More Adventures of Sunblock Hose (1)

 

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More Adventures of
Sunblock Hose
and
Doctor Whacko

The world's first and foremost serial
consenting detective and his little
wooden friend by A. Conman Doll
(who is always drinking a big glass
of water while Doctor Wacko is narrating).

Sunblock Hose took his five gallon jug from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypoaortic syringe from its nifty snakeskin case. With both benumbed hands he pulled back the plunger, drawing in a pint of the dark liquid and unbuttoned his shirt. For a wobbly moment his bug-eyed stare rested thoughtfully upon his pale white chest and the puncture-marks there. Finally, he propped the syringe between two sofa cushions and threw himself forward on it, quickly falling off the sofa and onto the floor, a small fresh wound upon his chest.

"You'll never get the needle to penetrate directly to the heart in that fashion," I said, when I felt I could hold back no longer. Thirty times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, and Sunblock Hose had still failed to get his desired injection.

"What is it anyway," I then asked. "morphine or cocaine?"

"Something new," he replied. "They call it 'break fluid' and I am using it to simulate the effects of a broken heart. I have never loved, you know."

"Poor fellow," I consoled, leafing through my heavy scrapbook of the women of five continents (and one penguin, making it six, really).

"I am the world's only serial consenting detective," Hose proclaimed. "I am the last uncourted male in detection. When Grillsome, Lestadt, or Englebert Humperdinck are beyond their limit, I examine their dates and pronounce my consent, but they are in every case laid before me."

I was about to reply when, with a tarty air and a teasing swish of her pegnoir, our landlady shimmied into the room.

"Another one for you," she told Hose, tossing him a calling card she had pulled from her decolletage. "Miss Nary A. Marestongue," he read, his eyes trying hard to stay fixed on the card and not Mrs. Hootson. "Sounds promising. Ask the young lady up, Mrs. Hootson."

"I'll leave you alone then ..." I said, seeing my big chance to finally get away from Hose.

"I don't need a loan, Whacko, she's not that kind of girl!" he retorted.

"And besides, I sent your dead drunken brother's watch to the pawnbroker this morning, so I've plenty of ready cash."

"This is unworthy of you, Hose!" I cried out, but before he could speak in his own defense, Miss Marestongue entered the room with a firm step and a big mother of a fire axe ... which was falling straight at my head!

IS THIS THE BLOW THAT PUTS DR. WHACKO OUT OF HIS MISERY?
WILL SUNBLOCK HOSE FINALLY MEET HIS DREAM DATE?
BE HERE NEXT WEEK FOR THE THRILLING ANSWERS! SAME WHACK-TIME! SAME WHACK-E-MAIL-LIST!

(Originally presented on the Baker Street list on July 6, 1998.)