12 Labors of Barkis
By: Wilona Riva
Disclaimer: All hail Tim Burton, rightful owner of this wonderful piece of macabre.
Chapter Twelve: Customer Service Is a Nightmare
Barkis still had no idea how he had gotten trapped into running an information booth by Napoleon Bonaparte and the German Kaiser. "Right back, my foot," he muttered.
A little snip of a child with half of her right arm's flesh rotted away, approached him cautiously.
"Mister, can I ask you something?"
Barkis leaned over the counter, perhaps a little too far, and regarded the girl seriously.
"Shoot," he said.
She looked him dead in the eyes. "Am I dead?"
Barkis pitched face forward on the ground.
"I should have known," he muttered. "Someone kill me now."
The girl just smiled and skipped away. The question had well been worth the butterscotch lollipop Mr. Napoleon had given her earlier.
A woman wearing a big floppy hat with large droopy ostrich feather (quite moldy Barkis noted) approached with a serious expression on her face. She looked like one of those mummies after they been unwrapped from their bindings, just dressed in the modest (moldering) women's fashion of the day.
"Excuse me, young man," she said, "I would like some availability in space."
"I did hear they were renting condominiums in the pyramids," Barkis replied, with a straight face.
Barkis' comment sailed right over the woman's head by at least five feet. She nodded her head, thanked him, and left.
Barkis snorted with laughter.
You have got to be kidding me! Barkis thought, when he saw the next customer approaching.
A skeleton, dressed in full scuba gear (oxygen tank included), waddled up to the booth. Holding up a sign, Barkis read: WHERE IS THE OCEAN?
Barkis pointed to the dunk booth 3 feet behind him.
The skeleton discarded the sign and waddled off.
Two vampiric looking gangsters sidled up to the booth about an hour after the skeleton left.
"Where's Jimmy Hoffa's body?" one of them demanded.
"Six feet under," Barkis shot back.
"That's a relief," the other gangster whispered to his companion. "He owed me fifty cents."
The split-in-half man was nervous. He was also disgusting Barkis immensely. Considering the fact...
"How can I help you, sir?" Barkis asked, politely.
"I'm looking for my significant other. Have you seen me?" the other asked, with a slight upper-crust British accent.
"I believe I saw him talking to Mrs. Plum. He looked like he was splitting hares."
Barkis scowled as his "employers" returned from their "break."
"Good evening," he said.
"They weren't too hard on you, were they?" Napoleon asked.
Barkis hopped the front bar and stalked off. "Have a nice afternoon, a nice day, a nice evening, a nice summer, and a nice life," he retorted, without turning around.
"Covering all the bases, isn't he?" the German Kaiser asked Napoleon, who just shrugged.