Monsane
Having been accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Mongrel flees to Cuba and becomes a refugee. On his travels he encounters and befriends the infamous mon, meets a bizarre duplicate of his injured friend, and manages to prove his innocence and earn his freedom. Now he just needs to find a way home.
Excerpts:
“We’re finally in Cuba!” Mongrel shouted. He jumped around like a dog shitting razor blades, happy to be alive and in his dream vacation location. But upon further glance, Cuba was made up of rundown shacks connected by roads too poor to even be made of dirt . Garbage was littered all over the place, sidewalks were deteriorated, and the air was polluted with a stinky brown fog, as if some big farts had settled down in the neighbourhood and began to raise children. Children, who were nothing more than skin and bones (and some were even less than that), ran amok…well, ran in muck, crawled in muck, they even ate the muck, with the rats, most of which were bigger than the children themselves. Mongrel even saw a half-homeless Eskimo living in a garbage can. The whole country was a dive.
“Oh man, it’s even better than I imagined!” Mongrel cried.
***
The night flooded Cuba in a thick river of darkness, and the stinky brown fog smothering everything made the thick river of darkness look more like diarrhea. Diseased rats came out of the gutters and sewers and dead bodies to begin their search for enlightenment, which often came in the form of pharmaceutical drugs like penicillin (well, diseased rats don’t like being diseased rats).
***
Suddenly four normal Cubans and a cute little Cuban midget jumped out of an alley and blocked their path. After a brief nodding session with each other, one stepped toward Mongrel and the mon and proffered his hands; they were empty. He then took off the bandana, unfolded it, and draped it over one of his hands. He sneezed and then whisked the handkerchief away, revealing a fish. The rest of the gang applauded obligatorily. The encore was worse; the magical leader said to Mongrel, “Give us all your money or I beat you up wit dis fish!”
***
“For the last time, I did not kill Captain Pete!”
Officer Switchblade stared off blankly into space as if he’d farted and didn’t want anyone to know. Given the circumstances this was likely just what he was doing. “Oh. Well you’ll have to go to jail anyway. It’s the principle of the situation, you understand. I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I just saved a bundle of money on my car insurance.”
This did not make Mongrel feel any better. “But I really can’t go to jail. I have a problem with small, confined places.”
“You’ve got claustrophobia?”
“No, I just don’t like them.”
The Chris Effect 
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