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Spring arrived, and the sunlight was as warm as urine, melting the dirty snow that covered the small town. The boy could finally move his entertainment venue to the backyard. He brought out a set of plastic tables and chairs, glass tea sets, and cardboard dinner plates to host afternoon tea for his best buddies.
"Hello there, Artemis Clyde Frog, Peter Panda, Muscleman Marc, Rumper Tumskin, and you, Polly Prissy Pants."
He poured a cup of Kenyan black tea for each of his friends in turn, then added two big spoonfuls of milk tea powder and a big spoonful of white sugar to his own cup.
"Want some ice, Clyde Frog?"
Clyde Frog sat in the seat closest to him, wrapped in green plush fabric, with a crookedly sewn right eye, a large dark stain on his chest, and his backside stuffed with cheap cotton. The boy talked to him every night, telling him how much he hated those damn Kikes at school, and how the school's meat patties tasted like shoe insoles. He slept holding Clyde Frog, his saliva soaking through the frog's belly, which, after drying, gave off a smell of safety. He loved Clyde Frog very, very much.
"No, thanks."
The boy added two ice cubes to his own milk tea.
"Hey, Cartman!" A voice from the outsiders came from afar: "Are you doing that voice for the frog?"
He looked up and saw a green and a blue hat, with two heads appearing side by side above the fence.
"Fuck you!" Cartman jumped down from his chair, knocking over Clyde Frog's teacup.
The melting snow dripped down from the eaves with a pattering sound.
"What do they know, right, Clyde Frog?" Cartman said softly.
Clyde Frog lay in the muddy water, silent. Maybe it wasn't the right time to have a gathering in the yard after all.
The next morning, the sunlight was still bright. Cartman sat up from his bed, habitually reaching his arm to the side, but only touched a crumpled bedsheet. He climbed out of bed and walked into the backyard. Clyde Frog, hanging from a tree branch, swayed gently in the wind. The hollow green skin looked thin and pitiful in the morning light.
Cartman changed into a black plastic raincoat as mourning attire, holding a shoebox in his hands. The inside of the shoebox was lined with tissues he had taken from his mother's room. Clyde Frog lay flat inside, his shriveled belly crookedly taped back together by Cartman with several strips of transparent tape in an attempt to cover the tragic gash.
"We are gathered here today," Cartman stood by the pit, lowering his voice, imitating the tone of the pastor on TV, "to mourn our dearest friend, Clyde Frog. He was a great gentleman."
The wind rustled through the branches. Kenny stormed off in outrage, while Kyle and Stan turned to look at each other, exchanging bewildered glances.
"The killer is still out there, but I swear to you, Clyde Frog, I will find the bastard who brutally murdered you and avenge you."
He gently placed the shoebox into the pit and closed the lid.
Under the shining sun, Kupa Castle had a crumbling gate, and on the unmelted snow, the plastic tables and chairs that had once held cardboard plates and glass tea sets were now replaced by wooden blocks and stones. The newly appointed Wizard King had the most loyal paladin, and those damn elves would eventually be reduced to ashes under his magic flame.
The knight himself stood beside him, wearing silver spray-painted armor two sizes too big. Though it made moving around difficult, his eyes still sparkled with fervent devotion unto death. Cartman was quite satisfied with that.
"Butters!" the Wizard King commanded. "Go buy me two ice creams and bring them to me before they start melting."
He knew how unreasonable his demand was, but he also knew that no matter what he did, Butters would never truly abandon him. Amazing, wasn't it? Sir Butters was a hundred times better than Clyde Frog—he had legs, a mouth, could talk, and could walk. Clyde Frog was just a rag stuffed with cotton; Cartman had to pinch his voice to do the frog's lines and endure others' disgusting mockery. But Butters was different. Butters was alive. Even if other people saw them, they'd just shrug and say, who cares, one's willing to dish it out and the other's willing to take it. Butters would look up at him with that almost worshipful gaze, without reservation, and say, "Okay, Eric."
Eric, Eric—Cartman savored that sweet name and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glaring sunlight.
"What are you smiling at?"
Cartman lowered his hand. Clyde stood across from him, expressionless, chewing on a blade of grass.
"Was I smiling?" Cartman tucked in the corners of his mouth. "I wasn't smiling. You're hallucinating. You need to see a doctor."
"Whatever, but if you dare make me do that, I'm out."
"Shut up, Clyde!"
That didn't carry much weight, but Clyde did shut up, because he heard Butters running over.
He was out of breath, and the two ice creams were visibly melting under the sun, chocolate syrup dripping down between his fingers.
"Eric! Ice cream!" He ran toward Cartman, holding up two cones. "Not a single drop spilled! Really! It's just... just a little melted. A tiny bit."
Cartman looked down. The scoops on both cones had already sagged to one side, oozing down the edges of the waffle.
He took one and bit into it. The chocolate had turned into a semi-liquid, flowing down his throat. He licked the corner of his mouth and quickly devoured the entire scoop.
Butters watched him take the second cone, and Cartman watched Butters's sticky palm. That melted chocolate looked like a half-dried bloodstain seeping into the lines of Butters's palm, and the boy's chest was heaving from running so fast.
"Eric," Butters ventured carefully, wringing his hands together, smearing the sticky mess everywhere, "are you satisfied?"
"Jeez." Clyde rolled his eyes and retreated back to his own fence.
Cartman swallowed the ice cream in his mouth. He looked at Butters's chocolate-covered fingers, and on a whim, he grabbed that hand, brought it to his own mouth, stuck out his tongue and licked it, then stepped back to his throne.
"You—" He opened his mouth, wanting to curse something out to cover it up, but the sweet, sticky taste choked the words out of him, and in the end, he could only force out a few syllables.
"That's disgusting."
Butters looked down and wiped his hand on his armor, to no avail.
Catching sight of that out of the corner of his eye, Cartman covered his face with his hand and let out a sigh.
"Now get away from me, and if you see any damn elves, use your dirty hands to stick to their faces."
The next day, Cartman walked into school, and something felt off. In the hallways, groups of students would drop their voices the moment they saw him. Some covered their mouths with textbooks, some pretended to tie their shoes, and some stared straight at him, only to look away quickly when his gaze swept over them. Cartman scanned the area and reached one conclusion: all these people were fucking insane.
He stood in front of the classroom door and heard someone behind him say something, followed by a low chuckle. The door opened, and he stepped inside. Butters was sitting in his usual spot, and all the seats around him were empty.
Cartman stared at his hands for two seconds.
Shit, Cartman thought.
He tossed his backpack onto his seat and went straight to Kenny. Kenny was leaning against the lockers, searching for his only pencil.
"Hey, Kenny," Cartman lowered his voice, "what's going on?"
Kenny glanced at Cartman and walked away.
Cartman cursed under his breath and switched targets, heading for Stan. Stan turned around and gave Cartman a rather complicated look, to which Cartman responded with an earnest blink. Stan asked, "You really don't know?" Cartman said, "Am I supposed to fucking know?" Stan was silent for a moment, then said, "Then you'd better not know." And he left too.
Fuck.
Cartman did not go to Kyle. Remember: never, ever ask a Jew for help. He decided to stop worrying about it, went back to his seat, and pulled out his blank homework notebook.
Then Kyle showed up.
Kyle stood beside him. Cartman looked up and saw Kyle's face. It was fucking weird—the Jew in front of him was red from forehead to chin, blending in with his red hair, as if he'd just been pulled out of a vat of tomato soup. He was even biting his lower lip, his shoulders shaking.
"What do you want?" Cartman asked, reluctant. "You gonna pee your pants?"
Kyle took a deep breath, as if using up all the self-control he had in this lifetime.
"Cartman, are you gay?"
It took Cartman three seconds to process Kyle's sentence.
"No! Fuck! What the hell are you talking about?"
Kyle finally couldn't hold it in anymore, and laughter poured all over Cartman's face.
"You licked Butters's hand, right?"
"What?"
"Yesterday, remember?" Kyle wiped his face, trying to get the words out. "Now everyone who's been touched by him is vomiting and crying nonstop and begging to have their limbs amputated. Dude, Butters's hands are the deadliest biological weapon in the whole damn world."
"What the fuck does that have to do with me?" Cartman shot up from his chair. "How dare Butters—"
"Butters didn't say anything," Kyle finally stopped laughing, wiping the corners of his eyes. "Guess who saw it? Clyde. Don't you remember? He was right there. He told everyone that you licked Butters's hand, and that you looked totally absorbed, with a smile on your face, like—"
"Shut up!"
Cartman charged out, locked onto his target. Butters saw Cartman coming, his eyes darting nervously, and he took half a step back, opening his mouth as if to say something. Cartman raised one hand and pointed his index finger at him.
"Don't you dare come within a foot of me ever again."
It must be Eric's mistake, Butters thought. The problem is Clyde—he's the one who leaked it. Eric's also at fault—he shouldn't have licked my hand just for that bit of melted chocolate, at least not while Clyde was still nearby. Maybe I'm at fault too, for not cleaning the ice cream off my hands before Eric could get to them, giving the rumor a chance to spread. He looked down, wringing his hands together, and the moment his fingertips touched, he yelped and yanked them apart. Too late. He looked up again and sure enough, the whole hallway's eyes were on him. Great. Now the number of biological weapons had doubled.
Cartman didn't absorb a single word of the afternoon classes—not that he usually paid much attention anyway, but today was even worse. He noticed that everyone's attention really was on Butters—with curiosity, with sympathy, with awe. Butters had become the center of attention. No one dared to sit next to him, but there were always a few people standing at a distance, watching him, like they were watching Kyle's pet elephant, or Stan's gay dog.
At eight o'clock that night, Cartman climbed over the fence into Butters's backyard.
Butters's bedroom was on the second floor, and the window wasn't locked. Cartman pulled a folding knife out of his pocket, flicked it open with a click, and pointed the blade at the sleeping boy.
"Butters!"
"Ah!"
"Fuck," Cartman was startled too, jumping back half a step. "What the hell are you screaming about?"
It took Butters a few seconds to recognize who was standing there. Once he recovered from the shock, he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, pulled the blanket up higher, wrapped it around his shoulders, and huddled at the head of the bed staring at Cartman.
"You came in through the window?" Butters asked. His voice was back to normal, carrying that sleepy nasal quality.
"So what?"
Butters didn't respond. He tucked his chin into the blanket, leaving only his eyes visible. Cartman sat on the edge of the bed, his legs dangling and swinging idly, kicking the wooden bed frame every now and then. The room was quiet for a while.
There was no TV sound from downstairs—his parents were probably asleep too. The whole house was steeped in a dark brown silence, like melted chocolate ice cream.
Butters pursed his lips. "Okay, but Eric, it was Clyde who said all that stuff, not me."
Cartman stared at him for a moment.
"You just have to tell them I didn't lick your hand."
"But you did lick it." Butters looked up. "You really did, Eric."
The knife in Cartman's hand wavered.
"That doesn't count."
"Then what does it count as?"
Cartman opened his mouth but found he couldn't come up with a rebuttal. He closed it again.
"Sometimes we need to tell a little lie, Butters. You have to go tell them that I—did—not—lick—your—hand!"
"But now everyone's afraid of me." Butters pulled his hands out from under the blanket, palms facing outward. Those hands were perfectly clean, no different from before.
"No one dares to push me, no one dares to throw paper balls into my lunch, no one dares to stick out a leg to trip me when I walk. They all steer clear of me, Eric. All day today, not a single person touched me."
Cartman closed the knife.
"I get it, man. Really."
Cartman got off the mattress and paced on the carpeted floor.
"But you can't fucking climb over me to get there," he finally shouted.
"Sorry!" Butters flinched, his eyes darting quickly toward the door and then back to Cartman—or rather, to the knife that was no longer a threat for the moment. "But if you hadn't licked it in the first place..."
"Fuck, you're blaming me?"
"I'm not blaming you! I'm just saying..." Butters's fingers tangled together again. "If you hadn't done that, no one would have gotten the wrong idea."
"It's not the wrong idea," Cartman said. "It's that little shit Clyde exaggerating everything." He stood up and paced around Butters's cramped bedroom. During those few minutes of silence, he remembered Clyde Frog's funeral.
"Butters," he heard himself say, summoning the sweetest childlike voice he could muster, "how about we play a game?"
Butters stood in the middle of the classroom, his voice trembling as he announced that he had witnessed Clyde and Craig kissing in the boys' bathroom. Maybe, he said, Clyde had spotted him when he panicked and ran away, and that was why Clyde had struck first by spreading the rumor—to cover up the truth.
Clyde's face in the crowd shifted from shock to rage. He slammed his hand on the desk, his chair tipping over backward.
"Bullshit! What the fuck is wrong with you?"
No one believed him. Because Cartman chose that perfect moment to step forward, wearing a pained expression, and confirmed: "Butters called me crying last night, saying he didn't want to expose your dirty business, but he just couldn't take all those rumors anymore. I told him to think it over, but he insisted on telling the truth. Clyde, you've gone too far."
Craig finally realized, under everyone's contemptuous stares, that he had also been dragged into this absurd story. He stood up, expressionless, and walked out of the classroom. Just before his figure disappeared through the door, he raised his middle finger at everyone for a solid three seconds.
"He must be going to apologize to his little boyfriend. So, Clyde, got any excuses?"
Clyde stepped forward, and the boys cheered.
"What? Losing it?"
Cartman blinked at Clyde with sincere innocence. Clyde raised his fist, utterly unable to defend himself. They stood frozen for a few seconds, then Clyde spat out, "Just you wait, Cartman," shoved through the crowd, and stormed out.
The classroom fell into dead silence. Cartman glanced around and gave Butters a light kick.
"Ah—ah! He ran away! We won!"
The boys cheered along with Butters. Stan and Kyle exchanged glances.
"Do they actually believe Clyde kissed Craig?"
"No. It's just that compared to Cartman licking Butters's hand, this story is way more explosive."
"Eric!" Butters jogged after Cartman. "You're amazing! Everyone believed it! Clyde is done for!"
Cartman didn't look back. He just kept walking.
"But..." Butters hesitated. "Will Clyde come after us?"
"Us?" Cartman stopped and turned around. "Why? He should only come after you, Butters. From start to finish, you're the one who told the lie. Clyde was framed by you. I'm just a kind friend who got used by you."
Butters froze.
"But... you told me to..."
"I told you? Who saw that?" Cartman tilted his head. "Do you have a recording? A witness? No. It's just you, Butters—you humiliated him in front of everyone. Guess who Clyde hates now? He hates you." Cartman stepped closer and patted Butters on the shoulder. "I'm still your best friend. Now I'm the only one who'll even talk to you."
"But that's not what you said yesterday."
Cartman turned and walked away. He didn't need to look back at Butters's face. He walked out of the school building, stopped by the horizontal bars on the playground, shoved his hands in his pockets, took a deep breath, and felt especially good today.
The night before, when Cartman had climbed into Butters's yard, he'd gripped that folding knife tightly. His original plan had been simple: while Butters was asleep, cut that annoying voice out of him with one slash, then climb out the window, leaving everyone to think some psycho killer had done it. He'd imagined the scene—the slight resistance as the blade cut through skin, the warm liquid gushing from the wound, Butters not even having time to scream. Cartman was good at imagining these things. Probably because he'd watched enough movies.
When he'd stood by Butters's bedroom window and seen the boy curled under the covers, chin buried in his pillow, hand still resting on the edge of the bed, he'd stopped and thought for a long time.
He was thinking about Clyde Frog again.
More precisely, he was thinking about the day Clyde Frog died. That morning he'd woken up, reached his arm across the bed out of habit, and only touched a crumpled bedsheet. He'd walked into the backyard and seen Clyde Frog hanging from a tree branch—the green skin deflated and sagging, cotton spilling out from the tear in its belly. He'd patched Clyde Frog up, buried him in the yard, and sworn at the funeral to find the killer. But Clyde Frog was simply gone, an empty shell buried in the mud.
Compared to a cotton-stuffed Clyde Frog, Butters was more like Play-Doh—tamable, moldable into any shape, as long as he stayed alive.
In the end, he hadn't driven the knife into Butters's neck. Instead, he'd spent the entire night feeding those lies into Butters's ears, one sentence at a time. Luckily, Butters was much better at lying than Kyle.
Cartman stood by the seesaw for about five minutes. Then he heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw Butters jogging over.
"Eric!" Butters stopped in front of him, out of breath. "I'm sorry. I'll keep listening to you from now on."
Cartman looked at Butters. The sun made his light blond hair look almost translucent.
"Good," Cartman said. "Then let's go. Let's get some ice cream. Chocolate."
End