Karkov Goes Klubbing
Karkov was his name. His favorite thing to eat for lunch was green pepper roasted in olive oil. He had a chainsaw for a neck, and when he laughed, the chains would rattle and the engine would stutter.
He lived alone in a studio apartment, and most nights he ate frozen pizza. But on Fridays, he got to go out to the club.
Today was another Friday night, and after a long day at the carpentry shop, Karkov was eager to let loose and party. He’d saved a few scraps of roast green pepper to munch on his way to the bus stop, and skipped over the sidewalk tiles with a light hearted gait.
He was almost there when the bus showed up and zoomed right by it.
Hot damn! That means he has to wait for ten whole minutes. That’s ten minutes of his dance time taken by an early bus. Karkov was furious. His chain neck roared and he bent down to sever a tree. Sawdust coated the bus stop, flying into the one-way street in a storm. The tree came down, all twenty feet of it, its bare branches hitting a car on their way down. The car screeched to a halt, skidding on the wet asphalt and ramming into the bus stop pole. The driver rolled her window down. “Oi what the fudgesicles I’m gonna be late to the club because of this!”
It was Chessa. She was a red haired bazookateer, and she had the bazooka to prove it. It was fully armed, and she propped it on the roof of her car to aim at the sonofabitch who just hit her car with a tree.
Karkov faced the bazooka with fear in his eyes, but the flame in his heart could not be squelched by even the deepest of pits. He was gonna dance, damn it. He opened his mouth and a roar of chainsaw came out because that was his throat.
Chessa heard and understood. “You. You’re going my way, aren’t you?” She put her bazooka in the backseat and beckoned the carpenter. “Get in stud.”
Karkov sat in the car with his head hanging out the window because it wouldn’t fit. Chessa buckled him in for him, and told him to try not to laugh. She backed out of the bus pole and gunned it down the street. “I’m just gonna say,” she said without taking her eyes off the road, “I need you to know, that although I’m mad at you for stopping me, I’m not gonna spend a minute of my friday being upset at you because that is NOT how I wanna spend my friday, not this friday, not ANY friday. You run into me any other day of the week though bub, I will see to it personally you feel my wrath you goddamn tree-hating freakazoid.”
Karkov laughed so hard his chainsaw went full-power and cut the front passenger door clean off the car. It fell onto the road, cutting off a cement truck and forcing it to stop.
Chessa screamed in rage. It was all she could do to keep from shoving Karkov out and pulling over to blast him with her bazooka. Her screaming was so angry Karkov found himself laughing again, and he buzzed his way into the roof so he could sit straight up, his head sticking out the top of the car like a domino’s pizza delivery logo.
Finally they arrived. Chessa got out, grabbed her bazooka, and gave Karkov one last dirty look. “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you so much. But damn you’re hot, c’mon let’s dance.”
At the club Chessa danced with Karkov, she used her bazooka as like a makeshift cane to tap dance around, and Karkov roared his neck as he danced, and it got everyone to stay clear. Except the planet Jupiter, which bumbled over to ask Karkov if he’d like to dance with it instead. Karkov was swept up into the gas giant’s atmosphere, his body pulverized to microscopic shreds by the exponentially devastating air pressure.
Chessa slapped her hands against her thighs and scoffed. “Man Jupiter what gives, I was just having fun with him and you had to go and show up what the fudgesicles man.”
Jupiter spun on its axis at about a twelfth a rotation per hour, then said “oh sorry, heh, I uh, guess I just really wanted to dance with someone as beefy and ripped as me.”
“You don’t have a muscle in you you big ball of gas, quit flattering yourself there is literally nothing I find attractive about you.”
“How about my gravity?”
“OH ha ha! Fuck you Jupiter.” Chessa launched a missile at Jupiter. The missile exploded long before reaching jupiter’s liquid hydrogen surface, torn apart by the sheer density of its atmosphere. Nonetheless, Jupiter backed away, lowering its magnetic pole.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry Chessa, I’ll leave you alone.” It went to dance up on the balcony.
A beam of blue light zipped down to the floor by Chessa, materializing as Karkov, the chainsaw-for-a-neck guy who’s a carpenter and who now no longer has a continue saved up. He and Chessa ended up tango-dancing the rest of the night together, and by the end Chessa gave him a peck on the nipple.
The club’s many members started home with bags beneath their eyes. Jupiter’s red spot was looking drained, it had danced so hard it shook the heavens, but lost a few moons. Metis had landed on the bar, and would have crushed it and the entire state county if not for the clubhouse’s particular lax on spacial existentialism.
“Kar,” Chessa said as she carried Karkov to her car. “I’ve changed my mind. If I happen to see you any time of the week... well...” she started to blush.
Karkov laughed, roaring his chainsaw right in Chessa’s shoulder and causing her to fall over. Chessa laughed too, then stopped laughing as she realized Karkov’s neck had dug a red canyon into her flesh, and it was pouring blood onto the deserted dance floor. She fell, dropping Karkov. “Oh god, ah! Kar I’m— FUDGESICLES this hurts!”
Karkov stood up, looking around for help. An orange hedgehog stood leaning against a wall talking to a white jerboa. Karkov roared his throat to get their attention, but it was no use; they’d been ignoring him all night because of how loud his neck was.
Chessa screamed “HELP I’m BLEEDING call an ambulance!”
The orange hedgehog who’s name was B’juh perked his ears at Chessa’s pleas and leaped forward. “Making the call to answer the call for help is the greatest heroic deed of all!” He started running very slowly towards the clubhouse phone. His friend ended up getting there first and bringing the phone to him. B’juh dialed an ambulance. “Hello? This is B’juh the hedgehog! I’m calling for an ambulance!” He hung up. “Even if your best is not enough, it’s the effort that matters most in the end!”
“Jesus god damn!” Chessa cried out. She’d cupped her hand on the wound, but it was no clean cut, and pressure was doing little to stop the bleeding. Karkov would have offered to tie a tourniquet with his shirt sleeve but he had no shirt. He couldn’t phone an ambulance himself because he had no voice. He didn’t know what to do. Karkov stood over Chessa, watching her face turn pale. He lifted and lowered his hands, unsure if anything he did would worsen the situation, or simply be a waste of time.
Chessa’s right hand was numb. She bit her lip and ground her teeth against the burning pain in her shoulder. She screamed against it to stay awake, but the world outside her body was turning gray. She looked into Karkov’s helpless face watching her die. He was terrified and devastated.
“Kar,” she said, her own voice a mile away. “Kar it’s gonna be okay. It’s not your fault, I’ll be just fine... just a flesh wound, heh.” Chessa wanted to smile, to show Karkov she was okay, to tell him she didn’t hate him anymore, but her face muscles wouldn’t register anymore. An orange hedgehog’s face appeared over her, and she heard the words Remember, never give up! Nothing is impossible! Then a warm tingling feeling encompassed her and she drifted into darkness.
Karkov’s eyes were leaking. He was on his knees in the puddle of Chessa’s blood, watching the light in her eyes grow dim. The hedgehog had come over to offer some advice, but the carpenter did not hear it. Gently, he closed Chessa’s eyes, and he placed her bazooka beside her.
Then he stood. He turned away. He stumbled to the doors, his heart crumbling. Her blood dripped off his bladed neck onto the nipple she had kissed. Karkov slammed his fist into the doorway and screamed. His scream sent flecks of blood all over the entrance as the chains spun madly beneath his head.
“Expressing yourself honestly is the first step in emotional recovery!” B’juh the Hedgehog said. He was then lacerated to bits by the carpenter’s honest feelings.
The jerboa gave an ironic smile. “Hey, someone actually took your advice,” he said to what was left of B’juh.
B’juh’s corpse said nothing.
