"Officer" Brandon Tatum (Nice Tattoo, Pretty Boy!)

 

Garrison vs. Miguel (YouTube Troll)

 

"Fight" by K.L. Cottrell

BOOK TITLE: Fight

AUTHOR: K.L. Cottrell

YEAR: 2014

GENRE: Fiction

SUBGENRE: Urban Fantasy

GRADE: Extra Credit

When last we left the Light Force, a new breed of enemy from the Dark World was next in line to bring chaos and destruction to this world: the Tatts. Inked up magic users along with their demonic brethren the Hellions have made life miserable for those who don’t conform to their evil agenda. Marienne and Gabe, along with the rest of the Light Force, refuse to go down without a fight. They have the tools, they have the know-how, but most importantly, they have each other and will do anything to protect what is sacred in their lives. There will be blood and death, but there will also be victories and love. Who will survive in this classic clash between good and evil?

Yes, this book is about slaying monsters. Yes, there’s a lot of violence. Despite it all, however, this book maintains a positive vibe from the beginning to the end. The way the Light Force treats each other is refreshing to anybody who wants a break from the drill sergeant mentality so prevalent in fantasy and sci-fi fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I love a dark story as much as the next sicko, but even I need a breath of fresh air every now and then. This book delivers on that front and so much more. You can create conflict in a novel without having your beloved good guys constantly at each other’s throats. The author proves that over and over again. The Light Force isn’t just a group of likeminded people. They’re family. They’re friends. They’re lovers. They’re everything they need each other to be…except Rafe, who’s a total jerk.

As long as we’re keeping the positive vibes going, let’s talk for a bit about the romance between our two narrators, Gabe and Marienne. I’ve read a lot of novels in my day with romantic subplots and I can safely say that these two are my favorite couple, hands down, end of story. They’ve got more chemistry than a periodic table. They can kiss and be physical with each other without being hokey. They’re equal to each other in terms of respect given and how well they perform in fights with Hellions and Tatts. Everything that can go right in this relationship does go right…and I love it to pieces! You know who else I can love as a couple? Wes and Beatrix, who are just as lovey-dovey and just as respectful to each other as Gabe and Marienne. I’m feeling giddy even as I write this review!

But with every hero, there are villains waiting in the wings to bring the happiness to a grinding halt. Though not technically a villain, Marienne’s ex-boyfriend Rafe is painful to read about due to his obnoxious and jealous behavior (which makes me wonder why he’s not secretly a Hellion or a Tatt). Claire, Marienne’s sister, has always been nasty and malicious with her salty dialogue and newly acquired demonic tone. If there’s one villain you have to look out for more than others, it’s Leuan Cain, Tatt billionaire. Yes, he has dark magic and fighting abilities equaled by nobody, but that’s not what’s scary about him. He’s scary because he’s charming to ordinary people. He gives civilians hope and love and in return they give him their free will. He’s a typical politician without ever once landing a position in the White House. In the same way Donald Trump appeals to white nationalists, Cain appeals to the weak and frail. That is one way to make a villain believable and formidable at the same time.

I could go on and on about how much I love K.L. Cottrell’s Light series. I could make a laundry list of reasons why this book in particular deserves five out of five stars, a grade I don’t give out so freely. But when you finally pick up a copy of this novel, it’ll all become clear to you in a heartbeat. You feel the love and positivity right away with the opening speech about our fights in life. You want to be best friends with everybody in the Light Force (except for Rafe). You want to see Cain and other villains get their comeuppance by the time the third novel in this series is over. Those things by themselves are enough to convince me to give any book five stars. But together? Oh man!

Dark Skills

“Tonight, tonight, tonight, hot damn tonight!” chuckled Matt Singleton while he was playing pocket pool in the empty streets. The closer he treaded towards Michelle Woods’ apartment, the harder he masturbated. With a jacket hood over his face, baggy sweat pants to mask his perverted activity, and not a cop or security camera in sight, he could easily get in and out, both literally and figuratively.

He ascended the stairs to Michelle’s apartment and overheard the sounds of a motor running coinciding with a feminine black voice’s cries of pain. Matt stroked himself even harder and got a sadistic, bloodthirsty grin on his face. The feminine voice’s screams were reduced to M noises and Matt’s smile widened to Cheshire Cat levels of terror. “I had no idea she was into that!” he chuckled to himself.

When he saw that the door to Michelle’s apartment was slightly ajar, his quarter moon grin flattened as did his perpetual hard-on. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said while pulling a hatchet out of his coat pocket. Knowing nobody was coming to save his newest victim, Matt kicked the door open and pulled back his hood to reveal disheveled blond hair and missing teeth. “I don’t believe this shit.”

Matt Singleton’s twisted imagination was justified, but not in the way he had hoped. Rather than screams of pornographic pleasure, Michelle’s pain was as permanent as the tattoo being etched into her lower back. Carl Howard had once again beat Matt to the punch and stuck his nose (among other things) where it didn’t belong. The chubby biker decked out in black leather was the one writing “Dark Skills” into Michelle’s skin while the sobbing victim was bent over the couch with a rag in her mouth.

“Carl!” whined Matt for a prolonged period of time. “How many times do I have to tell you to mind your own damn business and get your own kills?! I saw Michelle first! I actually did my homework on this bitch!”

Carl tossed the tattoo pen aside and hissed, “Homework? As in taking photos of her through the window like a fucking stalker? That’s not homework. That’s just you being too much of a pussy to talk to women yourself. Michelle and I are already on a first name basis. Isn’t that right, baby girl?” The last sentence was punctuated by Carl lightly slapping Michelle on her pink panty-wearing ass, to which she gave another muffled cry.

“Good job, dumb-ass!” said Matt while mockingly applauding with the hatchet in his hand. “She could have called the police any time and had you arrested! You stick out like a nun at a porn convention, my friend. You think intimidating her is going to be enough to keep her quiet?”

“Nah, but the rag in her mouth is,” said Carl as he once again tapped Michelle’s ass. “Besides, if you actually had a brain in that busted up skull of yours, you’d know how important mind games are. She ain’t going to tell anybody. Are you, baby girl?” Once Michelle shook her head, she got another slap, but this time on the thighs.

Matt shook his own head and snickered, “So this is where our conversations always go, isn’t it? You always steal my victims and then you justify it with some bullshit excuse. I know this comes as a surprise to you, but I haven’t gotten laid in a while, buddy. I’ve been picking out victims left and right…” He tiptoed up to Michelle and stroked her long hair with the yellow streak. “But there’s nobody quite like her. She’s got the beauty. She’s got the brains. Hell, up until I kicked open the door, I thought she was getting ready for some kinky shit. And then you show up, Carl…you, the hard-on assassinator. I’m sick and tired of this shit, Carl. I need my fix!”

“You want your fix?” asked Carl as he shoved Michelle to the floor. “You want to get laid? Shit, man, all you had to do was ask. But I’m not the one you should be asking. Why don’t you ask that uncle of yours to bend you over some more? You see, Matt…I do my homework too. You’ve pissed me off so many times that I actually took pride in my studies. That uncle of yours…he did some things to you, didn’t he? Things that involved you having a permanent case of diarrhea, if you know what I mean. Congratulations, Matty-Boy: you’re a walking commercial for Huggies diapers!”

As Carl hyena laughed at Matt’s miserable past, Matt himself clutched his skull and rocked back and forth while fighting the traumatic memory. He could feel the dirty, pus-filled limb going in and out of him. He remembered how his “permanent case of diarrhea” mixed with chunks of blood and splooge. The rancid smell of Uncle Singleton’s crotch. The bloodbath sewage smell of his own dumps. They all came flooding back to him like a tidal wave of life juices washing over his once young and innocent face. Carl’s laughter made those thoughts rush even faster around his explosive mind.

“Shut the fuck up, you fat piece of shit!” roared Matt before jumping across the couch and attempting to slice open Carl’s head like a watermelon. The chubby biker grabbed his assailant’s wrist to prevent the blow, but the two of them wrestled to the floor anyways. As Michelle screamed through her gag on the floor with them, the two serial killers struggled to push the hatched blade to each other’s faces. Carl, being the stronger of the two, was able to inch it towards Matt’s face and peel of a layer of his cheek.

Licking the blood off of Matt’s face, Carl said, “Is this what you wanted, lover boy? Is this the Freudian excuse you were looking for?”

Matt head butted Carl in his thick skull and bust his own forehead open more than he did his opponent’s. Matt’s horny smile suggested a lack of fucks given. He head butted Carl again. And again. And again. Blood washed over Matt’s face in an unholy baptism while Carl’s own forehead formed a tiny rip. “I could do this all day, motherfucker!” chimed Matt. “My fucked up mind is feeling pretty good right now. A little dizziness is good for psychological trauma.”

Carl managed to rip the hatchet out of Matt’s hands and stand over his opponent like a barbarian over a rotten carcass. “Don’t worry, you little pansy. Close those pretty blue eyes of yours. Here comes a lovely little lullaby for an anxious child!” Carl raised the blade over his head and brought it down with brutal force. Any shot that powerful would have decapitated not only an elephant, but the entire jungle kingdom.

But not Matt Singleton. In his blood-drenched dizziness, he found the tattoo pen and jabbed it in Carl Howard’s eye, while the hatchet was only centimeters away from Matt’s nose. Matt ripped out a chunk of brain from Carl’s skull and the chubby killer plopped backwards on the floor, spilling his blood all over the shag carpet. Matt’s head continued to gush like a geyser of violence, spilling his own juices over the floor as he sat up to face a trembling Michelle, who spit out the gag a long time ago.

Not even the silky pink underwear on a beautiful black body could revitalize Matt’s horny attitude. He stood up and wobbled on his way over to the victim he worked so hard to claim. “You think this is funny, Michelle?” he asked as blood oozed onto her lap.

Michelle shook her head and sobbed, “No, there’s nothing funny about it. Please let me go!”

“Sure, no problem,” said Matt as he spit a glob of red juice onto the couch. “I’ll just let you skedaddle out the front door like nothing happened. Go on. Leave. I’ve got no use for you now that my hard-on’s not coming back anytime soon.”

“Sorry for your loss,” stuttered Michelle as she slowly stood up to try and exit.

Matt grabbed a hold of her hair and yanked her back to the floor. “What did you say about my loss? Huh? You trying to be a comedian? You think rape is funny?! You think this is all just some Freudian bullshit?!” he yelled while Michelle sobbed loudly. “There are things in this life worse than death! If I could die right now, I’d be one smiling motherfucker! But you, Michelle…you don’t deserve to get off that easy. I came here tonight and had old wounds reopened, bloody forehead aside. Now I’m going to leave you with something more permanent than an uncle’s dirty dick!”

Matt retrieved the tattoo pen and cleaned the blood off of it with his jacket. He then threw it to the side and said, “You know what? Tattoos are for pussies! They can be lasered off for a few hundred bucks! But a hatched job…that’s something that truly lasts forever!”

The killer retrieved the blade, grabbed Michelle by her hair, and bent her over the couch kicking and screaming. “Shut up!” he belted while reading the tattoo job on her lower back. “Dark Skills, my ass! Carl ain’t got shit for skills! Let me show you what the real mark of the beast looks like!”

Slowly and painfully, Matt Singleton carved the number 666 into Michelle’s lower back, completely erasing the tattoo job from earlier with permanent scars and a river of blood.  The viscous mess gave Matt a rush of adrenaline that not only sped up the bleeding in his own forehead, but also the blood flowing into a part of his body he was sure he’d never use again. It stood up proudly. It beamed with life. Matt could smile again. Then the killer blacked out from the blood loss and fell on his ass, dying with a smile on his face and a hard-on in his sweatpants once again. Michelle Woods was alive and kicking, but Matt Singleton took her soul to the grave with him anyways.

Dark Fantasy

***DARK FANTASY***

This is going to come as a shock to a lot of people (eye roll)…but I’m a dark fantasy nut. You’ll probably need a crane to pick your jaw up off the floor after that revelation. Every chance I get, I always talk about black magic no matter what the situation is. Here are some examples:

When the power went out in Port Orchard a few weeks ago due to a windstorm, I described the town as being at the mercy of “The Aeromancers”, or wizards who specialize in wind magic. It was really just Mother Nature being an asshole, but I like the dark fantasy version better.

My most painful memories in life are referred to as “Demons”. It’s a common word for a lot of people to use, but I take it to an entirely differently level. I actually see those memories as hellish monsters that must be hunted with barbaric force. That could explain why I like the band Demon Hunter despite not being religious. That and they make good music.

If I ever decide to embark on a career in heavy metal music (beyond writing song lyrics), I’d want my band to be called The Pyrocrats, which is a Greek word that basically means we govern with fire. Granted, I don’t actually want to set buildings on fire, because that would be illegal. They call it “dark fantasy” for a reason.

If I ever decide to get a tattoo (which will never happen because I have a low tolerance for pain), I’d want to have a pair of dragon wings on my back. Why? Because every time I find something in life I want to go to war with, I “breathe dragon fire on it”. But that’s not dark fantasy, that’s high fantasy. It could be dark fantasy one day.

Every fantasy short story or novel I’ve ever written has been described by Good Reads members as “deliciously violent” (or something to that effect). There’s fast-paced martial arts action, energy slinging, and blood (lots and lots of blood). Violence is a necessary part of the dark fantasy genre because it combines magic and horror.

Most of the monsters in my stories are designed to be scary in some way. They can hatch tarantulas, they can cover someone in scorpions, they can be extremely hairy, or they could wear a freaky mask of some kind. Pink Floyd the Wall and WWE are my biggest influences when it comes to scary characters.

You know the drawings of my short story and novel characters? I refer to them as “Dark Fantasy Warriors”. They’re violent, they’re vicious, they’re nasty, and they can take any Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter situation and cover it in blood. Mmmmmm, blood.

Who do you have to thank for all of this delicious darkness? The people at Blizzard, of course. They created Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (a dark fantasy RPG) and I enjoyed the shit out of playing it for nearly all of my life. That computer game is the main reason why I have so many barbarians in my stories, Deus Shadowheart being the most famous example.

I’m currently reading a book called “Swamplandia!” by Karen Russell and there’s a rival theme park called The World of Darkness, which is basically like Disney World, but with a demonic theme. I wouldn’t want to work there due to the way they treat their employees, but I’d love to spend a day there and ride the rides. Eh, maybe I shouldn’t. Kiwi Bigtree is in enough trouble as it is.

That’s all folks! Actually, there are probably more examples, but I can’t think of any right now. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

It’s a new week, which means a new story. The theme we’ve got this time around is Contrast. The story this theme produces is called “King Blizzard” (now that we’re on the topic of the dark fantasy genre). It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

King Blizzard, Tyrannical Giant

Jason Clark, Farmer

PROMPT CONFORMITY: The contrast in size between King Blizzard and Jason Clark is astronomical.

SYNOPSIS: For centuries, King Blizzard has bullied the people of The Zeal Empire by stealing food from their farms and tromping all over the land if he doesn’t get what he wants. In the past, soldiers and mages have all been sent out to slay the giant, but all that did was lead them to the slaughter. For as long as he owned his farm, Jason would always surrender his food without incident. That changes when he decides to stand up to the giant. He might get himself stomped on in the process, but in his mind, it’s better than living life without his family, whom Blizzard killed when his “payment” was late one year.

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

SEBASTIAN LUND: Chris is the one with the funny accent.

CHRIS LASALLE: Y’all are the ones with accents.

-NCIS: New Orleans-

"The Illustrated Man" by Ray Bradbury

Having a tattoo doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a 1% badass who rides around on a Harley 24/7. But when your body ink begins to tell stories of the future and the past as they move across your skin, don’t be surprised when the guy hearing these stories has wide eyes and an even wider mouth. And quick feet, let‘s not forget that either. “The Illustrated Man” by Ray Bradbury documents the story of a tattoo-covered man who fits this bill. In fact, his body ink inspired an entire anthology of stories in a little over 200 pages. What kind of stories do we get from this man’s skin art? How about the one that’s as notorious as they come. You know, the one that almost all high school students have to read at some point. The tale of two spoiled brat children who spend their lives in a crystallized room that lets them experience television firsthand instead of vicariously. Or how about the one where a bunch of space jockeys are trapped on Venus and are driven mad by the harsh rain pounding on their softening skulls. Or maybe you prefer the one where a bunch of neighborhood kids are playing out in the streets an enacting an alien invasion scene, which is dead close to reality, by the way. No matter which story you decide is your favorite, you can be guaranteed that every single time, you will be educated beyond your wildest imagination. Ray Bradbury educates you by punishing his characters for their negative traits such as racial ignorance, selfishness, zeal, hatred, and a litany of other things that should be frowned upon by anybody with a shred of positivity within them. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Bradbury went on to have an illustrious career as an author that spanned many decades. And because it spanned many decades, the wise author left this life recently due to old age. Despite how many miles he had on him, I still believe he left us too soon. Rest in peace, Ray Bradbury. “The Illustrated Man” and the lessons it teaches will never be forgotten except by those who possess the ignorance necessary to be punished for it. Sometimes I think Mr. Bradbury would have had a stroke anyways if he saw the way us humans behaved.

　

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“New rule: if churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch on fire. Sorry Reverend, that’s one of those services that comes with paying in. I’ll use the fire department that I pay for, you can pray for rain.”

-Bill Maher-