Blood, Bullets, and Broccoli: Issue #6

You Can’t Trust Anyone With Coke Eyes, Dude

COMBAT LOG # 6

• Wednesday: 2300hrs.

• Hair: Burnt.

• Note to self: Quit sniffing glue.

• Grocery List: Hungry-Man frozen dinners, chicken cutlets, French fries, edamame.

• Mood: Holiday in Cambodia

***Disclaimer***

The following information has come from the grossly inaccurate and exaggerated mind of one, Charlie Campbell. Please take this into consideration when evaluating the story as a whole. I hope this does not cloud your opinion of me or the story. I’m only friends with Charlie because I feel bad for running him over with my car that one time. Sources could not be checked and Charlie was drunk and high at the time of taping, which I do not condone. This is a written transcript of the audio recording. I put myself in italics.

                                                      -Ian Remington.

The night was black as a brick of hashish.

Sorry, dude, let me start over.

The night was black as the brick of hashish I was smoking just thirty minutes before. Dude, it was off the hook. Completely organic and harvested locally.

“CHARLIE!”

Sorry, dude, but the soft whispers of the hash are still swimming around in my brain. Pass me that beer, dude. Thanks.

“That’s a kombucha, Charlie.”

Cool. So where was I?

The night was black, dude. No moon. No stars. It was like we were all shat out by a giant bum and left floating in dark waters. Could be I was overwhelmed by the vast night sky, or perhaps it was the fact I was sent out after dark alone while you sat on your comfy couch and watched the Brits make Macarons for French Pastry Week. Henry is just soooo cocky. Why you like him is beyond me.

“Charlie, you better focus before I throw you through that picture window. And Henry is a treasure.”

So, like I was saying, the night was black. Dude, just look out the window. It’s dark out. I was walking past Shafty’s Bar when three dudes with coke eyes came at me real tough guy like. You can’t trust anyone with coke eyes, dude. There’s no telling what they’ll do. The first guy is dressed in leather, this bastard pulls out a switch blade. I say, “Is that a comb?” Leather Pants clicks the button and a knife pops out.

I say, “I guess not.”

 Leather Pants says, “Look at this, dickhead guys. Little early for skiing. Are you some kind of retard?” Apparently I’m still wearing the balaclava. I said, “Woah. Words can hurt guys. Easy on the R word.”

His buddy, a white dude with an afro the size of a beach ball says, “Hey, man, this here is the Unknown Vigilante.”

In a real scum bag voice, the third guy says, “Dickwad, he’s half the size. Does this twerp look like he can kick any ass?”

I say, “Don’t you bag groceries at Safeway, dude?” This didn’t help my situation. You don’t belittle coked out sociopaths with low self-esteem. It triggers a nerve from when they were kids being bullied or when a girl laughed at their oddly shaped penis. Deep dark stuff, dude. So, Scum Bag Guy pulls out a gun that was tucked in the front of his jeans and places it to my forehead execution style like, and in a super saturated tough guy voice he says, “To your knees, my son.” The guy looks to be five years younger than me, but anyway I drop to my knees. Scum Bag Guy presses the barrel hard against my forehead and says, “Remove the mask?” Leather Pants says, “Chill out man, he’s not worth the jail time.”

I say, “Yeah, man. Chill out.”

Scum Bag Guy says, “Shut up. Now take the mask off.”

I lift the mask, the mouth hole crusted with almond milk. My singed braids fall out and flop over my bald burnt head. That blast from the other night really did a number on me, dude.

Leather Pants says, “Hot damn you ugly.”

Afro Dude says, “He aint no hero guys.”

Looking past the barrel up into Scum Bag Guy’s eyes I’d say I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting my ugly head blown clean off my shoulders. Panic set in and then something surged deep down within me. At first it felt like gas, but quickly that fart mutated and my heart raced and the panic snowballed. From my toes into my stomach up to my head and out through my eyes fire raged and wrapped itself around Leather Pants, Afro Dude, and Scum Bag Guy in a flaming purple tornado.

Sorry, dude I have to take a leak.

“Seriously Charlie. Right now?”

When you gotta got you gotta go.

***Ten minutes pass***

Sorry, man. I had to pee sitting down because of my gout and then I fell asleep. The air freshener in your bathroom is super sensual and relaxing. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. So I was flying through the air like a phoenix born from the ashes.

“No, Charlie. You seem to have jumped ahead a wee bit. Back up. Gun to your head. Heart racing. Panic, Blah, blah, blah. Fire tornado.”

“Oh yeah. Thanks dude. So, Leather Pants, Afro Dude, and Scum Bag Guy are circling Shafty’s parking lot screaming bloody murder because they’re covered in flames that somehow shot out from my eyeballs. I watch them stop, drop, and roll trying to put out the flames and I’m thinking that’s some messed up shit, and as horrific as it was, there was a small part of me that’s also thinking, “See what you get?” Then I realize the three dipshits who are now howling are actually laughing. The flames aren’t fire, it’s made up of a thousands miniature fingers massaging their sides, under their armpits. Waves of ticklers swarming their bodies with extreme prejudice.

Remington, have you ever been tickled so hard you almost piss yourself?

“What do you think Charlie?”

Leather Pants was the first to let go. The leather doesn’t absorb the piss so it flushed out the bottom of his pant legs. As he danced and flailed piss splashed around and I backed up to avoid the spray. Scum Bag Guy was next, the front of his tight blue jeans darkening all the way down both legs. And Afro Dude, well, he let out a thunderous clap from his arse. Gurgle and then a gush of something exploding, his pants absorbing the shock wave, the explosion running down his pants.

Laughter morphed into screams. Being tickled continuously becomes unbearable, painful even. Now multiply that by a thousand. Scum Bag Guy started smacking his head against the pavement to knock himself out, but the wave of tiny fingers protected his head from the blows. Afro Dude started ripping out chunks of his afro and Leather Pants scrambled for the gun now laying in a pool of Afro Dude’s poo. Leather Pants picked the gun up with liquid shit dripping off the barrel and pressed it to the side of his head leaving a shit stain, and click, click, click. No bullets. Irony or what dude?

All three ran off screaming for help. At this point, anyone within a two block radius got smart and buggered off long ago. From behind a voice said, “What the hell have you done?” I turned and what stood before me was the coolest badass I had ever seen. His face a demon, red as the pits of hell. The inside of his mouth glowed yellow. Big like a half ton, not like you, Remington, a monster truck reinforced and bulky. Either way not someone I’d want to meet down a dark alley which wasn’t far off from where I was. Demon Face was wearing a backpack and a sort of makeshift shotgun strapped to the backpack. It had a hook attached to the end of the barrel.

Demon Face repeated, “What the hell have you done?” I was like, dude, those guys had a gun to my head, and then fire sprayed out from my eyeballs and now it’s tickling those poor sonsofbitches to death.

Demon Face says, “Fix it.”

I said, “I can’t dude.”

Demon Face sighed. Then he sucker punched me and everything went black. Black as the brick of hashish I was smoking only an hour before.

When I woke, I sat up in a dark damp stank of a dumpster and said, “The Unknown Vigilante. Cool.”

“Oh, spare me, Charlie.”

 I peaked out from the dumpster and paramedics were loading Leather Pants, Afro Dude, and Scum Bag Guy into an ambulance. The tickling had stopped but they were still crying. Like, literally crying, dude.

“What about you flying through the air like a phoenix born from the ashes.”

Come to think of it dude, that was most likely a dream I was having while sleeping on the can. But the other stuff is completely accurate. One hundred percent fact.

“Okay, Charlie. Now get the hell out of here and go straight home.”