Shecky’s

TWINKIE™’S REVENGE (THE PICKLE FROM HELL)
AN EXERCISE IN DISGUST

DISCLAIMER
WORDCHASM ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY BOUTS OF NAUSEA PRODUCED BY READING THIS POST. WHILE IT IS NOT RESTRICTED ON AGE LINES, ANYONE WITH A WEAK CONSTITUTION, A SENSE OF ÆSTHETICS, OR IMPECCABLY GOOD TASTE SHOULD AVOID THIS ARTICLE. WORDCHASM MAY FIND, AT SOME AS-YET-UNDETERMINED TIME, THAT WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, MAY PROVIDE AIRSICKNESS BAGS; OUR CHOICE OF AIRLINE, PLEASE.

FADE UP ON
A burning pickle, wreathed in flame, rising from the smoldering pit of brimstone. It squirts a vinegary stream of hot ketchup out onto an unsuspecting hamburger. It roars, unsure of the giant fork flying toward it, but dodges at the last second. The fork flies into the pit, from which a huge, roiling groan of anguish coils, snakelike, into the foul steam rising. The Pickle looks back into the Pit, shakes what passes for a warty, misshapen head, and moves on.

A Hostess Snacks delivery truck pulls up in front of the camera. A Twinkie™ wearing a bandanna tied around his “neck” and a cowboy hat perched on his “head” looks out the window. “They laughed at me at the University,” he says.

DISSOLVE TO
Russell “Professor” Johnson from Gilligan’s Island: “True, but he was doing a standup routine at the time. At that, it wasn’t half bad for a bland, spongy pastry injected with cream filling so sugary it crunches.” A stereotypical Polynesian warrior runs in from stage left and lops off Professor’s head. Blood oozes down his trademark Oxford-cloth shirt as the body collapses onto the sand. The Warrior tosses the head into an also stereotypically boiling cauldron. Mmm… geek’s-head soup.

FADE UP TO
The Pickle, terrorizing the city. The Hostess Snack truck drives along, as if to lure the Pickle toward more mayhem and mischief.

SCENE PULLS BACK TO INSET VIDEO, STACY FLUFFPIECE AT NEWSDESK.
STACY FLUFFPIECE: That was the scene today in the heart of our fair city. Here with the story is our own Al Roquefort. Al?

CUT TO LOCATION SHOT
AL ROQUEFORT (wiping sweat off his prodigious ebony brow): Thanks, Stacy. What motivates a pickle? Why is it terrorizing the city? Is it looking for the legendary hamburger with that shake? Why do I look like Mr. Potatohead?

CUT TO
The Pickle lurches forward, rivulets of chartreuse pickle water emanating from its flesh. An oblivious little old lady shuffles past its shadow, her travel umbrella at the ready. Yellow spatters appear on her tattered, coleslaw-scented cardigan sweater where the threadbare bumberchute doesn’t shield her from the raunchy sweat of the cantankerous cuke.

Somewhere on a street corner, an East German street choir performs songs from Before The Wall Fell, accompanied by an organ grinder with a monkey. The perky beats drive the feet of passerbys to tapping. The six or seven men in the choir suddenly start whistling in near unison. The buildings start to appear to breathe as the scene morphs into a 1930s-style cartoon. The buildings start to cavort, suddenly towering to new, dark heights, as the Pickle turns to the whistling and tapping of the carefree Communists.

Rain spatters the pavement as the gargoyles above, suddenly crapulous with the cloudburst of acid rain, vomit their watery chunderings on the scene below. The very buildings take on the look of acid reflux sufferers, with torrents and fountains of fiery acid blistering their esophagi.

The Communist choir tears apart the hurdy-gurdy to use as rain hats. Still getting the icy tongues of filthy gargoyle effluvia down their backs, they offer up the monkey as a sacrifice. They rip it apart bare-handed, blood and fur drowning in the swill of the rain and pickle juice.

The Pickle looks upon the debacle with indulgence. It raises a huge, horrible hockering noise in its throat. It squelches and swishes the saliva, phlegm, and rancid yellow juice in its pimply, pickled mouth, consummating the vile act by spraying the bloodthirsty choir with the noxious plasma. The onlookers suddenly get that odd lemon-vinegar-bakelite taste in the backs of their throats, feeling their stomachs heave at the dastardly mob scene degrading before their eyes.

CUT TO NETWORK LOGO STILL IMAGE
STACY FLUFFPIECE (Voiceover): You’re watching the World News Network. Stay tuned!

CUT TO COMMERCIAL
Waxed-hair, shrill-voiced beard guy: This is Billy Might. Try new OxyAcetylene Cleaner. Set your cleaning on fire with our new Blowtorch Applicator! If you order now, we’ll double the order, so you get 2 tanks of OxyAcetylene Cleaner. Not enough, you say? OK, we’ll throw in a stiff cleaning brush and a set of rubber gloves. That’s a $20 value for the low price of $19.95. Operators are standing by, on chairs, with nooses around their necks, committed to suicide if we don’t sell enough units. Don’t let their blood be on your hands, order now.

CUT TO COMMERCIAL
[ALEX FROM A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, in the brainwashing chair, eyes clamped open. A beautiful rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony begins to play.]
ALEX: Please, no, not the Ludwig Van!
[Lab assistant, a long-tressed metalhead burnout dude with weasel-like face and gnarled teeth, looks thoughtful.]
METALHEAD: Like, OK, man.
[Late 1980s/early 1990s Hair Metal Ballad Love Will Find A Way starts blaring]
ALEX: Wot the ‘ell is THAT?
METALHEAD: Like, Man, it’s HAIR BANDS RULE, dude. Check it out.
[Titles of Greatest Ballads of Winger, Poison, Cinderella, etc. begin to scroll at a nauseating pace]
ALEX (despairingly): Please. Put the Ludwig Van back on.
METALHEAD: Uh, sorry, dude, like, the button ain’t workin’. Guess ya better buy one!
ALEX: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
METALHEAD: Heh heh, heh heh, heh heh, heh-heh. (muttering) Hmm. Needs more explosions.
[Order info screen pops up]
ANNOUNCER: Hair Bands Rule, a limited time offer from Rustco. Only $24.95 on your Visa or Mastercard.

STATION IDENTIFICATION

CUT TO NETWORK LOGO STILL IMAGE
STACY FLUFFPIECE (Voiceover): We now return you to the Pickle Assault, live. You’re watching the World News Network. Stay tuned for all the latest developments!

SUDDEN [JARRING] CUT TO LIVE FEED
The miserable heat ripples off the hissing street. The Twinkie sweats, viscous, opaque trails of cream filling glacially oozing down its face. Onlookers pry their shirts from their backs and underarms, stuck there by 99% humidity. The Twinkie, preparing for the final battle, removes his absurd Western Stetson hat, 5 sizes too small, and flings it haphazardly into the back of the oblivious delivery van. He makes a lazy 180-degree turn, back toward the Pickle. He slows to a snail’s pace, at the ready to subdue the vigilante vegetable.

The Pickle, suddenly seeming to become doubly enraged at the weaving pastry truck, turns its attention there as it comes to a halt in the middle of the sweltering boulevard. It reaches up and sticks a finger into its own throat, and retches. A tsunami of bile and triple-acidity pickle juice wells up and projects in a orange-brown-chartreuse stream at the hapless vehicle facing it. The paint bubbles and sizzles, as does the pavement that the foul mess drools onto from the now-sagging van.

The Twinkie has no choice. He steps into the street, into the pool of Pickle sputum, and as he does, his feet singe and begin to burn and smoke before he quickly steps to drier but equally as-hot macadam. From the holsters at his sides, he draws two incongruous six-guns, comically large, shimmering in the equatorial inferno of the noonday Summer sun.

He fires, streams of cream filling spraying the Pickle with insensate sweetness. The Pickle roars, kicking at the Twinkie, knocking him down. The suddenly-impotent cream shooters clatter away on the broiling asphalt.

The Pickle sneers at its spongy yellow foe, and raises a huge green foot to stomp it, when it’s pelted by a shower of pebbles. It turns, face hunched in anger, to see the source of the latest feeble insult. A freckle-faced kid, incongruous in the city scene, dressed in ratty overalls and a faded, torn plaid shirt, holds a hand-made tree branch slingshot in his hand. He looks up, realizing he’s extended a silver-platter invitation to the wrath of the demonic dill. Frozen for a moment, he sees there are no more rocks to sling.

The Pickle smiles a warty, gloating smile as it gets ready to demolish this pint-sized hillbilly. However, a camping lantern flashes over the kid’s head where a light bulb would normally be. He digs into his generous, speckled nose and pulls out a greenish gob of snot. Rolling it quickly in the sling, he fires and hits the Pickle in one of its eyes.

The Twinkie has had enough time to collect his death dealing spray guns, coming up large behind the Pickle, and shooting it squarely in the back, keeping the guns trained on it. The Pickle starts to vibrate and shake, undulating in the relentless waves of filling. The filling oozes into its pores. Pickle juice sprays out over the crowd.

Suddenly, a pack of ninjas jump out from the shadows of a building, slicing the gherkin Godzilla into a giant pile of fluttering slices. Unfortunately, they also bisect the brave pastry, who was standing too close to their silent swords of death. As the sword cleaves the Twinkie in twain, its filling erupts and falls over the scene as treacle-sweet, sticky snow. The ninjas spread the remains of the Twinkie and the Pickle out over the street to dry. Smoke bombs explode. Odd, moving, ninja-sized bumps appear under the streets and even in the brick walls of buildings, and, as fast as they have come, they are gone.

CUT TO
AL ROQUEFORT (wiping sweat off his prodigious ebony brow): Thanks, Ninjas and Twinkie. You will be missed. This leaves us all with some questions. Where did this vagabond vegetable come from? Was this a failed experiment from a snacking company? Who’s going to clean this mess up, the squad who always cleans up after ultra-disastrous fight scenes? And of course, the age old question… why do I look like Mr. Potatohead?

FIN (WE HOPE).