Like a Duck on Fire

“Like a Duck on Fire,” Episode 205

🚨A Duck Driver?! 

🎙️Welcome back to Perswayssick Radio: Unearthly Comedy, the interdimensional sci-fi/fantasy podcast where logic takes a nosedive and hilarity crash-lands! In this laugh-packed episode, Earthling DJ Nicki Rodriguez is stuck (literally) in the mierk—molasses-thick muck coating the banks of the  Perswayssick River Bridge. As she hacks sludge off her sneakers, her reluctant sidekick Sooperflea tries to keep her sane while Diroctor Bizzig “Zig” Gneeecey, an elbow-high megalomaniac who’s driven about in a thirty-two-doored, fully articulated white limousine, drops bombshells about her precious missing portfolio—and her new “job” at his yucky Gneeezle’s restaurant.

🚘 Things get even weirder when their limo driver, a giant albino duck named Culvert, screeches them into traffic and up Bimbus Crack Drive—home to Gneeecey’s unsinkable castle. Between crunchy, razor-sharp Rindom Doodles, a toxic health cigar, and sinister waxy-faced aliens all named Mark, Nicki wonders if she’ll ever escape this universe—or even survive the ride.

Highlights include:

• Nicki trapped in mierk muck 👟
• Gneeecey’s limousine chaos & “health” cigar disaster 🚬💥
• A brewery serving white malt with dissolvable black licorice spots 🍺
• The bizarre fate of Julio and the return of Nicki’s dimension burn🌀
• Explosive drive-bys, mutant potatoes, and the dreaded Mierkolatory Factory⚙️☠️

👽 If you love The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Monty Python, or absurd sci-fi adventures, this one’s for you.

🎧 Listen now to get your weekly dose of madcap space-time satire, cartoon logic, and intergalactic indigestion. 🔔 Subscribe & hit the bell for more weird, hilarious, and unpredictable episodes from our Perswayssick Radio: Unearthly Comedy fantasy/sci-fi comedy podcast series! ✨ Don’t forget to like, share, and drop a comment! 🪐🎧 New episodes every week! 🎧 LISTEN: https://perswayssickradio.buzzsprout.com 🎧

Episode Artwork created by ChatGPT

#Comedy #fantasy #SciFi #dogs #dogsofInstagram #Podcast #hitchhikersgalaxyfans #ParallelUniverse #FunnyAudioDrama #Multiverse #D

Transcript

Transcript / Like a Duck on Fire – Episode 205, by Vicki Solá. 

All content © 2025 Perswayssick Radio: Unearthly Comedy.

Music/Intro: Hi there, I’m author and radio host Vicki Solá, welcoming you to Perswayssick Radio: Unearthly Comedy. I invite you to escape with me into the bizarre dimension of Perswayssick County, where wackiness rules! The laughs begin when I morph into my alter ego, radio DJ Nicki Rodriguez and clash with the zany, alien canine-humanoid Gneeecey! And now, I turn it over to my other self, Nicki, and the gang…. 

SFX: [Magic Spell] [Misgivings & Misfortune]

NARRATOR VICKI SOLÁ: Welcome back to Perswayssick Radio: Unearthly Comedy, the interdimensional sci-fi/fantasy podcast where logic takes a nosedive and sometimes crash-lands! Every week, we switch timelines.This week finds us—Earthling DJ Nicki Rodriguez and her canine-humanoid companions Fleaglossitty “Flea” Floppinsplodge, also known as “Sooperflea,” and Diroctor Bizzig “Zig” Gneeecey—in that other parallel universe. One where Nicki had just recently met the two walking, talking dogs.  

Nicki has found herself stuck (literally) in mierk—the molasses-thick muddy muck coating the banks of the Perswayssick River. As she hacks sludge off her sneakers, her reluctant sidekick Sooperflea tries to keep her sane while Diroctor Bizzig “Zig” Gneeecey, an elbow-high megalomaniac waits on his duck-driven thirty-two-door, fully articulated white limousine.

SFX: [Magic Spell] [Misgivings & Misfortune]

NICKI RODRIGUEZ: Gneeecey was the only one smiling. His goose steps easily ruptured the molasses-like sheets that connected his sneakers’ soles to the mierk-covered ground. SFX: [SnapRubber] Flea handed me a penknife. “We’ll take turns cuttin’ this gump from our shoes.”

Leaning on the superhero, I snipped SFX: [SnapRubber] and inched forward, then passed the blade back to him. SFX: [SnapRubber]

“How,” he mumbled, “can anyone call this fun?”

Gneeecey’s head spun around. “Whaaat?”

Flea was saved by the bell, or to be more exact, the “pop goes the weasel” tune tinkling out of Gneeecey’s phone. SFX: [Human Whistle]

“What’chooo starin’ at, Ig? Mind your own stinkin’ business—smello? Heya Mark. . .yup, sure was an interesticatin’ conservation we had. . .yeah, things are fallin’ into place—got somethin’ here that’ll knock your socks off! Youse got a big payday comin’ your way—an’ so do I!” Blinking rapidly, Gneeecey glanced my way. “Even better’n that—I got the source.”

My purple dimension-burned skin grew clammy, despite the chill in the air.

“I know I promised yuz,” continued Gneeecey, his voice rising several octaves. “Uh-huh. . .I’m sure the whole Merchants’ Association, even Councilwoman whassername an’ her freeloadin’ sister’ll vote our way. It’s in the bag! See ya tonight. . .yeah, it is funny how youse guys always seem to know exactly where I am.”

SFX: [SnapRubber] Flea stopped in his sticky tracks and gawked at Gneeecey, who looked right through him as his white limousine slid up alongside us, pristine in contrast to the slop that surrounded it. SFX: [Car Engine]

“C’mon,” Gneeecey challenged us, hopping onto the blacktop. “Last one in is a rotten sclogg!”

I eyed him quizzically. “What’s a sclogg?”

“A three-legged, sneaker-wearin’ mollusk.”

“Of course.”

“Culvert,” he hollered, galloping toward the elongated limo, “ya gonna sit inside all day, quackin’?”

A startling albino mallard—a giant of a bird—emerged from the driver’s compartment. Wingless but two-armed, the gawky six-footer waddled, with an air of efficiency, down to the limo’s last segment. Around his neck, above his tan tweed jacket’s velvety black collar, sparkled the hint of an opalescent, cream-colored ring. 

With a dramatic flourish, the dapper drake flung open the vehicle’s thirty-first door. SFX: [Car Door Open] As he did, his cap sailed off his feathered dome. He hooked the hat in midair with his webbed foot and inadvertently mashed it down into a mierky puddle. SFX: [Mud Splash] 

“Clumsy duck,” muttered Gneeecey, hurling himself into the car with all the grace of a dump truck. SFX: [Comedy Boing]

“I’m f-f-freezing,” I stammered, through chattering teeth as I slid into my seat.

“You’re f-f-freeeeezin’?” Gneeecey stuttered back, seated across from Flea and me.

“S-stop imitating m-me.”

“Y’know wha’choo Earth people say—‘Imitations are the mothers of invitations.’”

“Can’t Culvert put up the heat?” inquired Flea.

Gneeecey punched his fists in the air. “Heat’s too igspensive! I never put it up at home or work—I feel warmer when I pay less.”

The superhero unsnapped his cape SFX: [Metal Click 3] and draped it over my shaking shoulders.

“Thanks.” my shivers stopped instantly. “Y’know, I’m amazed—how can we have a duck for a driver?”

“Easy,” snapped Gneeecey, before Flea could reply. “they’re so easy to take advantage of, it’s embarrassing.”

I looked him in the eye. “Diroctor, just for once, I want you to give me a straight answer—”

“Why—are there crooked answers just for twice?”

“Just answer my question—tell me once and for all where my portfolio is.”

“That’s not a question, Ig—it’s a regoogoolar sentence. I only answer asking sentences.”

“Okay, I’ll make it an ‘asking’ sentence. Where’s my portfolio?”

“Oh, thaaat—dunno. But that was a asking sentence.”

We hit a long stretch of bumpy road.

“Whaaat, Fleaglossitty? Ain’t my fault your back’s messed up. Anyways, I got worser troubles than you—the Ig here owes me big time.”

SFX: [Giant Burp]

“Uh, ’scuze you?” Flea prompted him.

“Whooo? Yooou? Okay, Fleaglossitty, you’re ’scuzipated. Now, as I was sayin’ before bein’ so rudely interrupticated, the Ig here owes me, an’ she’ll stay as long as it takes her to—”

“As long as it takes me to find my portfolio.”

“How dare ya? I’m talkin’ at Flea! The Ig here will stay at my place—”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here. I’m not staying anywhere—you’re giving back my portfolio case, then I’m history.”

“Nope. You’re stayin’ wit’ meee.”

“Oh, not at your dog’s condo?”

He fixed his eyes on me. “Don’t get intelligent wit’ meee. You’re gonna stay where I can watch ya. An’ you’re gonna work till ya pay off every cent ya owe me.”

“Oh, really?”

“You’re comin’ to the office wit’ me every day, plus you’ll help out at the restaurant. An’ ya ain’t stealin’ no more menus. Thought I wouldn’t notice, huh, Ig?”

“Uh…I’m sorry. I did take one.” My purple face burned with shame, as a murky memory surfaced, of my stuffing a Gneeezle’s menu in my purse, during my first accidental visit to Perswayssick County. “I thought it would be, y’know, a cool souvenir.”

Flea bit his lip to keep from giggling.

“Ya want souvoovenirs?” shrilled Gneeecey. “You’ll have plenny of them when I get through wit’cha!”

“When I get home—after you’ve returned my portfolio—I promise I’ll mail back your menu—”

“Ya ain’t goin’ nowheres. Not till I say ya is.”

“Nicki,” began Flea, “you’re gonna be here a while—you’ve got severe dimension burn. Bet’cha can hardly feel your legs.”

When I smacked my dead thighs, the soles of my feet began to tingle. “But my family—and my jobs—”

“Remindicate the Ig ’bout Julio—he was Hispanical, too.”

“And what exactly happened to Julio?” I demanded. “Tell me.”

Flea stared straight at me. “He jumped too soon.”

Gneeecey tilted his head thoughtfully. “When ya really stop to think ’bout it though, Julio did have some luck in his short little life—ownin’ a name startin’ wit’ a unauthorizated J impersonatin’ a H.”

We’d been riding for an hour, in what seemed to be circles. Bored studying my coffee-stained, mierk-splattered jeans, I turned my attention to a newspaper Flea had absentmindedly tossed onto the floor—the Perswayssick Pooper-Scooper. The slogan beneath its gothic masthead proclaimed, “All the Poop That’s Fit to Scoop.”

Two headlines vied for attention. One stated that a local whale, beached on the Perswayssick River’s banks, had given birth to a litter of purebred kittens who solved algebra problems underwater, scribbling on waterproof chalkboards. “Whales are, after all, mammals,” began the article.

The other banner blared, “Embattled Grate Gizzy Defends Environmental Stance.” Gneeecey’s face scowled up from the page.

Shooting me daggers, the good diroctor crumpled the entire section SFX: [Rustling Papers] and shoved it out the window.

Just then, our duck driver stopped short. SFX: [Screeching Brakes] Flea, who’d been dozing, cried out in pain. “Ooow!”

“Some chiroproctologist you’ll be.”

“Well, Zig, at least I’ll understand my patients’ pain.”

“Stooopidest thing I ever heard! SFX: [Giant Burp] Aaaah, that one’s been trapped all mornin’.” Gneeecey extracted a striped, oblong potato-like object from his shirt pocket. Clenching it tenderly between unclean choppers, he flipped open his phone SFX: {Metal Click 4] and pressed Binky’s red nose. SFX: [Electronic Button] A yellow flame shot out of the tongue-shaped nozzle below. SFX: [Fire] Sighing, he ignited his two-toned tuber.

The lit end crackled and exploded SFX: [Explosion], filling the limo with black smoke and a stink suggestive of an overpopulated zoo.

“Zig! Ya trynna unalive us?”

“It’s a health cigar—supposed to help my, y’know, problem. This one must be deflective.”

Flea and I couldn’t stop coughing. 

But Gneeecey was fine. Happily humming Planet Eccchs’s tragic anthem, he plunged his fist into a box. “Rindom Doodle anyone?”

No one answered.

“Good—more for meee.” He crunched his doodles rhythmically. SFX: [Gravel] I swore he’d had microphones implanted in his molars since my last visit. My sister Alex would’ve despised Gneeecey’s slovenly smacking—a passionate hatred of eating noises was one of many things we shared.

She’d be crushed when she heard I’d gone missing. Twenty years old, Alex was my “younger twin,” as we joked. My partner in crime. And our poor mom, Anna—I couldn’t bear to think of what this would do to her, so soon after my dad’s death. This would be one time my sixteen-year-old brother Dave wouldn’t just shrug and offer his stock reply, “Stuff happens.”

I prayed that my father was watching over me as I was driven around by a duck wearing tweed.

“Shaaaddup, Ig!” bellowed Gneeecey. “I can stinkin’ hear ya thinking!” 

I wanted to jump out of the window.

“Don’t even try it,” Flea advised sternly. I forced a face-hurting smile.

As Gneeecey ingested the last bits of his snack—cardboard container and all—we reached the northernmost end of Murgatroyd Avenue and a factory known as The Mierkolatory. The dingy dinosaur’s colossal pistons slammed up and down SFX: [MachPumpPiston] shaking the ground beneath us as it puked poison into the atmosphere. SFX: [MachPumpPiston] [Sizzle] 

Gneeecey rolled down his window. “Stuff that goes in our food comes from there.”

“Close that window, will ya, Zig?!”

Gneeecey leaned out of the vehicle. “Mark, ol’ buddy, I’ll buzz ya after my meetin’ wit’ Mark! An’ hi, Mark! An’ Mark—call ya later! An’ thanks, guys—driveway’s beaudiful!”

Flea and I exchanged puzzled looks. “Zig, din’cha jus’ talk to him on the phone? How many Marks do ya know?”

“Lots.” Gneeecey lowered his mierk-spattered behind back onto the swanky white seat. “The Mark I talked to before has brothers—a couple are rare, almost identical fraternically internal triplets, born in different years.”

“Huh?”

“He has sevooveral identical twins that look jus’ like him too, except they’re taller an’ have smaller noses, plus one has redder hair than the other one, who has a bigger chin but browner hair that’s shorter.”

“Huh?”

“They even share their hair. After a few times, ya can tell ’em apart.”

“They’re all named Mark?”

“Yeah. Accordin’ to Mark—or was that Mark?—since there’s so many of ’em, leasin’ such a consonant-rich name’s cheaper.”

Street Road’s wooded area, a palette of wild color only weeks before, when I’d escaped back to my dimension, had decayed into a lifeless collage of bare sticks and brown leaves. I couldn’t imagine how I’d escape this time. My life was over, totally over.

I slumped down in my seat.

“Look!” exclaimed Flea.

Reluctantly, I raised my head, as we rumbled down the dusty road, past a black-spotted white building.

“Dalmation Brewery’s finally open,” he said. “Jus’ hired a buncha people. You’ll love their beer—it’s a white malt, filled wit’ these yummy, three-dimensional licorice spots that dissolve in your mouth.”

Feigning interest, I nodded. I just wanted to wake up in my old, battered swivel chair, hunched over the mound of unpaid bills piled up on my desk.

“Their brewin’ technique’s a marvel of physics,” added Flea. “It’s a secret formula—no matter how you pour or store the stuff, the spots remain evenly distributed.”

“Yeah, but it has a flat taste,” complained Gneeecey, ripping open another carton of doodles. “It’s made wit’ skips, not hops. But, I suppose it is a revoovoolution in brewin’,” Gneeecey conceded grudgingly, “but the way they operate is cost-defective. They should make fewer workers do more—that’s how I got to be a business maggot.”

Yawning, I looked down at my purple hands, then back up at Gneeecey’s smirking face. Our eyes locked.

“We borin’ ya, Ig?” Suddenly, he screamed into the intercom. “Run that light!”

SFX: [Radio Static] “Boss,” protested Culvert, his quacky-but-concerned voice barely penetrating the radio static, “it’s red!”

“Speak up, duck, speak up!”

“I said, light’s red!”

“Don’t take that tone wit’ meeee! I said, run that light!”

“We’ll get a ticket!”

“Tickets, shmickets. I fix ’em—make ’em into tax decapitations. That’s one of the perks of bein’ Grate Gizzy. An’ stop shoutin’!” Turning to Flea, he shouted, “Whadda ducks know, anyways?”

“He’s right, Zig. Runnin’ lights is against the law—an’ jus’ plain dangerous—”

“Law, shmaw—I aaam the law ‘round here. Runnin’ lights ain’t dangerousical. Now, run that lousy light like you’re a duck on fire—or I’ll fire yooou, too!”

“Okay boss!”  SFX: [Sports Car Engine Rev]

I squeezed my eyelids shut as all around us tires screeched and glass shattered. SFX: [Screeching Tires] [Car Horns] [Car Crash] [Glass Shatter]

“Told youse it was safe,” said Gneeecey. “Nobody hit us. Furthermore, hitherto, in any event, be that as it may—may that as it be—the law can kiss my left foot.” He ripped off a sneaker, revealing a foul-smelling, green-and-purple polyester sock embroidered with runs and snags.

SFX: [Magic Spell]

I came to, just in time to be informed by a snooty sign that I’d just been afforded the revocable privilege of entering Saint Bogelthorpe Parke, an exclusive and historic suburb of Perswayssick City.

Barren trees shivered along the roadside, their brittle branches clattering in the chill winds. SFX: [Cartoon Chattering Teeth] Everywhere, rindom stalks had been chopped down close to the ground. Frost-covered mounds of the harvested arrows dotted stubby fields for miles. The skies above were overcast and you could almost smell snow. I hated winter.

Culvert barely negotiated the sharp turn onto Paper Plane Avenue, SFX: [Screeching Brakes] then nearly missed Horsey Street, stopping so short that the limo’s thirty-two segments clunked against each other in a violent, repeating chain reaction. SFX: [MachMetal] I felt Flea’s pain.

“Watch it, duck!” howled Gneeecey, spraying half-chewed Rindom Doodles all over the intercom. “She’ll dislocate!”

Culvert answered with a lone, forlorn “quaaack,” as the traumatized vehicle began a harrowing hula dance, ascending Bimbus Crack Drive, a perilously narrow road that wound round and round a double-peaked mountain. The higher we climbed, the more fallen trees I saw.

Halfway up, a rotting wooden duck mailbox, a “three” painted on its wing, listed toward the weeds on a rotting wooden pole, perhaps seeking a rotting wooden lake.

Several hundred yards later, a parked Good Intentions Paving truck blocked our way.

“Everyone out!” barked Gneeecey, pointing to a stone mansion just visible atop the miniature Everest’s dimpled summit, its four chimneys partially obscured by heavy, dark clouds. “We walk the resta the way.”

Flea and I groaned.

“Too bad, three eggs,” sympathized the good diroctor. “An’ walk on the grass—driveway’s jus’ been done.”

Flea’s eyes traveled up the half-mile of glistening black ribbon. “Musta cost a deck of vlecks!”

“Mark an’ his brothers all chipped in to gimme this, as a token of their depreciation. I jus’ hadda pick out the pavin’ company. Close your mouth, Fleaglossitty.” Gneeecey slapped the side of limo. SFX: [Car] “Duck, be back by five-stinkin’-thirty.”

“Okay, boss.”

“An’ don’t drive like a duck on fire!”

Sloping acres of lush tartan plaid surrounded Gneeecey’s four-story castle. I collapsed into the dreamlike lime, emerald and olive grass.

“Welcome to Three Bimbus Crack Drive, situated on toppa scenic, double-mounded Bimbus Hill,” sputtered Flea, gulping for air.

“Don’t welcome her, Fleaglossitty. She hasta stay, but I certaintaneously don’t want her to feel welcome in my gigaaantical, unsinkable mansion.”

“Ya must be confusin’ your mansion wit’ your yacht.”

“I’m sicka ya constantly corrugatin’ me!”

“Sorry, Zig.”

“Has this stinkin’ house ever sunk?”

The superhero bowed his head.

“Then don’t keep tellin’ me what I mean!”

SFX: [Fail Horn] [Magic Spell] [Halloween Cinematic Logo]

NARRATOR VICKI SOLÁ: Next week, we return to that parallel universe—where chaos reigns, and its fearless leader, Grate Gizzygalumpaggis Nicki Rodriguez, has vanished. With the County unraveling faster than a time-traveling toilet paper roll, things go from bad to bonkers.

Inside the madhouse of 666 Van Pooop Lane, evil Nurse Maudlyn’s two canine-humanoid captives—Diroctor Bizzig “Zig” Gneeecey and the ever-struggling superhero Fleaglossitty “Flea” Floppinsplodge, also known as Sooperflea—explode into a slobber-flinging, insult-hurling brawl. 

Just when Flea finally finds his nerve to try and fly both of them to freedom through a shattered second-story window… BOOM! Who should appear but the gibberish-spewing tyrant of Opposite Earth, Urgl—who sucks Flea into his airborne outhouse like a lint bunny in a Dyson.

Now, trapped alone in the dark, surrounded by weird wallpaper and even weirder smells, Gneeecey realizes he's got no Flea, no freedom, and absolutely no idea what to do next.

Don’t miss the madness!

SFX: [Magic Spell]

We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode! We thank Marysol Rodriguez, Sal Solá, Sandi Solá, Marcellina Ramirez, Rick “El Molestoso” Rivera, Diane L., Brunie Cariño, Toni Aponte, and Aileen Bean for being generous supporting members through BuyMeACoffee.com. 

And thank you for tuning in to “Perswayssick Radio: Unearthly Comedy.” We hope you enjoyed traveling to this loopy dimension with us and that you’ll come along again! Our new episodes drop every Tuesday! Please make sure to tell a friend! And keep on laughing! 

Frank: It’s a Gneeecey thing! [SFX: Door Slam] ###