Garrison Kelly's Blog, page 109
December 11, 2015
Shadow-Pie
For Lance Bradley, driving out to the Ophidian Valley Desert was the longest journey he had ever embarked on. It had nothing to do with how much gas his white Honda used to get there. It had everything to do with his mind racing even faster than his vehicle. With his father’s ashes in a golden urn in the back seat, why wouldn’t his mind be racing at a hundred miles per hour. His pale face hadn’t seen a smile since the day his father passed. His pony tailed brown hair was a disheveled mess. His black rimmed glasses did a piss poor job of blurring out the tears forming in his eyes.
It was a thirty minute drive to the desert with a lifetime of sorrowful thoughts and heartache to go with it. When he parked by the side of the road, he shook and staggered his way to the back seat to get his father’s ashes. Stepping out into the desert sand was even more of a chore for his aching body. Who knew depression could hurt so badly in more places than just the mind. After a while of dragging his heavy feet, Lance finally dropped to his knees and let the urn crash onto the ground, though the soft sand kept the golden container from breaking. The tears were coming much more rapidly and his face was turning beet red.
“You must be Lance Bradley,” said a sagely voice. The grieving son picked his burdensome head up and saw that an elderly black dog with hints of gray fur and an Indian head dress was the source of that voice. Lance had the urge to go over and give her endless belly rubs and ear scratches. Hearing her actually form words with her dog muzzle made him reconsider. This wasn’t an ordinary animal. This was the shaman of the Ophidian Valley Desert, Shadow-Pie.
The sagely dog went on to say, “My condolences for your loss, Mr. Bradley. I’m sure he was very special to you.” The pawl bearer cringed and shivered as he stood up with the golden urn in hand. Shadow tilted her head to the side and asked, “Did I say something offensive?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that…well…I wasn’t expecting a dog to carry out this ritual. No offense,” said Lance without making eye contact with Shadow.
“None taken, my child. I get that kind of reaction no matter who comes out here. That golden urn of yours. Bring it here so that I may perform the ritual. I take it you don’t want to spend the whole day out here. Let’s get this done so that you can go home and rest,” suggested Shadow.
Lance stumbled over to the talking dog with the urn clutched to his chest like a child’s teddy bear. Something was bothering him other than the fact that his father was dead. Not even a wise being like Shadow could make out what it was. The pawl bearer set the urn down in front of the sweet-hearted beast and unscrewed the lid.
“Are you absolutely sure you’re okay, Mr. Bradley? Is it just grief from the loss of your father or is it something else?” asked Shadow.
An agitated Lance said, “I told you, Shadow, everything is fine!”
The elderly dog barked at her charge and said in a stern voice, “That’s not the way you talk to a shaman, young man. I was merely trying to figure out if everything was okay. You don’t need to take your aggression out on an animal spirit like me!”
Lance stuffed his hands in his tan khaki pockets, looked down at his feet sheepishly, and said, “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
“If it means so much to you, then we can discuss this later. Until then, I have a ritual to perform. Stand as far back as you can, because the air is about to get dusty. Wouldn’t want a fine young man like you to have a sore throat,” said Shadow.
After the grieving son stepped backwards as he was told, Shadow stuck her snout into the urn and breathed in the ashes deep within her system. A few more deep breaths later and the ritual was underway, which consisted of her blowing the ashes out into the desert in the form of a high speed wind. The black cloud eventually turned green. The high winds became even more powerful. Spiritual chanting could be heard from Shadow’s throat as she simultaneously blew the ashes.
The green smoke began to form a dark circle around Shadow and Lance, making the latter of the two shiver and dart his eyes from side to side. If he wasn’t scared before, he was now that the shaman dog’s eyes were dark red and her currently razor sharp teeth were trembling in anger.
Lance tried to talk down the normally friendly dog by saying, “Good girl. She’s a good girl. Would you like a belly rub?” The possessed Shadow barked angrily at her charge and growled at him with white spittle running down her jowls. “Okay, um…how about some beef jerky! I have a whole bag of it in my car!”
The diplomacy of the dead man’s son was unconvincing to the ferocious beast as she leapt through the air and landed on Lance’s chest, pinning him down and barking relentlessly in his screaming face. Lance stopped screaming for a moment when Shadow spoke to him in his father’s gruff voice: “It’s about time you dragged me out here, little boy. There’s nobody around here to save you this time. No cops. No social workers. Not even your clueless mother! I’m going to enjoy every single bit of this torture I have planned for you. The first thing I’m going to do is bite off each of your little fingers one at a time!”
As Shadow slowly went for the first bite, Lance’s pants-pissing fear was replaced with a berserker’s courage. “Screw you, Dad!” he yelled as he landed a palm strike on the possessed dog’s nose. Shadow stumbled backwards long enough for Lance to stand up and put his dukes up.
But this wasn’t going to be an epic fight to the death. A dog’s nose was the most sensitive part of the beast’s body. Instead of charging at the dead man’s son with bloodlust, Shadow began to suck in air quickly before sneezing a hurricane of green spiritual energy. Lance was blown backwards into his car, where the back of his head bounced off of the hood and knocked him temporarily unconscious. As his vision was going black, all he could see was the green energy of his dead father cursing at him with venom in his voice.
It felt like an entire year had passed since this incident took place, but only because Lance Bradley had a monstrous headache as he awakened from his TKO at the hands of Shadow. The sky was a dark blue and the golden sun was setting underneath the horizon. Just exactly how much time did pass? Lance didn’t care. He rubbed the back of his sore head as he was coming around. He had a little bit of a bump there, but nothing more.
Shadow seemed a bit wobbly herself as she waddled over to her client, who sat against his car door with his butt on the desert ground. Shadow also seemed a little upset with Lance as she stared into his eyes with a little bit of a furrow in her brows. “Is there something you’d like to tell me, Mr. Bradley? Is there a reason why the spirit of your ‘loving’ father caused me to nearly kill both of us? I want answers, Lance. I want them now!”
“I can’t talk about it, Shadow. I just can’t,” said a whimpering Lance.
“Listen to me, son,” said the sagely dog. “You came all the way out to this desert for a reason. Someone obviously sent you out here to carry out your father’s final wishes. But your father’s final wishes weren’t necessarily yours, were they, Lance? You don’t have to give me all the details of your father’s sins, but maybe a surface-level description would satisfy me. I need to know why I transformed into that horrible beast.”
A teary silence befell Lance before he finally mustered up the strength to say, “I was…I was…”
“You were what? Don’t run away from your past, my dear. Face it head on and create a better future. You were almost denied that future when I inhaled your father’s spirit. Are you going to let him do this to you from beyond the grave?” said Shadow.
After taking a few deep breaths, Lance Bradley spilled the beans on his father’s transgressions. “I was only eight years old. You don’t make an eight year old do those things. You don’t make him taste those tastes. You don’t make him feel embarrassed like that. You don’t touch your own son that way!” The last sentence was shouted with all of Lance’s pent up frustrations. The tears were pouring like rain at this point.
“Do you feel that?” asked Shadow. “Inside each of those tears is the spiritual energy of your past agony. They’ve stayed within you for so long. You were afraid to let them out for fear of reliving those days. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to live those days anymore, my son. The truth set you free. You set your father’s soul free. And I am right here beside you. I always will be. Dogs like me were put on this earth to give comfort to those who need it. I am giving all of my comfort to you. Keep those floodgates open and learn to love again.”
Shadow nuzzled her soft head against Lance’s chest while the sobbing son wrapped his trembling arms around his new doggie. “Your fur is so soft. I could pet you all day long. Is it okay if I pet you?” asked Lance.
“You don’t have to ask me, my child. You can pet me for as long as you want to. Take your time and don’t let up until you’re ready to hit the road again,” said the loving Shadow-Pie.
The petting session, the flowing tears, and the heartache of it all lasted for hours that night. The sun had gone to sleep for the day and the full moon glowed brightly for the sagely animal and her new owner Lance. Peace and tranquility had come to Ophidian Valley once more.
It was a thirty minute drive to the desert with a lifetime of sorrowful thoughts and heartache to go with it. When he parked by the side of the road, he shook and staggered his way to the back seat to get his father’s ashes. Stepping out into the desert sand was even more of a chore for his aching body. Who knew depression could hurt so badly in more places than just the mind. After a while of dragging his heavy feet, Lance finally dropped to his knees and let the urn crash onto the ground, though the soft sand kept the golden container from breaking. The tears were coming much more rapidly and his face was turning beet red.
“You must be Lance Bradley,” said a sagely voice. The grieving son picked his burdensome head up and saw that an elderly black dog with hints of gray fur and an Indian head dress was the source of that voice. Lance had the urge to go over and give her endless belly rubs and ear scratches. Hearing her actually form words with her dog muzzle made him reconsider. This wasn’t an ordinary animal. This was the shaman of the Ophidian Valley Desert, Shadow-Pie.
The sagely dog went on to say, “My condolences for your loss, Mr. Bradley. I’m sure he was very special to you.” The pawl bearer cringed and shivered as he stood up with the golden urn in hand. Shadow tilted her head to the side and asked, “Did I say something offensive?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that…well…I wasn’t expecting a dog to carry out this ritual. No offense,” said Lance without making eye contact with Shadow.
“None taken, my child. I get that kind of reaction no matter who comes out here. That golden urn of yours. Bring it here so that I may perform the ritual. I take it you don’t want to spend the whole day out here. Let’s get this done so that you can go home and rest,” suggested Shadow.
Lance stumbled over to the talking dog with the urn clutched to his chest like a child’s teddy bear. Something was bothering him other than the fact that his father was dead. Not even a wise being like Shadow could make out what it was. The pawl bearer set the urn down in front of the sweet-hearted beast and unscrewed the lid.
“Are you absolutely sure you’re okay, Mr. Bradley? Is it just grief from the loss of your father or is it something else?” asked Shadow.
An agitated Lance said, “I told you, Shadow, everything is fine!”
The elderly dog barked at her charge and said in a stern voice, “That’s not the way you talk to a shaman, young man. I was merely trying to figure out if everything was okay. You don’t need to take your aggression out on an animal spirit like me!”
Lance stuffed his hands in his tan khaki pockets, looked down at his feet sheepishly, and said, “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
“If it means so much to you, then we can discuss this later. Until then, I have a ritual to perform. Stand as far back as you can, because the air is about to get dusty. Wouldn’t want a fine young man like you to have a sore throat,” said Shadow.
After the grieving son stepped backwards as he was told, Shadow stuck her snout into the urn and breathed in the ashes deep within her system. A few more deep breaths later and the ritual was underway, which consisted of her blowing the ashes out into the desert in the form of a high speed wind. The black cloud eventually turned green. The high winds became even more powerful. Spiritual chanting could be heard from Shadow’s throat as she simultaneously blew the ashes.
The green smoke began to form a dark circle around Shadow and Lance, making the latter of the two shiver and dart his eyes from side to side. If he wasn’t scared before, he was now that the shaman dog’s eyes were dark red and her currently razor sharp teeth were trembling in anger.
Lance tried to talk down the normally friendly dog by saying, “Good girl. She’s a good girl. Would you like a belly rub?” The possessed Shadow barked angrily at her charge and growled at him with white spittle running down her jowls. “Okay, um…how about some beef jerky! I have a whole bag of it in my car!”
The diplomacy of the dead man’s son was unconvincing to the ferocious beast as she leapt through the air and landed on Lance’s chest, pinning him down and barking relentlessly in his screaming face. Lance stopped screaming for a moment when Shadow spoke to him in his father’s gruff voice: “It’s about time you dragged me out here, little boy. There’s nobody around here to save you this time. No cops. No social workers. Not even your clueless mother! I’m going to enjoy every single bit of this torture I have planned for you. The first thing I’m going to do is bite off each of your little fingers one at a time!”
As Shadow slowly went for the first bite, Lance’s pants-pissing fear was replaced with a berserker’s courage. “Screw you, Dad!” he yelled as he landed a palm strike on the possessed dog’s nose. Shadow stumbled backwards long enough for Lance to stand up and put his dukes up.
But this wasn’t going to be an epic fight to the death. A dog’s nose was the most sensitive part of the beast’s body. Instead of charging at the dead man’s son with bloodlust, Shadow began to suck in air quickly before sneezing a hurricane of green spiritual energy. Lance was blown backwards into his car, where the back of his head bounced off of the hood and knocked him temporarily unconscious. As his vision was going black, all he could see was the green energy of his dead father cursing at him with venom in his voice.
It felt like an entire year had passed since this incident took place, but only because Lance Bradley had a monstrous headache as he awakened from his TKO at the hands of Shadow. The sky was a dark blue and the golden sun was setting underneath the horizon. Just exactly how much time did pass? Lance didn’t care. He rubbed the back of his sore head as he was coming around. He had a little bit of a bump there, but nothing more.
Shadow seemed a bit wobbly herself as she waddled over to her client, who sat against his car door with his butt on the desert ground. Shadow also seemed a little upset with Lance as she stared into his eyes with a little bit of a furrow in her brows. “Is there something you’d like to tell me, Mr. Bradley? Is there a reason why the spirit of your ‘loving’ father caused me to nearly kill both of us? I want answers, Lance. I want them now!”
“I can’t talk about it, Shadow. I just can’t,” said a whimpering Lance.
“Listen to me, son,” said the sagely dog. “You came all the way out to this desert for a reason. Someone obviously sent you out here to carry out your father’s final wishes. But your father’s final wishes weren’t necessarily yours, were they, Lance? You don’t have to give me all the details of your father’s sins, but maybe a surface-level description would satisfy me. I need to know why I transformed into that horrible beast.”
A teary silence befell Lance before he finally mustered up the strength to say, “I was…I was…”
“You were what? Don’t run away from your past, my dear. Face it head on and create a better future. You were almost denied that future when I inhaled your father’s spirit. Are you going to let him do this to you from beyond the grave?” said Shadow.
After taking a few deep breaths, Lance Bradley spilled the beans on his father’s transgressions. “I was only eight years old. You don’t make an eight year old do those things. You don’t make him taste those tastes. You don’t make him feel embarrassed like that. You don’t touch your own son that way!” The last sentence was shouted with all of Lance’s pent up frustrations. The tears were pouring like rain at this point.
“Do you feel that?” asked Shadow. “Inside each of those tears is the spiritual energy of your past agony. They’ve stayed within you for so long. You were afraid to let them out for fear of reliving those days. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to live those days anymore, my son. The truth set you free. You set your father’s soul free. And I am right here beside you. I always will be. Dogs like me were put on this earth to give comfort to those who need it. I am giving all of my comfort to you. Keep those floodgates open and learn to love again.”
Shadow nuzzled her soft head against Lance’s chest while the sobbing son wrapped his trembling arms around his new doggie. “Your fur is so soft. I could pet you all day long. Is it okay if I pet you?” asked Lance.
“You don’t have to ask me, my child. You can pet me for as long as you want to. Take your time and don’t let up until you’re ready to hit the road again,” said the loving Shadow-Pie.
The petting session, the flowing tears, and the heartache of it all lasted for hours that night. The sun had gone to sleep for the day and the full moon glowed brightly for the sagely animal and her new owner Lance. Peace and tranquility had come to Ophidian Valley once more.
December 8, 2015
Brutally Honest Dating Profile
***BRUTALLY HONEST DATING PROFILE***
There used to be a time where I would frown and pout at the idea of not having a girlfriend, especially one of celebrity status. Ridiculous, right? I think so too. At this point in my life, I couldn’t care less about the dating scene. I care even less than that about online dating. I’ve tried it several times with no success and I’m ready to say, “Fuck it, I’m done”. I have so little compassion for online dating that if I ever decide to make a profile for a place like OK Cupid, Plenty of Fish, E-Harmony, or any of those other sites, I’m going to take the Buzz Feed route and be brutally honest about all aspects of my life. For the sake of real life, I’m going to use my birth name instead of my penname. So without further ado, let’s get on with the Brutally Honest Dating Profile. It goes like this:
“Who is Garrison Haines-Temons? Most people don’t know, because they only see the surface of who I am: an out of shape and socially awkward man child with the worst case of allergies and the wrong answers to every socially acceptable question. If you’ve made it this far into my profile, I applaud you for not running away like a scream queen from a 1980’s horror movie.
The most common question I get asked by strangers is what I do for a living. If I wanted to be a funny guy, I could tell you that I work with impoverished children in the Democratic Republic of None of Your Damn Business. But that wouldn’t be the honest answer. The honest answer is, I’m an amateur writer who gets social security benefits for not only being schizophrenic and autistic, but also for having retired parents. I don’t go around telling people that because the person I’m talking to could either be a tea-bagging republican who judges poor people or a potential girlfriend who only dates men for their money and cars. If you’re going to judge me, do it on my character and not on my economic status. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks relationships are built on love and honesty instead of shallowness and greed.
What exactly is my character? The good news is, behind all of this social weirdness, I have a creative side to me. As I’ve said earlier, I’m an unpaid writer, but I also like to draw pictures of brutally violent warriors and take photographs of my toy collection and my animals. If there’s a creative project, I can get it done in style. For a while, I played the piano. I don’t do it much anymore, but the musical bug will come back to bite me soon enough.
What about my interests? Aside from expanding my creative outlets, I also love to watch professional wrestling, read books, and listen to heavy metal music. I used to play a lot of videogames, but ever since getting the shit kicked out of me multiple times by a lava dragon in Final Fantasy III, I’ve become too frustrated to continue that hobby. But I have to admit, videogames can be great creative fuel for when I’m writing a short story or heavy metal song.
You’ve made it this far into my dating profile without cowering away. You deserve a parade with confetti and marching bands. Now we’re going to get serious for a minute. I don’t have many pet peeves, but one of my biggest ones is people lacking respect for my introversion. You know the kind. They make small talk until the end of time, they always want your attention 24/7, they give you no breathing space or privacy of any kind, and they get pissed off if you call them out on their aggressive bullshit. If you’re one of these people who loves to smother your boyfriend with multiple texts, phone calls, and visits, then I don’t need you in my life. Every worst enemy of mine was someone who invaded my privacy and gave me no alone time to process my thoughts. Introversion may sound like an excuse to a lot of people, but it’s real to me and if you don’t honor it, you can’t be my girlfriend.
There you have it: Garrison Haines-Temons, bullshit free, nonconforming, live, and in color. Truth be told, I know not everyone accepts this kind of brutal honesty. In fact, I expect that most girls will see my profile and swipe to the right. That’s okay, though. I’m really joining this dating site out of protest and I really don’t need a relationship based on shallowness. Either you love all of me or you hate all of me. I don’t change for anybody. I don’t need to be told how to dress. I don’t need to be told what career to embark on. I don’t need to be told how to live life. I know what my life is about and I’m happy with my situation even though others aren’t. So what do you say? Will you give me a chance or will you keep pursuing your dreams of getting in the sack with Christian Grey?”
Now I’m actually curious as to how many hits this profile will get. I shouldn’t get too hung up on it, though. After all, I’m going into this thing with the ultimate “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***
With the additions of Autumn the parrot and Shadow the dog, it’s time to add yet another former animal of mine to the series. Remember Ottie-Doo from the short story of the same name? Like Autumn and Shadow, I don’t have any photographs of the elderly kitty. A drawing will have to do instead. And now that I think about it, Ottie had a lot in common with my current elderly kitty Smokey. Maybe I could use a picture of Smokey for a reference model. Hmm….
***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“New rule: couples who make out in public have to bring a bucket for me to throw up in. I didn’t come all the way to Applebee’s to be sickened by your dry humping. I came all the way to Applebee’s to be sickened by the food.”
-Bill Maher-
There used to be a time where I would frown and pout at the idea of not having a girlfriend, especially one of celebrity status. Ridiculous, right? I think so too. At this point in my life, I couldn’t care less about the dating scene. I care even less than that about online dating. I’ve tried it several times with no success and I’m ready to say, “Fuck it, I’m done”. I have so little compassion for online dating that if I ever decide to make a profile for a place like OK Cupid, Plenty of Fish, E-Harmony, or any of those other sites, I’m going to take the Buzz Feed route and be brutally honest about all aspects of my life. For the sake of real life, I’m going to use my birth name instead of my penname. So without further ado, let’s get on with the Brutally Honest Dating Profile. It goes like this:
“Who is Garrison Haines-Temons? Most people don’t know, because they only see the surface of who I am: an out of shape and socially awkward man child with the worst case of allergies and the wrong answers to every socially acceptable question. If you’ve made it this far into my profile, I applaud you for not running away like a scream queen from a 1980’s horror movie.
The most common question I get asked by strangers is what I do for a living. If I wanted to be a funny guy, I could tell you that I work with impoverished children in the Democratic Republic of None of Your Damn Business. But that wouldn’t be the honest answer. The honest answer is, I’m an amateur writer who gets social security benefits for not only being schizophrenic and autistic, but also for having retired parents. I don’t go around telling people that because the person I’m talking to could either be a tea-bagging republican who judges poor people or a potential girlfriend who only dates men for their money and cars. If you’re going to judge me, do it on my character and not on my economic status. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks relationships are built on love and honesty instead of shallowness and greed.
What exactly is my character? The good news is, behind all of this social weirdness, I have a creative side to me. As I’ve said earlier, I’m an unpaid writer, but I also like to draw pictures of brutally violent warriors and take photographs of my toy collection and my animals. If there’s a creative project, I can get it done in style. For a while, I played the piano. I don’t do it much anymore, but the musical bug will come back to bite me soon enough.
What about my interests? Aside from expanding my creative outlets, I also love to watch professional wrestling, read books, and listen to heavy metal music. I used to play a lot of videogames, but ever since getting the shit kicked out of me multiple times by a lava dragon in Final Fantasy III, I’ve become too frustrated to continue that hobby. But I have to admit, videogames can be great creative fuel for when I’m writing a short story or heavy metal song.
You’ve made it this far into my dating profile without cowering away. You deserve a parade with confetti and marching bands. Now we’re going to get serious for a minute. I don’t have many pet peeves, but one of my biggest ones is people lacking respect for my introversion. You know the kind. They make small talk until the end of time, they always want your attention 24/7, they give you no breathing space or privacy of any kind, and they get pissed off if you call them out on their aggressive bullshit. If you’re one of these people who loves to smother your boyfriend with multiple texts, phone calls, and visits, then I don’t need you in my life. Every worst enemy of mine was someone who invaded my privacy and gave me no alone time to process my thoughts. Introversion may sound like an excuse to a lot of people, but it’s real to me and if you don’t honor it, you can’t be my girlfriend.
There you have it: Garrison Haines-Temons, bullshit free, nonconforming, live, and in color. Truth be told, I know not everyone accepts this kind of brutal honesty. In fact, I expect that most girls will see my profile and swipe to the right. That’s okay, though. I’m really joining this dating site out of protest and I really don’t need a relationship based on shallowness. Either you love all of me or you hate all of me. I don’t change for anybody. I don’t need to be told how to dress. I don’t need to be told what career to embark on. I don’t need to be told how to live life. I know what my life is about and I’m happy with my situation even though others aren’t. So what do you say? Will you give me a chance or will you keep pursuing your dreams of getting in the sack with Christian Grey?”
Now I’m actually curious as to how many hits this profile will get. I shouldn’t get too hung up on it, though. After all, I’m going into this thing with the ultimate “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***
With the additions of Autumn the parrot and Shadow the dog, it’s time to add yet another former animal of mine to the series. Remember Ottie-Doo from the short story of the same name? Like Autumn and Shadow, I don’t have any photographs of the elderly kitty. A drawing will have to do instead. And now that I think about it, Ottie had a lot in common with my current elderly kitty Smokey. Maybe I could use a picture of Smokey for a reference model. Hmm….
***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“New rule: couples who make out in public have to bring a bucket for me to throw up in. I didn’t come all the way to Applebee’s to be sickened by your dry humping. I came all the way to Applebee’s to be sickened by the food.”
-Bill Maher-
December 7, 2015
Dark Prophecy
“You wanted to see me?” said Charlie Marks, a leather jacket and jeans wearing high schooler who was too cool for school. Judging from his lackadaisical posture and bored facial expression, he felt he was too cool to be in the same office as his art teacher.
“Yes, Charlie, I did want to see you. Have a seat. Don’t get too comfortable, because this has suspension written all over it,” said Rebecca Waters, a brown dress wearing blonde who sat cross-legged in her office’s computer chair with the posture of a judge presiding over a criminal court case.
When Charlie took a seat on the wooden stool and twiddled his thumbs nonchalantly, Rebecca pored through her file folder until she found the piece of “art” that brought the two of them together that day. It was a cartoon of a distorted faced Special Olympian dressed in a bicycle helmet and a dirty diaper. If that wasn’t offensive enough, the caption of the drawing said, “The Prophet Muhammad” in big bold letters.
Charlie took the drawing from Rebecca’s hands and stared at it uncaringly. “Yeah, so?”
“What do you mean, yeah, so? You know full well why that’s unacceptable. Not only is it disparaging to the mentally disabled, but it’s extremely disparaging to the Muslim community. There are over five hundred Muslim students who attend this high school. What do you think they’re going to do if they see this drawing?” said Rebecca in an authoritative voice.
The “artist” pretended to look at his drawing from multiple angles, but he was really just turning his paper upside down and sideways to stall for time. When Rebecca asked an impatient, “Well?”, Charlie responded with, “They’re probably going to strap bombs to their bodies and blow me into pieces. Is that the answer you were looking for? Are you actually worried about this kind of crap going on? You say there’s five hundred Muslims going to school here? I bet not one of them has the balls to take me on over a stupid drawing. Ever heard of Freedom of Speech, Miss Waters?”
Rebecca shook her head no, cleared her throat, and said, “Listen, Charlie. There’ve been plenty of awful things going on in the news lately with terrorism and general ignorance toward certain people. Remember hearing about the ISIS attacks in Paris a few weeks ago? Of course you don’t, because you’re not smart enough to pay attention to world politics. If you were, you would know that this ‘funny’ cartoon is the highest form of prejudice toward the Muslim community. I’m not worried about what the students will do to you. Because let’s face it, none of our students act anywhere near as badly as the ISIS terrorists who committed that awful attack in Paris.”
“Well then, what are you worried about, Miss Waters? What, is ISIS going to raid our stupid little school and start shooting everyone in sight because I drew a cartoon? Don’t they have better things to do with their lives? Newsflash: those crazies halfway around the world don’t give a shit about Paulson City kids like me!” said Charlie Marks in a more animated voice complete with frantic hand gestures.
Rebecca hunched forward as if she was in a secretive conversation with her student and asked, “You didn’t post this drawing to your social media accounts, did you?” No answer, just a stupefied look on Charlie’s face. “Well, did you?!” The student gave a cheeky half smile and it was obvious at that point what his answer was.
“You idiot!” screamed Rebecca Waters. She stood over Charlie like a giant ready to breathe fire on some helpless villagers. “Do you realize what the hell you’ve done?! Are you so thickheaded that you don’t realize the gravity of what’s going on here?! Yeah, it may be a stupid cartoon to you, but it’s much more to the people online and around the world! It’d be the same thing if you posted a drawing of a black guy eating watermelon or a gay guy in tight-fitting bicycle shorts! You don’t do that! There are certain lines you just don’t fucking cross!”
Charlie looked into his teacher’s furious eyes with five second fear and then smiled his idiotic smile again when he said, “You swore, Miss Waters! Naughty, naughty!”
The art teacher fluffed her hair in frustration, let out a pissed off grunt, and plopped back down into her computer chair. She sat there for a minute taking deep breaths to calm herself down while Charlie was smiling and chuckling at her.
“What are you laughing at, you moron?” asked Rebecca. “You think bigotry is funny? Well, I don’t. This school doesn’t. The whole point of school is to teach you the ways of the world and how to coexist with the people you share that world with.” She snatched the picture from Charlie’s hand and presented it with disdain. “I’m not letting you get away with this. This kind of sick, demented garbage is punishable by suspension, maybe even expulsion if we feel you’re not learning anything from this.”
The smile slowly disappeared from Charlie’s face. “You can’t do that,” he said in a defeated tone.
“Oh, but we can. And we will! But you know what, Charlie? I don’t want you to be expelled from here. I want you to be punished, but not in that way. Maybe a cartoon doesn’t warrant that kind of extreme punishment. But you’re saying depicting the Prophet Muhammad in that way doesn’t mean anything. I’m saying it does and many will agree with me, including the Principal.”
Charlie’s eyes darted from side to side before he asked, “So…what do you want me to do? I mean…there is a catch to me not being expelled, right?”
“For starters, I want you to log onto my computer, go to your social media accounts, and take down the picture before anybody sees it. Ah, who am I kidding? It’s probably spreading across the internet right now. But I’d still appreciate it if you’d take it down before anybody gets hurt.”
Mr. Marks stared at his teacher like what she was asking him was too much to handle. After a while of stalling, Rebecca sighed and said, “Listen. I told you I didn’t want to expel you from here. You know why? Because up until this point, you’ve been doing A and B-worthy work in my classroom. You are a talented artist in many ways. But this drawing crosses so many lines on so many levels. So instead of putting you on the chopping block, I’d like you to meet somebody.”
Using her smart phone, Rebecca signaled her special guest to enter the office. He was a giant of a man with dark skin, a bald head, and a scraggly beard. He stood over Charlie Marks like the offensive artist was merely a worm on the sidewalk ready to be stepped on. He was introduced by Rebecca as Kamal Sadollah, one of the five hundred Muslim students she referenced earlier in the conversation.
“Relax, Charlie. I’m not here to hurt you. Allah wouldn’t forgive me if I did such a thing to you. But I have seen your drawing on Face Book and Twitter. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” He placed his thick palm on Charlie’s quivering shoulder and said, “I know my religion and my culture doesn’t mean much to you. But it means something to me. I turned to Islam because I needed direction in my life. And guess what? I haven’t gotten in one fight since. I am a member of the high school wrestling team and any battle I have will be on the mat and nowhere else.”
“Okay, I get it,” said Charlie in a nervous tone. “You’re pissed off about my drawing. But you have to understand something. I didn’t do it because I wanted to piss you off personally. I did it as a joke. I thought it would be hilarious and I still think it is. Am I right?” he said with a half-hearted chuckle. Neither Rebecca nor Kamal was laughing. They were staring holes through him with their sniper scope vision.
“Here’s the deal,” said Kamal as he put his face closer to Charlie’s. “Either you take down that picture from Face Book and Twitter and anywhere else you have it posted, or I’m going to do something you’ve always wanted to do with your narcissistic pictures. I’m going to share that drawing. I’m going to share it with every Muslim friend and family member I know. And then I’ll share it with atheists, Christians, Jews, and anyone else who will listen. By the time I’m done distributing it, the entire world will know how much of an asshole Charlie Marks is. I won’t hurt you. I never will. But I can’t say the same for anyone else who sees that picture.”
“Charlie…listen to me,” said Rebecca. “You’re too young in your life to play the role of a villain. If that many people know about what you’ve done today, then your life will be ruined. I don’t want to see you end up that way. So please…do the right thing. Take down the picture.”
Kamal handed Charlie his smart phone and said, “Here, you can use this if you want. Don’t worry, it’s not hardwired to an IED. We’re not all stereotypes here, Charlie. We’re real people with real desires and real dreams. Do you have desires of your own that you want to see through? Then keep the world from seeing your worst side.”
Charlie Marks had tears in his eyes after being dressed down by Kamal Sadollah and Rebecca Waters. They broke him without ever once laying a finger on him. All they had to do was something every religion preached: talk to their enemy. After wiping his tears with his jacket sleeve, Charlie put Kamal’s smart phone to use and began the process of taking the offensive drawing down from the internet. It would be a huge weight off of his shoulders afterwards and that felt good.
“Yes, Charlie, I did want to see you. Have a seat. Don’t get too comfortable, because this has suspension written all over it,” said Rebecca Waters, a brown dress wearing blonde who sat cross-legged in her office’s computer chair with the posture of a judge presiding over a criminal court case.
When Charlie took a seat on the wooden stool and twiddled his thumbs nonchalantly, Rebecca pored through her file folder until she found the piece of “art” that brought the two of them together that day. It was a cartoon of a distorted faced Special Olympian dressed in a bicycle helmet and a dirty diaper. If that wasn’t offensive enough, the caption of the drawing said, “The Prophet Muhammad” in big bold letters.
Charlie took the drawing from Rebecca’s hands and stared at it uncaringly. “Yeah, so?”
“What do you mean, yeah, so? You know full well why that’s unacceptable. Not only is it disparaging to the mentally disabled, but it’s extremely disparaging to the Muslim community. There are over five hundred Muslim students who attend this high school. What do you think they’re going to do if they see this drawing?” said Rebecca in an authoritative voice.
The “artist” pretended to look at his drawing from multiple angles, but he was really just turning his paper upside down and sideways to stall for time. When Rebecca asked an impatient, “Well?”, Charlie responded with, “They’re probably going to strap bombs to their bodies and blow me into pieces. Is that the answer you were looking for? Are you actually worried about this kind of crap going on? You say there’s five hundred Muslims going to school here? I bet not one of them has the balls to take me on over a stupid drawing. Ever heard of Freedom of Speech, Miss Waters?”
Rebecca shook her head no, cleared her throat, and said, “Listen, Charlie. There’ve been plenty of awful things going on in the news lately with terrorism and general ignorance toward certain people. Remember hearing about the ISIS attacks in Paris a few weeks ago? Of course you don’t, because you’re not smart enough to pay attention to world politics. If you were, you would know that this ‘funny’ cartoon is the highest form of prejudice toward the Muslim community. I’m not worried about what the students will do to you. Because let’s face it, none of our students act anywhere near as badly as the ISIS terrorists who committed that awful attack in Paris.”
“Well then, what are you worried about, Miss Waters? What, is ISIS going to raid our stupid little school and start shooting everyone in sight because I drew a cartoon? Don’t they have better things to do with their lives? Newsflash: those crazies halfway around the world don’t give a shit about Paulson City kids like me!” said Charlie Marks in a more animated voice complete with frantic hand gestures.
Rebecca hunched forward as if she was in a secretive conversation with her student and asked, “You didn’t post this drawing to your social media accounts, did you?” No answer, just a stupefied look on Charlie’s face. “Well, did you?!” The student gave a cheeky half smile and it was obvious at that point what his answer was.
“You idiot!” screamed Rebecca Waters. She stood over Charlie like a giant ready to breathe fire on some helpless villagers. “Do you realize what the hell you’ve done?! Are you so thickheaded that you don’t realize the gravity of what’s going on here?! Yeah, it may be a stupid cartoon to you, but it’s much more to the people online and around the world! It’d be the same thing if you posted a drawing of a black guy eating watermelon or a gay guy in tight-fitting bicycle shorts! You don’t do that! There are certain lines you just don’t fucking cross!”
Charlie looked into his teacher’s furious eyes with five second fear and then smiled his idiotic smile again when he said, “You swore, Miss Waters! Naughty, naughty!”
The art teacher fluffed her hair in frustration, let out a pissed off grunt, and plopped back down into her computer chair. She sat there for a minute taking deep breaths to calm herself down while Charlie was smiling and chuckling at her.
“What are you laughing at, you moron?” asked Rebecca. “You think bigotry is funny? Well, I don’t. This school doesn’t. The whole point of school is to teach you the ways of the world and how to coexist with the people you share that world with.” She snatched the picture from Charlie’s hand and presented it with disdain. “I’m not letting you get away with this. This kind of sick, demented garbage is punishable by suspension, maybe even expulsion if we feel you’re not learning anything from this.”
The smile slowly disappeared from Charlie’s face. “You can’t do that,” he said in a defeated tone.
“Oh, but we can. And we will! But you know what, Charlie? I don’t want you to be expelled from here. I want you to be punished, but not in that way. Maybe a cartoon doesn’t warrant that kind of extreme punishment. But you’re saying depicting the Prophet Muhammad in that way doesn’t mean anything. I’m saying it does and many will agree with me, including the Principal.”
Charlie’s eyes darted from side to side before he asked, “So…what do you want me to do? I mean…there is a catch to me not being expelled, right?”
“For starters, I want you to log onto my computer, go to your social media accounts, and take down the picture before anybody sees it. Ah, who am I kidding? It’s probably spreading across the internet right now. But I’d still appreciate it if you’d take it down before anybody gets hurt.”
Mr. Marks stared at his teacher like what she was asking him was too much to handle. After a while of stalling, Rebecca sighed and said, “Listen. I told you I didn’t want to expel you from here. You know why? Because up until this point, you’ve been doing A and B-worthy work in my classroom. You are a talented artist in many ways. But this drawing crosses so many lines on so many levels. So instead of putting you on the chopping block, I’d like you to meet somebody.”
Using her smart phone, Rebecca signaled her special guest to enter the office. He was a giant of a man with dark skin, a bald head, and a scraggly beard. He stood over Charlie Marks like the offensive artist was merely a worm on the sidewalk ready to be stepped on. He was introduced by Rebecca as Kamal Sadollah, one of the five hundred Muslim students she referenced earlier in the conversation.
“Relax, Charlie. I’m not here to hurt you. Allah wouldn’t forgive me if I did such a thing to you. But I have seen your drawing on Face Book and Twitter. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” He placed his thick palm on Charlie’s quivering shoulder and said, “I know my religion and my culture doesn’t mean much to you. But it means something to me. I turned to Islam because I needed direction in my life. And guess what? I haven’t gotten in one fight since. I am a member of the high school wrestling team and any battle I have will be on the mat and nowhere else.”
“Okay, I get it,” said Charlie in a nervous tone. “You’re pissed off about my drawing. But you have to understand something. I didn’t do it because I wanted to piss you off personally. I did it as a joke. I thought it would be hilarious and I still think it is. Am I right?” he said with a half-hearted chuckle. Neither Rebecca nor Kamal was laughing. They were staring holes through him with their sniper scope vision.
“Here’s the deal,” said Kamal as he put his face closer to Charlie’s. “Either you take down that picture from Face Book and Twitter and anywhere else you have it posted, or I’m going to do something you’ve always wanted to do with your narcissistic pictures. I’m going to share that drawing. I’m going to share it with every Muslim friend and family member I know. And then I’ll share it with atheists, Christians, Jews, and anyone else who will listen. By the time I’m done distributing it, the entire world will know how much of an asshole Charlie Marks is. I won’t hurt you. I never will. But I can’t say the same for anyone else who sees that picture.”
“Charlie…listen to me,” said Rebecca. “You’re too young in your life to play the role of a villain. If that many people know about what you’ve done today, then your life will be ruined. I don’t want to see you end up that way. So please…do the right thing. Take down the picture.”
Kamal handed Charlie his smart phone and said, “Here, you can use this if you want. Don’t worry, it’s not hardwired to an IED. We’re not all stereotypes here, Charlie. We’re real people with real desires and real dreams. Do you have desires of your own that you want to see through? Then keep the world from seeing your worst side.”
Charlie Marks had tears in his eyes after being dressed down by Kamal Sadollah and Rebecca Waters. They broke him without ever once laying a finger on him. All they had to do was something every religion preached: talk to their enemy. After wiping his tears with his jacket sleeve, Charlie put Kamal’s smart phone to use and began the process of taking the offensive drawing down from the internet. It would be a huge weight off of his shoulders afterwards and that felt good.
December 4, 2015
Anybody Can Lose One Time
***ANYBODY CAN LOSE ONE TIME***
The title of this journal is a line ripped from the movie “Million Dollar Baby”. The line is used by Morgan Freeman’s character to comfort a welterweight boxer who was thinking of quitting the sport after losing a bitter fight. It took a while, but the boxer eventually came around and continued his career under Morgan Freeman’s tutelage. It’s true for every aspect of life: anybody can lose one time.
To think you can go undefeated in whatever you’re doing for the rest of your life is unrealistic. Without failure, there is no success. Some failures hit harder than others, but none of them are incentives to quit. Failure comes in many forms and is a universal trait among any profession. Here are some examples:
Ronda Rousey was the most touted fighter in the UFC, not just as a female, not just as a bantamweight, but as a fighter in general. She was undefeated with twelve victories, many post-fight bonuses, and two championships under her belt. With the exception of her second bout with bitter rival Miesha Tate, all of her twelve victories were achieved in the first round, mostly by arm bar submission. And then came a feared striker named Holly Holm who kicked Ronda in the head and punched her repeatedly until she lost consciousness. That would mark the end of Ronda’s championship reign and the first loss of her career. Anybody can lose one time.
Rusev was the most dominant wrecking machine the WWE had ever seen in the year 2014. He went through the entire year without suffering a single pin fall or submission loss. In December of that year, he defeated Sheamus on the WWE Network for his first major championship: the United States Title. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter showed lots of love for Rusev in 2014 by giving him the Most Improved and Best Gimmick (Russian nationalist) awards. And then Rusev had to defend his championship against John Cena at Wrestlemania 31 in 2015. He lost. Badly. Rusev then went on to be part of a humiliating love square storyline that involved his manager Lana, Dolph Ziggler, and Summer Rae. Don’t feel too badly for him, though. He’s now part of a four-man international team of wrestlers called The League of Nations, which also includes Alberto Del Rio (Mexico), King Barrett (England), and Sheamus (Ireland). Anybody can lose one time.
I’m not going to bore you all with another sob story about how I got two-star ratings on Occupy Wrestling and American Darkness. I’d like to go further back in time than that. Before I became the accomplished independent author that I am today, I had to learn about the art of writing and the importance of reading at Western Washington University. I’ve had teachers at Olympic College beforehand praise my writing as the best they’d ever seen. Not the case at WWU. I thought I could blitz through all of my English classes with A’s and B’s forever. Well, by the time I graduated from that school, I did get a lot of A’s and B’s. But I also accumulated four C’s. C’s might not seem like a big deal to most people, but those four C’s hurt me badly and left me angry. My ego had taken a Holly Holm kick to the skull. Though I still get seen as a C student by my peers in today’s world, I know that my hard work will get me to the top one day. Anybody can lose one time.
But sometimes one loss isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to have five losses. Six. Seven. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. Life is not about if you lose the big one; it’s about when. And when that time happens, what will you do? Will you continue to wallow in your sadness or will you pick yourself off the ground, dust yourself off, lock and load, and storm the gates of hell? In the end, it doesn’t matter how hard your failures hit or how close to the end of your life it feels. Your journey doesn’t end until you say it does. Don’t give up. Pick up your battleaxe and swing like a motherfucker. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***POISON TONGUE TALES***
I just submitted a story called “Mastodon”, which marks the 49th story in the Poison Tongue Tales catalogue. If my math is correct, which it usually is, that means I have one more story to write before I hit my fifty story quota, thus ending the series and getting it ready for Marie Krepps’ lovely eyes and switchblade tongue. The 50th and final story will be called “Shadow-Pie”, an animal fantasy dedicated to the memory of an elderly black Australian Shepherd dog I used to have back in the mid-2000’s. Here’s the synopsis for that story:
CHARACTERS:
Lance Bradley, Pawl Bearer
Shadow, Elderly Dog Shaman
PROMPT CONFORMITY: N/A
SYNOPSIS: Lance takes the ashes of his dead father to Shadow in hopes she will spread them across the desert. In the middle of the ritual, the spirit of Lance’s father possesses Shadow’s mind and causes the dog to attack the forlorn son.
***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***
The short story “Zombie” has certainly seen its fair share of gory goodness and foul language. What it needs now is some drawings of the main characters. Gail Reinhold already has a picture drawn since she used to be part of a novel called “Fireball Nightmare” and a videogame idea called “Final Fantasy Hardcore”. I’m not even going to bother with Deacon Simms since he’s too normal to be a Dark Fantasy Warrior. That just leaves one more character: combat drug zombie Mattie Dent, who used to be part of a longer short story called “Garden of Evil”. Mattie is muscular, defiant, rude, and butt ugly. Most importantly, she’s going to be a lot of fun to draw.
***POLITICAL QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“It is no more okay to ask a transgender person about their genitals than it is to ask Jimmy Carter if he’s circumcised, which by the way he is. Smooth as a boiled carrot!”
-John Oliver-
The title of this journal is a line ripped from the movie “Million Dollar Baby”. The line is used by Morgan Freeman’s character to comfort a welterweight boxer who was thinking of quitting the sport after losing a bitter fight. It took a while, but the boxer eventually came around and continued his career under Morgan Freeman’s tutelage. It’s true for every aspect of life: anybody can lose one time.
To think you can go undefeated in whatever you’re doing for the rest of your life is unrealistic. Without failure, there is no success. Some failures hit harder than others, but none of them are incentives to quit. Failure comes in many forms and is a universal trait among any profession. Here are some examples:
Ronda Rousey was the most touted fighter in the UFC, not just as a female, not just as a bantamweight, but as a fighter in general. She was undefeated with twelve victories, many post-fight bonuses, and two championships under her belt. With the exception of her second bout with bitter rival Miesha Tate, all of her twelve victories were achieved in the first round, mostly by arm bar submission. And then came a feared striker named Holly Holm who kicked Ronda in the head and punched her repeatedly until she lost consciousness. That would mark the end of Ronda’s championship reign and the first loss of her career. Anybody can lose one time.
Rusev was the most dominant wrecking machine the WWE had ever seen in the year 2014. He went through the entire year without suffering a single pin fall or submission loss. In December of that year, he defeated Sheamus on the WWE Network for his first major championship: the United States Title. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter showed lots of love for Rusev in 2014 by giving him the Most Improved and Best Gimmick (Russian nationalist) awards. And then Rusev had to defend his championship against John Cena at Wrestlemania 31 in 2015. He lost. Badly. Rusev then went on to be part of a humiliating love square storyline that involved his manager Lana, Dolph Ziggler, and Summer Rae. Don’t feel too badly for him, though. He’s now part of a four-man international team of wrestlers called The League of Nations, which also includes Alberto Del Rio (Mexico), King Barrett (England), and Sheamus (Ireland). Anybody can lose one time.
I’m not going to bore you all with another sob story about how I got two-star ratings on Occupy Wrestling and American Darkness. I’d like to go further back in time than that. Before I became the accomplished independent author that I am today, I had to learn about the art of writing and the importance of reading at Western Washington University. I’ve had teachers at Olympic College beforehand praise my writing as the best they’d ever seen. Not the case at WWU. I thought I could blitz through all of my English classes with A’s and B’s forever. Well, by the time I graduated from that school, I did get a lot of A’s and B’s. But I also accumulated four C’s. C’s might not seem like a big deal to most people, but those four C’s hurt me badly and left me angry. My ego had taken a Holly Holm kick to the skull. Though I still get seen as a C student by my peers in today’s world, I know that my hard work will get me to the top one day. Anybody can lose one time.
But sometimes one loss isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to have five losses. Six. Seven. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. Life is not about if you lose the big one; it’s about when. And when that time happens, what will you do? Will you continue to wallow in your sadness or will you pick yourself off the ground, dust yourself off, lock and load, and storm the gates of hell? In the end, it doesn’t matter how hard your failures hit or how close to the end of your life it feels. Your journey doesn’t end until you say it does. Don’t give up. Pick up your battleaxe and swing like a motherfucker. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***POISON TONGUE TALES***
I just submitted a story called “Mastodon”, which marks the 49th story in the Poison Tongue Tales catalogue. If my math is correct, which it usually is, that means I have one more story to write before I hit my fifty story quota, thus ending the series and getting it ready for Marie Krepps’ lovely eyes and switchblade tongue. The 50th and final story will be called “Shadow-Pie”, an animal fantasy dedicated to the memory of an elderly black Australian Shepherd dog I used to have back in the mid-2000’s. Here’s the synopsis for that story:
CHARACTERS:
Lance Bradley, Pawl Bearer
Shadow, Elderly Dog Shaman
PROMPT CONFORMITY: N/A
SYNOPSIS: Lance takes the ashes of his dead father to Shadow in hopes she will spread them across the desert. In the middle of the ritual, the spirit of Lance’s father possesses Shadow’s mind and causes the dog to attack the forlorn son.
***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***
The short story “Zombie” has certainly seen its fair share of gory goodness and foul language. What it needs now is some drawings of the main characters. Gail Reinhold already has a picture drawn since she used to be part of a novel called “Fireball Nightmare” and a videogame idea called “Final Fantasy Hardcore”. I’m not even going to bother with Deacon Simms since he’s too normal to be a Dark Fantasy Warrior. That just leaves one more character: combat drug zombie Mattie Dent, who used to be part of a longer short story called “Garden of Evil”. Mattie is muscular, defiant, rude, and butt ugly. Most importantly, she’s going to be a lot of fun to draw.
***POLITICAL QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“It is no more okay to ask a transgender person about their genitals than it is to ask Jimmy Carter if he’s circumcised, which by the way he is. Smooth as a boiled carrot!”
-John Oliver-
Mastodon
“Ten-thousand gold pieces for the capture of mass murderer Courtney Robyn, wanted dead or alive.” That seemed like a sweet deal to Christopher Brown. Find the craziest bitch in the town of Middlesex, cock the sniper’s crossbow, fire, repeat. Shouldn’t be too hard for a pro like Christopher. He’d only been tracking her for a whole goddamn year with no solid leads and minimal sleep.
And boy, did his lack of sleep ever show itself in the most obvious ways: constant yawning, dark circles under his eyes, depression, bad posture, and hazy vision. He wouldn’t have sacrificed his health so easily if that ten-thousand gold piece reward wasn’t badly needed.
For all the times he was wide awake, he thought of the fact that his log cabin of a home was falling apart little by little. The rainy weather was warping the wood, termites were chewing on it like beef jerky, and sleeping at night was impossible anyways due to the cold temperature and wet blankets. Finding a new place to live, preferably something worthy of royalty, wasn’t just for the sake of convenience; it was do or die in the worst possible sense.
As Christopher Brown walked down the street in his studded and spiked leather armor with the crossbow strapped to his back, he suddenly felt energized and awake, as if the danger of his situation shot a river of adrenaline through his veins. That was because after a year of hunting clues, he had that bitch Courtney Robyn clear in his sights.
Try as she might to conceal her appearance in a monk’s robe, she made one mistake when attempting to shake off bounty hunters: she didn’t brush her teeth. Christopher could smell that horrific oral stench from a whole block away: children’s blood mixed with women’s flesh and men’s muscles. Courtney’s victims were all dismembered and mauled in some way, leading authorities to at first believe they were attacked by wild animals. But these butchering marks were too perfect for animal paws. These bodies were dissected like a turkey’s corpse: with the intention to be eaten.
Time to collect a paycheck and get this cannibal off the streets for good. Christopher stood on the street corner and watched as the familiar and foul smelling “monk” in brown robes headed to a fruit stand in the bazaar. The street markets were filled with all sorts of customers and food mongers whether dinner that evening was fish, meat, or in Courtney Robyn’s case, fruit, probably to cleanse her breath.
Christopher approached his target with the vast number of customers in the bazaar getting out of his way since he was the most intimidating guy there. Brown hair in a ponytail with a scraggly beard and a face tattoo? Yeah, you’d better move. By the time he made it to the fruit stand, however, Courtney had already made him.
She threw off her brown robes and pulled a crying baby away from its mother before holding a jagged blade to the little guy’s throat. This was her alright: curly blond hair, the face of a demon, the clothes of a street dweller, and the breath of a cannibalistic monster. As soon as Christopher drew his crossbow and pointed, Courtney threatened, “Don’t take another step, bounty hunter, or the baby gets it!” She then kicked the hysterically crying mother in the shin to shut her up. The baby, on the other hand, was noisy enough for everyone in the bazaar, who were now fleeing the scene.
“Courtney, if you so much as pin prick that baby, I’ll put a bolt right through your fucking head! I know how you are! You’ll kill anybody as long as they taste good! I bet that baby tastes like pumpkin pie, but you’re never going to know if I get a good head shot!” threatened Christopher.
“Oh, you’re so good! You truly are an avid professional! I can smell the sweat equity you put into hunting me down…and that sweat smells like heavenly butter on that delicious man meat of yours!” said Courtney as she ran her monstrous tongue across her yellow teeth and chapped lips.
“I’m warning you, you psychotic bitch! Put the baby down or else…”
“Or else what?” The Mexican standoff ended when Courtney threw the screaming baby like a football into Christopher’s line of vision, hoping he’d pull the trigger of his crossbow out of instinct. His finger was itchy and twitchy, but he never fired. He dropped his crossbow, dove forward, and caught the baby in his muscular arms.
He spoke calmly to the little guy in a cutesy-wutesy voice while the mother limped up to the two of them crying herself. Christopher got up from the ground and handed the baby back to his mother, being ever so gentle despite his own scary appearance. “Thank you so much!” said the tattered clothed mother before she hugged him around his thick neck.
In all of this excitement, Christopher had lost eye contact with his target Courtney Robyn. The baby toss was just a diversion to help her get away. As the bounty hunter hugged the teary mother back, he was doing it also because a year’s worth of work had just gone to waste. His eyes would get blacker, his bed would get colder, and his depression would get heavier. In his mind, he cursed himself for being so “stupid”. On the outside, he held onto the hug for a little too long and the mother and her baby had to struggle to break free, which they did.
The mother and her baby would have the same reasons to cry as the rest of the bazaar customers, who were still running away in packs. Courtney Robyn didn’t escape from Christopher Brown. She didn’t want to. After a few loud, earth-trembling steps that cracked the cement roads, it was apparent that the cannibalistic murderer was still in control. Of all the animals to be riding, she had to chose a mastodon.
Not just any mastodon, but one powerful enough to squash large numbers of people like ants underneath its massive feet and towering legs. The body of this magnificent creature was stiff with muscles that made riding it feel like laying in firm bed, a luxury Christopher wish he had. Courtney Robyn, being arrogant and crude, rubbed it in by laying on her back with her hands behind her head while the beast of burden trampled through the crowd.
Some were fortunate enough to pack themselves in the alleyways and huddle underneath dustbins. Most of the customers were trying to outrun the godlike beast and got crushed and bloodied for their efforts. The streets of Middlesex looked like a battlefield with the number of flattened carcasses laying about. Christopher’s crossbow looked like someone had spilled toothpicks on the ground when it too was crunched.
Christopher himself, on the other hand, took a different route from the rest of the pack: he began scaling the buildings. The buildings were made with bulging stones held together with shallow cement, so sticking his feet and hands between spaces was easy. Climbing quickly was even easier since the adrenaline made him forget about his depressive tiredness.
But then the mighty mastodon was bumping into buildings as more people were trying to get away from it. The whole incident felt like a mosh pit with the mastodon crushing and smashing everything and anyone in its path. Courtney had done a hell of a job of riling the beast up, yet she was the most comfortable on its back. What a sick prick.
Christopher was beginning to slip and slide from his climbing position, but he was so close to the top. He could feel that final stone with in his muscular grasp. He held on with such tightness that it resembled the kind of chokehold he wanted to do to Courtney. The building continued to shake with the mastodon’s fury and Christopher’s fingers were getting weaker. With the last of his fingertips slipping away, he plummeted to the ground below in what was sure to be a splatter punk death.
He didn’t land on the cement ground to be pummeled, though. He landed right on the mastodon’s back with Courtney just now “waking up”. The spikes and studs in Christopher’s leather armor were so sharp and jutted so far that they irritated the mastodon like a bad case of flees. The destructive monster bucked around in the air like a rodeo bull, jostling Courtney and Christopher into the air and onto the cracked and split pavement.
In the last few seconds of consciousness he had after hitting the ground with deadly impact, Christopher could see the feet of not only bazaar customers fleeing, but also animal tamers lashing ropes around the mastodon to try and tame the beast. It was a relief to see the monstrous animal subdued within the world’s longest minutes. He could finally go to sleep.
No, he couldn’t! With one gloved hand, he held his left eyelid open. With the other, he rolled over on his belly and dragged himself over to where Courtney was laying. Christopher’s vision was blurry at best, but he knew the positioning all too well. She landed on the back of her neck with her legs doubled over her face.
Just a few more drags across the pavement with the detached studs in the bounty hunter’s armor irritating his skin. Another one. And another one. With bloody skin and quite possibly broken bones, Christopher Brown was finally able to drape his arm over Courtney’s lifeless body. Any authority figure looking at the two of them would know that Courtney was his catch and nobody else’s. They’d have no choice but to pay up and hopefully witnesses would back Christopher up if they didn’t.
Maybe the mother with the frightened baby could be a witness. Maybe the stony ground wasn’t such a bad place to nod off after all. Maybe…maybe…zzzzzzzzzzzzz….Goodnight, Christopher Brown. Rest in peace, Courtney Robyn.
And boy, did his lack of sleep ever show itself in the most obvious ways: constant yawning, dark circles under his eyes, depression, bad posture, and hazy vision. He wouldn’t have sacrificed his health so easily if that ten-thousand gold piece reward wasn’t badly needed.
For all the times he was wide awake, he thought of the fact that his log cabin of a home was falling apart little by little. The rainy weather was warping the wood, termites were chewing on it like beef jerky, and sleeping at night was impossible anyways due to the cold temperature and wet blankets. Finding a new place to live, preferably something worthy of royalty, wasn’t just for the sake of convenience; it was do or die in the worst possible sense.
As Christopher Brown walked down the street in his studded and spiked leather armor with the crossbow strapped to his back, he suddenly felt energized and awake, as if the danger of his situation shot a river of adrenaline through his veins. That was because after a year of hunting clues, he had that bitch Courtney Robyn clear in his sights.
Try as she might to conceal her appearance in a monk’s robe, she made one mistake when attempting to shake off bounty hunters: she didn’t brush her teeth. Christopher could smell that horrific oral stench from a whole block away: children’s blood mixed with women’s flesh and men’s muscles. Courtney’s victims were all dismembered and mauled in some way, leading authorities to at first believe they were attacked by wild animals. But these butchering marks were too perfect for animal paws. These bodies were dissected like a turkey’s corpse: with the intention to be eaten.
Time to collect a paycheck and get this cannibal off the streets for good. Christopher stood on the street corner and watched as the familiar and foul smelling “monk” in brown robes headed to a fruit stand in the bazaar. The street markets were filled with all sorts of customers and food mongers whether dinner that evening was fish, meat, or in Courtney Robyn’s case, fruit, probably to cleanse her breath.
Christopher approached his target with the vast number of customers in the bazaar getting out of his way since he was the most intimidating guy there. Brown hair in a ponytail with a scraggly beard and a face tattoo? Yeah, you’d better move. By the time he made it to the fruit stand, however, Courtney had already made him.
She threw off her brown robes and pulled a crying baby away from its mother before holding a jagged blade to the little guy’s throat. This was her alright: curly blond hair, the face of a demon, the clothes of a street dweller, and the breath of a cannibalistic monster. As soon as Christopher drew his crossbow and pointed, Courtney threatened, “Don’t take another step, bounty hunter, or the baby gets it!” She then kicked the hysterically crying mother in the shin to shut her up. The baby, on the other hand, was noisy enough for everyone in the bazaar, who were now fleeing the scene.
“Courtney, if you so much as pin prick that baby, I’ll put a bolt right through your fucking head! I know how you are! You’ll kill anybody as long as they taste good! I bet that baby tastes like pumpkin pie, but you’re never going to know if I get a good head shot!” threatened Christopher.
“Oh, you’re so good! You truly are an avid professional! I can smell the sweat equity you put into hunting me down…and that sweat smells like heavenly butter on that delicious man meat of yours!” said Courtney as she ran her monstrous tongue across her yellow teeth and chapped lips.
“I’m warning you, you psychotic bitch! Put the baby down or else…”
“Or else what?” The Mexican standoff ended when Courtney threw the screaming baby like a football into Christopher’s line of vision, hoping he’d pull the trigger of his crossbow out of instinct. His finger was itchy and twitchy, but he never fired. He dropped his crossbow, dove forward, and caught the baby in his muscular arms.
He spoke calmly to the little guy in a cutesy-wutesy voice while the mother limped up to the two of them crying herself. Christopher got up from the ground and handed the baby back to his mother, being ever so gentle despite his own scary appearance. “Thank you so much!” said the tattered clothed mother before she hugged him around his thick neck.
In all of this excitement, Christopher had lost eye contact with his target Courtney Robyn. The baby toss was just a diversion to help her get away. As the bounty hunter hugged the teary mother back, he was doing it also because a year’s worth of work had just gone to waste. His eyes would get blacker, his bed would get colder, and his depression would get heavier. In his mind, he cursed himself for being so “stupid”. On the outside, he held onto the hug for a little too long and the mother and her baby had to struggle to break free, which they did.
The mother and her baby would have the same reasons to cry as the rest of the bazaar customers, who were still running away in packs. Courtney Robyn didn’t escape from Christopher Brown. She didn’t want to. After a few loud, earth-trembling steps that cracked the cement roads, it was apparent that the cannibalistic murderer was still in control. Of all the animals to be riding, she had to chose a mastodon.
Not just any mastodon, but one powerful enough to squash large numbers of people like ants underneath its massive feet and towering legs. The body of this magnificent creature was stiff with muscles that made riding it feel like laying in firm bed, a luxury Christopher wish he had. Courtney Robyn, being arrogant and crude, rubbed it in by laying on her back with her hands behind her head while the beast of burden trampled through the crowd.
Some were fortunate enough to pack themselves in the alleyways and huddle underneath dustbins. Most of the customers were trying to outrun the godlike beast and got crushed and bloodied for their efforts. The streets of Middlesex looked like a battlefield with the number of flattened carcasses laying about. Christopher’s crossbow looked like someone had spilled toothpicks on the ground when it too was crunched.
Christopher himself, on the other hand, took a different route from the rest of the pack: he began scaling the buildings. The buildings were made with bulging stones held together with shallow cement, so sticking his feet and hands between spaces was easy. Climbing quickly was even easier since the adrenaline made him forget about his depressive tiredness.
But then the mighty mastodon was bumping into buildings as more people were trying to get away from it. The whole incident felt like a mosh pit with the mastodon crushing and smashing everything and anyone in its path. Courtney had done a hell of a job of riling the beast up, yet she was the most comfortable on its back. What a sick prick.
Christopher was beginning to slip and slide from his climbing position, but he was so close to the top. He could feel that final stone with in his muscular grasp. He held on with such tightness that it resembled the kind of chokehold he wanted to do to Courtney. The building continued to shake with the mastodon’s fury and Christopher’s fingers were getting weaker. With the last of his fingertips slipping away, he plummeted to the ground below in what was sure to be a splatter punk death.
He didn’t land on the cement ground to be pummeled, though. He landed right on the mastodon’s back with Courtney just now “waking up”. The spikes and studs in Christopher’s leather armor were so sharp and jutted so far that they irritated the mastodon like a bad case of flees. The destructive monster bucked around in the air like a rodeo bull, jostling Courtney and Christopher into the air and onto the cracked and split pavement.
In the last few seconds of consciousness he had after hitting the ground with deadly impact, Christopher could see the feet of not only bazaar customers fleeing, but also animal tamers lashing ropes around the mastodon to try and tame the beast. It was a relief to see the monstrous animal subdued within the world’s longest minutes. He could finally go to sleep.
No, he couldn’t! With one gloved hand, he held his left eyelid open. With the other, he rolled over on his belly and dragged himself over to where Courtney was laying. Christopher’s vision was blurry at best, but he knew the positioning all too well. She landed on the back of her neck with her legs doubled over her face.
Just a few more drags across the pavement with the detached studs in the bounty hunter’s armor irritating his skin. Another one. And another one. With bloody skin and quite possibly broken bones, Christopher Brown was finally able to drape his arm over Courtney’s lifeless body. Any authority figure looking at the two of them would know that Courtney was his catch and nobody else’s. They’d have no choice but to pay up and hopefully witnesses would back Christopher up if they didn’t.
Maybe the mother with the frightened baby could be a witness. Maybe the stony ground wasn’t such a bad place to nod off after all. Maybe…maybe…zzzzzzzzzzzzz….Goodnight, Christopher Brown. Rest in peace, Courtney Robyn.
December 1, 2015
Football Sucks
When Democratic Mayor Irwin Gladden opened the blinds to his office window, what he saw shook him to his very core. Protesters. Lots and lots of protesters wearing football jerseys and helmets. All of them shouting incoherently at the top of their dragon-like lungs. Some of them with signs that said, “Football doesn’t suck!” and “Impeach Gladden!”. Most of them with Photoshopped pictures of the Mayor in a Nazi uniform or a turban with a bomb strapped around his body.
Being new to the job, Mayor Gladden obviously wasn’t used to this kind of violent treatment down on the streets of Paulson City. His blood was chilled. His jaw was quivering. His hands were vibrating. He had a knot in his stomach the size of a cannonball and a lump in his throat the size of a watermelon. All of these normally fine young citizens came together through their mutual hatred of this newly-elected official.
Though he wasn’t one-hundred-percent prepared for a day like this, he could think of a good reason why it was happening. The football paraphernalia, the firecrackers going off, the trumpets blasting everywhere, they could only mean one thing. These citizens were protesting because Irwin Gladden wanted to convert their beloved football stadium into the city’s largest public library. If that wasn’t “sacrilegious” enough, the thirty-something Mayor actually had the balls to say, “Football sucks!”
His balls weren’t feeling so big anymore. In fact, as soon as he saw a firecracker zooming towards his window (only to veer off at the last minute), Irwin snapped the blinds shut and cowered in the center of his office. How could so many people be so zealous and ignorant over a game of football? It made no sense.
Mayor Gladden’s day went from bad to worse when his front door hastily opened, causing him to spring backwards in fear and sit on the edge of his desk. He thought he was going to get mugged by these protesters. Instead, it happened to someone else entirely. Irwin’s personal bodyguard, Fred Jacobs, had stumbled into his office, slammed the door behind him, and collapsed on the floor while coughing up blood.
Irwin and Fred could not be more physically different from each other. The bodyguard was a hulking bad black man in a brown suit and tie while the Mayor was only this gray suit-wearing, skinny twig who barely filled his counterpart’s shadow. Fred Jacobs didn’t look very intimidating at that moment. Rolling over on his back and spewing up more blood didn’t help create that kind of image.
The frightened politician rushed over and knelt by his bodyguard’s side and asked, “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened?! Where are the goddamn paramedics?!”
After coughing up a splash of blood, Fred explained, “The protesters are blocking the streets from all angles. They’re not going to move even for first responders. What kind of shit storm did you cause out there, buddy?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal!” said Irwin defensively. “It’s just a stupid arena! More taxpayer money goes into that stadium than anywhere else on the budget! We could have used that money to improve roads, hire more teachers, feed our poor, cure our sickly, and instead it’s going into this big ass stadium so that more athletes can end up in the hospital or even dead! Tell me my logic is wrong! I dare you!”
“Alright, dude,” said Fred as he sat up and looked his boss in the eyes with fiery zeal. “Your logic is wrong! There, I said it! Do you want to fire me now?!”
Irwin stood up in disbelief and backed up slowly. “What are you talking about? This makes perfect sense. Instead of going out there and giving people concussions, we could turn the whole stadium into a public library and actually improve their brain power for once.”
“That’s exactly how fucked up you are, Mayor!” Fred Jacobs stood up and spit a wad of chunky blood on the ground. If he was dizzy before, he wasn’t showing it at this moment. “A library? Really? You actually thought people would be onboard with that? This is Paulson City, damn it! People here don’t know whether to scratch their watches or wind their asses! They don’t give a shit about literature! You’re basically forcing your personal tastes on these poor people!”
Just like his bodyguard, Irwin Gladden suddenly found his testicle power when he snapped, “No! I’m not forcing anything on anybody! It’s called tough love! If these people won’t educate themselves, it’s my job and my responsibility to push them along!”
“Alright, man,” said Fred as he snorted blood up his nose and swallowed in a massive gulp. “I didn’t want to have to tell this story, but if it’s the only way to get through to your sorry ass, then goddamn it, it’ll have to do. You want to know how I got this big ass body? I didn’t get it through sitting on my ass eating Cheetohs and watching The Simpsons. I played football all throughout high school and college. That’s right! I was a quarterback for the Paulson City Warlords!”
“You’re kidding me,” said Irwin when he folded his arms.
“Back then they called me Freddy the Barbarian. They would have called me Inmate Number Blah-Blah-Blah if it wasn’t for football. It was either football or gangs and drugs for me. I lived in a poor neighborhood, my friend. A neighborhood that the previous Republican mayor promised to fix. Instead, all we had was more drugs, more gangs, and a shit load more police brutality. I joined the Paulson City Warlords to get away from all that disgusting crap. So the next time you say football sucks, think of this big ugly face staring you down!”
The big ugly face was indeed staring Mayor Gladden down and it was more frightening to look at than a dark fantasy demon. The politician’s body language showed it all: a trembling body that barely managed to stay seated to the edge of his desk. For the longest few seconds, Irwin and Fred didn’t say a damn thing to each other.
And then the Mayor screamed like a girl and ran into his bodyguard’s arms when he heard a cacophonous bang shattering his window and ripping his blinds. One of the firecrackers from the demonstration exploded against his window and went out in smoke.
Mayor Gladden had every reason in the world to piss his Armani pants and cry into Fred Jacobs’ Men’s Warehouse jacket. It was a tempting offer, but instead Irwin was red-faced with anger. He got down from his protector’s arms and stomped over to the phone. When asked what the hell he was doing, Irwin said, “I’m putting an end to this right now. Screw the riot police. If they’re not coming to my rescue, then I’ll declare a state of emergency and get the National fucking Guard! I’ll even tell them to bring AK-47’s instead of those wimpy rubber bullets. And real grenades too instead of that tear gas shit!”
“Put down that goddamn phone, Mayor Gladden!” screamed Fred, to which the Democrat slowly and shakily did. “Look at you, man! It’s your first week on the job and you’re already cracking under pressure! That’s not the Mayor I signed up with! You’re supposed to be this caring progressive who thinks of others! And now look at you! You’re actually considering killing those protesters with AK-47’s all because a firecracker got launched through your window!”
No arguments there. Irwin had snapped big time and all he could do was plop in his chair and try to block out the cacophony going on outside. It was doubtful another firecracker would make its way into his office again; that last one was a lucky shot. The city official just held his face in his hands and wept. “I can’t do this, Fred. I can’t do this. I want to step down.”
“No, you don’t,” said the bodyguard after putting a comforting hand on his boss’s shoulder. “You came here for a reason and that was to clean up Paulson City. You have the chance to do that right now by phoning the riot police. There are people down there who need you whether they know it or not. Do the right thing, Mayor. If the riot police won’t come, then you have my permission to get the National Guard. Just please, none of that AK-47 and real grenade crap this time.”
Irwin took a few deep breaths in and out, calming himself down in the midst of the outside chaos. “You’re right, Fred. You’re absolutely right. I don’t know what I’d do without you. And if football made you the man you are today, I doubt it could suck that badly.”
Fred Jacobs smiled and patted Irwin on the shoulder before leaving him alone to make the phone call. Just a few minutes ago, this ex-football player was dizzy and bleeding. Now he was toughing it out like a pro and that was inspiring to Irwin, who then picked up the phone and made this announcement: “Send them in. It’s an emergency.” The call for help was placed and all Irwin and Fred could do at this point was ride out the storm.
Being new to the job, Mayor Gladden obviously wasn’t used to this kind of violent treatment down on the streets of Paulson City. His blood was chilled. His jaw was quivering. His hands were vibrating. He had a knot in his stomach the size of a cannonball and a lump in his throat the size of a watermelon. All of these normally fine young citizens came together through their mutual hatred of this newly-elected official.
Though he wasn’t one-hundred-percent prepared for a day like this, he could think of a good reason why it was happening. The football paraphernalia, the firecrackers going off, the trumpets blasting everywhere, they could only mean one thing. These citizens were protesting because Irwin Gladden wanted to convert their beloved football stadium into the city’s largest public library. If that wasn’t “sacrilegious” enough, the thirty-something Mayor actually had the balls to say, “Football sucks!”
His balls weren’t feeling so big anymore. In fact, as soon as he saw a firecracker zooming towards his window (only to veer off at the last minute), Irwin snapped the blinds shut and cowered in the center of his office. How could so many people be so zealous and ignorant over a game of football? It made no sense.
Mayor Gladden’s day went from bad to worse when his front door hastily opened, causing him to spring backwards in fear and sit on the edge of his desk. He thought he was going to get mugged by these protesters. Instead, it happened to someone else entirely. Irwin’s personal bodyguard, Fred Jacobs, had stumbled into his office, slammed the door behind him, and collapsed on the floor while coughing up blood.
Irwin and Fred could not be more physically different from each other. The bodyguard was a hulking bad black man in a brown suit and tie while the Mayor was only this gray suit-wearing, skinny twig who barely filled his counterpart’s shadow. Fred Jacobs didn’t look very intimidating at that moment. Rolling over on his back and spewing up more blood didn’t help create that kind of image.
The frightened politician rushed over and knelt by his bodyguard’s side and asked, “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened?! Where are the goddamn paramedics?!”
After coughing up a splash of blood, Fred explained, “The protesters are blocking the streets from all angles. They’re not going to move even for first responders. What kind of shit storm did you cause out there, buddy?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal!” said Irwin defensively. “It’s just a stupid arena! More taxpayer money goes into that stadium than anywhere else on the budget! We could have used that money to improve roads, hire more teachers, feed our poor, cure our sickly, and instead it’s going into this big ass stadium so that more athletes can end up in the hospital or even dead! Tell me my logic is wrong! I dare you!”
“Alright, dude,” said Fred as he sat up and looked his boss in the eyes with fiery zeal. “Your logic is wrong! There, I said it! Do you want to fire me now?!”
Irwin stood up in disbelief and backed up slowly. “What are you talking about? This makes perfect sense. Instead of going out there and giving people concussions, we could turn the whole stadium into a public library and actually improve their brain power for once.”
“That’s exactly how fucked up you are, Mayor!” Fred Jacobs stood up and spit a wad of chunky blood on the ground. If he was dizzy before, he wasn’t showing it at this moment. “A library? Really? You actually thought people would be onboard with that? This is Paulson City, damn it! People here don’t know whether to scratch their watches or wind their asses! They don’t give a shit about literature! You’re basically forcing your personal tastes on these poor people!”
Just like his bodyguard, Irwin Gladden suddenly found his testicle power when he snapped, “No! I’m not forcing anything on anybody! It’s called tough love! If these people won’t educate themselves, it’s my job and my responsibility to push them along!”
“Alright, man,” said Fred as he snorted blood up his nose and swallowed in a massive gulp. “I didn’t want to have to tell this story, but if it’s the only way to get through to your sorry ass, then goddamn it, it’ll have to do. You want to know how I got this big ass body? I didn’t get it through sitting on my ass eating Cheetohs and watching The Simpsons. I played football all throughout high school and college. That’s right! I was a quarterback for the Paulson City Warlords!”
“You’re kidding me,” said Irwin when he folded his arms.
“Back then they called me Freddy the Barbarian. They would have called me Inmate Number Blah-Blah-Blah if it wasn’t for football. It was either football or gangs and drugs for me. I lived in a poor neighborhood, my friend. A neighborhood that the previous Republican mayor promised to fix. Instead, all we had was more drugs, more gangs, and a shit load more police brutality. I joined the Paulson City Warlords to get away from all that disgusting crap. So the next time you say football sucks, think of this big ugly face staring you down!”
The big ugly face was indeed staring Mayor Gladden down and it was more frightening to look at than a dark fantasy demon. The politician’s body language showed it all: a trembling body that barely managed to stay seated to the edge of his desk. For the longest few seconds, Irwin and Fred didn’t say a damn thing to each other.
And then the Mayor screamed like a girl and ran into his bodyguard’s arms when he heard a cacophonous bang shattering his window and ripping his blinds. One of the firecrackers from the demonstration exploded against his window and went out in smoke.
Mayor Gladden had every reason in the world to piss his Armani pants and cry into Fred Jacobs’ Men’s Warehouse jacket. It was a tempting offer, but instead Irwin was red-faced with anger. He got down from his protector’s arms and stomped over to the phone. When asked what the hell he was doing, Irwin said, “I’m putting an end to this right now. Screw the riot police. If they’re not coming to my rescue, then I’ll declare a state of emergency and get the National fucking Guard! I’ll even tell them to bring AK-47’s instead of those wimpy rubber bullets. And real grenades too instead of that tear gas shit!”
“Put down that goddamn phone, Mayor Gladden!” screamed Fred, to which the Democrat slowly and shakily did. “Look at you, man! It’s your first week on the job and you’re already cracking under pressure! That’s not the Mayor I signed up with! You’re supposed to be this caring progressive who thinks of others! And now look at you! You’re actually considering killing those protesters with AK-47’s all because a firecracker got launched through your window!”
No arguments there. Irwin had snapped big time and all he could do was plop in his chair and try to block out the cacophony going on outside. It was doubtful another firecracker would make its way into his office again; that last one was a lucky shot. The city official just held his face in his hands and wept. “I can’t do this, Fred. I can’t do this. I want to step down.”
“No, you don’t,” said the bodyguard after putting a comforting hand on his boss’s shoulder. “You came here for a reason and that was to clean up Paulson City. You have the chance to do that right now by phoning the riot police. There are people down there who need you whether they know it or not. Do the right thing, Mayor. If the riot police won’t come, then you have my permission to get the National Guard. Just please, none of that AK-47 and real grenade crap this time.”
Irwin took a few deep breaths in and out, calming himself down in the midst of the outside chaos. “You’re right, Fred. You’re absolutely right. I don’t know what I’d do without you. And if football made you the man you are today, I doubt it could suck that badly.”
Fred Jacobs smiled and patted Irwin on the shoulder before leaving him alone to make the phone call. Just a few minutes ago, this ex-football player was dizzy and bleeding. Now he was toughing it out like a pro and that was inspiring to Irwin, who then picked up the phone and made this announcement: “Send them in. It’s an emergency.” The call for help was placed and all Irwin and Fred could do at this point was ride out the storm.
Zombie-Ogre
VERSE 1
Eat, sleep, shatter, repeat
Ultra-violence for human meat
Winner, winner, chicken dinner
The glutinous one is a true sinner
Blood on his fangs, flesh on his tongue
Poison in his gut, disease in his lungs
Zombie-Ogre is coming to kill
Cannibalism, a sadistic thrill
CHORUS
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre! X2
VERSE 2
The mosh pit is more like a buffet table
Survive genocide? You’re clearly unable
You can kick and punch, but your ass is lunch
It’s just a formality and not only a hunch
Heavy metal fuels his venomous veins
Every guitar riff ensures his iron reign
Zombie-Ogre is the master of slam dance
Getting out alive is a fucking slim chance
CHORUS
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre! X2
VERSE 3
Never forget, you made him this way
You laughed at him every goddamn day
You shamed his body from head to toe
Threw rocks at him with crushing blows
Now he’s hungry for the flesh of humans
Disgusting creatures just like he knew them
The meat is so tender it falls of the bone
The blood is perfect for the king in his throne
EXTENDED CHORUS
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre!
Don’t worry, bitches, it’ll all be over!
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre!
Cannibalism gives him a massive boner!
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre!
He can end it quickly if you just roll over!
Submit yourself to the barbecue rack!
Feel the flames turning your body black!
FINAL LINE
Zombie-Ogre! Mmm, mmm, good!
Eat, sleep, shatter, repeat
Ultra-violence for human meat
Winner, winner, chicken dinner
The glutinous one is a true sinner
Blood on his fangs, flesh on his tongue
Poison in his gut, disease in his lungs
Zombie-Ogre is coming to kill
Cannibalism, a sadistic thrill
CHORUS
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre! X2
VERSE 2
The mosh pit is more like a buffet table
Survive genocide? You’re clearly unable
You can kick and punch, but your ass is lunch
It’s just a formality and not only a hunch
Heavy metal fuels his venomous veins
Every guitar riff ensures his iron reign
Zombie-Ogre is the master of slam dance
Getting out alive is a fucking slim chance
CHORUS
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre! X2
VERSE 3
Never forget, you made him this way
You laughed at him every goddamn day
You shamed his body from head to toe
Threw rocks at him with crushing blows
Now he’s hungry for the flesh of humans
Disgusting creatures just like he knew them
The meat is so tender it falls of the bone
The blood is perfect for the king in his throne
EXTENDED CHORUS
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre!
Don’t worry, bitches, it’ll all be over!
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre!
Cannibalism gives him a massive boner!
Zombie-Ogre! Zombie-Ogre!
He can end it quickly if you just roll over!
Submit yourself to the barbecue rack!
Feel the flames turning your body black!
FINAL LINE
Zombie-Ogre! Mmm, mmm, good!
Why Are You Laughing at Me?
VERSE 1
I wrote a story from cover to cover
For every one of the literature lovers
My imagination ran wild with fantasies
Autographs for those who are asking me
Making it rain hundred dollar bills
All because I had some mad skills
Then the red ink dried on the page
The word “reject” sent me into a rage
CHORUS 1
Tell me why! Why are you laughing at me?!
Tell me who! Who should I try to be?!
Tell me what! What the fuck is your deal?!
Tell me how! How should I fucking feel?!
VERSE 2
I worked up the courage to ask her out
Cleared my mind of any possible doubt
Calmed the butterflies in my round tummy
Waiting for a kiss so romantic and yummy
She laughed at me alongside her plus one
Goddamn, that’s just so fucking fucked up
She could have said no and it’d be over
She made me curse myself for being sober
CHORUS 1
Tell me why! Why are you laughing at me?!
Tell me who! Who should I try to be?!
Tell me what! What the fuck is your deal?!
Tell me how! How should I fucking feel?!
VERSE 3
I’m not a clown and my life is not a circus
You’re the joke, your opinion’s so worthless
It’s amateur night at The Laugh Factory
It’s your turn to curl up in dreaded agony
How does it feel to be under the microscope?
How does it feel to lose every ounce of hope?
You wore my shoes and walked the green mile
The pain is all yours via the laughs and smiles
CHORUS 2
Tell me where! Where is the justice in this?!
Tell me when! When will you end this shit?!
Tell me now! Give me your final answer!
Too late now! Give up, you laughing bastard!
I wrote a story from cover to cover
For every one of the literature lovers
My imagination ran wild with fantasies
Autographs for those who are asking me
Making it rain hundred dollar bills
All because I had some mad skills
Then the red ink dried on the page
The word “reject” sent me into a rage
CHORUS 1
Tell me why! Why are you laughing at me?!
Tell me who! Who should I try to be?!
Tell me what! What the fuck is your deal?!
Tell me how! How should I fucking feel?!
VERSE 2
I worked up the courage to ask her out
Cleared my mind of any possible doubt
Calmed the butterflies in my round tummy
Waiting for a kiss so romantic and yummy
She laughed at me alongside her plus one
Goddamn, that’s just so fucking fucked up
She could have said no and it’d be over
She made me curse myself for being sober
CHORUS 1
Tell me why! Why are you laughing at me?!
Tell me who! Who should I try to be?!
Tell me what! What the fuck is your deal?!
Tell me how! How should I fucking feel?!
VERSE 3
I’m not a clown and my life is not a circus
You’re the joke, your opinion’s so worthless
It’s amateur night at The Laugh Factory
It’s your turn to curl up in dreaded agony
How does it feel to be under the microscope?
How does it feel to lose every ounce of hope?
You wore my shoes and walked the green mile
The pain is all yours via the laughs and smiles
CHORUS 2
Tell me where! Where is the justice in this?!
Tell me when! When will you end this shit?!
Tell me now! Give me your final answer!
Too late now! Give up, you laughing bastard!
November 29, 2015
Makeshift Wrestling Teams
***MAKESHIFT WRESTLING TEAMS***
Whether you’re a wrestling fan or not, this journal is strictly for my own amusement. I have a raunchy sense of humor with a little bit of Peter Pan Syndrome going on, so I can’t let this opportunity at cheap laughs to slide. Anyways, if you’re a wrestling fan, you know who Team PCB are. The acronym in their team name is made up of their first initials: Paige, Charlotte, and Becky Lynch. They used to be called The Submission Sorority, but when WWE found out that the name was already being used for a porn movie title, they took the route of using initials. And that got me thinking…what other makeshift teams can be formed the same way? Hmmm….
1. Kane, Kalisto, and Konnor (Team KKK)
2. Goldust, Ryback, and Rusev (Team GRR)
3. Cesaro, The Undertaker, Neville, and Tamina (Team CUNT)
4. Kevin Owens, Christian, and Kane (Team KOCK)
5. Fandango, The Undertaker, Cesaro, and Kane (Team FUCK)
6. Sin Cara, The Undertaker, and The Miz (Team SCUM)
7. Sin Cara and Adam Rose (Team SCAR)
8. Big E and Diego (Team BED)
9. Jimmy Uso, Neville, and Konnor (Team JUNK)
10. Hornswoggle and Erick Rowan (Team HER)
11. Sting, Hideo Itami, and Tamina (Team SHIT)
12. Blake, Alex Riley, and Fernando (Team BARF)
13. Randy Orton and Adam Rose (Team ROAR)
14. Bayley and Alberto Del Rio (Team BAD)
There. It’s all out of my system. I couldn’t be more proud of myself. I love having Peter Pan Syndrome. Hehe! We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***EDITING PRIORITIES***
With Occupy Wrestling holding a rating of 2-75 stars and Poison Tongue Tales being close to hitting the 50th story, it seems as though I’ve come to a crossroads when it comes to editing and working with the ultra awesome Marie Krepps, who’s tough when it matters and a kick-ass best friend. She insists that Occupy Wrestling should take priority since it’s already on the market and she doesn’t want it to be unfairly judged. Good point. Damn good point. But she also said that the decision was ultimately up to me when it came to which book I should edit. I took that to heart when I made my decision. The decision is, why can’t I work on them side-by-side? Is singular focus so sacred that these books can’t coexist in the same process? One day could be spent bulldozing short stories, the next day could be spent editing the hell out of individual OW chapters, and the cycle will repeat until both books are finished. Granted, it will require a great deal of discipline, but that’s something I’m capable of showing even during my low energy days.
***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTEST AND COMPANY***
It’s a new week at the WSS and the prompt is “Fireworks”. The story I produce for that prompt won’t be part of Poison Tongue Tales since it’s a modern drama. It’s called “Football Sucks” and it goes like this:
CHARACTERS:
Irwin Gladden, New Mayor of Paulson City
Fred Jacobs, Irwin’s Bodyguard
Random Protesters
PROMPT CONFORMITY: Protesters set off fireworks as part of their demonstration.
SYNOPSIS: As Irwin’s first official act as mayor, he plans on balancing the city budget by converting a taxpayer-funded football stadium into the city’s largest public library. He even goes so far as to taunt opponents of this measure by saying, “Football sucks”. The morning after making this announcement, Irwin has an army of protesters outside his political headquarters and things don’t get better when Fred enters the room dizzy and bleeding.
***POISON TONGUE TALES***
Last night, I wrote story number 48, which was “Wasteland”. Story number 49 will be called “Mastodon” and it goes like this:
CHARACTERS:
Christopher Brown, Bounty Hunter
Courtney Robyn, Psychotic Criminal
PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.
SYNOPSIS: In a Dungeons & Dragons-like atmosphere, the city of Middlesex is overrun with criminals and it’s up to human fighter Christopher Brown to capture them for a reward. His latest hunt is Courtney Robyn, a psychotic serial killer whose body count is in the hundreds. Just when he’s closing in on her location, Courtney comes stampeding through the streets riding on a mastodon, crushing everyone in her path.
And in case you were wondering, no, Christopher Brown isn’t based on the rapper Chris Brown, although the former’s job requires him to fight a female serial killer. I swear it’s only a coincidence, though. I swear on my mother’s grave (even though she’s still alive).
***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***
The next drawing to come from this series will be of Elizabeth Dempsey, a human ranger from Blood Brawl who is in no way related to Brock Dempsey from Maggie’s Wisdom. It’s amazing that even though Blood Brawl is suspended, I still have the desire to draw the characters from that would-be novel. The more, the merrier I say.
***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“If I hear one note out of that trombone, I’m going to send all three of you to a place that makes Suplex City look like Disneyland!”
-Stephanie McMahon to The New Day-
Whether you’re a wrestling fan or not, this journal is strictly for my own amusement. I have a raunchy sense of humor with a little bit of Peter Pan Syndrome going on, so I can’t let this opportunity at cheap laughs to slide. Anyways, if you’re a wrestling fan, you know who Team PCB are. The acronym in their team name is made up of their first initials: Paige, Charlotte, and Becky Lynch. They used to be called The Submission Sorority, but when WWE found out that the name was already being used for a porn movie title, they took the route of using initials. And that got me thinking…what other makeshift teams can be formed the same way? Hmmm….
1. Kane, Kalisto, and Konnor (Team KKK)
2. Goldust, Ryback, and Rusev (Team GRR)
3. Cesaro, The Undertaker, Neville, and Tamina (Team CUNT)
4. Kevin Owens, Christian, and Kane (Team KOCK)
5. Fandango, The Undertaker, Cesaro, and Kane (Team FUCK)
6. Sin Cara, The Undertaker, and The Miz (Team SCUM)
7. Sin Cara and Adam Rose (Team SCAR)
8. Big E and Diego (Team BED)
9. Jimmy Uso, Neville, and Konnor (Team JUNK)
10. Hornswoggle and Erick Rowan (Team HER)
11. Sting, Hideo Itami, and Tamina (Team SHIT)
12. Blake, Alex Riley, and Fernando (Team BARF)
13. Randy Orton and Adam Rose (Team ROAR)
14. Bayley and Alberto Del Rio (Team BAD)
There. It’s all out of my system. I couldn’t be more proud of myself. I love having Peter Pan Syndrome. Hehe! We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***EDITING PRIORITIES***
With Occupy Wrestling holding a rating of 2-75 stars and Poison Tongue Tales being close to hitting the 50th story, it seems as though I’ve come to a crossroads when it comes to editing and working with the ultra awesome Marie Krepps, who’s tough when it matters and a kick-ass best friend. She insists that Occupy Wrestling should take priority since it’s already on the market and she doesn’t want it to be unfairly judged. Good point. Damn good point. But she also said that the decision was ultimately up to me when it came to which book I should edit. I took that to heart when I made my decision. The decision is, why can’t I work on them side-by-side? Is singular focus so sacred that these books can’t coexist in the same process? One day could be spent bulldozing short stories, the next day could be spent editing the hell out of individual OW chapters, and the cycle will repeat until both books are finished. Granted, it will require a great deal of discipline, but that’s something I’m capable of showing even during my low energy days.
***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTEST AND COMPANY***
It’s a new week at the WSS and the prompt is “Fireworks”. The story I produce for that prompt won’t be part of Poison Tongue Tales since it’s a modern drama. It’s called “Football Sucks” and it goes like this:
CHARACTERS:
Irwin Gladden, New Mayor of Paulson City
Fred Jacobs, Irwin’s Bodyguard
Random Protesters
PROMPT CONFORMITY: Protesters set off fireworks as part of their demonstration.
SYNOPSIS: As Irwin’s first official act as mayor, he plans on balancing the city budget by converting a taxpayer-funded football stadium into the city’s largest public library. He even goes so far as to taunt opponents of this measure by saying, “Football sucks”. The morning after making this announcement, Irwin has an army of protesters outside his political headquarters and things don’t get better when Fred enters the room dizzy and bleeding.
***POISON TONGUE TALES***
Last night, I wrote story number 48, which was “Wasteland”. Story number 49 will be called “Mastodon” and it goes like this:
CHARACTERS:
Christopher Brown, Bounty Hunter
Courtney Robyn, Psychotic Criminal
PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.
SYNOPSIS: In a Dungeons & Dragons-like atmosphere, the city of Middlesex is overrun with criminals and it’s up to human fighter Christopher Brown to capture them for a reward. His latest hunt is Courtney Robyn, a psychotic serial killer whose body count is in the hundreds. Just when he’s closing in on her location, Courtney comes stampeding through the streets riding on a mastodon, crushing everyone in her path.
And in case you were wondering, no, Christopher Brown isn’t based on the rapper Chris Brown, although the former’s job requires him to fight a female serial killer. I swear it’s only a coincidence, though. I swear on my mother’s grave (even though she’s still alive).
***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***
The next drawing to come from this series will be of Elizabeth Dempsey, a human ranger from Blood Brawl who is in no way related to Brock Dempsey from Maggie’s Wisdom. It’s amazing that even though Blood Brawl is suspended, I still have the desire to draw the characters from that would-be novel. The more, the merrier I say.
***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“If I hear one note out of that trombone, I’m going to send all three of you to a place that makes Suplex City look like Disneyland!”
-Stephanie McMahon to The New Day-
November 28, 2015
Wasteland
Sweat poured down Faye Blood’s dark skin like a desert rain. Her fiery red hair was pasted to her forehead like horse glue. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her baggy white pants were draining even more sweat her already exhausted legs. Her orange monk’s sash clung to her upper body like a wrestler’s bear hug. Then again, all of this was to be expected from wandering the wastelands with a short supply of water and a hunched over body. The sun’s rays punished Faye’s body to where everything hurt. And to think, this much foot travel was all in the name of making a pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage? What kind of cruel and sadistic god would ever encourage his followers to walk aimlessly through these unforgiving sands? Couldn’t said deity at least have the decency to splurge for some camels? What about barrels of ice cold water and buckets of dry rations, was that asking too much as well? Faye would be lying if she said these thoughts hadn’t crossed her mind at least one time. But as quick as they haunted her, she pushed them back out of devotion to Salaam, the God of Benevolence. Her religious zeal trumped any complaints she had about doing this much exercise in one day.
The things Faye Blood would do at that moment for even a teardrops of fresh, nearly frozen water. She could strangle somebody. She could disembowel them. She could commit genocide and completely ruin her zealous track record with Salaam. An hour of zombie-like walking later and she would have two reasons for sudden violence. Just to make sure it wasn’t a mirage, Faye rubbed her eyes with balled up fists. With clear vision, no, this wasn’t a heatstroke-induced illusion.
What Faye saw at that moment could have been described as sensually pornographic, even from her outside perspective. A blue tent had been pitched and judging from the shadows of the two occupants, a man and a woman, there was some serious hanky-panky going on in there. The dominant male rained kisses upon his lovely female and touched her in places that made her squeal with delight and giggle with pleasure.
She didn’t have a whole lot to puke up, but if Faye did, she would spill her breakfast, lunch, and dinner all over the desert ground. Public display of affection was more disgusting to her than a battlefield full of dead bodies. To make matters worse, the male in the tent opened what looked like a bottle of water and was pouring it all over the female’s chest and face, causing her to arch up in orgasmic ecstasy.
Now Faye was pissed off. That was valuable water that could have gone to anybody dying of thirst in this god forsaken land. Instead it was being used for a cheap aphrodisiac between two equally cheap people. The monk’s fists were clinched and her muscles were tensed. Any tiredness she felt beforehand was replaced with energetic rage. Adrenaline pumped through her veins like the river she so desperately wanted to drink from.
The religious warrior stomped over to the tent and jerked it open with one frustrated rip. The lusty couple jumped backwards in surprise and scrambled to put their clothes back on. All the male had to put back on was a black mesh tank top while the female had a black leather breastplate. Their lower halves were completely covered with black baggy pants and black combat boots.
Faye actually allowed these two the time they needed to dress just by standing there in her muscle-tensing pose with the ripped tent still in her balled up fists. She couldn’t stand looking at them half-naked anymore. She didn’t care how smooth and toned their “sexy” bodies were or how lovely their long hair looked. Faye was thirsty. Whether she was thirsty for water or blood was a question that couldn’t be answered just by looking at her viciously angry pose.
“I could snap both of your necks right now and nobody would even try to find you two nitwits,” said Faye through gritted teeth. “If you’re not going to use that water intelligently, then at least give it to someone who will. Show me where you keep your jugs of water and I’ll be on my way.”
The male paramour, identified as Marco Torres, drew a rather long blade from its leather sheath and said in a smooth Spanish accent, “Hold on a second, babe. Who the hell do you think you are interrupting a beautiful thing like lovemaking?”
“Trust me, macho-nacho,” said Faye. “There’s nothing beautiful about wasting water just so your little harlot over here can have a fifteen-hour orgasm.”
The female paramour, identified as Rook Maxwell, drew a claymore from its sheath and heaved up a metal tower shield before saying, “Now sugar bear, if it’s water that you want, you don’t have to threaten to rip our heads off. By all means, you can have as much as you want. You’re not getting it from those jugs, though. This kind of water comes from spending seven minutes in heaven with the two of us!”
Faye instantly knew where the source of “water” was supposed to be and screamed in disgust while covering her ears with her palms. She then sang an agonized, tone-deaf version of “La-la-la-la-la!” before Marco and Rook got annoyed and lunged at her full force.
The two lovers swung their respective blades full force and made heavy “woosh” noises as Faye Blood cart wheeled and back flipped out of the way of these deadly strikes. With two people attacking her at once, Faye couldn’t find a split second of offence and spent most of this battle acrobatically dodging attacks. If she kept moving around this quickly for much longer, she would have another reason to collapse in exhaustion other than her desert travels.
As Faye continued to tuck, roll, flip, and fly out of the way of Marco and Rook’s tireless slashes, the monk noticed how they were concentrating only on the upper half of her body. Therefore, Faye did the splits and went down low with five knuckles of death right into Marco’s testicles.
The Spanish thug doubled over and howled in a raspy voice before dropping to his knees and rolling around on the ground. With him dispatched of, it was only Rook Maxwell swinging her heavy blade at Faye Blood, who continued to flip and fly around the battlefield to avoid getting struck.
Evasion was much easier for Faye with one opponent, but not for long. Rook pointed her lengthy hunk of metal at her opponent and shot little black energy grenades that exploded into smoke. Faye could try to run, but the thick smoke enveloped her and she soon found herself on her knees hacking and wheezing, much worse off than being dehydrated in the desert.
Rook sauntered over to her vulnerable victim with a kinky smile and a clear path through all of her magical smoke. Faye was passing in and out of consciousness by the time Rook waved her sword and blew her own smoke away. The dark paladin held her blade against Faye’s coughing and bloody mouth with the intent to make the final kill.
“Look at it this way, sweetheart: at least now you won’t have to worry about dying of dehydration. I plan on making this as quick as possible, but only because I really like you,” said Rook.
She slowly positioned the blade to Faye’s throat when the monk shakily and languidly made it to her feet. Rook thought this was some kind of last ditch effort, a second wind maybe. But all Faye had to come back with was vomiting in the dark paladin’s face. Blood, ashes, and desert sand filled her stomach with enough contents to make the projectile vomit that much more disgusting.
All of that biological slop was enough to deter Rook Maxwell from carrying out a murder, however. She danced around and clutched her “beautiful” face as the stomach acids burned her eyeballs. Some of it even managed to go down her throat, so she was choking as well.
They weren’t dead, but Faye was satisfied with her combat results long enough to spot jugs of water with her blurry vision. “Must…have…water…” she said over and over again to herself when she crawled on her hands and knees over to the leather skins. She pulled the cork from one of them and chugged like it was her last chance at fresh water. And oh, did it taste fresh. It was like a waterfall of icy coldness soothing her throat and energizing her stomach. Chills went up and down her flesh as she gulped some more. This was heaven to Faye Blood. Pure, wonderful, lovely heaven.
“Thank you, Salaam. Thank you so much!” she said in a prayer position. But soon all of that heavenly coldness turned to drugged dizziness. Her vision was blurry and everything around her was spinning into darkness. The cool sensation was turning to uncomfortable warmth and sweat. Before long, Faye Blood passed out with her face buried in the sand.
It must have been hours before the monk awakened. When she did, she felt so weak and crippled that even opening her eyes took a lot of physical and mental energy out of her. All she could see was Marco Torres’s blurry face looking down on her while he stroked her sweaty hair. Every word he said to her from that point on had a little bit of an echo behind it with some reverberation off the walls of the tent.
“You feel that, my love?” asked Marco in a sensual voice. “That wasn’t water you drank. That was a cask of Salaam’s most magical wine. Granted, it was laced with other lovely drugs, but hey, you wanted to make your pilgrimage to the heavenly lands and now you’re here.”
“Wha…wha…what the fu…”
“Shh-shh-shh! There’s no need for talking, my sweet. Just relax and let Salaam’s holy cocktail wash over you. You often wondered what exactly it was you were traveling to. And this is it, my love. Your priests sent you on this mission to find me. I am Marco Esteban Torres. Rook Maxwell was one of my wives. But she won’t be joining us tonight. Salaam has taken her to a better place. But you, Faye Blood, will make a suitable replacement for my lost fifteenth wife. Welcome to the good life, sweetheart. This is the true definition of Salaam’s Heaven.”
The setup to be Marco Torres’ wife was sealed with a passionate kiss between himself and an unwilling, yet unresponsive Faye Blood. The monk would soon find out what had happened to her this whole time. And when she did, it was doubtful she would be so zealous to her religion anymore. “Fuck you, Salaam. Fuck you badly!” said Faye in her own mind.
Pilgrimage? What kind of cruel and sadistic god would ever encourage his followers to walk aimlessly through these unforgiving sands? Couldn’t said deity at least have the decency to splurge for some camels? What about barrels of ice cold water and buckets of dry rations, was that asking too much as well? Faye would be lying if she said these thoughts hadn’t crossed her mind at least one time. But as quick as they haunted her, she pushed them back out of devotion to Salaam, the God of Benevolence. Her religious zeal trumped any complaints she had about doing this much exercise in one day.
The things Faye Blood would do at that moment for even a teardrops of fresh, nearly frozen water. She could strangle somebody. She could disembowel them. She could commit genocide and completely ruin her zealous track record with Salaam. An hour of zombie-like walking later and she would have two reasons for sudden violence. Just to make sure it wasn’t a mirage, Faye rubbed her eyes with balled up fists. With clear vision, no, this wasn’t a heatstroke-induced illusion.
What Faye saw at that moment could have been described as sensually pornographic, even from her outside perspective. A blue tent had been pitched and judging from the shadows of the two occupants, a man and a woman, there was some serious hanky-panky going on in there. The dominant male rained kisses upon his lovely female and touched her in places that made her squeal with delight and giggle with pleasure.
She didn’t have a whole lot to puke up, but if Faye did, she would spill her breakfast, lunch, and dinner all over the desert ground. Public display of affection was more disgusting to her than a battlefield full of dead bodies. To make matters worse, the male in the tent opened what looked like a bottle of water and was pouring it all over the female’s chest and face, causing her to arch up in orgasmic ecstasy.
Now Faye was pissed off. That was valuable water that could have gone to anybody dying of thirst in this god forsaken land. Instead it was being used for a cheap aphrodisiac between two equally cheap people. The monk’s fists were clinched and her muscles were tensed. Any tiredness she felt beforehand was replaced with energetic rage. Adrenaline pumped through her veins like the river she so desperately wanted to drink from.
The religious warrior stomped over to the tent and jerked it open with one frustrated rip. The lusty couple jumped backwards in surprise and scrambled to put their clothes back on. All the male had to put back on was a black mesh tank top while the female had a black leather breastplate. Their lower halves were completely covered with black baggy pants and black combat boots.
Faye actually allowed these two the time they needed to dress just by standing there in her muscle-tensing pose with the ripped tent still in her balled up fists. She couldn’t stand looking at them half-naked anymore. She didn’t care how smooth and toned their “sexy” bodies were or how lovely their long hair looked. Faye was thirsty. Whether she was thirsty for water or blood was a question that couldn’t be answered just by looking at her viciously angry pose.
“I could snap both of your necks right now and nobody would even try to find you two nitwits,” said Faye through gritted teeth. “If you’re not going to use that water intelligently, then at least give it to someone who will. Show me where you keep your jugs of water and I’ll be on my way.”
The male paramour, identified as Marco Torres, drew a rather long blade from its leather sheath and said in a smooth Spanish accent, “Hold on a second, babe. Who the hell do you think you are interrupting a beautiful thing like lovemaking?”
“Trust me, macho-nacho,” said Faye. “There’s nothing beautiful about wasting water just so your little harlot over here can have a fifteen-hour orgasm.”
The female paramour, identified as Rook Maxwell, drew a claymore from its sheath and heaved up a metal tower shield before saying, “Now sugar bear, if it’s water that you want, you don’t have to threaten to rip our heads off. By all means, you can have as much as you want. You’re not getting it from those jugs, though. This kind of water comes from spending seven minutes in heaven with the two of us!”
Faye instantly knew where the source of “water” was supposed to be and screamed in disgust while covering her ears with her palms. She then sang an agonized, tone-deaf version of “La-la-la-la-la!” before Marco and Rook got annoyed and lunged at her full force.
The two lovers swung their respective blades full force and made heavy “woosh” noises as Faye Blood cart wheeled and back flipped out of the way of these deadly strikes. With two people attacking her at once, Faye couldn’t find a split second of offence and spent most of this battle acrobatically dodging attacks. If she kept moving around this quickly for much longer, she would have another reason to collapse in exhaustion other than her desert travels.
As Faye continued to tuck, roll, flip, and fly out of the way of Marco and Rook’s tireless slashes, the monk noticed how they were concentrating only on the upper half of her body. Therefore, Faye did the splits and went down low with five knuckles of death right into Marco’s testicles.
The Spanish thug doubled over and howled in a raspy voice before dropping to his knees and rolling around on the ground. With him dispatched of, it was only Rook Maxwell swinging her heavy blade at Faye Blood, who continued to flip and fly around the battlefield to avoid getting struck.
Evasion was much easier for Faye with one opponent, but not for long. Rook pointed her lengthy hunk of metal at her opponent and shot little black energy grenades that exploded into smoke. Faye could try to run, but the thick smoke enveloped her and she soon found herself on her knees hacking and wheezing, much worse off than being dehydrated in the desert.
Rook sauntered over to her vulnerable victim with a kinky smile and a clear path through all of her magical smoke. Faye was passing in and out of consciousness by the time Rook waved her sword and blew her own smoke away. The dark paladin held her blade against Faye’s coughing and bloody mouth with the intent to make the final kill.
“Look at it this way, sweetheart: at least now you won’t have to worry about dying of dehydration. I plan on making this as quick as possible, but only because I really like you,” said Rook.
She slowly positioned the blade to Faye’s throat when the monk shakily and languidly made it to her feet. Rook thought this was some kind of last ditch effort, a second wind maybe. But all Faye had to come back with was vomiting in the dark paladin’s face. Blood, ashes, and desert sand filled her stomach with enough contents to make the projectile vomit that much more disgusting.
All of that biological slop was enough to deter Rook Maxwell from carrying out a murder, however. She danced around and clutched her “beautiful” face as the stomach acids burned her eyeballs. Some of it even managed to go down her throat, so she was choking as well.
They weren’t dead, but Faye was satisfied with her combat results long enough to spot jugs of water with her blurry vision. “Must…have…water…” she said over and over again to herself when she crawled on her hands and knees over to the leather skins. She pulled the cork from one of them and chugged like it was her last chance at fresh water. And oh, did it taste fresh. It was like a waterfall of icy coldness soothing her throat and energizing her stomach. Chills went up and down her flesh as she gulped some more. This was heaven to Faye Blood. Pure, wonderful, lovely heaven.
“Thank you, Salaam. Thank you so much!” she said in a prayer position. But soon all of that heavenly coldness turned to drugged dizziness. Her vision was blurry and everything around her was spinning into darkness. The cool sensation was turning to uncomfortable warmth and sweat. Before long, Faye Blood passed out with her face buried in the sand.
It must have been hours before the monk awakened. When she did, she felt so weak and crippled that even opening her eyes took a lot of physical and mental energy out of her. All she could see was Marco Torres’s blurry face looking down on her while he stroked her sweaty hair. Every word he said to her from that point on had a little bit of an echo behind it with some reverberation off the walls of the tent.
“You feel that, my love?” asked Marco in a sensual voice. “That wasn’t water you drank. That was a cask of Salaam’s most magical wine. Granted, it was laced with other lovely drugs, but hey, you wanted to make your pilgrimage to the heavenly lands and now you’re here.”
“Wha…wha…what the fu…”
“Shh-shh-shh! There’s no need for talking, my sweet. Just relax and let Salaam’s holy cocktail wash over you. You often wondered what exactly it was you were traveling to. And this is it, my love. Your priests sent you on this mission to find me. I am Marco Esteban Torres. Rook Maxwell was one of my wives. But she won’t be joining us tonight. Salaam has taken her to a better place. But you, Faye Blood, will make a suitable replacement for my lost fifteenth wife. Welcome to the good life, sweetheart. This is the true definition of Salaam’s Heaven.”
The setup to be Marco Torres’ wife was sealed with a passionate kiss between himself and an unwilling, yet unresponsive Faye Blood. The monk would soon find out what had happened to her this whole time. And when she did, it was doubtful she would be so zealous to her religion anymore. “Fuck you, Salaam. Fuck you badly!” said Faye in her own mind.
