Deerman, Episode 9: Wanted Signs

It's time for some friggin' Deerman!

Artwork by Jack Parker - Buy his music here

Join Deerman as he happens upon a seemingly benign family-friendly restaurant during the day. Listen as Deerman discovers what he truly is as he finds his hoofing in the world. 

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Chapter Nine: Wanted Signs

The more me and the Mancat drove around aimlessly, wasting our days, the more I noticed that old west style wanted signs were being posted around all over the goddamn place. There was even one at Los Cazadores Musical, a Chuck-E-Cheese rip off that sold Tex-Mex and Tecate.

“Pull over,” I told Warning.

“Meow.”

I rolled my deer eyes. Fucking cats, man.

He parked in the handicap spot. It was something I was always uncomfortable with but if anyone came up and gave us shit, I’d be flabbergasted. And I don’t use that word lightly. I’m a fucking bipedal deer. He’s a naked guy who wants to be a cat. If handicap we’re not, then what is?

“We’re just going to walk in there casually, you know?” I said.

“Meow,” Warning said but his eyes betrayed an inner doubt.

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my hoof on my chin. “Maybe you should stay in the car.”

Warning nodded. It’s one thing to believe you’re a cat. It’s another thing to walk into a family restaurant naked with a deer.

There was no rush, though. When I got inside, there wasn’t even a hostess to greet me. The place was damn near empty. There was trash everywhere and a few old men smoking cigarettes staring at the stage.

“Hey, bud,” an old man with no teeth said to me from behind his pitcher of beer. “You here for the show?”

“The show?” I asked.

“Yeah, El Cazador promised a big show today. A big, bad show. He’s El Gran Cazador Blanco Con Pelo Amarillo. The great white hunter with yellow hair. I figured you were in the show.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I am.”

“Well,” the old man said, lighting a cigarette. “Don’t let me stop you from doing your thing.”

“Isn’t this a family restaurant?”

“On the weekends, yes. During the day, it’s a little bit different.” He motioned his work-beaten hand to showcase the room. It was filled with smoke and sparsely populated with people drinking straight from the bottle. “During the day, my friend, we smoke and sing and dance with El Gran Cazador Blanco Con Pelo Amarillo. He makes us laugh.”

“Yeah,” I said. I took a seat near the middle of the folding chairs that were chaotically arranged throughout the restaurant.

All the lights went out as I settled in. It’s hard sitting on a tail. I still haven’t gotten used to it.

A spotlight shone on the curtains where a short man in a beige leisure suit came out. He looked shy.

“Amigos!” he yelled, “Did I not promise you a grand show today?”

The crowd clapped but it sounded like the kind of clapping that happens when you’re jerking off into the toilet. Sometimes your balls hit the side of your leg. It’s not often, but it happens. That’s what it sounded like. Unimpressive. Noteworthy only when comparing it to masturbating into a toilet.

“Agh,” El Gran Cazador Blanco Con Pelo Amarillo said, “Amigos, that does not sound like my amigos!”

The crowd clapped a little bit more. Not much.

El Gran Cazador Blanco Con Pelo Amarillo pulled out two pistols. Then, he sang, “Mi pistola está en mis pantalones y está deseando una cacería.”

The crowd starting laughing.

“This dumb white guy thinks we like him,” an old man leaned into me and said as he exhaled his cigarette smoke. “He comes in here and thinks because he speaks Spanish, he’s one of us. Thinks because he married the owner’s daughter that we like him. Bullshit. We know he’s only after the restaurant when the old man dies. He wants to turn it into a condo with an office for Senator Teodoro Luz at the ground floor. He thinks we like Luz because his name ends in a z. We just come here to laugh at him.”

I nodded.

“Ouch!” the old man yelled. I turned and saw that my antler had split his left nostril in half when I nodded.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I bet you’re Teodoro Luz under there, aren’t you?” The old man started poking at me. It tickled but I couldn’t laugh anymore. Laughing was a human thing. Deer don’t laugh. Deer get revenge. And I’ve been running around in circles for too fucking long.

I stood up and knocked the chair in front of me down. I started bucking like a race horse who hates the feeling of having a really small guy sit on top of him and whip him into speed. I charged El Gran Cazador Blanco Con Pelo Amarillo.

The crowd cheered.

“Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” they chanted. I felt their hatred wash over me and I charged harder. 

This man didn’t deserve the passionate end of my hooves, the angry tips of my antlers, but I was bored with running around. I was tired of being a deer. I was tired of hanging around with some pervert that keeps up the charade of being a man with a cat brain even after he admitted to me it was just a ruse to satisfy some weird sexual desire that he couldn’t even find like-minded freaks on the internet.

Nobody asked me if I wanted to be a deer. If you ask me, I would’ve been better off bleeding out on the highway. At least somebody would find me and Brenda wouldn’t be sitting on the edge of her bed wondering where I went; if I ran off with some California hussy or if I killed myself. If I was killed by a serial killer who could overpower me, of all people.

Then it hit me like a gunshot to my knee; a gunshot to my knee.

The crowd hushed.

“I promised a show today, no?” El Gran Cazador Blanco Con Pelo Amarillo yelled. “Now this muchacho was not a part of this show. But now he is! And we’re all the better for it, no!?”

I fell to the ground and stared up at him. His pants were wet. He was scared. But he had weapons. I just had fucking antlers and a burning passion for revenge. Friends, sometimes the latter is more than gunpowder can ever provide.

“The show, amigos, must go on!” El Gran Cazador said. The curtains went up. His animatronic band went into a steady rhythm with a surprisingly complex emotional composition for a band made of robots.

He sang, “Cada vez que entro en un restaurante mexicano se vuelve menos auténtico. Cada vez, cada vez.” He grabbed his dick and spun around like a cheap Michael Jackson. A screen came crashing down from the ceiling. On it, the first slid of a PowerPoint presentation was illuminated. It read: The Future of Los Cazadores Musical.

The crowd hushed.

El Gran Cazador Blanco tugged at a rope that hung on center stage. A cage with a young woman and her father came crashing down. It took out the first row of chairs, killing one spectator. El Gran Cazador laughed. “Nobody will miss him!” El Gran Cazador pranced towards me in his white cowboy boots. He unbuckled his pants knowing I couldn’t lift myself off the ground.

But I had antlers. And I was getting a lot more familiar with how to use them. I pummeled forward, impaling the little idiot and lifting him off the floor. I shook my head and he flew off, hitting the wall. 

His urine stained pants were now covered in blood.

The crowd stood and cheered.

“My husband!” the young lady clutched at her heart  and reached for El Gran Cazador Blanco from her cage. Her father was unconscious.

“That idiot never loved you!” said a voice from the crowd. “He was just after your father’s property!”

But El Gran Cazador Blanco wasn’t finished. He pulled himself off the floor and stumbled toward the cage.

“It’s true, my love. I’m sorry but money is more important than authenticity. This is America.” He pointed his pistol, trembling, at the father. “I made sure he willed this to me before he died. Now I’m speeding up the process.”

I dragged myself across the stage, bleeding and practically useless. I poked at him with an antler but he must have been in some kind of greedy trance. He didn’t even turn around. I stuck my antler into the stage and used my weight to do a spinning kick on the floor. He fell flat on his ass, fell face first into my antler.

“Tell…” he said with his gasping last breaths, “Tell everyone my name… mi nombre es Blake Gentle. I fought valiantly.”

The crowd descended on me and helped me unstick myself from the stage.

One of them came up with one of the wanted posters.

“It’s him!” he said. I was scared but I was also in a lot of pain and jail would probably fix me up or put me out of misery.

I rest my head on the stage and closed my eyes. I heard sirens in the distance. The front door opened, bringing in unwanted sunlight.

“Hey! Let’s get the fuck outta here! The cops are on their way!”

It was Warning. Sliding in and talking like a real fucking human to save our asses. He ran up to me, flopping around in the air, not a care in the world.

“We’ll help,” the father in the cage said to Warning. A group of men surrounded me and lifted me up, carrying me into the truck bed. I was woozy. My eyes were tired. The sun blinded me.

“You saved my father’s business,” the young woman said. She kissed me on the cheek. “You’re a hero,” she said as she peeled her late husband’s face off of my antler.

I’m a hero. 

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Deerman, Episode 8: Good Cop, Party Cop

Deerman, Episode 8: Good Cop, Party Cop is live now for your enjoyment!

New characters! New shenanigans! Same deer problems.

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Deerman, Episode 8: Good Cop, Party Cop

by Andrew Hilbert

“Calling all cars, calling all cars. We have a John Doe with his eyes crushed into his skull. Possibly a criminal investigation. Assailant on the loose. Assailant on the loose.”

“Bro,” Party Cop was in the backseat shotgunning a tallboy. “We gotta fuckin’ see that. Eyes crushed in. Wild.”

“We don’t need to answer every call especially when you just finished your fourth fucking beer.”

“You know who counts beers, man?”

“Who?” Good Cop asked, knowing the answer.

“Pussies. That’s who. Are you a fucking pussy?”

“Internal affairs, amigo. Look, I’m not here to judge you. I crack open a cold one here and there, too. But you’re Party Cop. And the eyes are focusing on you, man.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Party Cop lay his head down. “We should still go see it, though. Fucking eyes crushed in. I hope the guy survived. He’d probably want to crush a few lines.”

“Jesus Christ. We’ll go.”

If you’re not a cop, you probably think it’s weird for a cop to drive his partner around in the backseat like he was some homeless guy you just arrested for sacrificing his penis to the satellites in front of a room full of shocked Whataburger families. But it’s not weird. Every force has a good cop. And every force has a party cop. Good Cop drives. Party Cop rocks. 

“Turn on the fucking siren, man. We’ll get there in no time.”

Good Cop rolled his eyes. “You know that every time I turn on my siren, I have to log it.”

“Dude, they said calling all cars, did they not? Now let’s get squirtin’.”

Good Cop knew Party Cop was right. Party Cop was usually right. It was just the way Party Cop went about being right that irked him. Being paired with Party Cop was punishment for calling foul on the department wide practice of strongly hinting at the need of free coffee at local coffee joints. 

“You wouldn’t do that to Starbucks, would you?” he asked in defiance of his superiors. “No, you wouldn’t. Starbucks is a big corporation and would balk at the first sniff of intimidation. No, no, no. You squeeze the little guy and it’s not fair. You never ask for free coffee, you let them offer it. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

He wasn’t popular with the force after a letter to the editor appeared in the San Antonio Express News about the very complaint he had with them.

He was a bleeding heart pussy. More concerned with counting beers than enjoying them. 

A cold tall boy hit him in the head as he drove. 

“Take one, bro. Take the edge off. I ain’t going to pull you over.”

Good Cop set it down on his passenger seat but said nothing.

“You know,” Party Cop said as he started rolling a joint in the backseat. “I always agreed with you about the coffee thing. If anything, we should have squeezed Starbucks for coffee. But I was never one for coffee. Get me some oolong tea and a spliff and my hangover is gone.”

Good Cop grit his teeth and white knuckled the wheel. He flipped on his siren. 

“You need to enjoy life, man,” Party Cop said. He pulled out a comb from his front pocket and groomed his stache. 

When they pulled up to the cul-de-sac where the victim was, nobody else had responded to the call. 

“Shit,” Party Cop said, “I guess this one’s ours.”

Good Cop grabbed Party Cop by the collar and pulled Party Cop to him. “You motherfucker, I told you we should have let this one go. Now go get a fucking breath mint, you no good hippie.”

“Whatever, dad. I could solve this case with my eyes closed.”

“So do it.”

Party Cop lit his joint. 

“Let me just get a closer look.” He bent down and scanned the face. “Fucking deer, man.”

“You’re saying a deer did this?”

“Most likely a buck but could’ve been a doe. Usually bucks get more aggressive when they’re in heat. This poor motherfucker must’ve just been in the way. Besides,” Party Cop took a deep hit off of his joint, “Check out that motherfucker over there.” Party Cop pointed to the ragged-dead deer carcass on the side of the road. “That’s probably the deer that did it.”

“Could it have been a two deer job?” Good Cop was scrawling notes as fast as he could. 

“Maybe. Let me go grab that tick bag.”

“Should we keep it in place?” Good Cop asked.

“Keep it in place? Who the hell do you think is going to be out here asking you to keep some deer body in place? This isn’t the Kennedy assassination.” Party Cop got up and grabbed the deer by its hind legs. He dragged it over to Earl’s body. 

“Sometimes,” Party Cop said, “A buck will kick with its hind legs so let’s just check the hoof size to the eye hole size.” 

Party Cop grabbed the legs and put them to the eye holes. They were too big. 

“These are too big. Let’s check the front ones.”

But they were too big, too. 

“Well, fucking shit, man. This was probably a two deer operation.” Party Cop shook his head and cracked open another beer. 

Good Cop wrote two deer op down and circled it five times like he’d ever forget it. 

Just as Party Cop took his first sip, the Sherriff’s car rode up.

“Did you fuck with my crime scene?” the Sherriff barely took off his seatbelt before he started losing his mind. “Did you move that fucking deer? Are you trying to fix a scene?”

Party Cop smirked and took another sip. “We didn’t fuck with nothing, man.”

“What’d you say to me?”

“I said we didn’t fuck with nothing, man. We didn’t move that deer, man. That deer was there.”

The Sherriff’s nostrils started flaring like pussy lips on prom night. He stuck his ass out, bent over, and started sniffing.

“Then what the fuck is this trail of blood?”

“Now, Sherriff,” Party Cop said, “I ain’t no detective but I can’t get any answers out of either of these guys.” Party Cop grabbed a hoof and a hand and made them wave at the Sherriff. 

“Get the fuck off my crime scene.”

“We were on our way out, anyway.” Party Cop smashed his can underneath his boot and got in the driver’s side of the car. “I’m driving, bitch,” he said to Good Cop.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Good Cop said with his eyes downcast as he passed by the Sherriff. He got into the passenger’s side.

For a while, they said nothing on the drive. Party Cop was too drunk and trying real hard to stay within the lines of the road and Good Cop was too embarrassed to open his mouth but the silence was broken.

“Wonder if Church Cop gots any leads on this two deer operation thing. What you think?” Party Cop asked with stunning articulation. 

“What the fuck will Church Cop have?”

“Well, for fucking one, man… that God damn church is on the biggest property this side of the Winter White House, man. It’s all wooded in some areas. I bet there’s a den of deer somewhere around there. He probably has good grasp of what’s going on in the deer world. Because, man, if you know one thing it’s that you gotta protect your own kind. When I stared into that poor assholes eyeholes, I didn’t see shit but darkness, man. And I got a real sense that maybe the deer are starting to act up. Maybe they’re finally getting some sense in them.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Some deer smashed some guy’s eyes down into his butt hole, what else can we do? It’s open and shut.”

“Then you tell me this, man.” Party Cop was steering with one hand on the wheel, the way every cool guy drives because they’ve got a tall boy in the other. He took a sip of the tall boy. “Then why’s the Sherriff out there busting my nuts over some fucking deer being moved?”

That was quite an observation for a drunk but it was probably an observation only a drunk could make.

“All right. It’s Sunday anyways. Church Cop will be directing traffic in and out of the parking lot over there. We could probably get a few lines out of him. But if it’s nothing I want you to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that, cowboy?”

“You let this whole thing go and we go back to writing tickets.”

“Man, you should’ve been a church cop. Church Cop has way more coke in his veins.”

Party Cop slammed the gas and turned on his sirens. He looked over at Good Cop while he ran red lights. “You gonna log this shit for me?”

When they got to the church, Church Cop was still directing people in. You couldn’t paint a better picture of boredom. With one gloved hand he made a come hither motion to every car pulling in while his other hand twirled a baton. In his mouth was a donut that he couldn’t bite because he had no free hands to save it with. 

“Uhhhhhh, I’m looking for the Church of Satan,” Party Cop said as he rolled up. 

“Yo! Party Cop! What the fuck is up! Can you turn off those sirens?”

“I would but I don’t know how.” 

“That busy on the street these days?”

“You know it. Hey, do you know where I can bust up some teenagers for weed?”

“Wait an hour. Youth Group is always going to the woods to smoke after church.”

“Sick, bro. Speaking of woods, have you seen any deer coming in and out of here?”

Church Cop’s face went white. His voice became monotone.

“No. Why would you ask?”

“No reason, dude. Some deer fucked some guy up. We were just wondering if there was something bigger going on.”

“No. I know nothing about anything. Thank you. See you again.”

Party Cop shrugged. “Thanks anyway.” He drove off.

“Church Cop knows something,” Good Cop said. “Did you see the way he looked at you after you asked about the deer?”

“I can’t see much, man. I’m seeing double and blurry. I wasn’t even paying attention. Some coke would do the trick though.”

As they drove off, Church Cop reached for his secret walky-talky. It wasn’t a department issue. It was church issued. And it was in his back pocket, concealed to make it more secretive. 

“Father Daddy, come in,” Church Cop said. “Some cops are sniffing around asking about deer.”