CHAPTER 4: Spittin' Introductions

Strange indeed, are the occurrences required, to make a man seek to don vomit-encovered clothing.

Stranger still, the occurrences required to make a man desperate enough to want, and to attempt to steal, lice and flea-infested clothing off a homeless man, with the intent to wear them.

These occurrences had, however, happened in the mind of Steve.  As these were the rails that his current train of thought rode upon.

As he rose up, and swung at the man, however, he couldn't help but be a little disappointed when Steve felt his shoulder dislocate as he was flipped, rather painfully, onto the soggy ground he'd just gotten up from. 

As he stared up at the drenched man who had effortlessly done what many movie stuntmen take quite a few takes to get just right, he quickly surmised that perhaps, this was not a man to be trifled with.

Ronald stood, or, from Steve's perspective, floated up-side-down, at about 6"1, obviously weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 190lbs, and, apparently, knew how to dislocate arms when they were presented to him in a hostile manner.  He wore the traditional, albeit with an usually high level of recent-vomit-stains, homeless person rags, and, even had the typical crazy-guy tinfoil hat.  But there was something about him...  Something that made Steve want to know his story.  Without getting up, Steve presented his un-dislocated left arm in an effort to shake the man's hand.  "Hi.", he moaned, and, as an afterthought, "My name's Steve."

"Ronald." Ronald spat, shaking the proffered hand.

"Homeless?"

"Yup." he expectorated.  (Don't make me start quoting Bill Nye again… Spit!  It means spit!)

"That helmet there to keep aliens from reading your thoughts?"

"Yup."  he spat.

"Got a spare?"

Ronald paused, both from the apparent lack of sarcasm in the query, and in the remembering of asking the naked stranger a similar question, but decided he was far too vomit encoated to make large statements, nor to appreciate irony to that extent.  "Nope." he spat some more.

"Stop spitting on me?"

"Nope."  He expectorated again.

"Pop my shoulder back into place?"

Ronald paused again, shrugged, and bent down and snapped Steve's shoulder back into its socket, emitting a very pleasant scream from Steve’s lips.  Ronald smiled, dripping.

"Help me up?"


"Sure." He dripped, yanking him up to a standing position.

There was an awkwardly, dangling, pause.

"So." Ronald started, keeping his eyes up, "Large-tentacled-purple-rhino-lookin' fellah?"

"Er, no.  He was gray."


"Ah."