Chaos

The forest road seemed to be dragging on forever, like traveling on an endless conveyor belt. With the trees on the side of the road flexing back and forth in this windy weather, this seemed like the wrong night to take such a route. Officers Kenny Ryder and Robin Cage seemed to agree on that point, but they weren’t going to complain…publicly. They had a much bigger concern on their minds than potentially falling trees. In the back of their paddy wagon was Derrick O’Brien, the nation’s most dangerous domestic terrorist.

Derrick didn’t prefer bombs. He didn’t need guns. All he needed to get his message across were the blades on the tips of his powerful fingers, the flesh and bone-chewing fangs in his mouth, and the vocal cords of a bloodthirsty monster. The brown fur all over his body reeked of death and decay, like somebody who hadn’t showered in months while slashing victims to chunky pieces. The man wolf slept peacefully in his steel chain cocoon, but not without snoring like an AK-47 every time he breathed in.

Kenny and Robin kept looking over their shoulders and out at the road in short bursts before the chocolate haired Officer Cage broke the ice. “You know, I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit in my career, but a fucking werewolf? If I don’t see a big fat paycheck at the end of this assignment, I might turn into a werewolf and go ape shit myself.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said the baldheaded male with the scraggly beard Officer Ryder. “You should have seen all the manpower it took just to chain that bastard up. And now they’re sending you and me to transport his big ass to some goddamn lab.”

“Lab? You mean they’re going to put makeup on him and squirt shampoo in his eyes?” asked Robin jokingly as she drummed her fingers on the dashboard.

“Hey, if I ever find out they’re testing Head and Shoulders on that big furry thing, I’ll gladly do commercials for those guys.”

“You don’t even have hair, Kenny.”

“So?”

The brief moment of comedy put weak smiles on Kenny and Robin’s faces. They hadn’t lost sight of how risky this assignment really was. One steel link snaps and Robin could lose her head. One pad lock breaks and Kenny could have his intestines spread all over the windshield. As quickly as the windstorm blew that night, the humorous mood faded.

“Oh, what the hell is this shit?” asked Kenny when he stepped on the brakes and slowly brought the paddy wagon to a halt. The halogen headlights did so little to make out the hooded and robed figure in the middle of the road. It was just standing there frozen in place when Kenny blasted the horn three times. He rolled down the window on his side and stuck his head out before shouting, “Hey! Move your ass! We’ve got a prisoner in tow and you’re holding us up!”

No response from the hooded figure, which prompted an even longer horn blast from Kenny followed by another shout. “Hey! I said move your ass off the road! Are you deaf or something?!”

“You want me to take care of this asshole?” asked Robin with her taser armed. Her partner gave a nod before she got out of the paddy wagon and slowly approached the hooded figure with her taser locked and loaded. “Sir? Ma’am? Whatever the hell you are, I suggest you get out of the road before I…”

“Before you what?” asked the feminine voice from behind the hood. She raised her bladed finger and continued her question with, “Shoot me with that little toy? Go ahead. See what happens, cupcake!”

Robin fired the electrical prongs, but not without the woman grabbing them and smiling at her with creepily seductive red lips. Officer Cage shivered and watched with wide eyes as the woman removed her hood and revealed herself to be a purple-haired vampire complete with bloody fangs. Before Officer Cage could let out a whispery swear word, the vampire rushed up to her and forearmed her in the cheek, knocking her to the ground and exposing her neck.

The vampire licked her lusty lips with anticipation as she knelt down to take a juicy bite. And then she heard, “Hey! Don’t even think about it, you circus freak!” Kenny stood at the opposite side of the paddy wagon with his shotgun pointed right at her. He even pumped it for intimidation, but instead got a voracious growl from the mysterious woman.

Officer Ryder squeezed off a shot, but hit nothing as the woman quickly ducked down and rushed toward the back of the vehicle. The shotgun wielder darted over to the fallen Robin Cage and put two fingers on her neck for a pulse. She had one, but it was fading. The entire right side of her face was swollen and purple.

Kenny watched his partner fade to black in front of him and said in a comforting voice, “Please, don’t die on me. I’ll find that bitch and put one in her chest for you.”

Robin painfully lifted her head off the ground and spoke in a raspy voice, “Kenny…forget about me…what about the prisoner?!”

The sounds of wet lips smacking together romantically could be heard from the back of the paddy wagon. “Oh no, no, not this!” shouted Kenny when he saw the back door swinging wide open. He patted Robin’s chocolate brown hair and said, “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving your side. Those two are probably long gone by now. They’re someone else’s problem.”

“Such dedication to your craft, Officer,” said the lusty vampire, who stepped out from behind the opened door with her arm wrapped around a thin blond haired stud muffin in an orange jumpsuit, quite the contrast from the beast previously in lockup. She smiled at the man and said, “Derrick O’Brien, scourge of the werewolf clan.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the ultra-sexy vampire queen, Sonya Demonic,” said Derrick, who was engaged in an intense lip lock with his blood sucking girlfriend, complete with ass grabbing and breast squeezing. Sonya took off her robes to reveal a stunning silk black dress underneath. “Excellent choice, my sweets!” They kissed some more.

“You two scumbags make me sick!” shouted Kenny as he pumped the handle on his shotgun and squeezed off another round into the couple’s vicinity. The blast hit Derrick in the chest, but the human-staged werewolf no-sold his pain with sarcastic clutches at his “wound”. Sonya Demonic held her mouth in mock horror and let out a few orgasmic screams.

The couple laughed off the “pain” together and hugged it out. Derrick wagged his finger at the shock-eyed Kenny and said, “Now, now, Officer. Didn’t I hear you say yourself that it took a lot of manpower to chain me up? What do you think happened to that manpower?” Derrick broke his embrace from Sonya and patted his tummy with both hands before snickering evilly.

“You sick bastard! You sick, sick bastard!” shouted Kenny.

“Sick? Sick? Who’s the sick one, Officer?” asked Sonya. “My beautiful werewolf boyfriend here, or the one person who keeps feeding able-bodied cops to the two of us for dinner? Did you two really think this was a transport mission to some god-awful laboratory? Come on, now. There’s nothing out here except for trees and windstorms. Go ahead. Call for help. I dare you!”

Kenny’s breathing was getting heavier and angrier with each passing second. He leaned down and picked up the wounded Robin baby style before sitting her in the passenger seat. She was still breathing, but shallowly. She sat upright, but with her neck at a forty-five degree angle. She let out a small cough to let Kenny know she was still alive.

Meanwhile, the shotgun-wielding cop was in the driver’s seat trying to work the radio buttons. He spoke into the microphone, “I need backup! Officer down! Repeat! Officer Robin Cage is down! I need extra units and an ambulance for her!”

There was a heavy crackling at the other end of the radio before an ominous voice said, “I’m sorry, Officer Ryder, but Miss Demonic and Mr. O’Brien are going to be full with just you two as their meal. It was the only way I could keep the creatures of the night from taking over this city. I’m sorry, Kenny. The sacrifice has to be made.”

Officer Ryder’s heavy breathing turned to silent weeping. The silence was broken when he pounded on the steering wheel and blew the horn while swearing his head off. The fit of rage ended when Sonya and Derrick were on opposite sides of the vehicle’s cab banging on the glass windows. The creatures smiled at them with bloodshot eyes, blood filled mouths, and plenty of hoarse laughs. Derrick had transformed back into his werewolf stage and was chewing on the door handle for special effects.

Kenny slammed his own head against the steering wheel until his forehead bled buckets. His vision was getting hazy and his body was relaxing. He didn’t even feel the storm of broken glass that nearly slashed his face up even more. His last vision before passing out from the pain of Sonya’s vampire bite was Robin Cage being dragged out of the vehicle with Derrick’s wolf teeth gnashing her skull.

The entire “dining experience” took little more than fifteen minutes of chewing, sucking, and chugging. Meaty morsels sliding down the creature’s throats while the bones were being cast aside. Blood oozing from their mouths like a waterfall of violence. They were full from their meals, but still had room for dessert, which they would eat in the privacy of the paddy wagon’s prisoner hold. Red velvet kisses with a few small drops of Pina Colata. Such a lovely meal for a lovely couple, who held hands afterwards and watched the night sky together. They had to do date night again sometime.

"Star Island" by Carl Hiaasen

BOOK TITLE: Star Island
AUTHOR: Carl Hiaasen
YEAR: 2010
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Environmental Thriller
GRADE: Pass


In this deconstruction of celebrity culture, untalented pop singer Cherry Pye is on the brink of becoming a mega-star with the concert tour of her latest album Skantily Klad. She’s also a drug and alcohol nightmare for her parents, handlers, and paparazzi. Whenever she’s too toasted to go out in public to ruin her career, Ann DeLuisa, her identical imposter, goes out for her and behaves normally. A perverted paparazzo named Bang Abbott desperately wants a photo of Cherry Pye at her worst so that he can sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But when he kidnaps the stunt double, the plot to keep Ann’s name out of the press becomes a chaotic clusterfuck for Cherry’s parents.

I’ve been a fan of Carl Hiaasen’s for almost half a decade now, which I realize is a short period of time considering his lengthy and productive career, but “Star Island” is another reminder of why he’s one of the best in the business when it comes to fast-paced and comedic thrillers. The dialogue is witty, the action never slows down for a minute, and the whirlwind of chaos that ensues in this book is perfectly planned out from beginning to end.

It should also be known that two of Hiaasen’s most famous characters are reintroduced in this book: Skink (deranged ex-governor of Florida turned eco-warrior) and Chemo (flaky-skinned criminal with a weed whacker where his hand was supposed to be). Though they are on opposite alignments at first, the further you read into this book, the more you realize they have a lot in common. They have a disdain for spoiled brats, they don’t take shit from anybody, they’re both on the wrong side of the law, and they can be cunning when they need to be. Chemo prefers to be a hard-ass who trims his victims with his weed eater and Skink prefers more creative methods, such as, attaching a sea urchin to a scumbag banker’s testicles. Sooner or later these two longtime Hiaasen characters are going to meet. And when they do, you’d better batten down the hatches.

Pretty much every character in this book has something kooky going on with them. Aside from Skink’s craziness and Chemo’s intimidation, you also have the main character of the book, Cheryl Bunterman, aka Cherry Pye. This woman deserves no sympathy whatsoever. She’s an airhead, she lip-synchs her way to popularity, she’s spoiled, she’s shallow, and she’ll do any drug she can get her hands on. Chemo is already a loose cannon, so when he’s hired to protect Cherry and keep her out of trouble, even he’s driven to insanity.

Any other kooky characters who mesh well with a chaotic plot? How about the pedophilic CEO of Jailbait Records Maury Lykes? How about the deceptive banker and environmental hazard Jackie Sebago? Bang Abbott is no angel himself: he’s 300 plus pounds of sexual perversion and bottom feeding behavior, which is perfect for his paparazzo occupation. Ann DeLuisa might be one of the few people in the book with a sane head on her shoulders. How she keeps from going insane in the captivity of Bang Abbott is a mystery in itself. All of the characters mesh perfectly with each other whether they’re allies or driving each other nuts. There is not one hint of bad chemistry among these comedic forces.

In addition to playing to his usual strengths of chaotic comedy and environmental hammering, Carl Hiaasen is also a master at dissecting celebrity culture. There’s always this fascination with a celebrity couple doing something as simple as walking the streets together. There’s an even bigger fascination with pop stars who crash and burn under their own stupidity and weakness. We as civilians like to talk about celebrities like we know all about them. We put them on pedestals one minute, but when they fuck up just once, the media shit storm becomes too much to handle. Some celebrities deserve their privacy, while those in the same vein as Cherry Pye deserve to crash and burn and wind up in the shit house. The things people will do for fame and fortune, for better or worse, are all documented in Hiaasen’s novel. If you’ve ever wanted to put celebrities under a microscope instead of on a pedestal, by all means, pick up a copy of “Star Island”.

There’s a reason why Carl Hiaasen is one of Florida’s most widely recognized authors: it’s because he never disappoints when he releases a new novel. Sometimes I grab a Hiaasen novel whenever I’ve read something from another author that was awful. It’s the perfect cure for the one-star blues. A passing grade for a brilliant author and his book.

Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen

BOOK TITLE: Stormy Weather
AUTHOR: Carl Hiaasen
YEAR: 1995
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Environmental Thriller
GRADE: Pass


A hurricane passing through southern Florida has brought out all types of colorful characters wanting to exploit the stormy weather for their own personal gain. While on a honeymoon with his wife Bonnie, Max Lamb takes his camcorder and films the devastation of the hurricane for his own personal amusement. Edie Marsh and her psychopathic partner in crime Snapper come up with a plan for insurance fraud that involves a little blood splatter along the way on Snapper’s part. Tony Torres is trying to defend himself after several mobile homes he sold were ripped apart during the storm, mobile homes he guaranteed were safe.

In the middle of it all is Skink, a former governor who went off the deep end and became a diehard eco-warrior with loony methods of convincing people not to screw with nature. These weird ass characters and plenty of others come together eventually for a chaotic climax to a story about hurricanes.

If you’ve ever read anything from Carl Hiaasen before, you would take special note of that last word “chaotic”. The crazy characters all have a way of meeting each other and the results of their meetings only serves to intensify the insanity. But this isn’t just any chaos we’re talking about here. This is controlled chaos. That means Carl Hiaasen’s character count is high and he’s actually able to contain and develop them all within 388 pages.

Writing a Carl Hiaasen novel is a lot like running an insane asylum: you’ve got a lot of people to control and occasionally there will be rioting. Add to all of this a hurricane and things get out of hand rather quickly. Mr. Hiaasen must feel more like a babysitter at times instead of an author. I commend his ability to watch over that many people at one time.

I’ve said this before about other novels, but it bears repeating: a happy ending is not about IF it will happen, it’s about HOW. For an author, determining how a happy ending will occur will require believability. If you’re Carl Hiaasen, the happy ending will not only be believable (despite the story being told in a world of lunacy), it will also be hilariously fitting.

The main villain of this story as you will quickly find out is the trigger happy ass-hat known as Snapper, a white supremacist criminal who has a crooked jaw and an all around ugly face. Everybody in this book is guilty of exploitation, but only Snapper is treated as the biggest asshole in the book, no likeability at all. He might even be what TV Tropes calls a Complete Monster. While I won’t divulge what exactly happens to Snapper, I will give you one clue: it involves a certain red “club” that’s used to keep a steering wheel in place and prevent car theft. If your imagination isn’t as wild as Mr. Hiaasen’s, then I suggest reading the book to find out just what the hell I’m talking about.

Every Carl Hiaasen book I’ve read in my lifetime is either giggly, satisfying, agreeable, or all of the above. Stormy Weather is yet another triumph in Mr. Hiaasen’s legacy. He remains one of my favorite authors to this day, especially since he has something I value in a lot of authors: a fast pace. A passing grade will be given to this wonderful novel.

Rhys Jambi

Pirate culture was something I wasn’t always emotionally invested in. Even after watching two movies from the Pirates of the Caribbean series and watching an anime called One Piece, I couldn’t get behind the culture. What finally changed my mind about it was joining a Good Reads group aptly called Weekly Short Story Contests and Company, which I’m still a proud member of. We posts stories and poems and get awesome feedback whether it’s in the form of praise or critique. But more importantly, this Good Reads group has a pirate motif. It’s not just an internet group; it’s a pirate ship complete with talking mice, roughhousing, and swashbuckling. God, I love the internet!

Which brings me to Rhys Jambi, who would have been lost in the dark recesses of my character archives if it wasn’t for me joining the WSS group and being influenced by piracy. Not much is known about Mr. Jambi except via a crappy drawing I did of him in 2006, a time when the men looked like sticks, the women looked like men, and neither of them had a lot of extraordinary details. Rhys didn’t have a story to be a part of, which is probably why he’s only known through that crappy drawing. From what anybody could gather, he had tall spiky hair, baggy pants, sandals, and a giant sword with a crescent hook at the end of it instead of a point, much like the one owned by Tidus from Final Fantasy X.

So now that Mr. Jambi is known only through the drawing, it’s time to give him a personality of some kind. The pirate is not an official Dungeons & Dragons class (at least according to 3.5 edition standards), but if it were, the characters who portrayed it could be any alignment it want as long as it was non-lawful. As it turns out, hostile takeovers of other people’s ships don’t constitute the behavior of people who obey the law. Isn’t that right, Captain Phillips? Okay, that was in poor taste, but you get the point, right?

Despite freely breaking the social contract, pirates can still be either good, evil, or neutral. Once a decision is made in that regard, there still needs to be a decision made whether Rhys Jambi will be chaotic or neutral. Since I only have a small space to make those decisions, I elect that he be a mixture of all those non-lawful alignments. He can rape and pillage one minute and save a kitten from a tree the next. If I’m going to have him undertake an ambiguous alignment like that, it means he can’t do something so horrible he crosses the Moral Event Horizon. Otherwise, Mr. Jambi won’t be believable. I could make him believable if I gave him Multiple Personality Disorder, but I feel like that would be exploiting people with mental illnesses.

Aside from what I’ve already said in this post, Rhys Jambi is a clean slate. I’m sure he’ll adapt comfortably to whatever role I assign him. What could possibly go wrong? It’s like hiring a guy with no job history but a reputable education. Yes, it’s true he’s never had a job before, but he’s young and a go-getter. Shouldn’t that be enough? It sounds like I’m trying to sell this talking point to a future employer, but that ship sailed when I terminated my contract with the Department of Vocational Rehab years ago. Wait a minute, did I just make a ship analogy in a blog post about a pirate? I swear that was an accident. However, if he’s going to be a chaotic pirate, he needs a ship.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Careful where you shoot, because you might hit what you aim for.”

-Linkin Park singing “Keys to the Kingdom”-