Disco Pogo a Go Go

F3 - cycle 34
Prompt: Write a story using the words banana, iguana, elbow, flaming & pogostick - and make it wacky, absurd, or bizarre.
Genre: Any
Word Count: 1000 words (total story wordcount: 618)
Deadline: Thursday, June 9th, 2011, 9:30 pm EST.

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Disco was dead. And by Disco, I didn't mean Donna Summer and Saturday Night Fever - I meant my brother's pet iguana, named Disco. It was his pride and joy. And I hated the thing. What kind of stupid, idiotic name was "Disco", anyway? I mean...it's a lizard. What does a lizard have to do with crappy music and leisure suits? Of course, they were both dead, so there was that. It was an accident. Mostly.

The death part was completely accidental. I just wanted to make one of those online videos, you know? The kind where someone sends it to a friend, and they send it to two friends, and before you know it you're internet-famous for like, fifteen minutes. I might have been a little high when the idea of a three-foot long lizard on a pogostick sounded like a good idea.

Well, okay. I was a lot high. It wasn't entirely my idea, though. Bogie and J-rod totally agreed to help. Bogie held the video camera until he got too drunk to stand straight. You can tell when he's really shit-faced because the frame goes out of focus and we're all Blair Witch shakey-cam. J-rod provided moral support. That's him laughing in the background. The wheezing is him too. His friend Gary spent the whole night huddled in the corner, talking to a plate of spaghetti. That boy's not right.

By the time everything was said and done, I had a long gash on my elbow from that damn lizard's tail, there was a flaming pile of dog crap on crazy Mr. Finkle's front stoop, and we'd almost set the house on fire at least twice. The first time was from when the goat knocked over Bogie's new Santeria-obsessed girlfriend's stupid voodoo candle. I never knew chicken feathers were so flammable...

Now, the second time I think J-rod put a piece of aluminum foil in the microwave. He won't admit to it. But he was the one eating the cold leftovers out of my brother's fridge, so I'm pretty sure it was him. So, in addition to a big surly lizard with a wicked sharp tail, I owe James a microwave. And a coffee table. He might not get his security deposit back because of the singe marks on the living room carpet, but he can't prove that those weren't there before. The goat poop, though...that's gonna stain.

I'm not really sure when it happened, exactly. At some point, Gary crawled out from wherever he was taking his really bad trip. Maybe he was trying to make friends with the lizard. Who knows. After we finished trying to make what was supposed to be the world's most amazing video of a huge reptile performing a trick in the history of the internet, I put the very cranky Disco back in his tank and we cranked the party up to 11. I didn't notice that my brother's pet wasn't within the sphere of the living for...well, lets just say it was a while. Lizards don't exactly move around a lot, right?

It was the smell, finally, that made me check. A small pile of nibbled on happy-noodles was turning to something putrid and foul on one side of the terrarium. Disco's skin had taken on this mottled color. Like an over-ripe banana. I tried to pick him up, but his whole body had gone stiff and I couldn't get him out of the tank. So I left him there. And I'm sitting at the airport pick-up lane waiting to take my brother back to what's left of his apartment and a reeking, dead iguana. At least I know what to get him for Christmas this year.