The bottles clinking together sounded a whole helluva lot like a fat, jolly elf and eight tiny reindeer trying to get out of a locked cellar before the rising water swept over their heads. 'Struth, Bad Mother was rooting through the empty, half-empty, quarter-empty bottles of JackD. littering the floor of the back seat in the BadAssMobile.

SuperBad shot a look carelessly over his shoulder; he didn't need to see what Bad Mother was up to on account of he'd seen it all before. There the poor bastard would be - dried vomit on his chin, a stained and bloody shirt torn open to the waist, bleary eyes looking as if they were about to wither into raisins - and his shaky, dirty hands would be rummaging through his refuse pile, searching for the elixir vitae, a fresh bottle.

"If you can hold on ten minutes, we'll go knock over a liquor store or something, get you restocked."

"Fuuhck tenm mimmints," Bad Mother slurred, his sloppy grip clasping a near-finished bottle sharply to his chest, "I's mah brthday."

"I'm pretty sure it ain't your birthday, you fool." SuperBad tucked his right hand into his jacket pocket, left hand on the top of the steering wheel. Tucked against his holster, he found what he needed. "Take two and call me," and he flung the airline bottles of Jack into the back seat.

The bottles hadn't even hit the ground before they were drained completely. Clean shaven, tie straight, eyes alight with malice and evil, Bad Mother sat bolt upright and rested his folded arms on the passenger side seat backs. He looked lovingly at the pair of emptied, plastic bottles. "Lo! in the orient when the gracious light/Lifts up his burning head, each under eye/Doth homage to his new-appearing sight. Motherfuck! It is too my birthday, and this ain't gonna hold me. What'chu got up front?"

"That was my emergency stash. All we got left is the stuff we cooked up that Mardi Gras last year. Check the trunk." SuperBad gunned it past a State Ranger, whose cruiser kicked to roaring life in pursuit.

Bad Mother had the back seat turned down, and was reaching through to the trunk. He pulled up a bottle of creamy, tan liquid, examined it in a manner which seemed to say "You are in a bottle, but I do not recognize you as whiskey." Bad Mother twisted around to look at SuperBad. "What's this stuff?"

SuperBad lit his ebony cigarino, touched the smoldering tip to the stick of dynamite, and dangled the dull red cylinder out the window. "Sweet Whiskey, I reckon. Shit, man, that's gotta be rancid. Don't you drink that. And could you shoot that guy for me?"

Bad Mother pumped five quick rounds out the back window while he looked at the bottle, now uncorked. It's fumes were pungent, honeyed, seductive - like the soft hands of Barbara Eden, they caressed his cheeks, pulled his mouth closer ... closer ... to the intoxicating vent of the bottle.

The Dynamite went off smack between the BadAssMobile and the cruiser. The El Dorado lurched, dribbled down the road by the explosion. With a hateful scream, its tires slid onto the shoulder of the highway. The cruiser was nowhere to be seen.

SuperBad was quiet, livid, and red with rage. Bad Mother had fired too early,  plugging the dynamite before it had cleared both cars; he was supposed to peg it as the cruiser passed, giving their pursuer  just enough of a distraction to drive him off the road. Instead, he'd atomized the poor copper. Slowly, as the engine cooled, hissed and popped, SuperBad turned to look at Bad Mother in the back, his eyes aflame with pistolwhippin' fury.

Spread out on the back seat, the empty bottle of sweet whiskey still in his hand, Bad Mother stared at a point near the rear-view mirror. "SuperBad?"

"What, DAMMIT!"

"SuperBad, izzat you? I've gone blind!"

***

Bad Mother strapped that bastard's hand to the triple clamp and felt his way back to the cycle seat, slapping the full, round ass of the Cajun whore while he saddled up. "I'm blind and crazy!" he bellowed, and kicked the cycle to life. The poor bastard's arm wrenched off with a sound like straw breaking apart in God's hands.

SuperBad slammed back another whiskey sour and kicked his heavy boots up on the table in front of him. Those sweet Louisiana girls hung all over him, he was in a New Orleans throne of soft flesh. Outside, the air was fresh and clean, and smelled just sweetly enough of the bayou. Superbad checked out his surroundings, the nighttime city street, the outdoor cafe, the whorehouse across the street. Yeah, the cathouse, SuperBad corrected hisself,  and the twenty, maybe twenty-five round-figured sweeties whispering sweet somethin-somethins, like a murmured hush of lusty night breezes caressing his ears. "Damn, brother," he bellowed to Bad Mother, "You oughtta see what you're missing!"

"I'm blind and crazy!" he answered back and he wheelied over that unconcious bastard - neither Bad could remember what he did, but they were pretty sure it warranted this level of asskicking. Or so they figured. "I'm blind and crazy!" and he shot back an airplane bottle filled with rancid sweet whiskey.

"Yeah, you are brother." SuperBad stood up, a whore over each shoulder, and walked to the steps at City Hall. "Keep it up Bad Mother...."

"You just keep it up...."