Editor’s Note: Millionaire adventurer Jed Foster and sex puppet Paulette Standiford have invaded N.O.R.T.O.N. headquarters, climbed down the endless shaft to its end, where they saw the world’s biggest bomb, two miles wide and long, boy, was it long. Then some German stepped in.

Chapter 9: Summer of the German Bastard

“Professor von Hufnagel!” shouted Jed Foster, naming the newest character to invade their plot.

He was a tall German, with rough German features and hard German eyes. His German nose was pointed and sprouted a gray German mustache just underneath, matching his hairy German eyebrows. He was bald, like a flesh-colored egg of wrinkly skin, all of it German. In his hand was a gun that almost appeared to grow out of his black-gloved German hand—a Dutch revolver.

“I thought I smelled your foul stench,” said Paulette, and hurt the big German’s feelings.

“A tongue as sharp as ever, my pretty pet,” said von Hufnagel. He pointed the gun at her tit. “Watch how you waste your breath on insults—they will be your last.”

“What do you have to do with all this, von Hufnagel?” asked Foster. “Are you part of Ostrich now?”

“Schweinkopf!” exclaimed von Hufnagel. “I am Ostrich!”

It was an amazing confession of shocking value, if one had been properly informed beforehand that von Hufnagel was the man who crippled Foster and put him in his wheelchair years before. He’s no longer in a wheelchair, of course, that’s something planned for a prequel, or perhaps a Broadway play.

“It all figures now,” said Foster. “The very man who crippled me and put me in that cursed wheelchair—the worst day of my life. And I’m still miffed about you killing my son as well.”

“He had to die, as do all those who make fun of mein accent!”

“It’s my accent, you German douchebag!” snapped Paulette.

“How dare you! I invented that accent!” He grabbed her roughly by the arm, and when Foster made a cursory effort to throttle him, von Hufnagel used his robot arm’s amazing reflexes to knock him onto his millionaire’s back. “Not so tough now, are you, Foster? Lying on your back, all like… uh…” The German made a goofy face and sprawled his hands out, laughing.

Foster wiped the blood from his lip—it had been there for five days, he had just now gotten around to it. “You son of unmarried Germans,” growled Foster. “If you do anything to Paulette, I’ll rip your heart out. So help me, or my name’s not Red Bagel.”

“I’d like to see you try it, from your place on the floor, all…” von Hufnagel gagged and crossed his eyes, laughing louder. He then put on his serious face, and informed them, “You won’t be doing much, once I drop this bomb on America itself!”

“Illegitimate monster!” screamed Foster. “You’re still mad about losing World War II, aren’t you?”

“Ostrich has more important things on its mind these days,” said von Hufnagel. “But yeah, it sticks in my craw something fierce.”

“Idiot, they made the bomb too big,” interrupted Paulette, smirking. “You’ll never find a plane big enough to drop it.”

“Maybe… or maybe, I’m the one who has a surprise for you!”


Next Chapter: The World’s Biggest Plane

The Idiotad
And all of this, so the story goes, over the honor of a woman. A hippy, full-breasted woman with lips like a couple of pillows and a tendency to drink a little too much.

Mousey Men
Joe splashed the water on his grimy skin. He laughed even harder, nearly passing out. “Golly, Britches, if that water don’t feel good after all that train dust. We should wash up good, ‘fore we go looking for work. You smell like something crawled up your armpits and died.”

A Fistful of Tannenbaum, Chapter 8:
It was a long, treacherous journey I won’t waste words describing. But Jed found the bottom, lighting the area with the eye of the synthetic sea monster they had slain on the way down.

The Secrets of Michelangelo
Banger directed his attention to a man, dead, swinging from a rope from the ceiling. The rope came right down through God’s navel. What a shame. That had been Banger’s favorite part of the painting.