Swiss decided to challenge me again.  This time instead of the worst possible beer I could get my hands on I was to locate the absolute snootiest of snooty beer.  Unfortunately, I might have painted myself into a corner with the deadline in this one. I told him I would have it finished before the Beer it Forward piece.

This might have been my fault.

Up first was the second most interesting thing I could find at AJ’s, a local high-end grocer.  By high end grocer I mean in the same neighborhood as a Catholic high school with yoga pants wearing Catholic schoolgirl types.  Why the second most interesting? The most
interesting thing was barrel aged Old Rasputin and quite frankly I already did an article on that one.  The best part was I actually wrote that one at work (Rufus).

This one to put it bluntly is quite good.  It reminds me a lot of a Belgian quadrupel ale with a lot of spices we typically associate with fall.  I would probably enjoy it more if it wasn’t 115 degrees. Still, I give The Brurey Autumn Maple a solid 4 pinky’s out of 5

I woke up with a splitting headache.  Slightly nauseated. Loss of appetite.

“You’re not hungover.” Sugarfree said. He had settled himself in a lotus position on top of a rock conveniently placed in the sun.  A small mirror was in the dirt with grayish black powder strewn about its surface. He appeared to be meditating but when most people do that they normally aren’t twisting their nipples.  I hesitated to ask why he felt the need to do this naked.

Quite frankly I didn’t want to know.

I noticed a small pile of spent 5.56 NATO ammunition near our campground.  Next to Sugarfree’s meditating rock I found more empty cartridges along with their corresponding projectiles.  They looked like they had been pulled out using teeth as a vice.

“What happened last night?”  I asked.

“STEVE SMITH HAPPENED.”  Sugarfree replied.

“I gathered that.”  I said. Sheepishly examining my ass.  Nothing out of the ordinary there.

“You shot him six times.  It left a convenient trail for us to follow.”  Sugarfree explained. He opened his eyes. You did the worst thing you could possibly do to STEVE SMITH.”

“…shoot him?”

“You frustrated him.”

“Oh…goody.”

“That’s why I took the pews from your assault pew pew thingy and snorted the pew powder inside.”

“Of course you did…did you do that with all 210 rounds I had?”

Sugarfree stood atop his rock, turned around and bent over.  He let out a hearty cough while coming to a squat.  The procedure allowed me to infer he ate at few bullets.

“37.”  He answered.  It then occurred to me I could’ve just checked my bag to see if he stole all my ammunition.  “I got full.”

*Honk* *Honk* *Honk*

“What the hell?”  I asked. Looking down the trail I noticed a plume of dirt approaching us quickly.

“This just got better.”  Sugarfree explained. “He found us!”

“Who found us?”

A Subaru Forester came to a abrupt stop in front of our campground.  A skinny hipster wearing a dirty, vintage t-shirt and skinny jeans stepped out.  He turned and looked in Sugarfree’s direction but stopped abruptly.

“Did any of you guys call an Uber?” He asked.

“In the middle of the woods?”  I was confused.

“Oh okay.  He told me you’d ask me that.” The hipster said.

I noticed he was still behind the door.

“Who told you that?”  I asked, still confused.

“The man who gave me this.”  The hipster reached into the Subaru and pulled out a box.  In his haste, he
revealed he had a bloody stump, wrapped with a linen dressing.

“What happened to you?”  I asked.

“He told me you would need a hand.” The Uber driver curled up into a fetal position and began to cry uncontrollably.  I opened the box to find a soft, white hand still holding an iPhone inside a red, silicone case with a white cross.

“Judas Titty Fucking Priest.”  I said out loud, to myself.

“He told me…you’d…say that too.” The Uber driver managed to get out between sobs.

Sugarfree drummed a catchy tune across his stomach then twiddled his fingers in the air.  “Narrowed gaze…”

The phone then began ringing in the classic bluegrass ringtone.

_____

“Hi, this is Anna with Swiss Corpse International Industries, how are you today?”  Swiss got a new receptionist. This one was particularly bubbly.

“It’s pronounced core…”. I said flatly.

“Please hold, I’m going to try to patch you through…I’m still learning this so in case we get disconnected call 312–“

“No!  Don’t you fucking do it, do not give out his number! HE WILL MURDER YOU!”

“Connecting you now.”  Swiss always has the sweetest receptionists.  It’s terrible he could never find one that meets the Swiss standard of perfection.

“…Damnit mex.  You have any idea the pickle you have me in?”  Swiss was yelling, I pulled the phone away from my ear, slightly.

“I’m in the woods with Sugarfree, and he lost his pants.  Do tell me how your date with the Uber driver went…did he give a reach around?”  I turned to check on Sugarfree, and found that he had gathered a number of small rocks arranged into a circle.

“No.  Why do you think I told him to give you a handy?”  The fucker had me cornered.

“Fine.  Go.” I said.  Sugarfree had gathered a surprising amount of kindling.

“You have any idea how long you two have been out there?”

“No, but I bet your watch has a date complication that confirms how long I’ve been gone.”

“You’re damn right it does.  Without a date complication a Rolex Datejust is just a ‘just’ now isn’t it?”  For a guy that hates puns and the people that make them, he was on a roll.  Even if that one was terrible. “I didn’t think this ‘ass-dog’ thing would be such an issue for you.  So you need to get something straight….”

Swiss was gonna straighten me out.

“Okay…”

“I just found the most awesome watering hole.”

“Okay…”  I said as I noticed Sugarfree got a small fire going.

“You should see the chick that works there.”

“Okay…”

“Okay?  She has an unbelievable ass.”

“Okay…”

“Don’t ruin this for me!”

“Okay…sorry…?”  I gave Sugarfree an inquisitive look.  He began to examine the Uber driver’s hand.

“You should be sorry, now I’m down three posters this week.  I’m sending Warty your way.”

“Warty!”  Sugarfree started jumping up and down, clapping with the Uber driver’s severed hand.  I turned away since I rather not see his junk bouncing along with him.

“What?  Why? I have this Tiny-ass Dog thing down.”  I tried my best to be confident.

“Bullshit.  You have any idea what the commenters said last week?  We had them bitching about random shit from jezebel and jihadwatch.  Then they started to Gilmore threads on corrupted titty-links. You have any idea what happens if you don’t channel the Saturday day drinking rage towards something that’s tangentially related to beer?”

“…..no.”  If said yes, I feared he’d send me another hipster that would be paid to cut his own heart out and eat it in front of me.  At this point Sugarfree had the Uber driver’s hand on a spit over the fire.

“Warty is of approximate size to STEVE SMITH.  You have the best tracker, and the best possible deterrent.  Make.This.Happen.” The call was over as quickly as it started.

“What are you doing?” I asked Sugarfree.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”  Sugarfree replied.

“I have a granola bar in my bag….” I lied.  I ran out of food several days ago, and if I had any I wasn’t about to give any to Sugarfree.

“I can’t eat that.  I’ve totally gone Keto.”  He turned the hand over. “Sugarfree isn’t just some moniker, it’s a lifestyle.”

_____

We followed the blood trail.  Sugarfree was right, and since I did get a few hits it was much easier to track STEVE SMITH.  The only problem was the drops became fewer and fewer, as if he had some kind of magical healing ability.

“He has a magical healing ability.”  Sugarfree said.  He really needs to get out of my head.  “It makes him hard to track.”

“Seriously, you need to stop doing that.  I don’t know how I think of something and then you immediately answer me back with a relevant response.”  I said.

“I hear voices.  Sometimes they sound like you.  Other times they are just voices.” Sugarfree replied back ominously.

“Are you hearing any others?”

“Just yours.”

A soft rustling in the bushes ahead got the attention of the two of us.  I couldn’t make out what was behind it.

“STEVE.”  I asked.  “Look we need to talk…man.  I’m not trying to hunt you or your kin.”  I flipped the safety off.  “I just want the tiny ass dog back.”

More rustling came from behind us.  I pivoted around in a low ready stance while Sugarfree kept spinning with his arms in the air.

“Lets be reasonable STEVE.”  I knew there was nothing reasonable about that request.

“Look.  If you shoot me. I’m going to have to break you, and I’d rather not do that, but I will if I have to.  You already made me miss my short workout for today, and I need to make up for it.”  The voice in the bushes responded.

“WARTY!!”  Sugarfree started jumping up and down clapping.  Thankfully he found his pants a mile back.

“Wait, you’re Warty?”  I asked.  That can’t be Warty.  This was a guy dressed like a Victorian-era explorer, monacle and everything.  “I was expecting somebody–”

“Bigger?”  He asked.

“Yes.  Bigger, balder, looks like he’s seen the inside of a gym.”

“Its just my disguise.”  Warty explained.  “Sugarfree and I go a long ways back in tracking STEVE SMITH; going back years.  He’s not the type that will approach unless he thinks he has the upper hand.  He’s been lethal as early as eight months, and I do mean lethal. I’ve hunted most things that can hunt you, but the way he moves…”

“He’s fast.”  Sugarfree interjected.  He began doing a dance reminiscent of the TechnoViking.

“Cheetah speed. Fifty, sixty miles an hour if he ever gets out into the open, and he’s an astonishing jumper…”  Warty continued.

“I’ve heard this somewhere before.”  I said.

“He shows extreme intelligence, even problem-solving intelligence.  That one… when he looks at you, you can see he’s working things out. That’s why we had to feed him like that. He was attacking the fences when the feeders came…”

“Like an electric fence?”  I asked.

“That’s right, but he never attacks the same place twice. He was testing the fences for weaknesses, systematically. He remembers…”  Warty didn’t come up with this line.  He got that from somewhere.

“He totally got that from Jurassic Park.”  Sugarfree did it again.

“I told you to stop doing that.”

“Stop what?”  Warty asked.

“He does this thing where I think of something, and he responds to what I am thinking with an eerily appropriate response.”  I replied.  “GET OUT OF MY HEAD.”

“Yeah, he does that.  You get used to it.”

“The mind reading bit?  I’m supposed to get used to that?”

“Don’t think of it as Sugarfree listening to your thoughts.  Its more like breaking the fourth wall, except the wall is your head, and you’re his audience.”  Warty explained.  “And his purpose is to use your thoughts to terrify you.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”  Warty said, working the massive bolt on his Holland and Holland “Bolt Action Magazine” rifle chambered in .375H&H.  “We have a sasquatch to find.”  He began waking quietly down the trail.

“Dog.  We’re finding my little ass dog.”  I said.

“Sasquatch.”

_____

“Sugarfree.  Quiet down.”  Warty said quietly.

Darkness had fallen.  We were peeking over the edge of a berm.  I could just barely make out the form of the little dog under a bush.

“If I make a break for it, I bet I can grab it and go.”  I whispered.

“We can’t.”  Warty whispered back.

“Why not?”

“We’re being hunted….”  Warty whispered ominously.  Sweat began to bead across his brow as he flexed the massive muscles that worked his jaw.  His disguise was fading.  He turned quickly to me.  “GO!”

Sugarfree made a break for it.  “AYE YA YIE!”

“Not you!  Damnit.”  Warty said.

We both turned and saw it….

“Clever girl…..”  Warty whispered.  The cat slowly began to walk towards us, contemplating which one of us was easier to eat.

 

STEVE SMITH LIKE NICE KITTY.  STEVE SMITH TAKE NICE KITTY HOME.  BY TAKE NICE KITTY HOME….

The mountain lion struggled against STEVE SMITH’S massive, hairy arms and his massive hug.  It screeched like a housecat that got caught under a wheel well in the winter when it gets cold out and it wants to get warm from proximity to the engine.

OOOH OOOH OOOH OOOH

“This is messed up.  Let’s just get the dog and go.”  Warty said.

_____

We celebrated later at a hotel and discovered they had Alesmith Speedway Stout on hand.  It was a fantastic imperial stout that rounded out our evenings with intense notes of chocolate and coffee.   I gave it a solid 4.5 pinkies out of 5.  I then considered something doesn’t add up, as a hotel probably wouldn’t have this sort of thing on hand.

“It’s only a plot hole if you don’t acknowledge the existence of the plot hole.”  Sugarfree said.

“I told you to stop doing that.”