nanowrimo 2k9

Nickles walked familiarly back into the store, skipped the supplies and walked right up.

“A ‘handcarved, man’” The quotes were necessary the punctuaion spalling and greammer weren’t

“Sorry, bud, out of the fixin’s. Havn’t had a truck go by in a couple weeks.”

“Whats going on, I thought this was the best route for that, you havn’t been out of shit in a year and a half.”

“I dunno, man, i just work here. I never even had one of those sandwiches, we just trade our own currencies, and I can usually just live off the scraps of the fast food of the truckers. I ran out a couple days and I’m living on energy drinks and eating the expired packs of cigarettes.”

Nickles noticed the attendents teeth actually were pretty brown.

“You eat cigarettes, how’s that going?”

“Terrible, always makes me puke, so I end up eating the cans of the energy drink. I think you can call me the goat man at this point.”

And thus, the goat-man was born.

Goats are amazing creatures, they can eat anything, balance on anything, have horns, scream like people and have warm fluffy coats. So what turned the nameless gas station attendent into goat man? Well it wasnt the toxic environment, lifestyle, or even the energy drinks and cigarettes. Well, it was partly that: eating the cans, which had been exposed to oxygen and the boutiful chemicals in the energy drinks caused a chemical reaction that created an edible mutagen. In reality, discarded energy drink cans had been edible since the first run of Red Bull, but no one had ever though of going ahead and eating the damn things. Except, of course, the goats on european beastiality clubs, where the energy drinks first caught on, but that just made them goat-goats. Which are really just goats. So nobody noticed.

This edible mutagen would normally be destroyed by the stomach acids, but being combined with lining the digestive tract with loose tobacco had managed to insulate a few small shards, which managed to cause almost immediate mutation. Not quite as fast as I have let on, though. He was not the goat man yet, but he had toughened up enough to start eating other cans, and would soon be able to digest whole packs of cigarettes. Soon he would become goat man, though, with proud balance, a handsome coat and enviable horns. For now, he was just a starving gas station attendent tending to an unsatisfied customer.

“Goat man, huh. Thats fitting, I guess, you always did have kind eyes. Well, I think I have just been fucking around until now, but I think its time tha I go on a quest to learn more about the “hand carved” sandwiches, and I dont think I can go back to my simple cabin life after living on such exquisite decadence for so long. Imagine, taking something for granted for so long, and then suddenly losing it. Like me, losing my “hand carved” sandwiches. You think they got them up on the next station?”

“No idea, dude. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cans and cigarettes to chew on.”

“Farewell goat man, I’m about to show people what it means to be AMERICAN MADE!”

They stood in silence for seventeen seconds, before Nickles remembered he actually needed some supplies.

“Need some supplies too, for my trip. You got credit for me?”

Goat man nodded approvingly with approving veal. I mean zeal.

Nickles knew he had to travel light, so he opted for the concentrated Bum Poison concentrate, which could be made in to a viscious liquor with just a little water. He packed up on cans of easy cheese and bandaids, and instead of his usual cord of wood, a jumbo family pack of toilet paper.

“I gotta go. Good luck, Goat Man, I think our paths will cross again.”

Goat man nodded again, bore his brown teeth and chewed through the bottom of a can of Monster.

Nickles quickly waddled back out to his vespa and made his way back to the cabin. Nickles, being no stranger to wandering, had many elaborate defense mechanisms and booby traps for people who might try to ransack his cabin while he was gone. They pretty much all involved being sprayed with pure alcohol and being set on fire. The fact that no one ever visited him was a plus, because he was the only one who could actually get anywhere near his place without being set on fire.

Anyway, Nickles got back to his place, and pulled out his specially made mini traveling kegs of his pure liquor, stuffed an extra pack of ill fittting clothes into a side bag and grabbed two fortys for the road. In addition to the concentrated liquor and tea, he kept most of his non “hand carved” sandwiches food in concentrated form. For fruits and vegetables, he had a gummy concentrate that could be rolled out in the hands into a kind of liquor based fruit roll up. They were delicious. For meat, he had been living off of the sandwiches, but also had an extensive knife collection for collecting roadkill or trying to take out small animals. Also a titanium egg poacher. He was a man of the woods after all, but not a skilled hunter. Simply a lifetime savage.

Finally, he opened a panel in the floor of his cabin which led down to a hidden cellar. This compartment had replacement parts for several vespas. Some were stock and still in the box, others were custom made, created from other pieces or having random shit welded together or melted in a hot alcohol flame.

His supplies to the side, he pulled piece after piece off of his might vespa, until it was practically lying in pieces in front of his cabin.  Through the course of the last two full fortys he had (he had to keep his senses and acuity), he hauled custom piece and tinkered with them like an autistic child would a set of mismatched legos. It took him several hours, but he had rebuilt his vespa out of nothing but custom parts: Rollbars, efficient alcohol based injectors. He even put in an airbag made of recycled children. When he was done, he was covered with grime, and spare parts littered his lawn. Normally his meticulously sloven self would sort them away, but he grabbed a wet tarp, and gathered the pieces up, and dropped them in a lump in the cellar.

Stepping out of the house, he alarmed all of his booby traps, and reloaded the last of his supplies on to his now mighty vespa. Lastly, he pulled a large axe out of a stump, settled in to the bike, and took off into the night with a brilliant white halogen headlight leading the way.