CHAPTER II
Bean's 'Bugout Camp'.
Tiny fragments of sand left congested clouds in solemn groups that fell back to the earth soon after their conception. Cold steel smashed HARD into the dirt as Shadow Darkspot wandered his 'campground'. His swagger was ON POINT and mud went flying as the good ol country-boy paced about the property. "Feliz navidad!" he muttered below his smoky breath, the sound growly and intoxicated coming from somewhere between his bottom teeth and cleft chin,. His booty-clad feet kept on tromping towards his house and his eyebrows fought fitful tantrums with the words made from mist in the fading morning air.
He stopped in front of his house a moment to spit out his week old tobacco onto the cracking sidewalk stone he had painted to look like Sonic the Hedgehog's FACE before continuing his swagger. He spied a few ladies watching him from a distance and puffed out his chest, trying to make his swagger look more like Han Solo, cause he knew it made some of the gendered creatures known as females swoon. But he FAILED. They snarled at him in disgust, and he may have caused a monkey to fall out of a tree...
"WHAO!" came a sound from not too far away, but Shadow ignored it, he pushed on, flexing his abdominals and glutes in a succession which caused him to buckle and wane. He pushed on! The hard cold steel of his bootildays SMASHING into the hard dirt, CRUSHING the pebbles of stone that lay here and there, and AWE INSPIRING anyone who watched, (which only happened to be a few sidelong glances from some old ladies checking their mailboxes a few meters from the 'campground) "Whatever!" Shadow thought, SMASHING his feet into the ground again, tilling the land in hopes mushrooms would grow, but knowing deep down it probably wouldn't work, and still doing it anyway!
He reached the swinging drape that was the door to his house, and PITIFULLY crawled into it, PULLING off his shoes and falling butt-first into his only armchair. He sighed quietly as noises continued from elsewhere in the park.
Eggnog.
"Yuh AUHTA Be watching ware Yer GOING!" the voices were muffled from inside a pocket of air below a leaf aside a tree not far away. But from close up and nearby, the angry shout was clear and unnerving. "L-look Sticks, i'm sorry really! It must've been an honest mistake!" a Monkey voice responded and a grunt came out from a short Raccoon/badger creature that was helping him to his feet. "Mustave?" she asked, but the monkey just smiled and was on his way. "BE careful.." she called after him. "YA did just fall outuva TREE!" she yelled, her hand flying up from her side and pointing to the tree that the monkey had, indeed, fell out of, her hippie wig flapping with each sentence. Eyes wide and mind open she too went on her way, only to hear unsolvable and unresolvable sobs coming from a pile of sticks and tarps nearby that surely someone would be kind enough to consider a tent.
With a mighty sigh she huffed and puffed, prepared to blow the house down if need be. "Yah," she said to herself, "I rally gotsda power to do dat." She stormed over to the tarp-like abode and kicked open the plastic sheet that was the door. "Bean?" she cried out, stomping through the "living room". "BEANIE BABY WHERE ARE YOU?" She moved past all the crowded furniture, some of it quite literally piled on top of everything else. There was a couch crammed in the corner over by the hole that they called a window, and they had a chair placed very precariously on one arm of the couch and the oven. Beneath the floating chair, (which was also charred from the burner) was Stick's bed, which was made up from several rat's nests that she had managed to buy from said rats. She was not afraid of the chair hanging above her head when she slept, however, for she supported it with a poll made of old clif bar wrappers glued together with super glue. Bean often scolded her for wasting usable trash, but she reminded him time and again that it was recycled, so it was all well and good.
Pressed so tightly against the couch that it left marks, sat a low coffee table with a broken TV that left you near blinded when you watched anything because it was right in front of your eyes. But, at least it made the screen look bigger, so they didn't complain. Of course, there was also a hole in the table to accommodate the chimney that sprouted up from the fireplace they lit under the table. And surprisingly, the TV hadn't melted yet... and sadly, their "chimney" – which was really a rusted old water pipe – wasn't tall enough to go through the roof, so it just smoked into their living room. They'd often questioned why bother having a chimney, but at least it delayed them breathing it the smoke, allowing them to quite literally crawl around to avoid it, and it kept the table from burning... to an extent...
Next to the oven was the sink, of course, and beside that, was a bucket with a hole that they called their toilet. Unfortunately, the house didn't have running water, so the sink was useless unless filled with creek-water beforehand. The toilet though, had an incredibly complicated flushing system, powered by a pressurized bottle of rum, which... somehow.. worked... they were thankful for that at least.
There was a large back door that was essentially a crumpled bit of wall, and wedged between the edges was the bath tub. The hole was rather low, so the tub provided some much needed support, but bathing in it was rather difficult... and embarrassing... but they didn't complain.
Stick sighed, looking around. "Thank GOD I no longer live here!" she realized, and threw down her sack of bananas before stomping through the house to find Bean. The floor flaked with each step, her foot falling through into the 'basement' on more than one occasion. The 'roof' dripped onto her wigged head as she smashed through the apartment, screaming and crowing for Bean the Duck. "BEANIE WHERE ARE YOUOOO!" she yelled, although the house was quite small it seemed he couldn't hear her, or maybe.. she realized, he might have been ignoring her.
Angry now, she regrettably STOMPED into Bean's 'workshop,' where a pot was brewing some sort of 'grub' on an open fire, and red smoke was pouring out another 'window' into the forsaken desert lot. Nestled under a 'shelf' of 'tools' lay a mat of tangerine skins, probably held together with dried molasses... or maybe horse mucus, she couldn't tell. But either way, it was likely to melt and fall apart in the coming heat. She groped in the dark, her eyes closed tight with fear, and GRABBED a swinging arm, yanking the sweaty form from under the 'shelf', and into the cracking light of day.
"BEAN!" she cried, and stared at her 'brother', only to be met with a sad, sad, goat face.