Chapter 26: A Good Day for Rat Meat.

It came to pass that I was required to flee Miss Spankpenny's school, primarily due to my murdering a rival student with a croquet mallet in a bitter dispute involving buttered toast and vengeance. Again I found myself alone in the world, sober, and forced to fend for myself. And fend I did, for I was becoming quite capable in my exile. A chance encounter with the King of the Hobos led to my accumulation of thousands of years of free Hobo Wisdom, from how to urinate in a Yoohoo bottle, to where to curl up and die without leaving an annoying stench.

"You'll want a box. A cardboard box. Those'll hold up real nice, until it rains. Then get a new box," he explained. "Ain't nothin' beats a new box, unless it's a tin-foil hat to keep the CIA from reading your brain waves."

"The CIA, they read your mind?" I asked, incredulous.

"What else they gonna read, Newsweek?" he answered. Then he showed me how to construct my own hat, and together we made love, knowing the CIA saw nothing but static and maybe a breast here and there.

I missed the Hobo King. He still haunted my dreams, and it was most unfortunate that he had to return to his homeland of Hobovania to fight the usurper Toothless Joe, who had challenged him in the Arena of Agony. As he packed his rat pelts to leave, the Hobo King told me he lamented ever having built an Arena of Agony, but that it had seemed a good idea at the time. It did not matter now, when challenged to a death match, one does not shirk away. That's the way the corn cracks, and I for one do not care.

"What's with the Arena of Agony? Does every nut I come across have to have some sort of stage built for ritual slaughter? It's just getting quite predictable, when something like that should really be special, like a figging or being on America's Most Wanted," I complained.

"Goodbye, Katrina," he said, as he mounted his imaginary steed. "I'll be back, I promise, and then we can film those snuff movies for the internet we talked about. Good times, they'll be. Good times." And then he trotted off, making horsey noises through the city streets, oblivious to oncoming traffic.

I read the news the next day, oh boy. About an unlucky hobo who made the grave. The King was killed ten seconds into his death challenge, when his own bindle was snatched from his grasp, then stabbed through one ear and out the other. But I will always remember him when I try unsuccessfully to wash his odor out of my clothing and hair. I will remember him as he was, face-down in a pool of his own blood, a stick jutting from each ear. He was a great man, a great, unwashed man, and he was granted a state funeral- tossed into a recycling bins behind the state capital and given a 21-bum salute. Even the flies paid homage, silencing their buzzing around him for a few moments before laying their eggs in his corpse.

While rummaging through another dumpster behind what turned out to be a broadcast network's headquarters, I met a man named Dave, who stood out because he was skinning a rat in a completely improper and wasteful manner. I showed him the correct way to perform the task, which leaves the remainder as a whole lump of meat which can be fried up as a nugget or slid onto a bun (or not, if you're on Atkins). I asked if he was a "Newbo," new to the hobo lifestyle, and he told me that he was, and had only recently been let go from a reality show being filmed within that very building.

A real self-made millionaire (not one of those pretend-millionaires you try to marry on Fox) had charged a group of eager go-getters with performing ridiculously demeaning tasks for his amusement, in no way related to potential business success. He was then to arbitrarily pick his favorite candidate to repeat this duty forever. Dave was not his favorite, in fact he was his least, and thus had been dismissed with the millionaire's signature catchphrase, "Get yo' skank-ass worthless visage outta me face! Arrggghhhhh!" before being tossed from the 17th floor window into a pile of refuse and contestants from the previous season. (The "arrggghhhhh" coincided with the throwing.)

Dave explained that he did it for the prize money, although he had lost more by quitting his job to compete than it had been worth. Despite begging and kidnapping the company's president, he was unable to return to his old position. Probably due to the restraining order, I guessed.

A plot began to hatch in my mind, much like the larvae that hatched from the Hobo King's egg-infested head 48 hours after his death. I would make acquaintance with this millionaire, apply a generous (but not heaping) helping of woo, and use his influence to raise and fund an army to recapture my throne. It was either that or using my own funds, and I've got shoes to buy, dammit.