Storytime Sunday @MagicallyReal, 01/15/12

Here’s one of my favorite stories from my archives!  Bundle up with a buddy, dog, kittie, or other special being.  Suitable for strange children of all ages…

MEET MOOSHIE AND SMOOSHIE

Mooshie and Smooshie are big furry blue monsters with large googly eyes, who live in the sewers of Beverly Hills. They eat fried coconut from the Thai restaurant on Olympic and Palm, and newspapers from the long magazine racks on Robertson; when they are slumming, they eat the old dumbbells placed in the trash outside of Bolder Fitness and the discarded hamburger wrappers from the Kosher burger place on Pico and Oakhurst. During rainstorms they come out at night and huddle under the umbrellas at Century City Mall near the Indian take-out stand. The young Indian woman can see them, but the older man who is the owner can’t, and this makes for all kinds of arguments in Hindi about LA monsters. Mooshie snaps her jaws of fuchsia-colored teeth at the young woman, and Smooshie makes terrible faces at the man. The young woman likes this, and when the owner isn’t looking, she throws them bits of Naan, which Mooshie and Smooshie have twisted into very long necklaces.

They are fond of luggage, rhinestones, carpets from Ikea when they can get them, and all kinds of plates and silverware from the new Target in Culver City. They have quite a setup in the sewers, I can tell you. They also like getting their nails done at night at Hands Up on Beverly. There is a sewer grate in the alley behind the store, and when it is dark and everyone has gone home, they come up and out with very nice Louis Vuitton carry-ons, and they focus their googly eyes on the locks, which turn and click so they can come on in. They sit on the big chairs at the front and conjure up the ghosts of manicurists from the past. Lady Murasaki’s manicurist, the women who specialized in Elizabeth I’s feet, and the cuticle expert for Catherine the Great all jump out of the nail polish bottles and get to work on Smooshie, who has eleven feet and twelve hands, and Mooshie, who, being the older one and the mother, has 100 feet and 212 hands.

Mooshie and Smooshie talk and use their eyes to turn the pages of the fashion magazines in the manicure place. They roll their big blobby eyeballs at Madonna and Julia Roberts, at Lil’ Kim and Ivanna Trump.

Such monsters, they say, and the ghosts and the Louis Vuitton bags all laugh, the ghosts shivering and quivering in hysterics, as the bags open and shut going swish click swish, which, in suitcase language, means ha ha ha.

originally published in Cafe Irreal #6.  Click here for more of their fabulousness: