“I can’t see ‘er,” whined Slimy Jack, squinting through a pair of cheap dimestore binoculars. “Can’t see ‘er fer the life of me, Dicky.”
 “That’d be so, seeing as you’ve got them on upside-down, yeh stupid prat!” snarled the overweight, sweaty man they called Richard Swine.
 Together they peered out the grimy window of the Kremlin, their old, beat up pizza truck which they had swiped from a pimply teenager on his way to a delivery, crossing out the logo with spray paint they had swiped from a different pimply adolescent boy as he exited a drugstore. Dick had had his fill of pimply teenaged boys for the day and it did not help that Slimy Jack, though well over thirty, looked quite alot like their pimply-faced victims. Also, he was not as smart.
 “’Snot doin’ anythin’ interesting.” whined sliimy jack again.
 “Shaddap, stupid,” snarled Dicky, taking a swipe at slimy Jack’s greasy red mop of hair, knocking him to the floor and chipping another one of his teeth.
 “Ey! Look what choo did! Ya chipped another on o’ me teeth!” exclaimed slimy jack. “By the end of this story, all of my teeth will be chipped.”
 “Quiet! She’s coming this way. The lady said to watch how she acted ‘round him.” As dicky stared, Stacy seemed to grow larger and larger the way those people in movies do when the camera zooms in on them, and soon she filled the whole screen and the storyline switched to her dialogue with Brad.
 Then, a passing libertine winked and cartwheeled across the story line.
 “Oh Brad, let’s make  a sand castle,” murmured Stacey like she’d never made a sandcastle before.
 “God, I want you,” said Brad.
 “What?” said Stacey.
 “I said, God, I want you.”
 “Neat!”  exclaimed Stacey, and began to fill her bucket with pebbles (in a non metaphorical sense). Brad was busy filling his bucket with pebbles in a metaphorical sense, then he got out the old nail file juuust in case things got a little frisky later on, so he’d be prepared for it.
 Meanwhile, back at the lair, Natasha was busy filing her nails, in a semimetaphorical sense, and then began to paint them magenta pink.
 Natasha, by the way, is Brad’s exlover and arch nemesis.
 Anyways, so Natasha was manicuring her nails and looking beautiful and exotic, like a flamingo on a beautiful, exotic bicycle. She was contemplating how to win back Brad’s heart, and wondering whether he’d age well. She had just come to the conclusion that Brad would age pretty well except for a a receding hariline, which he would attempt to hide with a toupee, which she could tolerate, when she got a call on her cell phone. It was Dicky.
 “They’re making sandcastles. And the libertine is hittingon slimy jack.”
 “libertine?” asked natasha. “he was supposed to be here ten minutes ago!” she peered irritatedly at her fingernails. “well, dicky, you’ll just have to distract them. use whatever means necessary. and...dicky?”
 “yes, madam?”
 “tell the libertine that it’s all over between us and he can pick up his paycheck tomorrow at noon.”
 So dicky put on his thinking cap, which was tartan plaid and stitched with the name, “agnes” across the brim, having belonged to a hairdresser he had once dated in Soho. he missed agnes, she was a hip chick, a real hip lady.
 finally after he had fallen asleep twice and had to be awakened both times by lewd acts on the part of the libertine (who refused to fuck off in QUITE the sense that dicky and slimy jack had meant it when they screamed it repeatedly) dicky came up with a plan; though, much to his distaste, it involved the use of a pimply teenager.
 “god. fucking. damn. it.” he said with feeling, and then located a pimply teenager on his way out of the laundromat, where Slimy Jack had been stealing ladies' underwear from unwary college students. Seizing him by the collar and glaring menacingly at the boy's acne-studded face, Dicky growled, "Gimmie yer laundry or I'll chop off yer tiny manhood and eat it with me own two teeth!" in what he hoped was a sufficiently threatening sort of growl.
  "I'm a master in Judo," confided the pimply teenager, tearing off his stained, greasy Marilyn Manson concert t-shirt to reveal an impeccably laundered ninja's costume. Simultaneously, the object in his left hand, which Dicky had previously perceived to be an ice cream cone, was revealed to be a glistening, well-sharpened machete.
  Hefting his load of clean jock straps and cargo pants above his head, the teenager lunged at a terrified, cowering Dicky, smothering him under his own tartan cap! Just then, in a speeding blur of elastic, lace, and underwire, Slimy Jack shot out of the door to the Klean N Happee, taking the teenage ninja by surprise and choking him with a black lace teddy.
  The teenager disposed of, Slimy Jack and Dicky high-fived, then retrieved the deceased's bundle of clothing, finding a large speckled muumuu and a pair of flowered socks, those two essentials to any ninja wardrobe.
  "These'll do," said Slimy Jack grimly, stepping into the muumuu and putting on the socks. Then he took a pair of pink panties and put them on his head. "Look!" he exhorted Dicky. "I'm Superman!"
  Dicky stared at Slimy Jack in disgust. "Get a hold of yerself!" he spat. "Distract Brad like we're supposed to."
  "Right, right," murmured Slimy Jack, subdued; he marched purposefully off to the beach, concealing the panties in his tennis shoes.
  Slimy Jack pranced, in what he assumed was a seductive manner, toward Brad's elaborate sand creation.  "Hey there, hot stuff," he said coyly, batting his eyelashes and looking every bit like a dressed up stork.
  Brad squinted at the lanky intruder. "Mark?" he asked tentatively.
  "Brad!" exclaimed Stacy, taken aback.
  "Jesus," sighed Slimy Jack.
  "Are we done here?" Jesus whined petulantly, donning his reflective sunglasses and picking up his double latte. "I have a photo shoot in a half hour, and then dinner with the Apostles. I'm supposed to turn a bunch of wood slats into filet mignon. I swear to God, it's a thankless job." He flounced off.
  Suddenly, a seagull swooped down, his menacing red eyes clearly intent on one target: Slimy Jack's left breast (which was in fact a water balloon filled with tapioca pudding)!! It burst with a loud SWISHPLABWISHPURTLAH as well as a resounding squish, and Slimy Jack, clutching his mutilated chest, was forced to make an embarrassing retreat , running through a volleyball game and knocking over five bowling pins as he went, after which he was arrested by a nearby plainclothes police officer for having toppled a run-on sentence in his haste to make an escape without further detriment to the stolen muumuu, which he had grown to love, even as Zippy the Pinhead himself loved his own polkadot muumuu, which he had won in battle with a ninja.
  "What a creep!" said Stacy, "I can't believe he killed that ninja just so he could have a polkadot muumuu!"
  "Yeah, I know," responded Brad, "And the cross-dresser was an asshole, too. Anyway...Stacy, there's something I need to tell you. I...I really need to tell you it. It's so important that I tell you, it's hard to find the words. Stacy, willya just let me tell you?"
  "I-Brad, I" but at that moment Stacy's words were cut off by Valerie screaming a few feet away from the shore.
  "HELP! I AM DROWNING! AHH!" said Valerie.
  "Valerie," said Brad, "that is a tidepool."
  "AHHH" said Valerie. Brad sighed, then reluctantly stripped off his shirt to reveal glistening bronzed stomach muscles, then dove in and rescued Valerie from the tidepool, where she was in grave danger of being attacked by and made the captive of a small horseshoe crab.
  "Oh, Brad," murmured Valerie. "Your stomach muscles are so...glistening. And bronzed." Stacy felt a pang of jealousy deep within her own sizable stomach muscles.
  Suddenly, Mark sauntered over, taking them all by surprise. There was an awkward moment as his eyes, the rich, subtle hue of baked beans, flicked lazily over the assembled. Brad looked away uncomfortably. Meanwhile, in all the commotion, Slimy Jack had returned. He flicked lazily over the assembled, too, then snatched Brad and stuffed him into the trunk of the Kremlin, which he had parked nearby and hidden under a run-on sentence earlier in the day.
  Stacy noticed he was gone three hours later, when she and the libertine, (whose name was Geraldine), were lounging in the tidepool, trading hair tips and discussing the difficulty of finding truly classy evening attire.
  "Oh MY GOD!!" she screamed. 'Where's Brad?"
  But it was too late. The Kremlin, Brad and all, was already speeding towards Natasha's lair, heedless of Stacy's anguished cries.

 Thus we conclude the second installment of Treacherous Net of Passion. Tune in next time to find out just what becomes of Brad, Stacy, Valerie, Slimy Jack, Dicky, Geraldine, Mark, the run-on sentence. Special guests will include Monica Lewinsky, Dick Cheney, a sex columnist, the INCREDIBLE HULK, Peewee Herman, and Chris Gilligan.