Garrison Kelly's Blog, page 70
January 15, 2018
Silent Warrior, Chapter 2
Scott didn’t even bother trying to look presentable for his classes that morning. His chestnut Sideshow Bob hair jutted in every direction humanly possible. His gray sweatpants overflowed with bagginess, thought they managed to stay above his waist. The holes in his plain black T-shirt didn’t reveal much, but they were noticeable to anybody with at least twenty-forty vision. He didn’t even bother to grab a bite to eat before he left the house. Even a strawberry Pop Tart would have resembled worms after that screwed up dream. Plus, it would have probably tasted like stomach acid and oral shit.
Without saying goodbye to his single mother, Scott popped his ear buds in and scrolled through his MP3 player looking for a good song. He kept his chin tucked the whole time and bumped into a few fellow students along the way to the bus stop. No apologies were necessary, because the hostile cursing from the other kids made reconciliation futile. By the time the bus arrived and Scott took a seat devoid of human contact, he finally found the song he was looking for: “Say Goodnight” by Gemini Syndrome.
“It's time to say goodnight to the nightmare as it gently falls asleep. / Another restless night, another show plays in my head. / It seems to never end. / Another hopeless plight, another cold and empty bed, / And the solitude again. / How can I live this lie again?”
It was always amazing to Scott how a voice normally used for screaming heavy metal lyrics was capable of taking the edge off every now and then. Despite knowing what the subconscious theater had in store for him, Scott allowed Aaron Nordstrom’s golden voice lull him into such a relaxed state that he rested his head against the seat in front of him. This was the major difference between being exhausted and being at peace. His eyelids grew heavier even as the mildly intense guitars hummed in his ears.
Scott could have fallen asleep on this bus and stayed here for all eternity. Let the truant officers drag his ass out kicking and screaming. Let the police handcuff his wrist to the desk. One man’s truancy was another man’s peaceful resistance. It was peaceful enough for Scott to snore rather loudly on the bus and attract the attention of the other students. If they did giggle at him, he couldn’t tell because of Aaron Nordstrom and his godlike passion for music.
Just like the puppet strings in his latest nightmare, Scott was jerked awake by the sudden impact of thick fists slamming down on the backrest in front of him. His heart thumped like a war drum and his bloodshot eyes nearly popped out of his skull at the sight of Alan Young, a kid he knew since middle school, emphasis on kid. With a stocky frame, the world’s meanest eyes, a drill instructor haircut, and fists covered in scars, he could easily be Scott’s worst nightmare, Aloysius Striker aside.
“Wakey-wakey, little bitch!” Alan mocked. “You look just like a little bitty baby with a thumb in your mouth! Does the big baby want his bottle? Does he need to be burped? Or maybe you need to have your big smelly diaper changed! It must be all that shitty music you listen to! I bet you’ve got some Justin Bieber on there, you little fairy!” That last line got a few chuckles from the other students.
In no mood to take crap from anyone, Scott fired back with, “You know what I’m listening to right now? A thirty minute track of your mother having an orgasm. Guess who gave it to her.” The kids on the bus gave their obligatory “ooos” to the response.
Alan also gave off an “ooo”, but only out of sarcasm. He even wiggled his fingers at Scott to show how “scared” he was. “Look at you, Scotty-Potty! The big baby’s using big boy words! You’d better be careful with that mouth of yours or else I might have to spank you!” Another chorus of laughter echoed throughout the bus.
“Look, if you want to grab my ass that badly, you should probably take me out on a movie date first,” said Scott. After another string of “ooos”, he punctuated his insult with, “Not that there’s anything wrong with it!”
Alan’s joyful bully expression morphed into humiliated anger, his jowls drooping like a Bassett Hound. He grabbed Scott’s cheeks and squeezed them together tightly. “Seriously, you little cunt, you’d better shut that big mouth of yours. Don’t forget who the real bitch in this relationship is. Maybe instead of giving you a spanking, I’ll give you a free colonoscopy.”
Scott grabbed Alan’s thick wrist and clamped down so hard that the bully was forced to let go. Mr. Young’s jowls wiggled in pain, but he wouldn’t allow a scream to exit his mouth so easily. Scott’s face also trembled, but only because he scalded with rage. “You put your hands on me one more time and I’ll rip your fucking head off. You aren’t using it anyways, so it won’t be a big loss.”
Alan jerked his hand out of Scott’s anaconda grip and attempted to throw a punch. The victim ducked down far enough to avoid having his face turned into Floydian sausage. Scott responded by grabbing the back of Alan’s pug-like skull and forcing his throat over the backrest, cutting off his oxygen to the point of having purple jowls. The more the other students chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” the harder Scott squeezed, until the bus driver slammed on the brakes and everyone fell on their asses. The chokehold was released and Alan gasped and coughed for fresh morning air.
The door flung open and the middle-aged female bus driver shouted, “That’s it! I’ve had enough of this crap! Get off my bus! Move it!”
As soon as he could talk clearly without wheezing and hacking, Alan pointed his sausage finger at Scott and said, “You heard the lady. Off the bus! Beat it, kid!”
“Not him, you creep! You!” belted the bus driver. Alan’s eyes bugged out with confusion and horror. “You were the one who was picking on him this whole time! I saw you throw that punch! You’re the one who’s getting off the goddamn bus! Get out! Don’t make me call the damn police!”
Alan’s breathing intensified for more reasons than just regaining lost oxygen. “This is bullshit!” he yelled while punching every backrest on every seat on his way off the bus. He made sure to snap, “Fuck you!” at the bus driver as he marched down the stairs and into the lonely streets. The doors slammed shut and the bus was in gear once again.
“Are you alright, Mr. George?” asked the driver.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, I guess,” huffed Scott. He too took the deepest breaths he could muster as he fidgeted his buds back in his ears. Even without music at first, his world was quiet due to the other kids settling down, obviously not wanting to join Alan Young in the cold and desolate streets.
With the peace that Scott once had gone forever, he cycled through his MP3 player looking for something a little angrier and a little heavier than before. “World Scum” by Soulfly always did the trick with its machinegun-like double bass drums, thumping bass guitar, roaring guitars, and leonine screaming of Max Cavalera.
With gritted teeth, tight lips, and a bobbing head, Scott got into the groove of his newfound soundtrack. Any anger he had before this bus ride would be bottled up so tightly that it could blow like an atomic bomb. His first class of the day was with the dreaded history teacher Tom Simpson. Aloysius Striker and Alan Young would have made a lovely power couple in another life, but Scott’s igneous temper would be reserved for the one man who could potentially set him off.
Tucking his head down so nobody would see him, tears poured out of Scott George’s eyes, splashing on his sweatpants to where somebody could mistake those stains for misaimed piss. He didn’t make any sobbing noises, because that would attract more attention than he wanted at this point. His lips quivered, his heart thumped like crazy, he couldn’t hold his fingers still as he slid them across the MP3 player, but he still remained invisible to the other classmates, who were off in their own world after witnessing Alan Young getting strangled nearly to death.
The bus had finally arrived at Perkins High School. The door flung open, the bus driver yelped, “Everybody out!” and true to form, the students filed out of the door one by one, not necessarily in the most civilized fashion. Scott peeled off his ear buds and shut down his music, his fingers still trembling as he placed his MP3 player in his backpack. Even after the final kid got off the bus, he still remained. Getting off this god forsaken vehicle would have been more tiring than Navy SEAL hell week training. Every day was hell week for Scott George.
“Hey!” the bus driver belted. “It’s time to get off the bus!” Scott sighed and unhinged himself from the seat before trudging down the aisle with a hung head and wiped away tears. The driver asked, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? Do you need to see Principal Williams?”
“Not today. Maybe someday, but not today.”
Without saying goodbye to his single mother, Scott popped his ear buds in and scrolled through his MP3 player looking for a good song. He kept his chin tucked the whole time and bumped into a few fellow students along the way to the bus stop. No apologies were necessary, because the hostile cursing from the other kids made reconciliation futile. By the time the bus arrived and Scott took a seat devoid of human contact, he finally found the song he was looking for: “Say Goodnight” by Gemini Syndrome.
“It's time to say goodnight to the nightmare as it gently falls asleep. / Another restless night, another show plays in my head. / It seems to never end. / Another hopeless plight, another cold and empty bed, / And the solitude again. / How can I live this lie again?”
It was always amazing to Scott how a voice normally used for screaming heavy metal lyrics was capable of taking the edge off every now and then. Despite knowing what the subconscious theater had in store for him, Scott allowed Aaron Nordstrom’s golden voice lull him into such a relaxed state that he rested his head against the seat in front of him. This was the major difference between being exhausted and being at peace. His eyelids grew heavier even as the mildly intense guitars hummed in his ears.
Scott could have fallen asleep on this bus and stayed here for all eternity. Let the truant officers drag his ass out kicking and screaming. Let the police handcuff his wrist to the desk. One man’s truancy was another man’s peaceful resistance. It was peaceful enough for Scott to snore rather loudly on the bus and attract the attention of the other students. If they did giggle at him, he couldn’t tell because of Aaron Nordstrom and his godlike passion for music.
Just like the puppet strings in his latest nightmare, Scott was jerked awake by the sudden impact of thick fists slamming down on the backrest in front of him. His heart thumped like a war drum and his bloodshot eyes nearly popped out of his skull at the sight of Alan Young, a kid he knew since middle school, emphasis on kid. With a stocky frame, the world’s meanest eyes, a drill instructor haircut, and fists covered in scars, he could easily be Scott’s worst nightmare, Aloysius Striker aside.
“Wakey-wakey, little bitch!” Alan mocked. “You look just like a little bitty baby with a thumb in your mouth! Does the big baby want his bottle? Does he need to be burped? Or maybe you need to have your big smelly diaper changed! It must be all that shitty music you listen to! I bet you’ve got some Justin Bieber on there, you little fairy!” That last line got a few chuckles from the other students.
In no mood to take crap from anyone, Scott fired back with, “You know what I’m listening to right now? A thirty minute track of your mother having an orgasm. Guess who gave it to her.” The kids on the bus gave their obligatory “ooos” to the response.
Alan also gave off an “ooo”, but only out of sarcasm. He even wiggled his fingers at Scott to show how “scared” he was. “Look at you, Scotty-Potty! The big baby’s using big boy words! You’d better be careful with that mouth of yours or else I might have to spank you!” Another chorus of laughter echoed throughout the bus.
“Look, if you want to grab my ass that badly, you should probably take me out on a movie date first,” said Scott. After another string of “ooos”, he punctuated his insult with, “Not that there’s anything wrong with it!”
Alan’s joyful bully expression morphed into humiliated anger, his jowls drooping like a Bassett Hound. He grabbed Scott’s cheeks and squeezed them together tightly. “Seriously, you little cunt, you’d better shut that big mouth of yours. Don’t forget who the real bitch in this relationship is. Maybe instead of giving you a spanking, I’ll give you a free colonoscopy.”
Scott grabbed Alan’s thick wrist and clamped down so hard that the bully was forced to let go. Mr. Young’s jowls wiggled in pain, but he wouldn’t allow a scream to exit his mouth so easily. Scott’s face also trembled, but only because he scalded with rage. “You put your hands on me one more time and I’ll rip your fucking head off. You aren’t using it anyways, so it won’t be a big loss.”
Alan jerked his hand out of Scott’s anaconda grip and attempted to throw a punch. The victim ducked down far enough to avoid having his face turned into Floydian sausage. Scott responded by grabbing the back of Alan’s pug-like skull and forcing his throat over the backrest, cutting off his oxygen to the point of having purple jowls. The more the other students chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” the harder Scott squeezed, until the bus driver slammed on the brakes and everyone fell on their asses. The chokehold was released and Alan gasped and coughed for fresh morning air.
The door flung open and the middle-aged female bus driver shouted, “That’s it! I’ve had enough of this crap! Get off my bus! Move it!”
As soon as he could talk clearly without wheezing and hacking, Alan pointed his sausage finger at Scott and said, “You heard the lady. Off the bus! Beat it, kid!”
“Not him, you creep! You!” belted the bus driver. Alan’s eyes bugged out with confusion and horror. “You were the one who was picking on him this whole time! I saw you throw that punch! You’re the one who’s getting off the goddamn bus! Get out! Don’t make me call the damn police!”
Alan’s breathing intensified for more reasons than just regaining lost oxygen. “This is bullshit!” he yelled while punching every backrest on every seat on his way off the bus. He made sure to snap, “Fuck you!” at the bus driver as he marched down the stairs and into the lonely streets. The doors slammed shut and the bus was in gear once again.
“Are you alright, Mr. George?” asked the driver.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, I guess,” huffed Scott. He too took the deepest breaths he could muster as he fidgeted his buds back in his ears. Even without music at first, his world was quiet due to the other kids settling down, obviously not wanting to join Alan Young in the cold and desolate streets.
With the peace that Scott once had gone forever, he cycled through his MP3 player looking for something a little angrier and a little heavier than before. “World Scum” by Soulfly always did the trick with its machinegun-like double bass drums, thumping bass guitar, roaring guitars, and leonine screaming of Max Cavalera.
With gritted teeth, tight lips, and a bobbing head, Scott got into the groove of his newfound soundtrack. Any anger he had before this bus ride would be bottled up so tightly that it could blow like an atomic bomb. His first class of the day was with the dreaded history teacher Tom Simpson. Aloysius Striker and Alan Young would have made a lovely power couple in another life, but Scott’s igneous temper would be reserved for the one man who could potentially set him off.
Tucking his head down so nobody would see him, tears poured out of Scott George’s eyes, splashing on his sweatpants to where somebody could mistake those stains for misaimed piss. He didn’t make any sobbing noises, because that would attract more attention than he wanted at this point. His lips quivered, his heart thumped like crazy, he couldn’t hold his fingers still as he slid them across the MP3 player, but he still remained invisible to the other classmates, who were off in their own world after witnessing Alan Young getting strangled nearly to death.
The bus had finally arrived at Perkins High School. The door flung open, the bus driver yelped, “Everybody out!” and true to form, the students filed out of the door one by one, not necessarily in the most civilized fashion. Scott peeled off his ear buds and shut down his music, his fingers still trembling as he placed his MP3 player in his backpack. Even after the final kid got off the bus, he still remained. Getting off this god forsaken vehicle would have been more tiring than Navy SEAL hell week training. Every day was hell week for Scott George.
“Hey!” the bus driver belted. “It’s time to get off the bus!” Scott sighed and unhinged himself from the seat before trudging down the aisle with a hung head and wiped away tears. The driver asked, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? Do you need to see Principal Williams?”
“Not today. Maybe someday, but not today.”
January 14, 2018
Changing My Mind
***CHANGING MY MIND***
After reading a blog entry I wrote about Backwoods Barbarian being my next project, you’re probably wondering why there’s a chapter of something called Silent Warrior on my social media accounts. Before I get into that, let me just state that changing my mind about creative endeavors is something I do quite frequently according to circumstances. Why? Because I can, that’s why. I admit that inconsistency and broken promises aren’t helping my brand a whole lot, but sometimes things can change without advance notice. If you want to know just how frequently things can change, then I shall give you a rundown of all my creative projects.
Let’s start with Backwoods Barbarian and Silent Warrior. Backwoods Barbarian was scheduled to be my next long-term project, but then my angelic beta reader Marie gave me some divine intervention in the form of a suggestion. She likes the idea of Silent Warrior because it’s something that I can identify with on a personal level: being a mentally ill introvert navigating high school. Just as a side note, I graduated in 2003. While I do incorporate personal creative fuel into my novellas often, Silent Warrior will do it in a way that’s even more personal to me. When I expressed my doubts as to whether I could flesh out the pre-write into twenty chapters, Marie cheered me on with pom-poms in hand and I finally pumped out my first chapter. She’s my own personal Jesus Christ.
That’s not to say that Backwoods Barbarian will be tossed aside so easily. I’ve contemplated working on it simultaneously with Silent Warrior, but there are pros and cons to having a two-novel schedule. The biggest pro is that I’ll have something to work on when I get writer’s block. The biggest con is that I could lose focus on one particular project, which could arguably aggravate my writer’s block instead of heal it. Nothing is set in stone just yet (in case you haven’t figured that out from how frequently I change my mind).
In addition to penning potentially two first drafts, I’m also working with my guardian angel Marie in editing the shit out of my next self-published poetry book, Lunatic Justice. Ever since we joined together in this project, I’ve had to cut a lot of poems and songs out of this collection due to the fact that they went over like a fart in church. It almost makes me wish I consulted her before publishing Necrograph since that has a lot of questionable poetry as well. Ever wonder why my parody about Texas isn’t on my social media accounts? Let’s just say that instead of going over like a fart in church, it went over like a diarrhea splatter in a graveyard. It’s never too late to cut it from Necrograph, but a small part of me still feels it could have at least SOME comedic value.
In the same way that she’s helping me put together Lunatic Justice, I’m fixing to help her edit the shit out of her upcoming novella, The Portal: Tales of Mentara. She describes it as a middle grade fantasy adventure, so that’ll be something to look forward to. Though she hasn’t picked an exact date yet, she tells me that she plans on publishing it sometime this February. But just like me, she has the right to change her mind whenever she damn well feels like it. There’ll be more news as it’s made available. Until then, I’ll have this to say: enjoy my smart-assed critiques, Marie! Some of your spice has rubbed off on me! Hehe!
Last but not least, I’ve been shopping around on Amazon for a webcam, but I haven’t made any purchases yet. I could just as easily use my digital camera, but I’m not totally trustworthy of my camera’s battery life, especially when it comes to shooting You Tube videos. Yes, you heard me right: I’m considering shooting You Tube videos as a way to expand my author platform. I’ve spent the last few minutes sorting my video play lists and sprucing up my channel page. I even have a play list in my favorites called “Critique Therapy”, which basically consists of angry videos used to psych myself up for receiving reviews and critiques. Yes, I know I’m safe in the arms of my beloved Marie, but even to this day, I get that knot in the pit of my stomach, because I’m a writer and it’s in my blood. You could have the world’s thickest skin and you’d still be terrified from time to time. Don’t kick yourself for it, because it’s as natural as breathing in and out.
So what will these You Tube videos consist of? Book reviews? Writing advice? Schizophrenia stories? Poetry readings? Short story readings? Maybe a mixture of all of those things. But before I do any of that, I have to learn how to be confident in front of the camera. People say that the best gimmick to have for You Tube videos is just to be yourself. In my private life, I have a colorful personality that involves whining in a French-Irish accent, screaming like a barbarian, talking in a cutesy ogre voice to my animals, and wearing a Snoopy T-shirt that says, “Please don’t make me do stuff.” In my public life, I’m shy and awkward as hell. I don’t intentionally make conversation with strangers and when I do I keep a lot of my colorful personality on the inside. Shooting You Tube videos is basically like having that same conversation with a faceless audience. Something has to change drastically.
I’m going to stop right here, because I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head. Wait a second, there is one more thing. Marie made me the most awesome book cover for Lunatic Justice! I’m not going to show it off on my social media accounts just yet, because it’s only a prototype and I’d rather you guys see the finished product. As of now, the cover has a Guy Fawkes mask on it with an American flag, flames, and shadows superimposed over it. The title and author font are in the style of a military stencil. Seeing that level of awesomeness makes me excited to publish this book of poetry. I can’t thank Marie enough!
We’ve got ears, say cheers! You know, I should probably use a different sign-off phrase from now on. I’ve been using that one for years and it’s from a kid’s show. While I may be a kid at heart, it doesn’t translate well into the world of professional writing. I’ll think of something.
***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“Willy, this has been a longtime coming. Every year you’re worse. Every year less reliable. More booze. More bullshit. More butt-fucking.”
-Marcus from “Bad Santa”-
After reading a blog entry I wrote about Backwoods Barbarian being my next project, you’re probably wondering why there’s a chapter of something called Silent Warrior on my social media accounts. Before I get into that, let me just state that changing my mind about creative endeavors is something I do quite frequently according to circumstances. Why? Because I can, that’s why. I admit that inconsistency and broken promises aren’t helping my brand a whole lot, but sometimes things can change without advance notice. If you want to know just how frequently things can change, then I shall give you a rundown of all my creative projects.
Let’s start with Backwoods Barbarian and Silent Warrior. Backwoods Barbarian was scheduled to be my next long-term project, but then my angelic beta reader Marie gave me some divine intervention in the form of a suggestion. She likes the idea of Silent Warrior because it’s something that I can identify with on a personal level: being a mentally ill introvert navigating high school. Just as a side note, I graduated in 2003. While I do incorporate personal creative fuel into my novellas often, Silent Warrior will do it in a way that’s even more personal to me. When I expressed my doubts as to whether I could flesh out the pre-write into twenty chapters, Marie cheered me on with pom-poms in hand and I finally pumped out my first chapter. She’s my own personal Jesus Christ.
That’s not to say that Backwoods Barbarian will be tossed aside so easily. I’ve contemplated working on it simultaneously with Silent Warrior, but there are pros and cons to having a two-novel schedule. The biggest pro is that I’ll have something to work on when I get writer’s block. The biggest con is that I could lose focus on one particular project, which could arguably aggravate my writer’s block instead of heal it. Nothing is set in stone just yet (in case you haven’t figured that out from how frequently I change my mind).
In addition to penning potentially two first drafts, I’m also working with my guardian angel Marie in editing the shit out of my next self-published poetry book, Lunatic Justice. Ever since we joined together in this project, I’ve had to cut a lot of poems and songs out of this collection due to the fact that they went over like a fart in church. It almost makes me wish I consulted her before publishing Necrograph since that has a lot of questionable poetry as well. Ever wonder why my parody about Texas isn’t on my social media accounts? Let’s just say that instead of going over like a fart in church, it went over like a diarrhea splatter in a graveyard. It’s never too late to cut it from Necrograph, but a small part of me still feels it could have at least SOME comedic value.
In the same way that she’s helping me put together Lunatic Justice, I’m fixing to help her edit the shit out of her upcoming novella, The Portal: Tales of Mentara. She describes it as a middle grade fantasy adventure, so that’ll be something to look forward to. Though she hasn’t picked an exact date yet, she tells me that she plans on publishing it sometime this February. But just like me, she has the right to change her mind whenever she damn well feels like it. There’ll be more news as it’s made available. Until then, I’ll have this to say: enjoy my smart-assed critiques, Marie! Some of your spice has rubbed off on me! Hehe!
Last but not least, I’ve been shopping around on Amazon for a webcam, but I haven’t made any purchases yet. I could just as easily use my digital camera, but I’m not totally trustworthy of my camera’s battery life, especially when it comes to shooting You Tube videos. Yes, you heard me right: I’m considering shooting You Tube videos as a way to expand my author platform. I’ve spent the last few minutes sorting my video play lists and sprucing up my channel page. I even have a play list in my favorites called “Critique Therapy”, which basically consists of angry videos used to psych myself up for receiving reviews and critiques. Yes, I know I’m safe in the arms of my beloved Marie, but even to this day, I get that knot in the pit of my stomach, because I’m a writer and it’s in my blood. You could have the world’s thickest skin and you’d still be terrified from time to time. Don’t kick yourself for it, because it’s as natural as breathing in and out.
So what will these You Tube videos consist of? Book reviews? Writing advice? Schizophrenia stories? Poetry readings? Short story readings? Maybe a mixture of all of those things. But before I do any of that, I have to learn how to be confident in front of the camera. People say that the best gimmick to have for You Tube videos is just to be yourself. In my private life, I have a colorful personality that involves whining in a French-Irish accent, screaming like a barbarian, talking in a cutesy ogre voice to my animals, and wearing a Snoopy T-shirt that says, “Please don’t make me do stuff.” In my public life, I’m shy and awkward as hell. I don’t intentionally make conversation with strangers and when I do I keep a lot of my colorful personality on the inside. Shooting You Tube videos is basically like having that same conversation with a faceless audience. Something has to change drastically.
I’m going to stop right here, because I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head. Wait a second, there is one more thing. Marie made me the most awesome book cover for Lunatic Justice! I’m not going to show it off on my social media accounts just yet, because it’s only a prototype and I’d rather you guys see the finished product. As of now, the cover has a Guy Fawkes mask on it with an American flag, flames, and shadows superimposed over it. The title and author font are in the style of a military stencil. Seeing that level of awesomeness makes me excited to publish this book of poetry. I can’t thank Marie enough!
We’ve got ears, say cheers! You know, I should probably use a different sign-off phrase from now on. I’ve been using that one for years and it’s from a kid’s show. While I may be a kid at heart, it doesn’t translate well into the world of professional writing. I’ll think of something.
***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“Willy, this has been a longtime coming. Every year you’re worse. Every year less reliable. More booze. More bullshit. More butt-fucking.”
-Marcus from “Bad Santa”-
January 11, 2018
Silent Warrior, Chapter 1
With the third grade classroom dimly lit in shades of purple, puppet children on strings danced and twirled their way through the door. The girls wore pretty red dresses and had their blond hair in pigtails. The boys wore elegant blue tuxedos and were shaven completely bald. This waltz of perfect conformity was accompanied by the PA system’s glorious soundtrack of the Moonlight Sonata. The rhythm carried the puppet children to their desks one row at a time so as not to cause unnecessary disorder. Once they had taken their seats, the puppets slouched over with their pale white faces and rosy cheeks touching their desks.
Their strings jerked them to the upright position while another puppet descended at the chalkboard in a heap. With another tug of the strings, the clown lady with rainbow hair, a distorted face, and a frilly white dress reassembled and proceeded to write her name on the chalkboard. As she wrote, she sang a “happy birthday” style rendition of her class greeting in a condescending, Shakespearean voice. “Good morning to you. Good morning to you. Good morning dear children…”
She signaled for her students to speak up with a wave of her hand. And true to form, they completed the song in perfect unison with, “Good morning to you!”
“Very good, dear children!” said the teacher while curtseying, still using her hammy stage voice. “My name is Aloysius Striker, but you may all call me Mrs. Striker. And my, don’t you all look lovely today! All smiles, tight strings, and not a single misstep in the morning song. No disorder among you all. Do you know why? Because we are all part of something much greater than ourselves. We have the same dreams. The same desires. We are all part of…a community!”
Mrs. Striker quickly erased her name from the board and wrote in its place the word of the day, community. “Now class, would any of you like to tell me what a community is? Don’t be too shy to speak up. Your grade depends on it!” The last sentence was punctuated with a mock whip strike with her piece of chalk.
All at once, the puppets rotated their heads three hundred sixty degrees and said, “A community is a gathering of people who have something in common!”
“Excellent, children! You’ve made me very proud already! But what are some examples of communities? Oh, do please speak up. We’re all part of a community, after all!” sang Mrs. Striker.
“Churches!” said the puppets, to which Mrs. Striker gave a celebratory, “Yes!” and quickly chalked it on the board. Other examples the children gave were shopping centers, police departments, congress, and yes, even school. That last answer sent an orgasmic chill throughout Mrs. Striker’s puppet body. She even gave a sing-songy laugh.
And then the teacher’s demonic smile turned to a saggy frown when she saw one student in the back corner of the class with his head tucked firmly in his hands. No puppet strings, no puppet face, no handsome tuxedo, just a shadow silhouette and glowing green eyes. Mrs. Striker tiptoed towards this lonely student like a ballerina and towered over him with a vengeful sneer.
“Look who decided to join us today, class. Mr. Scott George, the so-called introvert! The so-called shy guy! The little boy who hasn’t crackled a smile since the day he was born! Let me show you how it’s done, Mr. George!” The children’s heads turned one hundred eighty degrees and their puppet strings morphed their faces into insane grins with monstrous teeth and worms in the backs of their throats. “See? It’s not so hard, little Scotty! But in all seriousness, why haven’t you spoke up with the rest of the class? Don’t you want to be part of a community?”
Surveying the ghastly smiles around him, Scott brushed his teacher off with his hand and said, “Not really.”
Mrs. Striker’s elongated nose touched with Scott’s forehead before she chirped, “Well, that’s tough cookies, Mr. George! Your grade depends on your participation! Your ability to get a job depends on your sociability! You are indeed part of this society whether you want to be or not!”
The teacher clutched Scott’s wrist with a death grip as she dragged the shadowy student kicking and screaming towards the chalkboard, all while the puppet students pointed and laughed at him. By the time Scott made it to the chalkboard, Mrs. Striker grabbed him by the scruff of his neck to pull him up and placed the piece of chalk in his hand. “Now then! This is your next assignment, Mr. George, and you shall not screw this up for your fellow students, but most of all, for me! I want you to write on this blackboard another example of a community! Post-haste! Chop-chop!”
Scott George shivered and cowered, barely able to keep the chalk in his hands while the students giggled at him through their noses and closed mouths. Sweat poured off of him like rain while the purple lighting turned to a single bright halogen spotlight on him. He swallowed hard and stared at the chalkboard like a monkey doing a math problem. All of these examples of a community and he couldn’t come up with one…until he piggybacked off of the shopping center answer.
With slow precision and squeakiness that made the puppet children squint and hold their ears, Scott wrote something on the chalkboard without actually seeing what it was. It seemed as though hours went by and a whole tidal wave of sweat poured off of his body. But then he finished writing what he was going to write and breathed an anxiety-crushing sigh of relief. The pregnancy-sized knot reformed in his stomach when Scott saw the children laughing their asses off as well as Mrs. Striker staring at the blackboard in wide-eyed horror. “Shopping carts?!” she cried in disbelief. “Shopping carts?!”
As the laughter got louder and Mrs. Striker’s dramatic sighs grew more obvious, Scott’s crippling anxiety morphed into white hot rage. His boiling blood gave third degree burns on his tender flesh. His neon green eyes bulged out of their sockets. Every vein in his arms and forehead looked like a stick of dynamite ready to blow. His fists were clenched tightly enough to turn even the strongest metals into powder.
In one volcanic scream, he belted, “Shut up!” before picking up a text book off of a student’s desk and smashing him over the head with it. The teacher and students alike gasped in horror as the unfortunate student’s head exploded into a pile of worms and maggots, his body limp and lifeless. The puppet strings had no choice but to pull him into the heavens while Scott watched in horror at his own sins. Students cried maggots out of their eyeballs while Mrs. Striker sobbed blood.
“Oh, Scott! How could you do such a thing to your own community?!” asked the teacher. “Now the whole system is going to crash down upon us! Why, oh, why! WHY?!” With his head hung and his voice sheepishly low, Scott muttered a nearly incoherent apology before Mrs. Striker burst into flames and clutched his wrist with purpling tightness yet again. “Oh, I’m afraid an apology’s not going to be enough, Mr. George! You’ve been causing grief to my class for far too long! Your refusal to obey even the simplest commands makes me sick to my stomach! I’m afraid there’s only one thing left to do!”
The puppet strings yanked every child back into the heavens while the classroom burst into a fiery hell all around Mrs. Striker and the convulsing Scott George. The teacher smashed every desk into splinters with one punch and in their place ascended a torture chair with leather straps and a ball gag.
“No, Mrs. Striker! Have mercy on me! I’ll be a good boy! I promise!” pleaded Scott, who was bound and gagged to the chair with constricting tightness. He tried to thrash around and break free, but with a ball gag cutting off his air supply, he quickly became exhausted. It became even harder to breathe when Mrs. Striker shoved a funnel up one of his nostrils and held it in place with duct tape.
“You’re going to conform, Mr. George, whether you want to or not!” warned Mrs. Striker in a deep, devilish voice. She tore open the flesh on her own wrist and pulled out a handful of worms with razor sharp fangs and hooks. Scott tried once again to squirm and thrash in his bindings, but they only cut deeper into his skin. With a sick smile and Scott’s gagged pleas, Mrs. Striker shoved the razorblade worms into the funnel and watched them fest up his nose and into his brain. The children descended back down into the hellfire scene and repeatedly chanted along with the teacher, “One of us!”
After an eternity of having his skull feasted on, the present day eighteen-year-old Scott George awoke from his nightmare with a deep gasp of air and pulsating nausea. As soon as he caught his breath, the teenager looked around the room for his digital clock, which read five-thirty in the morning. Relieved that this was a dream and that he still had hours before he had to get up for school, Scott plopped backwards into his bed and burped his nausea away.
“Why does this keep happening?” Scott whispered to himself. “I hate falling asleep.” Tears formed in his eyes when he realized that the only thing fake about his nightmare was the psychedelic backdrop in which it took place. He never dropped acid or smoked marijuana a day in his life. Why was he being punished for it? And most of all, why did he have to take a United States history class with a teacher who was basically Mrs. Striker with a penis?
Knowing that class was his first period of the day caused Scott to skyrocket out of his bed and dry heave in his garbage bucket. No matter how hard he puked, all that came out of his mouth was tiny streams of snot and orange stuff he couldn’t identify. Once he had finished, he sat next to his desk and breathed heavily while fighting the urge to go back to sleep. “Goddamn you, Mr. Simpson,” whispered Scott. “Why doesn’t somebody go Columbine on his ass already?”
Their strings jerked them to the upright position while another puppet descended at the chalkboard in a heap. With another tug of the strings, the clown lady with rainbow hair, a distorted face, and a frilly white dress reassembled and proceeded to write her name on the chalkboard. As she wrote, she sang a “happy birthday” style rendition of her class greeting in a condescending, Shakespearean voice. “Good morning to you. Good morning to you. Good morning dear children…”
She signaled for her students to speak up with a wave of her hand. And true to form, they completed the song in perfect unison with, “Good morning to you!”
“Very good, dear children!” said the teacher while curtseying, still using her hammy stage voice. “My name is Aloysius Striker, but you may all call me Mrs. Striker. And my, don’t you all look lovely today! All smiles, tight strings, and not a single misstep in the morning song. No disorder among you all. Do you know why? Because we are all part of something much greater than ourselves. We have the same dreams. The same desires. We are all part of…a community!”
Mrs. Striker quickly erased her name from the board and wrote in its place the word of the day, community. “Now class, would any of you like to tell me what a community is? Don’t be too shy to speak up. Your grade depends on it!” The last sentence was punctuated with a mock whip strike with her piece of chalk.
All at once, the puppets rotated their heads three hundred sixty degrees and said, “A community is a gathering of people who have something in common!”
“Excellent, children! You’ve made me very proud already! But what are some examples of communities? Oh, do please speak up. We’re all part of a community, after all!” sang Mrs. Striker.
“Churches!” said the puppets, to which Mrs. Striker gave a celebratory, “Yes!” and quickly chalked it on the board. Other examples the children gave were shopping centers, police departments, congress, and yes, even school. That last answer sent an orgasmic chill throughout Mrs. Striker’s puppet body. She even gave a sing-songy laugh.
And then the teacher’s demonic smile turned to a saggy frown when she saw one student in the back corner of the class with his head tucked firmly in his hands. No puppet strings, no puppet face, no handsome tuxedo, just a shadow silhouette and glowing green eyes. Mrs. Striker tiptoed towards this lonely student like a ballerina and towered over him with a vengeful sneer.
“Look who decided to join us today, class. Mr. Scott George, the so-called introvert! The so-called shy guy! The little boy who hasn’t crackled a smile since the day he was born! Let me show you how it’s done, Mr. George!” The children’s heads turned one hundred eighty degrees and their puppet strings morphed their faces into insane grins with monstrous teeth and worms in the backs of their throats. “See? It’s not so hard, little Scotty! But in all seriousness, why haven’t you spoke up with the rest of the class? Don’t you want to be part of a community?”
Surveying the ghastly smiles around him, Scott brushed his teacher off with his hand and said, “Not really.”
Mrs. Striker’s elongated nose touched with Scott’s forehead before she chirped, “Well, that’s tough cookies, Mr. George! Your grade depends on your participation! Your ability to get a job depends on your sociability! You are indeed part of this society whether you want to be or not!”
The teacher clutched Scott’s wrist with a death grip as she dragged the shadowy student kicking and screaming towards the chalkboard, all while the puppet students pointed and laughed at him. By the time Scott made it to the chalkboard, Mrs. Striker grabbed him by the scruff of his neck to pull him up and placed the piece of chalk in his hand. “Now then! This is your next assignment, Mr. George, and you shall not screw this up for your fellow students, but most of all, for me! I want you to write on this blackboard another example of a community! Post-haste! Chop-chop!”
Scott George shivered and cowered, barely able to keep the chalk in his hands while the students giggled at him through their noses and closed mouths. Sweat poured off of him like rain while the purple lighting turned to a single bright halogen spotlight on him. He swallowed hard and stared at the chalkboard like a monkey doing a math problem. All of these examples of a community and he couldn’t come up with one…until he piggybacked off of the shopping center answer.
With slow precision and squeakiness that made the puppet children squint and hold their ears, Scott wrote something on the chalkboard without actually seeing what it was. It seemed as though hours went by and a whole tidal wave of sweat poured off of his body. But then he finished writing what he was going to write and breathed an anxiety-crushing sigh of relief. The pregnancy-sized knot reformed in his stomach when Scott saw the children laughing their asses off as well as Mrs. Striker staring at the blackboard in wide-eyed horror. “Shopping carts?!” she cried in disbelief. “Shopping carts?!”
As the laughter got louder and Mrs. Striker’s dramatic sighs grew more obvious, Scott’s crippling anxiety morphed into white hot rage. His boiling blood gave third degree burns on his tender flesh. His neon green eyes bulged out of their sockets. Every vein in his arms and forehead looked like a stick of dynamite ready to blow. His fists were clenched tightly enough to turn even the strongest metals into powder.
In one volcanic scream, he belted, “Shut up!” before picking up a text book off of a student’s desk and smashing him over the head with it. The teacher and students alike gasped in horror as the unfortunate student’s head exploded into a pile of worms and maggots, his body limp and lifeless. The puppet strings had no choice but to pull him into the heavens while Scott watched in horror at his own sins. Students cried maggots out of their eyeballs while Mrs. Striker sobbed blood.
“Oh, Scott! How could you do such a thing to your own community?!” asked the teacher. “Now the whole system is going to crash down upon us! Why, oh, why! WHY?!” With his head hung and his voice sheepishly low, Scott muttered a nearly incoherent apology before Mrs. Striker burst into flames and clutched his wrist with purpling tightness yet again. “Oh, I’m afraid an apology’s not going to be enough, Mr. George! You’ve been causing grief to my class for far too long! Your refusal to obey even the simplest commands makes me sick to my stomach! I’m afraid there’s only one thing left to do!”
The puppet strings yanked every child back into the heavens while the classroom burst into a fiery hell all around Mrs. Striker and the convulsing Scott George. The teacher smashed every desk into splinters with one punch and in their place ascended a torture chair with leather straps and a ball gag.
“No, Mrs. Striker! Have mercy on me! I’ll be a good boy! I promise!” pleaded Scott, who was bound and gagged to the chair with constricting tightness. He tried to thrash around and break free, but with a ball gag cutting off his air supply, he quickly became exhausted. It became even harder to breathe when Mrs. Striker shoved a funnel up one of his nostrils and held it in place with duct tape.
“You’re going to conform, Mr. George, whether you want to or not!” warned Mrs. Striker in a deep, devilish voice. She tore open the flesh on her own wrist and pulled out a handful of worms with razor sharp fangs and hooks. Scott tried once again to squirm and thrash in his bindings, but they only cut deeper into his skin. With a sick smile and Scott’s gagged pleas, Mrs. Striker shoved the razorblade worms into the funnel and watched them fest up his nose and into his brain. The children descended back down into the hellfire scene and repeatedly chanted along with the teacher, “One of us!”
After an eternity of having his skull feasted on, the present day eighteen-year-old Scott George awoke from his nightmare with a deep gasp of air and pulsating nausea. As soon as he caught his breath, the teenager looked around the room for his digital clock, which read five-thirty in the morning. Relieved that this was a dream and that he still had hours before he had to get up for school, Scott plopped backwards into his bed and burped his nausea away.
“Why does this keep happening?” Scott whispered to himself. “I hate falling asleep.” Tears formed in his eyes when he realized that the only thing fake about his nightmare was the psychedelic backdrop in which it took place. He never dropped acid or smoked marijuana a day in his life. Why was he being punished for it? And most of all, why did he have to take a United States history class with a teacher who was basically Mrs. Striker with a penis?
Knowing that class was his first period of the day caused Scott to skyrocket out of his bed and dry heave in his garbage bucket. No matter how hard he puked, all that came out of his mouth was tiny streams of snot and orange stuff he couldn’t identify. Once he had finished, he sat next to his desk and breathed heavily while fighting the urge to go back to sleep. “Goddamn you, Mr. Simpson,” whispered Scott. “Why doesn’t somebody go Columbine on his ass already?”
January 10, 2018
Jesse
She was so far away, yet she was so close to me
Smell her perfume through the computer screen
Touch her silky skin through the keyboard
A plane ticket was something I couldn’t afford
We were young, in love, and without a dollar
Somehow I found a way to long distance call her
Every email laced with sugary vocabulary
Her golden heart was my only sanctuary
She was the first to be worthy of my love
I called her my angel from the heavens above
But with those wings, she flew away from me
Jesse never came back, not even in my dreams
We never had the chance to say goodbye
I never had the chance to ask her why
I never had the chance to chase her around
I felt stupid for falling for her like a clown
You could call it dopamine or testosterone
But she was the reason I never felt alone
You could call it heartbreak or depression
But this will be her one and only mention
Smell her perfume through the computer screen
Touch her silky skin through the keyboard
A plane ticket was something I couldn’t afford
We were young, in love, and without a dollar
Somehow I found a way to long distance call her
Every email laced with sugary vocabulary
Her golden heart was my only sanctuary
She was the first to be worthy of my love
I called her my angel from the heavens above
But with those wings, she flew away from me
Jesse never came back, not even in my dreams
We never had the chance to say goodbye
I never had the chance to ask her why
I never had the chance to chase her around
I felt stupid for falling for her like a clown
You could call it dopamine or testosterone
But she was the reason I never felt alone
You could call it heartbreak or depression
But this will be her one and only mention
January 9, 2018
Backwoods Barbarian
***BACKWOODS BARBARIAN***
With American Darkness 3 suspended and Poison Tongue Tales 3 not even a possibility, I need something to work on to keep me busy and to keep my creative juices flowing. I originally wanted to do a modern day drama about fat-shaming called “Hulk Logan”, but I couldn’t pre-write it past the fifth chapter. I was hesitant to do the story I’m going to talk about in this blog entry, but then I realized something along the way. Though it could be categorized as fantasy, it’s actually a deconstruction of the violent messes Poison Tongue Tales, Demon Axe, and Occupy Wrestling have been. Yes, this new story will have plenty of fight scenes, but they’re not a means to an end.
I’m talking of course about Backwoods Barbarian, an environmental fantasy I’ve developed all the way to chapter twenty. Yeah, I know, everything has to be about barbarians. All barbarians 24/7. It’s all I ever think about, yada, yada, yada. What good is a barbarian’s rage if he keeps losing his fights and getting himself into trouble? This barbarian can’t win with brute force alone, because there are other fighters out there who are more powerful than him, particularly a dwarf monk named Sabin Rex and a werewolf assassin named Gray Miller (both characters I’ve used in past stories).
Who is this barbarian? Well, he’s not Deus Shadowheart. He’s not Brutus Warcry, either. In fact, if I reveal his name, it might be a tad upsetting to the originator of this character given how the barbarian was once used as a killing machine D&D character. His name is Agrusk Xis and he’s an orc who makes his solitary home in the woods.
He was once owned by an online friend named Timothy. He was also a former character in an attempted dark fantasy novel of mine in 2014 called Fireball Nightmare. I asked Tim if it was okay to use Agrusk in that manner and he said yes. Given Agrusk’s new role as a bumbling brute, Tim could possibly want to think twice about letting me use his character. If he wants me to withdraw Agrusk from Backwoods Barbarian, I’ll gladly do so and swap him out with another character.
If Tim should happen to say yes once again, then Agrusk will be a part of something greater than himself whether he uses brute force or not. As I’ve already established, Agrusk is an orc barbarian who lives in the woods hunting meat and picking fruit. His forest home is about to be chopped down for urban development thanks to the political strategy of Flora City Mayor Annette Cote. Agrusk just wants peace and quiet in his forest home, so he tries to muscle his way into keeping his solitary residence. Needless to say, he’s overpowered and outmanned.
Agrusk meets two environmental protesters along the way: an Amazonian Viking “singer” named Johnna Larson and a bagpipe-playing bard named Julie Piper. Throughout the novel, they teach him that using debate tactics and peaceful protest is more powerful at affecting change than anything he could do with an axe. The whole novel is one big internal battle between Agrusk and his conscience. Can he keep his temper under control or this hothead screw everything up with one moment of impatient rage?
I’ve tooled with the idea of an environmental fantasy before where the plot centered around the government cutting down somebody’s forest home for urban development. I wrote a 2010 D&D-style movie script called Tree Party Nation, where the forest was an eco-terrorist group’s base of operations. As I’ve mentioned earlier, in 2014 I wrote Fireball Nightmare, where the often-recycled Gary-Stu barbarian Deus Shadowheart protected the forest under the command of a living volcano. It’s 2018 and the third time will be the charm. Backwoods Barbarian will be the one that gets this concept right. Watching a “Terrible Writing Advice” You Tube video on environmentalism helped me figure things out.
So that’s it for now. Backwoods Barbarian is officially my next long-term project. It’ll be a departure from what I usually do (barbarism aside), especially considering that I’m shooting for 2,000 words per chapter instead of 1.500 like I normally do. At twenty chapters, that’s an even 40,000 words, which is the generally accepted minimum for a full-length novel. Wish me luck, guys. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***
JERRY: Hey George, ask that guy what street we’re on.
GEORGE: Excuse me, where are we?
STRANGER: Earth.
JERRY: Hey, we’re on the phone with the police!
-Seinfeld-
With American Darkness 3 suspended and Poison Tongue Tales 3 not even a possibility, I need something to work on to keep me busy and to keep my creative juices flowing. I originally wanted to do a modern day drama about fat-shaming called “Hulk Logan”, but I couldn’t pre-write it past the fifth chapter. I was hesitant to do the story I’m going to talk about in this blog entry, but then I realized something along the way. Though it could be categorized as fantasy, it’s actually a deconstruction of the violent messes Poison Tongue Tales, Demon Axe, and Occupy Wrestling have been. Yes, this new story will have plenty of fight scenes, but they’re not a means to an end.
I’m talking of course about Backwoods Barbarian, an environmental fantasy I’ve developed all the way to chapter twenty. Yeah, I know, everything has to be about barbarians. All barbarians 24/7. It’s all I ever think about, yada, yada, yada. What good is a barbarian’s rage if he keeps losing his fights and getting himself into trouble? This barbarian can’t win with brute force alone, because there are other fighters out there who are more powerful than him, particularly a dwarf monk named Sabin Rex and a werewolf assassin named Gray Miller (both characters I’ve used in past stories).
Who is this barbarian? Well, he’s not Deus Shadowheart. He’s not Brutus Warcry, either. In fact, if I reveal his name, it might be a tad upsetting to the originator of this character given how the barbarian was once used as a killing machine D&D character. His name is Agrusk Xis and he’s an orc who makes his solitary home in the woods.
He was once owned by an online friend named Timothy. He was also a former character in an attempted dark fantasy novel of mine in 2014 called Fireball Nightmare. I asked Tim if it was okay to use Agrusk in that manner and he said yes. Given Agrusk’s new role as a bumbling brute, Tim could possibly want to think twice about letting me use his character. If he wants me to withdraw Agrusk from Backwoods Barbarian, I’ll gladly do so and swap him out with another character.
If Tim should happen to say yes once again, then Agrusk will be a part of something greater than himself whether he uses brute force or not. As I’ve already established, Agrusk is an orc barbarian who lives in the woods hunting meat and picking fruit. His forest home is about to be chopped down for urban development thanks to the political strategy of Flora City Mayor Annette Cote. Agrusk just wants peace and quiet in his forest home, so he tries to muscle his way into keeping his solitary residence. Needless to say, he’s overpowered and outmanned.
Agrusk meets two environmental protesters along the way: an Amazonian Viking “singer” named Johnna Larson and a bagpipe-playing bard named Julie Piper. Throughout the novel, they teach him that using debate tactics and peaceful protest is more powerful at affecting change than anything he could do with an axe. The whole novel is one big internal battle between Agrusk and his conscience. Can he keep his temper under control or this hothead screw everything up with one moment of impatient rage?
I’ve tooled with the idea of an environmental fantasy before where the plot centered around the government cutting down somebody’s forest home for urban development. I wrote a 2010 D&D-style movie script called Tree Party Nation, where the forest was an eco-terrorist group’s base of operations. As I’ve mentioned earlier, in 2014 I wrote Fireball Nightmare, where the often-recycled Gary-Stu barbarian Deus Shadowheart protected the forest under the command of a living volcano. It’s 2018 and the third time will be the charm. Backwoods Barbarian will be the one that gets this concept right. Watching a “Terrible Writing Advice” You Tube video on environmentalism helped me figure things out.
So that’s it for now. Backwoods Barbarian is officially my next long-term project. It’ll be a departure from what I usually do (barbarism aside), especially considering that I’m shooting for 2,000 words per chapter instead of 1.500 like I normally do. At twenty chapters, that’s an even 40,000 words, which is the generally accepted minimum for a full-length novel. Wish me luck, guys. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***
JERRY: Hey George, ask that guy what street we’re on.
GEORGE: Excuse me, where are we?
STRANGER: Earth.
JERRY: Hey, we’re on the phone with the police!
-Seinfeld-
January 7, 2018
Coasting
A bowl of corn flakes on my lap
Elderly parents taking their naps
Kitties and puppies everywhere
Gray rain petrichor in the air
This is my haven and sanctuary
Until the day of my obituary
Day after day of feeling happy
The universe’s energy I’m trapping
But in this zone, nothing grows
Nothing to gain, nothing to show
Taking risks is the rational answer
Reason sounds like mindless banter
Too many times I’ve crashed and burned
Laying low the only lesson learned
A head full of voices is all I’ve earned
Broken memories are all that returned
If someone wants to show me the way
We could get it done as soon as today
Those who laugh call this handholding
Those with loud voices resort to scolding
But here’s the truth you can have for free
It doesn’t just apply to someone like me
We all need a push in the right direction
Even if it’s only the smallest correction
Don’t give me speeches about boots in the ass
Use some vocabulary that actually has class
Cheer me on instead of throwing insults
Show me my path without leading the cult
I’ll take it from here, this is my journey
These are the horizons for which I’m yearning
I’ll never forget where I came from
As I claim my place in this kingdom
Elderly parents taking their naps
Kitties and puppies everywhere
Gray rain petrichor in the air
This is my haven and sanctuary
Until the day of my obituary
Day after day of feeling happy
The universe’s energy I’m trapping
But in this zone, nothing grows
Nothing to gain, nothing to show
Taking risks is the rational answer
Reason sounds like mindless banter
Too many times I’ve crashed and burned
Laying low the only lesson learned
A head full of voices is all I’ve earned
Broken memories are all that returned
If someone wants to show me the way
We could get it done as soon as today
Those who laugh call this handholding
Those with loud voices resort to scolding
But here’s the truth you can have for free
It doesn’t just apply to someone like me
We all need a push in the right direction
Even if it’s only the smallest correction
Don’t give me speeches about boots in the ass
Use some vocabulary that actually has class
Cheer me on instead of throwing insults
Show me my path without leading the cult
I’ll take it from here, this is my journey
These are the horizons for which I’m yearning
I’ll never forget where I came from
As I claim my place in this kingdom
Same Shit, Different Story
***SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT STORY***
In my last blog entry, I said something that I never thought I’d hear myself say in a million years: nothing ever grows in the comfort zone. For the longest time, I’ve been living in my own personal comfort zone and justified it by saying that leaving would end up being another bad decision. Well, you know what happens when you start coasting with your writing? You adopt the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. While that philosophy may seem like a good idea on paper, you get in the habit of using the same formulas over and over again. As a result, every short story, novel, and poem will blend together like masked children from a Pink Floyd music video. I know this because…it happened to me.
If you follow me on Face Book, you would have seen me post status updates about how some of my American Darkness 3 characters have the same first name. I’ve had multiple characters named Matt, Tony, Vikki, Daniel, and Marcus. I have since changed these names and updated the changes to my Deviant Art account. For example, Matt Ramirez from “Escape From Kentucky” is now known as Marvin Ramirez. My niece Reina kept joking about how the name Matt wasn’t reflective of a half-black, half-Mexican character. She’s not wrong. Marvin Ramirez actually sounds like it could fit the bill. Plus, there’s one less guy in my stories named Matt.
If you’re still paying attention to the shit that I say on Face Book, you would have also seen a post about how my American Darkness 3 stories have similar themes and plots among each other. I’ll give you one example of that. After looking over all sixteen stories I’ve written so far (and that doesn’t include the synopses I wrote for future stories), three of those stories are about home invasions: Dark Skills, Crow Cop, and Duct Tape Princess. One home invasion story would have been just fine. But then I also have two different stories about domestic violence: Brandi and Belts & Welts. And then I have three different stories about the media: Disneylodeon, Defamation, and Age Against the Machine. Marie Krepps likes to joke with me about how all of the dogs in Poison Tongue Tales have saggy jowls. What’s going on in American Darkness 3 is a lot more serious.
And you know what else? It’s not just American Darkness 3 that suffers from this sameness. Both installments of Poison Tongue Tales follow the same basic formula of two people trying to beat the shit out of each other (not unlike a WWE wrestling match). Confessions of a Schizophrenic Savage, Necrograph, and what will soon be Lunatic Justice are all dominated by songs and poems about anger and angst. While there are hard rock and heavy metal bands that thrive on this formula, I’ll bet you anything their entire catalogue of songs doesn’t have the kind of frequency that’s found in my own poetry. Don’t get me started about Occupy Wrestling and all the other novel ideas I have fleshed out; they’re just Poison Tongue Tales stories with a higher word count.
Something has to change in my writing. I don’t know exactly what that could be, because as much as I hate to admit it, I do have limited experience when it comes to the world. I’ve never had a paying job, never been in love, never had a serious social circle outside of the internet, didn’t receive my first kiss until 2014, never had sex, and have only been around the world a handful of times. When I was a kid, my creative fuel came in the form of violent entertainment whether it was videogames, wrestling, or martial arts movies. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of other genres like romance, but without having a realistic picture of what true love is like, I can’t be an authority on the subject in my writing.
Having said everything that needs to be said, I’ve come to a decision regarding American Darkness 3. As of today, January 7th, 2018, American Darkness 3 has been suspended indefinitely, which means I’ll have to find something else to do not only for the WSS, but also for my creative life as a whole. Pretty much all of my developed synopses for novel ideas fall under the category of ass beatings and unexplained magic, not unlike Poison Tongue Tales and its sequel.
Meanwhile, I have nine different novel synopses that could be considered modern day drama. While these ideas do have their fair share of violence, the violent confrontations don’t saturate the entire story to where every chapter sounds the same. Would you like me to list them off? Sure, why not?
1. Chicken and Fries (working as a concessions clerk in an arena full of abusive customers (could be considered Clerks-Lite by critics))
2. The Has-Been Society (going to a school that slashed its art classes budget and continues to promote conformity)
3. I Won’t Forgive You (getting revenge on an abusive father who now lives with a new family)
4. Is This Weird? (romance with a man who has three different weird fetishes: duct tape, feet, and diapers)
5. Memento Mori (pissing off an entire conservative town with offensive standup comedy)
6. Never Conform (refusing to obey prison guards and getting tortured for it)
7. Silent Warrior (navigating a tough high school as a traumatized introvert)
8. Suck It, Double Dork (scaring children for life with perverted drawings of cartoon characters getting raped)
9. Tender Loving Intensive Care (putting a sexually harassing ex-girlfriend in the ICU as a form of healing)
If these nine stories are the keys to the next kingdom, I have to figure out which one will open the lock to new horizons. Or maybe I could ask you guys, my lovely audience, for feedback as to which of these stories sounds the most interesting to you. There’s nothing wrong with a little artistic democracy every now and then. What do you guys think? I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you soon!
***JOKE OF THE DAY***
Q: What nickname did Snoopy’s bird friend earn when he waited outside Peppermint Patty’s house for hours with a pair of binoculars?
A: Would Stalk.
In my last blog entry, I said something that I never thought I’d hear myself say in a million years: nothing ever grows in the comfort zone. For the longest time, I’ve been living in my own personal comfort zone and justified it by saying that leaving would end up being another bad decision. Well, you know what happens when you start coasting with your writing? You adopt the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. While that philosophy may seem like a good idea on paper, you get in the habit of using the same formulas over and over again. As a result, every short story, novel, and poem will blend together like masked children from a Pink Floyd music video. I know this because…it happened to me.
If you follow me on Face Book, you would have seen me post status updates about how some of my American Darkness 3 characters have the same first name. I’ve had multiple characters named Matt, Tony, Vikki, Daniel, and Marcus. I have since changed these names and updated the changes to my Deviant Art account. For example, Matt Ramirez from “Escape From Kentucky” is now known as Marvin Ramirez. My niece Reina kept joking about how the name Matt wasn’t reflective of a half-black, half-Mexican character. She’s not wrong. Marvin Ramirez actually sounds like it could fit the bill. Plus, there’s one less guy in my stories named Matt.
If you’re still paying attention to the shit that I say on Face Book, you would have also seen a post about how my American Darkness 3 stories have similar themes and plots among each other. I’ll give you one example of that. After looking over all sixteen stories I’ve written so far (and that doesn’t include the synopses I wrote for future stories), three of those stories are about home invasions: Dark Skills, Crow Cop, and Duct Tape Princess. One home invasion story would have been just fine. But then I also have two different stories about domestic violence: Brandi and Belts & Welts. And then I have three different stories about the media: Disneylodeon, Defamation, and Age Against the Machine. Marie Krepps likes to joke with me about how all of the dogs in Poison Tongue Tales have saggy jowls. What’s going on in American Darkness 3 is a lot more serious.
And you know what else? It’s not just American Darkness 3 that suffers from this sameness. Both installments of Poison Tongue Tales follow the same basic formula of two people trying to beat the shit out of each other (not unlike a WWE wrestling match). Confessions of a Schizophrenic Savage, Necrograph, and what will soon be Lunatic Justice are all dominated by songs and poems about anger and angst. While there are hard rock and heavy metal bands that thrive on this formula, I’ll bet you anything their entire catalogue of songs doesn’t have the kind of frequency that’s found in my own poetry. Don’t get me started about Occupy Wrestling and all the other novel ideas I have fleshed out; they’re just Poison Tongue Tales stories with a higher word count.
Something has to change in my writing. I don’t know exactly what that could be, because as much as I hate to admit it, I do have limited experience when it comes to the world. I’ve never had a paying job, never been in love, never had a serious social circle outside of the internet, didn’t receive my first kiss until 2014, never had sex, and have only been around the world a handful of times. When I was a kid, my creative fuel came in the form of violent entertainment whether it was videogames, wrestling, or martial arts movies. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of other genres like romance, but without having a realistic picture of what true love is like, I can’t be an authority on the subject in my writing.
Having said everything that needs to be said, I’ve come to a decision regarding American Darkness 3. As of today, January 7th, 2018, American Darkness 3 has been suspended indefinitely, which means I’ll have to find something else to do not only for the WSS, but also for my creative life as a whole. Pretty much all of my developed synopses for novel ideas fall under the category of ass beatings and unexplained magic, not unlike Poison Tongue Tales and its sequel.
Meanwhile, I have nine different novel synopses that could be considered modern day drama. While these ideas do have their fair share of violence, the violent confrontations don’t saturate the entire story to where every chapter sounds the same. Would you like me to list them off? Sure, why not?
1. Chicken and Fries (working as a concessions clerk in an arena full of abusive customers (could be considered Clerks-Lite by critics))
2. The Has-Been Society (going to a school that slashed its art classes budget and continues to promote conformity)
3. I Won’t Forgive You (getting revenge on an abusive father who now lives with a new family)
4. Is This Weird? (romance with a man who has three different weird fetishes: duct tape, feet, and diapers)
5. Memento Mori (pissing off an entire conservative town with offensive standup comedy)
6. Never Conform (refusing to obey prison guards and getting tortured for it)
7. Silent Warrior (navigating a tough high school as a traumatized introvert)
8. Suck It, Double Dork (scaring children for life with perverted drawings of cartoon characters getting raped)
9. Tender Loving Intensive Care (putting a sexually harassing ex-girlfriend in the ICU as a form of healing)
If these nine stories are the keys to the next kingdom, I have to figure out which one will open the lock to new horizons. Or maybe I could ask you guys, my lovely audience, for feedback as to which of these stories sounds the most interesting to you. There’s nothing wrong with a little artistic democracy every now and then. What do you guys think? I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you soon!
***JOKE OF THE DAY***
Q: What nickname did Snoopy’s bird friend earn when he waited outside Peppermint Patty’s house for hours with a pair of binoculars?
A: Would Stalk.
January 6, 2018
Public Speaking
***PUBLIC SPEAKING***
Even though I did standup comedy and stage acting as a teenager, I can say with one hundred percent certainty that I can’t stand public speaking. Being nervous and forgetting my lines in front of that many people? Forget it, buddy. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could read from a script the entire time, but then I’m sacrificing that all-important eye contact with my audience. Also without a prepared script, I’m left having to fill time with other topics that I haven’t rehearsed. But as much as I can’t stand public speaking, it’s clear to me after watching one of Jenna Moreci’s You Tube videos that I’ll have to do it if I want to be a successful indie author.
Giving interviews, giving lectures, and recording my own online videos are all part of an author’s platform growth. Not only do I have to swallow my pride and do these things, but I have to sound confident too. In the words of Vince Lombardi, confidence is contagious, so is lack of confidence. If I stutter and stammer over my words, it’s going to stick out like a nun at a porn convention. This is especially noticeable at every job interview I’ve ever conducted. I’d speak in a quiet voice and take time to think about my answers. Not good!
So in order to get myself together long enough for an introvert’s worst nightmare, I’ve come up with my own gimmick for these events. Because I have a prescription for Xanax and they’re taken on an as-needed basis, I’m going to bring two pills and a bottle of water with me to every speech and swallow said pills in front of the audience. This is my own special way of telling them, “You did this to me!” without actually going berserk. Once the chill pills wash over me, I’ll probably sound like I just woke up from a nap, but that’s probably better than sounding like I’m terrified.
If the Xanax gimmick sounds a little suspicious to you, it shouldn’t. If something calms you down and makes you perform better in front of a crowd, why question it? I would never drink alcohol myself because of the way it turns otherwise normal people into rowdy assholes. But then you have people who drink before a performance and seem perfectly rational onstage. I don’t know what it is about booze that makes people courageous, but if it works for you and you don’t sound like a total douche, bottoms up. I wouldn’t recommend the hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. I’d be okay with marijuana, but that’s not really considered “hardcore”.
Shit, there are a lot of things people do in order to relax in front of an audience. When Kevin Smith was filming Clerks, the guy who played Randal, Jeff Anderson, would chew gum throughout the movie because it evens him out. Studies have shown that chewing gum is calming because it triggers the same part of the brain as eating. If you need further proof that eating is a calming and joyful experience, look at the size of my belly. If chewing gum helps Jeff Anderson get through his job, more power to him. I’ll even give him a giant wad of Bubbleicious Mondo (if they still sell that).
The easy solution to sounding confident in front of an audience would be to rehearse your lines over and over again. But rehearsing your lines and actually producing them to a crowd are two completely different animals. You could sound like a million bucks in front of a mirror, but with tens of thousands of people judging you with their eyes? Jesus fuck! It’s part of the reason why I wouldn’t want to be a rock star even though I fantasize about singing onstage almost every day. Rock stars tend to be extroverts while authors such as myself are hardcore introverts.
So now that I’ve revealed to the world that I’m calming myself down with Xanax before a big speech, all that’s left is to book some appearances where I’d have to engage the public. Unfortunately, I’m not famous enough to warrant an in-person interview, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make You Tube videos. I have a digital camera, so it’s not like I’m starving for the right technology. What I am starving for is the right topic to discuss. Sure, I could just talk about writing like I am now, but what specifically? These topics have to be carefully chosen and preferably ones where I’m an expert. What am I an expert in? Eh, I’ll figure it out eventually, just not right now.
Leaving the comfort zone is hard for a lot of people (myself included), but it’s a necessary step in becoming successful in the writing industry (or any other industry for that matter). The comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there. I’ve been resisting this truth for far too long. I’ve always figured that sacrificing comfort wasn’t worth it in the end because whatever I did would be a bad decision anyways. Even though I now have a degree and an education, I consider going to WWU a bad decision because of the loneliness and scrutiny I experienced. I left the comfort zone and paid the price. If one of my readers would like to try and convince me to leave my comfort zone and make some You Tube videos, I’d be willing to listen. If not, that’s cool too. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***AMERICAN DARKNESS 3***
Yesterday was one hell of a productive day for me. Not only did I write “Escape From Kentucky” and entered it into the WSS contest for that week, but I did a bunch of other things as well whether it was drawing Walt Magnus, reading my Kelly Carlin book, or even doing the laundry. Let’s keep the momentum going for a story called “Food Stomp”, which goes like this:
CHARACTERS:
1. Rollin O’Neil, Mentally Disabled Food Stamp User
2. Mike Wolf, Robber
3. Rachelle Daley, Robber
PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.
SYNOPSIS: Mike and Rachelle wait until a Fudd Meyers grocery store closes and break in to rob it. The dark morning ensures they have no human obstacles, or at least they think so. Rollin keeps appearing out of nowhere like a ghost in an attempt to talk Mike and Rachelle out of robbing Fudd Meyers and making the store’s prices go up.
OOC: It’s easy to tell that this synopsis was written a long time ago, judging from how fucking short it is.
***QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“If you want to find out who your friends are, sink the ship. The first ones to jump are not your friends.”
-Marilyn Manson-
Even though I did standup comedy and stage acting as a teenager, I can say with one hundred percent certainty that I can’t stand public speaking. Being nervous and forgetting my lines in front of that many people? Forget it, buddy. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could read from a script the entire time, but then I’m sacrificing that all-important eye contact with my audience. Also without a prepared script, I’m left having to fill time with other topics that I haven’t rehearsed. But as much as I can’t stand public speaking, it’s clear to me after watching one of Jenna Moreci’s You Tube videos that I’ll have to do it if I want to be a successful indie author.
Giving interviews, giving lectures, and recording my own online videos are all part of an author’s platform growth. Not only do I have to swallow my pride and do these things, but I have to sound confident too. In the words of Vince Lombardi, confidence is contagious, so is lack of confidence. If I stutter and stammer over my words, it’s going to stick out like a nun at a porn convention. This is especially noticeable at every job interview I’ve ever conducted. I’d speak in a quiet voice and take time to think about my answers. Not good!
So in order to get myself together long enough for an introvert’s worst nightmare, I’ve come up with my own gimmick for these events. Because I have a prescription for Xanax and they’re taken on an as-needed basis, I’m going to bring two pills and a bottle of water with me to every speech and swallow said pills in front of the audience. This is my own special way of telling them, “You did this to me!” without actually going berserk. Once the chill pills wash over me, I’ll probably sound like I just woke up from a nap, but that’s probably better than sounding like I’m terrified.
If the Xanax gimmick sounds a little suspicious to you, it shouldn’t. If something calms you down and makes you perform better in front of a crowd, why question it? I would never drink alcohol myself because of the way it turns otherwise normal people into rowdy assholes. But then you have people who drink before a performance and seem perfectly rational onstage. I don’t know what it is about booze that makes people courageous, but if it works for you and you don’t sound like a total douche, bottoms up. I wouldn’t recommend the hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. I’d be okay with marijuana, but that’s not really considered “hardcore”.
Shit, there are a lot of things people do in order to relax in front of an audience. When Kevin Smith was filming Clerks, the guy who played Randal, Jeff Anderson, would chew gum throughout the movie because it evens him out. Studies have shown that chewing gum is calming because it triggers the same part of the brain as eating. If you need further proof that eating is a calming and joyful experience, look at the size of my belly. If chewing gum helps Jeff Anderson get through his job, more power to him. I’ll even give him a giant wad of Bubbleicious Mondo (if they still sell that).
The easy solution to sounding confident in front of an audience would be to rehearse your lines over and over again. But rehearsing your lines and actually producing them to a crowd are two completely different animals. You could sound like a million bucks in front of a mirror, but with tens of thousands of people judging you with their eyes? Jesus fuck! It’s part of the reason why I wouldn’t want to be a rock star even though I fantasize about singing onstage almost every day. Rock stars tend to be extroverts while authors such as myself are hardcore introverts.
So now that I’ve revealed to the world that I’m calming myself down with Xanax before a big speech, all that’s left is to book some appearances where I’d have to engage the public. Unfortunately, I’m not famous enough to warrant an in-person interview, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make You Tube videos. I have a digital camera, so it’s not like I’m starving for the right technology. What I am starving for is the right topic to discuss. Sure, I could just talk about writing like I am now, but what specifically? These topics have to be carefully chosen and preferably ones where I’m an expert. What am I an expert in? Eh, I’ll figure it out eventually, just not right now.
Leaving the comfort zone is hard for a lot of people (myself included), but it’s a necessary step in becoming successful in the writing industry (or any other industry for that matter). The comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there. I’ve been resisting this truth for far too long. I’ve always figured that sacrificing comfort wasn’t worth it in the end because whatever I did would be a bad decision anyways. Even though I now have a degree and an education, I consider going to WWU a bad decision because of the loneliness and scrutiny I experienced. I left the comfort zone and paid the price. If one of my readers would like to try and convince me to leave my comfort zone and make some You Tube videos, I’d be willing to listen. If not, that’s cool too. We’ve got ears, say cheers!
***AMERICAN DARKNESS 3***
Yesterday was one hell of a productive day for me. Not only did I write “Escape From Kentucky” and entered it into the WSS contest for that week, but I did a bunch of other things as well whether it was drawing Walt Magnus, reading my Kelly Carlin book, or even doing the laundry. Let’s keep the momentum going for a story called “Food Stomp”, which goes like this:
CHARACTERS:
1. Rollin O’Neil, Mentally Disabled Food Stamp User
2. Mike Wolf, Robber
3. Rachelle Daley, Robber
PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.
SYNOPSIS: Mike and Rachelle wait until a Fudd Meyers grocery store closes and break in to rob it. The dark morning ensures they have no human obstacles, or at least they think so. Rollin keeps appearing out of nowhere like a ghost in an attempt to talk Mike and Rachelle out of robbing Fudd Meyers and making the store’s prices go up.
OOC: It’s easy to tell that this synopsis was written a long time ago, judging from how fucking short it is.
***QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“If you want to find out who your friends are, sink the ship. The first ones to jump are not your friends.”
-Marilyn Manson-
January 5, 2018
Escape From Kentucky
Matt Ramirez and Alice Logan joined hands and let the soothing sounds of “Oh” by Stone Mecca wash over their exhausted bodies. Just a few more miles on the road and they’d be free at last. Matt took especial care not to drive over the speed limit lest he be pulled over by “Kentucky’s finest”. They’d take one look at his dark skin and wouldn’t think twice about pulling the trigger. Such thoughts caused Matt to accidentally squeeze too hard on Alice’s hand, to which she yelped and he promptly apologized.
“It’s my father, isn’t it, Matt?” asked Alice.
“It’s not just him,” said Matt. “It’s that whole group of assholes and whack jobs he sides with. I can’t go anywhere in Kentucky without seeing a burning cross or a burning swastika. Even when I close my eyes to sleep at night…” That last sentence was punctuated with a sigh as he was lost for further words.
Alice saw the pain etched in Matt’s otherwise handsome face and hers suddenly became visible too. That black eye he received healed quite nicely, though it was noticeable from miles away. All of this hatred over something as stupid as the color of someone’s skin. How senseless and cruel, she thought. She reached into the glove box and pulled out two items: a bowie knife and a manila envelope.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Matt,” said Alice in her sweet southern belle voice. “It’ll only be a matter of time before daddy finds us. If he does, I want you to have this knife. I’ll keep the envelope in case things get too heated.”
“What’s in the envelope?” asked Matt.
“Something my father won’t like. There’s no telling what the hell he might do if he sees what’s inside.”
“Like we need him to be angrier than he already is,” sighed Matt.
“He would have been angry regardless. Racist assholes like him always are. That’s why I’ve got a lifetime of lashes on my ass. Every little thing. Every stupid little thing!” Alice punched the dashboard and almost inflated the airbags.
“Hey, hey, hey, take it easy!” said Matt as he barricaded his girlfriend with his thick arm. “Everything’s going to be alright, Alice. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. Let’s just get the fuck out of this god-awful state and we’ll see what happens from here….Alice?...What’s wrong now?”
Alice’s icy blue eyes widened as she gazed into the rear-view mirror. Matt took a peek as well and said, “Uh-oh” when the source of his girlfriend’s horror came in the form of a massive pick up trick with a confederate flag paint job. He squinted into the mirror and saw the scraggly bearded face of an older man in overalls chewing on slimy tobacco. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Who else would it be?” sobbed Alice while wiping away her tears with her bare arm. The couple held hands even tighter and said their I-love-yous before Matt pressed down on the accelerator, giving zero fucks about the police potentially pulling him over. But the faster his SUV went, the further the pickup truck chugged along, spewing smog into the sky like a factory smokestack.
The pickup speeded close enough to tap Matt’s bumper, to which Alice squeaked and hugged her boyfriend’s whole arm. Matt never took his eyes off the road and pressed even harder on the accelerator. But the more he pressed, the harder the pickup truck tapped his bumper. “Son of a fucking bitch!” Matt roared. He didn’t know where the hell to go since there were ditches on both sides of the otherwise empty freeway.
Matt’s sniper sight turned to distracted rage when he saw another flaming cross off in the distance, complete with bigots in hoods dancing around and chanting. Alice tried to keep him focused with squeaks of his name, but all Matt heard was the many racial slurs he’d been subjected to all of his life. Nigger. Spick. Spigger. Porch monkey. Wetback. Being half-black and half-Mexican really brought out the creativity and imagination of his prejudiced tormentors….said no biracial man ever.
Matt’s grip on Alice’s hand tightened as the truck rammed hard into his bumper, causing the SUV to spin out of control and crash into the ditch. The couple screamed and cursed throughout the whole collision, shattered glass flying into them like a hailstorm of bullets, airbags and seatbelts being their only saving grace…or so it seemed.
The red in Matt’s vision wasn’t just hotheaded rage. It was the warm, copper-scented blood trickling down from his eyebrows and forehead. Any vision he still had was obstructed with blurriness. Looking at his own cut up arm felt like he was on acid…and drunk…and stoned. He reached across to the passenger’s seat and felt around for Alice’s arm. He shook it in an attempt to wake her up, but she barely moved an inch. “Come on, baby girl, wake up! Don’t die like this!” begged Matt with glass in his gums.
The excruciating feeling of having his puffy hair yanked on cancelled out the slashes tormenting Matt Ramirez’s body. At least lying dormant in a ditch lent itself to a somewhat peaceful slumber. This was war. And as such, he reached around for the bowie knife and kept a death grip on the handle before being jerked out of the vehicle by none other than Jesse fucking Logan, Alice’s father.
Matt wanted nothing more than to slash Jesse’s throat open like a slaughterhouse cow, but his normally muscular body felt weaker than a grandma who slipped and fell in the bathtub. Every time he went for the slash, the slashes in his arm set the rest of his body ablaze with agony.
Jesse wrestled the knife out of Matt’s hand and held the blade to the “nigger’s” throat. The old man’s body odor along with the tobacco sloshing around in his mouth made Matt want to puke himself inside out. “You ain’t going nowhere with my daughter, you little coon. In fact, you’d been sticking that ugly black thing in her for far too long. I think it’s time we do something about that.” Jesse went to work in pulling off Matt’s jeans and underwear, to which the sluggish victim put up a minimal struggle due to the burning pain he was in. Holding the blade up to Matt’s genitals, Jesse asked, “Any last words before I cut you from asshole to appetite?”
Matt spit out the glass in his mouth and allowed the nickel-flavored goodness to descend upon his throat and tongue. He took a few deep breaths before resorting to his final act of defiance, the one act he could actually perform without torturing the shit out of his own body. “You call yourself a father?” The brown-toothed smile on Jesse’s face made Matt shiver like a naked Eskimo. “I know Alice better than you ever will. Underneath all of that hatred you tried to teach her, there’s a beautiful and intelligent woman. I don’t look at her and see the lashes you gave her. I look at her and see someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. Looks like I’ll get my wish one way or another.”
“That’s some sweethearted poetry you’ve got there, nigger,” said Jesse while mockingly wiping away a fake tear with his free finger. “But there ain’t no such thing as magic here in our great nation. You’ll get plenty of that when you’re burning in hell with the rest of the sinners, boy. Later, tater!”
Matt could feel the blade opening a fresh wound on the base of his penis. Slowly. Painfully. Torturously. Jesse had all the opportunities in the world to finish him off straight away, but instead chose to pick the wings off of the proverbial butterfly. If Matt got any sicker to his stomach, his vomit would result in more violence than his torture and car crash combined.
And then out of the corner of his blurred vision, he saw an angel descend upon Jesse Logan. A blood-soaked angel who nonetheless looked beautiful and radiant in her teal dress, glass shards aside. In that small moment of temporary salvation, Matt smiled his handsome smile. And then Jesse shoved his own daughter to the ground and trained the blade on her. The smile was dead, just like the couple would be in a few seconds.
“I didn’t raise you to be no nigger-lover, Alice,” sneered Jesse while spitting tobacco in his own daughter’s face. “You’re a disgrace to this family. You’re a disgrace to my people. You’re a disgrace to God himself! You see that cross burning out there? That’s going to be you and your lover once I send both your asses to hell.”
“Be….before you kill us…” stuttered Alice. “Open this…” She lifted her battered arm just high enough to hand Jesse the manila envelope.
Jesse shrugged and said, “Why not? It’s the least I could do for my baby girl before she spends eternity getting butt fucked by the devil.” He took the envelope and slashed it open with the bowie knife. He read the contents inside at first with an arrogant grin. That grin slowly faded into wide-eyed shock. He lost control of his jaw and allowed the rest of his tobacco to splatter all over his daughter’s leg. “This is bullshit! This ain’t real!”
“Oh, it’s very real, daddy. Looks like you’ll be going to hell with me!” said Alice with a bloody grin.
“No way…no way in fucking hell…” Jesse dropped the paperwork and held the blade to his own throat. “I’m sorry, Jesus! I’m sorry for everything!” In one swift motion, Jesse D. Logan slashed his own throat and plopped to the ground dead as a doornail, covering both his daughter and her lover with his viscous life juices.
Although Matt felt a weight the heaviness of Jesse’s truck being lifted off of him, he couldn’t help but give his girlfriend a confused frown. Alice smiled her beautiful smile at him and said, “That was a DNA test, my love. My daddy has a little good in him after all.”
“He’s black?” asked Matt, to which Alice nodded. “That’s some sick ass irony.”
“It is. And when those Klan bastards come running over here to see what’s up, they’ll find that paper work and know their whole bullshit is just that: pure cow manure. They can kill us both, but love itself never dies. Hold my hand, just like we did in the car.”
As soon as Alice reached out, Matt found the strength in his left arm to squirm over and hold hands with his girlfriend. In this moment of beauty, he didn’t care about the Klansmen rushing over with their hateful rhetoric. He didn’t even care about the burning crosses that haunted his mind like schizophrenic ghosts. All he felt was love. His heart beat faster, the wounds stopped hurting, and even his blood-soaked penis couldn’t help but stand up for what felt right. Alice gave him a little giggle and said, “If only we could do that in front of these racist assholes.”
“I love you, Alice.”
“I love you too, Matt.”
“It’s my father, isn’t it, Matt?” asked Alice.
“It’s not just him,” said Matt. “It’s that whole group of assholes and whack jobs he sides with. I can’t go anywhere in Kentucky without seeing a burning cross or a burning swastika. Even when I close my eyes to sleep at night…” That last sentence was punctuated with a sigh as he was lost for further words.
Alice saw the pain etched in Matt’s otherwise handsome face and hers suddenly became visible too. That black eye he received healed quite nicely, though it was noticeable from miles away. All of this hatred over something as stupid as the color of someone’s skin. How senseless and cruel, she thought. She reached into the glove box and pulled out two items: a bowie knife and a manila envelope.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Matt,” said Alice in her sweet southern belle voice. “It’ll only be a matter of time before daddy finds us. If he does, I want you to have this knife. I’ll keep the envelope in case things get too heated.”
“What’s in the envelope?” asked Matt.
“Something my father won’t like. There’s no telling what the hell he might do if he sees what’s inside.”
“Like we need him to be angrier than he already is,” sighed Matt.
“He would have been angry regardless. Racist assholes like him always are. That’s why I’ve got a lifetime of lashes on my ass. Every little thing. Every stupid little thing!” Alice punched the dashboard and almost inflated the airbags.
“Hey, hey, hey, take it easy!” said Matt as he barricaded his girlfriend with his thick arm. “Everything’s going to be alright, Alice. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. Let’s just get the fuck out of this god-awful state and we’ll see what happens from here….Alice?...What’s wrong now?”
Alice’s icy blue eyes widened as she gazed into the rear-view mirror. Matt took a peek as well and said, “Uh-oh” when the source of his girlfriend’s horror came in the form of a massive pick up trick with a confederate flag paint job. He squinted into the mirror and saw the scraggly bearded face of an older man in overalls chewing on slimy tobacco. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Who else would it be?” sobbed Alice while wiping away her tears with her bare arm. The couple held hands even tighter and said their I-love-yous before Matt pressed down on the accelerator, giving zero fucks about the police potentially pulling him over. But the faster his SUV went, the further the pickup truck chugged along, spewing smog into the sky like a factory smokestack.
The pickup speeded close enough to tap Matt’s bumper, to which Alice squeaked and hugged her boyfriend’s whole arm. Matt never took his eyes off the road and pressed even harder on the accelerator. But the more he pressed, the harder the pickup truck tapped his bumper. “Son of a fucking bitch!” Matt roared. He didn’t know where the hell to go since there were ditches on both sides of the otherwise empty freeway.
Matt’s sniper sight turned to distracted rage when he saw another flaming cross off in the distance, complete with bigots in hoods dancing around and chanting. Alice tried to keep him focused with squeaks of his name, but all Matt heard was the many racial slurs he’d been subjected to all of his life. Nigger. Spick. Spigger. Porch monkey. Wetback. Being half-black and half-Mexican really brought out the creativity and imagination of his prejudiced tormentors….said no biracial man ever.
Matt’s grip on Alice’s hand tightened as the truck rammed hard into his bumper, causing the SUV to spin out of control and crash into the ditch. The couple screamed and cursed throughout the whole collision, shattered glass flying into them like a hailstorm of bullets, airbags and seatbelts being their only saving grace…or so it seemed.
The red in Matt’s vision wasn’t just hotheaded rage. It was the warm, copper-scented blood trickling down from his eyebrows and forehead. Any vision he still had was obstructed with blurriness. Looking at his own cut up arm felt like he was on acid…and drunk…and stoned. He reached across to the passenger’s seat and felt around for Alice’s arm. He shook it in an attempt to wake her up, but she barely moved an inch. “Come on, baby girl, wake up! Don’t die like this!” begged Matt with glass in his gums.
The excruciating feeling of having his puffy hair yanked on cancelled out the slashes tormenting Matt Ramirez’s body. At least lying dormant in a ditch lent itself to a somewhat peaceful slumber. This was war. And as such, he reached around for the bowie knife and kept a death grip on the handle before being jerked out of the vehicle by none other than Jesse fucking Logan, Alice’s father.
Matt wanted nothing more than to slash Jesse’s throat open like a slaughterhouse cow, but his normally muscular body felt weaker than a grandma who slipped and fell in the bathtub. Every time he went for the slash, the slashes in his arm set the rest of his body ablaze with agony.
Jesse wrestled the knife out of Matt’s hand and held the blade to the “nigger’s” throat. The old man’s body odor along with the tobacco sloshing around in his mouth made Matt want to puke himself inside out. “You ain’t going nowhere with my daughter, you little coon. In fact, you’d been sticking that ugly black thing in her for far too long. I think it’s time we do something about that.” Jesse went to work in pulling off Matt’s jeans and underwear, to which the sluggish victim put up a minimal struggle due to the burning pain he was in. Holding the blade up to Matt’s genitals, Jesse asked, “Any last words before I cut you from asshole to appetite?”
Matt spit out the glass in his mouth and allowed the nickel-flavored goodness to descend upon his throat and tongue. He took a few deep breaths before resorting to his final act of defiance, the one act he could actually perform without torturing the shit out of his own body. “You call yourself a father?” The brown-toothed smile on Jesse’s face made Matt shiver like a naked Eskimo. “I know Alice better than you ever will. Underneath all of that hatred you tried to teach her, there’s a beautiful and intelligent woman. I don’t look at her and see the lashes you gave her. I look at her and see someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. Looks like I’ll get my wish one way or another.”
“That’s some sweethearted poetry you’ve got there, nigger,” said Jesse while mockingly wiping away a fake tear with his free finger. “But there ain’t no such thing as magic here in our great nation. You’ll get plenty of that when you’re burning in hell with the rest of the sinners, boy. Later, tater!”
Matt could feel the blade opening a fresh wound on the base of his penis. Slowly. Painfully. Torturously. Jesse had all the opportunities in the world to finish him off straight away, but instead chose to pick the wings off of the proverbial butterfly. If Matt got any sicker to his stomach, his vomit would result in more violence than his torture and car crash combined.
And then out of the corner of his blurred vision, he saw an angel descend upon Jesse Logan. A blood-soaked angel who nonetheless looked beautiful and radiant in her teal dress, glass shards aside. In that small moment of temporary salvation, Matt smiled his handsome smile. And then Jesse shoved his own daughter to the ground and trained the blade on her. The smile was dead, just like the couple would be in a few seconds.
“I didn’t raise you to be no nigger-lover, Alice,” sneered Jesse while spitting tobacco in his own daughter’s face. “You’re a disgrace to this family. You’re a disgrace to my people. You’re a disgrace to God himself! You see that cross burning out there? That’s going to be you and your lover once I send both your asses to hell.”
“Be….before you kill us…” stuttered Alice. “Open this…” She lifted her battered arm just high enough to hand Jesse the manila envelope.
Jesse shrugged and said, “Why not? It’s the least I could do for my baby girl before she spends eternity getting butt fucked by the devil.” He took the envelope and slashed it open with the bowie knife. He read the contents inside at first with an arrogant grin. That grin slowly faded into wide-eyed shock. He lost control of his jaw and allowed the rest of his tobacco to splatter all over his daughter’s leg. “This is bullshit! This ain’t real!”
“Oh, it’s very real, daddy. Looks like you’ll be going to hell with me!” said Alice with a bloody grin.
“No way…no way in fucking hell…” Jesse dropped the paperwork and held the blade to his own throat. “I’m sorry, Jesus! I’m sorry for everything!” In one swift motion, Jesse D. Logan slashed his own throat and plopped to the ground dead as a doornail, covering both his daughter and her lover with his viscous life juices.
Although Matt felt a weight the heaviness of Jesse’s truck being lifted off of him, he couldn’t help but give his girlfriend a confused frown. Alice smiled her beautiful smile at him and said, “That was a DNA test, my love. My daddy has a little good in him after all.”
“He’s black?” asked Matt, to which Alice nodded. “That’s some sick ass irony.”
“It is. And when those Klan bastards come running over here to see what’s up, they’ll find that paper work and know their whole bullshit is just that: pure cow manure. They can kill us both, but love itself never dies. Hold my hand, just like we did in the car.”
As soon as Alice reached out, Matt found the strength in his left arm to squirm over and hold hands with his girlfriend. In this moment of beauty, he didn’t care about the Klansmen rushing over with their hateful rhetoric. He didn’t even care about the burning crosses that haunted his mind like schizophrenic ghosts. All he felt was love. His heart beat faster, the wounds stopped hurting, and even his blood-soaked penis couldn’t help but stand up for what felt right. Alice gave him a little giggle and said, “If only we could do that in front of these racist assholes.”
“I love you, Alice.”
“I love you too, Matt.”
January 2, 2018
Duct Tape Princess
Vikki Colt twirled across her wooden apartment floors humming a gorgeous tune while smiling seductively. She kicked off her six inch heels and was left with her long flowing cyan dress and long flowing green hair. She thought back to her performance that evening and grinned even wider at the feel of dollar bills in her hand. The rent would be paid for god knows how many months and she’d have enough left over for something nice. Granted, that room was filled with gangsters in leather jackets. As long as Vikki got paid, she didn’t give two shits where the money came from.
The dancing, humming, and lipstick smiling continued for what seemed like the whole night. She didn’t even know what room of her studio apartment she was in. And then the world of unicorns and rainbows melted into hellfire and dead bodies. Vikki felt a cord squeezing her neck so tightly that her head could have popped like a balloon. She grabbed the cord with both hands and wheezed heavily as an unknown assailant dragged her into the bedroom kicking all the way.
When the burglar finally released Vikki before she could drift into the afterlife, the songstress plopped onto the bed hacking up blood and smearing her makeup. A feminine voice called her a drama queen while the voice’s owner went right to work in binding Vikki’s wrists and ankles in duct tape. The singer tried to suck down as much air as she could, her stomach inflating like a parachute with every breath she fought for. Her vision blurred during this civil war over oxygen, but once she blinked her eyes dry, she could see the shape of the female burglar peeling off a strip of tape big enough for someone’s mouth.
“No! Please don’t! I won’t scream!” begged Vikki in between gulps of bloody oxygen. The home invader silenced her anyways with a strip of tape across Vikki Colt’s mouth. With her hands, feet, and mouth bound, all Miss Colt could do was wriggle around and keep her lungs pumping through her snotty nose. Her head lightened and her vision darkened under this struggle, but she was forced awake when the burglar raised her brass knuckles-wearing fist in the air.
With her free hand latching onto a heedful of Vikki’s hair, the gangster threatened, “Don’t even try squirming out of here or I swear to god I’ll punch the living shit out of you!” Through the neon signs outside the window, the burglar revealed herself to be a raven haired young woman in a leather jacket and jean shorts.
Even with Vikki’s impaired vision, she recognized the woman as Nadia Rinehart, heir to the Rinehart crime family through her marriage to the puffy-haired drunk Johnny. These people were local celebrities for all the wrong reasons. Murder, extortion, money laundering, and beating the cops to the punch every single time. Vikki fearfully swallowed a gulp of blood and panted heavily through her nostrils.
“Did you think I was just going to let this go?” asked Nadia in a disturbingly calm voice. “I saw you flirting with my husband onstage. The kisses you blew him. The hugs. The handholding. If you weren’t too busy singing shitty songs at nightclubs, you could just as easily be a fucking hooker. Johnny tipped you big time, didn’t he? He loved your little performance, huh? Sorry, babe, but this ain’t no open relationship. He’s going to be disappointed when he sees his new girlfriend dead as a doornail.”
Nadia lowered her punching fist and instead used her hand to gently stroke Vikki’s hair. The songstress whimpered and whined through her tape gag as Nadia’s fingers glided down her face and over the bridge of her nose. The gangster smiled sadistically and pinched Vikki’s nostrils shut for the longest time.
The pain in the singer’s chest exploded as she squirmed around in her battle for oxygen. Her eyes bulged like basketballs and her body shook like tectonic plates moving beneath the earth. Just as she was ready to venture into the dark side, Nadia released her nose and fresh oxygen blew through her body whirlwind-style. Vikki’s stomach bounced up and down to acrophobic heights. Her insides tingled as though spiders were crawling across her body.
“You really are a whiny little baby,” sneered Nadia as she peeled off another strip of tape. “I really see no point in keeping you alive much longer. Enjoy your last few moments of oxygen, bitch.” The gangster’s tape hovered above Vikki’s nose, prompting the songstress to use her last breaths to belt a blood-curdling scream through her gag.
The duct tape had touched the tip of Vikki’s nose when a thump at the front door was heard by both women. “Are you in here, sweet cheeks?” rambled a drunken male.
“Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me,” muttered Nadia as the drunk stumbled into the bedroom while flipping on the light switch.
That was him alright: disheveled hair, biker jacket, blue jeans, and enough alcohol on his breath to make sewage systems smell like rose gardens. Johnny Rinehart, in the flesh. The hair-covered, scar-bitten, ugly flesh. “There’s my little duct tape princess,” he chuckled. “Nadia, baby, you didn’t tell me you wanted to do a three way tonight. If I would’ve known…”
“Sorry, Johnny. The duct tape princess isn’t getting shit tonight. Duct tape princess is going to fucking die in a few minutes,” threatened Nadia while standing up to face her husband. Johnny burped obnoxiously and chuckled again, even after getting punched in the face with Nadia’s brass knuckles, which didn’t floor his big ass. “Babe, you’re getting worse every year we’ve been together. That alcohol is no good for you. It’s no good for us. If you hadn’t been drinking like a fucking pig, I wouldn’t be in this bitch’s apartment right now. What the fuck are YOU doing here? Getting laid?”
Johnny wiped the blood off of his nose and shrugged. “Jesus Christ, do you know how long it’s been since we’ve done it together? We’re always out beating the shit out of everyone and we never have time to be with each other.”
“You’ve really lost your damn mind, haven’t you, Johnny,” said Nadia while tugging on her husband’s hair. “This is business, lover boy. You don’t fuck with business. You were born into this shit. You should know better than to screw everything up. That’s how dickheads like you get killed in this game. Ain’t nothing stopping me from punching the fuck out of you right now.”
“I love you so much right now, girl,” grinned Johnny as he sloppily kissed his wife’s lips. She tried to pull away, but he only brought her closer and the make-out session was getting wet and wild. The two of them shed their jackets and Nadia wrapped her legs around her much bigger man’s waist while he pinned her to the wall.
With her vision getting brighter and her lungs inflating at a steady pace, Vikki Colt decided enough was enough. While the lovebirds were busy blocking the doorway with their bad romance, she sat up slowly in bed and hobbled to her feet. She bounced lightly towards her only escape: the bedroom window. The closer she got to freedom, the harder she bounced. In caged animal fashion, she leapt through the glass back first and prayed to god that she didn’t split her head open.
Splitting her head open would require a landing first. She felt the muscular grip of Nadia Rinehart on her bare ankles while the crazy gangster screamed obscenities at a million miles an hour. Vikki howled through her gag and squirmed like a snake with every ounce of strength she had. The howling intensified as Nadia’s nails dug into her calves and her body was being pulled back inside. “Goddamn it, Johnny, give me a hand with this bitch!” the gangster shouted.
“Anything for you, sweet cheeks!” cackled Johnny, who bumped stupidly into Nadia in an attempt to clutch her waist for extra strength. The drunken moron couldn’t distribute his weight properly and Nadia’s nails dug deeper as a result. Vikki thrashed around with more intensity, not caring if she banged into the brick wall. Part of this life or death struggle also included tugging with her legs. It felt as though swords pierced her body. She could smell the copper blood splattering across her chest and face. Even with bone nearly exposed, she tugged one final time for freedom.
Instead of shredding her legs to pieces, the tug pulled both Nadia and Johnny out of the window with her and the three of them crashed to the back alley concrete below. Bones snapped and crackled. Blood painted the sidewalk and ran down the storm drain. Final breaths grew progressively weaker until the angel of death was ready for his pickup. But none of these violent actions occurred with Vikki, because she landed in an open dumpster padded with puffy trash bags.
The singer’s intense nose breathing made her ill to her stomach as the odor of dog shit and rotten food assaulted her senses. She fought hard to swallow her digested food, but the gag reflex was so powerful that the tape on her mouth ripped apart and the tidal wave of sickness descended upon the trash bags. Vikki felt as though her body was being ripped inside out while breakfast, lunch, and dinner poured out of her now free mouth like Niagara falls. The tightening of her muscles gave her enough strength to pull the duct tape apart on her wrists. She rested a few moments in her own sickness before reaching down to pull the tape off of her feet and vacating the rubbish bin.
The chilly night air felt heavenly on her heated skin. The tears in her eyes cooled off as wind blew on her face. Vikki felt so weak that she could barely stand up after the night of excitement. She might as well have been the one drinking booze out of a trough instead of Johnny Rinehart, who’s broken body lay motionless in the alley. Nadia’s hand however grabbed a hold of Vikki’s red ankles. But this grip had the strength of a little baby rather than a boa constrictor.
Low and behold, Nadia’s roll of duct tape laid beside her, covered in the blood of her now dead husband. The crazy gangster tried to pick her head up to face her would-be killer, but her neck bones kept cracking with every expended effort. Vikki gazed down at the duct tape and back at Nadia. The songstress’s usual seductive smile was replaced with evil anger. She spit out blood on the sidewalk, rolled Nadia on her back, and began peeling off various strips of duct tape.
“Who’s the duct tape princess now, you stupid bitch?!” belted Vikki while coughing up more blood. “You want that drunken retard? You can have him! In hell!” The nightclub singer went to work in sealing off Nadia’s oxygen with the strips of tape. Unlike Vikki, there would be no glorious struggle for Nadia, just defeated moans and shallow breaths. The gangster’s body was broken so badly that bones jutted out her skin. If anything, the torturous suffocation was more like mercy kill. Nadia’s face turned bright white as she drifted off into the night, cold and lifeless like her loving husband.
Vikki plopped backwards against the brick wall and sat down slowly on her tired ass. The breaths she took were deep and delicious despite the garbage stains on her once beautiful dress. Speaking of which, she pulled the stack of hundred dollar bills out of her pockets and gazed at it with the same evil intentions as when she suffocated Nadia. “Who needs an apartment when I can have my very own hit man?” Vikki said to no one in particular. Her soft speech fluctuated into rebellious roaring with her next sentence. “You hear me, Rineharts?! I’m coming for you motherfuckers!”
The dancing, humming, and lipstick smiling continued for what seemed like the whole night. She didn’t even know what room of her studio apartment she was in. And then the world of unicorns and rainbows melted into hellfire and dead bodies. Vikki felt a cord squeezing her neck so tightly that her head could have popped like a balloon. She grabbed the cord with both hands and wheezed heavily as an unknown assailant dragged her into the bedroom kicking all the way.
When the burglar finally released Vikki before she could drift into the afterlife, the songstress plopped onto the bed hacking up blood and smearing her makeup. A feminine voice called her a drama queen while the voice’s owner went right to work in binding Vikki’s wrists and ankles in duct tape. The singer tried to suck down as much air as she could, her stomach inflating like a parachute with every breath she fought for. Her vision blurred during this civil war over oxygen, but once she blinked her eyes dry, she could see the shape of the female burglar peeling off a strip of tape big enough for someone’s mouth.
“No! Please don’t! I won’t scream!” begged Vikki in between gulps of bloody oxygen. The home invader silenced her anyways with a strip of tape across Vikki Colt’s mouth. With her hands, feet, and mouth bound, all Miss Colt could do was wriggle around and keep her lungs pumping through her snotty nose. Her head lightened and her vision darkened under this struggle, but she was forced awake when the burglar raised her brass knuckles-wearing fist in the air.
With her free hand latching onto a heedful of Vikki’s hair, the gangster threatened, “Don’t even try squirming out of here or I swear to god I’ll punch the living shit out of you!” Through the neon signs outside the window, the burglar revealed herself to be a raven haired young woman in a leather jacket and jean shorts.
Even with Vikki’s impaired vision, she recognized the woman as Nadia Rinehart, heir to the Rinehart crime family through her marriage to the puffy-haired drunk Johnny. These people were local celebrities for all the wrong reasons. Murder, extortion, money laundering, and beating the cops to the punch every single time. Vikki fearfully swallowed a gulp of blood and panted heavily through her nostrils.
“Did you think I was just going to let this go?” asked Nadia in a disturbingly calm voice. “I saw you flirting with my husband onstage. The kisses you blew him. The hugs. The handholding. If you weren’t too busy singing shitty songs at nightclubs, you could just as easily be a fucking hooker. Johnny tipped you big time, didn’t he? He loved your little performance, huh? Sorry, babe, but this ain’t no open relationship. He’s going to be disappointed when he sees his new girlfriend dead as a doornail.”
Nadia lowered her punching fist and instead used her hand to gently stroke Vikki’s hair. The songstress whimpered and whined through her tape gag as Nadia’s fingers glided down her face and over the bridge of her nose. The gangster smiled sadistically and pinched Vikki’s nostrils shut for the longest time.
The pain in the singer’s chest exploded as she squirmed around in her battle for oxygen. Her eyes bulged like basketballs and her body shook like tectonic plates moving beneath the earth. Just as she was ready to venture into the dark side, Nadia released her nose and fresh oxygen blew through her body whirlwind-style. Vikki’s stomach bounced up and down to acrophobic heights. Her insides tingled as though spiders were crawling across her body.
“You really are a whiny little baby,” sneered Nadia as she peeled off another strip of tape. “I really see no point in keeping you alive much longer. Enjoy your last few moments of oxygen, bitch.” The gangster’s tape hovered above Vikki’s nose, prompting the songstress to use her last breaths to belt a blood-curdling scream through her gag.
The duct tape had touched the tip of Vikki’s nose when a thump at the front door was heard by both women. “Are you in here, sweet cheeks?” rambled a drunken male.
“Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me,” muttered Nadia as the drunk stumbled into the bedroom while flipping on the light switch.
That was him alright: disheveled hair, biker jacket, blue jeans, and enough alcohol on his breath to make sewage systems smell like rose gardens. Johnny Rinehart, in the flesh. The hair-covered, scar-bitten, ugly flesh. “There’s my little duct tape princess,” he chuckled. “Nadia, baby, you didn’t tell me you wanted to do a three way tonight. If I would’ve known…”
“Sorry, Johnny. The duct tape princess isn’t getting shit tonight. Duct tape princess is going to fucking die in a few minutes,” threatened Nadia while standing up to face her husband. Johnny burped obnoxiously and chuckled again, even after getting punched in the face with Nadia’s brass knuckles, which didn’t floor his big ass. “Babe, you’re getting worse every year we’ve been together. That alcohol is no good for you. It’s no good for us. If you hadn’t been drinking like a fucking pig, I wouldn’t be in this bitch’s apartment right now. What the fuck are YOU doing here? Getting laid?”
Johnny wiped the blood off of his nose and shrugged. “Jesus Christ, do you know how long it’s been since we’ve done it together? We’re always out beating the shit out of everyone and we never have time to be with each other.”
“You’ve really lost your damn mind, haven’t you, Johnny,” said Nadia while tugging on her husband’s hair. “This is business, lover boy. You don’t fuck with business. You were born into this shit. You should know better than to screw everything up. That’s how dickheads like you get killed in this game. Ain’t nothing stopping me from punching the fuck out of you right now.”
“I love you so much right now, girl,” grinned Johnny as he sloppily kissed his wife’s lips. She tried to pull away, but he only brought her closer and the make-out session was getting wet and wild. The two of them shed their jackets and Nadia wrapped her legs around her much bigger man’s waist while he pinned her to the wall.
With her vision getting brighter and her lungs inflating at a steady pace, Vikki Colt decided enough was enough. While the lovebirds were busy blocking the doorway with their bad romance, she sat up slowly in bed and hobbled to her feet. She bounced lightly towards her only escape: the bedroom window. The closer she got to freedom, the harder she bounced. In caged animal fashion, she leapt through the glass back first and prayed to god that she didn’t split her head open.
Splitting her head open would require a landing first. She felt the muscular grip of Nadia Rinehart on her bare ankles while the crazy gangster screamed obscenities at a million miles an hour. Vikki howled through her gag and squirmed like a snake with every ounce of strength she had. The howling intensified as Nadia’s nails dug into her calves and her body was being pulled back inside. “Goddamn it, Johnny, give me a hand with this bitch!” the gangster shouted.
“Anything for you, sweet cheeks!” cackled Johnny, who bumped stupidly into Nadia in an attempt to clutch her waist for extra strength. The drunken moron couldn’t distribute his weight properly and Nadia’s nails dug deeper as a result. Vikki thrashed around with more intensity, not caring if she banged into the brick wall. Part of this life or death struggle also included tugging with her legs. It felt as though swords pierced her body. She could smell the copper blood splattering across her chest and face. Even with bone nearly exposed, she tugged one final time for freedom.
Instead of shredding her legs to pieces, the tug pulled both Nadia and Johnny out of the window with her and the three of them crashed to the back alley concrete below. Bones snapped and crackled. Blood painted the sidewalk and ran down the storm drain. Final breaths grew progressively weaker until the angel of death was ready for his pickup. But none of these violent actions occurred with Vikki, because she landed in an open dumpster padded with puffy trash bags.
The singer’s intense nose breathing made her ill to her stomach as the odor of dog shit and rotten food assaulted her senses. She fought hard to swallow her digested food, but the gag reflex was so powerful that the tape on her mouth ripped apart and the tidal wave of sickness descended upon the trash bags. Vikki felt as though her body was being ripped inside out while breakfast, lunch, and dinner poured out of her now free mouth like Niagara falls. The tightening of her muscles gave her enough strength to pull the duct tape apart on her wrists. She rested a few moments in her own sickness before reaching down to pull the tape off of her feet and vacating the rubbish bin.
The chilly night air felt heavenly on her heated skin. The tears in her eyes cooled off as wind blew on her face. Vikki felt so weak that she could barely stand up after the night of excitement. She might as well have been the one drinking booze out of a trough instead of Johnny Rinehart, who’s broken body lay motionless in the alley. Nadia’s hand however grabbed a hold of Vikki’s red ankles. But this grip had the strength of a little baby rather than a boa constrictor.
Low and behold, Nadia’s roll of duct tape laid beside her, covered in the blood of her now dead husband. The crazy gangster tried to pick her head up to face her would-be killer, but her neck bones kept cracking with every expended effort. Vikki gazed down at the duct tape and back at Nadia. The songstress’s usual seductive smile was replaced with evil anger. She spit out blood on the sidewalk, rolled Nadia on her back, and began peeling off various strips of duct tape.
“Who’s the duct tape princess now, you stupid bitch?!” belted Vikki while coughing up more blood. “You want that drunken retard? You can have him! In hell!” The nightclub singer went to work in sealing off Nadia’s oxygen with the strips of tape. Unlike Vikki, there would be no glorious struggle for Nadia, just defeated moans and shallow breaths. The gangster’s body was broken so badly that bones jutted out her skin. If anything, the torturous suffocation was more like mercy kill. Nadia’s face turned bright white as she drifted off into the night, cold and lifeless like her loving husband.
Vikki plopped backwards against the brick wall and sat down slowly on her tired ass. The breaths she took were deep and delicious despite the garbage stains on her once beautiful dress. Speaking of which, she pulled the stack of hundred dollar bills out of her pockets and gazed at it with the same evil intentions as when she suffocated Nadia. “Who needs an apartment when I can have my very own hit man?” Vikki said to no one in particular. Her soft speech fluctuated into rebellious roaring with her next sentence. “You hear me, Rineharts?! I’m coming for you motherfuckers!”
