Lucky’s lap for a nap, I heard Hella’s howling version of “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my tummy” filling the bus’s interior.  You, gentle reader, may have no idea how much a freshly fed succubi loves to sing.  Be assured that a succubi is no honey-tone siren.  She will discover herself to you as a wailer of the worst imaginable music. 

“Yummy, yummy, yummy” must rank as a candidate for the worst song ever written or performed, though I admit that John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” can, no matter how beloved it be by drunk hicks, hold its own in any comparison of bad music.  As I listened to Hella’s screeching wails, I wished I had no ears.  If only the Ohio Express had never existed.

I looked into Lucky’s placid eyes.  Without doubt she was imagining the peace of putting a few caps in Hella, but I despaired when she instead shoved a Flare earplug in each ear.  What about me?  Does she imagine that I was not yearning for earplugs?

Hella’s tone-deaf performances continued as we made haste across Poland. How I hate the Monster Mash” and “The Martian Hop”

Anyway, we were heading northeast towards Lithuania.  To do what I could to blot out Hella’s songs, I watched Behemoth and Walt play cards.  Walt was cheating. No honest deck has extra aces and face cards in it, but I noticed Walt’s decks did.  I was puzzled that Behemoth was oblivious to Walt’s cheater’s play. Then, I heard a remark of Behemoth’s that made it easier for me to understand.  Behemoth mentioned that Woland had recently gifted him a vast quantity of counterfeit rubles. Walt’s cheating was earning him a small fraction of Behemoth’s counterfeit notes. Let Walt run the inconveniences of turning phony money into real money.  

After Lucky began to doze, I went to the back of the bus.  It had a vacant bed.  I hopped up.  What a mistake.  There was Chaucer’s ghost staring at me.

“How is it,” asked Mr C, “that you run with mobs of murderers and yet the vicious, lascivious grifter Wolverine lives?” I then felt Crocky’s heavy paw crash down on my head.

After Chaucer clobbered me, he relaxed.  He turned prophet.  What he had to say was scary.  

If I believed Mr C, my destiny was in Russia’s north.  I was headed for an apocalyptic battle that would make the Rumble in Reading look calmer than Vermeer’s pictures. But, according to Chaucer, in the midst of all the coming ultra violence, I would have ample opportunity to “frag” Wolverine.  Chaucer told me I must not be sentimental about fighting on the same side as Wolverine. Why spare Wolverine? Why exempt Wolverine from the category of “killed by friendly fire.” 

“If you value your life Crocky, you will do as I say.  Also, during the battle, stay near, but not with, Lucky.  They’ll be sleuths of boy-gobbling bears after her.  My sources tell me the paederast Brongersma will command a Battalion of Boy-devouring Dutch Troops into battle.  Word has it, the madman Brongeersma will cloak naked Dutch boys in sable coats and booties . . . with their consent, of course.   These virgin boys will be forced at a jog ahead of the salivating Dutch to lure them forward.  The first Dutch troops to reach the boys have their implied consent to have at them. Brongersma adores consent.

To make it easier, rumours have it that Brongersma stipulated that only boys with prelubed bottoms will be permitted to run slow enough for a Dutchman off silver skates to capture them.  But once a Dutchman captures a slow boy, he will have full-access to the lad’s soon-to-be-deflowered hiney. Fair is fair.   

When I frowned, Chaucer reprimanded me for committing morality.  “What we’re talking about here,” Crocky, “is no different than using so-called rabbits at greyhound races.  You get better performance from a lured than unlured greyhound.  And so it is with the Dutch.”  

Now I’m no philosopher but I doubted Chaucer’s hypothesis that using boys as lures was the same as using fur-covered mechanical bunnies to supercharge a greyhound.  Mind you, I’ve not had the broad education that Chaucer had.

Shaking his head, Chaucer scolded me. “I don’t recall you complaining about Patty Smith’s account of her meeting the pouf poet Alan Ginsberg at a laundry-mat.  Ginsberg, like the Chickenhawk he was, started bribing destitute Patty with change.  Before long he discovered, to his everlasting horror, that Patty was a slender girl, not a pretty, moneyless boy. 

Now let me confess.  I have often suspected Patty’s boyfriend Robert Mapplethorpe made the same mistake.   He was a genius wiht a camera but was no good at telling boys from girls.  He lacked even Ginsberg’s rudimentary ability to discriminate.  But be generous.  Patty was not then or now bien roulee.  I bet anybody could have mistook her for a boy.  And can’t you imagine how Robert felt when he realised that the boy he’d been living with and sharing flats with for a few years was a woman? Talk about trauma . . . ”  I’m guessing she kept her pube hair long to deceive him.  

But then Chaucey left that tale of diversion to talk about the coming battle.  He again stressed that I must stay near, but not too near Lucky. He forecast the zone about her would be a field of death. Despite that I must not move  far from her line of sight. If I did as I was told, Lucky would kill anybody trying to harm me at immense personal peril.  “She loves you, Crocky.  She will die if she must to save you.  She is a lot like a dog.”  I then got the bad news that in a battle like the one coming in Russia, Lucky and I might both die, but not before I killed Wolverine.

Chaucer covered his ears when Hella began to sing her acapella version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” an old non-feminist hymn of Diana Ross.  It was yet another crime against music.  With a puff of hot air, Chaucey was gone.  

Much time had passed.  We were now approaching the Suwalki Gap.  Hella drove through Suwalki and took a road towards Alytus across the gap.  If we turned left onto the gap, we’d be headed towards Kalingrad, a Russian oblast.  

Despite the bus’s sketchy looks, nothing happened at customs.  Woland had a few of his friends pay the guards and the bus rolled unmolested into Lithuania with Hella sing-mangling “I will survive.” 

It seemed that after an hour or so the bus pulled up to a castle.  Hella brought it to a stop.  Everybody debussed.  Standing at the castle’s main door were none other than Lord Caligula and Constance.    behind them, I saw a Peregrine and Wolverine.  Wolverine looked very English.  He was in a 3 piece navy suit and wearing a Coke.  I could make out the gold chain of his pocket watch.   On the driveway, liveried servant began getting luggage from the bus.  I was amused that their livery jackets were a hot pink.  They wore black breeches with lines of pink flamingoes flowing down the seams.  Their shoes were black patent leather.  For reasons known only to Constance of Lord Caligula, the servants wore the bearskin hats of the Queen’s Palace Guard.  I couldn’t wait to sink my paws into one of those fancy hats. 

We all did brisk greetings at the door, and then entered a Great Hall that had been prepared for dining and, or so it looked, briefings.  For unknown reasons, a chair in the right corner of the room as I entered had a body with a familiar face in it.  It was Binky.  He had changed since I last saw him.  For one thing, he was as naked and as dead as his twin in Africa.  

Constance noticed that I had spotted Binky.  Lucky had too.  Constance approached, gave me a kiss on the crown of my head, then remarked to Lucky, “I see you’re looking at my statue.  You, at least in Africa, were too lax about correcting  Binky’s sass.  It made him evermore fat and inefficient. Just look at him.  What a slob. 

“I even stopped trusting his tallies of my holdings.  Then I knew he had to go.  So I verified the accuracy of my Cold Python.  I shot him with it.  One shot at about 125 yards did the job.  I set him out this evening so that Mr Quisling can see for himself what becomes of sassy, scheming, inaccurate servants.  I don’t abide them.  But doesn’t he look so relaxed?  I’m having a taxidermist preserve him for me.  I want to memorialise him in this relaxed state rather than as a man with a nervous stench.”  Lucky looked at Constance then shrugged her shoulders. To me, I thought Constance was a total optimist if she thought naked, dead Binky on display would deter Mr Quisling from stealing.  

To my left, I could hear Hella complaining to Woland.  “Why did Connie kill him.  She could have gifted him to me.  How long should a succubi have to do without fresh sperm.  Now, thanks to Connie’s selfishness, I must go hunt.”  Out the door she stormed, singing a screeching version of Carol King’s “It’s too late, baby.”  

Meanwhile, I got distracted. Walt and Behemoth had made their way to a bar set up not far from the Great Hall’s fireplace.  Behemoth was having vodka.  Walt was trying Stakliskes Mead, but complained that he had no taste for sweet. After the Mead, Walt assured to me he planned to switch to Lithuanian farmhouse ales. Mead’s a dogs drink.

Of course my eyes went to a Cold Table that had plenty of herring, sour cream, salads, cold cuts, and local bitter liquors.  I began pressing to get to the herring.  Lucky, glad to escape conversation with Constance, let me move her propel her to the Cold Table.