Maximum Pensioner Overdrive

“Doc” by Nicky Barkla (2012)

Occasionally, somewhere in this vast world, there is a person experiencing a profound moment of what is referred to as “batshit insanity”.  The following story is an account of exactly that, the moment one man’s life is altered so drastically that, although words can describe it, they’re almost inadequate.  As such, it is highly recommended that you acquire all of the drugs available to you within a twelve mile radius and do all of them before reading on.  Originally written on the 16th September 2016.

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“Maximum Pensioner Overdrive“

He was an octogenarian, loved the swinging sounds of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and never left the comfort of his house without his Balmoral tweed flat cap on. His name was Sidney and he wasn’t known coast to coast for anything more impressive than his golf handicap. He most certainly wasn’t known as the geriatric with the most. That all changed one day however when he was celebrating his eighty seventh birthday.

There came a knock upon his front door, and after taking almost an entire day to get there in his squeaking Zimmer frame, he answered it to find a small pink rabbit standing upright and wearing an impeccable tuxedo. The rabbit didn’t speak a word, instead offering the old man a small boxed present with a nice bow on top. Sidney took the gift wrapped present and the rabbit promptly vanished into a puff of green smoke. Thinking it rather odd but probably a figment of his astronomically aged imagination, Sidney simply shrugged – dislocating both shoulders in the process – and shuffled back into his living room whereupon he opened the mysterious package.

Inside the box there was naught but a small purple pill. Thinking that perhaps this was his medical subscription being delivered by a flamboyant mute dwarf that looked a bit like a rabbit on account of his sight-crippling cataracts, the old man picked the pill up and swallowed it without another thought.

Around twenty minutes or so later, Sidney suddenly turned to his lumpy wife, launched the TV at her contorted face and announced that he was going to go apeshit on the world. He wasted absolutely no time whatsoever with stupid things like calling an ambulance for his bleeding spouse or having a change of heart and instead chose to grab a microwaveable taco and a pre-inflated seven foot banana that had materialized on the coffee table before him. Chewing, screaming and laughing, he leapt head-first through the living room window and left his Florida apartment forever. The spectacular legend of well-seasoned Sidney had begun.

No longer did he nurture a decades old love for Glenn Miller and timeless tweed. Now the old man found both comfort and vigor in the earth-shattering sounds of Megadeth blasting from the technicolour clouds above and the neon top hat with “Pussy Slayer” written on it in eyesore glitter that he swiftly stole from a passing pimp. Sidney had undergone some sort of change, he wasn’t entirely sure what, but he was so full of energy and the need to lose his proverbial marbles that he didn’t even remotely care. Bless that little pink tuxedo-wearing dwarf, he thought to himself – or rather shouted in a decidedly slurred voice into the strobe-lighted heavens – as he ran around the streets trying to focus his attention but failing miserably and instead discus punching tourists right in the clam.

First thing was first: discard the inflatable banana. It had served the senior citizen well, taking the impact of a seven storey fall, but now it needed to be tossed in a traffic warden’s face, which it quickly was. The warden was next pushed into oncoming traffic whereupon she burst like a bag of tomato soup and Sidney danced in the wash of red slush that blasted out the back end of the bus that obliterated her. Now, second thing was second: steal a car.

Sure, the old man had his own but it looked like a pensioner’s four-wheeled rust bucket (because it was) and Sidney knew that the only thing it did well was make him look like a wrinkly old ballsack with no sense of adventure and a decidedly awful taste in cars. The energetic retiree craved adventure now, not shit cars. He wanted to grab life by the balls, drench it in pussy juice and cocaine and snort that fucker till his heart exploded at the speed of light. To hell with that old Volkswagen with its convenient seat warmers. Sidney tore off all his clothes like Hulk Hogan, only with much more unintentional defecation and showboating, and scoured the Florida streets for a suitable replacement motor.

In no time at all he had completely lost focus and had fornicated with eight different fire hydrants, twelve bags of shopping and a palm tree before getting even more sidetracked and setting a world record for most windows licked in an hour. It was only when he licked the windshield of a supremely expensive sportscar that he remembered his original intention. Sidney had located and subsequently proceeded to steal a rich oil tycoon’s Ferrari and without a care in the world, he immediately tore off across the Atlantic Ocean at the speed of actual dog shit to gay Paris. Why Paris? Because excitement with a foreign twang, that’s why.

Upon reaching the Eiffel Tower by crashing directly into it whilst singing upbeat songs about nuclear kebab meat and deformed children, the naked old man changed into a business suit he’d found inside the car as he flew through its shattered windshield and set about scaling the tower like a wrinkly Spiderman on smack trying to chase an off-colour goblin up a skyscraper. When Sidney reached the top of the lofty erection, he tore the catheter out of his urethra and pissed a steady stream off the end, sang a song about boobs, did a triple backflip off the spire and then rode the top of the elevator back down to ground level like it was a nonsensical surfboard. He then proceeded to bitch slap the interfering policemen’s faces clean off and took great delight in watching them whiz through the air like fleshy frisbees before slapping into the side of a Polish sausage emporium. Off Sidney tore towards an ice cream vendor who luckily also sold meth and those super cool fuzzy top hats that party stores normal hawk, for there was much more apeshit to unleash.

Loading himself up on the crystal candy that makes you feel dandy and no less than thirteen neon top hats all stacked on top of each other, the tripped out coot ordered a ninety nine with a flake, didn’t pay and swiftly vanished into the city streets in a series of impressive and age-defying cartwheels whilst screaming his favourite dance lyrics and battering his flappy scrotum off several street performer’s painted faces. The mimes in particular were teabagged in abundance.

When Sidney was done power fingering all the fashion models he could lie about his wealth to, he stumbled into the Louvre, mooned the Mona Lisa, started an impromptu flash dance with a bunch of Japanese tourists who didn’t really know what was going on, ate the leg off a security guard and broke around fifty laws with his genitalia and a priceless Caravaggio.

Having tired himself of the arts, Sidney rewrote the laws of physics by swan dived upwards through the glass ceiling of the museum and leapt directly into the Seine like an elegant salmon of considerable age and flexibility. From there he swam northwards until a lesser spotted Parisian gator bit his sweet stack of hats off and made the old man bitterly angry. By this point Sidney was tripping balls to the point of absurdity and so he fought the lesser spotted Parisian gator like it owed him a substantial amount of money. He beat the reptilian’s scaly hide senseless with suplexes and other pro wrestling manoeuvres that he’d never learned properly but had seen enough of on TV to get the gist of until the snarling thing retaliated and bit his foaming head clean off, whereupon Sidney died immediately in a spectacular explosion of crystal meth and fireworks.

But that is clearly a god awful end to such an exhilarating story, so no, he didn’t die at all. Well, not his head at least. Sidney’s disembodied skull yelled at the Parisian gator and fired lasers from his spiralling pupils like some kind of spherical representation of profound epic. “Looky here, you son of a handbag!” bellowed the head of the old man in all its gory glory. “Spit me out before I bite your tongue off and fire it up a hooker’s credit card slot for points!” The gator, rightfully bewildered at such a peculiar and wholly unexpected happening, immediately obeyed the reasonable command and thus Sidney’s disembodied pimp head was spat out and shot clean over Europe before coming to a stop inside Mount Vesuvius like an olive being tossed into a Martini glass by James Bond, only much sweeter and with an even better soundtrack which would have won many industry awards if it had paid the entry fee.

The methamphetamine and stolen French ice cream in the old man’s bloodstream trickled into the ancient volcano and the big angry bastard of rock and magma erupted, showering the entire planet with lava and instantly killing absolutely everyone ever. All except for our beloved hero of course, who now ruled the Earth as a whacked-out severed head who had by now also learned how to hover like a dragonfly, only without the aid of wings.

Sidney continued to lord it over the crusty, steaming surface of the post-apocalyptic world and its remaining seagull population until his roll was eventually called eight years later whereupon he went to Heaven for being a true G and living life to the utmost max.

“Sid, you are totally rad,” greeted a warm voice as the pensioner’s head floated through the pearly gates, obliterating them in the process. It was the rabbit in the immaculate tuxedo once again, the same pink fuzzball who’d given him the little purple pill eight years prior. “I am God,” spoke the rabbit, kissing the pulsating head of the old man. “And I want you to know that in addition to being both bodacious and tubular, you are also my most favourite severed old man’s head in the whole wide world”.

It all made absolutely no sense now: the pill, the rabbit, the microwavable taco still in Sidney’s mouth that he hadn’t swallowed yet because he’d been too preoccupied going sensationally apeshit on the world. The phenomenally epic geriatric pushed the chewed up snack out of his mouth and shared it with the divine rabbit in thanks, thanks for showing him how to enjoy life and squeeze every last drop of fun out of it in his final days on Earth.

After they had finished the taco and the rabbit had shown the old man his impressive collection of potted plants, Sidney was justly appointed official Bad Ass Party Planner™ of the Cloud Kingdom and given the body of a twenty five year old steroid maniac because he deserved it and God obviously had a soft spot for him.

And to this very day, in an alternate dimension, where Earth wasn’t obliterated by the meth volcano, if you listen very closely on a cool night, you can sometimes hear old Sidney up there, banging all the angels in their love boxes and singing his favourite Megadeth songs a cappella like the most excellent pensioner that he is.