My dog Quasar, who is of the Earth breed Golden Retriever, is my B.F.F. in the whole wide world. I have raised him ever since he was a puppy, and since that time, we have formed a bond that was completely indestructible. I’d compare us to Jonathan Brandis and Chuck Norris in the movie Sidekicks, or even Jonathan Brandis and Rodney Dangerfield in the movie Ladybugs whenever I would slip on the thong. When the two of us were together, there was nothing that we couldn’t do: scaling fucking huge ass volcanoes, surfing tsunamis, beating the Chinese in Chinese Checkers tournaments, completing Rubix cubes in mere seconds, and constructing impenetrable blanket forts…we turned the impossible into the almost-impossible-but-not-quite-impossible.
We also have our tender moments, as well. Although I don’t want to fuck him or anything, Quasar makes a great snuggle bear. The best thing is that I know he’s not going to try and teabag me when I sleep, because there’s only empty space where his balls used to be. Shoot, even if his breath stinks, I like it when he licks me in the face like I were something that tasted really REALLY delicious.
There was even one time where I got stood up on a date, and he was right there to place a paw on my shoulder and tell me I was pretty. That’s the kind of love and devotion you just don’t get from some butt-slut on Space Craigslist, my nizzles. That’s real.
Recently, he had consoled me after I was crestfallen by the recent loss of my beloved SCCW Gateway championship, a title I had held for three minutes or so before it was snatched away by a man some claim is even stupider than I am: Jared Sykes. It was not the loss of the title belt itself that upset me -- I can has many belts -- but rather being defeated by the Black Sheep himself is what brought on my funk. I'm not saying that That Blueberry Guy isn't a valiant competitor, I'm just saying he fucking sucks really bad. An overweight backstage interviewer had pinned him two weeks beforehand, and I couldn't even climb a ladder to beat him. I'm from Space, You Idiot where gravity is way heavier, and the mere notion of winning something via grabbing it off a forty-foot high hook on Earth should have been like taking candy from Bob Dole's right hand.
After the match, I cried like a little girl for a few days, sulking in a puddle of my own tears. On the third day, however, I received word from some mustachioed nitwit that I'd been chosen to compete in the GTT. This immediately perked my spirits. Just kidding, I really said, 'What the toot blossom is a GTT?' A fax then came into my e-mail box with a contract to compete in this PTC-sanctioned event. As I skimmed the details of my contract for this prestigious tournament, I saw that I got a free fucking T-shirt just for signing up. I like event T-shirts, as they make great evidence of an alibi in case you are brought up on rape I mean drive-by kitten-petting charges. Needless to say, I was in!
What was even better news to learn was that the Internet had me billed as the odds-on favorite against my opponents in the first round match: Drake Coleman and Ryan Ruckus. I assumed it was because I had knowledge of the 30-man code in the Nintendo game Contra, and the fact that I could fart the entire Beatles catalogue. Regardless, I knew that (miraculously) the Internet could be wrong every once in a while, so I decided not to take my competition lightly. I needed to sweat balls if I was going to beat those stinkers -- and I needed to train like a locomotive! (I wrote that joke myself!)
So, I strapped on some ankle weights, my lucky Day-Glo green spandex tights, my lucky Day-Glo green crew-neck sweatshirt, and my trusty jPod (the iPod that turns water into wine) and prepared for a brisk power walk on the beach. Since he was due for a bit of exercise himself, I poked Quasar in the eye with an extended pinky and summoned his punk ass to attention.
He bit me in the dick when I tried to slip on the 'I'm Daddy's Boy!' doggie sweater my grandma knitted for him last Christmas, but still followed me out of the space condo for the brutal workout session. After performing my warm-up routine of hurdler stretches and squats directly over the head of a sleeping homeless man, Quasar and I put our toes in the cool sand below and did one of those queer toe-tap jumps simultaneously to let the world know that we were in this fight together. And that we were really agile.
It was the loneliest beach in Zarflon where I could walk in solitude; my faithful companion at my side stepping in unison as salty water chopped our ankles like a retard attempting suicide. The packing bubbles buried underneath the sand popped beneath our feet and made conversation a really annoying thing to attempt. However, I was overcome with boredom -- there were no hot babes playing 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia' using pubic hair as fiddle strings and queefing out backing bass lines -- so I opted to talk to my dog. He was acting like a complete pecker-head this morning, but the desire to communicate with my best friend won out over the other option: sticking a jellyfish up my ass and dancing the Macarena.
'Isn't this just dandy?' I asked rhetorically, nudging Quasar by thrusting my butt cheek into his nose. Of course I had to tease him with only a mere graze of my tushie, knowing full well that he'd give anything to power sand one of the logs currently developing from my breakfast.
'It's cold and I'm having to spend time with you instead of tonguing my crotch,' he barked in response. 'So yep, pretty dandy indeed.'
I am an idiot, and therefore cannot detect sarcasm whatsoever, so I pat my golden retriever in the face as we continued walking west toward Star-589028323. The sky looked like God showing off his pretty new shit hat for the entire universe to see. I liked it. It reminded me of incest pornography. This of course led to everyone's immediate afterthought when pondering such a fine film genre: self-reflection. I turned around and began to walk backwards, looking like a complete asshole to all the marine life we passed by and examined the path that Quasar and I had traveled.
We had walked a long way, and I noticed the two sets of prints in the sand that hugged the coast like an uncle tucking me into bed. Being a gigantic creep and a seasoned pervert, I retrieved a pair of binoculars I always kept handy from my Marlboro Country fanny pack and observed the prints from the beginning of our journey to where we currently were. We had traveled a hundred miles! But, then again, I am a dumb ass and really bad at depth perception due to an accident I had as a child. (My mother attempted to abort me at the age of five by jamming a coat hanger in my left ear, God rest her soul.) So, it was probably only about a mile or two.
'Shit!' A bird yelled in the distance as a shark jumped out of the sea and ate it. Quasar released a belly laugh, noticing the incident, then turned to look at me.
'What are you looking at?' He woofed, wagging his tail in interest. 'Is she fat?'
'Kind of,' I spouted instantly due to force of habit, then caught myself right after. 'I mean, no, man. I was just looking at our footprints in the sand -- it's like, our life tied into a metaphor, or something.'
Quasar panted a little then did one of those Scooby-Doo 'Uh?' sounds.
'You know,' I smiled, wet dreams glistening in my eyes. 'Our footprints represent the journey through life together.'
Quasar blinked. 'Nigga, you high?' He sat down momentarily and began scratching himself behind the ear with his mighty paw. 'And what the hell is a metaphor?'
I didn't know what a metaphor was, as I had heard someone smart say it. So, I went off the next best thing when I didn't have a clue on what the true meaning of something was:
'You dumb ass, you don't know?'
'Shut up,' Quasar howled. We continued to walk, me placing my binoculars back in my fanny pack and the dog sniffing the ground in search of something to piss all over. Something bothered me, though. Something I had noticed when I looked back upon the footprints that had taken me this far. It was like an annoying itch that wouldn't go away, kind of like herpes, athlete's foot, or the band 3 Doors Down. I turned once more to my furry confidant and stuck an index finger in the air to emphasize that I was going to make a really important, story-setting statement...or just prepare to dig for a juicy booger.
I opted for the latter first, as a man's appetite speaks volumes over plot relevance. Popping the morsel into my mouth, I took a moment to savor the flavor.
'Hey, Q-dog,' I said, swallowing the remnants of the treasure down my gullet, 'I got a question.'
'What the fuck is it now?' He yipped back, obviously irritated with my bull hockey.
'Well,' I started, breathing before going into my explanation, “I looked back and mostly saw two sets of footprints -- your paws and my eleven-toed feet, right? But, I couldn't help but notice that in some sections of our life, there were only one set of footprints.”
'Yeah, so?'
“Well, do you think that it was because I was carrying you through the toughest parts of our life?” Spacely asked, a gleam of ignorance shining like a poorly done CGI effect in his eye.
Quasar faced forward, keeping his mouth closed for a brief moment and mulling over the question.
'I wish I had rabies,' Quasar ruffed, a snide tone in his canine retort. 'I would bite you so hard.'
The thought of rabies amused me momentarily, so I built up as much saliva in my mouth that I possibly could and formed a foamy coat in front of my teeth. Poking my dog in the skull to get his attention, I got in his face and flashed my best rabid smile whilst growling in the back of my throat. The spit fell out at I tilted my head down, however, landing on top of his nose.
'What the...'
I continued to growl, pretending that the 'foam' hadn't just snowballed him in the face. That, plus I liked to growl, since it made me feel good inside.
Instead of removing my testicle with his doggie jaw, Quasar merely grunted and sidestepped into the ocean, dipping his snout into the water and washing it off. He questioned silently the existence of God, as he was certain that Air Bud didn't have to put up with this kind of shit.
'Why do you think there was only one set of footprints, then?' I asked, refusing to merely shut up and drop the issue.
Quasar got a running start, catapulted off my leg and smacked me in the face with a sandy paw. 'You ASS HOLE,' he howled, 'there have been two sets of footprints this entire time!'
'Nuh-huh!' I whined, placing two fists on my hips in a defiant yet sassy pose. 'I SAW the part where there were only one set of footprints! I SAW it through my binoculars!'
'No, you didn't,' Quasar bow-wowed, biting at a gnat that just happened to fly by. 'You didn't see it, because those aren't even binoculars. It's a Fisher-Price Viewfinder.'
'Bull crap,' I pouted, reaching back into my fanny pack and pulling out the red plastic viewing device and bringing it close to my face. With my index finger, I pressed the orange focus lever down, giving me a clear shot of an orangutan scratching its balls with a twig.
'Hee hee,' I giggled. 'Monkeys are funny.'
Quasar retrieved a revolver out of his furry pocket, aimed it directly at his head, and pulled the trigger. Actually, that's not what really happened, it was merely a fantasy that he was having. Usually, this type of fantasy involved me: normally, the gun would be used to pistol-whip my noggin until I pooped my pants, and then he'd fire the weapon between my eyes for good measure.
Thankfully, before the dream could come true, the giant star above us slowly started to metamorphosise into the shape of a face. It was a big, fat face wearing a pair of 80's chic sunglasses, and its pillowy lips partially opened to reveal a top row of shiny chompers. The star then generated two noodly appendages, with bendable tentacles at the end of each. The left one waved down at me and Quasar while the right one slowly jammed an imaginary knife into its helios-shaped body.
'Hi, guys!'
'Hey, Mr. Shiny!' Quasar and I responded both staring up at the bulbous ball of burning gas and waving back.
We then heard a thunderclap, strangely familiar to a sphincter opening up and releasing pungent methane gas. Almost instantaneously, a flaming comet-like projectile flew out of Mr. Shiny's frame.
Nearby, a Top Gun fighter was making his return trip from the Zqywmar galaxy. All he could think about was the load he’d be scrapping once he got home to his computer.
'Shit!' the pilot of the space ship cried, as the fireball from Mr. Shiny’s flatulence incinerated the craft instantly.
'Pardon me!' Mr. Shiny apologized, using his tentacle to fan away the fumes. We merely smiled up and forgave him for the bolt of death, because he could probably kill us with relative ease. However, he did piss us off a little, as the smoldering debris from the sky mishap rained dangerously close to where we were standing.
'No problem, Mr. Shiny!' I beamed as Quasar and I skipped about ten feet to the left, narrowly avoiding a limb that landed with a thud into the sand.
'So, what are you guys up to?' he asked us. His voice resembled that of a cartoon bear, deep and dopey. It was a friendly voice for a heavenly body to have, which matched his laid-back personality.
“Not a lot,” Quasar woofed. “Just stretching the ol’ legs out.”
“Rad,” Mr. Shiny shined, commanding our attention with his hip lingo. “You guys wanna come up to my place and do a line of space dust with me?”
“Nah…” I responded, but was hamstringed by my partner as he answered over me.
“Sure, why not?” the dog arfed, always willing to get fucked up on someone else’s stash. I kicked sand at him and cleared my throat to get his attention. Quasar turned to face me. “What?”
“We’ve got a match to train for,” I regurgitated, angry that he wanted to abandon the game plan so quickly.
Quasar cocked his head to the side. “You’ve got a match to train for,” he corrected. He was right, but I wasn’t willing to concede the point on the principle that I didn’t want to hang out with Mr. Shiny. Don’t get me wrong – Mr. Shiny was a party dude (in addition to being cool but rude,) but he was a little weird. The guy was obsessed with toucans: photographs, paintings, replicas…all over his house. That, and it seemed like the guy never had any food around the place except for a big tin of candy corn and a pantry full of Vienna sausages.
Plus, his wife would always flirt with me, and she don’t understand don’t nobody wanna hit that stank ass of hers.
“I’m game,” Quasar yipped, nodding up at Mr. Shiny.
“Awesome,” the star glowed, quite pleased that he’d found company. “What about you, Spacely?”
I sighed. “Think I’ll sit this one out.”
“Suit yourself. Come on up, Q-Dog!”
The sun-like gas ball opened his mouth wide, revealing a great big tongue that rolled out like a red carpet down to the surface of Zarflon. The tongue formed stair-steps, giving Quasar an easy climb to the promised land of space dust and cans of processed pig intestines.
“You’re a dick,” I whined, as Quasar started his trot up the tongue. He turned to me to respond with an equally half-assed response, but before so much as a syllable could escape from his doggie mouth, the sound of a gravely, commanding voice could be heard in the distance.
“It’s a trap!”
Quasar and I turned to look out into the sea where the voice came from. A cephalopod creature in flower-print board shorts held tightly to a tow cable wrapped around the dorsal fin of a friendly dolphin. It stood on a single water ski and slalomed in and out of the wake created by the bottle-nosed sex addict, nodding his head at us.
SLURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!
“Shit!” Quasar whimpered, as the tongue of Mr. Shiny quickly began to roll him up, trapping him within the wet buds. The gay water-skier was right! It was a trap! I leapt up to try and grab the helpless outstretched paw of my comrade, but it was no use: white men cannot jump.
With rage in my voice, I shook my fist up at Mr. Shiny who gulped my dog down as if he were an M&M. “NO! NO! YOU SON OF A BITCH, NO,” I screamed, giving Mr. Shiny the finger.
“Who? Meeeeeeeeee?” He laughed.
“No, that was directed toward my dog you just ate,” I responded. “Now patooie him back out, you no-good trickster!”
Mr. Shiny merely burped, which only made him chuckle more. It hadn’t quite set in yet how horrible this experience was: I had on blinding colors, fish were swimming around doing completely asinine shit, and the sun had just eaten my dog. If that weren’t bad enough, at that moment, the little alarm on my wristwatch began to honk with the sound of a thousand sirens. Must be 8:00, I thought. I was going to miss Saved By the Bell on TBS, and they’d been running episodes where the gang worked at the beach club all week! How would I know if Zack finally got the upper hand on the snobby Malibu Sands boss?
I suddenly became very depressed. It was one thing to eat my dog. It was a completely different beast if I didn’t get my daily dose of Kelly Kapowski.
However, when I looked down at my watch, the time didn’t read 8:00. The digital lines merely read the word “SNURT” across the clear plastic face of the piece.
Meanwhile, the callusing laughter once coming from Mr. Shiny had ceased, and the wicked smile suddenly turned into a frown. Clutching where his stomach would be if his body were shaped like a human’s, the sour expression on his face told the tale. “I…I think I’m gonna be sick,” the star said, a tiny rumble sending light ripples across his frame.
It was only seconds later when the blinding wattage and sheer holy shitness of the supernova blast sent me into an endless cartwheel through the rip in the space-time continuum. Visions projected on the walls of the black hole as he fell headlong into the abyss, like I was on a hellish gondola in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Giant carnivorous rabbits laughing at black comedians telling jokes about white people. James Varga sitting quietly in a room doing math problems. New episodes of the television show Webster starring Emmanuel Lewis. Horrible, despicable things.
BEH BEH BEH BEH BEH BEH BEH BEH BEH BEH
------------------------------
And then, a bedroom: walls lined with blown-up pictures of Simona Halep hitting tennis balls, a poster advertising the movie Dude, Where’s My Car?, and a tacked-up cardboard cutout of a horse (just a horse.)
Instinctively, a fist came crashing down on top of the alarm clock, silencing the “BEH” and allowing sleeping beauty to stir within the blankets of his race car bed. Wiping the tasty crust from his eyelashes, Spacely slowly sat up and smiled. “It was just a dream.” Stretching his arms out as far as they could go, he yawned and let loose a squeaker from his cheeks, hoping that would be enough to wake up Quasar sleeping next to him.
“Jesus, man.”
The two-pack a day voice he’d heard was not that of his loveable dog, but rather from his tiny little buddy resting in the far corner of the room.
“Hey, Danny. Where’s Quasar?” Spacely asked, noticing that the golden retriever had apparently left the room before he’d woken up.
“I’ve been asleep. Unfortunately, the last will and testament of whatever died in your asshole was enough to wake me up,” Danny responded, his eight legs moving rapidly across his web to see if any flies had become entangled in it.
Spacely pirouetted on his knee to spin and face his arachnid roommate, noticing his latest Charlotte-inspired creation written inside the web.
“C’mon man, don’t you think that’s taking it a little far?”
The word “PICKANINNY” appeared as plain as day with thicker lining amidst the spider’s home. Spacely shook his head and followed up. “Yesterday it was ‘dago,’ now this.”
“What can I say?” Danny shot back defensively. “I’m Danny the fucking Racist Spider, not Danny the Politically Correct Dragonfly.”
“Good point,” Spacely conceded, doing a handstand on the frame of the bed and flipping over onto the hardwood floor below. Reaching inside his oversized Homer Simpson T-shirt and scratching his left armpit, our hero thought about what lay ahead on this important day. He’d made himself a nice little home here on Earth and had several fans who’d really taking a liking to him. However, with the start of the GTT tomorrow, he knew that bigger and better things lay ahead of him: more kids showing up to SCCW events with stars painted on their faces, more exposure to the wrestling community as a whole, and most importantly, more opportunities to get stink finger.
Little did he know, the only hole that his hand would be going into would be an ADVENTURE hole, for as he walked into the kitchen to grab a delicious Pop Tart…
“Quasar?”
…his beloved dog was nowhere to be found.