Wesley Anselmo a.k.a. Scar Tissue

 

All the potential of a rock n' roll legend and none of the opportunities.

Elijah Canterbury a.k.a. Dogmeat

 

A teenaged runaway who can escape a volatile home, but not the dangers of gang life.

Black Tar Kiss, Chapter 4

 

You ever hear that phrase snitches get stitches? Well, in my case, that’s provided I even make it to a hospital to begin with. That ambulance had to be haulin’ ass and doin’ all sorts of Motocross tricks across the highway to get me there on time now that word probably got out the minute I stepped on the concrete. Somebody would have heard about me ratting on Scar Tissue and White Snake. Whomever had their eardrums pounded with that information first would be the ones shanking me to death or putting bullets in whatever was left of my messed up brain. If it wasn’t going to be Scar Tissue and White Snake themselves, who would it be? The Bad Faith Actors Guild? The Monkey Slayers? The United States of Hitler? Any number of incel gangs rooting around in Bull Rope?

 

Nah, man. I didn’t see anybody in fedoras wanting to stick a knife in my guts. What I saw made me want to die. I’d been wandering around the city for a while not really paying attention to my surroundings until I found myself in a homeless district. A whole sidewalk lined full of ordinary people who lost every ounce of hope in their decaying bodies.

 

I saw a teen momma with a face full of dirt trying to bottle feed her little crotch goblin, if only he’d stop cryin’ his baby blue eyes out. Lord knew he had a lot to cry about not only in the present, but if he survived poverty and somehow made it into the future without dying of starvation.

 

I saw an old lady sittin’ in a scraped-up rocking chair trying to bundle up with every piece of fabric she had. Nothing would be thick enough to cover her skinny-ass body and she shook hard. The shaking might have had less to do with the chilly weather and more to do with drug withdrawal. I trudged a little further trying to hold back that stinging saltwater in my eyes.

 

And then I saw a pair of blistered and cracked feet hanging out of a cardboard box. I could barely see a chest rising and falling in there, but even that wouldn’t last forever in this frosty mess that we call weather. He didn’t have nothing but a torn up T-shirt on his back and a little paper cup with change jingling around in there. I wanted to give him a big wad of cash that I earned from wheeling and dealing with Black Tar Kiss, trading for ingredients to make that magical chewing tobacco. A wad of cash had nothing on a good homecooked meal and my heart sank to the bottom knowing it was already too late for him.

 

Seeing some shopping-cart pushers, some little kids in knockoff coats freezing their butts off, some old grandpa slumping around with a cane and not a single thing on his naked feet, not only did seeing these people put my weary eyeballs through hellfire and torture, but they reminded me of a meme I saw on the Book of Faces one time. It said, “You’re closer to being homeless than you are to being a billionaire.” A broken heart was the least of my worries. That meme was looking more like a reality the more I realized my money wouldn’t last forever. I could stay at a cheap-ass motel for a few nights, but then what? Right back on the streets to meet my new neighbors.

 

This wasn’t a neighborhood. It was a graveyard for people who still had something resembling a pulse. Old people and kids were among them. Old people and kids! My stomach growled and ached at the thought of these homeless folks dying a slow and agonizing death all because nobody would give them a bite to eat. They probably heard the unwanted advice of, “Get a job!” even though they already took it and still couldn’t afford shelter. Bull Rope ain’t no hippie paradise. This place was a death camp with no guards. Smelled like one, too. Made me wonder if the coroner had a steady supply of nose clips to go around, that was if he wasn’t too busy blowing snot out of it from all the tears he shed beforehand. Making a coroner or an undertaker cry took talent, but none of them talents translated into success in the job market. Squandered potential everywhere, though someone probably squandered it for them.

 

Speaking of squandered potential, as I was dragging my frozen carcass across the newspaper and plastic jug-covered sidewalk, who else but Scar Tissue popped up in my swimming head. Swimming was an appropriate way to describe it, because I just about sold my own pal up the river. This wasn’t just some wannabe thug who couldn’t cut it in the Mexican Mafia. Hell, he had no business in Black Tar Kiss anyways. This was a dude who played multiple instruments and had a love for heavy metal and hard rock. This was a dude who should have opened for Slipknot one year and headlined his own show many years down the line. He should have been slapping that bass and beating them drums all over the world from Italy to Japan to Brazil to back here in the US of A.

 

Why would a guy with all the promise in the world want to throw it all away just to hang out with incel thugs? During our time together while we were out of earshot from White Snake, he told me why. Truth was, he didn’t throw any of it away. His momma did. His batshit bipolar ass-beating momma decided her own hijo was a worthless piece of crap and smacked him around with her rubber slipper, damn near every night. Grades too low? Smack on the arm. Didn’t do his chores? Smack on the ass. Couldn’t get a part-time job at the pizzeria? Double smack on his thighs. Couldn’t walk on water like Jesus Christ? Breathed in and out? Dared to make a little bit of a fuss? Thwack, thwack, thwack! Apparently, physical punishment was a big part of Latino culture. It was so normal to his family that he would hear Mexican comedians on TV joke about it and think it was a high bar for parenting. If he complained about it, it would just bring about more beatings with the slipper. Or a leather belt. Or an open hand. Or a copy of the 2,000-year-old fantasy novel that my dad read a lot.

 

Speaking of Christianity, God bless Scar Tissue’s soul, because he tried to find an outlet for his trauma. Lots of them, in fact. He already told me he learned how to play drums from listening to The Warning. What he also told me was that he was a little bit lovesick for them three chicas. Every night he’d go to bed and have these intense fantasies about them girls. Sometimes he would open for their shows. Sometimes he would have dinner and lunch with them. Sometimes he’d hold hands with them and walk down the streets talking about this and that. And then there were those nights where his fantasies were…let’s just say, a little more involved. He was in love with all three of those sisters even though he never had the chance to meet them. Not once did they come to his home town. When Scar Tissue took the last beating he was going to take from that slipper smacking his bare ass and stinging the piss out of him literally, he knew The Warning weren’t coming to save him. He felt betrayed by three girls who never knew he existed. The sting of his ketchup red flesh outweighed the beauty of his lovey-dovey fantasies. When he first started communicating with White Snake over the internet, he jumped at the opportunity to run away from home and into the arms of an “alpha male”.

 

Everyone thinks gang leaders and Black Pillers like White Snake are just brainwashing and torturing random kids just so he can send them into battle to live out his own perverted fantasies. It was brainwashing, but he did it by giving us what we wanted and telling us what we wanted to hear. Before we joined Black Tar Kiss, we were nothing. No different from the gum stuck to someone’s shoe. No different from the diarrhea dumps in a public bathroom stall. No different from the tampons that soaked up more blood than we could dream of spilling in a gang fight. But once we joined up with him and got our names, we became badasses. We controlled the narrative. And if we worked hard enough in his ranks, we’d get better gangbanger names and all the money and chickies as far as our tear-stained eyes could see. All we had to do was reinvent ourselves. Get hard. Get tough. Pump that iron. Max those looks. Flex those muscles and macho man ourselves into the gang world. If anyone disrespected us, we would make them pay. If any woman turned us down, they’d be laying down and we’d be getting down.

 

Remembering Scar Tissue’s origin story must have been like taking a skewer to the eyeballs, because they were hurting like hell at this point. I wasn’t about to let out a whimper in case any of them thugs from The United Staes of Hitler or the Black Dragon Machineguns lurked around the corner. And then…some little lady did my whimpering and crying for me. Snapped me right out of my eyeball-murdering trance and made me realize I had been walking this whole time not paying attention to where I was going. My phone was buzzing like crazy, but I wouldn’t have answered it even if I was alert and alive. I had to give my dad credit, though: he wasn’t about to give up on the last of his bloodline. Maybe he should have, ‘cause I’d already given up on him and prepared myself for life on the street. A cardboard box was small potatoes compared to the spring mattress with the volume turned up to eleven.

 

After I had gotten my bearings, I turned my head and saw a group of chicks in yoga pants crouching on the ground attending to someone who shook and cried like she had just seen holocaust footage…in real time. These Stacies were supposed to be my enemy. This was a perfect opportunity to up my alpha male game and make them all obey. Lay them down and lay them good. Then my tummy got sour as I remembered all the misogynistic and pedophilic rhetoric that spewed from White Snake’s mouth like word vomit. Why the hell was I going to bat for him anyways? I never liked him past the point of getting me out of my hellhole of a home. These girls needed help and I needed a redemption arc in the worst way. I ran right over to see what the hell was going on.

 

Once I asked one of the women, she screamed, “There’s a guy going crazy in there! He just started wailing on us and yelling a bunch of nonsense about Black Pills! I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him!” Her speech got more frantic and she started stuttering at a million miles an hour as she held up her phone. “I can’t get any reception around here to call the cops! He’s still in there!”

 

She was spitting out information while my fried brain worked overtime to process it all. And out of the corner of my eye, I see that whoever was in there ranting and raving like an idiot had dropped his wallet, also like an idiot. I picked that sucker up and rummaged through it, hoping to find something resembling useful information. In between all the dead credit cards and dollar bills, there it was in all its glory: his driver’s license. That was definitely White Snake’s face on it, which looked like a prison mugshot with his wild eyes and serial killer frown. You know what else was on it? His government name. He never used it because he didn’t want me and Scar Tissue using ours. Our gangbanger names were our identities moving forward.

 

And speaking of moving forward, guess what bad decision I was about to make with my immature teenaged cerebral cortex? I tucked the wallet in my pocket and dashed into the yoga studio where all the chaos was happening and no copper could do anything about it because the reception sucked. Them yoga-hosers tried to plead with me not to go in there or do anything stupid, but selective deafness was a bitch and White Snake was about to become mine.

 

The yoga studio had exercise equipment strewn all over the floor like a stampede of horses just rushed through here. Busted windows, benches smashed in half, the reception desk had its cash box spilled all over the floor, and wouldn’t you know it, there was the devil himself. You’ve seen this movie a thousand times, so what did you think White Snake was doing with the chick in pink yoga shorts and blue sports bra when he had her by the brown ponytail? He repeated exactly what he saw at Battleground Park with Me Encanta Femicidio: he bent her over a bench that hadn’t been completely wrecked and spanked her apple bottom something fierce. Even the dialogue was relatively the same. SPANK, SPANK! “Naughty girl!” SPANK, SPANK, SPANK! “Bad, bad girl!” Repeating cycles was normal in his neck of the woods, obviously.

 

I could have ran over there and spear tackled him to the ground, maybe break a few ribs in the process. But I decided to hit him where it would hurt even worse. “ALLEX!” That got his attention in a heartbeat. He even let go of the chick he was spanking and she booked it out the shattered glass door. Getting shards between her toes and stuck in her soles was the lesser of two evils when the alternative was getting one more wallop on her butt.

 

“Allex Broker! That’s the name your momma gave you, right?!” And just like that, he stared at me like he wished he had a sniper scope in front of those coldblooded eyes of his.

Black Tar Kiss, Chapter 3

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Black Tar Kiss, Chapter 2

“Hey yo, Scar Tissue, I’ve got a question for you, buddy. What exactly does Me Encanta Femicidio mean?”

 

“I love killing women.”

 

“I know, but what does that sentence mean?”

 

This was pretty much a normal conversation that someone could have with White Snake. Normal by his standards, not normal by decent human being standards. Most people have at least some of their marbles rolling around in their heads. He doesn’t have a goddamn thing in there, not even a pebble. He laughed at his own joke while Scar Tissue gave a satisfied little smirk. Me? I was probably staring holes through our beloved gang leader, but ain’t nobody called me out on it.

 

The three of us got out of the car and surveyed the situation before us. Battleground Park used to be this beautiful forest full of life and greenness. Squirrels running around with nuts in their mouths, sometimes bulging their cheeks out. Birds chirping away and singing better than most auto-tuned pop stars could ever dream of. Hell, you might see a deer pitter-pattering up to a creek to get himself a little somethin’-somethin’ to cool his throat and quench his thirst. Nature photographers would never long for employment in a place like that. But like I said, it USED to be this way.

 

Instead of oak trees that looked like nature’s hard-ons, it was just dirt, grass, some picnic tables with vulgar nonsense spraypainted on them, and some port-a-potties that smelled like they were bursting at the seams with dead bodies, which was probably why they called it Battleground Park, ‘cause that’s where all the corpses typically were.

 

And speaking of people who hadn’t seen a shower since the Nixon Administration, there they were in numbers that grossly outmatched the three of us: Me Encanta Femicidio. Not one Latino among them, or at least anyone with half an appreciation of the culture. Just a bunch of out-of-shape white dudes with whole-ass forests under their chins, like what Battleground Park used to be. Heavy metal T-shirts with the sleeves cut off so that the rest of us could get a good whiff of their goopy armpits. Black jorts, blue jorts, tan cargos, anything at all as long as we could see their tarantula-like legs, even though there were only two of them on their bodies. There they were hooting and hollering like idiots, pouring beers down their throats, sucking down cigars that somehow stank worse than they did, and bending a little cheerleader chick over one of the picnic tables before pulling her skirt up and spanking her red with their meaty paws. SPANK, SPANK! “Naughty girl!” SPANK, SPANK, SPANK! “Bad, bad girl!”

 

The more I listened to that baby girl cry her guts out hoping some invisible dude in the sky would hear her, the more I wondered why White Snake and Scar Tissue were just standing in front of the corvette with their arms folded. Discussing strategy, maybe? Yeah, I was kind of curious about the strategy myself. My fists and jaw were clamping down tight as I watched those hayseeds spank that cheerleader. If I ever needed a blood test done, I now know where my arm vein is, to hell with the tourniquet. Maybe I could have used some dental work, too, if I clenched my teeth any longer than I did.

 

I stomped up to the trunk and popped the sucker open, hoping for some weapons. Some CD’s, some T-shirts and jeans, some candy bars, an old vinyl record of Dark Side of the Moon, but not a weapon in sight, although I’ve thought about shoving candy down Me Encanta Femicidio’s throats and triggering a mass diabetic coma. I shook my head in disbelief and slammed the trunk down. “White Snake! We got a situation over here!”

 

He barely turned his head to look at me, forgetting that eye contact was supposed to be a thing. “What kind of a situation?”

 

“Well, I was just checking out this here trunk and, uh…no weapons. No guns, no knives, no brass knucks, not even a little sewing needle. How the hell are we supposed to fight that many douche-canoes if we ain’t packing heat?”

 

“Ah, don’t you fret, little Doggie Meat. I got all the heat you could ever want right here. Come on over. Get a piece.” He pulled something out of a little tin and started chewing on it. He sprinkled some in Scar Tissue’s hands and he was munching like no tomorrow, smacking his lips, too.

 

I strolled up there to see what it was. “Chewing tobacco? This is your secret weapon? We’re gonna get our asses handed to us! Besides, aren’t you worried about jaw cancer?”

 

“Cancer?” White Snake blew some air out of his nose. “Feminism is the only cancer you’ve got to worry about.” Classy. “This ain’t chewing tobacco. We just need the cops to think it’s chewing tobacco. Ever wonder why we call ourselves Black Tar Kiss?”

 

“Because the initials are BTK and you’re an edge-lord?” Scar Tissue chuckled at my joke and then quickly shut up once White Snake gave him a little glare.

 

White Snake turned his attention back to me. “Well, that’s certainly one explanation. Of course, the other one would be, this here black tar ain’t just any old chew. It’s Black Pills.”

 

“I’m sorry, Black Pills?”

 

“Yeah, man, Black Pills. They ain’t just an analogy from a stupid movie written by transgender-sexuals. These suckers are real. I told y’all that we’re the ugliest sons of bitches to walk the earth. Now these Black Pills are gonna prove my point. Chicks ain’t gonna resist us now, because…well…they ain’t got a say in the matter!” My stomach bubbled listening to that. “Come on, Dogmeat, have some.”

 

“Nah, man, I’m good.”

 

“Dude…you said it yourself. We ain’t packing heat in the trunk. No guns, no knives, nothin’ like that. You want to beat these guys or what? Why should they get all the cheerleader chicks? Three of us and god knows how many of them. These Black Pills will even the odds in our favor. Or you can get your ass stomped into the ground, that’s always an option, if not by those chuds, then by me. What’s it gonna be, kid?”

 

I stood there furrowing my brows at White Snake. He probably could have kicked my ass on any given day, but I had a mind of at least trying to kick his, even if I would have gotten ambulanced away.

 

I can’t freakin’ believe I’m saying this, but…Scar Tissue was the voice of reason. “Come on, essa, have some! You think I’m gonna let these putos run around here speakin’ my language? They don’t know a damn word. They’re just tryin’ to be cool. Yeah, they cool, alright. They’re so cool we should call them…Los Kulos!”

 

I did know what Los Kulos meant and that put a smile on my face. “Okay, let me have some.” Who knew positive reinforcement could be so convincing? Scar Tissue gave me a pinch of chew and I started chomping up and down on it. “Tastes like beef jerky!”

 

“I know, right? Now let’s settle this beef, essa! Viva la Raza!” Scar Tissue rapidly drummed his palms on the hood of the car to get psyched up. Even when he was fooling around, he looked like a goddamn rock star pounding those drums. Again, why was he hanging out with us instead of opening for Mudvayne?

 

Any euphoria I had watching Scar Tissue be a little bit like his old self was blown away by the shrill sound of White Snake whistling at the rival gang. He got all their attentions. The cheerleader got her bright red ass out of dodge, running and sobbing like she was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of a creepy uncle. She lost one of her white sneakers, but there were more pressing matters, obviously.

 

“Greetings, ladies and Germans! Just kidding, none of you have any balls tonight! I got one question for your chronically online Reddit chuds! This place used to be a forest, so I figured I’d ask a little philosophical question. Would y’all rather be stuck in the woods with a man…or a ssssssssssssssnake?!”

 

On a normal day, that would be the cheesiest thing to ever come out of White Snake’s mouth. But considering that a forked tongue was actually what came out of it, we all had the right to be a little worried. Them meatheads on the other side of the battlefield started dripping from their pits and foreheads something fierce, even though we weren’t packing any heat. After all, why would we need heat…when White Snake started to transform…into a big-ass white snake?! His skin turned all scaly and stuff. He grew some fangs that would give any dentist PTSD. He grew this long-ass body that would give snake-haters instant schizophrenia. His fingers shot out these pointy-ass claws that looked more frightening than his ugly-ass fangs. And wouldn’t you know it, this guy was freakin’ huge! He must have gained a whole foot just to look like this big ol’ monster snake with his tail coiled around him.

 

Scar Tissue, bless his soul, he didn’t do any favors in the racing hearts department. He too gained about a whole foot. His whole body turned into this big ol’ river of blood with these slimy, gross, scaly tentacles shooting out of every which way. He grew some razor-sharp claws too, but I would hazard a guess that the little fanged mouths on the end of his tentacles were even more heart attack-inducing. At this point, I’d be surprised if that was the only river of blood I saw that night. I swear to god, my incel homies were transforming into their namesakes right in front of me.

 

…Which made me wonder what the hell I looked like, being that my name was Dogmeat and all. I grew some field of hair all over my legs and arms. I had a Gandalf beard that looked like it hadn’t been cut since the date that story took place. My nose and mouth shot out a few inches and I was afraid to bite my own tongue and draw some serious blood. I had to take a quick peek in one of the side mirrors to see what I looked like. Well, it started out as a quick peek. It ended up lasting a hell of a lot longer than that. I looked into the mirror and saw an absolute goddamn monster from the depths of hell. Werewolf body, clown face with pale white and all, and even a blood-red wolf nose to complete the motif.

 

If my momma saw this side of me, she’d go right back to the needles and cocaine. If my dad saw me like this, he’d go from screaming to crying his eyes out in short order, probably muttering something about disappointing him and him not recognizing his own son anymore. I didn’t recognize me anymore. The Black Pill philosophy was true all along. I WAS the ugliest freak walking the earth. No girl would be caught dead with her hand in mine…unless of course she actually was dead. Forget make-out sessions, because that’s one of the ways in which she could die. My bloodshot eyes bulged like I was ready for battle, but I was just waiting forever for some salty discharge to drop. Manly men didn’t do that mess, but I didn’t want to be a manly man anymore. I wanted to cry. I wanted to be a baby suckling my momma’s tits. I wanted my dad to be proud of the boy he raised. How could anybody be proud of me outside of my gang circle?

 

There was a whole-ass battle going on over yonder, but I stared into the mirror waiting to cry my eyes out. The tears never came. There was some screaming and smashing noises going on in the background, but I didn’t watch what was going on. I assumed my guys were winning. How could they lose when they looked like that? Sure, they wouldn’t lose their virginities, but at least they wouldn’t lose a gang fight against a bunch of mediocre nobodies. What was this all for?! Why were we doing this to each other?! The answer smacked me right in the temple.

 

Nah, man, I’m serious! One of them chuds tossed a brick at me and opened up a gash real’ bad. My eyes weren’t leaking, but that wound sure was. I took another look in the mirror after I picked my head up…and I was bleeding like a goddamn fire hydrant. Them chuds started laughing their wobbly asses off…so I laughed along with them. And the more I laughed, the more cartoonishly insane I sounded. I rubbed the blood all over my face and laughed like a damn lunatic. I didn’t have to worry about no consequences, because who would put a straightjacket on my hideous body?

 

I got this sick serial killer smile on my face as I turned to look at the weirdoes who did this to me. They weren’t shaking like an electric massager they wished they could have used on that cheerleader, but they were damn close. I showed all my bloody teeth at them, I gave them this big ol’ murder grin, and I laughed like I was a shoe-in for a 51/50 order. Those porkers started sweatin’ like the pigs they were. They started shaking in their little Nikes. And then they got some serious goddamn exercise by running in the other direction. I ran after them and made some booga-booga noises just for extra effect. These pukes had never ran a marathon a day in their lives, until they met Dogmeat. I let them go after a while. And once they were out of sight, I gazed up at the moon and howled. “AWOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

 

After that little war cry, I took a look back on the battlefield where the remnants of Me Encanta Femicidio were trying their damnedest to fight the good fight. Punches, kicks, even the occasional headbutt. White Snake snatched up one of them with his tail and asked another one of his philosophical questions. “Would your rather tell your feelings to a woman…or a TREE?!” Once White Snake was within range of one of the last remaining oaks, he slammed that kid against the tree and he went down clutching his spine and screaming in pain. Not gonna lie, that looked pretty badass.

 

“Scar Tissue, look out!” That’d be me warning him about some sneaky prick wielding a bass guitar. The kid had designs of smashing it over Scar Tissue’s head, but thanks to my warning, he turned around and snatched that thing out of the chud’s hands. That dude knew he was screwed, yet he could just stand there and tremble while Scar Tissue…played a tune? Was he actually playing the bass intro to “Disciple” by The Warning? Did he really kneel down like he was channeling that Alejandra chick? Was this guy seriously having a little fun on the battlefield? Well, he did until White Snake condescendingly cleared his throat. Scar Tissue sighed before smashing that bass right over the kid’s head. He plopped over on the ground, his cheeks bouncing on the grass. He was out cold as White Snake’s ugly heart.

 

And wouldn’t you know it, that battlefield was littered with big dudes groaning and moaning in pain. They weren’t dead by a longshot, but they probably wished they were, judging from how they writhed around clutching their wounds. The torture was still going on long after the fight was over and the three of us were standing tall. And just like that, the effects of the Black Pills wore off and we shrank down to our human selves. I had no idea the effects were temporary. I had no idea any of this was happening tonight. I got a little jolt of energy from that fight, even though I didn’t throw a single punch or kick. I was grinning from ear to ear. Scar Tissue and White Snake were high-fiving the hell out of each other. Scar Tissue went on a fire-spewing Espanol rant like only he could and literally not anyone from Me Encanta Femicidio, those absolute men of culture.

 

Scar Tissue bounced around excited, whooped, cheered, cursed in Spanish…and then there was White Snake, staring at me like I just made a yo momma joke about him. Scar Tissue realized what the hell was going on and went silent in no time at all. I had to ask White Snake. “What’s up?”

 

“What’s up? I’ll tell you what’s up. See all these bitches groaning in agony? They’re all over the place. They’re crawling around our feet like a bunch of bums. And now look at your feet. Ain’t nobody crawling around you. What the hell were you doing this whole time?”

 

I let out a nervous laugh. “White Snake, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. These morons got scared in their boots and ran for the hills the minute they saw me. You’re right! We’re ugly as hell! Ain’t nobody gonna dispute that!”

 

“You hear that, boss man? He scared them off!”

 

“Shut up, Scar Tissue.” Poor dude went quiet again. White Snake started marching up to me like he had another battle on his mind. I backed up little by little as he got closer. “Dogmeat, there ain’t nothing I hate more than a liar. I expect that mess out of a feminazi on X, but not you, bud. You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you? You ain’t down with us no more? Spit it out!”

 

“I swear, dude, it ain’t like that! I’m down for life!” I backed up a little faster this time, but I took one step too many and completely forgot that there was a hill right behind me. I made like Limp Bizkit and kept rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ rollin’. Thank god there weren’t any hard rocks in the way, but them sharp twigs poking in my skin weren’t much fun. I could have done without the dizziness swirling around my head like toilet water, probably the same water that them port-a-potties used. I could have puked up a bigger mess than what Scar Tissue’s body turned into when he chewed them Black Pills.

 

I hit the bottom of that grassy hill and the world spun like a damn carousel. I thought I was gonna float off into outer space. I thought the ground was the ceiling for a minute there. Took a while to get my bearings straight. When I did, I crawled on my scraped-up hands and knees, little stabs of pain along the way. And then I see a pair of leather high heeled ankle boots…accompanied by the flipping open of a police badge and a woman’s voice, probably a woman who didn’t take too kindly to the Black Pilled folk.

 

“Detective Jeri Lodge, Bull Rope PD. You and I are going to have a little chat, my boy.”

 

She’s right. We did have a chat. And what better way to start a conversation than by dropping my face to the ground and cursing under my breath? Saved by the goddamn cops…lord, help me…

Black Tar Kiss, Chapter 1

Well…now that I’ve got y’all’s attention and I ain’t letting it go anytime soon, you’re probably asking to nobody in particular, “What the hell is an incel?” You spend more time touching grass than most of us do, so kudos to you, cowboy. Bonus points if that grass is a slang term for something else. Speaking of slang, an incel is a portmanteau of “involuntary celibate”. Most of the dudes who call themselves this are a bunch of pissed off nerds who couldn’t get laid with a blow-up doll.

 

But if you join a street gang that calls themselves incels, you’re a different kind of dangerous. That’s what the three of us were. White Snake was our main man, Scar Tissue was his first pupil, and then there was me, Dogmeat, who got in the Corvette and pissed off from Sweetwater. Goodbye, Elijah Canterbury, welcome aboard, Dogmeat. Young, pissed off, and horny as hell. Can you think of a more dangerous combination than that? I guess Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would be a close second place. Do those three things really belong together?

 

Yeah, it all sounded pretty good on paper during that three-month grace period. A bunch of horndogs looking for love in all the wrong places, who hoped to one day stick our Johnsons in the wrong places too. We weren’t about to let a bunch of neckbeards get in the way of those plans. We were the Alphas. The badasses. The trigger fingers that would make them all obey. Again, it sounded good in theory. But once you listen to White Snake run his mouth for three whole months, ranting and raving about women like a psychopath? It makes you wonder why this guy hasn’t gotten the 51/50 treatment. He was long overdue for a straitjacket, but maybe an orange jumpsuit was more of his style.

 

This is the part of the story I was least looking forward to telling, but in the interest of show, don’t tell, I guess I’ll have to suck it up and power through it. White Snake loved talking about what he’d do to a woman if he got a hold of her, all alone somewhere in a dark lobby. It’s simple, really: duct tape her mouth shut, pinch her nose until she was out of breath, wait for her to hit the ground unconscious, and once she was in dreamland, pull his jockey shorts down and…well, you do the math from here. Math isn’t a very popular subject among the student body these days, but even an “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader” contestant can get this one right. And then you’d ask yourself, how would a fifth grader know this?

 

Speaking of people who aren’t old enough to join the army yet, another thing White Snake couldn’t stop running his motormouth about was “pranking” little elementary school girls by chasing them down the street and laughing like a lunatic. Eventually, the little ones would fall and scrape their knees, but it wouldn’t be nearly as painful as listening to White Snake repeat something he heard on a Tik Tok video once: “I CAN’T MOVE ON! I CAN’T MOVE ON! I WON’T ALLOW MYSELF TO MOVE ON FROM YOU, BECAUSE YOU’RE ALL I WANT! I DON’T WANT NOBODY ELSE!” And just like that, the little girl would do something not even my old man could do: break the sound barrier with her screams of horror. You’re damn right she was scared! What’s she supposed to do, put a ring on it? White Snake might give you a different answer to that question than what a rational human being might give.

 

And then we segue from pranking to spanking. Remember, incels couldn’t get laid if they held a pimp for ransom. So what do they do to relieve their horniness? You know, when they’re not too busy harassing women and beating up other Reddit chuds? Pull it out and crank it up. I’ve done that a few times in my life and I’m pretty sure that was the reason for the fracas with my daddy. More on that later. But at least I had the sense to do it to women who had more qualifications than being legally able to smoke a cigarette and drink beer. White Snake had no shame. He dove to the bottom of the barrel like he was in the pervert Olympics. How low could he go? Low enough to where they can’t wear anything but a diaper and say little more than “goo-goo-ga-ga”. I actually said to him one time, “You know those are kids, right?” And he was like, “No shit, Scooby-Doo!” I don’t know what was more offensive: his hard-on for kids or the fact that he butchered the easiest comeback in the world.

 

Yep. This was our guy. This was the guy that would lead us to the promised land. The land of milk and honey, though his ideal girlfriend couldn’t produce milk yet. This was the guy who drove the Corvette down a freeway blasting bro-metal while Scar Tissue and I were sitting in the back chillin’ like villains. Every time I was trapped in a car with White Snake, I could have sworn some creepy crawlies were running up my arms and legs.

 

But Scar Tissue at the very least had something resembling potential. While White Snake was blasting that bro-metal from the stereo, Scar Tissue air-drummed along like he was loving life again. And this wasn’t just casual air-drumming. Scar Tissue actually looked like he knew how to play the drums. He did the tom fills. He pumped those bass and high-hat pedals. He drum-rolled on that imaginary snare. He crashed them cymbals at the right time. Made me wonder what he was doing hanging out with a couple of losers like us instead of playing in a heavy metal band.

 

I asked him on the spot, “Where the hell’d you learn to play like that, bud?”

 

He gave me the world’s cheesiest grin as he waxed poetic. “Three chicas, homie: The Warning! I got a hold of their CD’s, took ‘em for a spin, and let Pau-Pau beat them drums like they owed her dinero. They don’t teach that kind of drumming at my school, homes. You listen long enough, you figure it out.”

 

“Self-taught, huh? I respect that! You still got any of them CD’s?”

 

Scar Tissue shook his head. “Nah, man. Started to get the feels for them chicas, so I had to ditch them. I don’t simp for nobody, essa. They don’t give me the time of day. Too busy or something like that. So now I’ve got some old school Drowning Pool in my collection. Tear Away is a classic! Goddamn, I love me!”

 

Of course he says, “I love me”, because nobody else would. It was true for the songwriter and it was true for Scar Tissue unfortunately. That’s rule number one in incel ideology: when it comes to a woman’s love, you’re in the back of the line. You think we picked out these names Dogmeat and Scar Tissue? Hell no. White Snake gave them to us to keep us “black pilled” and keep us in line. You get too confident, you might actually get caught by one of these black widows. What’s more heartbreaking than a demeaning nickname like Dogmeat or Scar Tissue? Those are the kind of names that make you feel ugly. Maybe we WERE ugly, I don’t know.

 

And in case we forgot about that, White Snake turned his head towards us and said, “Hey! You guys making gay porn back there or what?”

 

“Sorry, essa. Won’t happen again.” Scar Tissue shrugged his shoulders at me while I just rolled my eyes. Gay porn? Really? The guy who pounds his pud to diaper-wearing kids is judging other people for making “gay porn”? I didn’t tell him that. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Remember, Black Tar Kiss was a gang. You mess with the leader or try to run away, they’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. Once you’re locked in, you’re locked in for life. It can’t be the same as before.

 

And speaking of things not going back to the way they were before, you’ll never believe who tried to send me a text message on my phone: Ben Canterbury a.k.a. my old man from Sweetwater. I pulled the phone out of my garbage bag of this and that just to see if it really was him. No question about it. He had been trying to contact me for a long time now and every time he did, I just let the call go to voicemail or delete the text entirely. Yeah, life with White Snake wasn’t so great, but going back home wasn’t an option, because that would suck even more. At least with Black Tar Kiss, I could make a little money and get a little honey. Can’t say that with a mechanic’s salary in little old Sweetwater.

 

“Who was that, Dogmeat?” White Snake asked.

 

“Nobody. Just someone I used to know,” I told him I the most pathetic tone imaginable. I guess we all had someone like that in our lives. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be joining street gangs. We’d be at home playing videogames or building Legos, at least that’s what I’d be doing. Kind of hard to play videogames when your old man says they’re rotting your brain. And it’s kind of hard to build Legos when your old man keeps calling you out to the living room to do some mind-numbing chores. I can’t even put on a heavy metal CD without my dad’s voice drowning out the guitar work.

 

Black Tar Kiss wasn’t a great option. It was the only option. That was made abundantly clear to me when White Snake got off the exit ramp and started driving towards Battleground Park, where our first real test as a gang would take place. Me Encanta Femicidio was waiting for us there. I had no idea how many of them there were or what they were going to bring to the fight. I didn’t even know how many of us there were. Were there other Black Tar Kiss members that were going to meet us or was it just us three? Do we at least have some guns or something? I don’t need an AK-47 or a Styr Aug or anything like that. A nine-millimeter would have been just fine.

 

Pardon me for having a million questions running through my mind before this battle took place, but…if I’m keeping it a buck with you guys…my heart was pumping, my blood was colder than a fishing creek, and the rumbling my stomach was worse than if I ate some bad fish from that same creek. Want some plain English? I was scared to death and I wasn’t about to tell Whtie Snake or Scar Tissue about it. Me Encanta Femicidio didn’t scare me nearly as much as White Snake did. And if I lost my rapport with Scar Tissue, that was it, man. If there was a god up there in heaven, I know I wasn’t well-behaved worth a damn in them pews at church…but I hoped he was looking out for me.

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…