“I got you now, you little fruitcake!” said Joe Fields with
an arrogant smirk and a cigar pressed between his teeth. He could smell the
“vermin” from miles away, even with puffs of tobacco smoke sailing across his
face. Both of his index fingers were itchy and twitchy as they rested on the
triggers of his dual machineguns. His bulky metal armor was easier to move
around in than he thought. The metal boots made loud clomping sounds as Joe
walked through the bamboo forest, but even this mercenary was confident that
his target had nowhere to hide. Hell, if Joe wanted to, he could blow this
whole forest down like the Big Bad Wolf, except with his machineguns instead of
cigar breath.
The target’s tiny footprints led the grinning mercenary to a
Japanese-style temple with a wooden balcony, white paper walls, a bamboo roof,
and flowery decorations all around. “You’re making this too easy for me, you
little twit!” said Joe as he cocked both of his machineguns. The psychotic
smile on his face suggested that he didn’t care if his target lived a torturous
existence or died a brutal death. “You’re mine, you little bitch! Your ass is
mine!” he said in his gruff voice.
With his metal feet creating tiny tremors, the soldier of
fortune marched toward the seemingly abandoned temple before kicking down the
wooden door with shattering ease. Joe poked his head inside and sniffed around
for his target like a hungry wolf. With the exception of a few potted plants,
paintings, and samurai swords, the place was empty. But instead of waiting for
a pin to drop, Joe clomped and crashed his way inside, not giving two shits if
the wooden floor was cracking and splintering.
“I can smell that stank on you, you little weasel! Drop the
bowl of rice and come out here with your hands up!” A few more animalistic
snorts and Joe let out such a forceful sneeze that he yelled like a grizzly
bear and dropped his cigar. As snot flew from his nose and extinguished the
cherry, Joe began to notice the light coating of dust all around the walls and
the floor. “Really? Dust? Is that all you got? Holy shit, you’re in for a wild
ride, motherfucker! You only have nine holes in your body right now. I’ll put
about a hundred more in you, you slick son of a bitch!”
A monstrous growl caught Joe’s attention to where he
reluctantly turned around with his guns drawn. Standing in the kicked in
doorway was a seven-foot lizard demon with its blade-like tongue hanging down
to its knees. Its claws were extended and its screech was deafening. The beast
looked poised to strike, but quick as it may be, Joe’s trigger fingers were
that much faster. A hailstorm of bullets descended upon the “big ugly fucker”
and shredded skin and bones to a fine powder. The blood stayed floating in the
air in the shape of a sphere.
“What the fuck is this shit? Is this some kind of voodoo
bitch negro spell or what?” shouted Joe. Skull shaped blood spheres began
emitting from the liquid mass and staring down the mercenary with misty black
eyes. Their tongues flailed around like whips while their jaws were wide open
and leaking with green fluids.
Joe once again showered his opponents with bullets, but all
the shots did was splatter a modicum of blood stains all over the paper walls.
The floating blood skulls still remained and even let out an eardrum-shattering
yell. Joe squinted his eyes in confusion and terror as a brown bubbling
substance was rising from the back of their mouths.
The formerly arrogant mercenary turned around and ran
screaming like a child, mustering up every curse word on the top of his whacked
out head. The more he ran, the steeper the incline in the wooden floor, which
was like walking up a wall. Joe huffed and wheezed in exhaustion after draining
his legs in such heavy armor. The armor felt hot and muggy to where he
struggled to take it off. After a while of struggling, he dropped his guns and
used the power in his metal gloves to just rip the armor off a few chunks at a
time.
The incline in the floor lessened to a normal base and Joe
was feeling the sweaty chill in his confederate flag T-shirt and baggy
camouflage pants. He got so cold that he wrapped his arms around himself and
huddled on the floor. And then he felt a tidal wave of vomit wash over him as
well as dissolved blood and banshee cries. The bloody skulls left him so
drenched afterwards that he struggled to breathe underneath the weight of such
liquid. After coughing up retched fluids and vomiting himself, Joe looked
around the temple with glassy red eyes and said, “Where the hell am I? What the
fuck is this place?!”
“This is what you wanted all along, right?” said a
mysterious voice. Joe looked around for the source, but the temple was still
the same vomit and blood covered mess it was before, minus humans. “I’m the
voice inside of you, Joe. I’m the one who’s going to tell you to get the hell
out of this temple before it’s too late. You don’t need to catch anybody. This
isn’t your job.”
Joe tightly gripped both sides of his head as the inner
voice felt like he was being attacked with an ice pick. The mercenary even banged
his head against the soaked floor and shouted, “Stop it! Leave me alone! You’re
not real!” The inner voice chanted a Japanese-sounding magic spell and that
only made Joe slam his head harder, which opened up a huge gash on his
forehead.
Instead of blood pouring from the wound, a hooded cobra
slithered out and danced around on the floor. Joe fearfully crab-walked
backwards as the cobra hissed and spit venom in his mouth. The mercenary
coughed, hacked, and puked until a mouthful of tarantulas poured out and joined
the cobra in its dance.
Joe’s bloodshot eyes widened in horror as the cobra and the
spiders swirled together in a purple tornado, taking the form of a ghostly
samurai in blue robes. The spiritual warrior pulled out his katana and pointed
it sternly at the blubbering gun-for-hire.
“Please, don’t kill me!” begged Joe with his hands together
prayer-style. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here. I just came here
for a job and I ended up in....whatever the hell this place is!”
“In other words, you’re not sorry that you were chasing an
innocent human being. You’re sorry because you got caught doing it,” said the
“inner voice”, which now belonged to the samurai. “You knew all along that your
target did nothing wrong. He was defending himself from local police after they
tried to unlawfully arrest him. And now here you are trying to find someone who
is no longer here. All for what? An ill-gotten paycheck? You disgust me!”
“Disgust?” whimpered Joe. “You thought that was disgusting?
What about what this place is doing to me? What about all the lizards and blood
and skulls and shit? You mean there’s nothing disgusting about any of that?
You’re a bigger scumbag than me and that’s saying something! You’d better let
me the fuck out of here or I’m going to pick my guns back up and blow this
whole place down!”
“You want to leave?” asked the samurai. “You really want to
give up on your mission because you can’t handle your opponent? Is this what
you want?”
“Yes! Yes, you idiot! I just want to get the fuck out of
here! I’ve had it with this shit!” sobbed Joe.
The samurai stared him down with sternness and poison in his
eyes, but ultimately decided to put his sword away. “There’s nothing to stop
you, Mr. Fields. You can walk out of here anytime you want. The exit has been
there all along.” The samurai pointed to the smashed in front door, which now
had a brightly lit portal in its way. “Go. Leave here immediately and never
come back again.”
Joe’s teary eyes felt relaxed and hypnotized as he slowly
made his way to the portal. “Leave…here…immediately…never…come back…again…” he
said in a zombie-like voice. He reached his arm out to touch the light and the
magnetic force pulled him through. He swam and swirled through the heavenly
aura, finally able to rest after all of the nightmare fuel he took in that day.
When he crossed through to the other side, Joe found his
arms trapped in a straightjacket and that he was in a white padded cell with
only a small hole in the door to look out of. He struggled and fought in his
bonds, but the jacket was too tight and he was too exhausted from the sedatives
he received.
A doctor and a nurse could be heard having a conversation
outside the cell. “Read me the summary on this one,” said the doctor.
The nurse flipped through the papers on a clipboard and read
off, “Joseph Robert Fields, age thirty-five. Was admitted to psychiatric care
after inhaling a large amount of PCP dust. He has shown signs of aggression and
had to be given fifteen milliliters of sedatives. Previous criminal history
includes aggravated mayhem, property damage, assault and battery, and
aggravated kidnapping.”
Did Joe hear them right? PCP dust? Was the whole temple
scattered with it? Knowing that he had been had caused the newest patient to
thrash around in his cell and scream infinite curse words, to which the doctor
and nurse backed away from the door and allowed him to work out his pent up
violence. It may have been a while before he did, but anything was better than
dealing with this sick son of a bitch in any capacity.
