CANCER BOB

 

CANCER BOB AND THE YOYO

Bob with the Cancer, a charred renegade cowboy scout was puffing and lolloping along on his half-assed, half-blind donkey when he passed two unlikely lads cavorting on the skirted hem of a daisy prairie.
One of the unlikely lads, Pete with a rooster, cried, ‘yo!’
‘Yo,’ repeated his crushed-almond-eyed friend.
Cancer Bob creaked around his saddle to face them: ‘what in the name of sweet Jesus are you two female faggots wanting from me?’
‘Yo yo,’ shouted Rooster Pete and his nutty fiend.
Now the donkey agitated around to bring Cancer Bob nuzzle-up-close to the yoyo pair.
‘I’ll say it only once: why are you rattle-snakes repeating your death rattle claim on my running-out-time?’
‘Yoyo, sir. It’s all the craze in the East. Spare us a dime and we’ll furnish you with our presentation.’
‘What do you think, Dong?’ Cancer Bob asked of his donkey. ‘Shall we give them a dime for their troubles or shall we blast their dim-witted asses back up to Kingdom come?’
Donkey Dong looked heavenward and brayed very loud.
‘Sorry boys, I have my answer,’ said Cancer Bob with a rotten kind of smile. Then out came his pistols and squeeze went the triggers. Bullets flew and the two unfortunate, unlikely lads fell backwards onto the skirted hem of the prairie.
As the rooster cooked on a fire and Donkey Dong hoofed up granules of desert to make two shallow graves, Cancer Bob lay on his back doing an expert cat’s cradle with the yoyo. ‘Those talent less fuckers will be pushing up daisies soon enough,’ he said.
‘And so will you, Bob,’ replied Donkey Dong.
‘Guess I will at that,’ said Cancer Bob allowing a crooked smile to pass across his lips as he offered his donkey dong a drag on his nicotine.

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About Alan McCormick Writing

Alan McCormick lives with his family in Wicklow. He’s a Trustee and former writer in residence for InterAct Stroke Support, a charity employing actors to read fiction and poetry to stroke patients. His writing has won prizes and been widely performed and published, including recently in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, The Lonely Crowd, Southword, Sonder and Exacting Clam magazines, and previously in Salt’s Best British Short Stories, A Wild and Precious Life – A Recovery Anthology, Modern Nature Anthology – Responses to Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, The Poetry Bus, The Sunday Express Magazine, The Bridport and Fish Prize Anthologies, Popshot, Litro and Confingo; and online at Epoque Press, Words for the Wild, 3:AM Magazine, Culture Matters, Dead Drunk Dublin, Mono, Fictive Dream, The Quietus and Found Polaroids. His story ‘Firestarter’ came second in the 2022 Francis MacManus RTE Short Story Competition and ‘Boys on Film’ came second in The 2023 Plaza Prizes Sudden Fiction competition. DOGSBODIES and SCUMSTERS , his collection of short stories with flash shorts inspired by Jonny Voss’s pictures, was published by Roast Books and long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize. Alan and Jonny also collaborate on illustrated shorts known as Scumsters – see more at Deaddrunkdublin.com and Scumsters.blogspot
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