"Last night the mandibles apologized, after

"Last night the mandibles apologized, after all these years." Her husband clenched the steering wheel of the rusted pickup truck. "And I forgave them ... " The desert highway

was overrun by the Mandibles ["mahn DEEB lace"], a Mexican drug syndicate. They stole his teddy bear years ago, using Mr. Snuggles to smuggle cocaine. The emotional trauma led to

a book deal and a talk show interview on Ellen. The irony was that backstage, Ellen was taking bumps of the cocaine produced by "the Mandibles" which had been smuggled inside a

maxilla, in an another ironic twist, which wasn't really ironic enough to fool the studio audience, which today was filled with DEA agents. They jacked the glassy-eyed Ellen and h

g. They smacked Ellen upside the head. "Not another peep outta you!" they warned. "PEEP!" cried Ellen defiantly & wrestled her way out of their grasp & back to her dressing room.

There, Ellen kept peeping over and over, & if you walked by you could've heard her. Very strange. While she was grounded to her dressing room, she fantasized about being a chicken.

And a leprechaun. And a fire hydrant. Damned near everything conceivable -- but only within the Western post-industrial mindset. She crumpled her diploma and tossed it into the

fireplace, where it burst into sudden flame. Inside the flame she saw her destiny. It was bright white, beckoning, drawing her into the embers of the future. She followed. The next

thing she knew, she was laying on a flat surface with a massive headache. She opened her eyes, then immediately shut them tight. She had seen what no one was meant to see, and she