THE DUUM- WITZ HORROR. A TRUE STORY

" DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT BUBE WEISS,  VERRUCKT ALTE BUBE AND HIS " NEICE" FRAULEIN           SCHARF. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY GOT UP TO,  IN THEIR BAUERHAUS,  DEEP IN THE FOREST. 
     AND WHAT'S MORE,  I DON'T WANT TO KNOW .


     THEIR WICKED DEBAUCHERY NOT ONLY CONJURED UP ECHOES OF THAT MONSTER HEINRICH       KRAMER,  BUT IT THREATENED TO SULLY THE REPUTATION OF OUR FINE UPSTANDING  TOWN"


      Horst Schickelgruber. Oberburgomeister of Berchtesgaden 


                                              PART ONE




  If you leave the autobahn, 20 kilometres outside Salzburg,  forsaking  the glorious  vistas: the forests of silvery birch and majestic pine, spread like an ever growing,  ever changing carpet beneath the ancient feet of the mountains ,wrapped  up in their lonely but regal grandeur,  soaring gracefully above: today a vibrant patchwork of luscious greenery,  tomorrow a mournful shroud of somnolent brown and fading gold, you will reach the secretive,  somewhat squalid backwater of Schwarze Hubel. 

Along with the now abandoned village of Duum Witz,  the stunted cancerous Schwartze  Hubel,  nothing more than an unsightly pustule on Mother Nature's posterior,  remains the area's most closely guarded secret. 

As what happened there, over 4 accursed days, during the solstice of 1963, makes memories of the Berghof, the Kelstenhaus and even Martin Bormann's penchant for frilly lingerie look like cheery snapshots from Obersturmfuhrer Hocker's photo album 

Thus it is a name you will not find in the glossy tourist brochures. Indeed, even the merest mention of it's reviled  name will cause the finest, bushiest Kaiser Wilhelm  moustache to sag and droop and  the cheeriest,  ruddiest countenance of the most affable Bavarian bierstube proprietor,  resplendent in his lederhosen and gabelsberger hat, to turn a most pallid shade of sour. 

Causing the garrulous good natured torrent of jokes and slightly ribald anecdotes to instantly dry up.

" Nein,  no speak English . Fuck you yankee "he grunts, as he hurriedly bustles you on your way. Leaving behind a suffocating cloud of unspoken,  unspeakable perhaps?, dread, hanging over what had been,  until a few short seconds ago : a convivial barroom,  full of lusty voices, good cheer, laughter and hectic,  flushed faces, all  overflowing with bonhomie and  beer. The golden liquid,   gushing, like life's water,  to lubricate the evening, as it had lubricated many evenings before 

Before the Duum Witz Horror of 1963

Joe Ploppie, known to friend and foe alike as Fezzo,  due to his rather eccentric occupation: a travelling fez salesman for Hargrove and Kudlaty Fez makers, DaRouse's Snatch,  Indiana,  just happened to be driving through Schwatze Hubel, having just taken a wrong turn outside the picturesque hamlet of FloppyKoch.

Mr Ploppie was in the mood to celebrate. He"d sealed the biggest deal of his career. A confirmed order of 250 thousand two horned plastic Fezzes for a brewery in Vienna,  

Not even his still tender rump,  brutally enflamed by a vigorous afternoon's " testing" of the horns, could dampen or spoil his effervescent cheer.

He was happy. Yes, actually  happy! For the first time in a long time,  possibly since the day he was released from the Deprogramming Unit at the Special Needs block in the High Security Psychiatric Facility,  where he and his few surviving fellow cult members were sent,  after the now infamous Gunfight at OK OK Coral, when the FBI finally stormed the Church of the Sacred Doppelgangers compound,  outside Armstrongia township,  Utah.

He was no longer haunted by bullnecked all American phantasms. No more dinnertimes ruined,  turned into a Freudian nightmare by the disembodied mole,  detached from a fake mom's neck, winking up at him from his bowl of spaghetti hoops 

But he didn't believe in HARVEY anymore. His implants had been successfully removed,  he'd paid his debts to society. 

He was no longer Brother Sagittarius Ploppie,  Junior Under Enforcer and Wiper in Chief of the Holy Duvet. He was Mr Joe Ploppie,  husband,  father and successful fez salesman. 

After calling Mrs Ploppie,  back home in Impetigo,  Texas -" Oh Joe" she gushed,  " I can't wait until the little ploppies hear about this!!" - he  decided to take a leisurely drive through the scenic heartlands of Bavaria,  maybe sampling  the delights of the famous Braunhaus tittie bar, where  his friend and ex co worker,  Larrytrotter had been arrested.  His antics,    attempting   " clarification "with a large buxom Middle  Eastern prostitute,  while standing, resplendent in the soiled remnants of an adult diaper,  a faeces splattered gimp mask and a spiked dog collar,  in the middle of a busy Munich strasse had made the headlines,  even back in sleepy old DaRouse's Snatch. 

" Poor old Larrytrotter " Fezzo muses solemnly, as he finds himself driving through a seemingly deserted village; full of broken or boarded up windows, crumbling facades,  untended lawns and hedgerows choked and overgrown with the thickly veined tendrils of gigantic weeds. So unlike the other hamlets he's passed through on this trip: full of brightly decorated houses,  lovingly preserved gables,  luscious beautifully cultivated gardens and plump, well fed,  happy faces.

" He was lucky just to get off with an internal  tarring and feathering " Fezzo shuddered , rolling up the window,  as the overwhelming stench of putrifaction causes  a sudden wave of nausea,  making him heave and gag,  like he'd just chugged an entire jugful of Ma Butler's IErotic  Elixir. 

The tenebrous tunnel, looming ahead, like  a snapshot stolen from a Sanibelite's Freudian  daydreams,  peeling and dilapidated,  a dangerously rickety structure, beanpole  stilts tied together haphazardly,  like a copywritten ( sic) chart in the  last novel he read, barely stretching over the river, a murky sort of gaseous yellow colour,  moving with an exaggerated sluggishness while emitting a a stream of quite suggestive burpaceous gurgling noises,  fills Fezzo with a sense of imminent dread, reminding him of " the  bad old days", when he was still a member of the cult,  and he was forced to answer a question relating to the divinity, ascension  and ultimate dormition of the 2nd Marguerite and the 3rd  Spotty the dog

But all that was behind him now. After being released from Bellevue he had successfully applied to fez salesman school,  As for Jimbo Baggins? He's moved back to Middle Earth, working in his cousin,  Jemima's, tavern,  round the other end of sleepy old Bell End Hill. Hopefully he found his toupee,  to cover up his extensive lobotomy scars. And Stevie Gaal? Apparently he was working as a cabinboy for  the Scientologist's Sea Org. It was only a matter of time I guess,  if anyone needed to cross the bridge to clear to get his Thetans operating properly,  it was Stevie. I wonder if they ever did find the bodies? As for John Butler? $2 an hour,  dressed up as gigantic bleached arsehole,  advertising Burnham and Dragoo Anal Bleaching Emporium,  sure beat life plus 99 years in a Supermax with an entire family of otters nesting in your abdomen. 

Still,  even with a face painted like a puckered,  unnaturally dilated sphincter , it mustn't be too much fun,knowing PETA and the Squirrel Liberation Front have taken contracts out on your life

Armstrong is NOT a God, he's just a smarmy toupee  wearing  hustler, he can't see into my innermost soul or my bank accounts. Nor does he possess Prima Nocte rights with Mrs Ploppie 

After driving through the gloomy countryside; desolate,  depopulated,  nothing more than a  cratered treeless wasteland,  even  someone as inobservant as Mr Ploppie( who once thought  Dorothy from the Golden Girls was the missing  2nd Marguerite).could see something was badly wrong.  The landscape  being such a far cry from the lush verdant forestscapes nearby: full of cool wooded glades and brooding wordless magic,  the untamed magic of the seasons,  protected then as now  by the towering  inviolable mountains, with their  sun dappled peaks, cloud scarred precipices and jagged gorges. Suddenly,  noticing the first stealthy murmurs of the approaching night,  treading warily across the leprous wilderness on black cats feet, and not wanting to drive through such unwelcoming,  hostile even, terrain, especially in the darkness,  and having just reached another small hamlet: the dilapidated shadows of the few houses huddled together like orphans,  seemed to flinch from the piercing beams of his headlights,  nevertheless,  he pulls up in front of a reasonably well maintained bierstube. A rather crude wooden structure,  like the rough outline of a chalet, the maker, for whatever reason,  had decided to leave unfinished. Adorned with a lone neon sign,   crackling and flickering erratically ;  advertising Waffenstark Golden Showers,  a type of local bier no doubt,  Fezzo thinks,   as he clambered  out the car, stuffing his catheter  bag discreetly into an oversized inside pocket,  squinting up at the dim lettering , and what appears  to be the quite intoxicating,  seductive even image beneath,  probably just  malfunctioning , he ponders dreamily gazing  up at the jolting neon outline of a handsomely endowed man urinating ,  he could almost feel the pallid splatter of the grim neon piss splashing on him, dribbling down his sunken pockmarked cheeks,  as he turns to peer inquisitively down the single rutted track,  winding through the  unprepossessing village. 

On each side of unpaved road,  glowering back at him with sightless indifference,  like the time his dad took him to pop his cherry on his 31st birthday,  at Madame Dick's , Impetigo's notorious blind prostitute,  two almost identical rows of slatternly medieval styled high gabled wooden bauerhausen. 

The haughty ,  impressionistic,  downright  sinister  outline of the distant  mountains  createan ominous sense of foreboding,  such is the  intensity even the infamously tone deaf Fezzo could just about detect the malevolent sensations,  manifesting as tiny tremors of electricity, the sparks  trying  to burst through his clogged arteries, trying to reach a brain,  too long desensitized by lurid conspiracy soaked fantasy and over tight fezzes. ( Quite an achievement as for over 15 years he thought  " Fuck off you creepy befezzed bastard " constituted a legally binding marriage contract,  and a few blurry old photos,  wilfully misinterpreted school records and a great big steamy bubbling vat of horse manure,  seasoned with primo grade snake oil meant Lee Oswald was,  inactuality a pair of near identical doppelgangers)

" Actually,  this looks like a pretty good place to spend the night " Fezzo chirps,  as he heads for the rather ominous looking portal,  a menacing gothic archway, no doubt  pillaged long ago during the fratricidal Wars of Religion "Armst...God knows( remembering his deprogramming just in time) how old that is" As he continues to stare up up at the distorted  weatherbeaten granite face of a medieval gargoyle carved above the entrance,  its goatish features frozen in a leering grimace as it cavorts in vulgar glee, spraying  its  streams of stone piss down on the heads of the hapless drunks below, to sanctify the thirsty patrons,  and to commiserate with the helpless bums  reeling out to face the wrath of their unforgiving wifes, just as he had spent  centuries  pissing on the mitres of bishops and the tonsured heads of monks :so entranced was Mr Ploppie , he almost collides with the stout drunk staggering out, glaring at Fezzo he snarls , wretches and  curses before  promptly vomiting on his shoes. 

Fezzo begins to relax,  almost feeling as if he was back home, not literally at home, but snug in the very accommodating little club,  15 miles outside Impetigo ,  " hmmm" he muses " any village where men can openly vomit on each other,  and not just in the privacy of their own homes,  and is decorated with pissing men can't be all bad " He even contemplates wearing his catheter bag on the outside,  " like an incontinent Superman" , he thinks, before his self consciousness and the awful memories of his Senior Prom ( think a sub lavatorial remake of Carrie- minus the blood) , amongst other,  less definable motivations,  causes him to remove his hand from down the  front  of his crumpled beige corduroys 

Fezzo,  who,as you may have guessed ,is, at the best of times,  a stranger to the niceties of hygiene,  gives an accommodating smile: the pale, almost fustian half light spilling out illuminates his plump somewhat gormless features ( once described as looking the a lump of plasticine moulded by a semi comatose Madame Dick)   making  them  glimmer with  a gaunt  eerie almost ethereal pallor.

" Don't worry about it buddy,  it happens a lot" he trills,  waving a stumpy mis shapen hand in salutation ( until his epic heroics at the 1959 Sanibel Bed Wetting Olympics,  becoming the first non Doyle to win gold since the War of 1812) his biggest claim to fame was the leading article in the Lancet medical journal,  discussing the musculoskeletal degeneration caused by obsessive masturbation) Biting his lip,   he summons up just enough courage to cry out,  " Mein herr,  you have telephone? We maybe go for drink and pee pee tomorrow?"

For a second or two the words hang suspended in the hollow twilight,  as if being asphyxiated by thin icy cords of piano wire,  lost amidst the muffled shouts and shrieks of laughter,  drifting out from the bierstube 

The drunkard halts momentarily :  a hunched slovenly figure, wearing a ragged flecktarn combat smock and equally distressed feldgrau trousers,  tucked into a pair of highly polished hobnail jackboots. 

He wears a black kepi pulled down extremely low, all but obscuring his face. 

He pauses, swaying ever so slightly before scratching his balls, and , glowering  round at Fezzo 

" Fuck you" he growls as he stumbles off.

With an all too familiar sigh of unconsumation  Fezzo watches him for a moment or two. Weaving down the centre of the crude dirt track,  mumbling incoherently to himself,  before disappearing into a grimy swirl of jaundice yellow shadow,  cast by one of the most dilapidated houses .He thinks about following him, until he remembers what he read about the extradition arrangements 

With a shrug he enters the bierstube 

TO BE CONTINUED 

Copywrited 2023 Trine Day Verlag/ Deutsche Kouphaus

PART TWO


Entering the bierstube ,  his catheter tube practically tingling with expectation, ( indeed he hadn't been so excited since he attended the Clan McPloppie reunion,  having learned  about his Scottish McPloppie  heritage  and his famous Scottish ancestors- Sawney Bean McPloppie,  Gruoch Macbeth McPloppie,  Major Weir McPloppie,  Deacon Brodie McPloppie and,  more recently Peter Manuel McPloppie and Wee Jimmy Krankie McPloppie from the Deep fOO ancestry website/ dating site)

However, like the Clan McPloppie reunion: Fezzo was soon to be disabused,  but not in the way  he was  wanting . He had gone,  dressed up as William  "Braveheart 'McPloppie ,  using a homemade coagulant instead of woad, for " warpaint",  greenish yellow dribbles  and  caked effluent didn't quite have the same effect as blue, and as for the swarms of flies Fezzos costume attracted?, he'd been expecting a lot of cabers to toss , with a haggisful of braw big boned burly McPloppies, lots of bushy red beards, bulging muscles and kilts,  he wasn't really too bothered about the male McPloppies. Instead,  he had stumbled into a dingy flophouse, apparently made up to look like the apocryphal " Hanging of the Chiefs" scene,  reeking of rotten meat and cats piss, with a handful of wizened hookers and lecherous reprobrates from the nearby La Jolla trailerpark,  drinking cans of Mcewan's Lager from plastic bags and listening to "Donald,  Wheres yer Troosers ?", on a loop while a hulking monstrosity attempted to slow dance with an emaciated hooker in a bright blue wig, who kept getting entangled with the tubes of the dialysis machine she dragged behind her,  as she tried to remove her vivid pink lycra boob tube) he was , well he didn't quite know what to expect. 

Large florid faced men in lederhosen hopefully,  energetically fingering  their tubas,  practicing for their Oompah bands, or quaffing great stone tankards of foaming liquid,  or even,  dare he wish!, a few shapely young blades flopping around in wetsuits  , snorkels and skimpy PVC...

However,  as he pushes the heavy reinforced steel door open, a door still covered in bullet and even what looks like shell, or  bazooka holes, choosing to ignore the rusted advert for Der Sturmer's  1941 New Year Issue,  poor Fezzo felt his hopes shrivel. 

Yet again. 

It was Tijuana 1971 all over again,  " Sure Senor Fezzo micro penis not a problem,  a little snip snip,  stretch and stuff and you'll be hung better than the communistas at El Generale's birthday celebration " they had said, but $30000 and his left kidney later he was left looking like the unwiggliest worm in Nagasaki...

It was just your average bierstube. Full of fat middle aged men,  sitting around morosely attempting to deaden the pain of their pointless existence in gallons of the local brew.

There were 4 of them slumped at the bar. Through the bleary haze they  looked uncannily like a troupe of trained walruses,  except for the beards and the donkey jackets. 

The proprietor,  a small unkempt rodent faced creature,  with greasy light blonde hair,  slicked back,  a protruding nose, sallow cheeks and a large unseemly mole on his chin,  studied Fezzo intently,  from beneath drooping eyelids,  leaning on the bar, his angular,  slightly pointy chin resting on his hands 

The interior of the bierstube itself had obviously seen much better days. Perhaps before the war. Decorated in typical Bavarian style; carved timber and homely knickknacks,  the place exuded a grim aura of disrepair and neglect. Fezzo tried his best to ignore the large uncategorisable splatters, staining the walls,  they seemed to glow , pulsate and MOVE, like jellyfish. Then there was the mounted stags heads..and the bosrs head, and the warthogs,  and the,  well,  a creature that looked suspiciously like his high school maths teacher,  John Butler,  who was widely believed to be at least half Sasquatch. All of the severed heads seemed to be smiling at him, the Butler Sasquatch even seemed to be winking and grimacing,  apparently its attempt at come hither bedroom eyes..

Trying not to let his fear , his mild arousal and disappointment show, Fezzo came strutting in, his paunchy pockmarked face wreathed in a cherubic grin.

He was still celebrating after all!

250 000 two Horned plastic fezzes is still 250 000, well 249 990, the ones he tested were left looking like a herd of Sanibel unicorns after mating time , two horned plastic Fezzes!

" Guten nacht,  mein herr" , he chirps , in his atrocious German,  his smile widens,  revealing a row of badly discoloured rotten stumps 

" Ah another Amerikaner " the proprietor replies with a wry smirk, trying not to flinch as he is hit by gusts of Fezzos halitosis breath,  straightening up he bows politely across the bar.

One of the patrons, a grizzled old coot with ruddy cheeks,  a bulbous nose,   so crisscrossed with a spidery web of burst veins it could almost be used as a Nazi Conspiracy Bingo card,  glazed eyes and a thatch of frizzy steel grey hair, glances up briefly, then,   like Dick Gilbride in a dentist's chair,  he he groans,  seemingly horror struck ,  shakes his head and begins picking his nose, pausing to examine each freshly plucked specimen 

The other three ignore Fezzo,  preferring the company of their beer and their memories 

" Yes, I'm an American,  " Fezzo answers breezily, " Just passing through on business in fact,  but"

" You ended up getting lost, ja?" The bartender interrupts , grinning at the grizzled barfly,  who mutters something unintelligible beneath his breath,  before turning his attention to his ears.

" Because ", he continues, in a matter of fact voice, as he picks up a couple of empty tankards,  " No one passes through here unless they're lost"

Like a quartet of arthritic bullfrogs the four barflies burst into an aria of wheezy chuckles.

Fezzo responds with  a nervous guffaw. Suddenly he felt a flashback or two stirring: the time he'd gone to Don Jeffries Birth of a Nation party in blackface,  and ended up at a Black Panther's Rally,  

" I suppose you'd like a beer?" the bartender enquires laconically,  before adding,  rather enigmatically,  " Now you're here...perhaps a bed for the night too?"

This apparently innocent and guileless enquiry triggers yet more sub aquatic croaks of merriment 

The thought of a beer, a bed, and,  not forgetting the sign outside, even if the prospect of a Waffenstark Golden Shower with the grubby old drunks was hardly an appetizing one, " Still " Fezzo thought to himself,  as he stumps towards the bar, " ive showered with much worse", a quick sideways glance at the frizzy haired old walrus,  guzzling beer and grunting ,  " much worse "

Beaming in anticipation Fezzo steps up to the bar, placing both hands on the gnarled wooden counter, " A beer please,  I think " ,  he gives the bartender a clumsy wink, " I'd like to try your local brew,a Waffenstark Golden Shower  " , he pauses,  before adding  coyly,  " and a beer"

The bartender gives him a querelous look, scratching his head in , what appears to be genuine puzzlement,  before bursting out into great hoots of laughter,  slapping his spindly thighs 

" Another water sports enthusiast  and piss drinker, eh? We get all sorts here, mein herr,  Waffenstark Golden Shower is a brand of lagerbier, as for the sign outside? ", he waves an antenna like finger, " is playing up again,  it's not a pissing man but someone pouring a beer! And the gargoyle is broken too!! Originally he was throwing a vat of boiling oil on the heads of his enemies, over the centuries the vat has crumbled away , it came from the Von Kochsukersteins castle,  NOT a cathedral. 

He pauses again,  and, picking up a glass he begins wiping it methodically 

" Do you want a beer or not?"

Before the visibly flustered Fezzo could reply the bierstube was filled with a calamitous gurgling sound, like  the time FEMA tried to perform an invasive colonic irrigation procedure on Stevie Gaal, seconds later the gents toilet door flew open and a tall rangy middle aged man in a olive green camouflage jacket and a baseball cap came striding towards the bar 

His appearance had an electrifying effect; the four bar potatoes seemed to sober up instantly,  sitting,  instead of slouching all four grinned up at him.

The bartender too, lost his air of sullen detachment , smiling broadly 

" Ah, Mr O' Hara,  I take it you didn't have the skits from all the wieners and pumpernickel after all? If you're ready I'll continue with the story of the Duum Witz Horror "

To be continued