Decades of perfect inconsequentiality not only ensured that Checkers paid scrupulous attention to his calling plan, brand of kitty litter, cable television package, from which catalog he must place a minimal order so that he would remain on its mailing list, among the hundreds of other trifles to which he adhered, but also immured him against the unsightly. For Checkers, the unsightly is not the ugly as much as a vivacious expression of the primal, whose hues Checkers found ugly.

For thirty years, each night as Checkers would lie in bed, his limbs ached and buzzed, from the inside out and from the outside in, worsening and worsening until uniting into an unsightly throb. This sensation found its apex in his groin. He would gnash his teeth and resist an urge that he preferred not to address, but, in the end, he would reach the threshold of his endurance and would be forced to take matters into his own hands. Thus in a loud and pompous voice, Checkers would calculate his commission earned during the day at the Got Yer Goat Shoppe?, compare it with previous days, and, with the bliss of an adjusted average, he would shed a solitary tear while imagining a better calling plan, a kitty litter which inspired, the attributes of a savings monger who not only received all the best catalogs, but who also rendered the unsightly endurable, possible, like the cleaning of a high-tech skillet.

&#Each morning Checkers would arise in the best of spirits and exclaim, Top of the morning, all! He would yawn majestically, Up and at them! He would remove his sleeping cap, sensuously smell his instant coffee, and grin from ear-to-ear like an idiot who had found a jar of cookies with the magical property of self-regeneration, an illicit and perpetual glee. This incredible grin would remain on his face until he put his sleeping cap on again at the end of the day, before his solitary tear.

Such had been his routine for thirty years. He would enthusiastically sip his coffee and mutter nonsense such as, The costumer is always right until it turns a blind eye to an offer of savings, and, when refusing savings the customer is to be dealt with Old Testament style, while hoping, with increasing anxiety, that a telemarketer would call before his coffee had cooled, before he was obliged to assume his uniform of hoove-shaped shoes, a pair of goat-leg chaps, a red T-shirt and black frock, both festooned with cartoonish goats surrounded with the words, Got Yer Goat Shoppe?

As he assumed each garment his desperation for a telemarketing call would increase until at quarter to eight he would put his cell phone on silent because he no longer had sufficient time for a telemarketing call--sufficient time to force an intimation of meaningfulness into the call, a meaningfulness conceived inside the zone of the thirty-three percent free, but it took time to penetrate past the pitch and its, Well, I’m just not sure. Uhm, tell me more, coquetry--time that he could no longer spare.

For he had business of another order. Fully clad in his goat suit, he would smoke his pipe while visualizing sales wizardry. Savings! Imagine the Savings! Can you Imagine? the Savings? he would harangue imaginary costumers. After his visualization exercises he would begin his calisthenics regimen, but his exercise was ineffectual because his cat, Stocking Stuffer, would chase after and rub against his flaying goat-legs while meowing maniacally, fur-raised, and wide-eyed, as though she were in an aberrant heat. Ignoring this menace to the best of his ability, he would stagger, flop, and occasionally fall.

Then there was his morning commute, which he had undertaken seven days a week for the last thirty years (Checkers hadn’t had a day off the entirety of his employment at the Got Yer Goat Shoppe?). Though most of the commuters had long since grown accustomed to the goatman that boarded the 8:04 Super Savings Mega Plaza express route, they would still snigger. Often the snickering would escalate into outright mockery, but Checkers had been mostly to blame. With his incredible ear-to-ear grin grafted into place, he would habitually irritate others by thrusting brochures entitled, Get Your Goat On! And Get it Good! Savings Club, into their faces, interrupting their reading, their brooding, their comprised slumbers. Checkers would loudly and pompously summarize the brochure; he would take care to press his vocal reverb button, located between the knuckle and tip of his ring finger, each time he said, Savings!

But this morning he did not rise from bed with an incredible ear-to-ear grin, much less holler, Top of the morning, all. In fact, Checkers had not slept, but had instead ground his teeth and hissed, Savings while pressing the vocal reverb button. Savings, hissed reverberated so sinisterly that Stocking Stuffer was unnerved and frightened, and she too hissed all night, her back-arched, fur-raised, wide-eyed.

Yesterday at work, Checkers’s career of humiliation had reached its zenith. An amphetamine-addled seventeen-year-old boy had became outraged when Checkers, who had been leering down the miscreant’s thirteen-year-old girlfriend’s T-shirt, allowed a groan of desperation to escape. The girl had stopped snapping her gum and screeched, Like, oh, my God. Her beau had embarked on a minor act of heroism; wheezing and struggling, he had pulled himself over and into the kiosk and then ineffectually kicked, punched, and several times bite Checkers before Super Savings Maul Security had arrived and commenced beating both Checkers and his attacker. After an half minute of clubbing and kicking, the security guards had connected the goatman they were beating with the kiosk full of goat figurines, wheels of goat cheese, calendars featuring goats, goat skin clothing, goat’s milk mocha dry mix, and other sundry goat collectables. They had then focused their clubs and boots on Checker’s attacker for an especially harsh thumping and then drug him away (moaning, crying, profusely bleeding and having had visibly wet himself).

Checkers had remained alone on the floor with his torso and head lying outside the kiosk and his twitching legs inside the kiosk, soaking up spilt goat’s milk. Blood had oozed from his teeth, lips, forehead. It had been at that moment that he hated his goat suit, his life. He had transformed from an idiot who had given his all in service of next to nothing and into a genuine human, but this had happened to late because he had only senseless rage at his disposal, which would fail to address his condition. Regardless of its value-added features there was not--and never would be nor could be, Checkers had realized--a calling plan, a kitty litter, a cable television package, or a catalog that could provide even an intimation of meaning. He had groaned and croaked while imagining himself dying as his neighbors went about their business.

He had craned his head and looked at the dozens of shoppers and maul-walkers that had gathered around him. All the onlookers had kept their distance, a semi-circle regarding a spectacle. Most had affected concern, but many others chuckled, some openly laughed, a boisterous few loudly ridiculed Checkers. The averages had shifted in that at some points ridicule predominated and affectations of concern were few, hardly visible. The constant was that no one, neither shopper nor maul-walker, had helped. Checkers had wished that someone would give him a candy or offer to assist in reaching his emergency contacts.

A second later he had realized that a candy’s taste would be tainted by the blood in his mouth; he had further realized that his only conceivable emergency contact, Stocking Stuffer, couldn’t answer the phone. It had been at that moment that his reason, such as it had been, vanished. He had then foamed at the mouth and, at the top of his lungs, roared, Savings! Savings, motherfuckers! He had pressed his reverb button violently enough that it would remain forever activated.

Maul security had then returned. They had injected him with bad heroin that they had confiscated from Checker's attacker, loaded him into a cab, escorted him to his derelict hotel, carried him up into his room, and, leaving him in his goat uniform, dropped him into his bed. He had woke an hour later. His indignation had overpowered the drug. He had been grinding his teeth in his sleep. The foam that had accumulated around his lips and jowls was speckled with blood.

**

This morning neither Checkers, nor Captain Fiddlestick, rose from their beds with ear-to-ear grins plastered to their faces, as had been their habit for the last thirty plus years. Instead their bleating alarm clocks interrupted their sleepless night of reflection. Both men leaped from their beds and attacked their clocks--though for ostensibly different reasons.

Captain Fiddlestick attacked his alarm clock with kisses of rapture because for the Captain the day couldn’t start soon enough. After his outburst, he clasped his hands to his chest and exalted, stark naked in the middle of his bedroom. Captain Fiddlestick giggled and leaped up and down like a child. Though he knew he should act more temperately, he couldn’t force his enthusiasm into the confines of decorum because today the Super Savers Society for the Suppression of Vice would announce that they had commissioned an artist to create a bust of the Captain in honor of his rectitude, in recognition of his unflagging devotion to the suppression of vice, in honor, generally speaking, of what a great and noble person he was.

Two days ago he had received a letter from the Society. They had summoned him for a secret meeting, a delicate matter, a highly personal inquiry. Then last night, after hours of staring at cable television infomercials, the channel had gone off air, and the Captain hadn’t cared, hadn’t even noticed. He had just sat there.

But several hours ago, the static had shaped itself into a semblance of the human head. Instantly and with absolute certainty, he had recognized the face as that of Cicero. Though in truth, the face, to the vague extent that it resembled a face, could have been Nero’s countenance rather than Cicero's, or even that of the Captain himself. Also consider that the only fact Captain Fiddlestick knew about Cicero was that he had been commemorated in busts. And since that moment, Captain Fiddlestick had been beside himself with delusional certainty that the Society had commissioned a bust in his likeness.

Captain Fiddlestick ran to the bathroom, turned on the shower, and danced beneath the nozzle for fifteen seconds. He dried himself slowly, realizing he most act with more couth--this enthusiasm just wasn’t appropriate. He walked calmly to his room and put on his uniform, a pastel blue Super Saver’s police uniform that had been rendered ridiculous with green cuffs, violet ruffles, shoes two and a half sizes too large, and a policeman's cap too tall for even the audacity of caricature. The cap was festoon with the red logo, EXTREME DARE Liaison Officer Fiddlestick. Completing the outfit was a gun that resembled a plastic toy six-shooter, but which, when fired, released miniature helium animal balloons that were decorated with the words, EXTREME DARE..

While curbing his zeal, he realized that this was the first morning since his demotion from the vice squad to DARE liaison (he had been the victim of nasty rumors that suggested immorality between the Captain and his ex-roommate, Sergeant Seymour, whom, incidentally, was rumored to be living in flagrant outrage with some trucker in a trailer park) that he wasn’t overwhelmed with humiliation, the humiliation he overcame only an hour after drinking his Doc A.L. Wright Instant Breakfast Drink, fortified with vitamins, minerals, myriad pharmaceutical amphetamines, and mood enhancers.

Captain Fiddlestick grabbed his megaphone, his unicycle, and hit the streets. It was a beautiful morning and Fiddlestick rode fast, weaving his unicycle, very improperly, on both sidewalks and streets, wherever he could ride with less obstruction, with more glee Since his shift didn’t start for another hour, Captain Fiddlestick decided to drive by the Society’s office and peer into the windows--perhaps his bust had already been completed.

His travel took him from his home neighborhood--and his beat--into a derelict district of boarded-up strip mauls, craterous frontage roads, crumbled subdivisions, and cries of derision such as, Circus Po-po, Pig on Parade, Bitch been playing in the evidence room, but Captain Fiddlestick didn’t notice. The office for the Society of the Suppression of Vice was located in the heart of the Super Saver’s strip maul ghetto, in a lavishly refurbished cruise ship, inside the ruins of Rusty's Eighteen, a joke of a golf course, even during its halcyon days.

Captain Fiddlestick turned into a groove of trees and crashed into a circle of adolescents. He landed, face first, on an opened suitcase of cocaine. Captain Fiddlestick cried in anguish, as cocaine rushed into his mouth, eyes, and nostrils. As the boys began to beat him, the cocaine numbed the blows while escalating his indignation. Eventually, the beating subsided, and the boys erupted into a laughter first vicious but then, slowly and hesitantly, wholesome and mirthful. They gave themselves to delight, to wondrous reverie. Seconds later, their ringleader shed a tear. Captain Fiddlestick rolled onto his back and saw his gun’s animal balloons ascending--dachshunds, zebras, Venus flytraps, monkeys, tigers, and goats.

What bitch!? cried the ringleader, beside himself because he had shed a tear of mirth before not only his boys but also before the officer whom they had been beating.

?, thought Captain Fiddlestick, unable to give form, much less content to his outrage. As the youth’s face shook with wrath, bits of debris and Dorito dust fell from his clip-on handlebar mustache. It sagged and curtained his mouth. The boy pulled a Glock nine-millimeter from his waistband, cocked a bullet into the chamber, removed the clip, and, attempting to affected a highly stylized belligerence that was incongruous, like a Yeti attempting to impress an artisan with clumsy needle-point, dropped the gun onto Captain Fiddlestick’s chest.

He screamed, All right, bitch. You got one bullet, do something. C'mon. That’s what I though, bitch. The boys grabbed the suitcase, taking a second to scrape off the cocaine plastered against the Captain’s face, and left.

Captain Fiddlestick’s heart thundered. The beating and the cocaine synthesized into lucid insight: It wasn’t a statue which awaited him at the Society’s headquarters, but ignominy, which he had long since had his fill of. His pathological need for recognition that he didn’t deserve vanished, but this pathology had occupied so much of the Captain that he was left with only senseless rage. Captain Fiddlestick roared, holstered the Glock, leaped to his feet, and mounted his unicycle. He peddled faster than much of the morning hour commute. Horns and brakes locked; pedestrians scattered.

As he approached the thoroughfare of his beat, he heard a demonic scream, Savings you motherfuckers! I said savings! Captain Fiddlestick peddled still faster, skidded around the corner, quite becomingly, as through he were a hero in a big-budget action movie, and stopped before an unsightly spectacle, a small and disheveled man dressed in a ridiculous uniform of black frock, red T-shirt, and, most outrageously, goat-leg chaps from which a screaming cat was attached by one of its front legs. The goatman leaped up and down, flaying his feet in an attempt to stomp and kick the trapped cat while screaming, I’ll give you savings, Stocking Stuffer, you motherfucker!

Captain Fiddlestick imagined a statue of a clownish officer who’s riding a unicycle with an upraised pistol. He found the image grotesque. Nevertheless, he still fired the Glock and spared Stocking Stuffer any future offer of savings.