Ruh-roh, Raggy.  I may have gone too far that title.  Stop me before I kill again.
–

Time to do that plot work I put off until it was too late.  This should be the last meta article on Road Rage, the rest all writing.  If you don’t want to be spoiled on plot, don’t read this one.  Proceeding thusly…

Life of a road rage demon establishes what life is like for the main run of the damned.  But he gets punked out by someone who is not angry, pedestrian self defense.  Starts regenerating in his bed before chapter ends.

Establishing the life of road hell pedestrians, with Dejah being born.  Maybe this hellmouth is themed off medical bondage, besides the obvious yonic imagery.  After all, I’m picturing the good guys as originating from the innocent victims of road ragers, and many of them would end their mortal life surrounded by medical equipment.

Dejah runs away, over people’s protests.  Thurston shows up and some kind heart convinces him to go after her, while others seem callous.  Save that life – some hint here that lives are numbered.  Later it will be revealed that callousness was not so serious – they consider losing one life to be nbd if you play it safe after that.

Dejah is about to be killed by the road rage demon from chapter one, when Thurston action heroes in, and they kill him.  On the way back to safety, Thurston and Dejah survive lots of violence – establishing that action in this world is a little unrealistic – and meet Ralph.  Ralph reveals to Thurston that Hard John has become a cop.  Dejah can tell he’s upset but he doesn’t say why…

There should be a reason for them to meet Ralph.  An obvious video gamey reason is a need for healing items.  This gets me back to a question I’ve been putting off.  I know I want this world to have limited extra lives, but what about hit points?  What about health potions?  I look back over my notes…

Off that topic but just thought of a cool scene.  I have the idea extra lives / one ups come from seeing yourself in a pure mirror, perfectly clean, but nobody can seem to make that happen outside chance, magical type circumstances.  At some point a character dying their last death, face on the ground next to an oily puddle over a piece of sheet metal, and blows the oil away from their face enough to get that life.

Back on it, dang, what’s a good way to decide this?  What would it mean for there to be health potions / items, in a literary sense?  Everyone remembers Aerith dying in FFVII and nobody chucking a phoenix down on her.  It’s a thing that must be accounted for.  In practical terms, one could end up having to choose between tracking down a potion and heading home with a higher risk of losing a life.  Another random idea, they’re like crystal pepsi – some shit that becomes a sort of hot commodity after ceasing production, found only in increasingly fucked up rare circumstances and sheisty condition.  Could I just make it crystal pepsi?  No, fuck those guys.  Hm.

i do think the specific pop brand idea is amusing enuf to run with.  This could be a service Ralph provides – knowing where the caches are because he gets around the city much more than the enclave people.  But in a big city, how does anyone find him?  Seems like there should be some kind of inferno telecom tech.  What would be reasonable hell-flavored cellphonage?  Neh, I dunno.  Maybe none.  Like Thurston could just have an idea of Ralph’s routines.  No magic action movie earpieces.

But a name for the pop.  Turbo cola.  Nope, taken.  Turbo Fizz.  Nope, taken.  Blue Drink.  Not taken, but not great.  Mythological sources of water, like the Lethe and the Styx…  After research which uncovered the existence of a rich people beverage costing forty bucks an ounce, I have decided the product is “Quicksilver Crisp™ Energy Water.”

Back to plot.  On the way back, Dejah gets killed.  Maybe that’s why he was trying for an energy drink, to save her from a wound?  Thurston says sorry, see you soon.  She wakes up in the underground village again and gets this explained to her.  Then she has to feel guilty and worry about Thurston wasting a life on the way home.

Thurston and Ralph scheme on a hot score, maybe while playing a minigame of some kind? and Thurston asks about buying an extra life for Dejah at the merchant, establishing tha merchant.  It’s too expensive.  I need to decide what the hot score is.  Just hell money?  If it can buy extra lives, it may be worth it.  Armored car heist feels too boring.  Bank robbery too.  How can you rob heavily armed demons who do not value their own lives?  Gun threat means nothing.

…was thinking about it being extra lives themselves, but i had an idea those come from mirrors, and it would be too easy to break them.  that does give an element of tension, like nitroglycerin plots in westerns, but it’s not a fun type of tension, to me anyway.  i did like the movie vertical limit.

Maybe it is money.  Like that could lead to a question to help lampshade the horseshit of buying things in hell, like why doesn’t Ralph help out more?  Why does the merchant require money and what does she even do with it?  So let’s say it’s a cash heist.  No casinos in a road rage hell, banking is some kind of abstraction, just a charade to make people madder.  Who do they rob?  Gas station?

Naaaay.  Shit.  I dunno.  I guess armored car makes the most sense.  Maybe…  Armored car is actually a type of demon, like it transforms into a monster when attacked.  That would be some shit you would not see in 10 Fast 10 Furious.

Anyway, on the way home, Thurston is glimpsed by Hard John, before losing the tail.  Maybe when Thurston gets back to the enclave he asks someone why an innocent-turned-demon doesn’t just come back to the enclave and kill everyone, some old poke says they forget that.  Or maybe the enclave has some kind of magic property that makes it invisible to demons?

Dejah says she wants to learn to be tough.  Thurston agrees bravery is a big deal in hell and they recently lost a guy, so may as well try.  Training scene establishes how hell stuff works, including guns, lives, health items, money, etc.  The plan is to have no violence, just stealth, but of course it doesn’t work out.  They do great, beat a sub boss, but in the end Hard John costs Thurston a life.  Dejah barely escapes, discovering she knows how to skateboard.

The survivor enclave gets to be low on meat and pure water, because too many demons are on the streets.  But if heroes just kill them, they’ll come back.  The plan?  They’re immortal so just detain them indefinitely.  Out on the streets, heroes lure them to the reservoirs and nonlethal crashing.  It’s a laff riot, until it isn’t.  This could be another mini game scene.

Meanwhile Glossy goes on a mini game and saves the village with a ton of rat meat.

Rematch between Thurston and Hard John.  Thurston scores big money and buys the brakeboots and more magic items from the Merchant.  Extra lifes still too expensive.

Murderous monsters make the streets more dangerous.  It’s a speed trap.  Ralph wakes up underground – he was killed, explains why/how.  Time to fuck up the precinct.  But why is the usually sneaky Ralph being so brave?  We have to wonder.

Epic action leads to penultimate confrontation with Hard John.  Dejah gets damsel’d.  Personal hells are a thing and Thurston is pulled into one.

Thurston has weirder convos with Ralph and the merchant, starts to figure things out.  Along way out of hell he has a homoerotic scene with Ralph.  He rescues Dejah during final fight.  Romance with her?  Undecided.

Final fight some major thing happens.  Not decided yet.  Matrix ending?  Hell destroyed?  Option to ascend rejected for love? . . . . . . . . . . ..  …..  HUnngggghhh i needs to sort this shit all out.  Bullets.
–

ACT ONE

• Road Rage Demons (RRDs) established.  Immortal, damned to repeat hell commute.
• Innocent People are born in hell, live underground eating rats and pigeons, Dejah established.
• Thurston out to rescue Dejah.  Action hero element established.  She gets hurt bad enough he goes on a health drink quest where they meet Ralph, and they find out Hard John – Thurston’s mentor – has metamorphosed into a police demon.  Not fully explained to Dejah and the reader. –Glossy should be here too.
• More danger, don’t get the drink in time, and Dejah dies.  “See you later.”  She wakes in cradle and, having the three lives explained to her, feels bad Thurston might lose one because he tried to save her.
• Thurston wants to make up for her lost life and others in the enclave, raising the issue of hell money and the merchant.  Why does Ralph live like he does?  Why isn’t he more helpful?  What’s the merchant’s deal?  Ralph says we can get a lot of money with an armored car heist, and they scheme it up a bit.  During this time Ralph hints that he knows some demons – like cops – operate by different rules from the RRDs/commuters.
• On the way home, Glossy and Thurston are almost caught by Hard John.

–
ACT TWO

• Dejah says she wants to be brave hero like Thurston and he begins her training, establishing more of the setting.
• They do the armored car raid.  Thurston loses a life and Dejah learns she can radically gleam the cube.
• The enclave is running out of food and water because the roads are too dangerous with Hard John having turned.
• Trying to get their cut of the money back from Ralph leads to road duel with Hard John and this time Thurston wins.  Uses his money to buy magic items that help in next biz.
• They scheme to dump all RRDs in the reservoir without killing them.  They are slowly killing each other, but still, generally, it worked.
• Glossy mini-game.
• While checking out the situation, Ralph sees Hard John and cops bomb the trapped RRDs to kill them and start them back to commuting again.  He loses a life.
• Waking up in the yoni, Ralph is pissed, and shares that he thinks there may be a way to perma-kill cops, making something like the reservoir trick a sure thing.  Also that he has money for an extra life.  Maybe hints/lies it’s enough for more than just him?
• They go get his stash, then badger the merchant into selling the secret of how to perma-kill cops.

_
ACT THREE

• Raid the Precinct.  Ralph captured and Dejah and Thurston lose their second lives, but discover where actual place to go for victory is.  Back in enclave, Thurston says he’s going out even though he only has one life left, nominates Dejah and some other people as possible replacements.  Nobody likes any of it.  After he leaves, Dejah caves to temptation and runs after him.
• Raid the … Prison, maybe?  Office building like where Dan Kowal works?  This devolves into a sort of personal hell / gauntlet toward enlightment / transcendance.  Ralph, Thurston, and the Merchant are involved, Dejah is still in “real world” hell and trying to save them, or at least kill Hard John.
• Thurston has moments with Ralph and the Merchant, before being returned to his body.  I think he’s dying but not quite dead and blows on a puddle, regaining his last life.
• Maybe Dejah is actually the one who defeats the cops, while Thurston is on the edge of death.  I know you’re supposed to defeat your mentor, but maybe Thurston is too peaceful at heart for that.
• Thurston goes Neo-mode and in conversation with an angel opts not to leave hell, negotiating for a miracle.  The sky turns into a giant mirror that refreshes all the lives of the innocent in hell, and the status quo is restored.
  –

Alright.  I tries it some more…

–

Content Warnings:  It’s horror.  Whatever.

CHUNK ONE__

_
Dan Kowal had once been a reasonable man – of this he was certain, though he could not remember that time and never noticed that he could not remember it.  The world was unreasonable, so fuck the world, he’d give it back what it had given him, every day in every way.  He emerged from sleep like a poison womb, immediately forgetting sleep, immediately remembering waking life, and howling obscenities at the air he was cursed to breathe.

Thrashing limbs burst from the pool of grey grease, gripped the frame of rotting cotton and wire, jerked him upright.  Slimy pale feet on the corroded hardwood, its texture nearly as weak and pliant as cork.  He knew that he had a bitch of a wife and snot-nosed kids, but they must have left him.  The bed could not hold two people.  Probably he was paying alimony, but he couldn’t remember the details, just that everything in his life was a complete fuckjob.  No sense of working toward a future when that would end – when his dues would be paid – he was only aware of the raw present.  Gotta fucking go.

The TV crackled and hummed and nattered with solicitous tones and hammering irregular beats.  Dan didn’t pay it any attention, didn’t regard it as part of his daily torment, although it was.

In the rusty bathroom mirror, time to shave.  He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a month, but he must have shaved yesterday.  Whatever.  A more pressing issue was the broken cheekbone, the unmoored segment twisted to create a flat stretch below his eye – a depression into which that eye sagged, leaving his vision blurry.  Fuck that shit!  He couldn’t afford to take time off for medical care.  Not now.  He felt for the outer edge of it and tried to get a grip, so he could shove it back into place.  Damn slippery skin.

Was there a little hole in that skin?  Yes, there was.  Like an entry wound from a bullet.  But that would mean a huge hole in the back of his skull, and that wasn’t possible.  He did dimly recall being shot by some asswipe.  See if that happens again, you rat fuck.

The muscles and tendons of his face had a preferred shape, and when he managed to wedge the bone fragment back into its original position, they finished the work, propping his eyeball – but goddamn it hurt.  He steadied himself with a palm splayed on the wall, clenching and unclenching the other hand in a fist.  When his focus returned, shaving.

He couldn’t remember shopping but he always had a little cream left.  Some kind of shitty gel type, probably his wife’s fault.  Blue slime joined the grey slime in his beard and frothed into something like the shit that comes out of slugs when you pick them up.  The razor was shitty but who has the time to replace them?  It ripped out hairs as much as it cut them.  The mess it left in the drain looked like somebody had punched a rodent to death and emptied a grease trap over the remains.  The heat in the shower could close the nicks, right?

The shower was just a standing stall hemmed in with soap-stained textured plexiglass.  It took all his self-control not to shatter the glass, just for the satisfaction of breaking something.  The water had to be hot as hell to cut the oil of his shitty life, doing more of the work than the thin suds from his bar of soap and threadbare rag.  He wanted to pull all of his skin off, but resisted.  Again, he had to get to work.  Self-destruction now would just mean having to talk to his boss about shit.

Back in the living room, just long enough to put on his clothes.  The TV was always on, day and night, and always alternating between advertisements and traffic reports.  Rush hour never really begins or ends, does it?  Because some fuck is always trying to be smart and skip the rush by going in early, or was working some other bizarre shift, so the report was always relevant.  He lucked out that the tube was between commercials so he could get the bad news.

“Highways 51 and 96, and Interstate 183 are all congested with multiple ongoing collisions.”  Xaviera Holland was the ethnically ambiguous peroxide blonde rattling off the details like a machine churning out ticker tape of meaningless codes.  “Tensions have erupted into gun violence by the Nelson Street Turnpike with four policemen and twenty commuters dead.  Most of the gas stations on the Third Avenue Corridor are in flames.  Authorities advise caution on all roads within city limits, and in the suburbs except for Diamond, Horace, Ballinger, and Cypress Row.  In those areas traffic is sluggish but there are presently no collisions.  Correction, a truck has spilled burning chemicals in the northeast corner of Horace, where they have broken through the retaining wall and are currently flooding the blocks between 144th and Flagston.”

Whenever she mentioned something that was inconvenient to Dan, he pictured her body being ripped apart.  Or was it his imagination?  Was she actually split open like a biology class frog, organs all spread out on t-pins, and then immediately not?  The screen was full of digital artifacts and blotches of LCD bleed.  Maybe he had no imagination left and the TV was just obliging his rage, like the way it was always so easy to find bullets in a pinch.

It meant little to him, just one more thing adding to the anger he felt every moment of his life.  As the TV cut to commercials, he headed to the kitchen for breakfast.  He’d skip it if he could, but the commute could take every last thing out of you, if you weren’t ready for it.  In the background, the voice-over was so meaningless, easy to ignore except as a mounting static inside his body.

Again, Dan didn’t remember getting groceries, but the usual shit was in the cupboards and the fridge.  Maybe his bitch wife had just left a few days ago.  Who cares?  Throw a bowl on the table.  Pour cereal out of a cardboard box.  It was all plastic, glass, and wire these days.  Probably meant to be toys for fucking kids, so much that it didn’t leave room for flakes and freeze-dried fruit and marshmallows.  He poured the milk into the bowl, and it was all sludgy motor oil.  Probably just a scheme to adulterate the milk with something cheaper that got out of hand, but hey, not like he had anything else.  Something wasn’t going down.  Steel wool?  He yarded it out of his throat with angry fingers, and got to work on the rest.

No garage.  Can’t afford it because of the alimony, maybe.  He slammed the door behind him and it sagged from the hinges.  No need to lock it.  He had nothing anyone wanted, and if he found someone in there, he’d probably just kill them.  The cops didn’t care.  Nobody cared.

Another day in paradise.  Smog kept the sky a permanent rust haze, a low ceiling for the world that helped keep the idea of heaven at bay.  There could be nothing above that bloody miasma.  Helicopters sluggishly cut wakes in the lower reaches of it, doing who knows what for hell knows why.  All grass was dead, all wood blistered, all concrete stained.  Cars, trucks, SUVs, hatchbacks, station wagons, minivans, and commercial vehicles rolled by in a stuttering parade, five to ten miles per hour – the best they could hope for, without shit getting violent.  Not that anyone had any hesitation about that, but they had to save it for later, if they were going to have any shot of getting to work.

All the cars on the curb were crammed together so tight their bumpers were flattened.  The first person to get their car out would loosen the squeeze for the others, but it was a lot of effort, and nobody wanted to be it.  Dan was mad enough to just plow ahead, kicking at his car until it bulged free enough to try the wheels.  The car in front of him lost a tail light in the commotion.

Dan Carson crossed his lawn with aggressive strides, stopping only to rip a fence picket out of the ground as an improvised weapon.  “The fuck did you just do to my car, neighbor?”

Dan Kowal wheeled around and walked straight up to him, chest puffed.  Carson reflexively lashed out with the picket, smashing it across Kowal’s shoulder.  Blood welled beneath his sleeve, but he didn’t flinch.

Kowal said, “Maybe you shouldna parked so fucking close, neighbor.  Didja think about that?”

“Fuck you, pal.  If my insurance goes up one solitary penny a month, I’ll wipe my ass with your face and use your fuckin’ skull for a mailbox.”

“And fuck you very much as well, Carson.  We’ll see whose fuckin’ mug ends up in the sewer when we get off work, right?  Or am I the only man in this motherfucking city with a goddamned job?”

“If I didn’t have to be at work in a half hour, we’d find out right now.”

“The feeling is mutual, friendo.  Have a nice fucking day.” He saluted him and stomped back to his olive green honda civic, almost ripping the door off the hinges.  It didn’t close all the way, already deformed by his efforts at dislodging the car, but that didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered except the commute.

Dan Carson watched him go, momentarily entranced by the cracks in the back of Kowal’s skull, who knows what kind of connective tissue the only thing holding his brain in place.  Biting back the desire to pull the cracks open, just to see what it looked like.

Kowal started his car, and was shortly ramming it back and forth between Carson’s datsun and Susan Washington’s chevy S-10, each impact getting him closer to the freedom to drive away – such as that freedom was.  Carson fumed and ripped open the door to his car, getting inside just to get to the glove box, and his big revolver.  The jolts from repeated impacts made it hard to get the weapon free, but he finally did, gripping the handle so tight, using the gun in lieu of a free hand to brace himself, to shove himself back out onto the sidewalk.

He walked out into traffic behind Kowal as he started to pull away, only to get jerked to the asphalt by a tire bearing down on his heel.  It was a low-speed vehicular manslaughter, dragging him slowly under an F-150, breaking one bone at a time until Carson stopped moving.  By the time that had happened, he’d emptied his revolver into anything and nothing, just more noise in a city of traffic, gunshots, and screams.
–

You could jockey for side roads, but it was always a crap shoot.  Most days you just joined the line.  People who had to be at work by nine left as early as two, three in the morning.  Timid types with darting movements and heads on swivels.  Cowards.  Most joined the river of metal around five.  Both sides of the highway had motherfuckers driving the same direction, whatever the laws.  Anybody unlucky enough to be coming home from a graveyard shift had to swim against that current.  The only real risk to driving on the wrong side of the road was a police riot, but Dan thought it was worthwhile.  Most days you didn’t get shot.

Highway 96, driving on the left side of the median, jockeying for position, bullying graveyard shift off the busiest lanes.  Powering through drifts of splintered steel, composite fiber, safety glass, bone, blood.  Near the Wasteyards a pileup had been driven over enough times to wear down to a crude metal ramp in the road, too easy to rip a tire on, but what could you do?  Somehow he got over the hump with all tires intact.

At the offramp downtown the cops didn’t even bother moving their vehicles from the traps.  Armored personnel carriers with roof-mounted machinegun turrets had been parked there so long the tires melted.  The armored men in those turrets were as withered as burnt turkey, where their flesh was still visible through the dust and kevlar.  Did arms and legs move the pedals and levers of the turrets, did fingers pull the triggers, or were the machines pushing the dead bones around?  They fired with perfect efficiency, keeping traffic moving by blasting obstructions to passable smithereens.

If moving is what you call that.  Every day every single commuter that passed that gauntlet had to imagine getting out and walking, just leaving the car and walking to work.  Just do it.  Just go.  By christ it would be faster.  So much faster.  But nobody ever caved to that temptation, because of the principle of the thing.  They made their goddamned car payments, they paid for gas, why should they have to walk?  Fuck that shit.  Better to sit there, blood boiling, grinding against each other, staring at the drivers around you in mutual hostility, frustrated bloodlust.  If you can just get there, just get past the turrets, just get around the corner, they’d know.

They would get around that corner.  The first block was demolition derby, with smashed cars and bodies everywhere, the first floor lobbies of every business blasted out and strewn with wreckage.  The sense of freedom from the watchful eye of the law was celebrated with violence.  Dan didn’t reach for his gun because he wanted maximum speed, instead using his honda as a weapon.  He was rewarded with punctuality.  Less than two hours late for work meant less grief from the boss, right?

Nobody was ever to work on time, except management, who seemed to grow out of the walls like mushrooms when no one was looking.  The only reason there was adequate parking was that a good chunk of the employees didn’t survive the commute, but that meant everyone who did show up was doing more than their fair share of work.  And yet it wasn’t really appreciated, was it?  Surviving, showing up, you were still griped at.  But most were over three hours late, barely getting any work in before having to punch out and hit the streets again.

Dan got into the elevator with Rebecca Tranh.  She was holding her side, blood soaking her blouse, but she straightened up when she saw him.  Don’t show weakness, understood.  They didn’t say anything as the elevator lurched through the building.  She was especially tight-lipped, nostril flaring with labored breathing.  He knew the feeling – forcibly holding the nostril open to make the rasp of your suffering quieter.

He didn’t slip in her blood stepping out on their floor.  The day was going exceptionally well.  Yellow mayonnaise light buzzed from the ceilings between drop tiles encrusted with reddish dust.  They punched their time cards at the thick dull metal clock and went straight to their cubicles.  Chipping beige shellacked metal wrapped with cracking beige polyurethane, spongy yellow innards visible through the wounds.  The desks were too covered with continuous feed paper to see the wood, the computers and office machines beige inside beige over beige.

Sticky notes along the top of the CRT should have said where he left off the day before, but looked like they’d bleached invisible in years of sunlight.  There was only enough of a ghost left to tempt one to read, to tease one into frustration.  He ripped one in half from surprise, when the Team Manager Ross Sparinger wrapped its talons around the edge of the cubicle and peered inside.

“Daniel, I see you’re late.”

“I’m earlier than everyone else.”  He tried not to look at the being, focused on the paper scraps in his hands.

“Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.  That is obviously untrue, and you’re already escalating the temperature of this exchange.  It’s the kind of problem that gets people let go, mm?”  Sparinger was an exceptionally clean suit containing something dark red, with sharp black bits at the extremities.  To see its face was to look fully upon one’s self, which was the last thing anyone needed.

“OK, alright.  Please finish your piece so I can get to this work.  I need to…  I need to…”  Something complex enough to verge on meaningless.  Or meaningless in a way that made it look more complex than it was.

“This is for your own benefit.  As much as you need to do that work, you need to know these things as well.  It is really important for every single person in this office to be here when they are supposed to be here.  Staffing is a cost and the company can only remain profitable by reducing costs as much as possible.  We are already operating on a razor’s edge, Daniel.  A razor’s edge.”

Sweat dripped around Daniel’s head, coursed over pounding veins in his neck.  “What can I do to help you with that, Ross?”

A manila folder joined the stack of work covering his desk.  Sparinger said, “These are the reports Benjamin and Thomas were meant to input today.  Get it done by close of business, Daniel.  And your own work as well.  We can’t miss a dot this quarter.”

“I’ll try.”

“And best succeed.”  The thing slipped away, leaving Dan with his usual impossible amount of work.

If he could just remember how to do it.  The notes he’d made to himself were all so faded.  Nothing made sense.  He was going to be fired and end up a bum, like those rat pedestrians.  Until that happened, he had to keep trying.  Better dead than a bum.  A non-driver.

The new printed material helped.  He was able to decipher how it related to the programs on his computer, and start doing the inputs.  But what about his own work?  What had he even been doing?  As soon as he got into a data entry groove enough to free his mind to start wondering, the new work got to be more complicated.  There was no place to enter the data from some columns, and every sixth entry in the BIF column exceeded the character limit.  Rounding would be a problem.  Can’t miss a dot.

Dan tied himself in knots and broke down repeatedly, shuddering and fumbling at nothing, grinding his teeth.  But five o’clock was coming and he couldn’t be late out the door.  You did not want to be that guy, late off the jump, unable to get home before two AM.  His anger at being threatened, and at the possibility he’d get fired for only being the most productive worker in the building that day, finally broke through the stress and convinced him to half-ass the inputs.

At last, he was rushing to the elevator.  He punched the clock and stepped over Rebecca’s corpse, ignoring the way it seemed to be twitching and dissolving into the floor, and descended the shaft.  Work remained in his head and in his hands, just a poison to make him that much more insane on the way home.  He could sense his car, like a dreamer returning to their body.  He ignored the way Rebecca’s car was twitching and disintegrating into the concrete, pieces of frame moving like the legs of a dying spider.

There was no sense of relief in getting behind the wheel, just a sense that motion could resume after a seemingly endless red light.  It wasn’t happiness, and in fact, just set him on a path to a new release of anger.  His feet touched the pedals and he felt the argument with Dan Carson, heard his gunshots, anticipated what he’d do to that face when he saw it again.  He touched the gearshift and thought about everyone who had cut him off, had come too close, had clipped the paint, had dared to shoot at his car along the way in – how much he wanted to make them all pay.  He jammed his key in the ignition and turned, felt the impossible work task, the threat against his livelihood and by extension his life, the impossibility of facing the creatures that kept him in this state, and he wanted to destroy himself for his own cowardice.  He pulled out, knowing he didn’t care if he lived or died on the way home, as long as he could hurt people.
–

Pedestrians were rare on the street.  Something about them was just so killable, it was hard to resist the urge.  And what would it matter?  Taking the time to roll up on the sidewalk and do the deed, you might lose your place in line, might mess up your car, might be seen by a cop who would punish you…  Still, tempting enough to just do it, sometimes.  This was surely why they were so rare.

You could tell the difference between pedestrians and temporarily embarrassed drivers.  They were both full of fear, but the fear was visibly different.  Drivers were miserable, grey, yarded out things, ready to pivot to murderous rage at the drop of a pin.  Pedestrians were like rats and pigeons, just timid animals quivering and darting from shadow to shadow.  Maybe it was the spark of life in them, that you could see they had something left to lose, that fueled the murder impulse.  Dan didn’t care which because he so rarely saw them at a close enough range or opportune moment to act on it.

The cars were bumper to bumper on Ennis, which was the closest thing to a reasonable alternate route to the on-ramp for 96.  The sun was disappearing, though hard to tell through the smog and the buildings which direction.  It was just a gradual draining of natural light, before it would be replaced by equally yellow streetlamps.  The lamps didn’t turn on quite soon enough to make it work, making the dusk a great reminder of how much time you were losing to the jerks in front of you.  Deep charcoal grey shadows and muddier middle tones cut up the sidewalks and alleys.

For the first time in ages, Dan saw one.  Unbelievable!  Her skin was so dark she was nearly invisible in the shadows, and it was only chance that his eyes had fallen upon her.  She leaned against a wall, head darting back and forth, hoping for what?  Racist slurs came to his lips, though the only slur that held any meaning in his heart these days was “pedestrian.”  He’d lose his place in line, but it would be worth it.

He revved the engine for a burst of speed, drawing her attention, but he played it off like he wasn’t paying attention to her.  Important for her to not notice he was targeting her until it was too late to dodge.  Suddenly a car somewhere up the road distracted her, and he didn’t care why.  It was the opening he needed to gun it.

What was that movement out of the corner of his eye, as he jumped the curb, a hubcap rolling free?  Another pedestrian?  A two for one deal?  She was dead meat, at least.  Suddenly, he was robbed!  The woman flew out of the way, and a white man landed on his hood, bouncing around on Dan’s front end as it crunched and ground against the brick wall.  Motherfucker was like popcorn, bouncing away from serious injury at every moment, then falling out of sight.

Dan reversed, his car’s maneuverability as warped as its frame, but came free of the wall.  The man stood as he passed, and a moment later was in front of him again.  No way I can accelerate faster than he can dodge now.  He punched open the glovebox and reached inside for his gun.

Through the jagged frame of the blown out windshield, the young guy looked square at him with the most alien expression –  something he’d only ever seen in advertisements – a smile.  Then he shot Dan twice in the face.
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Dreaming is the reliving of waking, of practicing the path you walk in the light of day.  Daniel Kowal’s brain began again, each reborn part adding substance to that dream, to the pain and rage that could never end.  His womb was steel springs and rotten tufts of cotton and hay, suspended in a vat of grease – an amniotic substance somewhere between the oil of engines and of human skin, continuous with the wombs of every soul that had not survived the previous day’s damnation.  His flesh was knit from horror and pain, from animal aggression that could never be allowed to stay dead.

He woke again, screaming obscenities, flailing free of the oily mattress.  Sun would not rise for hours but his alarm clock would go off in seconds.  Another day another motherfucking dollar, Danny Boy.

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CRIKEY.  I started this article ages ago.  Anyway, it’s time…  Spoilers if you’re going to read Road Rage, anyway.

Been having an emotionally ruff time meatspacewise, not feeling too inspired.  But stay thy tongues, those who say we must bide our times until all is in readiness, that we must take it easy on ourselves.  There is a time and place for that, and this is not that day.  I am also feeling that press, that vibe that tomorrow is not guaranteed, and I want to have done as much as possible before I go.  (edit to add 😭)

So I force myself to think about the story I’m going to try to write in July.  Even tho the action is more GTA / The Transporter, the most direct inspiration is the Resident Evil IV remake that came out a few years ago.  I didn’t play it.  Frankly I’m no gamer and the play looked wearying to me.  Too many shots to take out those zombies.

But watching other people play it was a good time.  It probably helped that the action hero saving the girl was really nice to her, and their chaste relationship was kinda moving?  I hear tell the original didn’t hit those notes as well.  That’s not what inspired me the most, however.

RE4 Remake made the transition between main game play and segments with the merchant or the shooting gallery minigame seamless, which added a surreal element.  One minute you’re saving the president’s daughter from endless armies of monsters, the next you’re trading loot with an amiable cockney, or shooting at wooden pirates while the first daughter cheers you on.  How the hell did the merchant get to the secret island covered in machine gun turrets and lasers?  Why is Ashley so chill with Leon taking time out to play games when they’re both dying from zombie worm infestation?

And for me, could this be used in a novel?  What if a novel had minigames and cheerful NPCs in the depths of hell?  There have been movies that incorporated video game ideas, the most notable being Hardcore Henry.  Is a novel getting too far removed from the audio-visual media to make this work?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  So I’ll be trying to think through this venture in blog posts, like I did with Foothill Project.  Goddamn that one had a lot of work for something without a single draft.  This should be much simpler, but in a sense, more baroque things can get a pass for any one element being weak, so there’s more pressure for this to be tight as fuck, in its finished form.  Right?

I’ll talk about characters here.  It’s easy for me to get a visual of a character and just act out how I’d expect someone to act who looks like that.  Inherently superficial.  Or do one note characters, like almost everyone in Centennial Hills.  There’s an idea characters should change over time, that this is essential for main characters.  Tho I feel that’s not always needed – the maxim is overstated – it would probably make them more interesting to experience.  How can I make my cardboard cutouts feel more deep?  How can they evolve?

Leon Kennedy was fun, but completely unreasonable.  Nobody is built like that without devoting their life to bodybuilding.  That seems gay to me, which is cool, love the shirtless mod, but my mental image of an action hero is a lil more Bruce Willis than Jean-Claude.  My guy has enough muscles to do some parkour and carry some bullets.  Also less of a tool than Kennedy, who had that soldier fetish nonsense going on.

Thurston, no last name, because people remember their first names when they spawn in Hell but not the last.  Doesn’t remember life but did show up with some talent for “extreme” sport, hinting at his carefree and casual former life.  Learned quickly you have to be brave to help the people survive, and learned how to use guns and drive aggressively from his mentor Hard John.  The other risk is getting too angry.  If a heroic type gets genuinely furious during the endless violence, they might transform into a road rage demon.  In this task – staying peaceful at heart – Thurston is a natural.

How can he change over time?  The plot outline I had concludes (big spoiler) with him transcending the video game mechanics neo-style.  Not 100% decided on what that means, but mostly there.  But what about an emotional journey?  Or is a spiritual journey enough?  Nay.  Should be some emotions in it all.  I have him doing bisexual romantical stuff a lil bit…  idk.

Dejah arrives in hell with panic, runs out into traffic.  After respawning where she began that misadventure, she tries to play it cool, and learn how to live with this new circumstance.  Would she have any thoughts on escaping to heaven?  Returning to Earth?  She might not be the main character, but she is the closest to the reader’s life experience.  I should play that up, maybe.

I think in my original outline she only dies once.  (I could double back on previous article to be sure but this is annoying enough to write as is.)  Anyway, it would be more exciting if she gets close to three, but still feels the need to risk losing her last life.  The culmination of a journey from total terror to total courage.

Ralph is my Luis stand-in, but how is he distinguished?  I never watched Midnight Cowboy but clearly I picked up a lot of Ratso Rizzo from cultural osmosis, picturing that a lot.  Young Hoffman and young Pacino had similar vibes going on, but of the two, Pacino was sexier.  He aged worse, boy howdy, but that’s allowed in life.  I’m just thinking about that young guy here…

Irrelevant sidebar here, I saw that Viggo Aragorn Mortensen was in Carlito’s Way, playing a pathetic loser who ends up wearing a wire and melting down in front of our mans.  It’s funny to think, in storytelling conventions, main characters are allowed dignity, and anyone else can end up supremely humiliated.  After he got to play the king, no more humiliations.

Thinking about movie humiliations, the king of that has to be Sean Bean in Ronin.  U kno tf I’m talkin’ about, omg.  In those yt compilations of times Sean Bean died in movies, they should include that one.  He didn’t die, but his character was assassinated.

That got me considering that the embarrassing loser is a fun thing to have in a story.  I don’t remember much of anything after that scene in Ronin.  Jean Reno was acting subtly worshipful of a previous generation’s macho man, Natascha McElhone had some unfortunate make-out session to do, Jonathan Pryce was an unlikable creep.  They wanted to make it look like a car was burning rubber and used an egregious fake smoke effect.  I’m like, bring back Sean Bean, and slap him around some more!

I can’t see Thurston slapping Ralph around.  Gotta be some other ways for him to look charmingly weak…  As for how he can change over the story, still no strong ideas.

Ooh just had an idea.  While Thurston is figuring a path out of hell toward heaven, Ralph is farther down the path of transcendence – but he’s going a different direction with it.  Toward becoming like The Merchant?  When they have their big scene late in the story, Ralph gives Thurston a hint that helps him along his path.

Realizing I’m going to have to drill down the plot more, with crisscrossing arcs of action, to keep the momentum going.  (the first of july is upon me and i still haven’t)

Glossy the Doggo is inspired by video games, anime, etc. having cute animals sidekicks, and by the stock transgressive take on innocent material joke they did in a Venture Brothers episode penned by Ben Edlund – specifically the Shaggy stand-in hallucinating the Scooby stand-in talking to him like the Son of Sam.  “You are the Sword of Michael, Sonny!” -that kinda shit.

So funky little dog hangs out with Thurston and occasionally says stuff like… I’d originally described it as non-sequitur blasphemy, but it would be good to come up with a pattern to it.  Something better than “lolrandom.”  Certainly this could be a static character, so I’ll focus on this for him.  Her?  Sure.

That would be funny if her voice was sultry succubus style, coming out of a homely dog.  She shouldn’t make too much sense.  I wonder…  Asked my husband and he said maybe some legalistic attitude about rules of the road, like Mr. Eddy in Lost Highway, since we’re in vehicular hell.  …Yeah, maybe that could work.  Like, Glossy tells Thurston when he breaks the rules of the road, and the punishments the cops will mete out if he’s captured.  “You crossed the double yellow line, Thurston.  This is punishable by fifty years of evisceration.”

I also had an idea she talks about what’s going on in mechanical metaphors, something like, gigerish hell imagery…  Not sure.  Whatever.

Hard John transforms before the story begins.  Guess I’ll have to include flashbacks.  He was the original best hero of the nice hell-people, but raged too much and became a demon – specifically a traffic cop.  All the demons instinctively know their job and place in the infernal hierarchy.  Wake up in your newly assigned home.  Was the home born when he was?  Go to work.  Clock in at the cop shop, then set out on your motorcycle to corral the ragers – guns blazing.

How did it happen?  I think he had a not-quite-correct idea of what turns you into a demon, didn’t realize his anger was the issue, so he was teaching Thurston wrong.  Let’s say John thought the problem was losing control of yourself, but he was allowing himself to be mad as hell on the inside.  Over time Thurston figures out that he can never turn cop because it’s about anger, and he just isn’t an angry guy.

I had an idea that when you become a demon you get your surname back.  John become Officer Suchnsuch.  Maybe Thurston knows this, and when he starts to remember some things about his life, he fears he’s turning into a rage demon.  Turns out this also happens when you’re on a path to transcendence.

The Merchant is some inconsequential trans representation.  Hello.  As an NPC, she’s inherently static.  on the other hand, revelation she’s more than a list of exhaustible dialogue options could be a fun late stage surprise.

What does it mean to be an NPC in hell?  Not a demon, not an angel, just trading hell money for guns and such?  Maybe that’s what transcendence will look like for Ralph.  Is there room for more than one merchant in hell?  Will she get replaced by him?  If anything I might raise the possibility, then pull back and say nvm.  Usually in RPGs there’s more than one vendor, even if there wasn’t in RE.

Anyway, when I get this thing started, it’ll just be a day in a demon’s life.  I have the rough plot outline of that but fucken zero particulars developed.  This might not be pure pantsing, but it’s more close than I’m usually comfortable with.  Excelsior!

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