Make It Stop

It seemed like the world’s cruelest April Fools joke to live every day in a place like Meat Grinder City…except April Fools wasn’t just limited to one day of the year. At least the flames around the buildings and streets weren’t as tall as they once were. At least the sausage puppets walked normally down the sidewalks instead of jiggling around like lynched corpses. 

When their cyclopean eyes popping out of their mouths gazed harshly into Joel Upton’s soul, the sensation was only mildly chilling across his already sour stomach. He pulled the hood up on his thick rain jacket and tried not to draw too much attention to himself. Then again, he was already under this unforgiving city’s microscope as someone with no permanent residence outside of a garbage dumpster here and there. The smell wouldn’t come off no matter how hard it rained.

It wasn’t the sausage puppets walking past him that set Joel Upton’s brain on fire. It wasn’t the smaller-by-comparison fires that jolted his brain like a paper clip in a light socket. It was that laugh. That deep, throaty, horny laugh from behind that caused his heart to pump intolerably fast. The only breaths Joel could muster reeked of dumpster residue and rancid ashes. He slowly turned around and his worst tormenter towered over him as though Joel was dog shit underneath somebody’s shoe.

He almost snapped his own neck in half just to gaze upwards into the heartless eyes of Chainsaw Fist, a bulky, piss-stinking ogre with a metal jaw, an apron covered in blood, a necklace pieced together with skulls and intestines, and of course, a chainsaw/drill combination that just had to constantly be on fire in order to solidify the overkill of Meat Grinder City.

“Make it stop,” Joel whimpered. “Somebody please make it stop…”

Chainsaw Fist bellowed so hard that his garbage breath almost bowled his victim over. “Nobody’s going to make it stop, you weak little piss stain! Your writing career was a joke from the start! Nobody loves you, not even your own family! Why don’t you just quit like a little bitch!” He revved his flaming chainsaw. “I will make you tap out one way or another, you slimy sack of whale shit!”

Joel didn’t even have time to react before Chainsaw Fist tackled him to the ground and drilled his weapon into his victim’s gut, releasing a tidal wave of blood and spiritual energy. The sausage puppets drank the vile fluids like dogs lapping up garden hose water. The volcano of blood just wouldn’t stop. It kept exploding and destroying everything in its path. The spirits flying out of that festering wound laughed at Joel the entire time. And then…

“You’re weird,” said a little girl holding onto her father’s hand. The father mildly reprimanded her before the two of them left a writhing and screaming Joel to his devices. And just like that, Meat Grinder City was Seattle. Ordinary, urban Seattle with rainy weather, urban sprawl, and non-sausage puppet citizens wondering what the hell was wrong with Joel.

Having snapped back to reality, Joel rolled over onto his knees and frantically searched his raincoat, pulling a broken needle out of his breast pocket. “No…no, no, no…” he whined to himself. “I need more…where is that goddamn pharmacy?” He searched his coat again, this time for money, but all he could muster up were a few pennies and some broken lug nuts. “Make it stop…just someone please make it stop…”

The rain came down so hard upon Joel’s back that he flinched in pain. And there was his answer: they weren’t rain drops. They were scorpion tails. “Not again.” Scorpion tails continued to pound and stab him before he was thrust right back into Meat Grinder City, the flames around the buildings bursting sky high while the cutest of cute kids jiggled around like the sausage puppets they really were.

A familiar beefy hand pulled back Joel’s hood and slashed his skull open, laughing like a demonic pervert yet again. Once his brain was exposed for the whole world to see, the scorpion tails morphed into little gray kobolds with blade-like fingernails and childish cackles. They laughed and hee-hawed as they jumped into Joel’s head wound and started bouncing around behind his face. The headache was so intense that he covered his eyes out of fear of them popping out. They did anyways, but not without snake tentacles holding them in their mouths.

“Give up your career, you waste of shit and piss!” Chainsaw Fist roared. “This world hates you! Hell doesn’t want you! Heaven is disgusted by you! You’re a fuck-up of the very worst kind! You deserve to die like the pile of diarrhea that you are!”

“STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE! MAKE IT STOP!” Joel screeched, holding his aching head while the snakes and kobolds partied in his brain.

“You want to quit, you little bastard! Do you want to quit! Then quit like the little bitch baby you are! Tap out!”

The kobolds, sausage puppets, snakes, and Chainsaw Fist himself formed a circle around Joel and chanted for him to quit. The flames of Meat Grinder City grew to their maximum limit and caused Joel to suffocate on the ashes. Chainsaw Fist continued to slash and murder his lone victim. The kobolds made incoherent jokes about his suffering and laughed like hyenas on crack.

“…I quit…”

“I’m sorry, what was that? What did you say, you little cum guzzler?!”

“I QUIT! I QUIT, I QUIT, I QUIT!”

Joel’s broken body could finally relax even though he ached literally everywhere, even in places outside of his flesh suit.

“Wow…you really are pathetic, Joel. You really are the weakest bastard I’ve ever met. Let’s go, quitter!” Chainsaw Fist wrapped his intestinal necklace around Joel’s throat and dragged his exhaustively bloody body across the ashen cement. He was too destroyed to care. He had lived in Meat Grinder City for far too long. There were several moments during his homelessness where he could have quit. He wanted to believe there was still life left in him. But if there was, he’d put up at least a little bit of a struggle against his worst critic.

“You can’t quit mental illness, Mr. Upton,” said a throaty, yet gentle voice that belonged to a hairy demon with spikes all over his body. The room Joel found himself in was still covered in flames. But these were warm flames that glowed like an outdoor campfire. They hurt like hell. They burned down the last of his brain cells. But even in Meat Grinder City’s loneliest prison cell, Joel knew he could relax.

Then again, he had no choice since he was chained to a wooden table. He also had his head shaved and a metal helmet strapped to his naked scalp. The furry demon used his talon to jot down a few notes in his wizard’s spell book. “You probably don’t believe me right now, but this is the safest place you can be. The streets should be nobody’s home.”

Entering the prison cell were three porcelain mannequins, all of which had snakes growing out of their heads. One of them had muscles etched into his torso, another had the feminine features of a Greek goddess, and the third was a child no taller than an average human’s waist. The woman’s sweet voice struck a familiar chord with Joel. “Everything will be okay, honey. We still love you.”

Tears welled up in Joel’s already bloodshot and battered eyes. “Wendy? Is that you?” The face of the woman he fell in love with all those years ago formed behind her gorgon façade. And then the face of his daughter broke free from porcelain permanence. But who was this strange man who accompanied them?

Wendy held Joel’s hand while the snakes in her hair smiled at him. “You’ve been gone for so long ever since you had your breakdown. We never forgot about you. Yes, I have remarried, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you anymore. I was so worried about you. Our daughter had nightmares.” The snakes wrapped around Joel for a hug. And then the daughter’s snakes wrapped around his legs. And the new husband’s snakes gave him the warmest grins.

“Wendy…I’m so sorry I didn’t seek help earlier. I didn’t want to quit what I poured my heart into for so long. I was so obsessed that it drove me insane…All I had to do was quit…”

“You don’t have to be strong anymore,” said Wendy with tears in her own eyes. “It’s okay to quit when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Nobody’s ashamed of you.”

“But what about those jerks on the street who laughed at me?” asked Joel through a stuffy nose.

“Fuck ‘em” said the new husband, which earned a round of laughter from everybody in the room.

Wendy and the daughter broke their embraces. The gorgon mother of his child said, “We’ll visit you for as long as we need to. If you need anything, we’re always a skip and a hop away.” She kissed her palm and waved goodbye, the daughter waving as well while the husband gave a thumbs up.

Joel’s tears accumulated as he watched his old family walk away, leaving the hair-covered demon doctor to do his duty. He pulled a snake fang out of his fur and attached it to a miniature spinning chainsaw. “You desperately need a vacation from your mind, Mr. Upton. And when you awaken, we can try some cognitive behavioral therapy. But for now…relax…and enjoy the darkness…”

Joel didn’t even try to fight the injection into his arm despite the fact that the needle resembled Chainsaw Fist’s favorite toy. Fire and poison flowed through his body, but they were just formalities to a much-needed vacation from a schizophrenic mind. He switched between Meat Grinder City and the psychiatric ward of the Seattle hospital while simultaneously drifting off into sleep. The furry monster became a friendly old man before morphing back into his nightmarish form. 

Back…and forth…back…and forth…the transformations resembled the motion of a baby in his mother’s arms…back…and forth…back…and forth…until darkness and snoring were all that remained of Meat Grinder City. Joel’s snoring did sound like a revving chainsaw, but that nasty ogre was nowhere to be found in such a black void of relaxation. No dreams. No hallucinations. Just hours of nothing. Getting lost in the nothing was a better vacation than Hawaiian beaches or Canadian architecture, both of which would have burst into flames anyways.

A Bastard Sword in a Haystack

Butterflies flapped all around Elizabeth Dempsey as she laid on her back with her hands behind her long brown hair. With the comfort of the grass beneath her, she nearly drifted off into dreamland in this forest she called home. The only thing that kept her awake was one butterfly landing on her nose and flapping its golden wings. Ticklish as that sensation was, she let it slide. She smiled at the heavenly nature around her. The tallest trees protected her from the outside world. The butterflies were her best friends. Occasionally a squirrel would run up to her and she’d feed the little guy a handful of nuts. If not for her ranger duties, she could sleep here forever eating berries and veggies.

And then the distant sound of boots tromping on the ground startled the butterflies and squirrels. They sped away to higher ground while Elizabeth’s eyes were wide open and filled with frustration. “Goddamn it,” she said to herself. She fixed her green cloak, brown tunic, and green baggy pants before snatching up her bow and arrows and nipping up to see what the fuss was about. The longer she stalled, the louder the boots became. “Show time.” She pulled her hood over her head and scaled the nearest tree with the dexterity of a cat.

With one arrow plucked from her quiver, she pulled back on the string ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Whoever disturbed her peaceful new age moment was getting an arrow to the chest if he didn’t have any quick answers. The thumping grew louder and more intense, so much so that Elizabeth almost fell from her perch. “Come on, you big goof, get your butt over here so I can shoot you already.”

And then the source of the noise appeared on the dirt trail huffing and puffing, his massive palms engorging his kneecaps. Elizabeth couldn’t believe her eyes, even going so far as to lower her weapon. This clumsy oaf was at least seven feet tall…and he wore a purple ninja mask, no tunic to cover his muscles, and only tight-fitting purple pants and a pair of metal boots to barely cover the rest of him. “A walking contradiction if I’ve ever seen one,” said Elizabeth under her breath.

The ranger dropped down and landed perfectly on the soles of her leather boots, thinking she was at least a little safer than before. “You made a mistake coming here, my friend. You ran away from one problem and now you find yourself in another. All I wanted was some peace and quiet and you pissed that all away for me. Give me one good reason why I should stick one in that goofy-looking chest of yours.”

“My apologies, ma’am,” said the giant ninja in a stereotypical bass voice, placing his hands together prayer style and bowing to her. “I am Antonio Fujiwara, at your service. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I just need a place to hide, that’s all.”

Keeping her hand on her bow, Elizabeth held her fists against her hips and gave Antonio a pathetic look. “A seven-foot tall ninja wants to hide from whatever was chasing him…in a forest full of nothing. First of all, why is a mountain of muscle like you running away from somebody who’s probably shorter than you? Wouldn’t it be easier just to snap his neck and be done with him?”

“It’s not just one person, ma’am. It’s…quite a few.” Antonio fidgeted with his sausage fingers. “I’m being hunted by the Scorpion Clan. Being tall doesn’t mean anything when you’re being hunted by them. They’ll kill me if they find me! Please, you’ve got to hide me!”

“Hide you? I don’t know, Antonio. Seems like the Scorpion Clan is looking for a bastard sword in a haystack. There aren’t a whole lot of good hiding places I can think of for a guy your size. You probably can’t climb a tree and stay there. The caves are too small. The bushes are also too small. Looks like you’re shit out of luck. Now beat it before these Scorpion Clan guys involve me in your mess too.”

A flying dart pierced Antonio in the small of his back and he stumbled around like a drunk, slurring his words like one too. Elizabeth backed up in worry as the giant ninja’s intoxicated dance led him to grab a handful of vine berries in a failed attempt to keep himself hoisted. He collapsed on the ground with a resounding boom and snored his way to the subconscious theater.

Elizabeth pulled on her bow string as several shorter ninjas in red and black uniforms leapt out of hiding and enveloped her in a broad circle. Each ninja was armed with shurikens, which meant a ton of holes in Elizabeth’s body if she tried anything funny. Their hoods and masks covered everything but their eyes, which burned with disciplined fury. In other words, they didn’t come to this forest to fuck around. “Drop your weapon,” one of them commanded, which Elizabeth slowly did.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble. This giant oaf came to me, I didn’t come to him. I just wanted to take a nap and then he comes rolling in…”

“Silence!” belted the ninja. “You’ll have plenty of time to take a nap if we find out you were harboring this fugitive. Stealing money from us was Antonio’s first big mistake. Being stupid enough to come here looking for refuge was his second. Then again, he never was very smart to begin with.” His cohorts chuckled.

“You know what? You’re right. He’s not very smart. Just take him and leave me be, okay? Can we make a deal?” begged Elizabeth, her hands held high.

“You heard her, men. Take this gargantuan mongoloid away,” said the lead ninja. It took the strength of several ninjas to lift Antonio’s massive body and even then they were grunting and groaning. They almost dropped him on his head a few times while the lead ninja continued to hatefully gaze into Elizabeth’s eyes. “Unfortunately for you, we can’t make a deal. You’re a witness. I can’t leave any witnesses.”

“No, no, no, don’t do this! I’m begging you!” said Elizabeth as she got on her hands and knees. The ninja had his shuriken ready, but the pleading was just a cover up as Elizabeth grabbed her bow and arrow and shot the lead ninja between his devilish eyes. The shot was so stiff that the ninja’s entire brain fell out the back of his head.

“You bitch!” yelled one of the ninjas as they dropped Antonio.

Elizabeth and the ninjas stood across from each other at a stalemate, a bow and multiple arrows versus god knows how many shurikens. She knew this was a fight she couldn’t win, yet she had no choice now that she crossed the Rubicon. It was all a matter of which ninja would die first. They all looked the same. They all talked the same. But only one of them called her a bitch. Would he be the first to go? Decisions, decisions. At least now she would get the peace and quiet she desperately wanted. Did they have butterflies in heaven? Would she even go to heaven in the first place?

She didn’t have to make the tough decision after all. That decision was made for her when Antonio nipped up and slammed the ninjas’ heads together, concussing the guys on the edges and exploding the skulls of those in the middle. “Take the shot!” yelled Antonio. Elizabeth did just that. Whoever remained after that head slam took a series of arrows to the chest, knocking their hearts and spines out of their carcasses. Antonio chucked the dead bodies over the bushes and into a ditch. He didn’t break a sweat doing it nor did he need a firm grip on anywhere but their ankles.

After the dust settled, Antonio removed his ninja mask and smiled at Elizabeth, who smiled back at him. He said, “The poison these geniuses used in their dart was too low a dose for someone of my size. If they had any brains at all, they would have used a bigger dart. Maybe they could have used a bastard sword in a haystack. Plus, those berries I grabbed were a perfect antidote.”

“And you’re supposed to be the dumb one just because you have a deep voice?”

“Well, I did lead all of these jerks to your forest. That alone wasn’t very smart. Sorry about that. Now I’ve got you involved in my problems.”

“I don’t mind at all, Antonio. In fact, I wouldn’t mind hunting down every last one of those Scorpion Clan jerk-offs. The way I see it, they were going to interrupt my peace and quiet one way or another. Might as well strike them before they strike me. If they really are dumber than a giant with a deep voice, then they’ll fall for my begging and pleading trick again. Heh…like I’d ever beg for my life for those dweebs.”

A still wobbly Antonio wrapped his arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders and said, “You and I make a pretty good team, don’t we? Kind of like brains and brawns, right?”

“Well, to be fair, those ninjas have brains too. They just happen to be splattered all over the ground right now. So what do you say we stop running from the Scorpion Clan and start racking up a body count?”

“You can count on me!” Antonio gave a playful slap on Elizabeth’s back and unintentionally knocked her over. He apologized profusely as he picked her up and dusted her off.

“Okay, maybe you are just a little bit thick in the head, but we’ll work on that,” said Elizabeth with a playful smile.

"Mortal Kombat X, Vol. 1" by Shawn Kittelsen

BOOK TITLE: Mortal Kombat X, Vol. 1: Blood Ties

AUTHOR: Shawn Kittelsen

YEAR: 2015

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Martial Arts Dark Fantasy

GRADE: Mixed

Normally, the first paragraph of these reviews would be a brief synopsis in my own words (rather than copying it from the back of the book). However, there’s so much going on in this graphic novel that it’s hard to piece it all together in one paragraph. Yes, there’s a war brewing between the earth and outer realms. Yes, they involve blood daggers that turn their wielders into psychotic savages. And yes, old characters from the Mortal Kombat videogame franchise make an appearance in one way or another. Something tells me that in order to understand what the hell’s going on here, you have to be familiar with earlier materials (even though this is the first volume). I’ve never actually played the first three Mortal Kombat games, but I’ve watched other people play them on You Tube, so I have a general idea of who the characters are and why I should give a damn about them. But those are the only three games I’ve seen up close. It’s because of this mass confusion and chaotic storytelling that this graphic novel earns a mixed grade at best.

But what the book lacks in coherent storylines, it makes up for tenfold with the violent action sequences. Bodies are getting ripped in half, hearts are being eaten, heads are being chopped off, bones are being broken, and that’s just a warm-up. Hell, the daggers that corrupt the minds of their owners do so by traveling through their blood. “The flesh is a lie!” as one warrior so delicately put it. There’s so much blood and gore in this graphic novel that vampires would use this as their own version of Playboy magazines. Then again, this level of ultra-violence is to be expected from a franchise where Sub-Zero rips the spinal column and skull out of his opponents’ bodies in the very first game. This kind of bloodlust had politicians and activists up in arms in the early 90’s, so the graphic novel will do nothing to sooth their sensitive sides.

The positives of this graphic novel are purely superficial, unless of course you have a better grasp of the storyline than I do. You get bonus points if you can remember everybody’s names, let alone the names of the artifacts scattered throughout the story. If someone can explain this to me and make me feel like an idiot watching Jeopardy, I will be your own personal janitor for a month. I’ll mop your floors and clean your toilets…with my tongue. Okay, maybe that whole stipulation is a tough bet, but you get the idea. The graphic novel is enjoyable, but confusing at the same time. This kind of yin-yang dynamic is what makes me want to give the work a mixed grade.

Rx

“I am so frickin’ bored. Nothing to do today. I guess I’ll sit around and medicate,” sang Nathan Toney as his heavy body sprawled across the living room couch. Getting off that couch was a feat of strength akin to power-lifting a small Japanese car. His eyes were glazed over like a frosted donut. The multi-colored afghan blanket did little to cover his flabby torso.

The coffee table in front him was covered in pornographic magazines and cigarette ashes. The center of this table represented his only two choices in this world: a steak knife to end his misery or a bottle of Floydicon to numb him out. Nathan gazed at the scars on his wrists with a single tear in his eye. He wanted to go through with it. He wanted any excuse he could to exit this world forever and free himself of the unnecessary pain. But the bottle of magic pills was right there in front of him.

“Eh, what the hell…I’m too lazy for this shit anyways…” said Nathan flatly as he opened the bottle and popped one of the large white tablets. Another five hour nap was on the horizon. What kind of weird ass dream would he have this time? Unicorns and rainbows? Teeth falling out? Being naked in school? But then again, who said anything about a dream?

Nathan’s eyes shot wide open and pulsated as he watched the rain outside come to a complete standstill. The drops of water just floated there and changed colors at random whether it was clear to green, green to purple, or purple to blood red. “What the fuck is this?” asked Nathan in a hushed voice. The lights flickered in his tiny apartment before completely blacking out and leaving him in the shadows. “Oh no…not this shit again…not again!”

“Yes, Mr. Toney, we’re doing this again!” belted an ophidian voice. Nathan held his sausage fingers over his eyes and slowly uncovered them to reveal a woman in a business suit with a cobra’s head and scaly green skin. The chubby depression patient shivered and cowered further into the couch while pulling the afghan under his double chin. “It was a simple offer,” the snake woman said. “You could have had a promotion. You could have been the boss’s boss. All you had to do was one small little favor for me.” That favor was clear the minute the snake boss licked her fangs.

Nathan trembled and stammered as he struggled to say, “You knew I had a family. I can’t just do that to them. I can’t go sleeping around with whoever I want!”

“What family? This family?!” shouted a scorpion woman in a nightgown with two crying daughters clinging to her legs as tightly as they could. Nathan pulled the afghan over his whole head, but the scorpion’s tail ripped it away and poked him in the bare chest. “I knew I was right to divorce you, you son of a bitch! How could you ever consider taking that whore’s offer?!” She shed bloody tears and wiped them away with her pincer. “We didn’t need the money that badly! We needed a father and a husband!”

“Man, fuck you little bitches!” shouted Nathan as he tossed the blanket aside and shot up to his feet. “I gave you all nothing but hard work and this is how you repay me?! By taking it all away and making me live in this filthy piece of shit apartment?! You’re all poison to me! Fuck you bitches! Fuck you all!”

The two crying daughters morphed into wasps and pointed their sword-like stingers at Nathan’s face, but the disgraced father wouldn’t be deterred. “We didn’t do anything!” they said in synchronized demonic voices. “We wanted you to come home with us! We never wanted this divorce to happen! We miss you! Come home with us!”

Nathan’s raging face softened into solemnity when he hugged the two wasp children and said, “I can’t come back anytime I want. Your mom changed the locks. She has an order against me. I tried to fight her in court, but she wouldn’t let me win.” The wasps poked him in the gut with their stingers and sent their father sprawling on the couch screaming in pain. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled while clutching his green bloody wound.

“So this is it, huh?” said an elderly toad woman with red slime dripping from her amphibian skin and gnashed flies between her teeth. “You’re just going to give up on your family like this? As your mother, I can’t allow that, Nathan. I raised you to be a real man and a real man takes care of his family! A real man fights for what he believes in! But if you don’t believe in your own wife and children anymore…” With one flick of her poison tongue, she captured the wasp children and devoured them while drooling a river of thick goop.

“No!” shouted Nathan. “You can’t do that! You can’t take them away from me!”

The scorpion wife, cobra boss, and toad mother spoke in unified demon voices, “We can do whatever we want to you, Nathan. You gave us permission when you walked out on us. You gave us permission when you gave up the fight. All you had to do was see a psychiatrist about your…little problem! But you couldn’t do it, could you? You didn’t have the guts to do it then and you won’t do it now!”

“Little problem…” whispered Nathan with growing fury in his voice. “Little problem?!” He pointed to his brain and roared, “You call this a little problem?! Newsflash: I’ve been living with this shit for nearly all of my fucking life and all you three bitches did was make it worse! You all did this to me! I don’t owe any responsibilities to you pieces of shit anymore!”

“Do something about it!” said the three creatures. With every repetition of that phrase, their monstrous auras grew brighter and their voices grew louder. Nathan covered his ears and crouched down to the floor, yelling for them to shut up, but they never did. They tormented him further and began to form a circle around him. They danced and sang their demonic tune while Nathan’s eyeballs were glued to the steak knife on the coffee table.

“I know what I have to do…you want me to do something about it…you’re damn right I will!” Nathan scrambled for the knife and held the jagged blade to his throat while the horrifying ladies taunted and teased him some more. He made one small incision and a tiny droplet of blood hit the carpeted floor. He made another cut and smeared even more blood on the floor.

The blade made a full on slash and the monsters around Nathan were dropping dead one by one. Their bones snapped and their own slimy blood mixed with his. Nathan struggled for oxygen, but all that would come up in his throat was his own life juices. His stomach grew queasy at the thought of his death coming so soon and he barfed up what little oxygen he had left. All that was left of Nathan Toney and his demons was a mixture of biological sludge that made chemical plant explosions seem mundane. The goopy red rain fell once more and washed them all away in the storm.

A lightning bolt flashed across the sky and awakened Nathan Toney from his drug-induced haze. He pulled his face out of the toilet and coughed profusely until he could breathe fresh oxygen once again. He gazed around with bloodshot eyes and saw that his apartment remained in the same messy state as when he first took the Floydicon. He placed his fingers to his throat and saw that a nasty scar had developed there, but it wasn’t bleeding heavily like it was in his high.

After a while of shaking heavily, Nathan steadied his body long enough to pull himself to his feet using the rim of the toilet. He limped his way out to the living room and spotted the bottle of Floydicon resting conveniently next to the steak knife. With an expression of boiling fury etched on his jowly face, Nathan marched over to the coffee table, grabbed the medication, and stomped back to the bathroom to flush the pills down the toilet.

“What kind of dip-shit takes these kinds of pills anyways?” Nathan vengefully whispered. “What kind of doctor prescribes this shit to begin with?!” He eyeballed the label on the bottle and saw that the medication was prescribed to him by Tri-Circle Enterprises, the company he used to work for. “Figures…it fucking figures!”

He discarded the bottle in the trash and marched back over to the coffee table to grab the steak knife. Instead of holding it to his throat or his wrists, he held it like a samurai warrior and gnashed his teeth together like a rabies-infected wolf. “I’m taking my family back one way or another,” Nathan vowed. “If I have to kill every last one of those motherfuckers…so be it! No more lawyers! No more judges! No more courtroom bullshit! Ass-kicking is what’s called for!”

“But first…I need to get out of these god-awful clothes…” He spent the last few days in pajama pants and a 3XL white T-shirt. The clothes had seen pizza stains, cigarette ashes, and liquor spills of the worst kind. They smelled as though he’d been shit on by a horse in the middle of a burning junkyard. He changed into fresh jeans and a red polo shirt with black combat boots on his feet. His boss always told him to dress for the job he wanted. With a steak knife tucked firmly in his back pocket, his new job was corporate assassin. He could have done this the legal way, but it didn’t take a tripped out Floydicon user to know the law was one big conspiracy against the underdogs anyways.