The Red Woods, Redwood Run
POUR!
GULP!
BURP!
HICCUP!
POUR!
GULP!
BURP!
HICCUP!
"YEEEE HOWDY HO!" a hooting holler to the man on the moon did hillbilly Howdy 'Hootin' Morning howled as he downed another can of Campbell's with a side of crackers and cold cuts, his pet cat Cat cooped up in the confines of his coonskin cap and his beloved Browning BSS boomstick, nicknamed the 'Souper Shot Special', hanging loosely by his side.
And beyond the blurry boundaries that built up his blindness by way of biological experimentation on behalf of the United States Secret Service, rows upon rows of radiant redwood pines ran halfway across the county and back, their leaves riding the shimmering shine of the setting sun on a sizzling Saturday afternoon.
The superb setting for some seasonal Southern Sasquatch shooting.
"Nothin' like a nice cooked can o' Campbell's and cold cuts to kick back on while bear hunting for Bigfoots and Batsquatches. Ain't that right, Cat?" a short clink between man and munchkin fold before both their salivating swigs.
"I tell ya, 30 odd years of searching for so called 'monkey men' in the woods only to come home with dirty bootlaces and empty bottlenecks will drive many a mere hermit over the moon and back, but I reckon we're on some serious stink lines today." his gaze rested upon the horizons hanging.
"I can just imagine the headlines now. 'Howdy 'Hootin' Morning and Cat holds down on hoaxes and humbugs with hard hairy truths!'. And when I hang that head on the saloon wall, not even those pesky Banzai Blasters will hesitate to turn tail and take off from Redwood, California in terrified tears. What do you think, Cat?"
"Purr!" was his feline friend's response from the comfort of his cozy compartment.
"Oh Cat, you always know what to say. Come here, you cute lil' critter, you." a sweet smile stretched upon his lips as he reached to pet his partner.
The battered, broken and thoroughly beaten branch that seated him and held his bag of discarded cans of half-drank Campbell's, however, had other plans.
SNAP!
…
"Oh, f-!"
FALL!
"AGGGHHHH!"
SNAP!
"ARMS!"
SNAP!
"FACE!"
SNAP!
"BACK!"
SMASH!
"PINECONES!"
SPLAT
…
"WHOOOO WEEE! HAHA!" a chipper chuckle did he chortle as he dug his face and body out of the cold hard ground, dusting off the dirt as he did so. "Haven't had a fall that high since that harrowing nature walk back in Roswell!" he ran a wrinkled hand over his gray empty hair without a hat.
Wait, gray empty hair without a hat?
"CAT! Oh sweet baby bearcats, where are you?!"
"PURR!" his ears perked up at the purr as a fleeting feeling of fluffy fur ran by his face, followed by a line of loving licks and palpable paw pats.
"Oh thank God." he held his companion in his coonskin cap close to his chest, running rivers down his eyes as he forced himself to his feet, cracking the crooked corners of his dislocated spinal column back into place along with the rest of his broken body of bones.
"Well, so much for a find in fame and fortune 30 years in the making." he sighed a sad, sullen sigh before beaming right back all the same.
"Aw, to hell with fleeting fame and fortune! You're the only find I'll ever needed, Cat. That and my rusty trusty Souper Shot Special, of course." his friend mewed a merry meow and gently nuzzled up to his nutty owner, a series of soft pets to his head and a cheerful chuckle his master's response was.
But sweet serendipitous serenity could only come so far and between.
SHOOT!
"WHAT THE HELL?!"
SHOOT! SHOOT!
"MEOW!" a hand ran across his hair-raising fur in an attempt to soothe the frightened feline.
"There, there, Cat. It'll be alright." his sense of sound steeled to the strongest it could as it honed in on the source of the distant sounds of strafing shots being fired amongst the waves and walls of wood and brush.
Redwood Run.
"Oh, no… my saloon!" he quickly held his coonskin cap and Cat back onto his head of gray hair and held onto his boomstick, two Souper Shot shells loaded in the burning barrel as his screwy stare steeled into a growing glare. But the runaway route back was stretched upon miles and miles away, he would never make it in time before the town got turned on its head in a murderous mess of burning buildings, split blood and no saloon to scratch off the serial numbers in!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the point of view of the person reading this particular piece, Lady Luck had her own pawn to play on the chessboard.
A very hairy, very humanoid and very huge pawn.
"GRRRRRRRR!"
…
"Well, what do you know?" was his last statement before he soon found himself flying across the clear crimson California clouds, piercing the heavens and over the fiery autumn aurora and speeds only the thunderous toss of a Sasquatch's mighty arm can carry.
"YEEEE HOWDY HOOOOO! HAHAHA!"
—
Gods & Demons around the World - Sasquatch
A classic of North American cryptids and beyond, tall tales of so-called 'wild men of the woods' have remained a significant staple to mythologies and folklore the world over. Legends of humanoid giants covered from head to toe in frizzled fur leaving large footprints in the woods have spurred a series of investigators on the search for the elusive wild man, and while none have ever returned with physical evidence, its countless sightings across the world will ensure that the legend of the Sasquatch will live on forever.
—
Howdy's Hootin House o' Hootch, Redwood Run
SHOOT!
SHOOT!
SHOOT! SHOOT!
…
SHOOT!
And with that, the last can of Chef Boyardee on the shelf fell to the full force of Remington rounds as it joined its copious companions of rust-riddled soup can corpses full of holes on the flimsy, feeble floor.
Along with the splintered, shot up, soot-stained, rot-riddled and still rat-infested remains of what was once the town's only fully functioning saloon, courtesy of one very cunning, very captivating and currently very crossed bounty hunter in the final stages of a psychotic rant.
"Damn copper, damn conman, damn cocking necklace! Damn it! Damn it! DAMN IT!" a hard pair of hands ran across her long, brunette locks in furious frustration as she let out a searing siren's scream!
"RRAGGGGGH!"
TEAR!
THROW!
SMASH!
And now to add to the long list of ancestral antiques annihilated in the hell raised at Howdy's Hootin House o' Hooch, the front counter, smashed to splinters alongside the also smashed and splintered swinging doors at the hands of the hellraising hellcat.
"This ain't the last you heard of me, Murdoch!" her murderous stare steeled on the only somehow surviving antique during her red-running rampage: a broken Big Mouth Billy Bass on the wall.
"As soon as you step one foot out of whatever safe stir they got you all cozy and cooped up in, you'll be six feet under and feeding the worms! Do you hear me!? DO YOU HEAR ME!?
SMASH!
…
"With all that shooting, shouting and siren-like screaming, any dirty dinner bell and rusty trusty triangle around the world would be put to smelters by now." the hillbilly dusted the dirt and dust off of his shoulders as he lowered his boomstick to his hip, fingers itching at the trigger.
"Zora Salazar, high ranking member of the mundie band of misbehaving misfits known as Bliss Ocean. I shoulda figured you'd be the one to make a mess outta my saloon." the bounty hunter returned the old man's serious scowl with her own, her grip on her revolver tightening as she aimed the big iron at him.
"And what's it to you, old man? Don't ya have Bigfoot to bag or something?"
"Bigfoot decided to be a big help and brought me here when all the raging and rampaging started, and from the looks of it, you had yourself quite a wild ride, haven't ya?"
"You can't even see, you blind bat." Howdy merely smiled scarily at that.
"But like a bat outta hell, I can hear just as well all the way from the Red Woods and back. And now that I'm here, you now have a choice to make."
"Oh?" she tilted her head in insincere innocence.
"Put everything back to the way it was and walk away and I won't flare your face with Souper Shot, or don't and you get a one way trip to the milk man on the moon." he lined up his sights on the Special.
"So, what'll it be?"
…
"Hehehe.." a creeping chuckle from Zora broke the billowing silence as she took a tiny step forward. "Now, you see, the funny thing about that is… in any other circumstance, say for example, me being a meager mundie looking to do a mugging, I might have been willing to cooperate." a golden glimmer glowed in her eyes, before growing brighter and brighter and brighter.
"But you forgot one little thing."
"What's that?"
COCK!
"I ain't no mundie." stepping to the side showed what could only have been described as a wall of Remington rounds held up in suspended animation aiming straight at the hillbilly.
Followed by a flick of her fingers.
SNAP!
…
"Oh sh-!"
SHOOT! SHOOT!
SHOOT!
SHOOT! SHOOT!
"Hehehehehe! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Chairs chucked, tables turned and shots soaring amidst the sound of psychotic laughter as the gunfight at Howdy's Hootin' House o' Hooch commenced, the hillbilly quickly hiding behind an upturned set tables and chairs with his boomstick and coonskin cap carrying Cat close to his chest as bullets blew by and barely missing his skin by mere inches before he soon returned the greeting in kind.
SHOOT! SHOOT!
"TASTE TOMATO BISQUE, YOU MALICIOUS MERCENARY!"
"Mercenary? Why Howdy, now you're just breaking a poor girl's heart." she sneered a snake-like smile. "How about I soothe things over a little more SHOT!?"
SHOOT! SHOOT!
SHOOT!
"Damn, she's pinning us down good." he turned to his companion in a coonskin cap as the hailstorm kept closing in. "You got any ideas, Cat?"
"Meow!" was the feline's only reasonable response.
"Heh, right." Howdy held his chin for a moment, going through his list of solutions that could get both him and Cat out of this situation alive.
…
"Okay, I think I got somethin'." he held up his pet. "But it's gonna need you for it to go off without a hitch. Think you can handle it, buddy?"
"Meow!" the munchkin clicked its cat claws in agreement, earning a growing grin from his master.
"Alright." he pulled out from his pocket a single, unopened can of Campbell's Carolina Curse and held it tight. "Here goes nothing."
—
"You might as well give up and come on out now, if you're still breathing that is." Zora holstered her Remington as she began to close in on the rot-riddled mess of splintered tables and chairs she had rained hell upon. There was no way the old hermit could have survived that storm.
ROLL!
She quickly drew out the iron once more and aimed it at… a rusty can of Campbell's coming out from the other side.
Wait, what?
"SOUP'S ON!"
TOSS!
SHOOT!
"What the s-!?"
SPLAT!
…
"AGGGHHHH!" her searing screams echoed across the air as she desperately tried to wipe the spicy sting of Carolina Reapers out of her eyes.
"NOW CAT!"
"MEOW!" the feline leaped from behind the table and latched himself on the bounty hunter's peppered face as his sharp claws slashed away at her stinging skin.
"GAH! AGH! GET OFF!" she tried to pry the cursed creature off, but his claws only dug in deeper to the point that they were drawing blood, all while his master cheered him on.
"WOO WEE! GET EM' CAT!" a series of soupy shotgun shots and crazed cackles rang out as the belittled bounty hunter found her blood boiling hotter and hotter until finally, at her wit's end, she bellowed out a ravenous roar!
"ENOUGH!"
EXPLODE!
SMASH!
CLATTER!
…
"Ugh… god damn." his body still ached from that sudden burst of energy as he pulled himself from the ground, coughing up dust as he did. "What happened?"
"MEOW!"
"CAT!"
COCK!
…
"Don't even move." the bounty hunter, radiating gleaming gold from her skin, held the frightened feline in her hands, the barrel of her Remington aimed at his head.
"Let him go."
"Lemme think… no." he was quick to go for his boomstick, but she was quicker.
"Ah ah ah." she pressed the barrel closer to the feline's fur, the poor creature whimpering as his owner could only watch helplessly.
"So… any last words before I blow the hairball's brains out?
Howdy was sweating bloody bullets at this point. If he went for the Super Shot Special, Cat would be a goner, but if he did not then that would be the end of him too. Only a miracle could help him now.
And then, his sense of sound steered skyward.
"Wait, do you hear that?" the bounty hunter huffed at the trick.
"You honestly think I'd f-!"
FALL!
…
"Aw c-!'
CRASH!
"Christ!" The hillbilly coughed up the dust as he felt his feline friend jumping into his arms.
Happy as he may be that his pet was safe, his attention was averted to the now large crater in his establishment. As the soot settled and he closed in, a figure came to form in the crater, one that, had it not been for his blindness, appeared to be that of a young man in a black cassock and a hat larger than any sombrero he could have ever seen.
…
"Howdy?" a short struggle did the mysterious man react at first.
And then, a pair of ruby red eyes flickered open, followed by a raspy response.
"Is there a doctor in the house?"
…
"Cat… man the microwave."