DIAL "P" FOR PANCAKE

written by Kefka Jr., Sir T. Magus, Gollum-X, Crazy Dan, Ish, Jake McNeill


CHAPTER 1


Hobema chased the culprit down the alley. He was good, but he was no match for HOBEMA: the experienced chair repairman.

The country road was desolate this time of year. Despite that, there was a lot more roadkill stained into the ground. Robins populated this area greatly. Their Italian accents rang throughout the countryside. Badgers cook their rice around this time of day. It’s used in their guitar smashing rituals.

But our story doesn’t take place here. The current setting is a futuristic city in Thailand. Hobema was on this fitness brochure hi-jacker’s trail for two months now. Now he had the chance to lay the smack down on him.

Hobema jumped over a family, ran down the sidewalk and kicked the postman out of his way. He felt he couldn’t get this guy. He was fast, due to his condition, armstrongyria, which replaces the person’s blood with rubber cement. Since the body can’t function too well without any blood anyone with the condition needs to have a series of painful blood injections every four minutes. When that time comes, Hobema will have him.

Gaddi zoomed down the sidewalk, passing the many bystanders in his way. Dammit, get out of my way! he thought. This guy’s persistent... he’s been chasing me for two months now!

He checked his wristwatch again. Damn, one more minute until my horribly painful blood injection!

Gaddi glanced back to see where the chair repairman was. He’s catching up, and fast. Gaddi looked forward again and saw any means of a faster escape. There was a kid boarding a hovercycle directly ahead. Yes! The perfect escape vehicle...

The speedy fitness brochure hijacker caught up to the kid and grabbed the hovercycle’s handles.

"Hey, what’re you doing, jerk?!" the kid yelped.

Gaddi looked down at the child and grinned. The smile stretched from ear to ear and his jaw dropped to accommodate his huge, white showy teeth. He looked like some deranged fish. A toothy fish.

The kid screamed and fell to the sidewalk, motionless.

That was another advantage to armstrongyria: The ability to paralyze children and small animals.

Gaddi started the hovercycle, and levitated several feet off the ground before crashing back down. He fell off the bike. A hunk of hair was jammed in the bike’s exhaust port. It was jammed in there real good...

"Oh no!" Gaddi screamed as he began to convulse.

Hobema stood over the gelatinous mass on the ground. He picked up a stick and poked the beige-colored blob of rubber cement. It was the brochure hijacker all right. He must’ve missed his injections.

After poking and flinging more of the criminal around, Hobema called the police at the nearest payphone.

"Yeah, he just expanded and turned into a blob," Hobema explained to the police chief. "It’s like what happened to the villain in Blade, but less stupid... Uh-huh... Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’ll be waiting."

He hung up and stuck a finger in the coin-return slot. There was nothing inside. Not one coin.

"Aw, come on!" Hobema cursed. Before his anger could subside he heard a ticking sound. It was faint, but it was there. And it was coming from the phone.


CHAPTER 2


Gimmpy the Crab sat on his desk. He found that odd because he usually sat on a chair or a water cooler. He grabbed a frog from his desk drawer and dangled it over a blender set on puree. He squinted and asked the frog the question he asked the other frogs.

"Is Denis Franz made up of thousands of other bald men?" Gimmpy swallowed his prostate, which was extremely painful considering the location of the prostate and yelled "TELL ME!"

The frog stayed silent.

"IS HE!?!" Gimmpy screamed and dropped the frog into the blender. The frog let out a scream of pain. A scream Gimmpy identified with the song of the songstress Hairy Bill the Gas attendant.

Sweaters, Gimmpy’s secretary, opened the door and announced:

"Mr. Gimmpy? There’s a call for you on line one," she grunted a manly grunt and left with a slam of the door.

Gimmpy picked up the phone, then dropped it, then picked it up again, but then he accidentally hung up the receiver. Luckily the phone wasn’t plugged in so he never received the call. Gimmpy continued his questioning until the phone rang. Gimmpy picked up the phone, then dropped it, then he fell off of his desk and the radio fell on him, finally he picked up the receiver. It was his partner: Ike Turner.

"Yo man, it’s Ike!" Ike exclaimed in his usual silly voice. That second Gimmpy’s life changed forever. Gimmpy realized he didn’t have a job, secretary, or a partner. Gimmpy hung up the receiver and headed home.


*****


As Gimmpy headed home he noticed a large lump of rubber cement. A man stood by the lump, distracted by a payphone. Gimmpy noticed a brochure in the lump. He picked it up and read it. It advertised a tour of a man’s colon. It sounded like an exciting and very illegal activity. Gimmpy pocketed the brochure and continued his powerwalk home.

The powerwalk home was very unusual, not like his regular way home. Gimmpy thought he was drunk at first, then he thought he was a vampire, finally he noticed something on his left arm.

Usually on his left arm was an over-sized white freckle. This time it was a scar the shape of a pork-chop. Pork Chops were his least favorite food; he was disgusted by looking at it. He had no idea how it got there, but he had a feeling someone did it.


******


That night he had a dream, a dream of pork chops, pork chops that kill. In that dream there was a fat lady that sang to him after the pork chops killed him, the singer looked exactly like his secretary. But for some strange reason she never moved, she was like a basketball poster.

That morning when Gimmpy woke up he had a tune in his head, it kind of went like this... Diddy diddy do do do laddy do liddy da. He made his usual cup of decaf coffee and read the sports section of the newspaper. Then at 8:34 A.M. a slimy and juicy pork chop hit him in the side of the face.

Gimmpy looked around, all he saw was his newspaper and his coffee. He walked around his one-room apartment for any explanation of how it happened. He found nothing so sat back down.

Ten minutes later, another pork chop hit him, but this time something was carved on it. It read... "Pancakes shall kill all of your loved ones, one by one". Gimmpy searched once again for an explanation.

Then, in his left arm, there was a stabbing pain. The scar on his arm was no longer there. Instead, there was carving, still in progress, it said the same thing the pork chop had said, Pancakes shall kill all you’re loved ones, one by one. The pain was felt as if his arm was on fire now. He associated the feeling to continually spilling hot water on yourself.

Then his 1930’s phone rang, which it hasn’t done in 30 years.

"Pancakes shall kill all of your loved ones, one by one."

Blinking, Gimmpy was at first scared, but then realized that he hated everyone and everything, so he had nothing to fear.

Suddenly, King Phillip appeared from under the carpet and stole the phone. Gimmpy cried. Seconds later, a harpoon was shot from the chandelier and hooked onto Catameran’s stomach.

"I’m Catameran," said Catameran to no one in particular and flew away.

"Wow, that’s a lot of useless, named characters. I’m happy," chuckled Gimmpy as he wiped away a tear.

Out of no where, a flock of pancakes burst through the window singing a song that went something like this: dah dah dah dum dah repeated 23 times, each time in a squeakier voice. Arming himself with nothing in particular Gimmpy ran at them with both legs in his pockets.

Gimmpy woke up to the noise of his 1940s phone.

"What a day, what a day." Gimmpy then proceeded to pick himself up and walk towards the shower. As if to try to dodge an oncoming train, Gimmpy dove into his closest and stayed there for six months living on the rat poison he stored for an emergency like this.


CHAPTER 3

Six months and seven days later…


Dick Deacon walked down the hall to his chief’s office. He wondered why the hall was so long. Did it have something to do with Taiwan’s building code? Was it obligatory to have at least one, huge, long corridor in every building? Now that Deacon thought about it, there are a lot of long buildings in the city.

That didn’t matter now. Deacon was late for his meeting and the office door was just over the horizon.

Fifteen minutes later he opened the door to the chief’s office and walked in.

"Hello, Deacon, it’s good to see you again," the chief said.

The chief was a number of a man. Fairly overweight, a big long nose with a mustache underneath, and a pipe underneath the mustache. His marble shaped eyes, thin eyebrows, huge chin, and super-receding hairline didn’t do much for his appearance either. And he always wore suspenders. If Deacon didn’t know any better, he’d swear that he was working under the chief from Inspector Gadget.

"It’s good to see you, too, sir," Deacon replied and took off his coat and hat. His clothes would have been dripping wet had the office hallway been shorter. But the long walk gave his rain-soaked attire time to dry.

"Please, sit down," Chief offered, waving a hand at the chair before his desk.

Deacon did so. "So, what’s so important?"

"I’ve called you down here today to discuss a very important case," Chief said, smoking his pipe at the same time. He pulled a manila folder out of one the desk drawers and handed it to Deacon.

"Six months ago an experienced chair repairman named Hobema Pannini died in Thailand. He was calling the police after he caught a brochure hijacker when the payphone he used exploded and killed him," Chief said. "At the same time, Gimmpy the Crab was haunted by visions of porkchops and was attacked by a flock of pancakes."

Yeah, the pancakes are pretty bad that time of year, Deacon thought. "You think the two deaths are related?"

"Yep. But Gimmpy didn’t die immediately. He was found in his home last week by a fisherman. Apparently, Gimmpy was feeding on rat poison in his closet."

"Crabs aren’t too smart," Deacon pointed out.

Chief nodded. "True, true. But there’s something going on here, Deacon. And the United Nations wants to know what it is. I’m sorry, the United Nations want to know what it is… Damn, how do you say it?"

Deacon was surprised. "The United Nations? What does the U.N. have to do with this?"

Deacon suddenly slipped out of his chair and fell on his backside. He hopped around patting his buttocks until the pain went away. After a long, hearty laugh they both got back to the conversation at hand.

"The criminal Hobema caught, Gaddi Bupkis, was an international brochure hijacker," Chief reminded Deacon. He took the manila folder back from him and read a paper. "He’s been through Brazil, England, France, Spain, Canada, the United States, Japan, Middle East nations… This guy’s a man of the world. No doubt he’s done some naughty things in more than one of those countries. He’s also had an extreme case of armstrongyria."

"That’s right, so extreme he gellatinated," Deacon said. Gellatinated. Deacon giggled.

"And here’s a shocker, Deacon," Chief paused, waiting for Deacon to stop giggling.

"Hee hee… Sorry."

"Gaddi was a member of the Illuminati," Chief finally said.

Deacon gasped and his eyes widened. The Illuminati. He thought he’d never have to hear that name again.

Chief nodded solemnly. "I was surprised, too, Deacon. But I know you can handle the Illuminati. You did before."

"Of course, sir," Deacon assured the Chief.

"Now, here’s a lead to go by," the Chief took a brochure out of the folder. "This is a brochure that was found in Gimmpy the Crab’s home."

Deacon took the folder and read it over. So you Want to Take a Tour of a Man’s Colon. Creepy. And it sounded very illegal.

"You may also want to visit Gimmpy’s home and the crime scene in Thailand. And remember, watch out for the Illuminati," Chief said and handed the folder back to Deacon.

Deacon nodded, took his coat and hat, and walked out of the office.

About four-sixteenths down the hall, the chief’s office exploded. A fireball rushed down the hallway and dispersed just before it reached Deacon.

He slapped his forehead. He forgot to give me one of his self-destructing notes.

As Deacon walked past the halfway point he realized something: He never told me why the U.N. was involved. Then he realized he was in way over his head. Then he tripped.


CHAPTER 4


Deacon’s face ripped through the floor like a rock through paper. Very thin paper. Then he found himself peering into another room. The room was square shaped. There was a comfy looking armchair on shag carpeting. The next thing he knew, he was sitting in that chair. Shortly after, a crazy tune started playing. Then, a dwarf in a red suit walked out from behind a curtain.

"DeEk DeEcAn. ThArEs MoRe To ThE PuZzEl," the deranged little guy mumbled.

Deacon didn’t hear what the unusual dwarf had to say. He was busy drinking coffee and eating cherry pie. He hated having these hallucinations. However, something was different about this one.

Deacon expected the dwarf to go on, but instead, it started dancing. Suddenly the armchair fell through the floor. He found himself in a plane. It seemed that while he was having the hallucination, he got a plane to Thailand. He decided to take a nap.

But a light scampering sound interrupted it. It was amidst the sound of footsteps. The stewardess came up behind him. A lock of her red hair overlapped her left eye. She had a big smile. Deacon had her all picked out. Then the stewardess put her hand on the armrest of his chair. Her fingers were pointing straight down and were the only parts touching the armrest. The middle finger, however, was pointing out and away from the other fingers. Her hand looked like some sort of animal.

"Would you like some coffee?" The stewardess steadily moved her middle finger as she spoke.

Not one to insult other people’s habits, he copied her motion, resting his hand animal on the armrest. "No thanks," he said, moving his middle finger in tune with each word. "I don’t drink alcohol."

Suddenly, Deacon’s feet flew into the bathroom. Somewhat fortunately, the rest of the body was still attached. He turned the lock and stood up to the urinal.

Three hours passed.

Once he finished doing his business, he flushed and washed hands. He flicked his hands at the mirror so drops would hit it.

"Hee hee." Doing that made him happy.

Then he cranked the lever on the paper towel dispenser to make paper towel come out. Without looking, he dried his hands on the object and wiped it against his face. He strolled over to the trashcan to throw it away. He was horrified to see what he had used to dry himself.

It was a pancake.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" He woke up in his bedroom as always, silent. It had all been so real... He brought his hand up to his forehead only to realize he was in a cold sweat.

"Patrick?"

At first he didn't even hear the voice, his experience had shocked him so.

Eventually, though, it got through to him.

"Patrick, what's wrong?"

Patrick Duffy turned to his wife to answer, but the words just wouldn't come.

"Did you have a bad dream again? What was it this time?"

Finally, he spoke, "I-it was just AWFUL, honey. I don't remember all of it, but it was just this terrifying collage of... weirdness..."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I remember there was some sort of chase between two men named Hobema and Gaddi... and Gaddi has some sort of condition that turned him into cement Jell-O. And Hobema died, and then there was a crab named Gimmpy, and a detective named Dick Deacon trying to make sense of it all. And there were pork chops and pancakes, and brochures... and drugs... I'm pretty sure everyone was on drugs... and then, in the end, Dick used a pancake to dry himself!!!"

"Now, calm down, honey. It was all just a bad dream. You haven't slept well at all since you lost that show with Suzanne Sommers."

"It's that damn Sasha Mitchell's fault... if he didn't go off and beat his wife, then-"

"Calm down, honey, calm down... Just go back to sleep, OK?"

She turned the light off again, and turned to go to sleep. Patrick tried to do the same, but he just lay there for hours, eyes wide open, mortified at what he'd just seen. Finally, he couldn't stand it any more. He got up and started putting his clothes on. His wife, disturbed again by the noise, sat up.

"Honey... what are you doing?"

"I have to find out what happened to them... I have to go there, or I'll have no peace!"

"What... what are you talking about?"

"I have to go to Thailand!"

Patrick ran up to the desk in the airport, determined. His wife trailed behind, screaming at him, trying to inject some kind of sense into him.

Although Patrick was normally as weak-willed as flan, today, he had to keep focus. Today, he had to do whatever it took to regain the last shreds of his sanity.

"One ticket to Thailand, please"

"Patrick, are you even listening to me? If you do this, we're OVER!" His wife broke into tears.

"Honey, don't you understand? I need to know this... maybe it is just something in my head, but I need to find out, and this is the only way."

"Look, Patrick... I tried to put up with you after you lost your job, and God knows it isn't easy being married to an out-of-work actor, but somehow, I've managed to pay the bills every day. But you just can't DO this... it's... it's... it's CRAZY!"

Patrick lightly kissed her on the forehead. "Don't worry, hon. I'll be back. You know I will..."

The two embraced, and Patrick boarded the plane.


CHAPTER 5


"Holy smokes!"

Immediately, Deacon dropped the pancake. The pancake defied all physics and flew back up at his face. With unseen claws, or paws, or something, it latched itself onto Deacon’s face.

Deacon yelled a muffled scream and tried to pry the cake of pan off his face. In fear of the pancake laying it’s eggs in his chest Deacon closed his mouth and continued to tear at the pancake’s unusually tough body.

He wasn’t panicking anymore. Deacon was madly hysterical. So hysterical he got his foot stuck in the toilet and a hand stuck in the sink. He hung there in the middle of the bathroom like a human hammock. A human hammock with a pancake violently stuck to his face.

Now that Deacon was helpless the pancake detached itself from his face and flopped on his chest.

He was breathing heavily. The pancake heaved up and down on his chest.

"Jesus Christ superstar," he managed to say .

Somehow, the pancake stood up on Deacon’s chest. Deacon could feel the pancake’s stare. It’s icy, cold, light, and fluffy stare. It was a stare of pure evil.

"What do you want from me?!" Deacon yelled. "What are you?!"

The stewardess knocked on the bathroom door. "Don’t mind that, sir, it’s just the plane’s gremlin."

Deacon didn’t notice the little airplane-headed gremlin before. It was beating a nuclear warhead with a sledgehammer.

The pancake smiled. Well, it didn’t really smile, but Deacon knew it was smiling. It was a smile of pure evil. The pancake spoke,

"I’ll swallow your soul!"

Deacon screamed a scream that would make Courage the Cowardly Dog proud, "AAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!"

Enough was enough. Full of adrenaline, Deacon used his free leg to kick the hammer out of the gremlin’s hands. With a stroke of unrealistic luck the hammer bounced off the wall and fell on top of the pancake. The hammer and pancake fell off Deacon’s chest.

That gave him enough to pull his leg out of the toilet. His hand was still stuck in the sink’s drain. With enough strength to pull a sink out of a floor, Deacon pulled the sink out of the floor and a broken water pipe drenched the whole bathroom. He didn’t think that would, or could, happen on an airplane.

Before all was well, the pancake bit Deacon in the shin. He kicked his leg against the wall trying to fly it off. Then he stuck his leg in the water geyser and the pancake got caught in the current.

Deacon picked the hammer up from the pool it was sitting in, loomed over the pancake in the corner, and repeatedly smashed it into oblivion. And he smashed. And he smashed, and he smashed, and then he smashed some more.

"Swallow that."

After plugging the water pipe with a nuclear warhead, and trying to calm an extremely irritated and wet gremlin, Deacon exited the bathroom.

The stewardess was there with her hand animal crawling around on the wall. "What happened in there?" she said as she moved the hand animal’s head/middle finger.

Deacon, drenched with bathroom water, put his wet hand animal on his other wet hand.

"El Nino," his hand thing seemed to say.

Then the stewardess’ lips curled back, her eyes shut, and her nostrils flared. Deacon thought there was something wrong with her until she started to laugh. He let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t even think the joke was that funny.

She continued her strange laugh. It was the kind of laugh only Ludwig von Koopa could love. The other passengers began to get worried.

Deacon did his best to ignore her and walked back to his seat. His shoes made a wet "squish" sound each step he took. He sat back down and dialed his vid phone.

Seconds later an image of the Chief appeared on the small phone’s monitor.

"The price just went up another ten mil, Chief. I was almost killed by a soul-eating pancake, this plane’s stewardess is really freaking the hell out of me, and they ran out of those salty peanuts."

The Chief furrowed his brow. "Deacon… you’re not a bounty hunter…"

"…Crap."


*****


A pair of eyes stared at Deacon through a piece of Deacon’s luggage. They were cold unfeeling eyes, one might say they were "uncolding" eyes. The eyes adjusted themselves in the suitcase. They them wondered how and why they adjusted themselves, they had no appendages to adjust for they were nothing more than eyes… "uncolding" eyes.

The eyes grew impatient; they wanted to be free of their velvet prison. They wanted to report back to Mr. Buttly. They thought sneaking into Deacon’s suitcase wasn’t worth the trouble he could put them in. The eyes loved being part of the Illuminati but they hated stinky suitcases. They knew if they thought of their hero, Golf Pro Richard Palmer, they could get through this. Realizing they had been drifting off for hours now, the "uncolding" eyes snapped their attention back to Deacon.


*****


The Chief nervously hung up the phone in his usual wacky manner. He felt like he needed a drink, a "Big Gulp" from the local 7-11. He debated about what he would put in it, Oil was number three on his mental list, Sunkist was the second on the list, and a virgin’s blood and number one as usual.

The Chief was so caught up in his order he forgot he had a revolver up to his head. Oh god. He thought to himself. That was way too close. The Chief put his revolver back into his desk. "I should stop holding guns up to my head." He said to no one in particular. As he finished his sentence he remembered he had a bomb strapped to his chest. I didn’t strap a bomb on my chest. He thought.

"That’s right, I put the bomb on your chest!" An incredibly good looking, sharp dressing, and high fiber man exclaimed. The Chief thought there was something odd about his hand but he couldn’t put his smelly finger on it. The man resembled Kenneth Braughnagh (Gollum-X’s Note: How the hell do you spell his last name?) in Hamlet. Man, I gotta see that movie The Chief thought.

"There’s no Hamlet where you’re going!" The man said with an evil laugh.

"Mississippi?" The Chief asked fearfully, then he a realization came upon him. "How do you keep reading my thoug-" His question was cut off by the man.

"There’s no time for questions! Now… let me ask you something. Do you know who I am?" The man asked with a smile. The Chief opened his mouth when he was cut off. " I am… Muzz Buttly, The New ruler of The Illuminati."

The Chief gasped. "Muzz Buttly! Son of Leslie Buttly, the man that ruled The Illuminati with a wet noodle fist!" The Chief grabbed his ears and torn them off with tiger-like speeds. Right then and there The Chief noticed what was odd about Muzz’s hand, if you could call it that. Instead of a hand he had an over-sized live dog’s head there, The Chief thought he was pretty slick. He knew no one would notice it for days, it was so subtle. Well, That’s what you learn when you’re on the force for 5 hours. The Chief chuckled.

Muzz became enraged, "You did this to me! When you killed my father he ate my hand! I can’t speak with my fellow Illuminati! Do you know what it’s like to not be able to talk through you’re hand!" Muzz shook his dog head in the air. "I’ll get my revenge on you. Then operation "Pipes" will be under way! You’re little slug Deacon will be dead soon. I’ve got two agents following him!"

Muzz grabbed the chair The Chief was sitting on and wheeled by the window. "Where’s my dinner?" Muzz said and cackled. The Chief realized he had wet his pants, with his urine. The Chief breathed his last few breaths then a few more. He felt the window shatter against his face as the floor below him disappeared. He held out a "Yikes" sign as he plunged out of his ground level office onto the cold dirt where his head was smashed like a ripe melon being shot by a canon. There he died peacefully.


CHAPTER 6


Patrick Duffy pulled his finger out of his nose to inspect what he had found, It was a sticky white liquid that stuck to his finger, a large crusty green disc was protruding out of it’s center. Damn Patrick thought no Nazi Gold. There was never any Nazi gold up his nose like there was on TV Bored with his find he flicked it into a large woman’s puffy red hair.

Duffy inspected his laptop screen noticing the Metal Gear Solid 8,000 video was still at 45%. It had been at 45% since he boarded the plane. Duffy continually smashed his skull against the screen until it the screen was broken into pointy little shards. He threw the remains of the laptop through the airplane window.

The broken window unleashed a vacuum that began to suck in the wind of the plane. But, You probably don’t care about that. I’ll skip us to a good scene. Ready…. Now: Duffy stood frozen with fear as two man wearing black suits walked out of the bathroom. They were both toting a .9mm camera. The vacuum continued to suck papers, cause chaos, and create a really cool battle scene.

"Leslie Buttly doesn’t like you. POOPIE HEAD!" One of the men screamed. He pointed the camera at Duffy. He ducked and threw an orange at the first man.

"AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!" The first man screamed as the orange smashed into his eyeball. The man gripped the orange as it lodged itself into the eye socket. The man cussed under his breath as he passed out.