Munmun(83)

“Price went up, super sorry about that,” murmured the boneblue lunatic, creepy and innocent.

Puppyneck counted out another five, didn’t wait for yes or no, put my cage in the trunk, we pulled away.

“Dave, you okay,” asked Puppyneck.

I said nothing, what is there even to say.





LIFEANDDEATHWORLD


Back we drove to Lossy Indica, me and Puppyneck, also some new hipster goons.

Puppyneck sat next to me, pampered me through the cagebars, gave me sterile middlewater to drink, fruits and nuts to eat.

“I watched your gladvids,” said Puppyneck. “All I can say is, dang.”

I just spat on the carfloor.

“I didn’t enjoy watching, dave, believe me,” he said. “I’ve been working twentyfourseven to get you back. Had to persuade a lot of bosses, make some salespitches. Trustme, I was sweating everymorning in front of my screen, praying you didn’t get fanged.”

I spat again and said nothing.

“Anyway it’s all set up, dave, just breathe easy today, you’re safe,” he said, through the window the desert turned to scrubby hills as we crested toward the beachy capital.

What was set up was Dream Division of Faceboy Industries, the corpo child of my bloodred plan.

Is it time to tell you the diabolical plan, okay fine I guess, in the Dockseye bankbranch here was what I told Puppyneck: Do you see the televisionnews about carcrashes from baddreams, do you know how I found Usher, do you remember how berserk Dreamworld has been for the last few months,

well all of that was me dreaming.

My dreamstuff is superstrong and can be huge and terrible.

My sis meanwhile runs Solodream Sleepmeds, she’s the president.

Ofcourse this last part was not true, bear with me though.

If you partner with Solodream, get some percents of solodream revanew, I can drive sales up to ridiculous levels by raining hells in Dreamworld everynight.

Solodream will make the faceboys rich.

That was it, simple plan, crystalclear way to turn dreaming into munmuns afterall.

That night Puppyneck called my sis and said, “Hey, it’s the faceboys, Warner tells us you’re the president of Solodream,” and my savvy quickwit hero sis realized Warner is alive, Warner has a plan, the plan needs her to be president of Solodream.

Each one lied to the other, Prayer lied that yup she’s the president allright, Puppyneck lied that the faceboys still own me and have not sold me to todds.

My sis listened to Puppyneck’s offer, then immediately called Markfive, begged him to come find her for an Emergency Pitch Meeting, used all of her Busy Track learnings and powers and graphs to make the case of, Accept The Solodream Sleepmeds Company From Your Dad And Hire Me To Run It, I’m A Busy Genius Who Will Literally Never Stop Working And Striving, It Will Drive Your Dad Bonkers Probably That You Put Me In Charge So That’s A Plus, I Already Have A Detailed Plan To Increase Sales Many Thousand Percents, Best Of All, The Plan Is To Partner With A Bloodthirsty Squad, Basically You’re A Cool Squadtype Drugslinger Now.

Pee Ess The Clock Is Running On The Squad Offer So We Need To Move Fast.

Markfive listened, loved it, decided heckyeah, hired her out of Eat Votech, and made her a young president.

Prayer called Puppyneck, said you’ve got a deal, Puppyneck called the todds to buy me back, the todds retired Warner’s ugly gladcareer.

“Anyway do you want to meet your teammates,” suggested Puppyneck.

The Dream Division goons weren’t typical faceboy meatheads, reminded me more of Frank, the tolstoy writer wooing Grace, probably that’s why I hated them.

Soft hair and softer beards, corduroys and plaids and denimvests, expensive carefull tats and earhoops, warm cow eyes that have never been punched.

He told me their names but I didn’t listen, didn’t care, said nothing, kept spitting on the floor.

“Hired these guys right out of business school,” Puppyneck told me.

“What kind of idiots leave business school for this,” I said finally.

But they pretended like it was a hilarious joke, laughing all nickery and snickery, bunch of glossy wellfed horses.

“Where do I live,” I asked Puppyneck.

“Undisclosed location,” Puppyneck told me. “Not the Sitadell.”

“Usher’s going to live with me though,” I said.

“Nope, we’re not letting you guys live together,” he said.

“It wasn’t a question,” I said.

“It was an answer, though,” said the young faceboss.

They draped a blanket over the cage, drove me the last two hours in darkness to my new home. Stopped the car, lifted me out, carried the cage to my room, pulled the blanket off, opened the cagedoor.

I stumbled out into a middleroom with simple littlefurniture, dollbed, cuptoilet.

The windows were high, fivefeet up on the wall maybe, a littlepoor can only see upward to the spiky heads of palmtrees. It could have been Sand Dreamough, could have been Eat Almanac, could have been Sandy Barb or Sacrament or Laura Cannon.

I looked around at the dumb walls, dumb carpet, told myself, here is where you live for fifty years, here’s where old bearded Warner maybe dies.

Puppyneck called a number, put the phone on speaker.

“Solodream Corporate Headquarters,” said a secretary.