Hell Don't Need Me

Millions of years of evolution came unraveling for Harrison. Tufts of brown fur covered his already battered body. A tail protruded from his backside like a sword’s exit wound. His teeth sharpened and bulged from his gums in the same sword-like manner. His wild staring eyes grew bloodshot with rage and agony. His ham-like fists pounded against his cage as the anger within him built like dynamite. There was no more begging and pleading for the mercy of his eco-terrorist cohorts. The damage was done. Harrison was no more. In his place was a primitive savage with a thirst for blood and a nose for seeking out his prey. The more he punched the cage door, the hotter his rage became. And then…the door fell off.

There were other apes like him trapped in adjacent cages, pounding and growling for freedom. Harrison paid them no mind. His mother wanted a savage beast and she was about to get one. No plan of action. No intricate designs for revenge, just the love of revenge itself. Once he was free, with monkeys screaming in the background like his own personal cheerleaders, he pounded on the steel door to the prison room, creating little dents with each passing blow. Another series of punches, another dose of hot blood flowing through him. One dent turned into a crater of violence. And then, just like the door to his cage, this new door flew off like a leaf on a breeze.

Harrison sniffed around and perked his pointy ears up, but detected no signs of life, just an empty spaceship hallway complete with pipes and wires. More doors. More computer screens. More mumbo jumbo that used to mean something during his life as an eco-terrorist. Those days were long behind him, unlike the pipe he ripped off the wall with ease, which was right in front of him. Harrison smacked the steel pipe in his palm and bashed it off the floor several times, creating new dents where there were previously none. He howled and squeaked with a combination of excitement and anger. He loved this new weapon. He would love it even more once it struck somebody’s flesh.

And then…the common monkey scents grew stronger…and stronger. Harrison already knew he was basically occupying a zoo…but this animal prison had new blood…familiar blood…He took deeper whiffs to make sure he was locked onto this primal smell. His target burned into focus. They were all congregating down the hall. The excitement bubbling within Harrison caused even more primal screams and bashes of his lead pipe as he ran like a lunatic towards his destination. Another door to the cockpit? Where has he heard this story before? Harrison bashed his pipe against the door over and over again, creating the loudest thuds a prehistoric savage could possibly make. The deafening pounds didn’t create dents this time, but little explosions. Pieces of metal became lodged in his fur. Some got in his face, but Harrison didn’t bother wiping it away.

A few more bashes later and the door, much like Harrison’s evolutionary decline, was history. There they were, all in the cockpit like one big happy family. Except they too had prehistoric violence coursing through their veins. The monkey virus had gotten to all of them. His three brothers’ scents were powerful enough to knock a buzzard off of a shit wagon. But his mother…the revered leader of a once powerful terrorist unit…the perfume and glamour had given way to a pungent odor that no mother should have. Every guilty party was gathered in one convenient room, all of them swinging around and bashing the environment around them. They didn’t even try to acknowledge Harrison’s presence. Maybe he was too far gone after all. But if that was true…how did he utter the words, “Hell don’t need me!”

Brother number one was the first to feel Harrison’s wrath in the form of a tail chomp so bloody that the limb fell off. The furry attachment flailed around like a crazy cobra while the brother screamed and writhed in agony. The other two brothers flew into battle with their anvil fists ready to disfigure any face they came across. Harrison bashed one of their ribcages in with the steel pipe and got pounced by the other brother. Harrison’s attacker leaned his face in with monster teeth bared, prepping to take a bite of delicious animal meat. Harrison held the pipe to his brother’s throat and pushed as hard as he could, drawing a small amount of blood from his mouth. Then the victim took the role of the bully as he bit his attacker’s finger off and spit it in his eye. Once Harrison was free, he wailed on his brother with the steel pipe over and over again until he was nothing more than a pile of shattered bones and pooling blood.

Harrison surveyed the damage he did in that small moment of white hot anger. His first brother passed out on the floor bleeding profusely from his tail, gangrene not too far behind. The brother with the shattered ribcage took his last breaths in the form of punctured wheezes. The less said about the third brother, the better. Harrison raised his lead pipe to the sky and roared like the savage he was meant to become. He even bashed the steel floor a few more times just to make sure he got all of his primal instincts out of his system. They were, but not in the way he had anticipated. Another cry sounded off in the room, but this one was tear-laden and shaky.

The mother monkey sat in the pilot’s seat of the ship with pleading and sorrow in her eyes. She got on her hands and knees begging for forgiveness, begging for a second chance despite the fact it would never be possible after these transformations. Wetness dropped from her bloodshot eyes and mucous splashed the floor beneath her. She even extended her arms for a peaceful hug, mother to son, just like the way it should have been.

Harrison’s former human side clouded his mind during this sympathetic display. He was feeling things again. His heart ached. His eyes dewed up when he took a second look at his fallen brothers. He snorted mucous upon locking eyes with his mother. “M…M…Mom?” This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Families weren’t supposed to treat each other this way. Everyone was in the wrong. Everyone had something to be guilty over. This was what it meant to be human, even if that particular DNA was a small percentage. Harrison dropped the pipe and embraced his mother, the two of them shedding tears on each other’s furry shoulders. They could start over and track down the bastard who did this to them.

But then the mother took a big bite out of Harrison’s right ear, gnawing it completely off and causing a rainstorm of blood to soak his fur. The mother bit him again, this time on the cheek. And again in the other ear. And again on the nose. Harrison tried to howl in pain, but blood was pouring onto his tongue and censoring his animalistic speech. His heart was broken. His stomach ached with betrayal. Screwed over twice by his own mother. This would be his legacy going forward. He started out as an incompetent eco-terrorist and he would die as a dumb ass monkey. With most of his face bloody and eaten, now wouldn’t be the good time for a head butt. Then again, logic wasn’t the animal kingdom’s strong suit, not even in the human world.

Harrison head butted his mother in the face and cracked her skull, causing her to spit out her sharpest front fangs. The two of them punched and wrestled each other, causing even more blood to stain the already dirty battlefield. Bones cracked. Organs sloshed around. Vomit projected from the mother’s mouth after a vicious kick to the stomach. Despite having cracked teeth himself, Harrison took one last bite out of his mother’s tail, ripping it off and bleeding her dry. The rage-filled demeanor in the mother monkey’s eyes rolled backwards to reveal dizziness and defeat. She stumbled around aimlessly while Harrison dragged his battered body over to the steel pipe before picking it up.

Once the mother plopped backwards on the ground, Harrison dragged his knuckles and his weapon across the ground, creating annoying screeching sounds in doing so, before raising the pipe in the air to deliver the final blow. “Hell…don’t…need…ME!” When Harrison brought the pipe down across his mother’s sternum and exploded her heart, he fell with her, though that was more owed to the sudden shaking of the spaceship they were in. Harrison’s dizzy eyes shifted in and out of focus as the turbulence jostled him around. The mild turbulence became a full on crash, launching Harrison through the windshield and onto the pavement.

This was it. With glass fragments stuck in his fur and blood pouring all over his body, Harrison could finally rest knowing his family was burning in hell. But then a familiar scent awakened him. His eyes slowly opened and his vision was obscured by tears and blood. It was a painstaking process pulling himself to his feet. But drag his body he did, leaving a smattering of life juices across the pavement.

Somebody else’s broken body laid on the sidewalk. All life was completely gone from this new corpse’s eyes, his fingers stuck in a gun position, his blue suit and tie a mess, and his puffy hair ripped and torn. Upon whiffing even deeper, Harrison recognized the familiar scent as the bounty hunter who unleashed his mother’s own monkey virus on the family. Spike Spiegel his name was, right?

Harrison, still holding onto his pipe, gritted his shattered teeth and crawled slowly towards Spike’s prone body. He raised the pipe in the air as if to write the final chapter of this story, despite that chapter already passing. One bash and Harrison’s revenge would be complete. And then…the human side took over once more. Harrison tossed the lead pipe aside and instead cradled Spike’s head in his lap, once again repeating the symbolic words, “Hell…don’t…need…me…” The monkey’s head swam as his vision blacked out. That would be his final act as a living creature: forgiveness for his former enemy. Why? Because it just felt right. It felt…human, at best. Evolution had taken root once again, more so in those last few seconds of life than a million years ever could.

“Hell…don’t…need…me…”

Screw the Zoo

The leonine samurai Dijas Kai watched and waited high in a tree for the perfect time to strike. Even with his massive frame, the dense foliage provided a perfect camouflage for his green robe. His breathing was shallow and measured so as not to attract the attention of zoo patrons. He didn’t want to throw his blade around so recklessly, but these rifle-wielding zookeepers stationed at every cage might give him a reason to. The thought of having his own prison to live in brought a vicious glare to his face.

“Nobody deserves to be caged like this,” Dijas thought to himself as he scoped the zoo at the various “attractions”. Monkeys flipping around for the giggles of small children. Elephants lazing around on the concrete while being bombarded with peanuts. Giraffes trying to find space to stick their heads out of their undersized cages. The one attraction that made Dijas’s muscles tense was seeing baby lions moping in their enclosure with no mother to play with.

Seeing these imprisoned animals sent a hot rage through the samurai’s veins. He wanted to stain the ground with these insufferable humans’ blood. He wanted to snap necks, slash limbs, and smash faces, all with extreme prejudice and no absence of malice. It wasn’t his time to strike just yet.

Too many zookeepers with their tranquilizer darts ready to fire. Too many fat obnoxious patrons munching on cotton candy and drinking caffeinated sugar water while ignoring the cries of their bratty children. In Dijas’s mind, these people deserved each other. Then again, it was better to pull this operation off during the day than at night when the security intensified with robotic traps and even more powerful guns.

In addition to the lonely lion cubs that customers were blindly “awing” over, another enclosure grabbed Dijas’s attention: one that was covered with a surrounding curtain. Even with his distance high in the tree, he could make out the sign that said, “Sarah Tonin”. A cheap joke, no doubt, as if these animals needed more humiliation at the hands of careless owners.

When the zookeepers removed the curtain, however, Dijas’s blood boiled like molten lava. It wasn’t a family of monkeys. It wasn’t more miserable lions. It was a shackled human being. She sat on a tree stump with her head hung low and tears dropping from her eyes. Her face was painted like a skeleton clown and her only clothing was a black athletic bra and gray sweatpants. Her hair was done in the style of red pigtails, as if to add to the cuteness factor in the same way baby lions did by rolling around.

“Hey, monster! You want a peanut?!” shouted a little boy before chucking a handful at Sarah. She barely flinched when the salty snacks hit her. Her flinching intensified when cotton candy was being thrown at her. Her flinching turned to thrashing when she felt the coldness of an energy drink splashed against her smooth skin.

The patrons’ fits of laughter and mockery were hushed as they looked around for the source of a lion’s growl. Surely, the baby cubs couldn’t have made such a frantic noise. They were just children. Another growl sounded off across the zoo. And a much louder growl made the customers shiver in their giant shorts. Once noisy children were now whimpering against their mother’s thunder thighs. Ignorant fathers also huddled with their wives as the lion’s roar descended upon their fragile ears. Zookeepers’ rifles were locked and loaded as they looked around for the source.

The group of gunners huddled close together and formed a circle around their disgusting patrons. One shot from their rifles and their target would snooze and drool for hours on end. Dijas didn’t care; this was his time to strike! With his katana drawn and his roars deafening the crowd, he leaped down from the tree and sliced one of the zookeepers in two from asshole to appetite. Customers bundled together and shrieked in terror at the sight of organs and blood splashing all over the pavement.

The zookeepers aimed their rifles at Dijas and were ready to take him down if it wasn’t for the massive anthropomorphic lion grabbing a heavyset couple and using them as human shields with his blade firmly against their necks. “Go ahead! Fire! Shoot those tinker toys like you actually stand a fucking chance! You think I give a shit about these so called innocent lives?! Nobody here is innocent! You all are a bunch of disgusting shit weasels with too much self-esteem and not enough discipline! You’re teaching your children to be just as hateful as you! You people make me sick!”

“Take it easy, big guy. Nobody needs to get hurt,” said one of the eight remaining zookeepers as his arms shook the entire time.

“What do you mean nobody needs to get hurt?!” shouted Dijas. “I’m hurting now! These animals are hurting! And most of all, that poor girl you so cleverly named Sarah Tonin is hurting the worst! She’s a human fucking being, for god’s sake! And you decided to give her a cute little punch line for a name?!”

“It was my idea,” said Sarah in a medicated tone. Everybody’s attention turned away from the sword-slinging lunatic and towards the teary-faced “clown” with her neck and back painfully hunched over. “I deserve to be here. I’m not a human being. I’m an animal, just like the lions and monkeys. I don’t deserve to be loved. I’m just a freak of nature. Don’t take pity on me.”

Dijas’s heart sank like a brick tied around a drowning man’s ankle. Tears formed in his once fierce eyes, a frown sagged his rough features, and his blade’s grip around the obnoxious family’s throats loosened to where they could slide underneath and be free.

“Hey, assholes! Pay attention! Shoot him!” shouted one of the zookeepers. A popping noise sounded off and Dijas dropped to his knees, shedding the last of his waterfall tears before slumping over to the ground and weeping like the bored animal he was about to become. His whimpering became progressively softer until his animalistic drool mixed in with the pool of blood he left earlier.

“Holy shit, that was close!” said one of the zookeepers. Patrons silently backed away with tears in their own eyes as the riflemen gathered around Dijas’s prone body to try and lift the heavy beast. They kept debating among themselves who took the shot that knocked the samurai out. Nobody would admit to it. The debate turned into a cacophonic shouting match as the zookeepers held the lion by his arms and legs.

Their ear-piercing jibber-jabber was silenced by the sound of Dijas letting out a monstrous laugh. The zookeepers let go of him as the lion produced the shell of a tiny cherry bomb from his pocket in the palm of his paw. He rolled on his back, smiled evilly at them, and said, “All of these advances in science and technology and none of you idiots can figure out if you’ve fired your rifles or not. Great job, nimrods!”

The wily samurai drew his blade once again and flew around in a circle, slashing the throats of all eight zookeepers surrounding him. Patrons screamed and dispersed as blood shot up in the skies like Old Faithful. Some of the zookeepers even fell on their own rifles and shot themselves as their corpses went limp.

All that mattered to the blood-soaked Dijas was sitting in a cage with clown makeup on and tears smearing her paint job. The lion wiped a tear from his own eye with his paw and sauntered over to the cage before ripping the bars wide open and letting himself in. He placed a gentle paw on the slack shoulder of Sarah Tonin, who looked up at him with puppy-dog eyes and said, “Go away. I don’t deserve love.”

“Why not?” said Dijas in a sweet voice. “Is it because that’s what people have told you your whole life? Is it because you see no other way to live than by sulking in this cage? This zoo is not your home. Even the coldhearted streets would be better living conditions than this shit hole. This zoo has been home to countless health violations that the government chooses to do nothing about, because they’re too busy imprisoning minorities and apparently animals too. I know this because I too had my self-esteem ripped away by this cruel system. I didn’t belong anywhere simply because of who I am. Society wanted to lock me up for good. I had to fight for my freedom, just like you have to fight for yours. If you’re looking for love, look no further than me.”

Dijas gave Sarah a sweethearted smile and hugged her with all of his animal warmth. He even rubbed his mane against her face like a domestic kitty would. He also purred like a lawnmower in her ear, allowing a small grin to form on her face. Even with shackles on, Sarah managed to hug Dijas around the neck and cry softly into his fur. “Please get these chains off of me!” she begged, to which the lion smiled at her and with one powerful rip tore the shackles like paper.

Their moment of love was interrupted by the sounds of boots pounding the pavement and rifles clicking off in the distance. Sarah grabbed a wooden staff in the corner of her cage, smiled even wider at Dijas, and said, “Thank you so much for the love you’ve given me. I won’t forget you. But if we’re going down, we’ll meet our fates together.”

The two warriors hugged each other one last time before the one of the reinforcements shouted, “There they are! Shoot them!” The lion and the “freak” nodded together and drew their weapons with the intent of going down with a blaze of glory. In no uncertain terms, Sarah Tonin shouted, “Die, motherfuckers, die!” before shattering the bones of zookeepers left and right with her staff. Dijas roared like the mega beast he was as he slashed at anyone who moved (except for Sarah) with both his lion claws and his katana.

The two renegades didn’t know when death would take them or how violently it would happen. But as long as they were going to hell together, Dijas and Sarah would drag a few souls down with them. Blood, bones, and organs splattered across the floor of the wildlife park as more zookeepers rushed in on the scene to meet their splatterpunk deaths. For the first time in a long time, Dijas and Sarah were happier than pigs in shit. Hell, they were already rolling around in shit anyways in the form of zookeepers, so they might as well enjoy the ride.

"American Born Chinese" by Gene Luen Yang

On the inner sleeve of a graphic novel known as “American Born Chinese”, it will specifically tell you that three different stories will intertwine by the time the story’s over. When you get a glimpse of the three stories firsthand, you’ll ask yourself…how?! In the first story, you’ve got a kung fu-practicing monkey who wants to become a mighty deity. In the second, you’ve got an adolescent Chinese boy who is constantly picked on by his peers and tries to find friendship in the most unlikely places. And then you have Danny, whose stereotypically Chinese cousin comes over to visit and embarrass him in school with his buck teeth, R and L mix-ups, foot-binding intentions, etc. At first glance, it appears that these three stories have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You could even say that they’re worlds apart. Hell, the monkey’s story literally takes place in another world. I won’t give away how exactly these stories are related since that question is answered at the end. I will say this, however: if you’ve ever needed a lesson on maintaining friendships and being yourself, this is the graphic novel for you. Nobody makes it easy for these main characters to learn these lessons. Lots of bullies, lots of godly forces, and more than anything else, social awkwardness. High school is always an awkward time for teenagers. Maybe all they needed was for someone to help them along the way of their growth. Maybe that’s why there are three stories instead of just one: more allies to depend on in the end. Or perhaps there’s that remote possibility that Gene Luen Yang wanted to create a graphic novel that was fast-paced and somewhat giggly at the same time while making references that some parts of the book could be autobiographical. It’s never easy to tell what an author’s intentions are unless they tell you directly. But I suppose that’s why we have college classes and things of that nature: so that we can analyze the literary structure as much as possible. Whether you’re a student assigned to “American Born Chinese” or if you’re just a good old-fashioned bookworm, you will enjoy this graphic novel, guaranteed or your money back, which in this case is somewhere in the mid-20’s price range.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Dear child, stop working. Go play. Forget every rule. There’s no fear in a dream.”

-Nightwish singing “Song of Myself”-