He bent to unfasten them and the ends of his blonde hair stuck themselves to the fresh coat of lipstick.

He spat and wiped the hair from his mouth with one hand as he took off his shoes with the other. With a hop, he left the heels behind him, sunk in gravel. He headed back to the treeline and toward the open road.

He sniffed his way to the parking lot of the bar. His bike and all the other mangled metal skeletons had been dragged away the steps of The Wild Wood and toward the highway. They’d been heaped together in a bonfire that said “Fuck you!” to the pissant sparks of campfires and belched story-high flames when another gas tank exploded.

This almost drowned out the pap-a-pap-pap of gunfire and Toad’s hysterical weeping. The mascara mixed with Toad’s tears and sweat began to bead up like toxic dew. As he wiped the sludge from his eyes, and into his eyes, Toad hopped and reeled toward a new row of bikes and up the steps and into The Wild Wood.

He nearly fell backwards as his skin slapped up against a wall of cold as diabolically unnatural as the heat outside.

“Help me—help me—it burns—please, somebody help me—it burns!” Toad hiccupped through sobs.

“Ruby, is that you?” a stoat in a leather vest said before he fired a shot into a moaning heap of weasel.

“Hey, Ruby! Who fucked you up, girl?! I’ll kill him!”

Toad aimed his wet, stinging eyes toward the voice. It was a high-pitched squeal that silenced everything in the bar but the CD-jukebox. At last, someone in charge, Toad thought. He would recognize Toad as a fellow pillar of the community. He would help him get home.

He shivered and stepped his way over the broken bottles and glasses and fallen barstools and cracked pool cues to get closer to the voice shrieking, “Ruby, Ruby, what the fuck happened, baby?!” Toad failed to notice the bloody weasel carcasses slumped in booths or draped like furry bunting from the bar until his foot flopped into a pool of dark thick water. It came from the freshly made weasel stole the voice, a grizzled stoat, was shouldering with a difficulty.

“Damn, woman. You look worse than Big Daddy Zel,” he said patting his wrap. Toad wiped the sludge from his eyes. Just enough to see without squinting. He dimly realized what that was, where he was, what must have happened here. “Oh,” he sobbed. “Woe,” he bawled. “Oh, woe is me!”

“Did Ol’ Zel fuck you over girl, did he?”

All Toad could do was blubber and mutter either “Oh” or “Woe”.

“Well, he sure as shit ain’t never gonna touch you now. Come here and let Stoat Force One make it all better.” The stoat raised his arms to embrace Toad and the skin and fur of Ol’ Zel began to slip-slide away.

Ka-thud.

The pelt landed in its own congealing pool of blood. What was still viscous splattered across Toad.

“Doooooomed!” Toad screamed and screamed and screamed until Stoat Force One slapped him silent.

“Baby, getta grip.” He pulled Toad into his arms. “Get Ruby something to drink. Something strong. And none of that weasel piss beer.” His gang snickered and looked behind the bar for an unbroken bottle. At last, they found a large label-less mason jar. They scratched and bit at each other as they tried to unscrew it. Snout after snout sniffed it, dipped into it after it was open.

“Everclear, Mr. President,” said the one not shoving his tongue deep in the jar.

“So get Ruby a fuckin’ drink, already!”

The stoats scrambled again and came up with a “Gulp ‘n’ Blow” supersized plastic vat. They poured almost half the jar into it. And two of strongest stoats struggled to carry it toward the trembling Toad.

“Drink up, Ruby,” Stoat Force One said. Toad noticed the shoulders of his leather jacket were dull and cracked with dried blood. The fur around his neck tangled and black and wet. “This’ll wash all your pain away.”

“My eye! My ass! It burns! O Woe! Woe! Woe!” Toad caterwauled against the stiff, indifferent belly of the pool table, his face held down as Stoat Force One came closer and closer to landing.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” he shouted back, his hand gripping and yanking on the back of Toad’s dress like reins. “Nobody gives a fuck what you feel. Trying to sneak in here disguised as Ruby and kill us all.” The rapid thudding of his hairy balls against Toad’s slick backside punctuated nearly every syllable. “Trying to kill us with that goddamned harpy singing of yours!”

The leader of the stoat gang had been right. The everclear did take all Toad’s pain—even the hibernation-inducing chill of the cold dry air!—away. Not since Toad had pulled out of the dealers to test drive the Harley Davidson Low Rider, not since the second before he was blinded and crashed it, had Toad felt like his old self. Fortuitously, he thought, the CD-jukebox began to play “Freebird” and so Toad began to sing. He was alive and once he liberated one of the wicked stoats’ bikes, he would be as free as a bird on the open road.

Somewhere in the refrain, those still alive in The Wild Wood turned on Toad. Turned Toad over and onto the floor with a few slaps and punches and kicks. Heaved up and turned Toad over the edge of the pool table and fucked him. One stoat after the other. Stoat Force One was the last. As soon as he came, he planned to slit this spy-bitch’s throat and find the real Ruby.

“You’re never gonna walk straight again, bitch. You’ll be bowlegged till the day you die,” he panted, the pitch of his voice growing even higher as his balls came to boil.

Ka-bam! Ka-bam! Ka-bam!

“What the fuck?!” the stoat yelled as he frantically spurted into Toad. He could barely hear himself yipping over the exploding bar windows, the blaring music, the screaming not-Ruby beneath him.

Pap-a-pap-pap!

Rat, Mole, and Badger entered the bar firing.

“Am I dreaming? Do my stinging, weeping eyes betray me? Is that you, Badger? Mole? Dearest Rat?” Toad croaked. His words were too loud and bumped against the now-silenced jukebox, against the steaming bullet holes in every stoat but one, against the cold caked blood on Ol’ Zel’s fur. In the distance, he heard the whir of the straining air conditioner and the roar of the flames from the still-burning bikes.

“Had your fun, Stoat?” Badger asked. “You have three seconds to pull out of my friend before I pull the trigger. One, two…”

“Three! Three! Three, three, three,” wailed Toad. “Pull the blasted trigger.”

“You’re welcome, old man,” said Badger as he waved Stoat toward him with his Glock 9mm.

“Oh, Badger. It really is you. You’ve come to take me home.”

“All in good time,” Badger said calmly as he motioned Stoat to kneel before him. “Mole, Rat, do help our long-lost friend off the billiards table and out of that frightful wig.”

“Yes, Ratty. Please help me. My back is broken I think.”

“More like his asshole,” Mole tittered into Rat’s nodding ear.

“You there,” Badger growled at the stoat, “suck on this while I think of what to do with you. Even though I can’t imagine you going to the authorities, dead rodents tell no tales.”

Stoat Force One, aware that he was just that, a force of one, reached to unfasten Badger’s belt.

“Oh, how predictable. Do you really think I need a weapon to get blown? No, the gun.”

Stoat trembled, his large black eyes watered, and he pressed the thin pink strip of hairless skin around the mouth of the Glock.

“How very prim. Now suck.”

And suck the nearly convulsing stoat did.

“So, Toad, what to do with you.”

“Me?” Toad snorted. He waved away Mole and the handkerchief he’d been dabbing at various reddish streaks that may have been blood, may have been makeup. “I’ve been raped god knows how many times and you want to chide me like some tardy schoolboy?!”

“There, there, Toad,” Rat said as he lifted Toad’s arm across his shoulder. “We’ve come across the great pond to find you. We were so worried,” he added as he helped Toad hobble from the pool table toward Badger.

“I know, I know,” Toad said as he stopped to lower his head and let it bob on his chest. “I know. Oh how I know. Woe, woe, woe…,” he sobbed.

“There, there,” Rat whispered as he reached for the handkerchief Mole had nearly tucked away in his breast pocket.

Toad snatched it up and wiped and blew.

“Thank you,” he handed the damp rag back to Rat who daintily pinched the end of it between his right claws and passed it on to Mole who sighed before bending to lay it over the open eyes of a very dead weasel. “Thank you, one and all. Once again, I’ve been an ass and paid for it. And once again, you’ve saved me from my ways. I’m so terribly sorry. I’ll never get near anything powered by an engine again.”

“Toad, old fellow,” Badger laughed, “there’s plenty of time for apologies later. When we get back to Toad Hall.”

“How is my ancestral home?” Toad asked, recovering his spirits at the very mention of his riverbank mansion.

“In frightfully better shape than this bar,” piped in Mole.

“Oh, Mole, you are priceless,” said Badger.

“Bar?” Toad asked. He remembered where he was. “Oh, my. Guns, blood, wreckage? Yes, of course, bar. I’m in America. How ever did you find me here?”

“Water Rat,” said Mole.

“Beg pardon,” replied Toad.

“My friend the Water Rat,” said Rat.

Toad only smiled, his eyes as empty of reflection as the windows of The Wild Wood.

“We asked the Water Rat the name of the worst bar he’d come across in his travels in the U.S.”

“We knew,” added Badger, “you’d grow tired of the rides at Disney World—none would be wild enough for you, eh?—and thus stray. But really now, to stray several states away.” Badger harrumphed, thrusting the gun deep into Stoat’s mouth till he choked.

Toad pursed his lips into an obscene pout.

Badger busied himself fucking the stoat, trying as best he could to ignore Toad’s growing glumness. But Badger knew a quiet Toad was a dangerous Toad. Who knew what even more toad-brained schemes he could be plotting. At last, Badger broke: “What is it, Old Man?”

“I want to choke the stoat,” he said. “After all, I was the one he fucked.” He sighed and let his eyes and chin drop in one well-rehearsed, well-used move.

“Oh, blast it all, Toad. Here.” And with that, Badger grabbed Toad’s hand and placed it around the warm heavy handle left behind by his own retreating palm and claws. “Now do be careful. The safety’s off. And I haven’t decided whether to kill the wee wannabe weasel yet.”

The stoat squealed. From fear or outrage? No one but the stoat cared enough to ask. And his squealing didn’t last for long because Toad had begun to ram the muzzle as far into his mouth as it would go.

“That’s right, boy. Lube up Ol’ Toadie’s gun. Get it slick, boy. Gotta keep it cool. Because it’s overheating. Like me. I’m mean and high olive and ready to blow.” Toad howled with laughter as he pumped the gun faster.

“Toad. Toad! Is that really necessary?” cautioned Badger, who was also nodding away the worrisome looks that Rat and Mole were shooting him.

“Yes, it is necessary,” Toad countered, never slowing his arm. “I’m the one he and his gang fucked. Me. Toad of Toad Hall. You have no idea what it was like, Badger. The abuse! The indignity! All those little dicks in me. Barely opening my asshole. Barely tickling my prostate. And each one lasting but seconds! The only blows to matter coming from their little fists and feet. And one shot in my eye. My eye. My eye that has taken in all the wonders and horrors of this wide world and never once blinked. Oh, my noble eye. It still burns, Badger! Burns like the white hot hole at end of this big thick gun when I fire it…”

K-plap!

“Bloody hell,” exclaimed Badger, retrieving his own handkerchief to wipe the bits of brain and bone from his whiskered face.

“My eyes! My eyes!!” keened Toad as he dropped the gun onto the headless corpse and wiped the blood and gore from his face.

“Rat, old fellow, do help Mole there. He seems to be doubled-over and retching. And once you’ve helped him clean himself up, find some water and towels to wipe up this mess.” At “mess,” he pointed to Toad, who was nearly slapping his face as he wiped it hand-over-hand, managing only to smear the ooze more evenly across his skin.

“There, there, Toad,” Rat cooed as he dried Toad’s still-twitching face.

“There, there indeed, Rat,” harrumphed Badger as he pocketed the flask he’d just shared between himself and Mole. “Don’t mother him so. He’s not Otter’s little boy.”

“Whatever Toad’s faults, he’s in shock, Badger,” said Rat.

“As well he should be. Shocked at what he’s done.”

“You planned to kill the stoat too.”

“Perhaps. We’ll never know now, will we?”

“Oh, really now. I’m as angry as you to be thousands of miles from our river and rescuing Toad from this slaughter house—”

“Rescuing?” Toad moaned. “I saved you all from this foul beast. He could have overpowered Badger and then raped and killed each of us.”

“How?” snickered Mole. “By swallowing the gun and belching out bullets?”

“How dare you!” roared Toad.

“How dare he?!” Badger shouted. “Oh, that is quite enough, Toad. Quite enough indeed. I’m going to leave you with such a bitter taste in your mouth that you will never dare insult your rescuers—yes! rescuers!!—and friends again!”

“Who are you, Badger, my father?!”

“If you’re father were alive, and not felled anew by the spectacle of you as you appear this very moment, he would tan your hide to a most hideous shade of green!”

“Gr…gr…green!!!” Toad wailed, pressing his hands to his ears and waving his head from side to side.

“Yes, green, you ill-mannered amphibian!”

“Why…I…why…my…oh…Fuck you, Badger!”

Rat and Mole gasped. Badger snarled and then broke into deep and menacing laughter.

“Strip him,” Badger said.

“What!” shrieked Toad, swelling at the threatened indignity. But Rat and Mole seized his arms and with their free hands tore away what remained of his dress, a patchwork of dried blood and cum and fabric.

“On your knees, boy,” Badger hissed.

“What! No! You wouldn’t dare.”

“If you wish to ever leave these ruins and return home, you’ll kneel this instant and give me the best fucking blow job you’ve ever given in your long wasted life.”

“Why…I…never…”

“Then you’ll need to learn quick. It’s the only apology from you I’ll accept.”

“Ap…ap…ap…apol…”

And as Toad stuttered, Badger unzipped his tweeds and thrust his dick hard and fast into Toad’s mouth as it tried to spit out “ogy”.

“Rat,” Badger grunted, “do be a friend and push the back of his head to remind him of how a blow job should go. And Mole, would you be a good fellow and root about my ass with that snout of yours?”

“Certainly,” Rat said as he gave Toad’s head a shove, then gripped the sides of it and began to push it back and forth.

“My pleasure,” said Mole as he sniffed and licked and squeezed his snout deep into Badger’s crack.

“Oh, Rat! Oh, Mole! Never have I had such dear friends.”

Rat shoved, Mole dug, Toad sucked, and Badger grunted and moaned. This continued for quite some time till Badger realized that he was not the only one who’d been slighted by Toad.

“Rat, Mole, can you ever forgive me?” he exclaimed, startling the three other living souls around him. “In my anger, I thought only of my slighted and sullied manhood. Yet Toad has slighted all our manhoods and thus should unsully each one of them. At once.”

“At once?” asked Rat.

“Aphmunce?” mumbled Mole.

“At once. Indeed. At-one-and-the-same-time at once! It’s the only way to put Toad’s big mouth to good use.”

Rat let go of Toad’s head and Mole kissed Badger’s warm hole goodbye and both soon stood on either side of Badger with their pants and undergarments around their feet.

Badger flicked a finger sharply against the top of Toad’s head. He opened his mouth as wide as he could to shout his protest. “Now,” commanded Badger and in went the dicks of Mole and Rat.

“Now suck Toad if you ever wish us to forgive you. Use that cunning tongue of yours if you ever want us to take you home. Not since public school have you sucked so many dicks in one sitting—and this time all at once. Think of how you can work this into another of one of your poem songs. What do you call them? Raps?”

“Yes, raps,” huffed Rat as Badger stroked his tail.

“Oh, yes, rap me, Toad,” wheezed Mole as Badger twisted his nipple.

“Oh, good and merciful Pan, I can hear it now. Suckle, suckle little Toad,” rumbled Badger, his voice somewhere between a groan and a sob.

“Suckle,” said a fevered Rat as he fingered Badger’s hole.

“Suckle,” said a dizzied Mole before he bit Badger’s tit.

“Suckle…suckle…suckle,” chanted Badger until he and Rat and Mole all came fiercely and together, one howling and two squealing, “Toad!”

And Toad flopped about on the floor as he swallowed the wide mouthful and shot himself, for the memories of public school and his acclaim as a singing slam poet—for he felt he sang too much and too beautifully to be a rapper—had made his dick stiff and his hand eager to jerk it off.

“That’ll do, Toad. That’ll do.” Badger patted Toad on the head to calm his flopping. He then zipped up his tweeds.

“Time to go home?” Toad asked shyly, rubbing what little was left of his lipstick and cum from the edges of his mouth.

“Indeed,” Badger said as he smiled at Toad as he slowly rolled from off his knees and onto his ass. “And once home,” he whispered to Rat and Mole as they dressed, “I’ll call the doctor and have him cut off those runaway legs of Toad’s for once and for all. Then we can put that new French chef of his to good use and feast on our good fortune that at last our dear Toad will stay put.”

Badger guffawed, Mole tittered, Toad, ever-in-the-dark but hating to be left out of any bit of good cheer, burst out in deep, gut-jiggling ribbits, kicking the floor with his feet. Only Rat smiled politely, already imagining his remaining twilight years hobbling after old Toad, rumbling down the country road in his motorized wheelchair.

“Oh, Toad,” Rat sighed as he watched him vanish over the cresting macadam.

“To my liberators!” Toad boomed in the here and now as he leapt to his feet.

“Here, here!” the trio of heroes cheered.

“To the brave hostage who killed the worst of them!” Toad crowed before taking a bow.

“Here, here!” the trio cheered a little less enthusiastically.

“Let us drink to their good fortune!”

“Here, here!” the trio shouted, their good spirits revived by the thought of even better spirits.

And all rummaged through the ruins of the bar and drank until the rising of the new moon, a sliver in the night sky as thin and curved and luminous as a nail clipping askew on the star-flecked bathroom floor of God Himself.

 

© 2004 Ian Philips - Contributor's Bio