The Lollipop Gang by Andrew Hilbert.

Carl Winslow was waiting for his order at Sonic’s, the fast food joint where high school girls come and serve you on roller skates like the good ol’ days. He blasted the Beatles as he waited and lit a cigarette. He watched for the server in his rear view mirror. It’d been ten minutes and still no chili cheese tots.

He noticed a Girl Scout quietly pep talking herself and working up the courage to ask him to buy their cookies. He would, too.

               

“Excuse me, sir?” the freckled little red head asked him.

               

“Yes, sweetie?” Carl answered.

               

“Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”

               

“I sure wo--,” he felt a cold piece of metal up to his cheek.

               

“Don’t move! Drive away and be cool!” a child’s voice yelled at him.

               

He felt another cold piece of metal in the back of his head.

               

“Try any funny stuff, old man, and I’ll blow yer freakin’ head off!” another child’s voice said.

               

The Girl Scout who had first tried to solicit the sale got in to his driver’s side back seat and yelled, “Brittany! Where are the handcuffs?!”

               

“Gum drops, Alice!” Brittany, the girl in the passenger seat yelled, “I left them in my mom’s van!”

               

“Snookers!” the third girl, Lisa, yelled.

               

“GET DRIVING!” Brittany screamed.

               

“Girls, sweethearts, let’s take it easy. Where do you want to go?” Carl was sweating bullets in fear of them.

               

“Just start driving, geezer! We’ll give you directions,” Alice said.

               

Carl reversed and turned right onto Katella Ave. He knew there was a police department just a little ways up the street. He’d pull in there and send these sweethearts straight to prison.

               

“Make a U-turn first chance you get, silly!” Brittany smiled from ear to ear, food clinging to her fuchsia colored braces.

               

“Yeah!” Alice agreed.

               

“We’re not falling for that driving by the police station trick!” Lisa said in the back.

               

“Listen, old man! We’re saving up for a pony!” Brittany said.

               

“So empty out your wallet!”

               

“I don’t have any cash on me! All I have is a debit card!”

               

Alice in the back pulled out a shot gun of her own.

               

“STOP THE CAR!” she screamed.

               

Carl slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road.

               

“Not like that you goober!” Brittany yelled, “pull into the park!”

               

“You’re going to have to tell us what the fudge a debit card is!” Lisa was picking her nose.

               

“You can’t buy a pony with a debit card, girls,” Carl said, “you’ll probably need a cosigner and a down payment in cash.”

               

All three girls started screaming at the top of their lungs, Carl’s eardrums felt like they were about to burst and he felt like he was on the verge of an aneurysm and at that moment Carl wished one of them would just shoot him.

               

“Take us to the bank or we’ll keep screaming!”

               

“OK! OK! Jesus Christ!”

               

One of the girls cocked their guns.

               

“Don’t say the freakin’ Lord’s name in vain!” she said as she jammed the barrel as hard as she could into the back of Carl’s sweating head.

               

Carl drove to his bank. He looked at every car he passed by to see if he could get anyone’s attention. Everyone had their windows rolled up and their music blasting. They were all looking straight ahead or straight down at their cell phones.

               

When they got to the bank, Carl drove through the drive-up ATM. Brittany smiled sweetly at him and fluttered her eyes, “Empty out your bank account, pretty please!” she smiled and flashed her braces right at him and his heart broke.

               

He wasn’t dumb enough to empty out his entire bank account so he just pulled out $200. “Here!” he yelled, “Take it and get the fuck out of my car!”

               

“Cool it, mister,” Brittany said and pointed her gun right at his dick.

               

Alice leaned in between them from the back.

               

“You’re telling us that a man who drives around a Mercedes only has $200? Shoot his wiener off!” she yelled.

               

Lisa took off her seat belt and climbed into the front. The whole time her gun was pointed at his dick.

               

“NO! NO! NO! Wait!” Carl yelled, “Let me get some more.”

               

He withdrew $300 because his daily ATM limit was only $500.

               

“Hey, mister!” Brittany the braced one said, “You don’t only have $500, you think we’re stupid!?”

               

“It’s a daily withdrawal limit, I can’t take any more out! It won’t let me! When you’re old enough, you’ll understand! I swear!”

               

“I smell a fibber,” Lisa squeaked. She whacked him in the back of the head with her gun.

               

He fell forward onto his horn and lay unconscious. His horn blaring, the three little girls jumped out of his car. Red-headed Alice pulled out her pink cell phone.

               

“Daddy!” she said, “Can you pick us up at the Chase bank on South Street? We sold a lot of cookies today!”

Bio: Andrew Hilbert lives and works in Austin, TX. He maintains this blog: The Cheesepaper.

The Body by Andrew Hilbert.

There it was. Flies buzzed around it. There had to be a hundred of ‘em. Flies, not dead bodies. Of dead bodies there was only one.

Traffic did not slow down the way it usually does at grisly scenes. Nope. It just kept speeding. But the body was there. I know cuz I saw it. I know cuz I poked it.

                

He wasn’t a friend of mine or of anybody I’d recognized. This dead body had a suit on. A suit and tie. Nobody ‘round here wears those. It’s tacky.

                

“Smells like shit,” Crazy Bob said, “Tha’s why the flies swarm it. They think it’s shit. You check his pockets?”

                

“I don’t wanna touch it,” I said.

                

“Well, shit! Poke him and make fer certain he’s dead so he doesn’t get all jumpy when I reach in his back pocket!”

                

“Ok, you gotta stick?”

                

“A stick!? There are sticks all over the god damn place! We’re on the side of the freeway!”

                

I looked around but there were no sticks.

                

“You think a beer can’ll work?” I asked him.

                

“Is it a tall can?”

                

“Nope,” I said with the empty Bud in my hand.

                

“If you wanna get that close to him. I hear dead rich people curse you with wealth if you poke them. You don’t want that, do you?”

                

“Wealth?” I asked.

                

“Money, you idiot. Just poke the motherfucker!”

                

I poked him in the shoulder with my finger. He didn’t move. The flies made my skin feel like millions of things were crawling all over it. I like that feeling.

                

“He’s as dead as flies on shit!” Crazy Bob’s hands dove into each of the body’s side pockets simultaneously. Crazy Bob pulled out an ink pen.

                

“What’s the California Redemption Value on this?” Crazy Bob was holding the pen close to his eye. He sniffed it. “What the hell’s the use of a pen!?” Crazy Bob threw it onto the freeway. Tires screeched but there was no accident. A pen ain’t too much of a harm to the normal flow of things.

                

Crazy Bob turned the body over and reached into his back pocket. He pulled out the biggest wallet I’d ever seen.

                

“I think our nightmares are over!” Crazy Bob could barely lift it with one hand.

                

I ran toward him.

                

“Fifty-fifty?” I asked.

                

“Sixty-forty.”

                

“Fifty five-forty five?”

                

“Sixty-forty.”

                

“Ok.”

Crazy Bob opened the wallet. No money in it, just a bunch of golden and silver credit cards. No one would believe me and Crazy Bob could legitimately get our hands on one of those. There were just some lint balls and a receipt to a high class restaurant. He spent $200 on two plates.

                

“That’s where all the money went, goddammit!” Crazy Bob yelled.

                

“That’s one heavy receipt.”

                

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up! How’re we gonna split this? Sixty-Forty. What’s sixty percent of a lint ball and an eyelash?”

                

“I’ll take the receipt,” I offered.

                

“What? So you can pretend that you spent $200 on a meal? So you can be the King of Shit-town? No!” Crazy Bob waved his arms around, holding on to that damn wallet like it carried bars of gold.

                

“I just wanna look at it and imagine,” I said.

                

“Imagine what? Imagine what? You stupid damn idiot sonofabitch cock sucking wannabe moneyed snaggle ass! What’re you gonna do with the receipt? Use it as collateral to get shiny new spinny rims on your grocery cart?!”

                

“Fine, you take the receipt. You can have the whole damn thing.”

                

Crazy Bob threw the wallet into the freeway traffic. One of those platinum Visas must have had a real heavy balance on it or something because that wallet shattered the windshield on a Mercedes and it went skidding across four lanes, getting smashed by cars less valuable in each lane. The flies’d be happy soon. The bodies were stacking up as far as I could tell. Lots of honkin’ and hollerin’.

                

Sirens started blaring nearby. A fire truck came. Police cars came. Helicopters hovered over. The Mercedes driver was dead-- I saw an officer poke him. A couple of officers were interviewing survivors and witnesses and all of ‘em pointed at me and Crazy Bob. Crazy Bob smiled and waved at them.

                

“Look at it this way, Corker,” Crazy Bob put his arm around me. With his free arm he pointed across the sky, “Free meals, a place to sleep, and television.”

He paused a second and made sure I heard him take in a deep breath right before he said, “Jackpot.”

Andrew Hilbert lives in Austin, TX.