A History of Violence...Against Internet Trolls

 

Deathbringer (Trigger Warning: Child Abuse)

VERSE 1

Your son got a C in his Bible Studies class

So you took your leather belt and you bloodied up his ass

Told him he was worthless and he’s burning in hell

There’s more blood to shed if he finds a cop to tell

Damn right there’s more bloodshed, but now it’s yours

‘Cause he found your nine-millimeter in your chest of drawers

A tool of destruction used in overseas wars

BANG-BANG! Now the maid’s got some extra laundry chores

 

CHORUS

Death to abusers! Death to the rapists!

Death to conformists! You’ll learn to hate this!

Life isn’t precious when you take theirs away!

Here comes the Deathbringer, it’s Judgment Day!

 

VERSE 2

Your trustworthy pastor grabbed your daughter’s legs

Because she wore a short skirt and was begging for sex

That’s your version of the story and you’re sticking to it

She had her chance to go to heaven, but she fucking blew it

There’s still hope for you to find out your fate

‘Cause now your tender baby has a reason to hate

Meet Jesus early, your vision became blurry

When she stabbed you in the throat, ended your life in a hurry

 

CHORUS

Death to abusers! Death to the rapists!

Death to conformists! You’ll learn to hate this!

Life isn’t precious when you take theirs away!

Here comes the Deathbringer, it’s Judgment Day!

 

VERSE 3

Those in power love to cry about the birthrate

So they outlaw abortion using anti-woman hate

The real headline isn’t guys not getting laid

It’s the bounties on their heads finally being paid

Wanted dead or alive, but not so much the latter

Bash rapists’ skulls and enjoy the blood splatter

Cut off their wangs, cock the pistol, BANG-BANG!

It’s too late to negotiate, abusers must hang!

 

CHORUS

Death to abusers! Death to the rapists!

Death to conformists! You’ll learn to hate this!

Life isn’t precious when you take theirs away!

Here comes the Deathbringer, it’s Judgment Day!

 

OUTRO

Are you offended? Are you pissed?

So am I, because of what you did!

Are you a censor? Brainwasher?

That’s good, I’ll hold your head under water!

Thou Shalt Not Kill no longer applies

Every time the innocent always fucking dies!

It’s too late to rehabilitate

Here’s a bullet or two, how ‘bout I fire eight?!

Caleb Rosales, Carpenter and Concerned Neighbor from "Virtuous"

 

Brett Markoff, Father of the Year from "My Favorite Magazine"

 

Revenge Against the Innocent

VERSE 1

Getting laid off at work makes you go berserk

And then a minor inconvenience turns you into a jerk

A tender voice says, “Daddy?”, you scream, “WHAT?!”

Call your daughter every slur from bitch to slut

She runs to bed crying while your self-esteem is dying

Nobody’s on your side, they had no choice but to hide

A raging ball of fire launched from the depths of hell

Leaves your heart seizing up and no one to wish you well

 

CHORUS

Revenge against the innocent, it sounds so ignorant

They committed no crimes, yet they’re on borrowed time

Before a nervous breakdown or a violent takedown

Revenge against the innocent, you’re absurd and insolent

 

VERSE 2

Your nuclear family had a nuclear explosion

Of every single tearful and screaming emotion

Hey, don’t complain, you’re the one who pressed the button

You always had the launch codes, so keep on truckin’

Couldn’t pay for therapy with a bleeding bank account

Inflation raised the price to a ridiculous amount

Credit cards can’t help, lenders hand you the shovel

And you can’t say, “I’m sorry” with an invisible muzzle

 

CHORUS

Revenge against the innocent, it sounds so ignorant

They committed no crimes, yet they’re on borrowed time

Before a nervous breakdown or a violent takedown

Revenge against the innocent, you’re absurd and insolent

 

VERSE 3

Fifty-one-fifty, free room and board

And all the cigarettes you could possibly hoard

I’m making this place sound just like a prison

But you know damn well they’ve got the same system

Seventy-two hours without a warm shower

Piss and moan all you want, but there’s no people-power

Your daughter’s grown up and got her own wedding flowers

She broke the cycle, her love is stronger than a tower

 

OUTRO

This could have been avoided, nulled, and voided

If you didn’t let your anger turn into a Big Banger

Cosmic explosion that pissed off the universe

Now you’ve got no ride home except the back of a hearse

Jake "The Snake" Roberts vs. Christian Cage

 

Black Tar Kiss, Prologue

Living in Sweetwater was like going to a Five Finger Death Punch concert every day for the rest of my life, but there was no heavy metal and no mosh pit, just beer cans, Trump signs, shotgun shells, and idiots who put those things there in the first place. Not a lot of opportunities for a kid like me. Like any small rural town, it was a whole lot of nothing for miles and miles and miles. Maybe some grass here and there, maybe a few cow pies to make my nostrils bleed, and that was about it. My 18^th birthday, joyless and festive as it was bound to be, was only a month away, but my father gave me the best gift I could ever ask for and it wasn’t even on my list: a reason to leave him and this god-awful town behind.

 

There I was walking down that lonely road with a Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt on my back, some blue jeans on my ass, and my whole life packed into a garbage bag slung over my shoulder. I didn’t even bother bringing a suitcase, not that we could afford such fancy things. Just a trash bag for a piece of white trash. How appropriate. I had a gorgon death stare on my face the entire time I was walking. I wasn’t even the least bit concerned about the sores on my feet or the achiness in my legs. Something else of mine was hurting a hell of a lot more than that: my broken spirit.

 

My mom left us when I wasn’t even old enough to be in the double digits. Too much drinking, too many drugs, and neither me nor my father wanted to deal with her anymore, so she up and left. You’d think that’d be the end of the drama, but my relationship with my dad wasn’t much better. He was a yeller, that’s for sure. I probably would be too if I married a woman like that. Or it could have been a generational thing. Either way, when he yelled at me for the slightest inconvenience, I drifted apart from him. To his credit, he never slapped me or spanked me with a belt like other fathers in my town would have done to their kids. But I guess that’s where the Five Finger Death Punch analogy comes into play: lots of screaming, lots of noise, and lots of BS. I’m surprised my ears didn’t bleed like faucets after one of his fits of rage.

 

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, I never wanted to see him again, but he sure wanted to see me another time or two. In fact, he was so desperate for a verbal sparring partner that I heard his truck engine gurgling and burping not too far from where I was walking. I’d know that truck anywhere. Didn’t smell great either. For a guy who fixes cars for a living, he didn’t have much time for his own truck. Definitely needed a tune-up. I probably would have had to beg him to tune it up before one of us died from lung cancer. That truck engine got louder and louder, but I just kept walking. As far as I was concerned, the engine and his voice were every bit as obnoxious as each other.

 

Wasn’t nearly as bad as that horn was, though. He blasted it a few times to try to jolt me out of my pissed off stupor. I didn’t budge at all. Kept walking. He blasted it some more like he was in a jazz band, or maybe Five Finger Death Punch got themselves a saxophone player. I still didn’t turn around to face him. Then he called my name in a way I’ve heard many times before. “Elijah! Get your ass back here!” He honked again. “Elijah! Move it! Come on, buddy, let’s go!” I didn’t give two damns and just kept walking. He honked one more time. “Elijah! Get your ass in the car, now!”

 

“Yeah, Dogmeat, get your ass in the car! He didn’t say which one, though.” And there he was, parked in a silver corvette off the side of the road, which had like a dozen key scratches on it, probably to reduce its value and make it easier to buy. Or it was stolen from the rich folk in Bull Rope, I’ll never know. That would be White Snake sitting in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t an actual member of the hair metal band, but he did have that long black hair, sunglasses, and leather jacket that would make you believe otherwise. The closest he ever got to playing an instrument was beating rival incel gangsters like a drum, as you could see from the redness on his knuckles.

 

Riding shotgun with him was Scar Tissue. With that spiky haircut, milk bottle skin, and 70’s porn star moustache, you wouldn’t believe this guy was Latino. But if he had been anything other than milky white, White Snake would have booted his ass a long time ago. I guess he just liked having a guy around who could translate Spanish for him and occasionally curse at other gangsters in his native tongue. It was pretty damn entertaining watching him rundown some poor bastard with words I wouldn’t know if my C+ in Espanol classes was anything to go by. I knew a few words, but I could never hold a full conversation. His English was topnotch, though, so I wasn’t worried about it.

 

“Dogmeat? That’s what you want to be called now? Dogmeat? What are you, stupid?” Fair question coming from my dad, but I was in no mood to entertain the thought of getting in his truck.

 

“Yeah, you’re clearly daddy of the year calling him Elijah. That 2,000-year-old fantasy novel ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on, my guy. And that church you go to every Sunday would be better off as a Mickey D’s. The food’s about as fake as the stories in that god awful book.” White Snake wasn’t one to hold back and I already loved him for it. Naturally, I started gravitating toward the corvette with a million scratches on it.

 

But of course, this conversation wouldn’t be complete if my dad didn’t honk the ear-piercing horn one more time. “Elijah, if you get into that goddamn car, you’re making the biggest mistake of your life, son! You think these high school dropouts care about you? You think these losers are your friends? You’re better than this, damn it!”

 

I stopped in my tracks and looked back at him with some sad ass eyes, like I was about to see the light. But then again, people who stare at the eclipse with no shades on see the light and look what happened to them. “Sorry, Dad.” I told him. “Your mouth got you into trouble for the last time. Goodbye, old man.”

 

To the Beethoven-like symphony of my dad honking his horn and cursing at the top of his lungs despite being a good Christian boy, I ignored all of it, and got in the backseat of the corvette. I threw my trash bag of this and that onto the adjacent seat and gave him one last sad-ass look before White Snake and Scar Tissue hooted and hollered in excitement. White Snake stepped on the acceleration and those screeching tires were more heavenly on my ears than my screeching dad’s voice. Off we go into the night without a second thought. Why would I need a second thought? It was the easiest decision of my life walking away from Sweetwater.

 

For the next three months, one of which my 18^th birthday passed without a hitch, I would be a full-fledged member of Black Tar Kiss, an incel gang who fought other incel gangs for the rarest resource of all: the love of some chick with a huge…huge…HUGE…Twitch following. And if she or any other Stacy didn’t want to give us that love, we would take it with both hands, which didn’t sound like a figure of speech to me at that point. It all sounded so exciting even though the first three months was basically a trial period to see if me and Scar Tissue were good enough. Mostly grunt work and white-collar stuff, some wheeling and dealing, and maybe some training in an abandoned building that was great for squatting, both the homestead and gym rat kind.

 

But after that three month grace period, the three of us were on our way for the biggest battle of our lives: a fracas with Me Encanta Femicidio at Battleground Park. The real excitement was about to begin. But if I’m keeping it a hundred with you all, any excitement I felt during that grace period was starting to feel like homesickness. Yeah, my dad was the only stable environment I’ve ever been a part of. Yeah, he was louder than a heavy metal band who tried WAY too hard to suck up to the troops while using a brass knuckle microphone. But when he told me that joining Black Tar Kiss would be the biggest mistake of my life…he wasn’t joking. If looking at beer cans and Trump signs on the side of a Sweetwater road was enough to make me miserable, hanging around with White Snake was a hell of a lot worse…

Welcome to the World, Gunther Golan

VERSE 1

After nine months of tummies being swollen

Welcome to the world, Gunther Golan

Can’t find your momma? Neither can I

Like a broken resolution, kiss her goodbye

Even I don’t know how you came to me

Must have been a night of drunken misery

But I can’t stand the taste of Budweiser

Another drug kept me from being the wiser

VERSE 2

Sorry for the disappointment, my little guy

Don’t have the patience or money to raise you right

Only resource I have is a life full of baggage

Potential turned to shit like eating too much cabbage

I could get a nice job flipping other people’s burgers

But that won’t offset all my fantasies of murder

Even if I had a million dollars in my bank

The screams still grated, the diapers still stank

VERSE 3

I can’t afford a car to drive you to school

So they give you D’s and C’s and label you a fool

Only option for you is to join the military

Where survivor’s guilt is their burden to carry

Another piece of meat for the sausage grinder

Another statistic in the government binder

This could have been avoided with a simple abortion

But instead the system plotted all this extortion

VERSE 4

After all the trauma and the baby mamma drama

All I had to show was a check from Obama

That was years ago, time flies like a vulture

Makes meals of us all, it’s American culture

We all had dreams at one point or another

Maybe you dreamed of having your own brother

But your legacy ends here, Mr. Gunther Golan

An endless stream of shit like cancer in the colon

FINAL LINE

But I’d give anything to bring you back…

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

MOVIE TITLE: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

DIRECTOR: Marielle Heller

YEAR: 2019

GENRE: Drama

RATING: PG for violence

GRADE: Extra Credit

After watching this movie and having sore eyeballs as a result, I can say with a hundred percent conviction that the story is completely devoid of Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. On the contrary, imperfections can be found among every character, including Mr. Fred Rogers himself. He may be a kind and gentle soul in public as well as on TV, but even he admits that he makes mistakes every now and then. He too gets angry. He too feels sad. He too had a tumultuous childhood and married life. The only difference is, he’d rather use positivity and creative therapy as a conduit for his emotions, not violence and rage. It takes work to achieve this kind of attitude towards life. And yes, there are many bumps in the road. Tom Hanks, the actor who played Mr. Rogers, openly admitted to being terrified to play his role. He doesn’t have to be anymore, because he knocked it out of the park. He made me believe in the kindness of Mr. Rogers all over again, imperfections and all.

Lloyd Vogel, the journalist who is assigned to interview Mr. Rogers, has his own share of imperfections. He hates his father, he’s questioning himself as a parent, he’s wrapped up in his work and can’t be there for his family, and he’s stubborn about not wanting to interview a “hokey children’s show host”. To put it mildly, he’s got a lot of anger in his heart and won’t let anybody in. After many interviews with Mr. Rogers, his transformation into a loving and forgiving person becomes the basis for his character development. It’s a slow, distrustful, and heartbreaking transformation. He even shows glimpses of the father he hates so much. If you’re a big fan of character development, you’ll easily get behind Lloyd Vogel. When he cries, you cry. When he’s angry, you’re angry. When he triumphs, you’ll cheer for him. He makes awful decisions, but that doesn’t detract from him being a relatable protagonist.

You know who else has a lot of growing up to do? Jerry Vogel, Lloyd’s aforementioned jerk of a father. He mocks his son at the beginning of the movie and the two get physical over it (hence the PG rating for violence). Jerry slept around while the mother of the family was dying. He abandoned the family when they needed him the most. But it’s easy to tell that he’s a sleazebag from the minute he first appears on the screen. The rest of these revelations come naturally. But is he a redeemable character? Can he too go through a transformation and mend fences with his son? Yes, he’s a sleazebag, but if he was perfect and gallant all the time, there’d be no story and there’d be nothing to cheer for as the movie progresses. You like character development, right? You like slow transformations? You like redemption stories? Keep an eye on Jerry Vogel. Will your patience pay off? Watch the movie and find out.

As I mentioned before, my eyes got sore during the more emotional moments of this movie. None of it came across as cheesy. This was genuine emotion and nobody knew more about how to deal with our emotions than Fred Rogers himself. It takes time. It takes patience. But it’s worth it in the end. That’s what this movie means to me. That’s why this movie gets a solid five out of five stars. A perfect grade for a movie about imperfect people. It truly is a beautiful day in the neighborhood. There better be some award victories for this movie.

Butterscotch

The tear that burned Abby Cole’s purple and black eye was but a droplet in an ocean of sorrow and silence. Though she kept her head down as she walked hurriedly down the street, she was painfully aware of passersby staring at her wound. Whether it was in pity or disgust, she was too numb to figure out. Their stares made her feel like even more of an outcast than she already was. The difference between the gawking pedestrians and Daniel Park? Abby could easily forget the judgmental masses. After all, they weren’t the ones who threw the punch during school in the first place.

The more Daniel Park’s cold, demonic expression stained her mind, the more her colorful eye burned with pooling tears. His screams earlier that day were barely intelligible, but they were loud enough to leave her ears ringing. His fist was harder than a cinder block and almost put her into a permanent sleep. Getting rid of him would be an easy solution for the school administration, but it would imply that anybody cared. Judging from the cracked infrastructure and unwashed graffiti surrounding the school, the uncaring attitudes of those in charge were more obvious than the all-consuming wound across Abby’s face.

Abby couldn’t even think about anything else at that moment. If she tried to do math homework that evening, she would only be counting the pieces of her face she had to pick up. If she tried to do history homework, then she could justify putting so many violent wars in one textbook, hers chief among them. If she tried to write a poem, no words would come out, just like her current silence dictated. Forget A-pluses and scholarships. All she wanted to do was lie face down on her bed and drift into the darkness forever and ever.

She had passed a few neon signs in the street for barbecue joints and strip clubs and their obnoxious lights burned her eye as well. She couldn’t open it to full length no matter how hard she tried…until a little patch of fur came darting out of the alleyway. Nobody else was there to judge her and the tiny kitten. The cat stared up at Abby with pitiful eyes and let out a series of soft, high-pitched meows. His yellow and orange striped fur looked gentle enough to touch despite him being a street cat who no doubt had to fight for his food.

Abby’s smile was wide enough to burn her eye again, but this time she didn’t wince nor care. “Come on, little kitty!” she sweetly said while kneeling down on the ground and holding her hand out. “It’s okay, nobody’s going to hurt you. Are you lost? Do you need some snuggles and love?” The cat meowed at her some more before creeping up to her hand and jumping into her arms for a hug. He purred loudly in her ear while Abby stroked his velveteen fur. “I’m going to call you Butterscotch, because you’re sweet!”

Butterscotch licked Abby’s bruise with his rough tongue and caused some yellow leakage, but she didn’t mind as evidenced by her giggles and continued pettings. “You’re such a love bug!” she squealed to him. Forget laying in bed all night long. She could stay in these now empty streets for eternity if it meant loving and being loved by this tender creature. Butterscotch would never punch her in the face. He would never scream obscenities about pimping and prostitution. This kitty would never stare at Abby with evil eyes.

Daniel Park, on the other hand, didn’t mind doing those things at all. His familiar gruff voice could be heard clearing his throat and just like that, Butterscotch leapt out of Abby’s arms and hid behind a dustbin, leaving her with a mild scratch on her bare arm. Abby began to feel conscious about any other body part that could be easily revealed to Daniel. Her flannel skirt showed off her legs. Her high heeled shoes gave away free foot content. She pulled on her black T-shirt to keep it from looking too tight on her.

With his victim trembling before him unable to speak, the leather-jacket-wearing, face-tattooed Daniel lit up a cigarette and slowly approached her with a tightened fist. “So…have you thought about my offer from earlier? Are you ready to make me an ass-load of money? I want that ass, Abby. I got horny bastards that’ll pay good money for an ass like that. What do you say?” No answer, only trembles and tears. “Are you deaf?!” he roared before taking another drag of his cigarette and stomping it out.

“Uh…uh…uh…Daniel? I, uh…I can’t do that.” Abby had a hard time steadying her body, almost to where she was going to fall over.

Daniel grabbed a hold of Abby’s shirt and caused her to yelp. “Shut up, bitch!” he screamed as he raised his fist in the air. “I was asking rhetorical questions when I made you that offer. I’m not giving you a choice, bitch. You either come with me and sell some ass or I’ll leave you laying in the fucking street. It doesn’t matter to me either way. Bitches like you are a dime a dozen!” He lifted up her skirt and she could only tremble some more. “Since you won’t be able to use that mouth of yours for a while…I was wondering if…”

Butterscotch emerged from behind the dustbin and hissed at Daniel. He asked, “Who’s that little shit stain? Friend of yours, Abby? You wish your pussy was that small?”

“L…l…leave Butterscotch alone!” Abby flinched in anticipation for another punch.

“Butterscotch? Is that what you’re calling him? Shit, I don’t even have to beat your ass again. I’ll just wring this little fucker’s neck, how about that?”

Abby collapsed on the ground and sobbed as Daniel slowly approached Butterscotch, pounding his fists and earning hisses and growls for his intimidation tactics. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!” he said in a creepy voice. “Maybe I’ll take my phone out and play some Sarah McLaughlin music or some shit. That’d make a hell of an ASPCA commercial, don’t you think?”

“Leave him alone!”

“Fuck you, cunt!” Daniel raised his fist in the sky and poised for another beat down on Abby. She tightly closed her eyes and held her hands up in defeat, so she only got to hear the action when Butterscotch screamed and scratched Daniel hard enough that he let out a monstrous, “Ouch!”

The double-tracked yell plus the goopy noise emitting from Daniel’s wound caused Abby to open her eyes to see what was up. Green ooze leaked from his palm while his eyes glowed neon red. He stared down at her and said, “That’s right, bitch. I’m a motherfucking demon. We’re everywhere! Ever wonder why nobody gives a shit about your sorry ass? Demons don’t give a shit about anyone, so don’t feel too left out.”

Abby’s breathing intensified and her heart rate sped up to dizzying heights as it lodged in her throat. She was just going to lay there for her attacker while Butterscotch snuggled up against her chest. Demons ran this world whether she accepted it or not. Demons weren’t in the business of fixing schools or policing criminals. They were in the business of creating even deeper bruises on people more vulnerable than her. They were in the business of selling ass and literally raising hell.

Abby didn’t want to live in such a world anymore, but realized that if she gave up now, she wouldn’t be able to hold sweet kitties in her arms wherever the afterlife took her. A coffin was no place for a grieving cat. Her body was no place for a demon’s hands, which had developed wrinkles, hair, and claws as they reached down to grab her. Butterscotch swiped at Daniel again and opened his palm gash even wider, causing more green goop to spill.

“Goddamn it, you little bastard! I’m going to rip your tail off and shove it up Abby’s pussy!” Daniel wrapped his good hand around Butterscotch’s neck and was poised to make good on his threats.

Abby remembered that there were no sweet kitties in the afterlife. Butterscotch needed her here and now. If she wasn’t going to fight for herself, she had to fight for her new furry friend. She saw an opening…mainly the one in Daniel’s hideous hand. In one swift motion, she grabbed the demon’s wound with her manicured nails and opened it wider and wider with every slash. Tears poured down her face and blinded her from the green goop spilling everywhere. Her ears bled from the demon’s screaming in pain. Her ears also took a pounding from Butterscotch growling as he bit his attacker.

Soon enough, Abby ripped off an entire strip of demonic skin. And another. And another. Her heart rate could barely keep up with her tearful rage. “Die, you motherfucker! Just die already!” she screamed as she ripped more flesh from the gaping wound. She pulled out muscle fibers and organ pieces. She ripped a piece of bone out as well after some hard tugging. She had to stop her rage for a moment to wipe her eyes, but when they were clear, they widened at her handiwork.

Daniel’s red devil arm was stripped completely of skin and muscles. His green goopy blood sprayed all over the ground and leaked into the sewers. His screams grew silent and more pathetic as he crumpled to the ground dying. His string of obscenities remained unintelligible, but not because of traumatic blocking. He bled and broke until his monstrous, muscle-bound, leather-skinned body was just a heap of crap lying on the sidewalk, no different from one of Butterscotch’s constitutionals. To put it mildly, Daniel Park was dead.

Abby’s body still shook in a combination of shock and trauma. Her painful eye was still wide and achy. Her mouth kept trembling as she spoke. “I did it,” she said in amazement. “I killed that bastard. He’s gone…” She leaned down to extend her demonic-ooze-covered hand to Butterscotch and he licked the fluid off for her. “You saved my life, little guy. You’re just a baby. You shouldn’t have to save people like me. You should be cuddled and loved forever. Dad would never let me keep you.” That last sentence caused more tears to scorch her purple wound.

“Don’t worry, baby Butterscotch. I’ll find you a nice home. I’ll get you away from these demons…if there really are more out there. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if my good-for-nothing dad was one himself. He’d never believe me if I told him what Daniel did to me. He’d just be like, ‘Suck it up! Rah-rah-rah-rah-rah!’”

Butterscotch rubbed his head against Abby’s ankle and she rewarded him with scratches behind the ears. Only then did she notice that his claws were marked with weird-looking runic symbols. They were long, too. And jagged. Did this cat know what he was doing all along? That gave Abby an idea…

“Hey, Butterscotch…would you like to meet my daddy? Of course you would! Hehe!”

2019

My intentions for the brand new year

Have never been so crystalline clear

Drop a hundred pounds as I walk this town

While listening to favorite heavy metal sounds

Publish a new book full of action and drama

Edit that bitch down to the very last comma

Find a girl who loves me for my soul

Who’ll pull me out of my blackest hole

Read more books and clear my shelves

I’ll review them all, but read for yourselves

Learn how to drive some clunky machinery

Eat less junk food and eat more greenery

See Tarja Turunen perform at a show

Even if the destination is one I don’t know

Buy a T-shirt that says Ego Kills Talent

Vote for justice on the November ballot

Glide my fingers across the piano again

Play some funky music that never ends

Be the best kitty father I can possibly be

Emilio the snuggle buddy sleeping with me

Write more often while being wide awake

Write every day if that’s what it takes

If these dreams and goals sound unrealistic

You’re obviously part of this division

You might as well stand right in my path

Can’t guarantee your safety in the aftermath

You say I can’t do it, I tell you to screw it

You’ve got too much attitude; lose it

This year is mine to grab by the horns

This life is mine, it shall never be torn

My Child

VERSE 1

If I allowed you to be born in this world

Your hate for me would come full circle

I’d give you the genes, the mental disease

You would murder yourself to be set free

Ripping the stitches after life-saving surgery

Someone stole your soul, an act of burglary

A never-ending cycle of psychological torture

Another week to live is what the doctor orders

VERSE 2

If I allowed you to be born on this earth

You’d be considered a criminal by virtue of birth

Bullied by the worst kinds of scum in school

Fired by the bosses with their autocratic rule

Beaten by the cowards in the dingiest prison

Until darkness becomes your only true vision

I couldn’t put you through any of that shit

Another reason to never have my own kid

BRIDGE

My child, my son, my daughter, my young

Punished for the crime of not holding your tongue

Punished for the crime of not breaking down

Punished for wanting to drown out the sounds

Of the voices telling you you’re not good enough

That surviving this world is for the macho and tough

I can’t raise you in an environment such as this

Time to say goodnight with a forehead kiss

VERSE 3

My only children have fur on their bodies

My only children bark for a piece of salami

My only children meow for a can of tuna fish

My only children drink from a paw print dish

My only children don’t need to go to college

To pay off their debts by emptying their wallets

To answer to the police for doing nothing wrong

Just listen to this purr baby’s mechanical song

Do It For Her

When everything in the world seems to hurt

Just remember that you’re doing this for her

Every hour you work for draconian wages

Is so that she can live beyond young ages

Every sleepless night marked with baggy eyes

Is so that she doesn’t have to grow up to cry

Is it worth the pain? Would you do it all again?

Damn right you would, my hardworking friend

Some things are more important than agony

To say otherwise is the highest form of blasphemy

The future grows darker every single day

Even in dystopia, she needs sunshine rays

Should experience happiness while she’s alive

The world is there for your daughter to thrive

She can be a dreamer, really anything she wants

In spite of politicians who throw their taunts

In spite of billionaires who don’t want to share

In spite of bullies who don’t seem to care

While everything else may feel like a blur

Never forget that you’re doing this for her

Silent Warrior, Chapter 15

The fact that Mr. Simpson didn’t get a speeding ticket or a smashed up car on the drive to his daughter’s house was nothing short of miraculous. His hands squeezed the steering wheel like it was the throat of Scott George. His eyes burned brightly like a fiery orphanage. His veins bulged and pulsated while his teeth were so tightly clamped that he could easily max out his dental insurance. When he finally pulled up to Adrienne’s house, he slammed on the brakes and nearly smashed his forehead against the windshield (another miracle that he didn’t).

The history teacher huffed and wheezed in an attempt to reason with himself. He didn’t want to go in there guns blazing (because he still loved his daughter), but that message scrawled across his blackboard did no favors for his boiling rage. It played over and over in his head like a scratchy record of cacophonic screaming. He got out of the car and slammed the driver’s door shut before marching with authority to the front door of Adrienne’s house.

Taking a few more deep breaths to steady his pulsating nerves, he noticed his ex-wife’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Adrienne must have been home alone. Or maybe not. Maybe he was with someone a little more familiar to her. Mr. Simpson clutched his agonized face and scraped his fingernails across his cheeks in a raw attempt to push that thought to the back of his mind. He opened the door without knocking and bolted straight for Adrienne’s room. A few more whirlwinds of anxiety-crushing breaths later, he barged into his daughter’s room and caught her painting her toenails bright pink.

Adrienne crab walked across her bed and allowed her nail polish to spill all over her carpeted floor. “D…Dad? What are you doing here? Don’t you know how to knock?” she stuttered.

With a sinister visage and clenched fists, Mr. Simpson took a few more hard breaths before stating his business in the house that was once his. “Your mother and I may be divorced. It may have been one of the worst experiences in the Simpson family history. But I am still your father, Adrienne. I still love you very much. That’s why I must insist that you stay away from Scott George.”

Her jaw quivering, Adrienne said, “W…why? I love him, Dad. He loves me too.”

“That’s not love!” belted Mr. Simpson, causing his daughter to jump out of her skin. “Scott George doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself. He’s dating you to get back at me. I may be a rotten bastard at times, but at least I’d never hurt you the way he’s going to.”

Sobbing and breathing heavily at the same time, Adrienne said, “Bullshit! You’ve done nothing but hurt me and my mom ever since you married her! All the yelling, all the rules, all the arguments…I remember everything, Dad. I’ll always remember those no matter how many times I see my therapist. Yeah, Dad: you put me in therapy. That must be a proud moment in your life. So much yelling. I can still hear it in my head!”

Crossing his arms, Mr. Simpson said, “I didn’t yell at you and your mom because I wanted to cause you pain. I did it because I wanted order. That was something this household was lacking for a long time. Your grades weren’t always the best and your mother was complacent at her job. Sometimes yelling is the best way to get through to someone. You’ll understand one day when you’re a mother, hopefully not with Scott’s child.”

“Order?” cried Adrienne as she shot up from her bed and shoved her father. “I call bullshit! I had you figured out a long time ago, Dad! In fact, I want to show you something that you’ll never be able to deny.” She reached in her underwear drawer and pulled out a stack of magazines before slamming them on her computer desk for Mr. Simpson’s perusal.

The teacher’s heart thumped deafeningly in his chest as he thumbed through the magazines and saw pictures of athletically gifted men with chiseled frames. “Heh…your porn collection? Does your mom know you have this?”

“They’re not my magazines, Dad. They’re yours.”

Mr. Simpson’s blood froze into a solid block of anxiety. His nerves tingled as he took one more look at these “beautiful” men. “Where did you find these?”

“Under your bed, Dad. I’ve known about them for a long time now, but I didn’t want to say anything because I was too interested in keeping this family together,” confessed Adrienne, who held her father’s hands in hers with a tender loving touch. “Dad…” she sobbed. “I don’t care that you’re gay. I would have loved you anyways. You didn’t have to keep it locked inside you this whole time. Hell, I would have helped you find a nice boyfriend. You’re angry at everyone because you don’t feel accepted. You didn’t have to take it out on your own family. You don’t have to take it out on your students either. Dad…let me help you! Please!”

Mr. Simpson pulled his hands out of his daughter’s loving grasp and angrily whispered, “I’m beyond help, Adrienne. There’s no turning back for me or this family. And there’s certainly no turning back for Scott George. It’s like I said to him in detention this morning: I’m definitely going to hell for all of the disgusting things I’ve done. But if I’m going to hell, I’m taking the whole world with me. Every homophobe, every bigot, and everybody in between…they’re all going down in flames. I don’t know how I’m going to get back at Scott, but it’s going to happen. Detention isn’t good enough for him. I need something a little extra!”

Adrienne dropped to her knees and begged her father, “Please! Don’t hurt my boyfriend! I love him!”

Petting his daughter’s hair with fake comfort, Mr. Simpson said, “Don’t worry, my darling. I’m not going to get physical with him. I can’t even afford a pistol on my teacher’s salary. Like I said, I don’t know what I’m going to do to him yet, but when I do…I’m going to make it hurt!”

“No…no…NO!” wept Adrienne while pounding her father’s chest with clenched fists. “Don’t do it! Leave him alone! He’s mine, goddamn it! He’s mine!”

To end the assault, Mr. Simpson shoved Adrienne on her ass and caused her to bawl even louder than before. Realizing what he just did, he clutched his scalp and sighed in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Adrienne. I didn’t mean to do that. Here, let me help you up.”

He offered his hand for Adrienne to grab, but instead of accepting it, she screamed, “Get out! Get out of my house and don’t come back! You’re not a father! You’re a glorified sperm donor! I hate you, Dad! I fucking hate you! Get out of my house before I call the police! Move it!”

Holding up his hands defensively, Mr. Simpson backed off and silently said, “Okay, I’m leaving. It’s okay, dear. It’s okay.”

As the teacher turned around to leave, he overheard Adrienne screaming at him some more. “No! It’s not okay! It’ll never be okay again! Get the fuck out of my house, you pig! You wanted this divorce! Now you’ve got it!” That last sentence was punctuated by Adrienne throwing a hardcover book at her dad and nailing him in the back of the neck, to which the teacher just flinched and shrugged it off. He ran out of the house and back into the driver’s seat of his car.

Mr. Simpson clutched the steering wheel tightly while tears poured from his eyes. Adrienne’s words stung him like a thousand scorpion tails. He almost considered backing off from Scott just out of respect for her. He still wanted to love his daughter. He still wanted to make things right. But she wouldn’t let him. Nobody would. He even damned his own sexual chemistry for getting in the way of what could have been a beautiful family love.

He screamed like a gorilla and wailed on the steering wheel with closed fists. His assault could have easily disabled his own vehicle if it hadn’t been for one lingering thought interrupting his moment of rage. He still had one more person to talk to that morning. There was somebody out there who could make things right even though they were on less agreeable terms than him and Adrienne.

Mr. Simpson smiled maniacally and breathed heavily as he said to himself, “Miss Williams…guess who’s coming to breakfast!” He laughed like a loony toon as he started his car and peeled out onto the empty suburban street, once again evading a speeding ticket through the kindness and mercy of the universe.

Silent Warrior, Chapter 14

“Trust me, Mr. George, there’s a variety of other places I’d rather be than here in my classroom: an Afghan war zone, a rape dungeon, a slaughterhouse, or maybe even hell itself,” joked Mr. Simpson as he sipped his hot coffee. “I’m sure scrubbing boogers and leftover food isn’t your idea of a fun Saturday morning either. We have all of these janitors in our school, yet they never seem to want to scrub down desks. So basically, you’re taking the job that nobody else wants to do, Mr. George. For that, you should be proud.”

Scott’s gag reflex worked overtime for a slave’s wages as he scrubbed the underside of the desks with a damp sponge. Mr. Simpson seemed sure that his pupil was going to unload landslide of stomach acids into the soapy bucket. “Yes, I know it’s not the most pleasant work I can find for you, but it needs to get done. I’m sure your fellow students will appreciate having a clean place to sit. Of course, they’re just going to stick disgusting crap under there again, but at least it’ll be good in the short term.”

After wringing out the sponge in the bucket and gagging again, Scott looked up at his teacher with bloodshot eyes and said, “This will probably earn me more detention, but you’re a monster Mr. Simpson.”

The history teacher chuckled, shook his head, and held his hands up defensively while saying, “Nah, I won’t penalize you for that. You’re in enough trouble as it is. Plus, you make a strong argument. I’m definitely going to hell for what I’m making you do today. But I have to ask…is it really that disgusting underneath there? Who knows? Maybe you’re trying to make yourself sick so that you can get out early.” He leaned to the side to get a better view of the underbelly and said, “Please do me a solid and tell me I’m wrong.”

Scott wrung out the sponge again and said, “I’ve been doing that for the past semester, Mr. Simpson. I’ve called you out on your BS and you laughed in my face every single time. For a guy who’s supposed to instill knowledge and wisdom to the next generation, you seem to not give a damn about the kids in your class.”

Mr. Simpson took a sip of his coffee and said, “Well, I guess there’s no fooling you, is there. I try hard every day to give a hoot about my students, but let’s be honest, they’re not making it easy for me. You’re hardly the worst offender when it comes to this, Scott. I’ve been hit in the face with spitballs, I’ve been called homophobic slurs even though I’m not gay, and I even had one student tell me that he was going to stab me in the chest with a butcher knife. Great stuff, huh? But through it all, I keep soldiering on.”

“But why?” asked Scott as he continued scrubbing. “If you don’t like what you do for a living, why don’t you just do something else?”

With a wag of his index finger and a blunt smile, Mr. Simpson said, “You see? That’s what everybody tells me these days. I’m sure you’d love to see me hand in my resignation and walk out those front doors to a life of rainbows and unicorns.” The teacher took off his glasses and stunned Scott with a look of hard seriousness, “But the truth is, there are no rainbows and unicorns. This is the real world, kid. And in the real world, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. I happen to be knowledgeable in history, so I teach history for a living. Is it everything I thought it was going to be? Not even close. But then again, nothing really is. You’ve got depressed rock stars and starving painters all around the world who thought they were going to waltz into happyville the day that they graduated.”

Though taken aback by his teacher’s steel eyes, Scott threw his sponge in the soapy bucket and stood up to meet them with a vengeful scowl. “So basically what you’re trying to tell me is that because you’re a miserable sack of shit, everybody else has to be too? I don’t buy that crap for one minute.”

“Speaking of being miserable,” said Mr. Simpson as he set his coffee mug on one of the now cleaned desks. “Never forget why you’re here today in the first place. Trash can violence aside, you swore in a place where it isn’t allowed. Whether you agree with that rule or not, it is the law of the land. We encourage a professional environment between these walls. That way, when you take your so-called dream job, you’ll be better equipped to thrive in it.”

“Really?” said Scott with a cocked head and raised eyebrow. “You’re taking away my self-esteem so that I can blindly follow orders and embrace my misery? This sounds like the plot of a Pink Floyd music video, if you ask me.”

Mr. Simpson slammed his fist against one of the desks and caused Scott to jump out of his skin. “No, young man. That’s not classic rock. That’s real life. You think your employers are going to care about your precious little self-esteem? That’s if you have any employers at all! This world wasn’t built on cutesy-wutesy feelings. It was built on toughness. It was built on efficiency. History’s legends didn’t build entire nations out of precious and pretty dreams.”

“No! They built entire nations on slavery and genocide!” shouted Scott, bringing the heated debate to a dead silence. These fiery seconds were spent gazing into each other’s eyes to see who would flinch first. Scott broke the stalemate by angrily whispering, “But you’re right about one thing: those conquerors don’t care about self-esteem and personal ambitions…just like you don’t care about mine! I guess you’re fit to be a history teacher after all. You relate so well to those European settlers.”

With his sour expression trembling, Mr. Simpson said, “Ouch, Scott. That hurt. That hurt badly. You know what? Forget the desks. Forget the sponge, forget the bucket, forget the boogers, forget everything! I’ve got a new assignment for you, my friend.” He approached the blackboard and pointed at it with a piece of chalk. “What was I thinking? Cleaning desks isn’t going to make the message sink in. But saying it often enough will. I want you to take this piece of chalk and write a single sentence so many times that it fills the blackboard. And no taking shortcuts by writing in huge letters!”

Arms folded and stone faced, Scott asked, “And what exactly is it you want me to write?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” said Mr. Simpson. “My job as a teacher is to impart wisdom on the next generation. You seem to believe that once you graduate the world is going to welcome you with open arms and a bowl of rainbow ice cream with sprinkles. You need to learn that things don’t work out that way. You need to learn…to ‘Embrace the suck’. It’s the mantra military personnel live by on a day-to-day basis. It’s the iron that sharpens their iron. It’s the basic building blocks for toughness. Conquering bad situations that keep getting worse will build your character, not living in a jobless fantasy.”

Scott maintained his death stare as he yanked the piece of chalk out of Mr. Simpson’s hand and placed it to the top edge of the blackboard. The teacher grabbed his mug and told him, “I’m going to get more coffee. It’s 8:45 right now, so that means you have fifteen minutes to complete your new assignment. If you try to leave early, you’ll get another hour of detention, this time tomorrow morning. Remember, Scott…’Embrace the suck!’”

As soon as Mr. Simpson exited the classroom, Scott slowly scraped the chalk across the board, little squeaking sounds piercing his eardrums. He took a deep breath and tried again, but the squeaks pounded his tired brain even more. He wanted to just throw the piece of chalk across the room and bail, but that would have been yet another victory for Tom Simpson. “If the guy has any more victories, his head will be bigger than Alan Young’s ass,” Scott said to himself in a low voice.

The very mention of the A word brought a piece of sagely advice from a beautiful fifteen year old girl to mind. For the first time since he got here, Scott had a shit-eating grin on his face. He erased the original text on the board and wrote something entirely different from embracing the suck. As the poetic words danced across the canvas, Scott’s smile became more obvious than the annoying squeaks. He even gave a goofy giggle every now and then.

Nine o’clock reared its supermodel head and Mr. Simpson finally found a bag of coffee he really liked: stronger than his own authority. He even whistled as he moseyed back to his classroom. Before he could cross the threshold, Scott beat him to it and threw his piece of chalk in the air, which landed in Mr. Simpson’s coffee mug. “Hey!” the teacher shouted as Scott strolled out into the hallway. He ultimately thought nothing of it and shook his head.

Upon seeing Scott’s tapestry of nonconformity on the blackboard, Mr. Simpson’s eyes widened and he dropped his coffee on the ground. “No…no…no…!” he whimpered over and over again while rushing up to get a better look. Sure enough, the chalkboard was filled from top to bottom, left to right with, “Scott and Adrienne sitting in a tree / F-U-C-K-I-N-G!” The teacher’s heart and mind raced at the speed of light as he slowly dropped to his knees. He then let out a primal war cry and pounded the blackboard with his fists. He even raked his nails across the board for extra ear punishment. “I’m going to…I’m going to…I’m going to kill that little bastard!”

In this nonstop assault on his own wall, Mr. Simpson could empathize with the swear-word laced rage of his own students now, but not in the way he wanted and certainly not in a way that made him rethink his conformist edge. He was a hypocrite alright, but even history’s most dangerous warriors couldn’t keep a straight story from time to time. The teacher bathed in his white hot rage. His pounds became so powerful that cracks formed on the chalkboard. Upon seeing the damage he did, he slammed his back against the wall and sat there breathing throatily while holding his sweaty head in his hands. “This war’s not over…it’s not going to fly away like a little birdie…this war…is just getting started, you little piece of shit!”

Silent Warrior, Chapter 8

By the time Scott gathered his wits about him for the thousandth time that day, the orange hell across the sky darkened into a starlit night complete with a full moon. He didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved that his mother didn’t try to call him on his cell phone. He didn’t burst out of the house all this way just to think about her any more than he had to. Instead he tried to find relief in the cold night air blowing against his still red hot skin. Maybe a rainstorm would have been nice, but at this time of year, it was highly unlikely.

Rows upon rows of marked graves lay before Scott. This wasn’t the start of another trippy nightmare; he was wide awake as he humanly could be. Every stone cross, every marble angel, and every tombstone reminded him that life was short even though he had his own future ahead of him. Did he have much of a future left after high school? What college was going to take a damaged young man like him? Why should anybody care? He guessed he would be dead or in jail long before he had the chance to find a real job.

The soundtrack of “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1” by Pink Floyd soothed Scott’s battered eardrums as he approached the grave of his father, Carter Clifford George. The tombstone wasn’t anything fancy, but the sentiment of remembering a simpler life was the same. Scott touched the gravestone with his fingertips and allowed a singular tear to soak the grass beneath.

“Dad…I love you,” he whispered, his voice growing shakier with every word. “If you were here today, none of this would be happening. You were what a real father should be. Not that I would know anything about that, because I don’t plan on having kids. I might not even live long enough to know if I’ll ever be a worthy father. You and I can be together again, Dad. Won’t that be great?”

Scott dropped to his knees and the tears welling up in his eyes turned into a winter storm of emotions. His eyeballs stung like a motherfucker from holding all of this back at school. Even while sharing this moment with his deceased father, he wanted to keep holding it in. But the tears kept rolling. The rage kept bubbling. Adrenaline pulsated through his body. With nobody here but the spirits of the dead, Scott finally cracked and splintered while shouting “DAD!” to the dark heavens above.

He pounded the gravestone with clenched fists and shouted, “Why the fuck did you leave me here to die, you motherfucker?! I need you, damn it! Come home! Come back home and teach my bitch mother a lesson in what it means to be a good fucking parent! Dad! Come back!” Tears moistened his knees like a lawn sprinkler while he struggled to swallow the snot building up in his nose. No matter how many times he pounded that gravestone and begged his father to return, Scott George was still a broken man with nothing to live for.

The crying and screaming session left his legs feeling spaghetti-like and his ribs feeling like they’d been punched in by a heavyweight boxer. Scott breathed so heavily that his voice dropped a few octaves. Using the gravestone for leverage, he hoisted himself up and struggled to stay balanced. He could have easily passed for someone who was just tossed out of a bar for being too intoxicated. His blurry vision was proof of this, but with one hard blink, he could clearly see Alan Young holding a smart phone up to him and grinning from ear to ear.

“I got to say, that’s some Oscar-worthy shit right there, buddy,” Alan mocked. “You’ll be a You Tube celebrity in no time at all once this goes live. Hell, you might even have fifteen minutes of internet fame as a meme. I’ll have to think of a good tagline, though.”

Still breathing like an enraged grizzly bear, Scott held up a finger and warned, “This isn’t the time or the place for your bullshit, Alan. Give me that phone so I can shove it up your ass and lose it forever!”

“Too late, crybaby,” said Alan as he put his phone back in his shorts pocket. “Uploading that shit was as easy as one, two, three. Your ass is on TV!”

The question wasn’t how far Alan Young would stoop. It was how far Scott would run towards him if it meant giving this moron the beating of a lifetime. The chase was on throughout the graveyard. Scott shouted every curse word he could think of at Alan while threatening to, “Punch a hole through [his] big fat chest.” The bully turned around and laughed at his assailant while keeping a long distance between the two of them. Alan even zig-zagged between rows of graves, but the red-visioned Scott stormed towards him like a stampede of rhinos.

Scott had his target in sight and was ready to pounce on him at any moment. Oh, the punches he could throw. The knees that could connect to Alan’s jaw. Maybe Scott could devour this uncaring human being as though this really was the African wild. He could taste the blood on his tongue and feel the moistness of brains sloshing between this teeth. Maybe this would be his permanent cure for anorexia.

And then the high school senior accidentally pounded his own knee against one of the stone crosses and plummeted to the ground, allowing Alan to get away with the evidence and wave goodbye in the process. The cries of pain and the curses that followed filled the night air like a wolf’s howl at the full moon. Scott clutched his bruised knee and pounded the ground with the fist he wanted to use on Alan over and over again.

“Hey, kid!” shouted a middle-aged man not too far from Scott’s location. The crying came to a screeching halt as what appeared to be an undertaker shined a flashlight in Scott’s eyes. “I think you better go home, kid. You and your friend have had enough fun at the dead’s expense for one night.”

“Friend? Friend?!” chuckled Scott through his tears, progressively growing more insane with every cackle. He used the gravestone to pull himself to his feet and limped over to the undertaker, staring up at him with wild bat shit eyes. “If that fat fucker was a friend, I’d hate to meet my enemies. You saw the whole thing, didn’t you? And yet, you did nothing about it! You’re just like every other client you’ve got buried six feet under: you’re dead to the world around you!”

“You want me to do something about this, buddy?” asked the undertaker. “How about if I pull out my cell phone and call 9-1-1 right now. Does that sound good to you? Maybe I’ll tell them a couple of necro-nuggets were looking to get their freak on with the dead bodies.”

Scott ripped the undertaker’s cell phone out of his overalls and asked, “You mean this piece of shit? You want to know what I think of your little 9-1-1 call? Do you, bitch?!” The teenager threw the phone against one of the stone crosses and shattered it into slivers. “If you to want call someone that badly, you should probably howl at the moon like all the other doggies. Woof-woof! Hahaha!”

“You are bat shit crazy, my friend,” said the undertaker while shaking his head. “I’ll be sure to send you the bill for my cell phone once I figure out who the hell you are.”

Scott pulled on the undertaker’s overall straps and grinned at him like a comic book villain. “You do all the detective work you need to do, Dick Tracy. In the meantime, I’m going to just fly away and leave you to…whatever it is you like to do with dead bodies. I’m sure it’s a healthy hobby. If not, then fuck you. I’m flying away! I’m flying away!”

The watchman shook his head yet again as Scott flapped his arms like bird wings and skipped his way out of the graveyard. He sang a little high-pitched tune for the undertaker’s musical enjoyment. “Get some help, asshole!” shouted the watchman as Scott George “flew away” into the night.

“Are you getting this, Alan?!” shouted Scott in a quasi-feminine tone. “I’m going to be a runway diva! I’m going to be a You Tube star! Who’s going to please me today?!” He giggled like a sassy schoolgirl all the way home that night while listening to “I’m Going Slightly Mad” by Queen on his MP3 player. He didn’t bother to see if anybody was spying on him or if any pedestrians were scrambling to get out of his way. That kind of thought process required a brain that didn’t explode like a bag of popcorn.

As soon as Scott reached his doorstep, the divalicious insanity was replaced by another round of him dropping to his knees and bawling his eyes out. This was what it meant to hit rock bottom. Any further down and he’d truly be walking the nine circles of hell for all eternity. He didn’t give two shits if his mother was listening to him agonize or not. The closest he’d get to sympathy was looking it up in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. That seemed to be the general consensus among the people of this god forsaken city. 

Age Against the Machine

“Warning: this episode of The Crow Show has been rated TV-14-L. It contains strong language that may be unsuitable for younger audiences. The opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the host and his guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Mystery Rider Productions or their affiliates. Viewer discretion is advised.”

The words and TV rating on the screen blew away in a fog of dust while an animated cowboy with a skeleton mask rode into view on a horse. The animal bucked up in the air and let out a powerful shriek while the cowboy screamed, “Yee-haw!” The words “Mystery Rider Productions Presents…” appeared below the now frozen logo after a bolt of lightning ripped through the screen. The logo also blew away in a cloud of dust in favor of the words, “Today’s Episode: Age Against the Machine”.

The black screen faded in to reveal a clapping audience while the camera circularly panned toward the main desk. On one side of the desk sat a grumpily frowning gentleman in a suit and tie while occupying the other side was a pleasant-faced middle-aged lady in a sun dress and hat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the star of The Crow Show: Marcus Crow!” shouted the background announcer, prompting the clapping audience to rise to their feet and cheer even louder than before. A dapperly-dressed black male appeared onstage smiling and waving at his adoring crowd while smoothly making his way toward the desk. Mr. Crow even bowed to his audience like they were gods as the cheering slowly died down.

“Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Crow Show! Today’s episode is probably going to be the most controversial one we’ve had in a long time. I’ve hired extra security to come out if necessary. The topic of course is the so-called Brat Ban sweeping the nation. Children deemed too noisy or disobedient are being ejected from public places along with their parents. Some people agree with this policy while others believe it’s unfair and ageist towards these small children. My guests today represent both sides of the Brat Ban debate.

To my left, she is a stay at home mom of two sons and she’s also a parenting blogger who claims to be on the wrong end of the Brat Ban, give it up for Ms. Leslie Cain!” The audience cheered and clapped as Marcus stole a kiss on the back of Leslie’s hand. He continued, “To my right, he is a retired restaurant manager who has enforced the Brat Ban multiple times in his career, give it up for Mr. David Charles!” The audience’s cheers were purely for the sake of being respectful and had nothing to do with their love of Mr. Charles.

“Okay everyone, let’s get started. Now before I…”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” interrupted David. “I want to clear the air on something before we begin. Mr. Crow, you said earlier that people are suggesting the Brat Ban is ageist, but I’m here to tell you it’s not. Ageism would suggest that I’m prejudiced. I didn’t prejudge those children. I judged them based on things they all universally do.”

With her arms folded and a death stare on her face, Leslie asked, “And what do all children universally do, Mr. Charles? Do they get hungry? Do they get impatient? Do they…you know…act like children? You can’t hold little babies to the same standards as adults. It is unfair, David.”

Marcus extended his arms in a quasi-barrier between his two guests and said, “Okay guys, let’s have a little bit of civility here. We’re trying to get to the bottom of…”

“Bottom of what, Marcus? Your Nielsen ratings?” belted David, which was followed by an “ooo” from the audience. The host straightened his tie and remained passive while David pointed his finger at him and said, “Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know about how badly this show is doing. You knew full well me and this crazy bitch would never get along, so why don’t you…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” interrupted Leslie, holding her hands out defensively. “What the hell’s your problem? I didn’t come here to be humiliated by an ageist creep!” The audience came back to life with a round of applause. “I came here to have a civilized debate! Maybe if you’d actually open your eyes every now and then, you wouldn’t have to throw those children out of your restaurant!”

Marcus tried once again in vain to restore order, but David blasted right through his verbiage with, “You’re right! I don’t have to worry about throwing kids out, because I don’t have a restaurant anymore! I sold it to my oldest son so that I wouldn’t have to…”

An even louder “Oh!” emanated from the audience while Leslie cut off her foe. “You have a son? So you actually have kids and you’re out here making these ridiculous claims? The irony’s killing me more than your greasy ass food probably would have!”

The audience continued to voice their “ooos” and “ahs” as David and Leslie traded barbs back and forth. David said, “First of all, you fucking moron, unlike the bitchy parents who had to get thrown out, I raised my kids the right way! If they did half the shit that these banned kids did, I’d beat their asses with a belt!”

The banter between Leslie and David escalated when the two guests stood up and came nose-to-nose with each other. Marcus had given up hope completely and sat at the table with his shaking head in his hands. The beefy security guards in black T-shirts stormed onto the stage to separate David and Leslie, but the two wouldn’t stop turning the studio into a cacophonic hellhole with their screeches and screams. The audience didn’t do much to ease Marcus’s aching head with their own noisy chants.

The stressed out host finally put a stop to the madness when he shot up from his seat, extended his arms in another pseudo-barricade, and shouted, “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” The audience, guests, and security team calmed down long enough to allow the host’s words wash over them like a tidal wave of rage. Marcus straightened his collar and shouted, “This is not the Jerry Springer Show! I will not have fighting on my program! This is a respectable show and I demand that everyone here treat it as such!”

“I don’t know, Marcus,” mocked David. “The Jerry Springer Show’s pulling better ratings than the Blow Show right now. Maybe you can get some more viewers if that Leslie chick takes her clothes off!”

Leslie Cain bolted towards David Charles like she was shot out of a cannon and rained down fists and elbows upon the child-hating guest. Not even the fierceness of the security team could contain the motherly fireball. She just kept climbing over them and throwing more haymakers, to which David inadequately covered his head and dropped to the floor.

Marcus jumped up on the table and dove onto the mass of humanity brawling it out on the stage, while the audience mockingly chanted, “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” During the scuffle, Marcus Crow suffered a deep scratch on his arm and bled buckets all over the stage. The redness in his arm was only matched by the redness in his vision. He hungered for violence. He hungered for retribution. The sinister urge ate a hole in his stomach. In his blind rage, he threw a punch at what he thought was the source of the scratch.

But then the audience gasped in horror when it was Leslie who took one on the jaw and flopped over unconscious. The bruises were on Marcus’s knuckles. He stopped giving a shit about his bloody arm and started hypnotically at his purple fist. In that moment, everybody was quiet, the security guards slowly backed away, and time itself stood as still as a statue for Marcus Crow.

The frozen host barely noticed David Charles’s hand on his shoulder when the guest mocked, “Well, well, well, I guess you’ve got your ratings after all. Isn’t this what you wanted? A steady income? Lots of fame? Well, you’re famous now, buddy. Come on, say it with me: Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”

“I…I…” Marcus wiped a singular tear away from his eyes and softly said, “I’m not Jerry fucking Springer…”

“You’re right, buddy,” said David as he patted Marcus on the shoulder. Making reference to Marcus’s black skin, he said, “You’re the host of the Jerome Springer Show! Enjoy your fame!” David gently shook the still petrified Marcus and danced off the set whistling a merry tune.

Marcus slowly turned his head to face the camera and stuttered, “We…we’ll be right back after…th…these messages.” The camera still rolled long enough to catch Marcus shaking as he pointed at Leslie’s unconscious body and telling his security detail to take her to the medical wing. The sullen-faced bouncers heaved Leslie on their shoulders and carried her away like it was a funeral procession.

Marcus gingerly made his way to the desk and couldn’t bring himself to face the hushed audience, so he held his head in his hands yet again. He lifted his head only a little bit and noticed the camera still hadn’t gone to commercials. “What are you waiting for?!” he roared. “Turn that fucking thing off and take a commercial break, damn it!” Except instead of a five-minute word from the sponsors, Marcus was certain he would have a permanent vacation from television life. He was right: he wasn’t Jerry Springer. At least Jerry Springer would still have a show.

Exile

“Sing a song, Night Wolf, sing a song, mommy’s boy!” sang Maria Kevin in an off-key voice while she strummed her guitar. Sure enough, the spirit wolf glowing with blue energy howled at the full moon like the happy hound dog he was. The ghostly beast was rewarded with chin scratches and ear rubs from her elfish bard mommy. “Good boy, Night Wolf. Good, good puppy boy.”

The two of them sat outside a rickety old church on the grassy field together while the evening’s wind caressed them with cool air. Such was a pleasant evening for rest and relaxation, considering the long journey they had together playing concerts. Maria’s pointy red hat, black halter top, brown shorts, and brown leather boots gave her the appearance of a folk rock goddess. But to Night Wolf, she was still the down-to-earth spirit animal mother he snuggled up to every night.

“A lot of good memories come from this church, Night Wolf,” said Maria in a pleasant whispery voice. “This was where I first learned to play the guitar and sing to my heart’s content. There wasn’t a single elf in our village who didn’t come to this church every time they wanted some spiritual music. It makes me wonder what happened to this place that it got so…empty and depressing.” Those last words were punctuated with a small frown and a slight whimper from Night Wolf. The spirit animal tucked his head on Maria’s lap and earned himself more pettings behind the ears.

And then Night Wolf’s ears perked up as he lifted his head and barked rapidly at something going on in the church. “What is it, boy? What’s going on?” Maria asked. Night Wolf blitzed inside the church barking and howling while the elf bard struggled to keep up. The inside of the church looked as dilapidated and depressing as the outside. Stained glass windows were shattered, wooden beams splintered and peeled, the carpeted floor was soaked in animal urine and rainwater, and the roof had a hole through it big enough to fit a family of bears through.

Maria’s frowning sorrow intensified when she saw Night Wolf scraping at the basement door and howling in a pathetic, childish dog voice. She didn’t like to see him in such misery, but the purple energy glow behind the door was too much to ignore. The bard trotted down the stairs to the basement door and slowly opened it after backing Night Wolf away with her slender arm.

The source of the purple glow was a mere mortal human with an aura around his pale-skinned body. With dark robes to contrast his disturbingly white skin, he pointed his fingers and shot purple lighting into what appeared to be a bubbling cauldron of some kind. Maria’s eyes widened as the mysterious liquid boiled and splashed while Night Wolf crouched on the floor and whimpered again. The elf covered her ears while the spirit dog yelped after a gunshot-like blast erupted from the cauldron and gray smoke filled the air.

“Damn it!” the elderly wizard yelled. “This is ridiculous! How many times do I have to…” The old man turned around to reveal his baldheaded, wrinkly face to his new intruders and it became clear to Maria Kevin who this man really was. “What are you doing down here, my child? I haven’t seen that face in such a long time. You’re all grown up.”

“Reverend Dominick…how long have you been dwelling in this basement?” asked a dumbfounded Maria.

“Please, call me Stigma. And as far as your question goes…I’ve been down here for much too long,” sighed the priest as he sat down on a wooden stool holding his head in his hands. “What am I going to do, Miss Kevin? I’ve tried so hard to concoct this spell, but nothing seems to work. I can’t find the answers I’m looking for. I’m just…I’m a wreck, my dear.”

Night Wolf trotted over to Stigma Dominick whining and pouting. “I know, my fluffy friend,” said the priest. “Nothing about this is fair.” He treated the large animal to a scratch behind the ears and a back rub, to which Night Wolf panted and smiled with his tongue hanging out.

“You can’t keep torturing yourself like this, Stigma,” said Maria. “You have to let go eventually. Your father’s death wasn’t your fault and never will be. Time heals all wounds, but time isn’t going to be kind to your father if you go through with this necromancy. You’re already older than he was when the accident occurred.”

“I know, Maria, trust me, I know,” said Stigma as he languidly continued petting Night Wolf. “It’s just that…I never got to say goodbye to him. I never told him I was sorry. In my family, showing feelings was never allowed. I’ve kept it all on the inside for…for…” He couldn’t hold it in any longer. Tears poured from the old man’s eyes while Night Wolf whined and licked his salty face. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

Maria placed a tender hand on Stigma’s shoulder and said, “You don’t need to apologize to me. But if you really wanted to make things up to me, you’ll leave this…lab behind and learn to live your life again.”

Night Wolf rested his head on Stigma’s lap while the necromancer said, “I wish it was that easy, Miss Kevin. But if I leave this church and venture back into the city, they’ll have me locked up in an even more disgusting place than this broken down church. They blame me for everything, Maria, and I tend to agree with them.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” said Maria while stroking the reverend’s shoulders. “You never really bothered to ask their opinions, did you? Do you know for sure that they believe it’s an accident?”

Stigma swatted Maria’s arm away and snapped, “I don’t know, Miss Kevin, do you think I should take a poll? Do you think it’s as easy as waltzing back to the village after all of these years? Time never healed my wounds and it won’t heal theirs either! My father was a trusted leader in our community! People loved him and came to him for help! Who are they going to turn to now that it’s over?! They won’t let bygones by bygones, Maria. They’ll have my head on a silver platter!”

Stigma’s diatribe caused Night Wolf to yelp and back up a few paces before laying down and covering his face with his paws. Maria’s fists balled up and her face contorted into stern anger. “If you really feel guilty about what you’ve supposedly done, then you’ll take whatever punishment comes your way. Running away and trying to bring your dad back from the dead isn’t going to help one bit. For all you know, this spell you’re trying to concoct could bring him back as a zombie abomination. I’m sure that’ll look great in the family album!”

The necromancer grabbed Maria tightly by the shoulders and, with Night Wolf barking in the background, screamed, “And what exactly am I running away from?! Huh?! I’d rather be stuck down here for another twenty years than in some shit hole where the guards talk like they’re the fucking overseer! At least here I can find some closure! If your idea of closure is rotting in a cell with judgmental assholes watching over me, then you can take your morals and go to hell!” Stigma threw Maria to the floor and put minor dents in her guitar. Night Wolf rushed over and licked his master’s face before the necromancer shouted, “Get out! Leave me to my research!”

With one hand in her tear-stained face and the other holding the guitar, Maria stood up and ran up the basement steps with Night Wolf whining and chasing after her. The two of them bolted out of the church before the elf bard tripped on a rock and spent the next few minutes crying on her knees. Night Wolf licked the saltiness from her face while the bard wrapped her arms around her spirit animal. “This isn’t over, Stigma. ...This isn’t over by a long shot!” she shouted.

She gazed angrily into Night Wolf’s eyes and whispered, “Get him, boy. Sick ‘em!” The dog barked fiercely and stormed back into the church while Maria stood up and waited outside. She wiped the tears from her eyes while listening to Night Wolf snarl and chew at human flesh.

“Ouch! What the hell are you doing, you stupid dog?! Leave me alone! Stop it!” shouted Stigma from inside the church. Maria yanked the strings from her guitar and waited with her arms folded. Sure enough, Stigma came running and yelping outside with Night Wolf hot on his tail. His robes were ripped and his skin was pierced, but he was otherwise okay.

Maria caught Stigma in a headlock and wrestled him to the ground before switching behind and tying the necromancer’s hands with the busted guitar strings. “Shut up!” she snapped. The harsh tone immediately put an end to Stigma’s whining and yelping. “You’re coming with me to the village whether you want to or not! Enough of this guilty garbage! Instead of saying sorry to your dear old daddy, you’re going to say it to people who won’t end up like fucking zombies! Come on, on your feet!”

The elf bard headlocked Stigma once again and dragged him to his feet before hauling him off to the village. The necromancer pleaded and protested, but Night Wolf nipped his heels every time the whining got too intense. Maria also squeezed harder.

The trek to the village wasn’t long enough to warrant exhaustion from anybody in this group of three, although when Maria released the headlock and cut the guitar strings, Stigma clutched his chest and panted due to how hard the elf squeezed. His eyes bulged out of their sockets when he realized where he was. This forest village was complete with stone houses, tree houses, and many, many elven warriors. The fruit was more abundant than Stigma remembered it. The vegetables looked delicious enough to garner a drooling response. Would it be the last time he was privileged to eat such beautiful food?

It seemed to be that way when a group of leather-armored elves carrying poleaxes approached him with stern looks on their faces. The warriors, Maria, and Night Wolf all circled him with greedy, judgmental eyes. The captain of this squadron said in a flat tone, “How could you, Reverend? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Stigma Dominick huddled into himself and shook with nervousness. “I’m sorry…I really am…”

“You should be sorry,” said the elf captain. “You should be sorry for torturing yourself for so long.” Stigma lifted his head with a surprised look on his face. “We’ve missed you, dear friend. I’m sure you’ve missed being in the sunlight. Look at you, you’re a mess! We don’t blame you for what happened to your father. We blame you for abandoning us in our time of need. But now you’re safe with us again, necromancer.”

Stigma’s eyes were drowning in tears once again as the circle of elves closed in on him and gave him a much-needed group hug. Night Wolf pawed at his leg and howled at the full moon. Maria Kevin stroked Stigma’s bald scalp and said, “You’re great at giving sermons, but you’re terrible at listening.”

“I’m sorry, Maria. I’m sorry for everything…”