I Dream of Weird Shit

***I DREAM OF WEIRD SHIT***

I say all the time that dreams are a rich source of creative fuel. They’re like Vitamin B12 for the schizophrenic mind (trust me, this is real science; look it up). Last night’s visit to the subconscious theater was one that qualified as cinematic wizardry. Or a psychotic cluster fuck, one of those two. Either way, I’m going to harvest as much creative fuel as I can from this once in a lifetime acid trip. Here’s how the dream went:

I started the dream by opening a newspaper and reading about male-to-female transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox confronting Ronda Rousey at one of her press conferences…wielding a crossbow. That’s right, folks. A crossbow. Not a shotgun. Not an AK-47. A crossbow. Nobody around me was asking why Fallon Fox was holding a crossbow. They wondered what kind it was and how many rounds it could carry. This was the one instance where it was okay to complain about unfair advantages in a one-on-one situation. A crossbow, for shit’s sake!

I put down the newspaper and get to work at my family-owned toy store. My occupational dreams have come true; I get to work with toys! I was setting up various Bionicle figures on the display table and even playing with some of them. My videogame playing brother signed a package for a shipment of Double Dragon games…for the PS4. A beat-‘em-up side-scroller from the 1980’s is now on Playstation 4. Where the fuck have Jimmy and Billy Lee been this whole time?! I missed those guys!

And then I actually start to play a copy of the game. Seeing as how it’s on the newest generation of videogame consoles, the game is ten times harder than its Regular Nintendo predecessors. The first level is a ski resort crawling with anthropomorphic wolves carrying big fucking swords. The creatures themselves aren’t so scary. It was when they grabbed Billy Lee and bashed him over the head several times with the handles of their blades that I decided to lower the difficulty and try again.

The ski resort level was the same, but this time I was fighting baby dolls with milk bottles. The same health bar-draining beatdown happens all over again. The dolls force feed me sleep-inducing milk while the other dolls punch and kick me while I’m down. I throw the control and say, “I don’t want to play anymore!”

I couldn’t play the videogame any further anyways, because it was time for me to clock out from the toy store and spends some time with my babysitter. This thirty-year-old man actually has a babysitter! And that babysitter has some cute daughters who are about my age. I tell everybody how beautiful they are and they get creeped out.

Instead of talking about beauty, we watch a TV show about aliens disguised as people roaming the earth and preparing it for an invasion. For the main character, we have a bald guy in a trench coat and a hat with his face concealed as he goes around ratting on these aliens to the authorities. Every time he successfully squeals on an alien, he gets a new identity under the Witness Protection Program and continues roaming the earth to do his detective work. He one time ratted out an entire restaurant because the aliens were making racist jokes about Europeans. Aliens getting accused of xenophobia: the irony could not be clearer.

After the end credits rolled, the closing logo featured a guy getting hit by a car and flying through the air, getting hit by another car and flying through the air, getting hit by a train and flying through the air again, and then getting his nose chopped off by a helicopter’s propellers. In the words of the pilot, “That’s one dead motherfucker!” For some reason, I thought that closing logo was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.

I woke up this afternoon at about two o’clock and I didn’t want to do anything for the rest of the day. I was so exhausted from ongoing sleep apnea issues that writing was impossible until now. I also didn’t feel like watching WWE NXT or Smackdown this evening, instead electing to watch the NXT Takeover special in Dallas tomorrow night and Wrestlemania 32 on Sunday.

Losing an entire day of potential work to sleep apnea is something that has plagued me throughout my whole career. Some days I’d have energy, some days I didn’t. Today was the latter and I felt awful about it. Not to worry, because I finally scheduled a sleep study which will take place on June 8^th, five days after my 31^st birthday and three days before seeing Slipknot and Marilyn Manson in Auburn. Chances are good I will need an oxygen mask, which I won’t mind as long as it gives me the energy I need in my day-to-day routine.

As of now, I have a short story to write for the WSS and a chapter to edit the hell out of in Occupy Wrestling. Those things don’t just write themselves. At least now I have some funky creative fuel to power me through my short stories. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What do you call it when the voices in your head laugh at you for having dirty underwear?

A: Skids-ophrenia.

Mastodon

“Ten-thousand gold pieces for the capture of mass murderer Courtney Robyn, wanted dead or alive.” That seemed like a sweet deal to Christopher Brown. Find the craziest bitch in the town of Middlesex, cock the sniper’s crossbow, fire, repeat. Shouldn’t be too hard for a pro like Christopher. He’d only been tracking her for a whole goddamn year with no solid leads and minimal sleep.

And boy, did his lack of sleep ever show itself in the most obvious ways: constant yawning, dark circles under his eyes, depression, bad posture, and hazy vision. He wouldn’t have sacrificed his health so easily if that ten-thousand gold piece reward wasn’t badly needed.

For all the times he was wide awake, he thought of the fact that his log cabin of a home was falling apart little by little. The rainy weather was warping the wood, termites were chewing on it like beef jerky, and sleeping at night was impossible anyways due to the cold temperature and wet blankets. Finding a new place to live, preferably something worthy of royalty, wasn’t just for the sake of convenience; it was do or die in the worst possible sense.

As Christopher Brown walked down the street in his studded and spiked leather armor with the crossbow strapped to his back, he suddenly felt energized and awake, as if the danger of his situation shot a river of adrenaline through his veins. That was because after a year of hunting clues, he had that bitch Courtney Robyn clear in his sights.

Try as she might to conceal her appearance in a monk’s robe, she made one mistake when attempting to shake off bounty hunters: she didn’t brush her teeth. Christopher could smell that horrific oral stench from a whole block away: children’s blood mixed with women’s flesh and men’s muscles. Courtney’s victims were all dismembered and mauled in some way, leading authorities to at first believe they were attacked by wild animals. But these butchering marks were too perfect for animal paws. These bodies were dissected like a turkey’s corpse: with the intention to be eaten.

Time to collect a paycheck and get this cannibal off the streets for good. Christopher stood on the street corner and watched as the familiar and foul smelling “monk” in brown robes headed to a fruit stand in the bazaar. The street markets were filled with all sorts of customers and food mongers whether dinner that evening was fish, meat, or in Courtney Robyn’s case, fruit, probably to cleanse her breath.

Christopher approached his target with the vast number of customers in the bazaar getting out of his way since he was the most intimidating guy there. Brown hair in a ponytail with a scraggly beard and a face tattoo? Yeah, you’d better move. By the time he made it to the fruit stand, however, Courtney had already made him.

She threw off her brown robes and pulled a crying baby away from its mother before holding a jagged blade to the little guy’s throat. This was her alright: curly blond hair, the face of a demon, the clothes of a street dweller, and the breath of a cannibalistic monster. As soon as Christopher drew his crossbow and pointed, Courtney threatened, “Don’t take another step, bounty hunter, or the baby gets it!” She then kicked the hysterically crying mother in the shin to shut her up. The baby, on the other hand, was noisy enough for everyone in the bazaar, who were now fleeing the scene.

“Courtney, if you so much as pin prick that baby, I’ll put a bolt right through your fucking head! I know how you are! You’ll kill anybody as long as they taste good! I bet that baby tastes like pumpkin pie, but you’re never going to know if I get a good head shot!” threatened Christopher.

“Oh, you’re so good! You truly are an avid professional! I can smell the sweat equity you put into hunting me down…and that sweat smells like heavenly butter on that delicious man meat of yours!” said Courtney as she ran her monstrous tongue across her yellow teeth and chapped lips.

“I’m warning you, you psychotic bitch! Put the baby down or else…”

“Or else what?” The Mexican standoff ended when Courtney threw the screaming baby like a football into Christopher’s line of vision, hoping he’d pull the trigger of his crossbow out of instinct. His finger was itchy and twitchy, but he never fired. He dropped his crossbow, dove forward, and caught the baby in his muscular arms.

He spoke calmly to the little guy in a cutesy-wutesy voice while the mother limped up to the two of them crying herself. Christopher got up from the ground and handed the baby back to his mother, being ever so gentle despite his own scary appearance. “Thank you so much!” said the tattered clothed mother before she hugged him around his thick neck.

In all of this excitement, Christopher had lost eye contact with his target Courtney Robyn. The baby toss was just a diversion to help her get away. As the bounty hunter hugged the teary mother back, he was doing it also because a year’s worth of work had just gone to waste. His eyes would get blacker, his bed would get colder, and his depression would get heavier. In his mind, he cursed himself for being so “stupid”. On the outside, he held onto the hug for a little too long and the mother and her baby had to struggle to break free, which they did.

The mother and her baby would have the same reasons to cry as the rest of the bazaar customers, who were still running away in packs. Courtney Robyn didn’t escape from Christopher Brown. She didn’t want to. After a few loud, earth-trembling steps that cracked the cement roads, it was apparent that the cannibalistic murderer was still in control. Of all the animals to be riding, she had to chose a mastodon.

Not just any mastodon, but one powerful enough to squash large numbers of people like ants underneath its massive feet and towering legs. The body of this magnificent creature was stiff with muscles that made riding it feel like laying in firm bed, a luxury Christopher wish he had. Courtney Robyn, being arrogant and crude, rubbed it in by laying on her back with her hands behind her head while the beast of burden trampled through the crowd.

Some were fortunate enough to pack themselves in the alleyways and huddle underneath dustbins. Most of the customers were trying to outrun the godlike beast and got crushed and bloodied for their efforts. The streets of Middlesex looked like a battlefield with the number of flattened carcasses laying about. Christopher’s crossbow looked like someone had spilled toothpicks on the ground when it too was crunched.

Christopher himself, on the other hand, took a different route from the rest of the pack: he began scaling the buildings. The buildings were made with bulging stones held together with shallow cement, so sticking his feet and hands between spaces was easy. Climbing quickly was even easier since the adrenaline made him forget about his depressive tiredness.

But then the mighty mastodon was bumping into buildings as more people were trying to get away from it. The whole incident felt like a mosh pit with the mastodon crushing and smashing everything and anyone in its path. Courtney had done a hell of a job of riling the beast up, yet she was the most comfortable on its back. What a sick prick.

Christopher was beginning to slip and slide from his climbing position, but he was so close to the top. He could feel that final stone with in his muscular grasp. He held on with such tightness that it resembled the kind of chokehold he wanted to do to Courtney. The building continued to shake with the mastodon’s fury and Christopher’s fingers were getting weaker. With the last of his fingertips slipping away, he plummeted to the ground below in what was sure to be a splatter punk death.

He didn’t land on the cement ground to be pummeled, though. He landed right on the mastodon’s back with Courtney just now “waking up”. The spikes and studs in Christopher’s leather armor were so sharp and jutted so far that they irritated the mastodon like a bad case of flees. The destructive monster bucked around in the air like a rodeo bull, jostling Courtney and Christopher into the air and onto the cracked and split pavement.

In the last few seconds of consciousness he had after hitting the ground with deadly impact, Christopher could see the feet of not only bazaar customers fleeing, but also animal tamers lashing ropes around the mastodon to try and tame the beast. It was a relief to see the monstrous animal subdued within the world’s longest minutes. He could finally go to sleep.

No, he couldn’t! With one gloved hand, he held his left eyelid open. With the other, he rolled over on his belly and dragged himself over to where Courtney was laying. Christopher’s vision was blurry at best, but he knew the positioning all too well. She landed on the back of her neck with her legs doubled over her face.

Just a few more drags across the pavement with the detached studs in the bounty hunter’s armor irritating his skin. Another one. And another one. With bloody skin and quite possibly broken bones, Christopher Brown was finally able to drape his arm over Courtney’s lifeless body. Any authority figure looking at the two of them would know that Courtney was his catch and nobody else’s. They’d have no choice but to pay up and hopefully witnesses would back Christopher up if they didn’t.

Maybe the mother with the frightened baby could be a witness. Maybe the stony ground wasn’t such a bad place to nod off after all. Maybe…maybe…zzzzzzzzzzzzz….Goodnight, Christopher Brown. Rest in peace, Courtney Robyn.

Oswald the Giant

Zack Moraga didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve to be found guilty for a murder he didn’t commit. He didn’t deserve to be locked up in the smelliest god-awful dungeon for five years. He also didn’t deserve to have his only chance at freedom come at the price of hunting a giant with little more than a jagged dagger and a measly crossbow. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t lay a giant even if he had a fiery catapult and two battering ram teams. He was all alone out there in the Dread Wight forest with two crappy weapons and a death sentence disguised as a window of opportunity.

The poor prisoner didn’t even try to track down this “Oswald the Giant”. He just sat on a tree stump in the middle of this foggy forest and sulked with his spiky-haired head in his hand. What did he really do to deserve all of this? Why was he wearing leather blue prison armor instead of a decent outfit? Didn’t anybody even remotely entertain the idea that Zack Moraga might be an innocent man? All he was at that point was a statistic. An outcast. A walking corpse. These negative thoughts caused a sigh to slip from his chapped mouth.

Finally after a few hours of moping on that tree stump with nothing but his thoughts, the ground began to shake. At first it was a gentle rumble. But then as the beast got closer, the tremors knocked Zack off of his stump and sent him into a mad dash for safety. He was barely one step ahead of the giant as it put its foot down for another violent quake. And another step. And another step. While this would be considered moseying for a giant, it was an exhausting sprint for Zack, who fell off the dirt trail and into a ditch.

The would be giant slayer laid on his back after so much exercise and breathed heavily. His ribs were sore from the cardio and his feet felt like he was walking on swords barefoot. He was done for. This is what a corrupt justice system in medieval times amounted to. For god’s sake, if the giant wanted to kill Zack, why didn’t he do it already? Get it over with! Quit letting the anxiety build up!

And then the giant laid down beside Zack on the dirt trail and rolled on his back. He let out an animalistic yawn and then a longwinded…purr? Wait a minute. Giants don’t purr. Sure enough, Zack opened his sore eyes for a few seconds and saw that the “great” and “fierce” Oswald the Giant was an oversized tiger-striped cat who purred and played like any other domestic animal would. But for now, he was sleeping.

A cat? The high courts wanted Zack Moraga to kill a giant cat? What for, exactly? Was his heavy stepping really that much of a threat to the royal kingdom? Was there a sudden shortage of fur? How about meat? Were people that starved for a good meal? Whatever the case was, the imprisoned warrior shook his head and achingly pulled himself to his feet. There wouldn’t be a better time to slay the giant than right fucking now.

Even though his body was sore, Zack managed to find the strength within his tired bones to climb up on Oswald’s belly using his fur coat. The big gut rose and fell slowly and evenly. The purrs were mixed in with the snores. This cat was definitely unconscious. But sneaking across the moving belly without disturbing him proved to be difficult work for Zack.

He tried to maintain his acrobatic equilibrium whilst tiptoeing across the beast’s stomach. Thinking this kill was already his, the hunter pulled out his crappy dagger and raised it in the air, hoping to get a good stab to the throat. He was almost there. He could feel the sweet taste of freedom. And then Zack stumbled on his ass and awakened the kitty giant, the rusty blade dropping to the ground below.

Oswald looked at the strange creature on his belly and lifted his head to try and lick him off like a flea. “Oh, dear god! Why?! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” screamed Zack as he was getting bathed in feline saliva. The goopy fluids caused the jailbird to stick to Oswald’s tongue and be flung high in the air after the cat spit him out.

While in the air, the cat giant batted him around like a common toy with all four of his fuzzy paws. Zack Moraga continued to curse and scream since the harsh motion (along with the spittle) was making him sick to his stomach. A final wave of Oswald’s paw sent the fighter off to the side of the dirt trail into the ditch once again.

Zack hit the ground hard enough to finally trigger a storm of vomit from his already filthy mouth. After about half a minute of puking, it was pretty much just dry heaves, which went to show how poorly prisoners were fed under this justice system. How badly they were defeated was also evident when Zack laid in a puddle of his own (and Oswald’s) oral filth and didn’t care about life anymore. It was over.

“Who am I kidding?” he said to himself. “This was a setup from the start. I don’t know how to slay a giant, much less a goddamn cat. Fuck this. I’m…going…back…to sleep.” He let out an acidic yawn and started to pass out when Oswald was nudging him with his wet nose.

“Stop it, leave me alone!” said Zack weakly. “Just kill me already! It’s over! My life is over! Why are you taking so long?!” Oswald was licking him again and the saliva didn’t smell any better than it did before. “Why?! Why must you do this to me?!”

After a while of licking, Zack was clean of his vomit, but not of cat spittle, so it was a minor victory at best. Oswald then grabbed Zack by his shirt collar with his teeth and tucked him into his belly before snuggling around the suicidal warrior. Along the way, Zack heard his crossbow drop on the ground as well, but he wasn’t going to lift a pinky in order to pick it up. To be honest, Oswald’s furry cuddle was more comfortable than any straw bed in that crappy dungeon. It didn’t take long for Zack to fall asleep in the cat giant’s loving hold.

The entire night had passed over the Dread Wight Forest and still Zack’s handlers didn’t see any progress made. The two seven-foot tall knights clad in steel armor and carrying war hammers were trudging through the forest in search of their ill gotten prisoner. “I told you we couldn’t rely on that pathetic weasel to get the job done!”

“What did you expect? He’s one guy with the most basic weapons we can come up with. Do you really think he stood a chance? Besides, there really was no hope for him after all. This had death sentence written all over it.”

“So the whole thing was just one sick joke from the start?”

“Pretty much. Now where is the little bastard? I’m hungry and I don’t want to stay in this wretched forest any longer.”

The ground shook and knocked the two towering knights on their asses, yet they kept steady grips on their war hammers. Before them stood Oswald the Giant, with his teeth showing, his drool flowing, and his hisses and growls coming at intimidating paces. Even so, the two knights weren’t the least bit scared. They laughed at the kitty giant before getting up and dusting themselves off.

“Come on, you giant turd! Let’s see what you’ve got!” shouted one of the knights before that same knight felt a sharp pain going up the crack of his ass. He danced around bleeding and screaming like a little girl until he eventually lost his footing and spun out into the ditch below to die.

The other knight noticed that the source of the anal pain was a crossbow bolt, one issued only to prisoners of this “death sentence”. The steel-clad warrior looked around and saw Zack Moraga leaning against a tree with his arms folded and the smoking gun (or cocked crossbow) in his hand.

“You sick bastard!” screamed the remaining knight as he stampeded toward the unflinching Zack with his war hammer ready to strike. The seven-foot warrior felt a hard smack against his back and flew into another oak tree with explosive force. The pain was horrendous, so much so that turning his head to see who smashed him was a chore itself. It was Oswald and his giant paw, no doubt.

As soon as the knight peeled himself out of the tree, he fell over in a weakened state and was ripe for the picking. Zack waddled over to him and lifted his head before saying, “Justice is finally served!” That was the last thing the knight heard before he felt the jagged edge rip his throat to pieces, bleeding him out and suffocating him at the same time. He died instantly.

After the two handlers were disposed of, Zack threw aside his weapons and looked up at Oswald with a big smile on his face. He hadn’t smiled in such a long time and it felt good to do so. The now ex-prisoner climbed up on Oswald’s back and said, “Take me home, kitty-pie. I have a baby girl who’s dying to meet you!”

The jolly gray giant meowed and purred as he trotted across the forest, fully intending to take Zack home where he belongs.

Clair Deus

NAME: Clair Deus

AGE: 24

OCCUPATION: Witch Hunter

CANON: None

Back in the years 2007 and 2008, whenever I was strapped for fantasy movie script ideas, I would come up with multiple lists of 100 original characters and randomly select from those lists to determine which ones would be in the same story. The list items would have a name, a race, and a class. That’s it. No back story, no psychology, no flaws, just the basics. The good stuff would be developed as I wrote the script. Unfortunately, Clair Deus, Human Witch Hunter, was never randomly chosen for a script, so she stayed on the list she was a part of indefinitely.

But the more I thought about the potential Clair Deus had, the more I began to develop her for no real reason inside my own head. I always envisioned her as a medieval dark fantasy version of Kate Beckinsale’s character from the Underworld saga. The few differences were, Clair had gothic makeup on her face and used crossbows and magic wands instead of guns and knives. Not much original thought put into Clair’s character, I agree.

It was the characters closest to her on the list that allowed me to develop her even further. Many of those extra characters had “mancer” in their class title. “Mancer” is a Greek suffix that signifies the person has magical powers in the prefix of his choosing. For example, a pyromancer works with fire, because pyro is a prefix for fire. A cryomancer uses ice, a hydromancer uses water, an electromancer uses lightning, and of course, we all know after playing Diablo II for half of our lives that necromancers deal in death. With so many people surrounding Clair Deus’ spot on the list with “mancer” in their job titles, you’d think she would have plenty of “witches” to choose from when she goes hunting for evil bastards.

All of these possibilities flowing through my head made me wonder why I couldn’t just cherry pick characters from these lists and do whatever the hell I goddamn want. I favor random selection for a number of reasons. One, it’s an exercise in discipline. If I force myself to conform my story to the selections I’ve made, I will have established myself as a disciplined writer who didn’t let his only form of controlled chaos get too overwhelming. Two, if I randomly select from whatever list I’m working with, I’m giving every list item an equal chance of being chosen. When everything has an equal chance and there’s no favoritism of any kind, that would be the equivalent of parents raising multiple children. I treat list items like I would treat my own children if I wanted any: with justice and fairness.

Although I use randomness every day whenever I’m working creatively (in fact, I use it to choose blog topics as well), Clair Deus will have to settle for being an unemployed character on Garrison’s Library. But if she stayed there indefinitely, it would defeat the purpose of having old characters’ biographies on my blog in the first place. I want to use Clair in a dark fantasy story someday. The question is, how big of a role will she play (if any at all) and will she have enough flaws to make her a believable character rather than a Mary-Sue badass? That’s the problem I’ve faced in the past with a lot of my dark fantasy characters: they were too perfect for their own good. Nobody likes perfection, because life is far from perfect. Although we should all strive to be better people, we will never be perfect, which is what makes real life such an interesting story. Shouldn’t Clair Deus’ story reflect that kind of creativity? And before you ask, no, Clair’s last name isn’t a recycling of Deus Shadowheart’s first name. The two characters are unrelated.