Fishcoat was a mustachio'd gentleman of the upper class who was never seen out and about without nine flavors of monocle, all of which were bitter and horrid. He liked to lick at least one around 4 pm, as an afternoon tide-me-over sort of snack between luncheon and supper. He never wore the same suit of clothes twice, and had never once been late for an appointment. Such was the world of Fishcoat. I am going to tell you how he died.
It happened the day the lollipop girl appeared on the doorstep. Fishcoat, who was enjoying his daily operatic in the bathtub, was most perturbed at the interrupting chime of the doorbell, which cut short his warbling rendition of the Barber of Seville. Fishcoat stood, his sudsy fat rolls bouncing soapily out of the tub and into a towel. He made his way down the stairs and opened the door.
A tiny waif confronted him, wielding a bushel of crystallized sugar-pops on a bushel of wrapped paper sticks. "BUY A LOLLIPOP!" she enthused. Fishcoat gasped. He did not know how one deals with children, especially when one is clad in a towel. He slammed the door in abject terror, and ran back to his suite. He opened the window, and peered down below. The tot was still present, still waiting patiently at the door. He withdrew his bulbous head, and assured himself that the lollipopper would inevitably disappear.
Five minutes passed. Fishcoat had clothed himself in a new suit, regained his composure, and poured himself a flagon of tequila. Such was life. But as he steeled himself for the impending floodtide of alcohol, he was snatched up in the hooks of a sudden and irresistable urge to go have a gander once again out the window. He looked. The lollipop girl was gone. No sweet candy vendor stood on his doorstep. Fishcoat smiled, closed the window, and blissfully quaffed his pint of pick-me-up, which immediately knocked him into unconsciousness.
In the terrifyingly pristine corridors of his upper-class mind, Fishcoat drifted. Behind his senses he heard a rumbling with a backbone of mariachi cornet. His mind flopped tequilishly around to confront this intruder. Juaxtango, he cactus loa of the wastes, loomed into his vision, his ectoplasmic tango shutting down all possibility of resistance. Fishcoat's will jellied. Juaxtango bellowed a psionic roar of maraca that carried one simple demand: BUY A FUCKING LOLLIPOP!
Fishcoat awoke with a wide-eyed howl, his pristine mustachios curled perplexingly upward. He leapt to his feet, grabbed his overstuffed wallet, and bowled down the stairs, flutting money unceremoniously in his path. The door, painted and bevelled in the most urbane style, was shattered by the barreling corpulent missile of Fishcoat's bulk. Unimpeded, the fat man ran on.
He ran as only a man recently confronted by a sombrero'd mexican tequila spirit can run, careening forth in search of the tiny fundraising lollipop vendor. Three blocks down the road, after trampling a bulldog and traumatizing its aged master forever, he found the wee tyke. Foaming and wild-eyed, he demanded a candy.
"one dollar and fifty cents!" she exclaimed, holding up one of the tasties to Fishcoat's flaring, fur-lined nose. The heaving rotundus snatched the offered sweet, and dug through its wallet for a bill of such small denomination. Having found none, he threw a hundred at the girl and bowed graciously before sticking the lollipop in his mouth and descending in a torrent of bottom-first fat rolls onto the curb.
The sweetness was overwhelming. Fishcoat closed his eyes and Juaxtango appeared behind them, cackling and backed up by a quartet of sombrero'd mexican towel boys sporting mustachios every bit as impressive as Fishcoat's. They handed the drunk and sugared fat man a mouth harp, and faded blissfully into the tequila-lollipop sunset of Mariachi Voodoo Hell.
