The Battle About Nothing

Gonzo Kramer fingered a jovial TV tune on his bass guitar, hoping for an audience of some kind in this tiny New York apartment. But alas, all the attention was on his three whiny friends in the kitchen, Jerry Stonefield, George Katana, and Elaine Berretta. No matter how ordinary the topic was, there remained no shortage of comedic observations or general complaints about it. The more they bitched, the harder Kramer’s bass playing became. It had nothing to do with being heard, but everything to do with wanting to slap his friends instead of a bass guitar.

The wavy-haired Jerry Stonefield held a jug of milk in his hands and asked, “Why is it called two-percent milk?! It’s a hundred-percent full when you buy it. It should be called a hundred-percent milk! And why is it so funny when Oval Teen dissolves in it? And why is it called Oval Teen? The jar is round. The teenagers who drink it become round. It should be called Round Teen!”

This earned a corny laugh from anybody not named Gonzo Kramer, who slapped his bass guitar with even more aggression. He could have played bagpipes, a kazoo, and crash cymbals and still wouldn’t have drawn a crowd.

All the attention now was on the horseshoe-haired, stumpy George Katana, who said, “I drank a whole jar of Oval Teen on TV once. I didn’t even put milk in it, I just ate the powder. I had powder all over my face and there were no napkins around. Whoever was responsible for shooting that footage cost me a relationship!”

“You should’ve just eaten soup, George,” said Elaine, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Soup is not a meal unless you crumble some crackers in it.”

“It’s the Bubble Boy’s fault anyways,” said George.

“No, it’s Newman’s fault,” said Jerry. “Everything is Newman’s fault! He’s not a mystery wrapped in a riddle! He’s a mystery wrapped in a Twinkie! There’s LESS to Newman than meets the eye!”

The kitchen drivel blended together and became more obnoxious for Kramer to listen to than any instrument he could have been playing. It didn’t matter how hard he banged his instrument, because it was his own head that needed banging against a brick wall if this conversation was allowed to continue. And then…he got an idea.

“I like Newman, but I don’t know if he’s sponge-worthy!” confessed Elaine before Kramer got up and smashed his bass guitar over her head, crushing her skull and splattering her brains all over the counter. The guitar wasn’t in any better shape since the neck broke off and the thick strings coiled up.

Jerry and George backed up against the fridge shaking in horror. Jerry yelled, “Kramer, what the hell are you doing?! You killed her!”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship with her,” confessed Kramer with an evil grin on his face.

George whimpered and stuttered, “Have you ever killed somebody before?”

Throwing the neck of the bass guitar on the ground, Kramer held out his bloodied hands and said, “What do you think, Junior? Have these hands been soaking in Ivory liquid?” He then wiped the blood all over George’s flannel shirt and Dockers pants. “Wait a minute…cotton Dockers! One hundred percent! If they’re not Dockers, they’re just pants!” In one fluid motion, Kramer ripped George’s pants off and left him trembling in his boxers and socks.

With Jerry unable to help him due to cowering in the corner, George begged, “Please don’t hurt me, Kramer!”

“Shut up, you whiny bitch!” yelled Kramer. “Fifty years ago, we would have had you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass! In fact, now that I’ve got you here…” He grabbed George by the ear and allowed the victim’s glasses to fall on the floor. George could scream all he wanted, but his trembling legs weren’t backing him up in his begging for freedom. Kramer dragged George to the open apartment window and bent him over the sill.

As George whimpered and squealed, Kramer let out a few yodels to taunt him before ripping off his victim’s underwear. “Aww, what’s the matter, you big baby?!”

“Kramer…I think it moved…”

“Get a life, you faggot!” yelled Kramer before smacking George on the ass. He spanked him a few more times until George’s naked butt was blistered and bleeding. “Hey, George! Are you sponge worthy?! Can your boys swim?!”

“For God’s sake, Kramer, let him go!” cried Jerry, huddling in the corner despite his small moment of bravery.

“You want me to let him go?! Okay! I just hope he doesn’t need radical reconstructive surgery afterwards!” Kramer shoved George out the window and it was only seconds after that the sound of crunching metal and glass echoed across the street. It was even more musical to Kramer’s ears than his bass guitar playing, but it was not nearly as boner-inducing as Jerry’s pleas for forgiveness in the corner of the kitchen.

Kramer slowly stalked towards his final victim and stood over him like a giant over a sea of frightened villagers.

“Please, Kramer, don’t kill me! I won’t tell anybody about this! I won’t even do it in my standup comedy!”

Kramer knelt beside Jerry and placed a hand on his vibrating, tear-stained arm. “And here I thought you liked edgy comedy. This is far more compelling than arguing about two-percent milk and whether or not soup is a meal. Aren’t you always complaining about how everything is too politically correct these days? Well, you’re being a snowflake right now!”

“Kramer, you murdered them!” Jerry wiped his leaky eyes with his other sleeve.

“Your audience was dead long before I smashed that bass guitar over Elaine’s head! Who gives a shit about two-percent milk?! Who gives two fucks about Oval Teen?! In fact…” Kramer pulled out a jar of Oval Teen from the cabinet and scooped up a handful. “This should help with your little crying problem.” He threw the powder in Jerry’s face and caused him to blubber some more.

Trying to talk over Jerry’s screams of pain, Kramer said, “You know why they should call it Round Teen?! Because your crappy comedy is like a circle! It just goes on and on and on! It never changes! It’s the same shit over and over again and I’m sick and tired of it! Do something edgy! Change it up a little bit!” He grabbed handful of Jerry’s hair and said, “Don’t make me come back here again!” Kramer then slammed the back of Jerry’s head against the cabinet. “Maybe that’ll scramble your brains enough!”

Months after the incident, Kramer never returned. Jerry’s brains did get scrambled. This was the wakeup call he never asked for. Quite frankly, nobody else asked for it either. Kramer sat in his jail cell watching TV one night when he saw Jerry debut new material on a late night talk show. He sported a shaved head and an older look (probably because of the beatings and trauma respectively), but he was definitely ready to charm the audience.

“Oh, people. They’re so important to you,” said Jerry. “You’ve got to be on your phone all the time because the people in your life are important. Really? They don’t seem that important with the way you swipe right by them like a gay French king.” The audience laughed as Jerry made exaggerated swiping motions with his finger. “Who pleases me today? Who shall I favor? Who shall I delete?”

“Okay, maybe I fucked him up a little too hard,” said Kramer to nobody in particular. “Can you go back to talking about Oval Teen?”

A prison guard knocked on his cell bars and said, “Gonzo Kramer? It’s time for your last meal.” And what did he get for a last meal? Soup with crackers crumbled in the broth.

“Soup is not a meal, damn it!” yelled Kramer. “Jerryyyyyyyyyyy!!”

The Shit

Ray Hardy’s alcoholic scent could be smelled from a country mile away, yet his equilibrium and speech remained normal enough for functioning in society. Though it was hard for a cheap bottle of Thunderbird to mess up someone’s balance when none of it entered the man’s mouth. Instead the bitter liquid stained his white T-shirt to where it looked like he was sweating bullets. Coupled with the venomous expression on his face, his fists at his sides, and heaviness in his footsteps, Ray’s roommate Adam Victor was in for a rude awakening as soon as the former crossed the threshold into the apartment.

Even though Ray was one hundred percent sober, he still had a hard time fitting his key in the door on account of his trembling hands. When he finally fit the damn thing in the lock, he made his wrestler-like entrance by swinging the door open as hard as he could. Adam, who was previously channel surfing on the leather couch in his sweatpants, jumped to his feet at the sight of his roommate and best friend looking awful as fuck.

“Good god, are you alright? What happened to you?” Adam asked.

Ray sucked in his belly and released a heavy sigh upon formulating an answer. “Adam, I don’t think you give a shit how I’m doing tonight. But to answer your question…I’m not okay. In fact, I don’t think anything’s going to be okay ever again. There’s no way in hell I can show my face at that bar again, not after what Ruby did to me.”

Nervous and fidgety, Adam said, “Okay, um…so…what did she do to you? You can tell me.”

“Of course I’m going to tell you, dumb ass!” snapped Ray, causing his best friend to lean back a little bit. “But then again, you can probably find the whole thing on You Tube if you look hard enough. I finally did it, Adam. I stepped out of my comfort zone. I approached the woman I had a crush on for so long…” He pulled his glasses off and wiped a singular tear from his face. “Ruby threw a drink in my face while her friends laughed their asses off. That’s why I smell so bad.”

“Oh my god, that’s horrible! Why the hell would she do that?”

“…Because…because she thinks I’m too fat and ugly.”

“She said that to you? What the hell’s wrong with her?!” Holding his hands up defensively, Adam hurried his next words along. “Listen, I had no idea this was going to happen, okay? I genuinely thought stepping out your shell would do you some good. I didn’t anticipate her throwing a bottle of Thunderbird in your face and…”

“Shut up, Adam!” retorted Ray while pointing an accusatory finger. “You wanted this to go wrong from the start! Do you even know why they call it a comfort zone in the first place? Because nothing bad happens there! If I had just sat there staring at my shoes all damn night, I wouldn’t smell like a bottle of hobo wine!”

In response to Ray’s heavy, beastly breathing, Adam kept his hands up and said, “Calm down, buddy. The important thing here is that nobody got seriously hurt.”

“Don’t give me that shit! I’m hurting now! I’m hurting badly! And it’s all because you brainwashed me into believing that everything would be okay!” Wiping away another angry tear, Ray said, “You know what? There is one way this will all be okay. I tried my hand at talking to women and I failed miserably. I lived up to my end of our little deal. Now it’s time for you to live up to your end too. The wooden box, the one marked The Shit, where is it?”

Backing slowly away, Adam said, “Um, Ray, now you’re really going to be mad at me. There’s been a little bit of a snag with the box full of shit. You see, I didn’t get my paycheck this week and…”

“Where’s the shit?!” Ray bellowed, causing an uncomfortable silence to hang between the best friends. Adam slowly stepped to the side and waved his arm towards the wooden chest, which was sure enough marked The Shit with a permanent marker. “Yeah, I’m going to get the shit. DVD’s, gift cards, money, CD’s…yeah, I could use some shit right now!”

Ray skulked towards the wooden chest and flung the lid open as fast as he could, almost making a crack in the wall. His imagination ran wild with the kinds of surprises that could be in there. Maybe there was a gift card to McDonald’s. Maybe there was the latest Hellyeah CD. Maybe there was a wad of twenty dollar bills. But when Ray poked his head inside the box, his insane smile drooped into a saggy frown. “A mirror? A fucking mirror?! Is this a joke?! Huh?!”

“Ray, as I was saying, I didn’t get my paycheck this week, so I couldn’t buy you anything. I’m sorry.” No response, just a frozen stare into the mirror from Ray Hardy. Adam swallowed a lump of saliva and said, “If it’s any consolation to you, at least you learned something from your experience. You can’t put a price tag on that. No Double Quarter Pounder will ever replace a valuable lesson. Right?”

Ray stood up and slowly turned to face his best friend with a vicious gleam in his eyes, causing Adam to tremble and back away a little bit. “Lesson? Yeah, I learned a couple of things, actually. One, women aren’t worth the trouble anymore. And two, neither are best friends! I was counting on there being some good shit in this box! I needed these things to be there for me when I failed!” Pointing his sausage-like finger, he yelled, “I! Want! A safety net!”

“You want a safety net?!” belted Adam, sending a shockwave throughout Ray’s tense muscles. “No, you don’t get a safety net, my friend! You know why? Because safety nets are nothing more than rewards for failure! You don’t get rewarded for failing! You get rewarded for succeeding! I put a mirror in that box because I wanted you to take a good long look at yourself! I wanted you to realize that there are no participation trophies in life! But you should know that because you’re a college kid! If you get too many F’s and D’s, you don’t get gift cards and CD’s! You get kicked out! I put that mirror in the box because I didn’t want my best friend to coast through life, that’s all!”

Adam’s burst of rage muffled back into fear at the sight of his friend huffing and puffing like a rabid wolverine. Ray growled, “Coasting, huh? Do you even know what it means to coast? It means to become comfortable with your own success to where you become complacent. Let me ask you something, Mr. 4.0 GPA: how am I supposed to be comfortable with my success…when I don’t fucking have any to begin with?!”

Adam tucked his chin to his bare chest and solemnly said, “I don’t know, Ray. I just don’t know. Look, I know how much that box of shit meant to you, but…” He let out a sigh and continued. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you just now. I often forget that you didn’t have it easy growing up and you don’t have it easy now as an adult. I guess what I did doesn’t make me a very good friend, does it?”

Ray slammed the lid shut and sat down on the box, his glasses in his pocket and his head in his hands. The two friends had a cold war of silence between them for the longest time. And then Ray wiped away his few tears, sniffed mucous up his nose, and softly said, “You know what? Can we just end this night right now, please? I don’t want to think about this shit anymore. I don’t give a damn about Ruby and I don’t give a damn about anything else. Tell you what, Adam, if you really want to be a good friend, do me a favor. There’s a bottle of pills in the kitchen with my name on it.”

“Wha…wait a minute…your medication? You mean the stuff for your…” Adam tapped himself on the head to signify a mental illness of some kind.

“Yes, those pills. I’d get them myself, but I don’t feel like getting up right now. I need two pills and a bottle of Perrier. If you get those things for me, I’ll completely forget that you screwed me over tonight.”

“Well, of course you will, because that’s what your medication does.”

“Don’t be a smart ass, Adam!” snapped Ray before taking a few deep breaths and calming down once again. “Just please, get me my pills and something to swallow them with. I’m not going to make any decisions about my comfort zone until the morning. Right now I just want to go numb for the rest of the night…and try to forget that I smell like the world’s worst wine.”

Adam nodded and said, “Okay” before fetching the two pills and bottle of sparkling water. He gave them to Ray and allowed the big guy to medicate himself for the evening. He shivered in disgust at the bitter taste of the pills, but otherwise remained peaceful with his head in his hand.

“How do you feel?” asked Adam.

“…A little bit better. I’m actually surprised at how quickly this stuff works.”

Adam took a seat on the wooden box next to Ray and put a gentle hand on the back of his neck. Mr. Victor then sang the lyrics to “Rx” by Theory of a Deadman, a song about taking medication and being depressed. This got a sad chuckle out of Ray, who then said, “You know what? Maybe I won’t go to bed just yet. I’d rather just sit here and listen to you sing goofy songs.”

“So in other words, me hanging out with you and being there for you during your time of need is safety net enough?”

Ray sighed, “I almost hate to admit it, but…I guess that’s what I want.”

Adam patted Ray on the shoulder and said, “Truth be told, buddy, you don’t need a woman like Ruby if she’s going to treat you like that. You can stay in the comfort zone for as long as you want. Come out only when you’re ready.”

“I probably won’t be ready for a while…but if I crash and burn again…will you be the one who gets me my pills?”

“Not only that, but I might have to fill that wooden box up with pills and call that The Shit.”

The two friends laughed and sang together for hours that night. They even sang a Pantera song whose title fit the situation perfectly: “Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills”. How convenient. Then again, safety nets usually were.

Everybody's Rock

The corny commercials on TV rotted Clark Hall’s brain into mush and froze his heart into an arctic glacier. The sounds of his girlfriend Sydney Farrow sobbing only a few feet away from him did nothing to bring him out of his trance. Even when Sydney took a few seconds to blow her nose or sob even louder, she couldn’t get her boyfriend’s undivided attention. She wiped away her tears with a napkin and finally asked, “Are we going to talk about this?”

“Nope,” said Clark without even thinking about his answer. Instead he just flipped through channels in a vain attempt to find something that will rejuvenate his porridge mind.

“Say something!” shrieked Sydney.

“Something.”

After one last wipe of her drenched face and smeared makeup, the pajama pants and tank top-wearing Sydney ripped the remote control out of Clark’s hand and turned the TV off. All he could do was stare her down with a frosty expression, not even a little burst of energy. With her hands animated, Sydney freaked out when she said, “Clark, why won’t you talk to me?! Just once I’d like to have a real conversation with you! For god’s sake, do something! Sing! Dance! Anything! Do anything at all!”

“Anything?”

“Yes, anything at all!”

Taking her words literally, Clark moseyed on over to the kitchen table and sprinkled salt n his own head. “There, I did something.”

Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, Sydney asked, “What the hell’s wrong with you?! Are you fucking insane?! You knew damn well what I meant! You’re taking a serious situation and ripping the piss!”

“Serious? You want to talk about seriousness? How am I supposed to take you seriously when you keep crying every damn day?! Every fucking day, it’s the same thing! More tears! More drama! More bullshit! You know why I watch so much television? Because it’s the only thing that can take me away from your horseshit!”

Holding Clark’s hand in hers, Sydney wept, “Please, stop talking like that! You’re scaring me!” In typical Clark Hall fashion, the stone cold lover dropped to his knees and rattled off in devilish tongues. Sydney finally snapped, “You’re scaring me!”

Seemingly taking this conversation seriously, Clark stood back up and gazed into his girlfriend’s damp eyes. “You’re scared, huh? That’s okay, baby girl. I’m scared too. I’m scared of where this dramatic diarrhea will take us. I’m scared of never being able to feel happy again. Your sadness is making me sad! The only difference between you and me is that I’m not allowed to cry, seeing as how I’m a man and all.”

“Nobody said you couldn’t cry, Clark!”

“Bullshit! That’s bullshit! I hear people say that shit everyday! I’m always the one who has to be the strong superman for everybody! I’m the one who has to be everybody’s rock! I remember being a kid when I rode my bike and landed on my ass! Did anybody let me cry? No! Not one fucking person! Not my dad! Not my mom! They both wanted me to be a so-called real man! Well, congratulations, fuckers! I’m a real fucking man now!”

Taking her boyfriend’s hands once again, Sydney delicately said, “You can cry in front of me if you want, Clark. I won’t judge you. I’d never judge you for something like that.”

“Yeah right! If I start sobbing, who are you going to have left for comfort? Huh? Who’s going to be there for emotional support? I don’t even know how to fall to pieces! Twenty fucking years of pissed off feelings, Sydney, and I ain’t done a damn thing with all that rage! Now what?!”

Eyebrows furrowed, teeth clenched, skin pink, and muscles tensed, Sydney’s rage boiled over when she whispered, “You want to cry? Go ahead, Clark. Do it. Do it! Cry, damn it! Show some emotion for the first time in your fucking life! Be the man I fell in love with so many years ago! The one who wrote me all that poetry! The one who didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought of him! Come on, damn it, cry! Cry!” Her last few words were punctuated with shoves to Clark’s chest.

He brushed his hand through his thick brown hair and used his Pink Floyd the Wall T-shirt to air himself out, but no tears came. Not one drop. Just clenched teeth and a pointed finger. “You can’t do this to me, Sydney. You’re not going to break me. Not tonight, not ever!”

Sydney brought Clark’s face over and planted a wet kiss on his lips, get a few teardrops on his shoulders in the process. The boyfriend’s eyes widened at the gesture while the girlfriend remained pissed off and intense. “Now cry, damn it. Cry! You have my permission even though you never needed it. Open those floodgates!”

Clark’s breathing intensified while he tried in vain to hide his face from his girlfriend. His muscles tightened, then relaxed, then tightened, then relaxed again. His face was concentrated on his black socks and teal sweatpants. Twenty years of being pissed off. Twenty years of nothingness. Twenty years of emptiness. It all resulted in a primal scream of the F-word followed by several punches to the couch cushions. It didn’t matter how hard he punched, because no amount of toughness could prepare him for what came next.

The first tear dropped on the couch pillow. Then the second. Then the third. And then they swarmed and multiplied until the emotional dam finally exploded. For the first time in Clark’s life, he felt absolution from being “everybody’s rock”. He tried hard to suck back his tears, but it was too late: the floodgates had permanently opened. “This isn’t fair,” he muttered. “This isn’t fair!”

As Clark sobbed some more, he felt Sydney’s fingernails gently scraping down his back while the softness of her other hand petted his hair like a kitty. She whispered in his ear, “Of course it’s fair, honey. Don’t fight it. Let them come.”

“How? How could I let this happen?”

“It’s okay, Clark. I love you. I always will. Scoot over, I want to lay next to you.” The two of them snuggled together on the couch sobbing silently into each other’s arms. It was as Clark prophesized: more drama. More tears. More bullshit. More awkwardness. But it felt right. It felt as though this was where the conversation was meant to go all along. Twenty years of bitterness could never have become twenty-one no matter how hard Clark tried. He didn’t remember much from that night, but only because he fell asleep on the couch shortly after, taking Sydney’s cherry kisses with him into dreamland.

By the time the butt crack of dawn came shining through the apartment window, Clark Hall was so drained that he didn’t even have the energy to open his eyes, which were still damp, salty, and fiery from the night before. The only difference was that Sydney wasn’t in his arms anymore. Clark slowly picked his head up off the pillow and saw that she was drinking coffee at the kitchen table, still in her tank top and pajama pants.

The psychologically emancipated boyfriend peeled his body off of the leather couch and stumbled towards the table to join his equally drained girlfriend. A cup of coffee was already there waiting for him. He took several sips of the sugar and cream-drenched stimulant, but still couldn’t wake up. If he spent eternity on that couch, it would be alright with him.

Breaking the awkward silence, Clark asked, “Did you want to talk about last night?”

“Did you?”

“No, not really,” said Clark as he stretched his arms out. “I have to be at work in an hour. All that crying drained me the fuck out.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I don’t even want to go today, but it is what it is. Maybe we can talk about this tomorrow?”

“…Yeah…tomorrow…”

The two of them absentmindedly sipped their coffee while the lessons of the previous night struggled to sink in. Would tomorrow be another dramatic spell? Would Clark spend more time in front of the TV? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. All he wanted to do was go back to sleep and maybe take a sick day. But just like with all things in life, it was back to the grind again. Just another day, just another lousy paycheck. “Tomorrow…tomorrow…I love you…tomorrow…” Clark sang in his head.

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!”

Dark Skills

“Tonight, tonight, tonight, hot damn tonight!” chuckled Matt Singleton while he was playing pocket pool in the empty streets. The closer he treaded towards Michelle Woods’ apartment, the harder he masturbated. With a jacket hood over his face, baggy sweat pants to mask his perverted activity, and not a cop or security camera in sight, he could easily get in and out, both literally and figuratively.

He ascended the stairs to Michelle’s apartment and overheard the sounds of a motor running coinciding with a feminine black voice’s cries of pain. Matt stroked himself even harder and got a sadistic, bloodthirsty grin on his face. The feminine voice’s screams were reduced to M noises and Matt’s smile widened to Cheshire Cat levels of terror. “I had no idea she was into that!” he chuckled to himself.

When he saw that the door to Michelle’s apartment was slightly ajar, his quarter moon grin flattened as did his perpetual hard-on. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said while pulling a hatchet out of his coat pocket. Knowing nobody was coming to save his newest victim, Matt kicked the door open and pulled back his hood to reveal disheveled blond hair and missing teeth. “I don’t believe this shit.”

Matt Singleton’s twisted imagination was justified, but not in the way he had hoped. Rather than screams of pornographic pleasure, Michelle’s pain was as permanent as the tattoo being etched into her lower back. Carl Howard had once again beat Matt to the punch and stuck his nose (among other things) where it didn’t belong. The chubby biker decked out in black leather was the one writing “Dark Skills” into Michelle’s skin while the sobbing victim was bent over the couch with a rag in her mouth.

“Carl!” whined Matt for a prolonged period of time. “How many times do I have to tell you to mind your own damn business and get your own kills?! I saw Michelle first! I actually did my homework on this bitch!”

Carl tossed the tattoo pen aside and hissed, “Homework? As in taking photos of her through the window like a fucking stalker? That’s not homework. That’s just you being too much of a pussy to talk to women yourself. Michelle and I are already on a first name basis. Isn’t that right, baby girl?” The last sentence was punctuated by Carl lightly slapping Michelle on her pink panty-wearing ass, to which she gave another muffled cry.

“Good job, dumb-ass!” said Matt while mockingly applauding with the hatchet in his hand. “She could have called the police any time and had you arrested! You stick out like a nun at a porn convention, my friend. You think intimidating her is going to be enough to keep her quiet?”

“Nah, but the rag in her mouth is,” said Carl as he once again tapped Michelle’s ass. “Besides, if you actually had a brain in that busted up skull of yours, you’d know how important mind games are. She ain’t going to tell anybody. Are you, baby girl?” Once Michelle shook her head, she got another slap, but this time on the thighs.

Matt shook his own head and snickered, “So this is where our conversations always go, isn’t it? You always steal my victims and then you justify it with some bullshit excuse. I know this comes as a surprise to you, but I haven’t gotten laid in a while, buddy. I’ve been picking out victims left and right…” He tiptoed up to Michelle and stroked her long hair with the yellow streak. “But there’s nobody quite like her. She’s got the beauty. She’s got the brains. Hell, up until I kicked open the door, I thought she was getting ready for some kinky shit. And then you show up, Carl…you, the hard-on assassinator. I’m sick and tired of this shit, Carl. I need my fix!”

“You want your fix?” asked Carl as he shoved Michelle to the floor. “You want to get laid? Shit, man, all you had to do was ask. But I’m not the one you should be asking. Why don’t you ask that uncle of yours to bend you over some more? You see, Matt…I do my homework too. You’ve pissed me off so many times that I actually took pride in my studies. That uncle of yours…he did some things to you, didn’t he? Things that involved you having a permanent case of diarrhea, if you know what I mean. Congratulations, Matty-Boy: you’re a walking commercial for Huggies diapers!”

As Carl hyena laughed at Matt’s miserable past, Matt himself clutched his skull and rocked back and forth while fighting the traumatic memory. He could feel the dirty, pus-filled limb going in and out of him. He remembered how his “permanent case of diarrhea” mixed with chunks of blood and splooge. The rancid smell of Uncle Singleton’s crotch. The bloodbath sewage smell of his own dumps. They all came flooding back to him like a tidal wave of life juices washing over his once young and innocent face. Carl’s laughter made those thoughts rush even faster around his explosive mind.

“Shut the fuck up, you fat piece of shit!” roared Matt before jumping across the couch and attempting to slice open Carl’s head like a watermelon. The chubby biker grabbed his assailant’s wrist to prevent the blow, but the two of them wrestled to the floor anyways. As Michelle screamed through her gag on the floor with them, the two serial killers struggled to push the hatched blade to each other’s faces. Carl, being the stronger of the two, was able to inch it towards Matt’s face and peel of a layer of his cheek.

Licking the blood off of Matt’s face, Carl said, “Is this what you wanted, lover boy? Is this the Freudian excuse you were looking for?”

Matt head butted Carl in his thick skull and bust his own forehead open more than he did his opponent’s. Matt’s horny smile suggested a lack of fucks given. He head butted Carl again. And again. And again. Blood washed over Matt’s face in an unholy baptism while Carl’s own forehead formed a tiny rip. “I could do this all day, motherfucker!” chimed Matt. “My fucked up mind is feeling pretty good right now. A little dizziness is good for psychological trauma.”

Carl managed to rip the hatchet out of Matt’s hands and stand over his opponent like a barbarian over a rotten carcass. “Don’t worry, you little pansy. Close those pretty blue eyes of yours. Here comes a lovely little lullaby for an anxious child!” Carl raised the blade over his head and brought it down with brutal force. Any shot that powerful would have decapitated not only an elephant, but the entire jungle kingdom.

But not Matt Singleton. In his blood-drenched dizziness, he found the tattoo pen and jabbed it in Carl Howard’s eye, while the hatchet was only centimeters away from Matt’s nose. Matt ripped out a chunk of brain from Carl’s skull and the chubby killer plopped backwards on the floor, spilling his blood all over the shag carpet. Matt’s head continued to gush like a geyser of violence, spilling his own juices over the floor as he sat up to face a trembling Michelle, who spit out the gag a long time ago.

Not even the silky pink underwear on a beautiful black body could revitalize Matt’s horny attitude. He stood up and wobbled on his way over to the victim he worked so hard to claim. “You think this is funny, Michelle?” he asked as blood oozed onto her lap.

Michelle shook her head and sobbed, “No, there’s nothing funny about it. Please let me go!”

“Sure, no problem,” said Matt as he spit a glob of red juice onto the couch. “I’ll just let you skedaddle out the front door like nothing happened. Go on. Leave. I’ve got no use for you now that my hard-on’s not coming back anytime soon.”

“Sorry for your loss,” stuttered Michelle as she slowly stood up to try and exit.

Matt grabbed a hold of her hair and yanked her back to the floor. “What did you say about my loss? Huh? You trying to be a comedian? You think rape is funny?! You think this is all just some Freudian bullshit?!” he yelled while Michelle sobbed loudly. “There are things in this life worse than death! If I could die right now, I’d be one smiling motherfucker! But you, Michelle…you don’t deserve to get off that easy. I came here tonight and had old wounds reopened, bloody forehead aside. Now I’m going to leave you with something more permanent than an uncle’s dirty dick!”

Matt retrieved the tattoo pen and cleaned the blood off of it with his jacket. He then threw it to the side and said, “You know what? Tattoos are for pussies! They can be lasered off for a few hundred bucks! But a hatched job…that’s something that truly lasts forever!”

The killer retrieved the blade, grabbed Michelle by her hair, and bent her over the couch kicking and screaming. “Shut up!” he belted while reading the tattoo job on her lower back. “Dark Skills, my ass! Carl ain’t got shit for skills! Let me show you what the real mark of the beast looks like!”

Slowly and painfully, Matt Singleton carved the number 666 into Michelle’s lower back, completely erasing the tattoo job from earlier with permanent scars and a river of blood.  The viscous mess gave Matt a rush of adrenaline that not only sped up the bleeding in his own forehead, but also the blood flowing into a part of his body he was sure he’d never use again. It stood up proudly. It beamed with life. Matt could smile again. Then the killer blacked out from the blood loss and fell on his ass, dying with a smile on his face and a hard-on in his sweatpants once again. Michelle Woods was alive and kicking, but Matt Singleton took her soul to the grave with him anyways.

Adorably Clueless

Billy Mann scanned books into the system while his mind drifted off into outer space. “The second chance college prom,” he thought to himself. “If you couldn’t get it right the first time, you won’t get it right the second time.” He repeated this mantra over and over in his mind while paying minimal attention to the students checking out books at the counter. Loud conversations rarely carried on in quaint libraries like this one.

The loud snapping of fingers, however, was enough to jolt Billy awake like a fire underneath his ass. He adjusted his thick rimmed glasses and saw the image of a lovely Mexican student in front of him, donning a black dress with floral designs and flipping her raven black hair around with a ruby red smile on her face. “Wakey, wakey! Eggs and bacey! Rise and shine! It’s breakfast time!” she giggled.

“Sorry about that, ma’am. Here, let me scan that book for you,” said Billy while fluffing his black hair and adjusting his checkered wool vest. “Can I have your name, please?”

“Man, you really are out of it today, aren’t you? What are you doing, thinking about your girlfriend?” said the lady with her elbows on the counter and her face in her manicured hands.

Billy just now realized the student’s library card was tucked in the pages like a bookmark. He shook himself awake yet again before reading the name on the card, which was Mia Rodriguez. “My apologies, Miss Rodriguez,” said Billy while scanning her items.

“You don’t have to say you’re sorry. I’d be out of it too if all I could think about was the second chance prom,” Mia grinned, flashing her pearly white dentistry.

The librarian’s face flashed a neon shade of red at that revelation. He’d been talking out loud this whole time? Were the other students just trying to avoid him? Is that why they didn’t speak up sooner? Billy felt like crawling under the desk and sucking his thumb into a deep sleep. His testicles seemed to shrink to the size of Tic-Tacs.

Speaking of which, a tiny winter mint capsule would have been nice at that point. He breathed into his hand and scrunched his face in disgust at what he smelled. That breakfast burrito hung around like a home invader. Or even more appropriate, a flirtatious Mexican lady who just wanted a fucking library book.

“If you wanted a breath mint, I could have given you one. I’ve got a million of them in my purse,” said Mia as she rifled through her belongings.

“No, no, that’s okay. I’m just, uh…” Billy could only complete his sentence with a deep sigh, as if the tunnel of air would relax his rapidly beating heart and his ice cold neurons.

“Look, if you’re that hung up on the second chance prom, just take one of these,” said Mia as she handed him a business card with her name and phone number on it. The redness in Billy’s face was a perfect match for Mia Rodriguez’s cherry-colored lips. “You don’t have to be shy around me. Just give me a call if you change your mind about the prom. Buenos tardes…Billy Mann! How could I not like a guy with Mann in his name?”

“Wait a minute, how did you know my name?” asked Billy. He looked down at his vest and at that moment noticed he wore a nametag this whole time. Mia giggled and waved goodbye at him before strutting away with her book. Billy hung his head in shame, wishing deep down that he could hang his head with an extension cord. He tucked his lips inward and bit down on them before tossing Mia’s business card in the dustbin behind him. He breathed out another sigh in a futile effort to calm his nerves.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked a black feminine voice behind him. Billy mouthed, “Oh no” to himself and then turned around to see his coworker Dottie Jackson fishing Mia’s business card out of the garbage bin. With a hand on her purple dress-wearing hip and an incredulous pout in her lips, she said, “You’re really going to let this chick slip through your fingers, babe? I don’t think so. You need to get out every once and a while and you literally had that opportunity handed to you on a silver platter.”

“Yeah, like I’m going to trust her with my heart that fucking easily. Give me a break,” said Billy with his arms folded and his weight leaning against the counter.

“If you can’t trust her, who can you trust?” asked Dottie. “All your high school crushes are long gone, my friend. Sure, you could look them up on Face Book, but you ain’t bringing them all the way over here for a stupid dance. That chick was into you, buddy. Seriously, how often does that happen anymore?”

“So I’m just supposed to say yes to any chick who flirts with me? For all I know, this could be some kind of joke. I’ve had girls in high school joke around like this all the time. I know a faker when I see one,” said Billy.

“This ain’t high school anymore, Billy-Boy,” said Dottie as she tucked Mia’s business card in his vest pocket. “This is college. She’s in her twenties, just like you and me. You really think she would go up to just anybody and waste their time like that? She’s too old for that shit. You’ve got something that others don’t.”

Billy laughed sarcastically and waved Dottie’s talking points off with his hand. “Please, Dottie, I’ve got absolutely nothing. I’m a super nerd who works at a college library. It doesn’t get anymore uncool than that.”

“Uncool? Really?” asked Dottie with raised eyebrows. “Yeah, you really are stuck in high school if you’re talking like that, honey. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, my friend. If you don’t want to date her, that’s fine. Just don’t yammer on about the second prom out loud to the customers. You’re scaring them off like a bus stop psychopath.” Dottie walked away and left Billy to contemplate her arguments.

The librarian tucked his face in his hand and shook his head. The embarrassment was killing him like snake poison flowing through his veins. Any more of this psycho babble and he was out of a job. What if this Mia Rodriguez really was the last opportunity for him? Was it that easy this entire time? His mind blazed through a whole rolodex of girls he could have asked on dates when he was in high school. The cheerleaders, the geeks, the sweethearts, each and every one of them had fallen away from his grasp. The images of them flipping their hair and pursing their lips forced a single tear to build up in his eye.

“Excuse me! Hey! Hello!” shouted an impatient customer, which snapped Billy out of his trance and put him in apologetic mode once again. That was the difference between Mia Rodriguez and everybody else who checked out books here: harshness wouldn’t even cross her mind. Even if she was being disingenuous, it was better than the grating voice of a three hundred pound frat boy staring down at him like a bear waiting for his next meal.

Nightfall descended upon the college town and Billy’s shift was thankfully over. Somehow, the thoughts of Mia flirting with him so openly got him through a tough work day. He actually smiled and chuckled as he exited the building. How long as it been since even a hint of happiness crossed his face? He had to stop by the florist and pick up a bouquet of roses. He had to stop by her apartment. It really was his last chance and damn it, he wasn’t going to let it pass him by! He picked up the pace in the parking lot and hurried to his respective destinations.

The dashboard clock read 7:30 and Billy drove over to Mia’s apartment in record time. He wondered about the shoddy conditions of the building. The wood splintered and the paint peeled. Plus, there was a neon green swear word spray painted on the walls. Maybe Mia secretly needed a gentleman like Billy to take her away from this horrifying place. Whoever said romance novels weren’t real had never felt the beautiful rhythm in Billy’s heart before. With flowers in hand, he exited his Prius and ascended the stairs to her apartment.

He knocked on the door and Mia told him to come in. The interior of the apartment looked much lovelier than the exterior, or it could have been the angelic glow of lava lamps placed every which way. Or maybe it could have been Mia’s wide smile that could have brought the toughest men to their knees. “You brought flowers! Don’t just stand out there! Come on in, sugar-booger!”

The two would-be dates for the second chance prom met in the center of the room and hugged tightly, Mia’s high heeled feet lifting off the ground. She kissed his forehead and said, “See? I knew you wouldn’t be in that trance forever!”

Except Billy was in a trance now. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Mia’s brown beauties. This is what second chances looked like. This is what happy endings felt like. This is what…gang initiations looked like? His lustful trance morphed into a frown of fear when Billy found himself surrounded by Mexican gangsters in basketball jerseys with tattoos running up and down their arms. “Mia…I trusted you…” he whispered with quivering lips.

“I know you did, honey,” said Mia with fake sympathy. “But if you came here looking to lose your virginity, you can still do that. Isn’t that right, boys?”

The gangsters all unzipped their jean flies and chuckled evilly at Billy while one of them closed the front door and bolted it shut. Mia backed away and Billy could feel tears welling up in his eyes. He kept mouthing the word, “Why?” without having a powerful enough voice to speak it.

One of the gangsters said, “That’s right, buddy, you keep moving those lips. You’re going to need them! Open wide, sweetheart! It’s initiation time, bitch!” The gang bangers circled around Billy and wrestled him to the ground, already proving that broken hearts and loneliness were better than broken bodies and mind-numbing trauma. He screamed like Mia would have done in a similar situation, but she just laughed it off while the gangsters had their way with Billy.

By the end of this night, a group of thugs would earn their stripes and a victimized librarian would lose his mind, his soul, and his cherry all in one night. Tears flowed more violently than the blood in his mouth and asshole. If something was too good to be true, it probably was. Billy had lied to himself this whole time and that was a more vicious lie than anything Mia could have spun up.

Beefcake

Sergeant Corey Jakes had seen a lot of shit overseas and still saw it during the cab ride to her apartment. Still dressed in camouflage fatigues with her raven hair in a bun, she stared blankly out of the shotgun window with visions of war cycling through her head. Every bullet she fired, every mine her squad mates stepped on, every drone bombing marked as “friendly fire”, she couldn’t wait to have this horrible shit erased from her memory.

A long process it may be, she knew she had the support of her green-haired boyfriend “Froggy” McKee. From all the times they Skyped together, his eyelids were baggy and his face was longer than the Nile River, probably just as wet too. Corey hated leaving him for such long periods of time, but the life of a soldier didn’t discriminate when it came to who fought on the frontlines.

She stared into space for so long that the taxi driver had to snap his fingers several times to wake her up. “We’re here, Miss Jakes. That’ll be twenty dollars and sixty cents,” he said as he stopped the meter.

Corey pulled a twenty and ten out of her wallet and languidly said, “Keep the change.” The cab driver thanked her with a shit-eating grin on his face before popping the trunk and allowing his passenger to get her duffle bag.  The marine absentmindedly waved goodbye and the taxi drove away.

She stared at the apartment complex for a while and took several deep breaths before ascending the stairs to room B22. Would Froggy even recognize her after everything she went through? Would she open the door and find him with another woman? Would he even be alive? On one hand, the excitement of seeing her supportive boyfriend again sent chills through her scalp. On the other, her heart raced for reasons other than traumatic visions.

Sergeant Jakes wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and entered the unlocked apartment declaring, “Honey, I’m home!” The next words out of her mouth were anything but loving: “What the fuck?!”

Froggy recognized Corey just fine, but Corey didn’t recognize him in return. One tour of duty later and Froggy’s newly round stomach bulged out of his sweatpants and T-shirt. His chubby cheeks sagged and his spiky green hair was all over the place. In one hand was a big ass brick of cheddar cheese and in the other was a Diet Mountain Dew (as if the so-called zero calories was going to save him now).

His breathing was labored and intense, like he was trying to suck down a whirlwind full of air. BO radiated off of his armpits like a plutonium rod. The state of the apartment wasn’t any better with pizza boxes and chip wrappers scattered about. There was even an ash try on the coffee table when Froggy didn’t even consider smoking before.

Corey scrunched her face into a warrior’s mug when she angrily whispered, “What the hell happened to you, Froggy? I go away for a few months and this is what you do to yourself?! Weren’t you the one who encouraged me to lose weight before I signed up for the marines? Huh?! Does that shit mean nothing to you now?!”

Froggy struggled to get up from the couch and grunted in pain when he made it to his feet, stretching his back in the process. “It’s nice to see you too, Corey. It would have been nice to see you more often, but you know…Murica and all that.”

“So that’s it, huh?” said Corey as she dropped her duffle bag on the ground. “You ate all this disgusting food and gained all this weight because you were lonely? How do you think I felt?! After a while of losing my friends in combat, I got a little lonely too! That’s kind of what happens when terrorists are firing bullets at you!”

“Nobody forced you to go over there, Corey!” shouted Froggy before coughing and wheezing. A few more labored breaths later, he said, “You’re damn right I got depressed without you. You think I’m in bad shape now, imagine what the fuck would have happened if you came home in a casket.”

“So you want to be in a casket too?” snapped Corey. “You want to take away the one person I have to come home to because you’re too lazy to go to a gym? That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard in my life! I hope that brick of cheese was tasty! I hope it was damn good! I hope chewing on that lump of fat made you happy! You don’t look so happy now, do you?! You look like a giant sack of protoplasm! You look like three hundred pounds of chewed bubblegum!”

“Cut the drill sergeant shit, that’s not going to work!” shouted Froggy, again coughing after his outburst. “You want to body shame me? You want to make me feel guilty? Fine! Then go back overseas and shoot some more brown people! Apparently, those squad mates of yours are better friends to you than I ever was! Never mind the fact that I paid your bills and bought you groceries when you were down on your luck without ever once raising my voice! Now you’re going to pull rank on me with that macho marine crops BS?! After everything I’ve done for you?! You’re a hypocrite! You’re a fucking hypocrite, Corey!”

The marine marched up to her boyfriend, flipped the coffee table over, and knocked the cheese and soda out of his hand with brute force. “Do I have your attention now?! Huh?!” No answer, only jitters. “You think this is body shaming?! I could have said a lot worse to you right now! Hell, I’ve said worse shit to the guys I trained in boot camp! If they can take it, you can too! Don’t like it?! Tough shit! I’m not going to stand here and watch you waste away just because you went without me for a little bit of time! I fight like a motherfucker for that reason, Froggy! Every bullet I fire on that battlefield is so I can come home to you in one piece and hopefully spend the rest of my life with you! But now…I don’t even recognize you anymore!”

Froggy pulled Corey closer with her shirt firmly death-gripped in his sausage fingers. He gazed angrily into her soul, as if his chubby belly was full of fire and venom instead of cheddar cheese and soda. Corey’s own stoic gaze refused to change at the threat of this newfound aggression. The marine had left one war and came home to another, neither time would she relent or cower. In fact, she coldly said to her boyfriend, “Take your fucking hands off of me right now or you’re a dead son of a bitch.”

Froggy would release his grip, but only because his hands found a new place: his chest. He coughed and wheezed some more, but this time he plopped backwards onto the couch and had glassy eyes. “Froggy, are you okay?!” asked Corey with genuine concern instead of macho marine BS as her boyfriend called it earlier. He wouldn’t answer her question, only cough violently again. And again. And again, until he had slipped into unconsciousness and fell off the couch with a thud. Corey went back into war mode and scrambled to find her cell phone to call 9-1-1.

Corey Jakes’s recollection of the ambulance ride to the hospital was as blurry as the taxi ride home. The visions of war tormented her even further, now with visions of her aggression towards Froggy piled on top. She kept imagining pulling the trigger at the enemy, but Froggy’s ghost always got in the line of fire and his blood smeared the desert ground. A tear rolled down her stony face as she contemplated why she ever thought it was a good idea to push Froggy over the edge. Why did she push all of her students over the edge as well? Why did she survive when others didn’t? Another tear rolled down, but she wouldn’t acknowledge it, not even to the paramedics pointing it out to her.

The marine sat in the hospital lobby with her head tucked in her hands wondering where the hell it all went wrong. Was she selfish for going overseas? Would it matter where she went in the first place? Could she save everybody with her marine training alone? So many questions swirled through her mind along with images of blood and gore from her tour of duty. Every time she thought she had the answers, a leg would blow apart, a head would burst open, a marine would scream in agony, and Froggy would be left behind all the same.

Corey once again had to be snapped out of her trance to receive the news from the blood-covered surgeon. “I’m sorry, Miss Jakes. Your boyfriend didn’t make it.” Tears flooded her eyes like a river of sorrow no matter how hard she tried to remain stoic and strong. The tears poured even harder when the surgeon gave her a small velvet box and said, “I found this in his pants pocket. I thought you might want to have it.”

The marine’s heart beat like a war drum as she slowly opened the velvet box to find the greatest treasure of them all inside: a diamond ring with a golden band. It sparkled as brightly as stars in the night. Corey clutched the wedding ring in her hand and completely lost any last ounce of stoicism she had left. She plopped back on the bench and allowed her tears to rain down with heavy force.

Froggy had shown her kindness and love in the past and she believed she had repaid him with harshness and evil. Being at war overseas was very different from being at war with a lover. Corey couldn’t separate the two and it killed her deep inside like she had taken the bullets herself. How liberating would a bullet be for her at this point? Maybe the next tour of duty she had would be her last. She had nothing else to fight for and nobody else to fight with. But if she was going down in a suicide mission, she would go down swinging. Once a marine, always a marine. Once a lover, now an empty shell.

The Audiomancer

Fully automatic pistol? Check. Blue trench coat? Check. Badass shades? Check. Nasty attitude? Double check. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, Edge Spider whistled a playful tune as he ascended the busted-up wooden stairs of the Neon Neighborhood Apartments. Through the mirrored shades resting underneath his afro do, he glared at the janitor at the top of the stairs, an old man in gray overalls mopping the floors. Edge reached the second floor and the elderly custodian never took his scowling eyes off of the cybernetic thug.

“Dude, what the fuck you lookin’ at, old man? I’ll kick your ass if you don’t take them eyes off of me! Keep mopping that dirt and don’t pay me no mind, bitch! Jesus!” threatened Edge as he scurried down the hallway to the apartment of his choice. He never turned around to see if the janitor was still glaring at him. All of his attention was on the number on the scratched up wooden door in front of him: 4B. “That’s the one.”

Edge knocked on the door several times and said, “Hey, Lisa! Come on, baby girl, open the goddamn door!” No reply. He knocked even harder this time and said, “Open the door, bitch! I ain’t got all day!” Still no answer. He then pulled a small wire from his trench coat pocket and fiddled with the lock until he heard a click. He chuckled to himself and said, “Bitch, you’re making this too easy.”

With one harsh swing of the door, Edge burst inside the shabby apartment and yelled, “Here’s Johnny!” in a prolonged voice. Not even the gangster’s obnoxious tone was enough to awaken Sgt. Lisa Baker, who sat hunched over at her computer lightly snoring with thick headphones on her ears. “Damn, that must have been some powerful shit.”

Shutting the door behind him with a loud thud wasn’t enough to startle Lisa, but slapping her in the back of the head and knocking her headphones over was. The blond ex-marine in a ratty pink bathrobe held the back of her head while stretching her sleepiness out with her other arm.

“Wakey, wakey! Eggs and bacey! Rise and shine! It’s breakfast time!” said Edge in a quasi-playful tone.

“Hey, Edge. How’s it going?” said Lisa in a languid, zonked out voice.

“Well, babe, I wish I could say things were going great, but they ain’t. I’ve been lookin’ at my bank account today and it’s getting pretty damn low. That might have something to do with you being late on those payments. So where’s my money, bitch? You obviously love them audio files I gave to you. Now you gotta pay for them sum-bitches,” said Edge while hovering over her.

“Listen, man,” said Lisa as he rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes. “Those files have done wonders for my PTSD. I’m grateful to have them, I really am. But I’m having a hard time coming up with money, okay? Ever since I came back from the war, I had a hard time finding work. Just give me a few more weeks and you’ll get your money.”

Placing a hand on Sgt. Baker’s shoulder, Edge said in a sarcastically comforting tone, “Okay, baby girl. I’ll give you a few more weeks. And then I’ll give you a few more weeks after that, a few more weeks after that, and a few more weeks after that. I could give you enough time for me to be in a fucking nursing home and I still wouldn’t get my money. Them audio files are making you lazy, bitch. You know how I feel about lazy people.”

His feelings were confirmed when Lisa’s head drooped over and she fell asleep again. “Oh, no, you didn’t. I know you didn’t just fall asleep on me.” The marine’s response was even heavier snoring than before. Edge gritted his teeth, grabbed Lisa by her shoulders, and tossed her across the room, all while yelling, “Wake up, asshole!”

The soldier slowly stirred from her slumber and gazed up at Edge with foggy eyes and a crooked smile. “Hey there, big boy. What can I do for you today?”

“Oh, you know damn well what you’re going to do for me! You’re going to break out that checkbook and give me what I came here for! If I have to throw your ass out the window, I’ll fucking do it! I’m telling you, you’re hooked on them audio drugs! I’m cutting your ass off until I get my money!” shouted Edge while pointing an accusatory finger at his victim.

Lisa made a flat tire noise and torpidly said, “Audio drugs? Babe, that wasn’t an audio drug I was listening to.”

“Oh, don’t gimme that bullshit! You was snoozing like a lazy little dog! I saw you myself!” snapped Edge. For full proof, he put the headphones on for a quick listen. His pissed off expression softened as he announced, “This ain’t no audio drug. This is just some new age piano shit.” He threw the headphones across the room and yelled, “Where the hell are my audio drugs, bitch?!”

Lisa’s laughter suggested that she was never tired to begin with as it was full of energy and gusto. When asked what she was laughing about, she said, “Word of advice, Edge Spider, if that is your real name: when you give painful audio drugs to complete strangers, do a better job of wiping your personal data off of them. Then again, it’s not really your fault, is it? You did everything you could. It’s just that my team was better!”

“Team? What’s all this about a team?” asked Edge before his confused expression turned into a full-on quivering lip. “You ain’t no marine with Pussy-Traumatic Stress Disorder! You’re a cop! You set my ass up!”

“I sure did,” revealed Lisa. “Somebody had to do something about those audio files crushing people’s brains. You’re no healer. You’re just a common scumbag drug dealer, Edge. Every file you gave me has been uploaded to the police database. If I were you, I’d run like the wind.”

Instead of taking that wise advice, Edge chuckled evilly, pulled his automatic pistol from his pocket, and aimed the Freudian weapon at Lisa with a cocked barrel. “They ain’t gonna take me if I have a hostage. You look important enough to them folks at the po-po station. So come on, baby girl: on your feet. Put them silky smooth hands of yours behind your pretty little head.”

Lisa did as she was told, but did so with a wicked grin of her own. “Okay, sweet cheeks. You win!” She pulled a knife from her thick hair and threw it with a blinding quickness at Edge’s gun, shattering the weapon into pieces.

At first the gangster looked down at the metal parts with fright, but then threw his arms in the air and smiled as he said, “Nah, nah, nah, cutie pie. You’re the one who wins this time.” In one swift motion, Edge threw a roundhouse kick at Lisa’s face, spinning her around in the air before she tumbled onto her shag carpet floor. Edge yelled, “I ain’t gonna spend my life in no federal prison! Fuck this shit, I’m outta here!”

Just when Lisa was stirring, Edge booted down the apartment door and sped down the hallway with every ounce of athleticism he possessed. The janitor was still glaring at him with viper-like eyes. “Damn, dude! The hell’s wrong with yo ass?!” shouted Edge as he shoved the janitor out of the way. It seemed like he would have a clear path to freedom with an empty lobby and an empty stairwell.

And then the drug dealer felt something hook his ankle, causing him to roll down the stairs and bang his body on every sharp corner of the stairs. By the time he reached the lobby, he was holding his ribs and head while whining in pain. Some of his blood painted the stairs and the railing on the way down.

Once his vision cleared up, Edge looked at the top of the stairs to see that the old man had a hook at the end of his mop before he concealed it again like a switchblade. Lisa held her bruised face as she joined the janitor, who then hugged her and asked, “Are you alright, Baker?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for the assist, Private. I’ll put in a good word for you at the station and we’ll see about getting you that promotion you’ve always wanted,” said Lisa. She looked down at the battered and broken gangster and said, “Here’s another piece of free advice, shit-head: treat the janitor with the same respect you give to the CEO.”

Edge spit out a wad of blood in a poor attempt to hit either Lisa or the undercover cop. “He ain’t no motherfucking janitor! Goddamn you two!”

The two cops trudged downstairs while the “janitor” ripped his wrinkly skin off to prove that he was actually a lot younger than his character suggested. Lisa rolled Edge on his stomach before cuffing his hands behind his back. “Edge Spider, I still don’t know if that’s your real name, but you’re under arrest for distributing illegal audio files. You have the right to legal counsel, which you’ll probably need since you can’t put together a decent sentence yourself.”

The Cryomancer

Olivia Snow could feel the frozen energy surging through her body. A cool breeze blew past her and little snowflakes were descending upon her. To this elf wizard dressed in black ninja gear, this form of magic was known as cryomancy. She had spent tireless years perfecting this beautiful, yet deadly art. With the eight-foot tall fat-ass obnoxious ogre standing in front of her with a bloody smile on his face, Olivia knew she had to be ready to use it at a moment’s notice.

The ogre swung its mighty club down upon Olivia, but the elf cartwheeled out of the way and allowed the heavy weapon to create a spider web crack in the stone ground. The ogre continued to swing with wild rage and unquenchable bloodlust, smashing down trees all in the name of trying to hit this swift ice maiden. She flipped and flopped away from every powerful strike.

When it was her turn to strike, she extended her fingertips and blasted the gigantic weapon with an icy mist. The weapon went from being a gigantic popsicle to diamond dust as it shattered after the ogre dropped it. The monstrous warrior flexed his muscles and roared to the sky in his loudest voice.

Olivia shook her head no at the raving beast and blasted him with a gigantic glacial spike, piercing him through his black heart. Even then the ogre was able to rip out the spike and scream in fury some more. Even though he was bleeding profusely from his chest, he yelled out, “Is that the best you’ve got, woman?! You’re a dead bitch!”

The ogre stampeded his way toward the now vulnerable cryomancer, creating impressions and craters in the ground with every thunderous step. Olivia flipped backwards onto a treetop and rained down smaller glacial spikes upon her opponent. This time he bled even more profusely and his tough guy mentality couldn’t save him from becoming a limp and lifeless corpse on the ground. Once the ogre hit the floor and his blood splattered everywhere, his body crumbled into snowflakes and the wind blew him away.

Olivia Snow sat down on the tree branch and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She was so exhausted that she could have fallen asleep in that tree. And then the familiar pounding footsteps rang out across the forest and the elf wizard opened her dreary eyes to see at least five more of these hideous ogres lusting for her death. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she said to herself. She even stood up on the tree branch and yelled to the sky, “Julian, what the hell is wrong with you! Give me a goddamn break!”

In a small apartment in Hollywood, California, Julian Kane took a break from writing his epic screenplay at the computer and asked, “Did that bitch really just talk to me?” He tried to shake off the tiredness in his eyes and even slapped his own face for good measure. The harder the screenwriter tried to wake up, the more he slacked backwards and snored.

After letting out a ferocious yawn, the scraggly haired and pajama-dressed Julian dragged himself out of his seat and headed toward the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. He looked blurrily at the clock on the stove and said, “No fucking way” when he realized he had been writing and editing that script from the early morning to the dark of night.

He would have gladly gone to bed if it wasn’t for the fact that this movie script was due tomorrow morning at the director’s office. Instead he made his pot of coffee like he set out to do. When he poured it in a cup and tried to drink it however, it was colder than a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. It even triggered sensitivities in his teeth. “Goddamn, man, I need to get to bed,” Julian said to himself. He absentmindedly threw the cold coffee into the sink and shattered his mug.

Mr. Kane got to his bedroom doorway and sobbed to himself when he realized he couldn’t go to bed until his movie script was finished. What broke him out of his sobbing spell was looking out the window and seeing a snowstorm outside. That’s right: a snowstorm in Hollywood, California in June. “What the fuck is going on here?” he said.

Julian trudged back to his computer to put the finishing touches on his masterpiece. He heard a familiar feminine voice ask him, “Do you really think pitting that many ogres against me will make me the strong feminine hero everybody wants to see? There’s a difference between paying your dues and being screwed over. Nobody will want to watch this movie.”

“Jesus, lady, what the fuck do you know about screenwriting? It’s an art form. Besides, if you beat all those ogres, I’m sure…” Julian’s dialogue was cut off by him chattering his teeth. “Goddamn, it’s cold in here.”

“Yes, Julian, I agree. I am after all a cryomancer. That is what your movie will eventually be called, right? How do you think it’s going to do at the box office if I somehow get a fluke victory in an fight a clearly can’t win? All the ice magic in the world isn’t going to save me from getting stepped on or pounded into the ground. Then again, what kind of a hero would I be if I could just the entire world’s population into ice cream sandwiches?”

Julian formed a confused look on his face and asked, “Wait a minute, why am I talking to my own character? You’re not even real. Besides, you don’t get to question me and my decision making. You’re a character. You do what you’re told and that’s it!”

One of the windows in his apartment shattered and snow began covering his carpeted floor. Julian Kane looked on with saucer-like eyes and a trembling jaw. “No! This isn’t real! There’s no such thing as cryomancy! It’s all bullshit! You hear that, Olivia? You’re no different from Pinocchio or the Three Little Pigs! You’re a cartoon and nothing more!”

His front door was the next thing to burst open and the snowstorm followed, turning the entire apartment into a winter wonderland. Standing in the doorway with glowing blue eyes, black ninja garb, and blue energy forming at her fingertips was none other than Olivia Snow. She pointed at the convulsing Julian and said, “You’re no screenwriter and you will not be the author to my pain!”

From her fingertips, she shot a tightly-packed snowball and pinged Julian in his stomach, causing him to double over and clutch his wound. Another snowball flew his direction and hit him in the shoulder. Another came and hit him in the leg. The final blow was smack dab in the middle of his forehead, which caused him to flip around and land flat on his back. His breathing was shallow and his vision was fading.

Olivia knelt down beside his victim and whispered in his ear, “You’re the hero of my screenplay now. If you can get through this, you can get through anything. So what are you going to do about all of this? Are you going to pay your dues or are you going to break like a little bitch?” The elf bit down hard on Julian’s earlobe and drew blood.

That was the sharp pain that awakened the screenwriter from his dream while hunched over his keyboard. Julian’s neck and back were sore from the awkward sleeping position and his eyes were blurry as he tried to read his computer screen. “Screw the director. I’m going to bed. This is bullshit.”

Julian stood up and fished around in his pajama pocket for his smart phone. As soon as his eyes adjusted, he speed dialed the number for his director. He wasn’t picking up, so the screenwriter left a zombie-like message. “Hey. It’s Julian Kane. Listen, I’m not going to be able to get you the script for The Cryomancer tomorrow. I’ve been exhausted lately trying to figure out my own plot holes and shit. Well, that and doing all of these media tours you keep booking me for. I’m going to bed for the evening. You’ll get your movie script in a couple of days, maybe even a week. If you don’t like the timetable, then quit exhausting the shit out of me. Bye!”

Mr. Kane tossed his smart phone on the couch and did his zombie walk back to his bedroom. He didn’t bother brushing his teeth or taking his medication. He just plopped on the bed and covered himself up.

He felt an icy hand on his shoulder and a gentle whisper in his ear from a familiar feminine voice. “You made the right decision, honey.”

“You’re damn right I did. Wait a minute, what?” said Julian as he flipped over to see who was in his bed. It was nobody. His mind was playing tricks on him again even when he agreed to go to sleep. He tiredly laughed it off and covered up his head. He snored and drooled like a tranquilized animal, though he kept wondering why his ear was scarring over and why there was blood on his pillow.

The snow continued to fall over the magical city of Hollywood. Magic? What kind of magic? It wouldn’t happen to be cryomancy, would it?