Lick Your Neighbor by Chris Genoa Page A

doing the weather forecast. They were calling for rain all afternoon.
    “Are you saying I was fired because of cloudy skies and a 90% chance of rain?”
    “Hold on, wait for it.”
    The weather report ended and the station turned to local news.
It was a grisly scene in the Knightsbridge section of Duxbury this morning. Judy Stitch, caretaker of Gobbling Gus—the longtime beloved mascot of Duxbury High—awoke early this morning to a grisly scene. Gobbling Gus had been brutally murdered in the night. Duxbury correspondent Felicia Richards was at the scene.
“‘The horrifying handiwork of a psychopath.’ Those are the only words police had to describe the crime committed here in Duxbury last night. The most famous turkey in the State, possibly in the entire world, was found hanging by his neck from a tree. The main suspect? The man whose tree Gus was killed on. Dale Alden. Police say they have a strong case against him, and promise that justice will be served.
We’ll be back in a minute with an update on the early morning break-in at the Duxbury Library, as well as breaking news on a deadly fire at the Duxbury Ti-”
    Randy turned the radio off.
    “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” Dale asked.
    Randy shook his head. “Like I said, you made a crack in the wall, letting chaos into your life. Rules like innocent until proven guilty, and monkey see monkey do, no longer apply to you, Dale. Not until we patch up your crack. Unless of course you’d rather we leave your crack cracked. Some people prefer life that way. With their cracks wide open at all times, and the madness swirling around them.”
    “Please stop talking about my crack.”
    “I’m not talking about that kind of crack.” Randy scratched his butt. “Although I do appreciate the analogy. Because we all have cracks, through which sometimes bursts, when we least expect it, the most obscene nastiness you’ve ever seen or heard. And it’s up to our buttcheeks, those two soldiers in the war against chaos, to maintain law and order down there.”
    “Okay stop,” Dale demanded. “Just stop it. You’re disgusting, and I don’t need your bogus chaos crack theories to explain this.”
    “While I admit that my theories are often based on certain assumptions and hunches,” Randy said, “they are never bogus .”
    “Perhaps you’re forgetting about the time you tried to convince me that the Dairy Farmers of America were using specially trained mercenary raccoons to secretly kill off the entire North American opossum population so that people won’t find out that opossum milk tastes better than cow’s milk.”
    “When’s the last time you saw an opossum?” Randy asked.
    “I’ve never seen one.”
    “Well there you go.”
    “You know what? Shut up. Here’s what’s happening. Some no good kids, probably from Plymouth High, thought it would be funny to hang Gus as a prank. I got blamed because they did it in my tree and with my rope. The higher-ups at Ferdue got wind of it and freaked out, thinking it would somehow hurt the company’s wholesome image, especially during the holidays, so they fired me. End of story.”
    “That’s one way to look at it,” Randy said, “Or, maybe, just maybe…”
    “Don’t say it.”
    “It’s because you’ve unleashed chaos by trumpeting the Auwaog in the paper!”
    “Stop pointing at me like that! It was the Duxbury Times, no one reads it anyway. And besides, Mayflower Jenkins was the one doing all the research. Why wasn’t chaos unleashed on him?”
    “Have you spoken to Jenkins today?”
    “This morning. He was fine.”
    “And since then? Any word from good ‘ol Mayflower? I thought not. So how do you know what his day has been like? For all you know he could have taken a nap and woken up to find himself transformed into a giant, hideous turkey. He could be in his bedroom as we speak, frantically trying to figure out how to open the door with a pair of wings.”
    Randy tucked his hands