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…

Tales From the Hood 2

MOVIE TITLE: Tales From the Hood 2

DIRECTORS: Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott

YEAR: 2018

GENRE: Horror Anthology

RATING: R for violence, language, sexual content, and political themes

GRADE: Mixed

Master storyteller Mr. Simms is hired by rightwing prison CEO Dumass Beach to give secondhand experience to a police android named Robo Patriot. These stories are designed to help the robot identify threats to America and deal with them appropriately. Instead of giving Beach his confirmation bias, Simms tells stories about the pain racism and sexual harassment have caused throughout the years. Whether the lead characters in these stories are Tinder rapists, mammie doll collectors, wannabe thugs, or black republican politicians, they all will get what’s coming to them in the end. Beach doesn’t like these premises, but live with them he must.

Compared to the first Tales From the Hood movie, this sequel had more cheese than a stuffed crust Domino’s pizza. Whether you agree with the messages in this movie or not, every storytelling device these directors used was so obvious even to the most tone-deaf viewers. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what the prison CEO’s name Dumass Beach is supposed to be a play on words of. The poor acting skills of the white characters didn’t make me believe in the stories, especially the mammie doll collector in the first story. The Robo Patriot sounds like it was haphazardly thrown together at the last minute, not an ounce of creativity left. The CGI effects looked faker than a John Cena pro-wrestling punch. I could have eaten Wendy’s Baconator fries and gotten the same amount of cheese, but no, I had to sit through Tales From the Hood 2 because I thought it could measure up to its 1995 predecessor.

I can’t completely dump all over this movie, though. There is a reason it received a mixed grade from me instead of a failing one. The strong themes of racism are what saved it. Floyd, the museum curator in the first story, delivered his dialogue about the history of black culture in a convincing and educational way. Plus, I loved his evil side near the end (even though he was technically the good guy of the story). In the last story, a group of voodoo sacrifices have to convince a black republican to vote with his heart, not with his wallet. And don’t forget the third story about the Tinder rapists, which is a cautionary tale to end the romanticizing of “boys will be boys”.

Beach’s distasteful reactions to these stories should serve as a reminder of how abundant racism and sexism are in today’s culture. It’s a shame these stories had to be poorly acted by the white characters. The black characters did an excellent job, by the way. I’m not trying to be a “reverse racist” when I say that. I’m just calling it like I see it. The black actors most likely experienced overt racism during their lives, so they bring that into their acting gigs and it sounds more authentic. I was disappointed with Zoe’s performance, though. She sounded just as unconvincing as her white friends.

I can understand the hate this movie gets online, but it’s not as bad as I was anticipating it to be. It had its good moments along with its hokey ones. And yes, it didn’t live up to the bar the previous Tales Form the Hood movie set. I get that. Even Mr. Simms’s “Welcome to Hell!” line sounded forced, like the directors were trying to recapture that old glory of Clarence Williams’s version of Simms in the first movie. But like I said before, this movie gets a mixed reception from me, not a negative one. But would I want to watch it again? Maybe if I was a robot during an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Football Sucks

When Democratic Mayor Irwin Gladden opened the blinds to his office window, what he saw shook him to his very core. Protesters. Lots and lots of protesters wearing football jerseys and helmets. All of them shouting incoherently at the top of their dragon-like lungs. Some of them with signs that said, “Football doesn’t suck!” and “Impeach Gladden!”. Most of them with Photoshopped pictures of the Mayor in a Nazi uniform or a turban with a bomb strapped around his body.

Being new to the job, Mayor Gladden obviously wasn’t used to this kind of violent treatment down on the streets of Paulson City. His blood was chilled. His jaw was quivering. His hands were vibrating. He had a knot in his stomach the size of a cannonball and a lump in his throat the size of a watermelon. All of these normally fine young citizens came together through their mutual hatred of this newly-elected official.

Though he wasn’t one-hundred-percent prepared for a day like this, he could think of a good reason why it was happening. The football paraphernalia, the firecrackers going off, the trumpets blasting everywhere, they could only mean one thing. These citizens were protesting because Irwin Gladden wanted to convert their beloved football stadium into the city’s largest public library. If that wasn’t “sacrilegious” enough, the thirty-something Mayor actually had the balls to say, “Football sucks!”

His balls weren’t feeling so big anymore. In fact, as soon as he saw a firecracker zooming towards his window (only to veer off at the last minute), Irwin snapped the blinds shut and cowered in the center of his office. How could so many people be so zealous and ignorant over a game of football? It made no sense.

Mayor Gladden’s day went from bad to worse when his front door hastily opened, causing him to spring backwards in fear and sit on the edge of his desk. He thought he was going to get mugged by these protesters. Instead, it happened to someone else entirely. Irwin’s personal bodyguard, Fred Jacobs, had stumbled into his office, slammed the door behind him, and collapsed on the floor while coughing up blood.

Irwin and Fred could not be more physically different from each other. The bodyguard was a hulking bad black man in a brown suit and tie while the Mayor was only this gray suit-wearing, skinny twig who barely filled his counterpart’s shadow. Fred Jacobs didn’t look very intimidating at that moment. Rolling over on his back and spewing up more blood didn’t help create that kind of image.

The frightened politician rushed over and knelt by his bodyguard’s side and asked, “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened?! Where are the goddamn paramedics?!”

After coughing up a splash of blood, Fred explained, “The protesters are blocking the streets from all angles. They’re not going to move even for first responders. What kind of shit storm did you cause out there, buddy?”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal!” said Irwin defensively. “It’s just a stupid arena! More taxpayer money goes into that stadium than anywhere else on the budget! We could have used that money to improve roads, hire more teachers, feed our poor, cure our sickly, and instead it’s going into this big ass stadium so that more athletes can end up in the hospital or even dead! Tell me my logic is wrong! I dare you!”

“Alright, dude,” said Fred as he sat up and looked his boss in the eyes with fiery zeal. “Your logic is wrong! There, I said it! Do you want to fire me now?!”

Irwin stood up in disbelief and backed up slowly. “What are you talking about? This makes perfect sense. Instead of going out there and giving people concussions, we could turn the whole stadium into a public library and actually improve their brain power for once.”

“That’s exactly how fucked up you are, Mayor!” Fred Jacobs stood up and spit a wad of chunky blood on the ground. If he was dizzy before, he wasn’t showing it at this moment. “A library? Really? You actually thought people would be onboard with that? This is Paulson City, damn it! People here don’t know whether to scratch their watches or wind their asses! They don’t give a shit about literature! You’re basically forcing your personal tastes on these poor people!”

Just like his bodyguard, Irwin Gladden suddenly found his testicle power when he snapped, “No! I’m not forcing anything on anybody! It’s called tough love! If these people won’t educate themselves, it’s my job and my responsibility to push them along!”

“Alright, man,” said Fred as he snorted blood up his nose and swallowed in a massive gulp. “I didn’t want to have to tell this story, but if it’s the only way to get through to your sorry ass, then goddamn it, it’ll have to do. You want to know how I got this big ass body? I didn’t get it through sitting on my ass eating Cheetohs and watching The Simpsons. I played football all throughout high school and college. That’s right! I was a quarterback for the Paulson City Warlords!”

“You’re kidding me,” said Irwin when he folded his arms.

“Back then they called me Freddy the Barbarian. They would have called me Inmate Number Blah-Blah-Blah if it wasn’t for football. It was either football or gangs and drugs for me. I lived in a poor neighborhood, my friend. A neighborhood that the previous Republican mayor promised to fix. Instead, all we had was more drugs, more gangs, and a shit load more police brutality. I joined the Paulson City Warlords to get away from all that disgusting crap. So the next time you say football sucks, think of this big ugly face staring you down!”

The big ugly face was indeed staring Mayor Gladden down and it was more frightening to look at than a dark fantasy demon. The politician’s body language showed it all: a trembling body that barely managed to stay seated to the edge of his desk. For the longest few seconds, Irwin and Fred didn’t say a damn thing to each other.

And then the Mayor screamed like a girl and ran into his bodyguard’s arms when he heard a cacophonous bang shattering his window and ripping his blinds. One of the firecrackers from the demonstration exploded against his window and went out in smoke.

Mayor Gladden had every reason in the world to piss his Armani pants and cry into Fred Jacobs’ Men’s Warehouse jacket. It was a tempting offer, but instead Irwin was red-faced with anger. He got down from his protector’s arms and stomped over to the phone. When asked what the hell he was doing, Irwin said, “I’m putting an end to this right now. Screw the riot police. If they’re not coming to my rescue, then I’ll declare a state of emergency and get the National fucking Guard! I’ll even tell them to bring AK-47’s instead of those wimpy rubber bullets. And real grenades too instead of that tear gas shit!”

“Put down that goddamn phone, Mayor Gladden!” screamed Fred, to which the Democrat slowly and shakily did. “Look at you, man! It’s your first week on the job and you’re already cracking under pressure! That’s not the Mayor I signed up with! You’re supposed to be this caring progressive who thinks of others! And now look at you! You’re actually considering killing those protesters with AK-47’s all because a firecracker got launched through your window!”

No arguments there. Irwin had snapped big time and all he could do was plop in his chair and try to block out the cacophony going on outside. It was doubtful another firecracker would make its way into his office again; that last one was a lucky shot. The city official just held his face in his hands and wept. “I can’t do this, Fred. I can’t do this. I want to step down.”

“No, you don’t,” said the bodyguard after putting a comforting hand on his boss’s shoulder. “You came here for a reason and that was to clean up Paulson City. You have the chance to do that right now by phoning the riot police. There are people down there who need you whether they know it or not. Do the right thing, Mayor. If the riot police won’t come, then you have my permission to get the National Guard. Just please, none of that AK-47 and real grenade crap this time.”

Irwin took a few deep breaths in and out, calming himself down in the midst of the outside chaos. “You’re right, Fred. You’re absolutely right. I don’t know what I’d do without you. And if football made you the man you are today, I doubt it could suck that badly.”

Fred Jacobs smiled and patted Irwin on the shoulder before leaving him alone to make the phone call. Just a few minutes ago, this ex-football player was dizzy and bleeding. Now he was toughing it out like a pro and that was inspiring to Irwin, who then picked up the phone and made this announcement: “Send them in. It’s an emergency.” The call for help was placed and all Irwin and Fred could do at this point was ride out the storm.

The Four Horsemen of D&D

These four characters aren’t submitting job applications, though they may be used in future stories. Instead, they’re going to listen to my obituaries. I talk all the time about how in 2010 when I binge-played Dungeons & Dragons with Heather and TJ, four different player characters died under my watch. Every time one of these deaths happened, tears formed in my players’ eyes and RPG life wasn’t the same without them. Their spiritual essences would haunt the PC’s dreams and bring back traumatic memories as they entered their next battlefield thinking the next one could be one of them. As they say at the beginning of every episode from the Law & Order franchise, “These are their stories.”


NAME: Chris Bryan
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human


Chris and his cousin Wade made a pact to be lifelong vegans after running away from their farm home due to the bloody treatment of innocent animals. To sustain themselves, they both signed up for the Middlesex National Guard. Both cousins graduated, but at different times in their careers. Wade went on to be a personal bodyguard for the lead PC Darthania Gaveston (controlled by Heather) while Chris joined much later. The cousins and their new PC friends were inseparable. And then one night, their world turned black (not that it already wasn’t in a crime-infested place like Middlesex). Middlesex Fighting Championship, the main MMA enterprise of the D&D campaign, was blocking traffic because ticket sales to their most recent event were skyrocketing. In a fit of road rage, one of the MMA stars, Glenn Allen, tried to run over several innocent people while honking at them. It took Chris, Wade, and an elf paladin named Windham Farrell to subdue Mr. Allen. Unfortunately, Chris was the recipient of several unanswered kicks to the ribs and died of suffocation. Wade was so devastated by his cousin and best friend’s death that he thought about quitting the bodyguard business until his mentor, Zell Jardine, convinced him to do a commercial promoting National Guard membership on the basis that they rescue animals from their abusers. Wade did as he was told, but described it as the most sobering experience in his life. Poor guy.


NAME: Gerard Killings
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human


NAME: Kurt Blades
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Panther


Zell Jardine, the founder of the leftwing terrorist organization The Trench Coat Militia, trained a lot of people in his lifetime into becoming badass soldiers with his ruthless drill instructor mentality. But of all those people, he only had four he considered his best pupils. Gerard and Kurt were among those four people, the other two being a human fighter named Ethan Stryker and a troll fighter named Michael Heaven. Together, the Trench Coat Militia changed the city of Middlesex from a dictatorship to a democracy, but not without shedding a shit ton of blood along the way with their machetes. But when you bring about change with violence, you can expect more violence as you can guess from the deaths of Gerard Killings and Kurt Blades. Both warriors died defending different MMA events from terror organizations and criminal gangs. The difference between the two deaths is that Gerard had a 19-year-old son named Jason who signed up after his father died. Kurt Blades had no family and died in obscurity. Kurt even visited one of the PC’s, a half-orc barbarian named Agrusk Xis (controlled by TJ), in his dreams and asked a profound question, “Why, sweet God, why?!” Agrusk couldn’t come up with an answer even if he was awake and alert.


NAME: India Malakar
LEVEL: 2
CLASS: Monk
RACE: Elf


Considering the fact that India was an elf with a negative constitution modifier and a warrior class, his death shouldn’t have come as a surprise. What was really surprising was how this guy became the longest reigning MFC Welterweight Champion of all time before losing the gold to Agrusk Xis? A negative constitution modifier is detrimental to the work of a mixed-martial artist since most of what they do centers around their conditioning. In gaming terms, India was a level two character with only 7 hit points. This made absolutely perfect sense at the time I played with him, but it doesn’t make sense anymore. Before turning to MMA as a source of income, Brutus Warcry (a human barbarian that I controlled) along with his wife Darthania (Heather’s half-elf wizard) and best friend Agrusk Xis (TJ’s half-orc barbarian) needed help capturing wanted criminals around Middlesex and turning them in to the authorities for bounty money. These criminals could blow the shit out of populations with nail bombs or they could just slash everyone they see to pieces. They were too dangerous for one person to take on alone. India gladly lent his help and surprisingly did a good job of it. But when bounty hunting became too much of a dangerous chore, India was the one person who recommended Brutus, Agrusk, and Darthania become involved with mixed-martial arts, which is much safer and much more regulated by comparison. Brutus became the MFC’s Heavyweight Champion, Agrusk as I’ve said before became the Welterweight Champion, and Darthania became the Vice President of the company. They did well for themselves, unlike India who while helping his new friends fight off terrorists died after having his throat slit by a rat warrior. India’s death was the first to take place among the official PC’s, so everybody in the game took it hard. Even Agrusk, a macho half-orc, was blubbering as he tended to India’s dying corpse.


Four dead player characters from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in 2010. But death is only the beginning. The greatest thing about being a fictional character from another canon is that there are always extra chances. Instead of rotting in the Middlesex Cemetery, these four are in the unemployment line of my imagination. But don’t worry, they’ll find work soon enough. They always do.