RUBE GOLDBERG'S REVENGE

There in the center of the baseball diamond was the most complicated, convoluted, and plain ridiculous device ever assembled in a single night.  The metal beast was dressed in the skin of a hundred rolls of duct tape, thousands and thousands of wraps handing loosely from the cannibalized monkey bars and bicycles that served as bones.  The inside was a madhouse of gears and cogs and toys and metal, the stink of the solder barely pushing back the acrid scent of the still gummy tape.  The twelve kids (seven boys, five girls) manned their stations, dirty hands and feet at their pedals and ready to propel the gigantic beast out and into its path of destruction.  Their leader lit the candle before him and waited for the flame to burn through the string.  Once the string broke, some lead weights would fall, the balls would roll, a water bottle would be squashed and schoolbooks would soak and tear and then the glasses would break and then the engines would light and then the beast would roar.  Their leader pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and took an excited hit from his inhaler.  His delighted eyes locked onto the flickering flame and he grinned, whispering to himself "School's out, you sons of bitches."

GOVERNMENT MAN

It was supposed to be a sweet gig.  Such a sweet gig!  But in the end it was all bullshit, all bullshit!  In the middle sixties I was a private in the Army, and a private was all I was gonna be.  And that was fine, until I started hearing things about life over in active duty.  Over in Vietnam.  All of a sudden being a little pissant private didn't sound so hot.  So then I volunteer for some big time, super secret Army experiment.  Was supposed to make me like a super hero.  Faster, stronger, more powerful.  You've seen TV, you know the deal.  I asked them if they was gonna make me bulletproof and they just laughed at me.  Yeah, now I know why they were laughin'.  Their little experiment?  The radiation, all of the needles and the shots and stuff?  That junk didn't do a thing for me.  Nothin'!  I was supposed to be able to life a jeep over my head easy, run a minute mile in half the time, bend steel bars with my bare hands!  And all their crap didn't do a thing for me.  All it did for me, it sped my my metabolism or whatever so now I need three times as much food as a normal guy to stay alive.  Ain't that a treat?  Thanks a ton, Army Corps of Engineers!  Or whoever the hell you quacks were.  And I was supposed to get a reward, some big ticket for even risking the experiment.  You know what they gave me in the end?  An honorable discharge and free lifetime food stamps.  Yeah.  Yeah!  Can you believe it?  I risk my ass for my country, and they give me a lifetime supply of government cheese.  Unbelievable.  I was supposed to be a dream, a vision, a beacon of american strength and valor.  I was supposed to be a hero.  And instead, I sweat when I eat.

Family Night

It was dark now, but the coals still glowed with more than enough light enough to see by.  I held the child in my arms and tried to sing to it, but in my exhaustion I couldn't remember the words or the melodies to any children's songs.  The child grew fussy in my arms as I struggled with it, struggled with my idiot brain and got nowhere.  The child became upset and she - he - it, it began to wail and then to scream and twist in my arms.  I looked up to the stars, but I'm not sure for what.  Not prayer, certainly.  The child's screams turned into a thick barking cough and like a machine I sang the first two lines of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' over and over and over again, silently begging the child to stop crying.  "Mother will come in the morning," I tried to whisper.  But my rough voice scared the child into even more frantic tears, and I went back to dully singing in my loveless, hopeless monotone.

BUSK

The girl started the mosh pit at about eleven o'clock in the morning. She had hung a big, silver boom box from the railing- and really, when was the last time you even saw a boom box anyways? But yeah, she hung the boom box and it started blasting some truly aggressive noise, and the next thing you knew she was and kicking and thrashing all around the place in a tight little circle. And this was right before the lunchtime rush, in the middle of one of the busiest subway stations downtown. It was crazy. She had her eyes closed the whole time, and just went for it, just hurled herself and her fists and elbows out and around and around and around until the song ended. People all around- tourists, people with jobs, people in a hurry- all freaked out when she started, they ducked and covered and scurried back when she started but she didn't hit a single person. Not a one. Then when her song stopped, she casually held out an old baseball hat and patiently waited for people to drop change in it for her. And the craziest thing was...they did.

He Had It Coming

The kid just wouldn't shut up.  He and his two little buddies, just talking shit the whole time.  During the opening commercials, the trailers, and throughout the entire damn movie.  I'd heard of this kid, who hadn't?  Some little child prodigy, went to high school at the age of ten, solves mysteries for giggles.  Good, great for him, shut the fuck up; adults are trying to watch the fucking movie.  My date, Sheila, she's telling me to settle down and the kids some sort of local hero.  She says he broke up a smuggling ring on the waterfront, caught a burglar or two.  Like I give a shit.  This kid might be a little junior detective like in the Encyclopedia Smith books or whatever, but to me he's just another goddamn punkass who can't shut up when in a movie theater.  I look back and glare at him to quiet him down, I 'SSH' him as loud as I can and then the little punks start making fun of me?  Of ME?  Did I serve in Vietnam to get mocked by some little ten year old shit?  I just want to try and solve the little word jumble and he's snickering at me behind my back?  I stand up and pull him up by the front of his shirt, I can hear Sheila in the back of my head screeching to stop.  But you know what?  If the brat wants to play big boy detective, then he can get punched in the face like a fucking man.

Abstract

The madman flipped back the hem of his filthy raincoat and spread his arms wide in supplication. "I've done everything else that you ever asked for, I'm going to do anything else that you ask of me. Whatever you need me to do, it's done. Done! All that I ask is that you finally speak to me. Say something! Please. I'm begging you, I'm fucking begging you. How many years has it been? I've lived in your shadow for years. Two years? Two years I have spent in, in worship of you and your form. Your every angle, your curves, the lines of your face. I can't take it anymore, I need to know. Do you love me at all? Can you?" The statue loomed two stories above him, all red rust and creaking iron. He wept at its silence then, lines of tears tracking lines through the grime on his cheeks. And then his heart soared as the statue looked down at him, nodded, and then began to speak.

SUPPERTIME

The art of hurrying without appearing to hurry is best seen in a teenager, trying to get through his family meal as quickly as possible, without giving away the fact that all he wants to do is get the fuck out of there.  Kyle flashes a big and disarming smile, he talks and jokes constantly, eating hugely; taking seconds and thirds if he can get them.  Family dinner is a pure pleasure.  His family can hardly get a word in edgewise, all they can do is laugh and eat and smile.  But this is his plan.  Kyle talks and talks so that they eat and eat, the more time he talks the more time they chew and slurp and swallow away.  And in between funny anecdotes about school -fictions, he hasn't been to school in weeks but they can't know that, oh no- he sucks down huge, gulping bites of whatever they put in front of him.  Not just because he has a terrible, ravenous hunger way down deep inside his liars chest.  But because the faster he eats, the sooner the food is gone.  And the sooner the food is gone, so is he.

THE WAY GONE

They had sent a pair of burly security guards to her office, where she had been hurriedly trying to pack her belongings.  These were cold, quiet men she had never seen before in the building.  Icy, anonymous and bulky, the type of man obviously not meant for any generic lobby reception desk.  They had each taken her by an arm, and lifted her bodily from her desk without a word.  As they raised her up, her feet clipped the box with her few personal things- a  picture of her son, one of her mother, a mug and a bowl- spilling to the ground in a crash of broken glass and crockery.  Though they were rough and it did hurt; she never made a sound of protest or pain.  Although some distant part of her was thinking shouldn't they have female guards doing the manhandling?  And as they roughly dragged her down the hall and to the elevator, she let herself smile a little bit.  They obviously knew that she had been the leak, but they hadn't checked to see what else she had set in motion.  If they had, perhaps they wouldn't have had the goon squad haul her from the elevator, and through the lobby, and then pitch her through the front doors.  They should have instead first had their thugs check her now vacant lab, where the automated centrifuges were now slowing to a close, her new compound nearly complete.  And when it was finished, the final reaction was going to be as if somebody drove a dump truck full of phosphorus into a small lake.  Or maybe a big pond.  They pitched her unceremoniously to the sidewalk and went back inside without another look with absolutely no idea that in about ten minutes the whole building was going to be a crater.  She unclipped her now useless security badge and let it drop, shed her lab coat and got herself gone.  She didn't look back either.

Me, You, and an Episode of Hoarders

Well, hello.  I can see you have followed my trail of love.  I personally plucked the petals from three dozen of the reddest roses to make that, milady.  And I am more than pleased that you followed that romantic trail of mine all the way from the garage up into the boudoir to where I; your love machine is waiting for you.  Oh yes, darling Janice.  The kids are away, the dog is in the basement, the lights are low and now it’s just you, me, and this episode of Hoarders.

Care for a glass of white?  You are most welcome, beloved.  Please, slide that fine body of yours over my way across our Tempur-Pedic and relax yourself.  Let my experienced fingers play over that tense and unhappy brow of yours to erase the tension of a bad, long day.  And sit back, nestled into my arms as we watch an hour’s worth of intense personal struggle and hopefully some healing.

Oh my.  That’s right, the kids are gone and away.  I know that’s how you like it.  Yes, the state has taken them away until Sheena can find a way to make their home a safe and livable space again.  Yeah, I know you like it like that.  You like it when bureaucracies in rural North Carolina care enough and have the resources to intervene on the the well-being of minors.  You love it like that.

Oh my!  Oh my, you are a dirty girl.  Damn, woman.  Why on earth would she need to keep every single plastic bread bag you’ve purchased since 1995?  Can you believe it?  I mean, wow.  She must be growing mold cultures from every single loaf of bread she bought for nearly twenty years in that kitchen.  

...why yes, Janice.  That’s not the only thing growing right now.  Ah ha. Ha.

I don't even want to talk about her downstairs bathroom...on a related note, can I interest you in a chocolate? Belgian.  You are very welcome, beloved.  Just sit back and enjoy your sweets, and let me take control of your body with my magic fingers.  Much as professional organizer Geraldine Thomas is trying to take control of an explosive situation between Sheena and her sister Felecia.  But she’s got to do it without my magic fingers.

Oh my, Janice!  Janice!  Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?  Or perhaps...it’s both of us?  And things also seem to be getting pretty hot between Sheena and professional organizer Geraldine Thomas.  Geraldine sure does seem to be annoyed at how noncommittal Sheena is acting towards the prospect of clearing out her collection of VHS cassettes.  There is some definite tension there, oh yes.

Conflict between seasoned professionals and people with complex compulsive hoarding tendencies gets me so hot.  Know what I mean, baby?

Mmm?  Oh yes, we’re perfectly safe.  We’re not going to be disturbed, I sent the kids to a movie a half an hour ago.  We’ll have at least a full hour to enjoy an hour of the most compelling real life drama on TV.  And each other.  

SKEDADDLE

The spiders had come from the forests, swarming hordes of the weird things flowing over the asphalt like a weird, lime green wave of legs and glittering eyes and hairy fangs.  It would have been almost pretty, if it weren't for the fact that they were the size of cats.  Well, kittens.  But a spider the size of a kitten, you have to admit that's more than big enough to put you off your dinner.  At first they just ran over the town, ignoring man and beast alike as they quested through the short, dusty streets and inspected things.  Everything, really.  It was creepy, but nobody really felt like they were in danger.  Big as they were, they were still small enough to get stomped.  A bunch of the neighborhood kids spent the rest of the day doing just that.  But that night the bravery faded as the rumors of swarming green spider attacks had started to flow freely over the phone lines and email chains, and people kept the kids inside with the windows shut tight.  Myself and a few of my neighbors took the arrival of thousands of abnormally large, lime green spiders as a sign that it was time to get the hell gone.  Sadly, my ex-wife didn't get the message to skedaddle.  I let out a whisper-sad sigh whenever the TV news shows footage of my poor old town, our little doomed town in the woods covered completely in brittle, green cobweb.

Something To Look Forward To

"Why do you always drink so much, Grandpa?"  Kyle asked nervously.  He'd been planning to use the bathroom for some 'private time' with his miniature Smart Window, but for some reason the bathroom was where Grandpa was having his morning drink.  Perched on the closed toilet seat in his bathrobe, with a 8 AM martini in one hand, and a nicotine inhaler in the other.  The bathroom LED's embedded in the walls reflected harsh white light from Grandpa's ancient steel-rimmed glasses, and on his sudden tears.  "Because I worked all my life to be a writer, and my crowning achievement was I had a book on tape."  Grandpa said, voice as bitter as his tumbler of gin.  "And nowadays, you kids don't know what either of those things are."

I'M A TERRIBLE PYROMANIAC

That night I went out with an entire box of wooden matches, a little yellow bottle of lighter fluid, a road flare, and my camcorder.  The old shack was right there on the side of the desolate dirt road.  Abandoned for years, decades, and generations.  I knew that it was another place that nobody would miss, the perfect place to unleash that flickering mass of oranges and reds and yellows I have come to love.  But I didn't plan for the wet weather.  It had rained all day, the wetness penetrating through the many cracks in the walls, the gaps in the roof.  And weakening the planks of the floor.  I hadn't gotten two steps in when the damp and soggy floorboards gave way, a jagged splinter of wood as long as my leg piercing me through the stomach and suspending me above the darkness of the cellar.  The bleeding has slowed to a trickle, which should worry me more than it does.  The shack should have exploded into a shower of glory, a ran of sparks and flames and beauty.  Instead I hang here, lighting match after match as I slowly bleed to death.

My Dog Food Will Change The World

Sir,

First of all, I take great offense at your flat denial of my application for a $10,000 small business loan.  One would expect that your bank would have taken an appropriate and reasonable amount of time to review and assess my business plan.  Perhaps a month, a week at the least.  

And yet my application was denied in under twenty-four hours. 

This does not seem either appropriate or reasonable to me.  This in fact leads me to believe that somebody in your organization simply rubber stamped a rejection, and did not take the time to properly consider my plan to prepare and market pre-chewed food for dogs.

My business plan is exemplary.  I detailed line by line my plans:  the location, cleaning and remodeling said location into a place suitable to chew food for dogs, procurement of raw goods such as grains and meats -all organic, mind you!- and hiring a staff of four to eight employees to assist in pre-chewing the dog food.  I even included the paperwork for the theoretical employees heath plans, medical and dental.  

Especially the dental.

Furthermore, I take exception to your professionalism.  Yes, your professionalism.  One would assume that a reasoned, well-thought out rejection letter would be a bit more verbose than what I received.  Perhaps you could have taken time to write at least a paragraph.  Instead I got two sentences.  Two!  

Allow me to reread these two sentences to you: ‘Are you nuts?  Nobody’s going to pay you to chew food for dogs.’ 

This is not what I would consider ‘brevity.’  In fact, I consider it lazy.  Yes, lazy!  Compared to the countless hours that I put into my proposal; as well as the countless hours I put into producing samples of my wares I do consider your flippant denial of my loan to be rooted in laziness.  I myself spent hours and hours masticating pound upon pound of raw meats, grains, and vegetables to create my Canine-free Canine Chow (trademark pending) samples for your perusal, to prove my devotion to my product as well as to attest to the quality of my wares.  

The beef, the chicken, the beef and chicken, the salmon.  The salmon, so rich in Omega-3’s! And the organic vegetables, the whole grains, the fresh blueberries so plump with flavor and antioxidants! The raw egg yolks, which proved to be quite difficult to chew. So much work and care went into this project and to be so cruelly dismissed...well sir, I am more than offended. I am outraged.

And to add injury to insult: the samples I had provided you were simply returned to me, unopened.  I am aware that some close-minded individuals find this proposal to be unsettling.  ‘Disgusting’ is a word that has been carelessly thrown around by several other banks, I am sorry to say.  "Unseemly." "Terrible." "Please get out of my office." I will credit you sir, for at least sparing me those heartless words.

I beg you sir, please think of the many, many elderly dogs out there that are unable to chew their own food.  Do you consider yourself an animal lover?  Pre-chewing their food is simply the most economical way to prepare food for elderly dogs with weakened teeth and jaws.  And while the human mouth does not have as many enzymes as that of a dog, it still contains enough to help in breaking down food in order to make it easier for dogs to get the proteins and vitamins that they so need!

Also, jaw-powered food processing is as close to green energy as the animal food industry will ever hope to become.  Tell that to the people at Eukenuba!

I beg of you sir, please reconsider my proposal.  This is a chance for your bank to get in on the ground floor of an exciting new industry. Join me at the forefront of history! Please don’t let my hours and hours of chewing raw meats (organic raw meats) be in vain.  

ARE YOU THERE, DOG?

I've been depressed lately.  I don't get out much, and I'm alone pretty much most of the time.  I stay inside at all times, I've got something of an issue with the outside world: I don't like it.  The only times I do go out is to walk my dog, a husky-mix named Trevor.  My dog told me to kill the president today.  I was of course shocked at his ability to speak, but was also dismayed by his poor grasp of modern politics.  You see, the name he mentioned was president Harry S. Truman.  When I explained this to him, he shouted "No!  I'm too late!" and then he ran around in a circle for a minute, snapped at the air, and then lay down in front of the TV, utterly depressed.  I've tried to get him to speak to me again, but he's not having it.  He's too depressed. That makes two of us.

THE PRICE PER POUND

The man sat almost in the firepit, staring straight ahead as he gnawed at a chunk of burnt and smoking bone.  I could not tell from where he had obtained the meat, and this troubled me.  The carcass had been cooked- well, it had been burnt fully black, and he had scattered the bones and the cuts of meat into an unrecognizable pile.  He saw me staring and called out.  "You!  Yes, you there!  Care for a bite?"  He pointed the tip of his mysterious bone at me, sloppily chewing as he spoke.  "You look like a hungry one, you do."  And I was, I was ravenous.  My provisions had run out two days ago, all I had was a canteen of rainwater.  My stomach growled as I looked at his massive pile of barbecue, but I still held back.  "What is it?" I asked, my mouth filling with drool as the marvelous smell of roasted meat hit me.  He giggled, an oddly small sound coming from a man so large.  "It's free, is what it is." his smile faded as he spoke, and my horror grew as I recognized the curves and contours of his bloody bones.  "It's free meat."

The Tragedy

The second the Mustang died, so did Carl. He just gave up the ghost and passed away, his last breath wheezing from his lips as the engine growled and clanked and shuddered to a stop. I let the car drift along the deserted highway as I stared into the rear view mirror, waiting for the death rattle. I'd always heard that when you died, there would be a death rattle, a last gasp at life. I didn't hear anything though, and once I realized it I hit the brakes and the grand old car slowed to a stop. I put it in park and got out, not daring to look back at the old man. as I walked away, I let my hand trail along the smooth contours of the Mustang, the enameled surface warm against my fingertips. I kept walking up the highway, leaving the car and my friend in the behind. I didn't look back. There was no point.

HAPPY HOUR

When she threw the drink in his face, the pot-bellied guy with the John Waters mustache reeled back like he'd been hit with a taser. He stumbled back one, two, three paces and then did this weird, mid-fall twisting maneuver where he wrenched his body around and around and ultimately ended up throwing himself face first into the floor. The girls sitting opposite me at the bar went into high, shrill peals of laughter but I was wincing as I'd heard a thick 'pop' when the guy went down. And as the chaos built around where he lay spreadeagled on the sticky barroom floor, I noticed how wrong the angle of his left knee was and knew bad times were coming.

CLOWN WARFARE PART III

It was bedlam. Everywhere you turned there was another brawl, Sad clown versus Happy, circus versus French, rodeo versus...well, everybody. Nobody liked a rodeo clown. I skulked down low on the far side of a burnt-out car, creeping past broken, battered clown body after body sprawled on the pavement. I had my eyes peeled in both directions, my ears peaked for the sinister honk of red rubber noses; but all I could hear were agonized screams, guttural grunts, the meaty thud of clown horn against flesh, the methodical squeak of a clown shoe against something heavy and soft. I thought I saw an alley I could scoot down, but when I rose up from my crouch to make a break for it I was spotted. A big, fat Sad clown in overalls, hefting a loaded rubber chicken in his fist. He saw me and smiled, the leering grin looking sickly against the broad red smile painted across his cheeks. He stated swinging his chicken like a medieval flail in the air, the weighted chicken feel whistling in the air as he turned it and he came for me.

CLOWN WARFARE PART II

In retrospect, there were better places to try and play this clown for information. But at that moment, I was angry and tired and just didn't give a crap anymore. I sapped him across the face with my sock full of nickels, once, twice, three times. He reeled, twisting away from me in an effort to protect his broken mouth, red with blood and lipstick. "So you gonna spill it, Bobo?" I snarled at his shaking back. "Or do I stop playing nice?" And that's when I realized what this clown was leaning against, and that's when I realized that it wasn't empty. So I did what any sane person would do and turned tail and ran before those doors even opened. I was halfway up the block before they finished pouring out of that tiny little yellow clown car of theirs. I heard the squeaks and honks of a dozen pairs of shoes trailing me all the way to the subway. I was three stops away before it hit me: they'd been waiting for me all along.

CLOWN WARFARE

I took a step back when the guy pushed open the door to my cozy- yet empty- little bar. He was in a bright silver jumpsuit, with powder blue stars all over the place. A big curly red wig atop a face painted white, with a big red rubber nose, black diamonds over the eyes and a big red smear across his mouth. That was the part that made me curious, that indistinct red slash across his mouth. You see, there had been a feud running between the Sad clowns and the Happy clowns for as long as I'd been alive. But it had always been a small, petty sort of thing. Spiteful words, maybe a little bit of roughhousing when the circus came to town. But things had gotten weird in the past month, every week it seemed there was a lot more blood and greasepaint on the pavement. There had been a big clown rumble two nights ago, and word on the street was that there were three in intensive care in the hospital. One might not make it at all. So yeah, clown warfare was wrecking the city of my birth. The streets weren't safe, my business was suffering, so suffice to say...I didn't like the look of this clown.

THE MERCY OF THE KING

The high priest turned to the gathered masses. "The defendant stands accused of having led an illegal rebellion, and disrupting the flow of the King's grain wagons." Tomas attempted to shout out a word of protest, but was easily drowned out by the delirious roar of the crowd. "I turn now to our most honest and good king for judgment. Who is such a good king, yes? Who's a good king?" The King sat atop his throne, his head wobbling on his underdeveloped neck. A long string of drool dripped from his lower lip as he babbled softly. I would have never gotten a fair trial, not from this court mused Tomas grimly. The High Priest held up a hand for silence, and reached beneath his robes. From one of the many folds, he pulled out a silver keychain, which he then swiftly held before the King's eyes, tinkling and jangling merrily. "Glagloo?" asked the King, who then giggled uncontrollably. "Awwww," replied the crowd, delighted by the King's naked joy. "We shall heed his words! The punishment shall be...death, by stoning! Thus spake the King! All hail!  all hail King Baby!" he shouted, but the people drowned him out with their gleeful noise. The priest cleared his throat and tried again, croaking out at the top of his lungs "ALL HAIL THE KING! ALL HAIL KING BABY!" And as the crowd exulted, Tomas wept a silent tear at the doom that had befallen him. The rebellion was certainly doomed now, all at the soft and unlined hands of the infant king.

WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 3

Strike here, swiftly and without mercy to read WAY OF THE WET FIST: PART 1!

Strike with great precision and all of your power HERE for WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 2!

The four men paused in the alley, looking at the crouching Master Yu.  They were perhaps five feet away from him now; one down, another of their number winded badly (cardio was not a major precept of the Toscani) , most of them stinking of soy sauce.  Master Yu calmly leveled his outstretched left hand again, and carefully swung the plastic carton of milk in a circle around his right thumb.  He smiled larger, and made a ‘come on’ gesture.  

“GET HIM!” shouted Ryback, furiously pacing at the end of the alley.  “CUT HIM DOWN!”  And so they tried.

Luckily for Master Yu, they came at him one by one.    If they had been smart enough to recognize their strength in numbers, he would be dead.  Yet luckily for Master Yu, they were quite stupid. One by one they charged at him, black knives flickering wickedly in forward and backhand thrusts.

 
Master Yu remained calm, parrying their outreaching arms with the heavy half-gallon of milk, and then striking crisply with his left hand.  One by one they attacked; one by one they fell under his speedy fist and the heavy thud of the milk.  As he sent the four men flying into the back of the alley, he kept flicking glimpses to their end of the alley where Ryback lurked at the open end.  The ‘Grandmaster’ appeared unconcerned and stood nonchalantly flipping his knife over his fingers, until he cut himself a little.

Master Yu bobbed backwards to avoid a Toscani knife thrust and swept his left leg into a bent knee, leaving him off-balance.  Master Yu swung the half gallon of milk with tremendous force into the back of the Toscani man’s head.  The milk slammed into the man’s greasy hair and bounced back, a half gallon of liquid force knocking the man facedown into the concrete alley floor.  There was a sickening crack as his front teeth broke, and the man went down.  Master Yu allowed a frozen moment to contemplate his fallen opponent, and then was looking up and ready again.

It was Gino Taft, second in command of the Toscani Tong; and the recent recipient of a can of tuna (packed in water it was healthier than oil) to the gut.  He looked to be on shaky feet, but pulled himself upright to posture.  “You, fuck nuts!”  He growled, as he pointed his black knife blade towards the master.  Master Yu, rolled his eyes.

His knife strikes were short and precise, but Master Yu easily parried them with a few short swipes of his half gallon.  Taft feinted with his knife, and then led in with his right hand in a vicious chop that Master Yu easily spun past.  His spin ended with him standing behind Taft, where he then grabbed him by the shoulder and bent him over backwards over his left knee.  Gino Taft was not used to bending in such a manner (stretching also not a priority in their school) and yelped piteously before Master Yu brought the half gallon milk down in a cruel, swinging arc right into the center of Taft’s face.  Taft’s nose burst open in a spray of red, and Master Yu stood upright, toppling Taft onto the floor of the alley.  As Taft tried to get up, he was laid low by a short, sharp kick to the face from Master Yu and that was it for Taft.  

Master Yu turned again to where Ryback stood at the open end of the alley, his left hand again outstretched and his half gallon of milk again casually swinging on his right thumb.  What a tremendous weapon, he thought.  And I thought milk was no good for kung fu!

He sensed another man behind him, and whipped around in a circle, his half gallon of milk swinging wide.  The milk grazed the face of a third Toscani man with little injury, although it did back the man off for a second.  

Now Master Yu faced two men at once, in their haste to defeat the older man forgetting the one-at-a-time rule ingrained in them from such films as Marked For Death.  He swung his half gallon back and forth in a wide arc, doing his best to keep these two greasy-haired bastards at a safer distance.  They could do nothing but take ineffectual swipes at him, snatching their arms back from the angry sloshing of his weapon.  Ahh, that’s right.  They cannot kick.  thought Master Yu.  

Master Yu swung another gurgling strike at the man on his left, then abruptly stopped midswing and leapt forward with a kick to the head.  His foot struck the side of a greasy head, sending the man face first into the wall.  Yu then leapt straight up into the air and delivered a sharp kick with his left foot directly into the temple of the knife-wielding man left standing.  This man having been the recipient of the other can of tuna he’d let fly with at the battle’s beginning.  The kick was more than enough to put the man down for good.  Landing on the ground, Master Yu turned to swat away yet another knife strike from the last Toscani man before swinging the half gallon into that man’s soft midsection.  Such a durable weapon!  he thought.  What kind of plastic is this?

Then, Ryback made his move.  With his right hand, he sunk a fist into Master Yu’s kidney from behind, utilizing the most deadly weapon of the Toscani school: the cheap shot.  A poorly considered attack, the force of his blow accidentally sent the older man out of range of his next knife thrust.  Master Yu grunted, but rolled with the impact and came up on his feet in the same stance he’d maintained for the entire battle: left hand out and inviting, the half gallon of milk on his thumb; swinging slightly.  

“If your daddy knew how stupid you were, he’d trade you in for a pet monkey.” Ryback grimaced.  The quote from Fire Down Below went unnoticed by Master Yu, as his first conquest of the battle sprung up from where he had been quietly bleeding on the ground and lashed upwards with his blade directly at Master Yu’s back.

Master Yu was swift however, and managed to twist and avoid the man’s knife strike.  He brought the man down for good with a swift milk-elbow-milk combination to the face and throat.  Master Yu turned back to his last two opponents and assumed his stance again, only to be taken aback by a pair of grim and knowing grins.  

The doughy man had missed Master Yu entirely, but the knife strike had done its damage.  It had neatly sliced the bottom from the half gallon of milk on a diagonal, leaving Master Yu standing with an empty plastic carton.  
Ryback stood with his arms out, one knife at the ready.  His last crony -Austin Storm, so named after hit films Executive Decision and Hard to Kill- circled around, trying to get into Master Yu’s blind spot.  His greasy pony tail was askew, lank hair framing the puffiness about his face from where the half gallon had struck him.  Master Yu twisted and turned, trying to keep both men in his line of sight.  He dropped the diminished half-gallon to the alley floor, and tried to fight the feeling of panic that had set in.  “The fight’s not over yet, Danny.  I’m not scared of you and your bully boy.”

“Maybe you should be,” Ryback whispered; inwardly pleased that he could naturally quote Hard to Kill without it seeming too forced.  It of course went over Master Yu's head.  That was weird.  Why is he whispering?

Austin Storm giggled, and bent to pick up another knife from one of their fallen compatriots.  When Master Yu turned to kick at him, Ryback floated in and viciously punched the older man in the kidneys again.  Master Yu slumped heavily to the ground.

Ryback laughed, pointing his knife at a prone Master Yu.  “Now it’s over, old man.  You put up a good fight, but now it’s aaaaall over.  You’re done, and with you your school is done.  Get ready to-“ and then they heard a cry from the open end of the alley.  “UNCLE!”  

It was his nephew, On Pui racing down the alley with a pair of large plastic bags in either fist.  He had returned from the pet store with a large orange carp and a large white carp in bags filled with aquarium water.

Heavy bags of water.  

Austin lunged forward, but On Pui tucked and rolled and then was straight up with a knee to the chest of the pudgy Austin Storm.  He swung the bags wildly, hitting Austin in the side of the head one, two, three, four times in quick succession.  The water sloshed violently as the force of his strikes rattled his brain.  Austin thrust wildly about with his knives in either hand, but On Pui danced back on delicate feet, easily avoiding his opponent’s flustered attacks.  Then On Pui paused, and then whirled around in a circle before bringing both aquarium bags around in a three hundred and sixty degree arc to hammer the man into unconsciousness with his mighty bags of fish.

Ryback went for On Pui, hoping to blindside him from behind.  But On Pui heard him coming, and whirled about in a blur of white and orange fish, the bags from the pet store striking Ryback in the side of the head with tremendous force.  Ryback was staggered.  On Pui let out a terrific yelp and advanced on his weakened opponent, but Ryback was ready and socked him deep in the stomach.  On Pui fell back, windmilling his bagged fish to keep Ryback from advancing any further.  Ryback cringed, and turned to run.

Right into Master Yu’s left fist.

Rocked by the blow, Ryback stabbed out only to have his other hand slashed again by an edge of Master Yu’s diminished milk bottle.  The sharp plastic carved a furrow into Ryback’s right hand, the pain causing Ryback to drop the knife to the alley floor.  But Seagal never loses, he thought in a panic.  

Pained, a shouting Ryback chopped his left hand at Master Yu’s throat, but the master cagily whirled and spun and whipped his cut up half gallon up and across Ryback’s face.  A thin line slashed up the man’s face, splitting his eyelid open.  Ryback wailed in shock and fear, flailing about in a circle…

…right into a face full of white and orange fish, slamming into his face yet again.  The impact of the heavy bags of water and fish was the end of him, his short and greasy ponytail flipping in the air as he fell to the alley floor among his men.

The fight was over.

On Pui twitched with adrenaline, hopping from one downed man to another, satisfied by the dull groans and slow breathing of those unconscious.  “Uncle, are you all right?  Are you hurt?”

“No, On Pui.  I am unharmed, but somewhat winded.”  And he was.  He stood there, looking over the remains of the battle.  Noting the brown streaks of soy sauce on the alley floor and walls, the milk slowly curdling in the summer sun.  Looked down at the handle of his cut up half gallon of milk.

“I can’t believe these assholes.  What were they thinking?  Did they really think they could come and try and knife you to death in the alley to your school and get away with it?”  On Pui kept on hopping, nerves on edge.

Master Yu looked up from the remains of the half-gallon.  “I think I have discovered a new fighting style today.  And it appears that you have as well, On Pui.”  On Pui looked confused until his uncle pointed at the bags of koi.

“What?  Holy shit!  They’re still alive!”  And they were, the tails of the carp flickered as they moved about in their temporary homes still clutched in On Pui’s fists.  

“A fine omen.  I take that as a sign, a signal from the divine tha-”

“Man, I’m so glad I didn’t kill them.  I didn’t even think about it, I just saw they had knives on you and I-“

“On Pui, I fought and defeated three men with a half gallon of one percent milk.  You fought and defeated two men with two plastic bags filled with water.”

“…well, there were fish in there too.”

“Ssh!  I think we have discovered something.  Unarmed men, defeating multiple opponents with vessels filled with water.  This is something we need to study.  Something we can perfect, so that we can use these techniques against opponents less lowly than these of the Toscani school.”

“Yeah, never know when the Van Damme School is gonna attack.”  Master Yu frowned at his nephew.  “I don’t really see the sense in attacking people with gallons of milk or…is that soy sauce?  It smells like soy sauce.”

“The proof is laying all around you.  We have triumphed with this new approach to kung fu, this new…way of fighting.  We have innovated something here, and that is not to be taken lightly.”

“I don’t think a bag full of carp is tournament legal, Uncle.”

“…just go put the fish in the pond and call the police already.”

WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 2

Strike here, swiftly and without mercy to read WAY OF THE WET FIST: PART 1!


Strike here with great focus and energy to read WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 3!

“Out for a walk, old man?” sneered ‘Grandmaster’ Mason Ryback.  Who had been born Danny Lo some thirty years before as Master Yu remembered.  Upon the founding of his school Danny had taken it upon himself to rename based on his two second-favorite Seagal films, Hard to Kill and Under Siege.  “You’d better enjoy the sunlight while you can.  There’s not going to be too much sunlight in the nursing home.”  His four cronies guffawed loudly, then their laughter abruptly stopped short as they reassumed what they likely thought to be their ‘cool,’ intimidating glare.

“Danny, did you really just throw a knife at me?” Master Yu refused to indulge in this foolishness.  Why can’t kids today just shamelessly copy Bruce Lee like we did when we were younger? he wondered.

“YOU WILL CALL HIM MASTER RYBACK!” shrieked the chunkiest flunky to his left, face red.  He surged forward into the alley, only to be held back by Ryback’s outstretched arm.

“Hey!” he murmured.  “Play it cool,” he hoarsely whispered in what Master Yu supposed was supposed to be a Seagal-esque voice.  Ryback turned a glare onto Master Yu.  “That little stunt you pulled at the gym the other day...bad move.  The Toscani Tong” -so named after Danny Lo’s number one favorite Seagal movie Above the Law- “had a lot of money riding on that match.  That trick you pulled with the judges…not to cool.  Your nephew was supposed to lose.”

“Oh, so telling them that you paid off the referee wasn’t cool?  I’m terribly sorry that you feel this way.”  Master Yu was not actually sorry.  “Maybe you shouldn’t have paid him off in the parking lot.  Or maybe you could have at least gotten that idiot to leave his payoff in his car, instead of leaving it in his gym bag, and then leaving that right next to the judges table.”

Ryback’s air of cool started to slip, his nostrils flaring impressively.  “Maybe so.  Maybe so.  But you should have been smart enough to keep your stupid old mouth shut, old man.”

“Oh, please.  On Pui didn’t lose.  Your man hit him a full four seconds after he’d been kicked in the stomach.  We all counted.  Including the judges, who were then quite rightly wondering how the hell the referee had managed to call the point for your man.”  Master Yu felt himself getting angrier, although underneath his anger he was calculating the odds.  Five against one in a small alley was not good news.

“Shut up!  Shut your damn…old mouth!”  Ryback stepped forward, fixing the leopard-print belt that marked him ‘grandmaster.’  “The point is…you cost the Toscani Tong quite a…lot of money...to a number of…concerned individuals.”  

“Would you stop the dramatic pauses, Danny?  It’s ridiculous when Seagal talks like that, its worse when you do it too.”

More glares.  “We’re in deep.  In fact…we’re going to have to leave town for awhile.  But before we do…we figured we ought to leave just one more rival school…in pieces.  You may think you’re above the law…well you’re not above mine!”  

With that, Ryback made a curt gesture with his left hand, and his four men suddenly produced four black, ceramic blades identical to the one buried in the alley’s back wall.  Suddenly this was serious.  

The four men advanced swiftly.  Which for them was not very swift at all.  More of a fast walk.  They were somewhat pudgy.

Master Yu found himself literally with his back up against the wall.  In a regular fight, he was mostly confident that he would be able to fight his way out of the alley.  But with all four of his opponents armed (and now Ryback produced yet another blade) he found he did not like his chances.  A quick glance around the alley confirmed that it was entirely empty.  The knife was buried hilt-deep in the planks of the wall, and was no use.  Master Yu considered throwing his keys at the men, but thought it to be dishonorable.  He crouched down, his left hand out in invitation of their first strike, and his right hand...laden with the small bag of groceries.

He smiled.

Grandmaster Ryback tried to maintain the level of serene violence that he saw in his idol, Steven Seagal; but found it slipping.  After their disgrace before the Yu-Ban, he and his school were in thirty large to Fat Carl.  And Fat Carl was angry, and supposed to have mob ties.  And Ryback and his second-in-command Gino Taft (so named for the smash Seagal hits Out For Justice and On Deadly Ground) soon agreed that an angry fat man with numerous mob ties would be bad for the continued health of the school.  Their plan was to kill Master Yu, steal his van and whatever cash he had on hand , take a dump in his koi pond, and then flee to Fresno.

He tugged on his oily ponytail and grimaced in what he felt was a manly way at the old man in the back of the alley as his men advanced.  Master Yu was rifling through his groceries frantically.  “This is for my school.  Fuck you and die!”  Ryback felt good, paraphrasing the master like that.

Master Yu raised his cans of tuna first, and whipped them with great force directly into the two foremost Toscani men.  The impacts were brutal, sinking deeply into the considerable gut of second-in-command Gino Taft and striking another in the throat with a meaty thud.  As the two men toppled, Master Yu shattered the top of the small bottle of soy sauce against the ground and splashed it frantically into the faces of the other advancing men.  They clutched at their eyes and screamed piteously. “Aaaaaah! My eyes!"  "So salty!”

Master Yu allowed himself a small smile, and readied himself for the next wave of attacking jackasses. He hefted his primary weapon in his right fist: a half gallon of 1 percent milk.

Organic.  

GONNA BE THAT KIND OF PARTY

The first thing I looked for was the industrial sized barrel of generic snack mix. And there it was, looming high above the rest of the sad little snack table. Dwarfing the sad cheese plate and the bottles of generic soda- no, not even sodas, seltzer only this time- it sat, her handprint visible in the thin layer of dust. Julia had been putting that sad tub of snacks out at each and every single one of the lame parties she'd thrown since I met her. "Glad you could make it, Jim!" she said. I looked around the empty, dingy apartment and thought to myself I sure bet you are, Juliaand forced a smile across my face.

WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 1

Strike with great precision and all of your power HERE for WAY OF THE WET FIST PART 2!

Chenmin Yu walked down the street towards his school, the plastic of his grocery bag rustling against his leg.  He paid it no heed, his mind lost in contemplating  the recent troubles that had  befallen his school.   Mild annoyances abounded.  There had been two instances where the windows of his school had been shattered in the night, likely by the thugs of the Toscani school.  Childish prank calls rang at nearly every hour of the day, disrupting practice and preventing actual business form being accomplished.  Mail had been stolen.  A banana had been forced into the tailpipe of Master Yu’s Econoline van, and the lacquered yin yang he had painted himself over thirty years ago had been defaced with hundreds of tiny key scratches.  And on top of all of that, his cherished koi had died the night before in the night.  

Master Yu wanted to laugh off the immature pranks at first, but in recent weeks the level of malevolence directed against the Yu-Ban school had increased alarmingly.  Another student had been assaulted over the weekend by the Toscani school, bringing the list up to an even ten.  Ever since the Toscani were dishonored by the revelation of their bribing the judge in their last contest, a blood feud had simmered quickly.  The bad blood ran strong between the two schools, to Master Yu’s chagrin.  His own students were young and hot-blooded, but their skills were nothing in the face of the treachery of the Toscani.  He had begged  them to remain calm in the face of their adversary’s childish behavior, but even kindly Master Wu had a limit.  That limit was found bobbing pungently at the top of the shallow pond in the back of the school this morning.

“Well, sometimes fish just die Uncle,” said his nephew that morning, as his uncle clenched his knotty fists in decidedly un-Zen like calm.  The small pond was sheltered by a small group of trees, planted when the school was new. 

“Sometimes.  But I would wager that if you were to taste that pond water, you would find it to be unusually salty.”

“…uhh how do you know how salty a koi pond usually tastes, Uncle?”  

Master Yu stared On Pui down, until the teens eyes found something very interesting on the base of a mulberry tree.  “Just go buy some more fish.”  

On Pui often stepped on Master Yu’s lines when he was trying to be sagelike.  It was irritating.

That morning, Master Yu buried the fish in the yard beneath the mulberry trees and tried to go about his day.  He ventured forth into the bright sun for a quick stop to the corner market for a few groceries for his small kitchen in the rear of the school.  A small bottle of iced tea, two cans of tuna, a bottle of soy sauce, a half gallon of milk.  This last item he bought with great reluctance.  Dairy products are commonly not consumed in Chinese culture.  But though he was in fine shape for a man in his late fifties, Master Yu had grown older.  He had come to fear the onset of osteoporosis as his middle age slowly meandered by.  His nephew had sold him on many benefits of Western training –running for conditioning, weight training and the like- but the past he had resisted the most was the diet.  Master Yu found milk to be cloying in his throat, the thick wetness not agreeing with his chi.  He doubted that it did anything for his muscles or bones, but had to admit that his nephew grew taller than he or his brother had ever been when they were On Pui’s age.  He had to accept that it may have been a direct result of the calcium and vitamin rich diet the boy had as a youth.  Not that he would ever admit to such a thing.

He pondered this thought idly as he turned down the alley to the back gate of his school, grateful for the momentary distraction from the troubles with the Toscani Tong.  Perhaps, I will have a full glass today, he thought.  Then grimly looking up at the hot sun, rethought it.  “It is too hot for milk,” he said aloud as his free hand fumbled in a pocket for his keys.

“Talking to yourself, old man?  That’s an early sign of…senility.” came a snide voice from behind him.  Master Yu sensed something, and tilted his head gingerly.  A black, ceramic blade thrummed as it planted itself into the fence at the back of the alley.  Whirling around, he crouched slightly into a defensive stance to find himself facing his enemies.

The Toscani Tong.

The Toscani Tong ‘grandmaster’ stood at the end of the alley, flanked on either side by two of his students.  With snakeskin vests atop their jet black gis and long, black hair pulled back into oily ponytails they stood, sneering and posturing in what they likely thought to be ‘cool’ poses.  To a man, all members were oddly pudgy and unnaturally tanned.  

Orange, even.  This upstart school had taken the underground kung fu scene by storm months back, leaving several lesser schools in shambles after of harassing their opponents to their wits end, and then dominating their harried opponents in fixed contests.  And now they had their sights on the Yu-Ban school.  In regulated competition, the Toscani Tong’s opponents would generally be so frustrated by the bullying tactics of the Toscani that the uncentered fighters would leap headlong into the fight, only to be cruelly defeated shortly thereafter.  

Their fighting style was unorthodox, primarily based on countering the attack of an opponent, followed by an array of brutal chops and punches.  They would not kick for whatever reason, although young On Pui’s theory was that they were simply 

unable to.  And for all their oily ‘cool’ and devious behaviors, even Master Yu had to admit that they had in fact a formidable fighting style.  

What he did not understand was why they had chosen to devote themselves so totally to Steven Seagal.