The Barq's Bandit

“They say he’s a ghost. A myth. A legend. I know better though. I was there when it happened. I’d say that guy got what he deserved…but he didn’t really deserve that. The kid came in and sat at a table in the back. It was really shadowy, like you’d expect from his type. It was almost like a movie the way he moved. Even the jukebox seemed to know he was here. It started playin’ a song I ain’t never heard before. Didn’t even know I had that song. He sat in the back table and ordered a drink. Root beer, it was. Barqs’. Ya know how the commercials say “It’s got bite”? Well, he bit that drink right back. That’s when it all started. He let out a burp that made the lamp shake. The jukebox skipped. One of the waitresses fainted, and dropped a plate full of Southwestern Frijole, Bean, Cheese and Queso Burriots right in Spartacus Webster’s lap. Now he got up and he was real mad. He was redder than the salsa runnin’ down his face. He stood up and he walked over to that boy and he said. “Hey, boy” everything went quiet. “Ya dropped somethin’” he said. “Actually, that was your order” the boy said. Then, it all started. The boy took out a guitar. And he started to play. We couldn’t tell what it was at first, but after a little while it got real clear. Super Mario Brothers. Spartacus stood there, his veins poppin’ out of his head, one hand in his pocket, around a knife, the other in his nose, tryin’ to get a bug that flew up in it. Once he got that bug, he flung it, snot ‘n everything right at that boys high e string. The string snapped with an evil “twang!” and that boy stood up. He put the guitar down on that table, like his girl after she’d been shot. Well we was on that old Spartacus faster than Japanese tourists on a good pi’ture. He flung him into a chair and yanked the laces right out of his boots. Tied him up so quick his eyes started whirly giggin’ around! In the total opposite direction, they spun and spun and spun…and that’s when it got nasty. Ole Spartacus said “You get me outta this chair, ‘fore I tell ye a joke!” But the kid didn’t let him out. He just walked over to his table and opened up his guitar case. We couldn’t tell right away what it was he took out, but we knew it couldn’t a’ been good. “Why’d the chicken cross the road?” Spartacus was just settin’ himself up fer a hurtin’. That kid turned around and I’ll be damned if he didn’t have the biggest, softest looking feather I ever seen! He kicked Spartacus, chair ‘n all up ‘gainst a wall, so there wasn’t no room for him to move. Then he sat right down in his lap, one leg on each side and he took that feather and tickled that poor man till he wet himself. Then he stood up, packed his things, paid for his drink and left. The jukebox seemed to know he was goin’ too, ‘cause it started playin’ another song I ain’t never heard come out of it before. And that was the last time I saw him.”