GUNPOINT, AZ: Twinkie the Kid—adventurer, Western icon, and longtime advertising pitchman beloved by millions—was gunned down at noon yesterday in what witnesses described as a proper Old West shootout. Twinkie’s unknown assailant, identifiable only by a red kerchief and black hat, fled the scene on horseback and is still at large.
Born in River Forest, Illinois, Twinkie the Kid was filled with the spirit of adventure shared by lesser-known Old West figures such as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Woody Pride. This zest for life was fueled by his unconventional friendship with the disreputable Captain Cupcake, whose lavish lifestyle and wanderlust took the unlikely pair to all corners of the Earth.
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| The captain boasted often of having “a Suzy Q in every port,” but for a time, he and the modest Twinkie were inseparable. |
Twinkie’s reputation remained somehow unblemished by the poor taste and shady exploits of the dissolute Cupcake, who dragged the too-willing Twinkie into a notorious succession of scandalous escapades and dangerous adventures. None of these adventures were more famous than their ill-fated Nile River expedition of 1958, which ended abruptly when Twinkie, wandering intoxicated along the shores of the Nile alone after a forty-three-hour drinking contest with Cupcake and English actor Oliver Reed, was attacked and critically wounded by a vicious Chocodile.
His urge to see the world diminished by the slow, painful recovery form his gruesome injuries, Twinkie made his way to Hollywood, California, to try his hand at acting. His youthful good looks served him well in the movie business; while other actors aged and were put back on the shelf, Twinkie remained remarkably well-preserved even after several decades under the lights.
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| Twinkie the Kid at age twenty-five (left), and again at seventy-eight (right). |
Perhaps even more notable than his film career, however, was his long and tumultuous relationship with famed Canadian snack cake May West—a series of very public fights, affairs, accusations, and reconciliations that entranced the public and ended only with her tragic death from consumption. Ever the gentleman, Twinkie always refused to divulge private details of his turbulent life with the icy morsel, preferring to state only that their relationship was “wonderful and sweet, but terribly unhealthy.”
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| Above: a typically revealing racy photo of the provocative May West. |
Already reeling from the loss of May, Twinkie spiraled into a deep depression after being indirectly blamed for the 1978 murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Worried that the public thought he’d finally gone bad, the Kid isolated himself for years, and after a failed attempt to break back into film—he narrowly missed out on playing Gozer the Destructor in 1984’s Ghostbusters, which catapulted the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man to the A-list—Twinkie quit the movie business and ventured back out to the American West that had loomed so large in his childhood imagination.
In Arizona he made a living as a rancher, rustler, merchant, and occasional gunslinger, the desert air clearing his mind and the hard sun baking his spongy skin a healthy yellow. But even there, living his dreams and filled at last with serenity, Twinkie the Kid could perhaps see the seeds of his downfall.
“Folks would always ‘go heeled’ around the Kid, trying to stir up trouble,” says Twinkie’s longtime friend and ranch-hand, Fruit Pie the Magician. “I reckon you’re shocked to hear about gunfights in these parts, comin’ from where you do, it bein’ the Twenty-first Century and all.
“Well, the Twenty-first Century ain’t gotten here yet. This is Arizona.”
Fruit Pie blows his nose into a red-and-white handkerchief and pauses for a moment to collect himself. “I reckon I’ll take solace in the fact that Twinkie the Kid died the way he wanted: with his adorable little cartoon boots on.”
The coroner’s report reads that Twinkie the Kid expired on June 24, 2011, at 3:00 Arizona Standard Time, from multiple gunshot wounds. Not mentioned on the report is how Twinkie’s puzzling physiology itself may have hampered his treatment—or so believes Gunpoint General Hospital’s Chief Surgeon, speaking off the record and under a guarantee of strict anonymity from his office on the hospital’s twelfth floor, right between the water cooler and the pharmacy:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Twinkie’s abnormal physiology contributed to his death,” says the anonymous Chief Surgeon, stroking his distinctive handlebar mustache and his memorable horn-rimmed glasses. “When we open up a trauma victim, we usually see what we expect—heart, lungs, kidneys, intestines. Once in a while we spot something a little unusual like an internal third nipple, or a six-chambered heart, or a splancreas—but that’s all just normal biology. This just wasn’t the case with Twinkie.”
Small shunks of viscous white goop still stick to the hair of his forearms, all the way up to his elbows. They smell fainly of dried sugar, and vanilla, and death.
He gestures at them, tries a couple of times to brush them away, but they cling to him like guilt, sticky, implacable, and delicious. “This is what was inside Twinkie—and nothing else. We tried everything we could, but in the end, I don’t think there was anything we could have done. Frankly, there’s not a doctor alive who has any idea what this shit is.”
He gestures at them, tries a couple of times to brush them away, but they cling to him like guilt, sticky, implacable, and delicious. “This is what was inside Twinkie—and nothing else. We tried everything we could, but in the end, I don’t think there was anything we could have done. Frankly, there’s not a doctor alive who has any idea what this shit is.”
He stands up and gestures politely to the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for lunch. There’s free sponge cake today in the cafeteria.”
