Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening Read Online Free Page A

cacti have been exploded into green chunks, their
white milk spilling out onto the ground. He pulls his pistol out as a
precautionary measure and inches his way to the front of the small octo-hovel.
He peers in through the large banana-shaped opening that Alfonzo’s car had left
earlier. All the furniture has been toppled over or smashed. The walls are
covered in thick black ink. Papers are spread everywhere. Hanging from the
ceiling, where the chandelier would have been, is a single tentacle.
               
“Oh no,” says Jeac as he steps over the broken wall and into the building.
               
Black ink trails across the house, into the kitchen, and out the back door.
Jeac finds yet another tentacle in the kitchen and glances out the window over
the sink to see another of his friends’ limbs sitting in a bucket.
    The small, normally dried-yellow sand
in the back yard has been stained black. Jeac, seeing a figure in the distance,
kicks open the rear door and fires three warning shots. He steps out the door
and sprints to where the figure now lies. A wheezing breath still comes from
the figure. Jeac rolls it over and stares into the eyes of Sanders.
               
“Oh, shit,” says Jeac. “I didn’t know it was you, Sanders! I wouldn’t have shot
if I had known. I saw your limbs laying everywhere and thought for certain you
were your killer.”
               
“You always were a fool, Jeac. Octopi limbs regenerate. Had you not shot me,
I’d have been fine.”
    Ink drips from the tentacled
informant’s beaked mouth. As he releases his final breath, all the ink in his
body sprays with uncontrollable fervor. The pressure is enough to completely
destroy what remains of the house. The desert consumes the ruins of Sander’s
home, making it seem like it was never there to begin with. Jeac falls a very
short distance to his knees as he watches his once good friends’ corpse,
riddled with bullets, get picked up by the wind and carried away into the great
unknown like a deflating balloon. Jeac mourns momentarily and then immediately
forgets that Ja-La Pe-Pe Ecko Sanders ever existed and proceeds to gather up
the severed tentacles and says, “Why waste a good meal?”
               
    Back in his apartment, he has put
water to boil and is placing two of the three tentacles into the pot when the
sound of knocking comes from his door.
               
“Come in!”
               
Alfonzo and Armando open the door. Alfonzo shoots a banana gun in every
direction, covering various things around the room in goop.
               
“It’s still Wednesday you little dwarf!”
               
The remaining tentacle sits on the counter next to a large knife and catches Armando’s
eye.
               
“Where’d you get the tentacles, Jeac?” He asks.
               
“Oh, you know. Some place out in the wastes.”
               
“Well we dropped by because you didn’t file a report. Nor did you bring in the
perp I assigned to you. I’m getting a bit concerned with letting you operate on
your own. The department wants to partner you up with a member of the A.M.M.D.
Jeff ‘Low Rider’ Stevens.”
               
Jeac dumps the pot of boiling water all over the kitchen floor and leans down
to pick up the now cooked tentacles. He grips the chewy flesh in his teeth and
pulls until it stretches and snaps like a rubber band.
               
“I ain’t workin’ with no cog-bender,” he says between bites. “It’s not that I’m
racist. I just hate machines.”
               
“Well, Jeac. Your partner is outside. You’re working with him no matter what.
Public opinion of the department is faltering. You’re making us look bad.
You’re a terrible detective; you’re drinking all the time and that whole
situation with the hot dog stand and your penis in chapter four? Don’t even get
me