My name is Reverant, and this is my first short story effort... ever. I wanted to start with a little overview of what's going on here. Skip to the story if you're familiar with the cartoon or bored by explanations. Please review if you've read more than... oh, I'll say ten words!

Show Notes: For the uninitiated, "Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales" was a short lived cartoon series that ran in the sixties, and it was made by the same company that went to on to make "Underdog." In the early nineties, segments of Tennessee Tuxedo were incorporated into a larger broadcast segment that included Rocky & Bullwinkle and Underdog, which is when I first watched the show. I honestly don't remember much more than that, since I was only around seven years old. Anyway, this was this early attempt to make an educational cartoon. Tennessee Tuxedo (the penguin) and Chumley (the walrus) were a couple bumbling fools that would learn math and science lessons in the process of solving random problems in the episodes.

One day, I was reminiscing about the cartoons of my youth and suddenly remembered this one. I joked with my wife how hilarious it would be if they updated it to be modern and gritty (as such things seem to happen with irritating frequency). I wrote this first chapter as a one-shot to amuse my wife and satisfy the ridiculous vision in my head, but over time I wrote a few more dramatic bits for my amusement (Chapter 4 and the final one, to be exact). I decided to force myself to write an entire story out of it, and the fruits of that experiment are gradually showing up here.

Rating Notes: I didn't give this story an M rating because I thought it would bring all the boys to the yard. It's written by an adult, and it's aimed likewise. There are no humans in this world, but it mirrors our own down to nearly every detail. The story starts with a gruesome murder scene and themes only get heavier as the chapters progress, and they cut deeply into very real and very current issues. "Ripped from today's headlines!" is a retarded phrase, but it works here. It's very likely you'll be surprised, confused, offended, or referring to Wikipedia. You've been warned.

Grin and Bear

The old apartment building was like any other in this run-down side of town. Cracked windows, crumbling brick, and the haze of despair that permeated the atmosphere told the story of this neighborhood better than any do-gooder journalist ever could. I glanced at Chumley, who stroked one of his long tusks thoughtfully. He'd grown up on a block like this. He could smell the alcohol on the breath of fathers who stumbled home late, hear the gunshots that rang out in the crisp night air, the shouts of parents and children fighting each other with words and fists. Nobody wins here. Penguins, walruses, hell, even tigers don't make it out of here without losing something. We're all just animals in a cage of poverty.

"Tux," said Chumley, and nodded to a young pup in blue that was walking our way. He'd been waiting at the entrance stairs for us. Being a rookie meant you got the bitch jobs, but having to wait for Mommy and Daddy to show up was sometimes better than hanging out in a room with stiffs. This kid was a mutt of some kind. I grinned internally; 10 years ago, the purebloods wouldn't have given him a shot out in the field. Thought they were inferior half-breeds that couldn't figure out the difference between the toilet and their water bowl.

That all changed when the president held Congress hostage 'til they passed that anti-discrimination amendment. Suddenly the playing field was leveled for animals of all breeds, not just the purebloods and the "right" species. That was one hell of a good thing for them to do, though it took some time for people to accept it. Sure made a difference in the force, too. The purebloods they kept trying to hire always developed joint problems too early in life and had to medically retire. It cost a lot of money to give them benefits and train new recruits. Thinking back to a time when your average Joe said mixed breeds were inferior is almost impossible. Guys like this young pup were always stronger, faster, and quicker on the uptake. Hell, you could even teach the older mutts new skills once they got too old for field work.

"Good evening, Detectives," he said politely. His badge said Westin. He looked like a rott-shephard mix.

Probably stronger and faster than his Lieutenant and Captain combined, I thought. We could use more guys like this.

"What do we got?" asked Chumley.

"Three bodies." He was looking at my partner, but his eyes flicked to me for a brief second. He was the sensitive type. "Pinguinos. We're practically in the barrios, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some gangland shit going on."

Pinguinos, our cousins from the far southern latitudes, had literally flocked to New York in the past few decades by the tens of thousands. With so many immigrants and so little room, they were forced to live in the poorest and most crowded neighborhoods. They didn't speak much English, had little to no formal education, and flippers are so damn worthless it's nearly impossible to get a job doing manual labor. These were deep sea fishers, and trust me, you don't want to dive deep into the New York harbor. Down on their luck, many of them sought the true refuge of the poor: drugs, violence, and prostitution. Mostly confined to the barrios, they lived in their own private hell, specially reserved for those who weren't born again with the grace of money. I pulled my hat low over my eyes, almost down to my beak. Upper-class penguins were too ashamed to call them their own, and that made us accomplices in damnation.

"Take us up, Westin," I said to the rookie. He nodded, and opened the right side of metal double doors that were decorated with graffiti and peeling gray paint. I'd bet you a million bucks it was full of lead.

Inside was no less pleasant than outside. Before us lay a long hallway lined with tattered brown carpet. The walls, where they weren't tagged by thugs, were that gritty beige of electronics manufactured in the nineties. Some doors were broken in, hanging on their hinges. In some places, there were no doors at all. The air was musty, putrid. It stank of mold, urine, and vomit. A smoker didn't need to light up in here; he could get all the smoke and poisonous fumes he wanted by opening his big mouth. No sane person would raise a kid here, but further down in the hallway I could see a pink tricycle turned on its side.

"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood,"I sang quietly. "Won't you be mine? Won't you be… my neighbor?"

"Tux, you are one creepy man," intoned Chumley from behind me.

"Have to lighten the mood somehow. Why don't you sing along?"

I could hear him clench his tusks behind me. "Because I am not insane."

"Very well then," I said, and continued humming.

Westin led us down the hallway to a stairwell in the center of the building. I was stupid enough to glance in one of the apartments with a door missing on the way. Inside, the carpet had been torn up to reveal the cold, gray cement below. A few folding chairs were placed in a circle in the otherwise bare room, and a Foldger's coffee can sat in the middle of the chairs. It was probably the only thing that kept some pinguino family from freezing to death in winter. Some in the media said they were here to steal jobs from America. I say it's more accurate that our fair country stole their lives.

"Rookie, let me give you some advice. Never love anybody," I told Westin.

"Yes, sir," he replied. He led us to a door on the fourth floor and stopped. "This is it."

"Forensics inside?" I asked.

"Not yet. They're on their way."

"We'll be sure not to step in too much blood then," said Chumley.

Westin winced, then assumed the position of sentry outside the door. He wouldn't be going inside with the bodies. Bitch jobs really do have their perks.

"Shall we?" I asked, and then opened the door.

Your heart isn't the only part of your body that becomes deadened to reality after 20 years on this job. The odor of death was magnificently powerful, but it had little effect. You see, smell, taste, and whatever the hell else you feel with everywhere you go. I see it in my dreams, and I see it in the empty space next to me in bed every morning. Death follows you until he decides he's ready for you. Smelling him stops scaring you after awhile.

The apartment was small. A small hallway led to the kitchen, living room, and bedroom, conveniently located in one dirty little square room. The third of the room devoted to kitchen was lined with cheap linoleum; the rest of the room was stripped. A foldaway bed was tucked into the wall. A small television with rabbit ear antennae sat on the window sill, and a battered wooden chair was propped in front of it. Two officers, a goose and a puma, shifted idly. They were waiting for the clean-up crew, all the while trying not to stare at their charges.

The first body lay in the kitchen, slumped against the cabinet under the sink in a pool of blood. His eyes and beak were wide in shock. Well, wide is a misnomer. Just above the beak, his face was badly mauled. Closest thing to hamburger you could make a penguin's face, anyway. His neck was similarly a mess. It looked like it'd been crushed by someone strong. I bent over to get a closer look. My suspicions were confirmed. Claw marks ran deep across his face, and at the back of the neck I could see where the claws had sunk in to flesh when the murderer's titan-like grip closed around his neck. The killer was strong enough to crush the neck and snap the neck.

"I doubt even Officer Kitty Cat back there could do this," I said. Chumley nodded.

"Yeah, he had to be a big fellow. Bigger than me, even. I'd say 19, maybe 20 hands. I'd guess a lion."

"You would guess lion. What do you have against African-Americans, anyway? Killer lions, speeding cheetahs, stalking hippos…"

Chumley sniffed. He was a little uptight, but a great guy. I knew he didn't think in those terms, but I couldn't help rib him sometimes.

"That hippo confessed, and you want to talk about that cheetah? His spots were matched by four different cameras."

"Easy, easy. Yeah, I'm guessing a lion, too. Officers!" I called to the pair in the entryway. "Any witnesses?"

"None that were credible, sir," replied the goose. She was young and not unattractive. Her beak was well curved, in any case. "We found a pair of Siberian tigers about three doors down that said they always hear screaming, but they were high out of their minds on heroin. The room was covered in needles."

"You found tigers next door to a penguin mauled to death, and that didn't strike you as strange?" snapped Chumley.

"No sir," piped up the puma. "There was no sign of blood, and they were completely nuts. They kept shouting 'Moose and squirrel! Moose and squirrel!' over and over again, laughing. Besides, they were…" He trailed off.

"They were what?" said Chumley.

"Declawed?" I asked quietly. Puma jerked towards me. He nodded and sighed.

"I checked them myself, sir. They're just a couple of coked-out and declawed Russkies. They didn't hurt anybody."

I saw the recognition in my partner's eyes. Some crazy-right wingers in the last administration got it in their hands that clawed immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Central Asia, were walking terrorist time bombs. For three years, all 'predator' species from those regions were subject to random declawing procedures for the 'greater good.' I'd even heard rumors of secretive spay and neuter operations, but never found any proof. The Supreme Court overturned the executive order that had set off the procedures in the first place, but the damage was done. Untold thousands of people, fresh off the boat, had been stripped of dignity and pride. Like the pinguinos, they had nowhere to go but down.

"You want to see them, Tux?"

"No, Chumley. I don't think we'll get anything out of them." They're losers, and sooner or later, you know they'll be dead. "Let's see the others."

"One was stuffed in the hallway closet. The other is in the bathroom," said the goose. Her nametag said Olson. Her accent was slight, but I caught it in the vowels. It was whimsical, out of place in a grisly murder scene.

"You from Wisconsin, Olson?" I asked.

"Minnesota. In the north, near Hibbing," she replied.

"No offense, but nobody cares about Butthole Midwest Town, USA," said Chumley. "Show me the bodies."

"Chumley, my friend, the door is in front of you, but you are missing the key. Hibbing is the birthplace of none other than Bob Zimmerman," I chided.

"The world's most boring Jewish wolf?"

"That's Bob Dylan's real name, Chum."

"Ah. I love American Pie." He smiled. I frowned at him. "Yes, I know that was Don McLean," he added after a second.

I walked over to the closet, and pulled the door open. I heard Olson gasp behind me. She wasn't dead to reality yet. Inside was another penguin, dead and loving it. He was severely mauled, just like the first. Claws had raked the poor fowl head to toe, and blood stained his white chest red. His beak had been brutally crushed halfway to the face. What remained was a haunting, cracked stubbed. My eyes and brain stopped as I scanned the right side of the body. There was a bloody hole on the side. He was missing a flipper.

"Jesus!" I shouted, invoking the name of the Holy Lamb. Chumley would disapprove of my language, but the brutality of the dismemberment shocked me. I didn't take much stock in His Holy Fleeceness anymore, but sometimes He rolled off my tongue unbidden. I stepped away from the closet and closed the door.

"What? Was it that bad?" Chumley stroked his tusk. Even after all these years, I could never tell exactly what was going on in that walrus skull of his.

"I think our perpetrator may in fact be a walking blender. That guy was shredded to bits."

"I think I'll pass. I'll check the bathroom." Chumley turned to the door across the hallway and opened it. I could see a body on the floor, again in a pool of blood. I looked at the ceiling.

This isn't a drive-by mauling. These guys made someone angry. Whoever killed these guys wanted something, and these penguins came up short. They chose the wrong guy to disappoint.

"Tux," called Chumley. There was a warning note in his voice. "Don't come in here."

I looked at the two younger cops. Puma shrugged, but Goose was looking down, avoiding my eyes. "What's up, Chum?"

"You don't want to see this. Stay out, please." There was a pleading note in his voice. This was nonsense.

"Pal, I've been on the job for twenty years. I don't need you to protect my virginity," I began and pushed my way into the bathroom. "I'm not some retarded…"

I stop.

I see the body.

My here and now becomes then and there and the why and where is wretched from the grasp of reality. I see her body on the bathroom floor I'm holding my sister in my arms, the bleeding won't stop Those claw marks aren't from a lion 'White,' manages my sister 'Huge.' She shouldn't be speaking I've seen this before The bodies of my family litter the snow, everyone except Twenty years ago Where is she? My sister doesn't know where my wife is She wasn't in on the deal Our nest, our child gone beneath blood and snow I stare into the eyes of the girl on the floor until night falls once again over my heart and consciousness.