Monday, December 27, 2010

Fatty and Tinsel-Toes Kill a Christmas Goose

By John Weagly


“What you want to do for Christmas?” Tinsel-Toes asked.

“Eat somethin’ good,” Fatty said. “A special Christmas dinner.”

Fatty was six foot two, three-hundred pounds, white hair, white beard and partial to wearing red. Tinsel-Toes was three foot seven, had pointy ears and liked to personalize his appearance with the color green. Together they looked like Santa and his A-Number-One elf. They had real names, but everyone that knew them called them Fatty and Tinsel-Toes.

They were sitting on the handed down and then handed down again couch in Fatty’s mobile home, listening to Twisted Sister’s “A Twisted Christmas” CD. It was December twenty-fourth.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Tinsel-Toes said. “You still got that hatchet?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it. We’re going to Garland Park.”

Fatty stood, his brain trying to catch up with what was going on. “What we gonna do in Garland Park?”

“Take care of those geese. They think they own that damn pond.”

“What ya mean?”

“You go there to feed the ducks, they steal all the bread. They chase the other animals away."

“Even the squirrels?” Fatty asked.

“Even the squirrels.”

“I don’t like that."

“There’s one that’s the leader,” Tinsel-Toes said. “He’s bigger than the rest. Darker. We take him out, the rest will fall in line.”

“And then we eat him. A special Christmas dinner.”

“Exactly.”

Garland Park is on the south side of Currie Valley and in Garland Park is a pond and in that pond are waterfowl. Mallards, wood ducks and Canadian geese. People go there to spend time with them, to throw bread scraps at the birds.

It was cold, snowy and windy. The sun was going down. When Fatty and Tinsel-Toes got to the pond, they found the gaggle of geese huddled together under a picnic table a few feet from the water’s edge. There were six of them, six geese a-laying.

“Which one is it,” Fatty asked, giving his hatchet a few practice swipes. It was an old one with a wooden handle and a rusty blade.

“You’ll see.”

Tinsel-Toes took some oyster crackers out of his pocket and scattered them on the ground. The geese saw the cuisine, stood and started to lumber over. One of them was clearly larger than the rest.

“Right,” Fatty said. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Careful, he’s a tricky one.”

“He ain’t nothin’.”

Fatty approached the malicious goose, still swinging the hatchet. Ice and snow crunched under his feet. The five average geese went their own separate ways, but the big bird was curious. He stood his ground. Fatty and the goose each took their time, checking the other one out. They looked like two sumo wrestlers preparing to engage, one human and one fowl.

“He must think I’ve got a treat,” Fatty said, “This is gonna be easy.”

“Just keep your eye on him.”

“I can already taste him melting in my mouth.”

When he was close enough, Fatty raised the hatchet over his head. The goose knew something wasn’t right, he puffed himself up and charged, letting out a livid hiss. The goose’s aggression startled the hatchet-wielding hunter, causing him to slip on the ice. Fatty stumbled, tumbled and went down.

And that was it. Fatty fell on the hatchet, the angle of the plummet opening up the back of his skull. Blood and brains stained the snow.

The killer regained his composure as the other five geese honked in admiration.

Someone nearby had a fire burning in a fireplace and Tinsel-Toes could smell the smoke. He wasn’t sure what had happened. One minute Fatty was there, the next minute he was on the ground.

The geese understood, though. It was war! There was still one human left, the one that had the crackers. They formed themselves into a V and started toward the dwarf.

Tinsel-Toes looked around. The pond was behind him and the geese were in front, fanning out, surrounding him. The average Canadian Goose stands thirty-three to forty-five inches tall. Tinsel-Toes was forty-three inches. It was also six against one.

In a flurry of beaks and feathers it was over. It didn’t end well.

But in Garland Park on December twenty-fourth, six angry geese got a special Christmas dinner.

****

JOHN WEAGLY is a Spinetingler Award nominee and Derringer Award winner with over 30 plays produced by theaters around the world and over 50 short stories and poems published in a variety of mediums. www.johnweagly.com.

11 comments:

Sean Patrick Reardon said...

Very clever. Golfer's everywhere should read this before they go complaining about the geese ruining their courses.

Alan Griffiths said...

At the end I started to feel sorry for poor Tinsel-Toes - what a way to go. Great stuff, John.

Evil Ray said...

Nicely done, sir. You've captured the horror that is feral poultry.

Al Tucher said...

"Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat ..." Good nasty fun.

Author said...

Ha ha ha! :D Terrific story, nice work1

Paul D Brazill said...

Clever, funny and cruel. Just the way I like it!

pattinase (abbott) said...

This was a real classic, John.

Joyce said...

This was great. It's about time the proposed 'dinner' won for a change! Love this.

Kate Pilarcik ~ absolutely said...

Axe and you shall receive> I was laughing along with eye-mirth when you pointed out the six-geese-a-laying but then, Mr Weagly ... you slip'slid into your gruesome twosome ending.

Egads ... peckin' images of beaks on the fly ... egads. ~ Absolutely*Kate

seana graham said...

Well, really, you had me at "Fatty and Tinsel-Toes".

Evan Lewis said...

A happy and heart-warming ending.