THE MAN WITH THE SKELETON ARMS
by Sycamore Smith

Wake up, Flanagan, the bartender's comin'
He says there's someone here
Who means to do us harm--
Sound the alarm, it's the man with the skeleton arms
--------
Ten years ago on Hogsback Mountain
The flames was roaring like a lion in a fountain
The trees were burning, too many to count 'em
And trapped in the middle
With fire all around him, was a man...

Flanagan and I was out camping that day
We started our fire with turpentine and hay
The wind was howlin' so I guess we should have known
That the flames was gonna get blown across the land
--------
Two days later when the fire died out
Flanagan and I went rootin' about
For to find a little dinner of roasted critter,
Blackened blackbird eggs and pine-cone fritters

That was how we happened on the badly burned man
He was yelpin' for help and so we each grabbed a hand
Thinking we'd be heroes if we dragged him back home,
We pulled, but pulled the flesh right offa the bone
--------
Now of all the mad people, that guy was the maddest
He pulled a bone across his throat
And pointed right at us
Ten years on the lam from that skeletal man
He's sworn his revenge, we've heard his sinister plan:

He'll string us up by our hands and lift us over a vat
And dip us up to our elbows in boiling fat
It's like an eye for an eye, but ninety-nine times worse
He wants to do to us what we did to him,
Except in reverse...