A/N: Renee once called this "a psychedelic Plum fever dream" and she's not wrong. REDRUM! REDRUM!

"The Velveteen Ranger"

August

There once was an Army Ranger, and boy was he hot. He was tall and dark-skinned, and built solid, as a Ranger should be. He had six-pack abs, strong muscular arms, and other very nice parts, which no woman had ever found lacking.

One day in late August, as he sat in a booth in a small diner in downtown Trenton, New Jersey, a quirky Babe with big blue eyes and curly brown hair took a look at the Ranger and thought, "Man, what an asshole."

There were other people in the diner. A waitress named Fran who poured lukewarm coffee made from cigarette ashes and bleach water into the mugs of her patrons, and a couple dudes in black leather who rode in on big fat motorcycles, and a scary-looking guy with a huge-ass gun looking to rip the fucking place apart as soon as the two dudes and the Ranger left. But the Ranger was all the Babe cared to see.

You see, the Babe needed a Man in the Know, and there was no Man more in the Know than the Ranger. At first, the Babe thought the Ranger was cute-if not a wee bit arrogant-but she attributed this mostly to a nasty bout of PMS coupled with an extended period of celibacy, during which the only clitoral stimulation she experienced was bestowed upon her by an overpriced Waterpik. The Ranger sensed this, and for the first time in a long time, the Ranger was amused. For the next few days, he helped the Babe, even coming to her aid when she was naked and chained to a shower rod. The Ranger smiled as he looked up and down her nude form, and for the first time in eleven minutes, the Ranger was aroused.

But then the Cop moved in on the Babe, and there was a great display of fighting and fucking amongst the two, and in the excitement of the fighting and the fucking, the Ranger was more or less forgotten, except in times of peril, when his help was needed.

For years, the Ranger lived in his apartment on the seventh floor of his office building, wiling away the dull hours by scrambling his name in search engines and printing out counterfeit VINs for his stolen cars, and no one thought very much about him, except that he was scary. He kept to himself, having been emotionally fucked up since the age of eight, when he learned that his birth father, indeed, was not the man by whom he'd been brought up, but instead Richard Simmons, an allegedly gay weight-loss guru known for his primary-hued hotpants and Sweatin' to the Oldies series of aerobic videos for the morbidly obese. Because of this, the boys in his 'hood felt they were superior to the Ranger. They looked down on him, each for their own reasons, and beat the shit out of him daily.

"My dad's a pimp," one boy said, as he accosted the Ranger after school one day. "My dad's got hos and bitches, and he got ten swallowers to bring in the smack. Ain't even had to cut one of them mules open, either. He got good bitches. Bitches that respect his ass. What your dad got? Your dad got a cheap-ass perm and them little shorty-shorts."

The Ranger didn't quite know how to respond to this, for he didn't know anything about his real father, nor did he know anything about them little shorty-shorts. And so the boy kneed him in the groin, and mumbled something that sounded a lot like fucking metrosexual as he lit up a Newport and strutted on down the street.

After many similar incidents, the Ranger gave up primary colors, opting instead for all-black apparel, none of which could be mistaken for hotpants, much to the chagrin of his only friend, the Cher, one of his father's longtime companions.

The Cher had lived many years before the Ranger, and had been nipped and tucked in such a way that many scientists heatedly argued over whether or not she could still be considered organic. But she had won an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy, a Bambi, and three Golden Globes, and therefore the Ranger considered her to be very wise, or at least to know many very wise people, such as Oprah and Dr. Phil. And so one day, as they were playing strip-Rummy with a deck of Deal-A-Meal cards, the Ranger relayed to the Cher his growing emotional attachment to the Babe, and why it was just, like, the most horrible thing ever.

The Cher took a long draw off her cigarette and melded a group of carbohydrates before discarding a fruit. "Let me ask you something," she said to the Ranger. "Do you believe in life after love?"

The Ranger thought about this for a moment, not sure of the answer. Then he folded his hand and looked up at the Cher, and said: "I can feel something inside me say, 'I really don't think you're strong enough-'"

"No," the Cher said, shaking her head. "That's not what I'm asking. Do you believe in life after love?"

"After love?"

The Cher nodded. "After love."

The Ranger shook his head and drew a protein from the deck. "No," he said.

The Cher rolled her eyes and lit up another cigarette, and leaned back in her chair.

"There's no talking to you," she said with a sigh. "Are you in love?"

"Depends on your definition of love," the Ranger said. "I feel like something's buzzing inside me, and I got a permanent stick-out handle."

"Love is more than how your body reacts. It's something that happens to you, whether you like it or not."

"It's a pain in the ass," the Ranger said.

"Sometimes," said the Cher, for she knew very much about love. "But when you are in love, you don't care about that. It doesn't happen all at once, you know. It takes a while to really sink in. And by that time, you're toast."

The Cher discarded another fruit, her very last card. The Ranger shook his head, and then stood up and took off his boxers, annoyed that he had once again lost a game he, himself, had created just four hours ago. The Cher glanced down at Ranger's stick-out handle, and smiled approvingly.

On his way home that night, the Ranger thought about what the Cher had said, and sighed. It had taken him many years to sculpt his body, and he thought love should progress in a similar fashion. The Cher had said it would take time to sink in, and then he would be toast. The Ranger longed to get laid, yet the idea of turning into the Kloughn and driving a minivan pained him. He wished there was some way he could have his cake and eat the Babe, too.

Then one evening, as the Ranger was getting ready for bed, his cell phone rang. It was the Babe, and she was in a state. She had been in a hurry, and it had been too much trouble to check her car for explosives, and so it had blown up while she was buying condoms at a convenience store on Lincoln.

The Ranger agreed to escort the Babe back to his apartment so she could clean herself up and get a good night's sleep. The Babe snuggled up to the Ranger in his bed, and at first he found this very uncomfortable, as the Babe had a bad habit of crawling on top of him at night, causing his stick-out handle to stick out a great deal more than when he was alone. But as the hours passed on, he grew to like it very much, for though the Babe smelled strongly of smoldering charcoal, she was also horny as hell, and the condoms had survived the blast.

November

Many weeks passed, and then one night, the Ranger came home to an empty bed. He checked the closets and the cupboards, and found the Babe's Sig on the counter in the kitchen. This made the Ranger frown, as he had told her repeatedly to keep the goddamn thing loaded, and with her at all times. The Ranger called the Babe on her cell, but was sent straight to voicemail, so he then dialed down to the Tank, who was working the control room.

"Tank here," said the Tank.

"Stephanie's missing."

The Tank let out a long sigh. "Again?"

The Ranger barked a few orders at the Tank and told him to pull his head out of his ass. For the first time in a long time, Ranger was not amused.

They searched for hours, the Tank and the Ranger, and finally found the Babe in an abandoned warehouse many miles from home. She was quiet and still, and sticky with blood, and the Ranger felt for the first time how extremely uncomfortable love could be. He ordered the Tank to call for a medic, and knelt down beside the Babe, checking for a pulse, finally breathing again when he found one.

For many days and nights, the Ranger sat in a chair in a cold hospital room, keeping watch over the Babe. Her face was pale and her hands were cold, and she sometimes mumbled things in her sleep that the Ranger could not understand. All day long, people came and went, some telling the Ranger to go home and get some sleep, as he was beginning to resemble George Clooney in Syriana. The Ranger responded by resting his Glock on his thigh, and soon no one dared suggest he leave her bedside.

Then one morning the Cop came by. He yelled and cursed, and threw his hands up in rude gestures. But the Ranger was tired, and he was cranky, and he wasn't in the mood for the Cop's bullshit. And so he raised his Glock and fired off two rounds in an attempt to make the son of a bitch stop talking. The shots were wide, but the Cop got the message, and he left the Ranger alone with the Babe, in order to go home for a fresh pair of pants, as the ones he was wearing were soaked clean through.

But the Ranger thought about what the Cop had said. Night after night, while the nurses played Pogo and read Doogie Howser fan-fiction, the Ranger sat alongside the Babe, sometimes consulting his Magic 8-ball when things got too muddled in his noggin.

"Do I really sound like Mango?" he asked the Magic 8-Ball.

"My sources say yes," the Magic 8-Ball said, causing the Ranger to sigh.

"But my wiring, it's up to code, right?"

"Maybe," came the answer.

The Ranger nodded. He was thinking maybe, too.

The Ranger shook the Magic 8-Ball and looked down at the Babe. "This is all my fault," he said aloud. It was a statement, not a question, but the Magic 8-Ball answered him anyway.

"Yes," the Magic 8-Ball said.

The Ranger wasn't sure, exactly, how it was all his fault. A small part of his large brain told him that the blame rested solely on the Babe, as it was her dumb-ass idea to go after a skip with no gun and no cell phone, but he cast that aside as selfish reasoning. Of course it was his fault. The Magic 8-Ball had told him so, and it was always truthful.

Saddened by the news, the Ranger turned back to the Magic 8-Ball once more, and gave it a shake. "What am I going to do?" he asked.

"You're going to die."

"Whoa," the Ranger said. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Yes," the Magic 8-Ball said.

The Ranger was relieved. Then he looked at the Babe and was worried once more.

He did not want to leave her, but there was no other way.

He turned back to the Magic 8-Ball.

"Will the Babe be okay?" he wanted to know.

The Magic 8-Ball pondered this for the briefest of moments. Then it said, "Signs point to yes."

And the Ranger was placated by this response, as it was the same one the Doctor had given him earlier that evening.

That night, the Ranger made a doll out of pencil erasers, Frito wrappers, a banana sticker and a can of aerosol hairspray, just as he'd seen on a MacGyver episode, and tucked it under the Babe's arm so she wouldn't be lonely. Then he kissed her forehead, packed up his shit, and walked away.

February

The winter in New Jersey had been harsh, and it showed no signs of ending. The Ranger was on his back, staring up at the top of his cloth tent, and he was quite unaffected by the cold. He was a Ranger, after all, and had been taught to survive in such harsh conditions.

There isn't a lot to do in a tent in winter. The Ranger thought briefly of starting a game of Solitaire, but quickly decided against it, as he was now on a strict diet, and only had 27 Deal-A-Meal cards to work with, most of them fruits. He had just peeled apart the pages of his Penthouse magazine when he heard the doorbell.

"Go away," the Ranger yelled. The door opened and closed, and the Ranger muttered a few curse words under his breath while he zipped his pants. He stuck his head outside the tent, and came face-to-groin with the Cher. She was standing in his living room, dressed up like Elvis in a glittery jumpsuit, customized Uggs, and a bright feather headdress.

She had a large boa constrictor wrapped around her neck like a scarf.

"What the fuck?" the Cher asked.

The Ranger crawled out of the tent, turned off his Nature Sounds CD, and stood,

facing the Cher. "Is that a rhetorical question?"

"No," the Cher said. "All your furniture's piled up in your living room, and you got a huge-ass duvet thrown over the top. I believe that deserves an explanation."

The Ranger rolled his eyes and padded into the kitchen. He took a can of vanilla Slim-Fast out of the fridge and chugged it, and then turned back to the Cher. "I go camping when I need time to think," he said.

The Cher's eyebrows disappeared into the headdress. "Oh, for chrissake," she said.

"You're in your living room!"

"Duh," the Ranger said. "Have you been outside? It's fucking freezing out there!"

The Cher closed her eyes and inhaled a few deep breaths. "You need to get a grip," she said to the Ranger. "Look around. This isn't healthy."

The Ranger made a full circle, taking in the apartment, and shrugged. "I don't get what you're saying."

"For one thing, you've wallpapered your apartment with her underwear."

"It's a theme," the Ranger said. "Like Hogs & Heffers."

"And the peanut butter?"

"Protein," the Ranger countered. "Good for building strong muscles."

"Not if the jar is bronzed."

The Ranger's eye twitched. "A lot of people bronze things," he said. "Baby shoes, maples leaves, jars of peanut butter or mayonnaise. It's a hobby, not an obsession. Jeez, will you get off my back already?"

The Ranger stormed off into the living room and climbed inside his tent once more, clutching his Wonder Woman action figure tightly to his chest. He rocked back and forth for a while with his eyes closed, and when he opened them again, he realized he was no longer alone. The Cher was in the tent with him, and she was looking very sad. She felt around her backside and pulled out a small, headless action figure.

"Who is this?"

"Wolverine," said the Ranger, sounding only half as bitter as he felt. "Fucking Wolverine."

The Cher nodded. "Is there a reason Wolverine has no head?"

"Yes," the Ranger said. "He was poaching."

"Are you drunk?" she asked the Ranger.

"No. Are you drunk?"

The Cher just smiled, and said, "I'm fucking wasted. But I'm also worried about you. Give me the doll-"

"Action figure," the Ranger corrected.

"Okay. Give me the action figure and tell me what's on your mind."

The Ranger hesitated, but handed the Wonder Woman over to the Cher. She tucked the Wonder Woman into the shoebox bed beside the Batman, and waited. The Ranger's eyes welled up, and one tiny-tiny but real-tear rolled down his cheek.

"I love her something awful."

The Ranger reached out for a hug, but the Cher was dressed in a Bob Mackie original, and there was no way she was going to get Slim-Fast on her ensemble six hours before she was scheduled to be on Letterman. She pulled away and slapped the Ranger twice through the face.

"What the-"

"I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this," the Cher said, "but you've left me no choice."

She reached into her cleavage and pulled out a stun gun, and pressed it to the Ranger's neck. He slumped over, dead still, and she reached into her cleavage once more, this time to extract a small cell phone. She punched in a number and waited for the person on the other line to pick up.

"Time for Plan B," she said into the cell phone. Then she flipped it closed, adjusted her headdress, and dragged the Ranger out of his tent.

The Ranger came around slowly, and realized he was chained to a large bed in a large house, surrounded by people he didn't know, but had seen on TV. They told him they were there to help him, and he responded by foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal, while issuing a series of threats he fully intended on carrying out.

"Now, son," the Dr. Phil said. He tore a sheet of Bounty from the roll and wiped the foam off the Ranger's mouth. "If we're gonna do this, we're gonna need you to cooperate. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"REDRUM!" the Ranger shouted. "REDRUM!"

"Get over it. This is a big deal."

The Ranger struggled against his restraints, and leveled a death glare on the Dr. Phil. "I hope you're not too busy later on tonight," he said, "because the Ranger plans on whipping your bony ass all over Chicago."

The Dr. Phil rolled his eyes and rocked back on his heels. "Whatever," he said. "Why can't you just stop being mad and love me again?"

The Ranger did not know the answer to this question, for he did not remember ever loving the Dr. Phil. Had they met at a rave in Poughkeepsie? The Ranger did not remember ever attending a rave in Poughkeepsie, either, but he felt it would explain a lot.

The Ranger looked around at all the faces lined up by the bed. The Oprah, the Dr. Phil, the Cher, the Richard Simmons, and...

"What's with the Democrat?" the Ranger wanted to know.

The Dr. Phil and the Oprah exchanged glances.

"Slight mix-up," the Oprah said. "We asked for John Edward, but my assistant made a mistake."

"Well, fuck me," the Ranger said.

"Hold on just a minute," the Democrat said. "I'll have you know I didn't get to the Senate by accident."

The Oprah patted him twice on the shoulder and asked him to step outside, lest things get out of hand. Then she walked into her closet, pulled out a rhinestone belt circa 1984, and placed it in the Ranger's mouth. "Bite down," she said. "This is going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt us."

May

The Oprah's statement had not been false. Indeed, the Ranger had suffered greatly. For six weeks, he endured torture the likes of which he'd never before experienced. Not only had he been forced to read the Oprah's entire library of self-help manuals, he had also been forced to watch countless chick-flicks-most of which were made-for-TV or straight-tovideo, produced by Lifetime, Television for Women. But the worst part came at the end of his trial, when he had been forced to do the unthinkable: share his feelings.

The Ranger shook off the memories of his ordeal and stepped out of his Porsche. He took in a breath of polluted air and let it out slowly. He had come a long way, even kicking his addiction to Zone bars and Slim-Fast shakes, but he wondered if he was ready for this final step. He eyed the Babe across the street, and his heart caught in his chest. She was coming out of a pastry shop on Hamilton Avenue, carrying a bag of doughnuts and pushing a pram.

The Ranger crossed the street and whistled at the Babe. She turned around slowly and smiled.

"Babe," the Ranger said.

"Ranger," said the Babe.

They embraced each other like lovers, and much groping was involved. Cars honked their horns as they passed, but neither the Babe nor the Ranger seemed to notice, as they were each rounding third and had other more important things on their minds.

There was a squeak from the pram, followed by a lot of hissing, and the Ranger pulled away. He looked at the Babe, and her eyes grew sad.

"Her name is Princess," the Babe said as she leaned over the pram and fussed with the gurgling, hissing thing. "Princess Chiquita Cupcake." The Babe looked at the Ranger and gave a small smile. "I named her after you."

The Ranger was confused. "My name is Carlos, Babe."

The Babe slapped herself in the head. "Dammit!" she cried. "Then who the hell is Chiquita?"

"Beats the fuck outta me," the Ranger said with a shrug. He peered over the edge of the pram and smiled. "She looks like you."

The Babe nodded. "A little. I think it's the Frito wrappers."

"Yeah," the Ranger said, quite in awe.

The Princess hissed again, and the Babe sighed.

"She keeps doing that. I can't get her to stop." The Babe looked as if she was going to cry. "I think I broke her nozzle he last time I dropped her on he sidewalk."

The Ranger reached behind him and pulled out a roll of duct-tape. He wrapped it tightly around the Princess' head a couple times and the hissing died away.

"There," the Ranger said. "Better?"

The Babe nodded. "Much better."

The Ranger picked the Princess up and cuddled her to his chest. She was just as he remembered her, and yet somehow seemed different. Her Frito-wrapper dress was wrinkled and torn, the erasers he'd used to create her face had all but worn away, and there was rust around the bottom of her aerosol-can body. Yet, the Princess seemed more real to him at that moment than she had the night he assembled her in the hospital room, when he'd been high on Dexatrim and blueberry-almond cookies.

He placed the Princess back in the pram and looked up at the Babe.

"Let's go home," the Ranger said.

"Fucking A."

And they lived happily ever after.