Outwashplain

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Freezing rain begins to pour, and you're only halfway done with the walk home from the bowling alley. "Shoulda brought my umbrella..." you say to yourself. But there was only a 20% chance of precipitation and you thought if it did come it was gonna be snow so you didn't bother and you already had to hold your bowling ball bag. That's the worst part of the fall-to-winter and winter-to-spring transitions, you never know if you're gonna need the umbrella. You look down at the sidewalk - it's really freezing on contact. At this point you notice that you're also still wearing bowling shoes. You must have forgotten to change back into your normal shoes on the way out, meaning they're still stuck in some stupid cubby back at the bowling alley. It's not worth it to walk all the way back for them, and the bowling alley's probably closed by now anyway. The smooth, supple sole provides no friction whatsoever, and you know its only a matter of time before you slip on some of that black ice and completely wreck your ass. But as long as you're careful...

"FUCK!" Within seconds you slip and completely wreck your ass. You're cold, wet, and a little scraped up. As you start getting up, you hear a feeble warbling sound coming from a drainage ditch. Something's alive in there, and maybe in straits more dire than yours. Peering into the darkness, you make out what seems to be a creature. It looks like a raw turkey with hair. It lifts up its grapefruit-sized head and looks at you with two bloodshot eyes. Oh god. You know what this is. Your uncle told you about these. Its a joe biden.

A shivering, sick, juvenile joe biden. No more than 20 or 30 pounds, probably a yearling, exuding a stench of blue cheese and old tires. It extends a wrinkled claw-like hand. "Hhhhnngg... hnnghow ya doin sonny?" it croaks. "Mighten i use your.... commode?" It's too late, the joe biden has begun to shit all over itself. Explosive. Terrible. From the look of that shit it's sicker than you thought. You would love nothing more than to keep walking, but this little freak is definitely going to die if you don't take care of it. Your uncle said its bad luck to knowingly let a joe biden perish. He also mentioned that they sometimes repay favors with magical boons and enchantments - in a brief reverie, you imagine yourself hitting the last strike of a 300 game while the whole league cheers, including Mindy, who you have quite a little crush on... You open up your bowling ball bag and take the ball out, gesturing to the biden to get inside. You dont really want to touch it. The biden scrabbles over to the bag and slithers in. You zip it quick, but end up pinching some skin and the joe biden lets loose a pathetic yawp. Whatever. It would be dead without you so it can't really complain, right? You tuck your stupid bowling ball under your arm, and carefully continue to trudge home to your apartment...

[Continue The Story]

Arriving home you kick off the bowling shoes and shake off your wet coat, casually dropping the bag with its wretched inhabitant onto the kitchen counter. You crank the shower on high and wait impatiently for the water to heat up until it becomes clear that the boiler has gone out again. No matter, once that joe biden has granted your wishes this dump will be a thing of the past.

Returning to the kitchen you notice you forgot to unzip the bowling ball bag. It's moving around a little as the joe biden struggles weakly inside. "Gimme a second for christ's sakes," you think, opening the bag slightly.

"Pee-yoo!" shrieks the joe biden, pushing its head out. "Wha ya goforme inere? Meatloaf?" it mutters, trying to sneak a hand out through the opening as well...

There's only one more Rolling Rock in the fridge. You crack it and take a swig. The Biden has by now crawled out of the bowling bag onto the counter, leaving a thin trail of pinkish slime on the tile as it approaches your meager fruit bowl. It reaches out tentatively toward a banana, "Heysonny nowwe'retalkin." You swat at it before it can defile your fruit bowl, and the Biden glares at you dolefully. The bright green bottle catches its attention: "Heytheresport howbouttataste?" As you pour a small amount of beer into a saucer, you realize that the Biden's language, however inhuman and strange, is starting to become easier for you to understand. In many ways, its alien syntax is better than English. Purer. You set the saucer next to the Biden and an uncomfortably long tongue unfurls to sample the beverage. "Gollymollywally that'sgoodstuff." The tongue must have some kind of internal duct or channel, because he is able to ingest the beer without moving the organ at all. The level of beer drops at an alarming rate and you give him another pour. "Anotherround barkeep onme." A harsh, phlegmmy noise that must be laughter.

A drunk Biden could be a particularly dire situation. The police or even the national guard might have to be involved. You push away these thoughts. From the fridge you get an ancient pack of hotdogs and slice one over the saucer, quarter-inch disks of meat plopping into the beer. The artificial pink hot dog casing looks godawful when juxtaposed with the Biden's scabrous, untanned flesh. A shudder rolls across your entire body. The creature, somehow unfamiliar with the product, retracts his disgusting tongue-organ into his mouth, then prods a coin of meat with one sharp, mucous-dripping claw. "Saywhatsabigideasport?" You nod at him, and the Biden samples, nibbling a small shred from one of the hot dog pieces. "Geewhillikers that'ssomethinelse." He is on the hot dogs, snarfing, choking and coughing in his eagerness, an evil creature in some 1980s Willow-type film. "Jeeperscreepers Icouldeat Thisallday." You top up the saucer and finish the beer in one gulp, drop it in recycling without even a cursory rinse.

The sound of the Biden swallowing hot dog is awful, seemingly impossible to tune out. You go into your bedroom and change into dry clothes; by the time you return to the kitchen, the Biden has finished his squalid meal and is probing the cold cuts drawer, leaving streaks of a rapidly-hardening goo all over the clear plastic shelves. You shoo him away and give him an old box of rosemary-olive Triscuits Luke's ex brought for Fourth of July. He squeals with delight, an unholy noise. "Geehosephat thisisjust mykinda crackers." As his long fangs plunge into the inner bag.

You plop down on the couch, open your laptop, and hit up Wikipedia for more info on Bidens and related leprechoids....

It's a small sound. So quiet that you can't quite believe you noticed it over the considerable noise of the rapidly-diminishing triscuits. Curiously dry amidst the squelching movements of the Biden's body. Yet somehow it needles your brain as you scroll past Wikipedia's call for a $2 donation. Somehow, you have no doubt as to the origin of the sound and its significance. The Biden has farted. As you read, the implications of your decision to shelter and feed this Biden begin to dawn on you...

Some miles away, a low, unearthly moaning can be heard coming from a culvert behind a sporting goods store. Neighborhood dogs hide under their masters' beds. Stray cats sink into their secret hidey holes. People shiver, and turn up the volume on their televisions.

The mother joe biden has come back to the nest after a day's foraging, and found it empty. Her cub, last and only survivor of her clutch, gone. Searching through the dead leaves, bits of moss, and old Hustlers that line the nest, she becomes more and more agitated, her moaning rising in pitch until it becomes a knife-edged howl. "Come on, man!" she shrieks, racing out of the fetid warmth of her den and into the rain outside, her talons scraping horribly on the concrete. The freezing rain plasters her thin white hair to her forehead. Her nostrils flare as she snuffles the muddy earth of the empty lot. Suddenly her head pops up on her skinny neck and she fixes her watery gaze in one direction. She's caught the scent. The unmistakable scent of joe biden flatus...

"Would you like to make a Mandragora, as powerful as the homunculus (little man in a bottle) so praised by Paracelsus? Then find a root of the plant called bryony. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man's grave. For 30 days, water it with cow's milk in which three bats have been drowned …"

These words, as you read them for the second time from your laptop screen, this time out loud, begin to trigger a deeper intuition. There is a putrid aroma wafting steadily from the bowling bag, to which the Biden, now so engorged by Triscuits he, or it, is reduced to crawling along like an abject pink and fat-bellied spider on spindly limbs, has retreated, seemingly for security. Perhaps this guest can be exploited to your advantage.

Glancing back toward the bag, you observe a ridge of wrinkled pink skin on which a pale toupée of coarse, white and strangely genital hair congregates poking out from between the teeth of its zipper. It's the scalp of the Biden! You experience a sudden frisson of worry as you realise it has been eavesdropping. Who knows how much of your ruminations about bending its power to your will it may have overheard?