Volume 02, Story 11
Chino and Homeboy are exactly where you would expect to find two professional delivery men at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday: leaning against the graffiti-tagged wall of Mr. Dealer’s dispensary, smoking a joint, ignoring the PA system demanding they get back to work. Then the spotlight hits them. A blinding beam from above, wind whipping around them, red and blue lights stuttering through the haze. They drop to their knees, hands behind their heads. “It was him!” Chino shouts, pointing with his chin at Homeboy. “Homeboy did it! I had nothing to do with it!” The light swallows them.
Their eyes open on a cold metal cell with humming bulkheads and glowing surfaces. A poster sneers at them: THE EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE, complete with a smug, galactic grin. “We’re in fucking jail, bro.” “Fuck. What did we do?” Chino figures it out. “It was those Amazons. They turned us in. Now they want child support and we’re behind on payments.” “What?! Damn it! I knew I shouldn’t have fucked all of them.” “All of them?!” “Yeah… why? You didn’t?” “Fuck yeah I did… twice!” High five. They stand there grinning until the math lands: how much child support, and will there be enough left for rent and weed money?
The door hisses open and two burly aliens drag in a flailing Mr. Dealer. “This is bullshit! I demand to see a lawyer! I’m an American. I have rights!” He gets tossed into the cell, scrambles upright, and points at both boys. “Both of you are fucking fired!” Then the octopus-headed alien arrives in a sharp uniform. Chino perks up. “Oh shit! It’s Cthulhu!” Homeboy bolts upright. “Is it the end times?!” Cthulhu speaks in wet pops and aquatic blurts until he taps his wrist and chimes, “My apologies. I had my translator set to Atlantean. It’s been a few millennia since I’ve been stationed in this sector.” Mr. Dealer’s screaming gets his cell soundproofed with a push of a panel. Cthulhu clears up the confusion: they are not here for child support. “You’re here for possession and distribution of illicit substances.” The boys beam and high five. “Fuck yeah! Drug charges!” “No child support for them rucas, homie!” They dance around the cell until Homeboy asks the penalty. Cthulhu tilts his massive head. “Nothing… you just need to apply and get your distributor’s license.” Chino blinks. “No jail?!” “For drug dealing?! That’s stupid. Who the hell would do something as moronic as try to control drugs?!” Chino has two questions: did aliens build the pyramids (“Oh no. Your species built those. We were quite impressed. We thought your species was pretty stupid… now we’re not as impressed and still think your species is pretty stupid.”) and does Cthulhu have a phone charger. “That we definitely have.”
Cthulhu needs signatures for the license application, but first the boys ask to watch Mr. Dealer’s interrogation. In the observation booth they watch a horrifying alien lumber in carrying a small potted weed plant and demand to know where it came from. Mr. Dealer leans back defiant. “Fuck you. I know my rights. I get one phone call and a lawyer.” He does not budge through the roaring. Then he hocks a loogie onto the floor with maximum disrespect, and the room erupts. “2319!” Hazmat-suited aliens swarm in and yank the interrogator into containment. The booth alien turns to the boys. “I think it’s time you two returned to your paperwork.” Quarantine is coming for Mr. Dealer, and for them too.
Now they are in matching skin-tight quarantine suits that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination, and Cthulhu walks in with bad news delivered deadpan: “We’re going to have to incinerate the two of you.” Chino recoils. “What?! We didn’t do shit! It was Mr. Dealer!” Cthulhu laughs, low and gurgling. “I’m only kidding.” They sign the distributor paperwork. An unconscious Mr. Dealer gets dumped into the adjoining cell in his own undignified quarantine jumpsuit. The suits, Cthulhu explains, run on an AI that converts everything the body excretes into fuel. Chino demonstrates. Homeboy tries it. “Ah man! That was fucking awesome!” “I’m never taking this suit off.” “Mira! No poop bulge, Mr. Dealer!” Mr. Dealer refuses to piss himself on principle until his bladder wins, and when it is over he blinks up at the ceiling. “That’s fucking amazing.” The boys decide to stay with Mr. Dealer rather than go home. “We’re not leaving Mr. Dealer here. His dumb ass would probably rather die than give up the secrets to his Ganja.”
Cthulhu interrogates Mr. Dealer about the plants: hybrids, part Earth, part another planet very similar to Earth. Has he traveled interdimensionally? Through time? Mr. Dealer is outraged. Homeboy and Chino share a look and mouth Mary Jane at the same time. Then Homeboy asks the question that breaks him: where is Mrs. Dealer? Why did the aliens only take the three of them? “You don’t suppose they took her to the incinerators, do you?” Mr. Dealer shoots up. “Hey! Hey! I’ll talk! I’ll tell you where the plants came from! I’ll tell you anything you want to know!” He got them from the forest next to his dispensary, growing wild. Cthulhu’s last question: will he consent to a full inspection of his facility, plant life, and wildlife by the Intergalactic Authority? “Yeah… sure. Just get me off this fucking thing and back to my wife.” He slumps against the bulkhead. “But I’m an American,” he says sadly.
Back at the dispensary under the neon lights, Mr. Dealer sits on the counter staring into his joint smoke. “This has been the single most weirdest fucking day of my Goddamn life.” Chino exhales a thick cloud. “We’ve had weirder.” Mrs. Dealer walks in with a tray of cookies. “All right, boys! Here we go. Freshly baked cookies. Marijuana-free, since you boys have already been smoking quite a bit.” Homeboy snatches one up and jerks his hand back. “Ouch!” Mrs. Dealer chuckles. “Let them cool off, silly.”
Featuring Chino, Homeboy, Mr. Dealer, Mrs. Dealer, Cthulhu, The Emperor of the Universe.
Read the full story in The Adventures of Chino & Homeboy, Volume 02