The Happy Slasher

Three months of murders and rapes had passed in the wild west town of Tombstone and Sheriff Lisa Roberts was no closer to solving these crimes. The public was beginning to lose faith in her. Hell, they didn’t have much faith in her to begin with seeing as how she was Tombstone’s first female sheriff. At this point, all she wanted to do was get a cold glass of frosty beer at the saloon and forget her failures ever happened. Getting the icy treat was no problem. In fact, it tasted delicious. Passing out afterwards was a little creepier to think about.

She had every right in the world to be creeped out, especially after waking up with a monster hangover and actually having the capacity to think. She didn’t, however, have the capacity to move or talk. Her wrists and ankles were bound by leather straps to what felt like a rickety wooden torture table. Her mouth was stuffed with a red rubber ball with a strap that was nailed to the table. She tried to squirm and muscle her way out of this insidious device, but she was stuck whether she liked it or not. All she could do was listen to her own heart beat in the back of her throat while icy sweat poured down from her long auburn hair.

The room she was in was illuminated only by wall torches. There were no windows to the outside and even if there were, Lisa Roberts wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Her permanent stay in this death dungeon that reeked of mice corpses and horse shit was further cemented when she heard a familiar raspy voice in the background. “I bet you’re wondering why I’ve got you down here, Lisa!”

She knew she heard the voice somewhere before, but it wasn’t until the madman stepped into the light did she realize who this disgusting prick was. He had puffy white hair, a dreadlocked beard, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, and a blood-covered lab coat with little more than a black thong underneath. He also carried a machete that looked sharp enough to cut through steel. Lisa had seen this man before and started panicking through the ball gag once she realized who he was: Cletus Jung aka The Happy Slasher.

Cletus twirled his machete around nonchalantly as he stared into Lisa’s fearful eyes and explained himself. “You’re a tough woman to get a hold of, Miss Roberts. You’re an even tougher woman to ask on a date. It didn’t have to be this way, Lisa. You could have said yes and all would have been right with the world. But instead, you chose the path of a snooty, stuck-up mega whore. You labeled me, Lisa. You labeled me a creep! You labeled me a psychopath! And when all I wanted was a goodbye hug, you threw a beer in my face!”

The madman’s heavy breathing made Lisa perspire and tremble even more. He said, “Well, my darling. My lovely, beautiful, sexy darling. You have every right in the world to say goodbye to me. In fact, it’s your last goodbye. After tonight, you’re not going to be known as the first female sheriff of Tombstone. You’re going to be known as victim number fifty. That’s a lot of bodies to leave behind. I’ve built quite the legacy for myself, haven’t I? I thought that would have been enough to impress you.”

Tears formed in both Lisa and Cletus’ eyes, but for much different reasons. The machete-swinger said, “And this is how you repay me? By turning me down and leaving me a depressed mess? Well, I’m tired of being single, my dear. I’m tired of feeling lonely. With you strapped to that table, I don’t have to be lonely anymore. And goddamn, do you look sexy strapped to that table. I love a girl with a ball in her mouth. Now…let’s get started!”

Cletus raised his bloody blade and slowly stalked Lisa as she rocked the table back and forth with all of her desperate strength. The closer her got, the harder she rocked. The serial killer shook his head at her and said, “Bitch, please, you’re not getting away that easily.” With that said, Mr. Jung raised his machete in the air and brought it down with a powerful force. This would have been the end of many months of sexual frustration for him.

But just as the blade came down, so did the table. The wooden table crashed over on its side and Cletus ended up slashing the leather restraint on Lisa’s left hand. Once she tasted that small bit of freedom, she wasted no time in punching Cletus right in his nut sack, doubling him over in extreme pain.

That bought the sheriff a little bit of time to use her free arm to undo her restraints and ball gag as quickly as she could. The adrenaline rush caused her to fumble with the straps as she tried to untie herself and she screamed through her gag in frustration. She was quickly losing precious time since Cletus was slowly standing back up and raising his blade for yet another slash. “You goddamn bitch!” screamed the murderer when he brought down his blade for what was sure to be the final time.

Lisa had undone her restraints and gag with only microseconds to spare and rolled over on her stomach to avoid the slash. She rolled on her back and went for another low blow, but this time Cletus was ready. He caught her cowgirl booted foot and brought it to his face for a deep sniff.

“You sick pervert!” yelled Lisa before she hauled her foot back and planted a big kick right across the bridge of Cletus’ nose. The killer stumbled backward against the wall clutching his bloodied nose and screaming like a hunted animal. While Lisa used the knocked over table to try and lift herself off the ground, Cletus saw another opportunity to bring down the fierce blade.

This time the torturous weapon found its mark. Lisa’s left hand was cut off at the wrist and the cowgirl rolled around on the ground clutching her wound and crying in agony. She held the front of her shirt against the stump to try and suppress the bleeding. Cletus was bleeding too, but it was the result of a fractured nose and he didn’t care.

Instead the creepy machete warrior picked Lisa’s detached hand off the ground and fondled the fingers lovingly. “Yes…yes, this is indeed a beautiful hand, my dear. Now I won’t have to use my own anymore. You gave me a piece of your body.” Happy tears formed in Cletus’ eyes when he said, “And for that I thank you so much! You’re such an angel! At least you’re going to be by the time I’m finished with you!”

The agonized Lisa Roberts was on one knee still trying to stop the bleeding when her attacker raised his weapon and charged at her full force. The lawwoman only had seconds to react, so she decided to be just as disgusting as her opponent when she unwrapped her shirt from her stump and sprayed a stream of blood in Cletus’ eyes, blinding him and causing him to swing wildly at thin air.

“You bitch! You crazy bitch!” screamed Cletus as he was swinging and missing. “Who does that to another human being?!”

Lisa got to her feet with her stump rewrapped and answered that question with, “The same person who cuts off a woman’s hand just because she broke his damn heart. I don’t give two shits about your broken heart, Cletus. I care a lot more about your broken head!”

In the midst of Cletus’ blind slashing, he had his back turned to Lisa for only a few short moments. That was all she needed to make her move, she ran up to him and threw a flying kick to the back of his head, causing him to wobble forward and drop his weapon. He was so dizzy that he dropped to the ground on one knee reaching around for anything to support him. In case he was thinking of getting his weapon back, Lisa kicked it away from him.

She unforgiving sheriff then stepped on his spine and held him there while allowing him to bellow in agony and scream as many curse words as he could think of before the inevitable happened. While one boot was on Cletus’ back, the other boot came down multiple times on the back of his head, effectively curb stomping him out of existence. His brains and broken skull decorated the already pungent floor of the murder dungeon. Then again, so did Lisa’s stump, which was still bleeding heavily and soaking her shirt.

Escaping the dungeon and finding a doctor in time was a cakewalk compared to the battle she had with Cletus Jung. Not only did the doctor stop the bleeding, but he also attached a hook to her left arm so that she wouldn’t be completely disabled. After the injury, Lisa Roberts began to question the validity of returning to work with most of the town despising her anyways.

But after hearing about Cletus Jung’s violent death, the town didn’t feel too hostile toward her anymore. In fact, they could have voted for Lisa over and over again if they wanted to. But was she really ready to return to work with a hook on her hand and a gun in the other? Decisions, decisions.

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”-

Synopses

Before I get started with the body of this blog, I just want to take a moment and read to you the synopsis for “Cody’s Army”, which I am currently 72 pages into. It goes like this…

“The sequence was familiar: Another jet hijacked to Lebannon. Once again America held hostage by fanatic rebels. And just to prove they meant business the terrorists dragged two innocent passengers out on the tarmac and shot them in cold blood. That’s when John Cody and his mone got on the scene. Their mission was to free the hostages. But Cody wasn’t going to stop there. This time he had to make sure it didn’t happen again. And there was only one way to do that. The hard way. The bloody way.”

If that doesn’t get you excited about reading a high-octane military thriller, I don’t know what does. Just from that synopsis alone, you can expect John Cody to be a literary version of Rambo. The reason I reposted that text verbatim is to make a point: it may be wrong to judge a book by its cover, but it’s nowhere near immoral to judge one by its synopsis. If you’re a potential author and you want people to be at least vaguely interested in your book, you have to hit them with something hard long before they delve into the first page. It’s called hooking them in and it’s not a new thing. Movies that don’t hook in their audience by the first five minutes are going to lose a lot of patrons. And when you write your synopsis, don’t worry about overselling your product. It’s much more practical to oversell something than to undersell it. If you’re advertising a dog turd to someone dying of hunger, you’re going to want to oversell it as tasting like a Butterfinger candy bar. Otherwise, there won’t be a sale. If you want an example that’s closer to my heart, let’s use a WWE example, particularly one starring Dolph Ziggler. When he gets thrown around the ring, he doesn’t just flop over like most guys do. He spins around and flies like a birdie just to make that hip toss look painful. Dolph Ziggler can wrestle a broomstick and make the broomstick look good. If you’re an author looking to get people excited about your book, be a literary Dolph Ziggler and oversell your product. Talk about the bloody and painful moments early on. People love blood and pain. Now if only I could take my own advice when it came to selling “Red Blood, White Knuckles, Blue Heart”. If you’re wondering why I keep mentioning my self-published book in my posts, it’s because I haven’t sold a single copy as of today. It’s pathetic, I know. One day, I’ll shut up about it forever. I promise.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“CM Punk could burn an orphanage to the ground and he would still be popular with the fans.”

-Me-