As you may or may not remember, Horace (aka Tha Hobo King aka the Tinkerbell of all Trolleys aka Toby David tdavid1@swarthmore.edu) had just been recruited as an IRS agent, given the task of hunting down himself.

Horace had been sitting outside the Blockbuster Video video rental store for the past fifteen years in hobo time, which is fifteen years in human time too… because hobos are people too. Except for chicken hobos.

Horace was wearing nothing. Nothing at all. He thought it would be nudent to be prude. No, that’s silly. It was prudent to be Ted Nugent. He was neither. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t at the video store at all. He was still at the IRS, dreaming of how he would capture himself. He ended this particular thought balloon, because he realized that he is a hobo and does not rent movies. Not because he doesn’t have a TV. He has seven. And not because he doesn’t have an electrical outlet. He has… because it was time for lunch.

“What should I have for lunch,” Horace yelled at the young woman serving lunch. He had yelled this at her the same number times as electrical outlets he has, and had not yet heard what he was having for lunch.

“Let me… again… tell you today’s specials,” said the young woman, who believed strongly in Horace’s right to self-determination and had little desire to tamper with his basic freedoms.

MENU

Special Breakfast
Huevos/Eggs

#10 Huevos a la Mexicana
Two scrambled eggs with onion, tomato, and jalepeño peppers
$4.50

#11 Huevos Rancheros
Two eggs sunny-side up on top of corn tortilla topped with green spicy sauce
$4.50

#12 Butt Tacos
Festive seasonal selection
$22.00 (double deuce)

Horace read this far into the menu before he realized he couldn’t read. It was okay, because the young woman was reading it to him. So it really wasn’t a problem. But he didn’t like the content, so he pretended it was a story his mother had once told him, which went like this:

THE YOUNG MAIDEN AND THE PRETENTIOUS TIC-TAC-TOE OCTAVE

“One day I’ll escape from Staten Island,” exclaimed Miriam, from the tower in which she had been imprisoned.

“Not so,” exclaimed Knockwurst, her guardian dragon with antlers……….$4.50

Meanwhile, King Raymond tried to figure out why he was so beloved. It was very much an enigma to him, seeing as he had gone out of his way to be unloved.

“Better eat some Romano cheese,” he thought, remembering how he had stolen this cheese from a particular cheese merchant and ordered his entire family murdered.

“Orange prison jumpscoots,” exclaimed Pierre Lothario.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” screamed the King’s screamwich, a popular food concoction around them there parts.

“I’ll have the AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-range juice and scoot,” said Horace. “After all, I have places to be.”

“I keep telling you. We don’t serve that.”

“All right, just give us a kiss and we’ll call it even. You aren’t plural,” he said, as he did a headstand and left.

“I eye, captain,” said the captain as he eyed himself.

“AIEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” said Horace. “I’m screaming because everybody else has been screaming.”

“Quiet, I’m screaming my calls,” said an IRS agent, who was sitting in the corner trying to screen his calls but inadvertently vaporizing the captain.

“I’ll eye myself forever, even in the afterlife,” said the captain from the afterlife.

“There’s no way I’ll find myself here,” thought Horace. “Things are too normal.”

“I agree,” retorted Horace.

“Horace!” yelled Horace.

“Yes,” said a nearby Horace.

“Not you,” said both Horaces.

“I’ma gonna kill you,” said Horace.

“You’ll have to find me first,” said the ghost of Horace, who would die later on.

“How will I find myself?” thought Horace. Horace then decided to backpack around Europe for a couple of months, in an attempt to find himself. Tragically, Europe had recently been placed in a shrinking machine and been shrunk to the size of a wooden nickel. Horace managed to backpack around the continent in only six weeks, all of which took place while he was standing in the cafeteria.

“Damn exchange rate,” said Horace.

Meanwhile, Horace sensed that the IRS was on to him. Then Horace received a telegram from the IRS. In this case, telegram was an abbreviation for “tele[vangelist Billy ]Gra[ha]m,” who appeared to deliver the following message:

“Greetings, my name is Billy 'Ted Nugent' Graham. You might assume I am a unit of measure, but I am in fact a unit of treasure. A national treasure, that is, and more so than that rogue Nicholas Cage, that’s for sure. I was up for the leading part in that movie, but, alas, my agent fouled up the paperwork. Incidentally, KFC: that’s foul.”

Enlightened by this telegram, Horace … uhm …… uh…. hmmmm…. What should my next move be…. Oh, I know, I’ll continue telling the story. Hell yeah! Horace proceeded to open the window and float out into the vacuum of space. “What a dump this space is,” Horace said, starting up his vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, no one heard him, because sound cannot travel through a vacuum, and besides which, the vacuum cleaner was too loud. The vacuum cleaner, incidentally, was plugged into outlet number …

“What ho!” cried the giant dust bunny, again inaudibly. “I have eggs in my basket, made of dust. Heaven knows, I’ve got the toes, and the toe jam to boot.” The toe jam thus:

“Yo’s, we ain’t those, y’all knows, bros before hos.”

“What’s that you say?” asked Horace, though his words never left his mouth.

“He speaketh of gardening tools,” sang 34th United States Vacuum Cleaner Salesman Herbert Hoover, as he floated past, on a rocking chair, plucking at his diamond-studded ukulele.

“All the threads are coming together!” thought Horace, thinking of threads.

Meanwhile, back at the lunch counter, Horace gazed out the window, which he had recently opened and jumped out of, and observed that the various goings-on in the vacuum of space would distract himself sufficiently that he might attack himself.

“That’s an unexpected twist,” thought Horace, sipping his Lemon Twist Diet Coke, not expecting the twist of lemon. “People who make labels have gotten less creative…and more accurate.”

As Horace thought about Burma Shave and its inaccurate slogan (“This IS a form of public transportation!”), a particularly Myanmarean/accurate crosshairs appeared on his forehead. Moments after, he was shot dead by himself.

“All by myself,” he sang as he pulled the trigger, shooting the bullet back in time.

***

Horace awoke in the same position he’d fallen asleep—lying on his back in bed. It was a hobo bed, which meant it was made of pine needles. Still groggy from the strange dream, he had scarcely shaken the cobwebs from his eyes, when a giant dust bunny appeared and fed him a poisoned dust egg, which ended his life.

As he lay dying, Horace glared at the dust bunny, and asked him, “Et tu, Brute?”

“Sorry, Jack,” said the bunny, “I’m none other than Horace, A.K.A. You.”

The dust bunny unzipped his giant dust bunny costume to reveal tiny ol’ Horace, laughing over his own corpse.

But the last laugh was on him, as he realized the corpse was not his at all, but that of a giant dust bunny.

THE END…OR IS IT? YOU DECIDE…OR DO WE?