Later. Big Bluto’s feeling jolly after a good sperm-sucking. Who wouldn’t? He scoots across the room in his office chair, clicking his calculator, crunching the numbers. Carmen’s been talking about putting rat poison in his coffee. Here’s hoping she gets a chance to sprinkle the magic dust. We’d all like to see Big Bluto croak. But it’s not going to be so easy. He’s got Tariq with him now, always by his side. He stands there with his arms folded, glaring at us like a big evil genie. He’s out of the bottle, Tariq, and he’s as nasty a piece of work as you’ll ever come across.

          Monday. The Grand Dragon came out of his oval office this morning with the Dr. Sharpe parasite book under his arm and gave us another lecture. Those of us who understand English were laughing up our sleeves. We’re the parasites, aren’t we? We’re the hookworms, the tapeworms, the liver flukes and the pinworms. We’re everywhere now, there’s no escaping us. March us off to war, starve us out, banish us to the streets, a million more spring up. We’re the microbes that live deep in the bedrock, in the heart of a diamond, below the polar ice, in the center of a volcano, on Jupiter’s moons. We’re the weevils in the flour, the rats in the cheese, we’re the lice that burrow under Big Bluto’s skin. We’re the horror that’s festering in his soul. We’re renegade cells in the Body of Bluto.

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