Last time in Lake Nipples…

“I know you have no idea where to start catching up,” said Delores, “so let’s get you dressed and back to the house so we can pick up exactly where we left off as if nothing unusual happened at all.”

Esmerelda allowed her mother to wrap an arm around her waist; her gait still wobbly, the scars on her soul beginning to burn. She loved her mother, but to say their relationship was fraught was to put it kindly. Delores’ obsession with her own mother’s death had made her a terrible one; her short fuse and emotional absence turning her daughter’s heart into a meat locker of mommy issues. A new break in the case could break their tenuous bond for good, regardless of the fact that Esmerelda had scarfed a doughnut off Bill Clams’ big ol’ dick.

And now… back to our story!

The way Delores Poppingcorn saw it, there were three types of people in the world: the kind that followed the rules, the kind that questioned the rules, and the kind that knew the rules only mattered if you were stupid enough to believe in them.

Esmerelda was the first type, and Delores despised herself for letting it happen. Her little girl had been something special once — sharp as Vermont cheddar and bubblier than diet soda, with a slightly crooked smile that could give yours cavities. She should have done things differently the day her daughter went dark. She should have thrown herself into motherhood like a pie in the face the moment she found her baby girl covered in ham.

But, she didn’t.

She told herself it was because she was still in shock from the discovery of her mother’s honey-covered corpse, but deep down, Delores knew she never had it in her. She was a woman who lived for danger; a cop who played by her own rules, no matter the cost.

Without a mother’s support, daughters put up their own walls, and walls need order. Walls need rules and reasons to exist. Take that away, and everything comes crashing down.

It all comes crashing down eventually, doesn’t it.

Bill Clams was the second type — a hard-nosed reporter with a mysterious past, and a sinking suspicion there was something sinister bubbling under the surface of Lake Nipples. Every second of his 40 years were etched into the corners of his beef-brown eyes, but behind them there was a stubborn glimmer of hope that world had yet to stomp out of him. Maybe it was the faint smell of whiskey on his breath, or the way his wrinkled thrift store button down hung loosely off his slender frame, but Delores could tell he was a man teetering on the edge of oblivion, and she was more than willing to give him a good shove it meant finally bringing her mother’s killer to justice.

Delores had flirted with being the last kind since the day she was born, but kept things tight the best she could to make her mother proud. Her dad had skipped town before she had a chance to remember him, unable to handle the shame of his intrepid businesswoman wife earning more than he did. If he’d stuck around, he would have seen that brains and good looks weren’t enough to escape the tradition of tragedy that came for every Poppingcorn, no matter how hard they tried to run.

Oprah was brilliant — a genius, even — but her male colleagues found her “threatening” and “distractingly beautiful,” stifling any chances she ever had to get ahead. After spurning the sexual advances of one too many titans of industry, she found herself all but unemployable. Her brains may have been as disposable as a cum-coated Kleenex, but her beauty was undeniable. She and Esmerelda could have been twins, but unlike her homely granddaughter, who hid her assets in order to disappear, Oprah used hers to her full advantage. She, too, had gargantuan knockers — the kind that could tip a dame over if she wasn’t careful. Fortunately she had an ass to match, which kept her torso precariously balanced atop her mile-high gams.

Desperately needing to put food on the table for her three daughters, Oprah took a job as a cigarette girl at the Flamingo Breeze Nightclub, working morning, noon and night to scrape together enough to get by, and leaving young Delores and her sisters to all but fend for themselves. When they came of age her eldest girls fled Lake Nipples as fast as they could without looking back, ashamed of their accursed lot in life, well aware of the whispers that swirled around their mother. But not her baby.

Delores joined the LNPD straight out of high school, determined to clean up the mean streets of South Central Lake Nipples. A century ago it had been Poppingcorn country; her great-great grandfather’s stately Victorian home looming large over the developing idylic hamlet. But somewhere along the line, everything went wrong. Some said the Poppingcorn bloodline had been cursed; it’s poison slowly leeching from their deterioating estate until the whole neighborhood was dragged to hell along with them.

When you watch your mom spiral downwards from Uranus Industries executive to two-bit cigarette girl, you quickly realize the rules are different for girls. In some rooms, you’re nothing but a nice pair of tits with a pretty smile. Even though Delores was blessed with both and thensome, she resented all of it. She made herself the kind of cop that struck fear into men twice her size, with a fire in her eyes that could singe their pubes from 23 yards. She was feisty and unpredictable — a real loose cannon — but goddamn, did she get results.

It had been 25 years since she last clipped a badge to her belt, but not a day went by without a gun strapped to her thigh. Once the LVPD declared her mother’s death to be a freak bear attack, she had no choice but to persue justice outside the law. There were no more rules — no more pretending that the world was anything but a cesspool of lies. On its shimmering blue surface, Lake Nipples was a postcard — toothy grins, world-class parasailing, fun for the whole family. The flip side was blacker than a dead tooth, infected and rotten all the way down into the earth’s meaty gums.

Delores turned her motorcycle into the driveway of the crumbling Poppingcorn estate, her dazed daughter flopped lazily in the sidecar, still struggling to process what had happened to her. She knew Esmerelda had a tough day ahead of her, but still had no clue about the carnal connection she had with the ruggedly handsome Bill Clams. Had she known, she might not have told him to meet them at the house to help explain the new evidence. Que sera sera.

Has Bill finally found the smoking gun? (Besides his penis.) Will Delores find out about his tryst with her daughter? Find out next time in another exciting installment of Lake Nipples!

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