Content Warnings:  It’s horror.  Whatever.

EDIT to ADD:  jeezis i have a lot of repeated words phrases in this.  they call those “echoes” and they are ill-favored in english language writing.  it was written in tiny snips at the end of my night over weeks.  c’est le travail.

 

CHUNK DEUCE__

_
A cradle of medical machinery quietly breathed and hummed to life.  The nurse picked up her head.  Either this was someone new, or one of the tough guys had been killed.  She checked her clipboard.  Hard John and Thurston were out.  It could also have been Ralph, but he hadn’t died in ages.  Even he had to run out of returns eventually…

Susan didn’t have to be there.  Really, no one did.  It was just a personal interest, and a way to spend her time.  Her services were just useful enough that nobody busted her chops for hogging the light draft.  She looked on in concern equal parts genuine sympathy and morbid curiosity.

Of course she couldn’t see anything yet.  When the cradle came to life, you knew it was working on a body, but it would just be a sliver of bone and muscle, deep in the dark fluid.  Nobody even knew what that stuff was, but it smelled something between medical adhesives, alcohol, and sweat.

That sliver of muscle had a nerve, and that nerve had awareness, however slight.  Very quickly more nerves and muscle fibers joined it.  Other organs began to form from nothing in the fluid around it, and within a few minutes they were growing together.  The senses multiplied and compounded into greater and greater awareness, verging on cognizance.

By this time the body was large enough to see, and the nurse could see the yellow of extra fat cells over the chest.  Ralph, Thurston, and Hard John did not have breasts like that.  It was definitely someone new.  Again, part of her felt a gentle affection for this person, being born into this terrible life, but part of her was darkly amused at the prospect of seeing someone have to deal with that all over again.  Susan wore a strange smile.

The lights over the cradle swelled and glared.  The thing was shaped somewhat like a large bed with elevated back, but surrounded by so many tubes, wires, straps, pumps, and beige plastic with beige bolts that it formed something like a nest, trailing away into the unknown territory beneath the floor.

You’re in the hospital, the new arrival thought.  By then she could tell her body was incomplete, which could only mean that she had been horrifically mutilated in an accident, and would spend the rest of her life an object of revulsion and pity.  The realization would have been more shocking if the parts of her body responsible for those feelings were more developed.  Instead she was just consumed by a vast sorrow.

Susan noted the writhing.  Not as intense as it sometimes can be.  In her experience, people were either born in terror or sadness, and she had an idea how this one was coming in.  She leaned on the foot of the cradle and looked deeply into the biological mess.

Dejah remembered her name.  Nothing of life, just that one name.  Somebody could be calling to her, but she could not quite hear.  Somebody crying, probably just in her growing imagination.  Such phantasms receded as the cradle became more clear – the lights most of all, but the tubes as well.  She was in a spider’s web of the things, writhing until she noticed the futility of it.

Why could she sense more of her body now than when she’d first awakened?  Maybe the mutilation wasn’t so severe.  Maybe she was just coming out of some very strange anesthesia.  Her long black hair swirled around her view now, like she was underwater in the bathtub.

Underwater.  Time to come up for air.  She groped wildly for the sides of this tub, and had to settle for pulling herself out by gripping fistfulls of wire and plastic.  She vomited a fountain of the uncanny water, and bobbed there in the fluid, violently coughing until her lungs were fully clear.

Susan was surprised by how dark the new girl’s skin was.  It would surely be very pretty, when the slime was washed away.  Long black curly hair clung and clumped all around her like seaweed.  “Don’t try to speak until you are able, OK dear?”

Dejah couldn’t make sense of it.  Was she hallucinating?  Medical machinery should have sense.  Electrodes attached to key areas, intravenous injection sites, tubes for breathing or to drain infections.  The things around her were just so much bondage, in the colors and shapes of hospital equipment.  “Can we turn down the light?”

The light dimmed itself, relaxing as the birth reached its conclusion.  Susan said, “I guess we can,” and laughed softly.  “What’s your name, baby?”

“Dejah.  I’m an adult.  The hell is this?”

Susan pursed her lips.  “Hon, you should just try to relax and get cleaned up.  I can take you to a shower, get you some clothes.”

Dejah almost forced the issue, every waking moment increasing her sense of alarm, but bit it back.  No sense getting in a fight when you’re naked and covered in slime.  She could see the nurse putting on some kind of black rubber apron with long, gloved sleeves.  She looked down at her naked body, barely able to see anything of it through the reflections on the fluid surface.

Susan helped her out of the cradle.  “I’m Nurse Susan.  Pleased to meet you, Dejah.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say to that, learning new disconcerting things every second.  She was naked and covered in warm slime, though that quickly turned cold in the stale air.  This hospital room was covered floor to ceiling in cracked blue-white tile, like the showers at a public swimming pool – after a bombing.

Besides the creepy device she had come from, the only feature in the room was pipes near the ceiling, emerging, snaking, and sinking back into the walls at random angles.  Nurse Susan didn’t take her to a regular shower stall with anything like privacy.  She just walked her to a place where multiple pipes crossed, several feet behind the cradle.

Susan said, “Stay right here,” then went back to the foot of the cradle to sort herself out.  She quickly doffed the apron and picked up a bundle of cloth – a towel? a robe? – then, instead of returning to Dejah, she reached up to turn a valve handle on the nearest pipes.

Lukewarm water spilled out of tiny holes in the pipes above Dejah, and she miserably began to paw the slime off of her body, while the nurse watched and waited.  “There’s something very wrong with this hospital.  Is my insurance really that bad?”  Susan was charmed by her subtle accent, which made the word sound more like “insurants.”

“Yes, this isn’t exactly a hospital.  I don’t know from insurance, but I doubt it has anything to do with why you’re here.  Just try to relax.  You’re safe.  As safe as anyone can be in this life.”  In a sunnier life, Susan might have been half as dark as Dejah, but still clearly of African descent.  Age also had a paling effect on her, but most of the time, the kindness of her expression made up for it.

Dejah didn’t feel too self-conscious about her nudity.  Whether or not it was a hospital, it was a medical circumstance, and Susan seemed like a medical professional.  She let her hair fill with water and wrung it out a few times, her lean young body gleaming in full view of the mature woman.  But she wasn’t eager to continue feeling so exposed in general, so as soon as she felt sufficiently less disgusting, she said, “Turn this off, please.  Thank you.”

Susan turned off the water and met Dejah halfway with a big towel.  It was more coarse than Dejah would have expected, less white, but at least it was clean.  She followed it up with a thin terrycloth bathrobe in faded turquoise with white polka dots.

“This is the first I’ve seen of you all cleaned up.  You’re so beautiful, Dejah.  I really am pleased to meet you.  Was not a lie.”  She shook her hand.

“Um, thanks.  You look nice too.”

Susan laughed and shook her head.  “I’ll take you to the clothes.”

Dejah looked again at the strange object from which she’d just emerged.  Its structure just made no sense.  Even without understanding the engineering of a hospital bed, you could usually guess at the purpose of a join or a hydraulic component.  This was a profusion of technological nonsense, surrounding an abyss of mysterious dark fluid.  It should look like a shallow tub in there.  Why was it so deep and dark?  Sensory deprivation?

“What is that?”

“A cradle for babes like you and I.”  Susan led her through the only obvious way out of the room – an opening in the wall with no door – and through a similar opening on the other side of the hall.

The hall itself also caught Dejah’s attention.  It looked like something between a hospital basement and a subway corridor.  Why so poorly lit?  Where the hell was it?  And then they were in the room with the clothes – a laundry room, with several ancient machines chugging away in scuffed white enamel.

“I’m called Nurse Susan, but I should really be called Laundry Susan, because it’s most of what I do.  Sometimes I get help in here.  Have a look.  It’s mostly women’s clothes, so no point having a separate section for the boys.  Just how things shook out.  We do have men.”

The room was, again, poorly lit.  Nothing like a window.  Almost certainly underground.  Racks were sorted by size but otherwise chaotic as a thrift store.  Were those jeggings dark grey, dark blue, or black?  No way to be sure.  She put them on, with sparkle embroidered lavender socks, green adidas with yellow stripes, a red babydoll tee, and a close-fit black windbreaker with some cracking around the shoulderblades.  The only thing to tie her hair back was a selection of bandanas.  She chose a dark blue one, wondering why she didn’t remember her own tastes in clothing, reaching for mostly dark clothing from that rising sense of fear.  No, don’t run and hide.  That would be silly, whatever was going on.

“Alright, Laundry Susan.  Can you please tell me where the hell I am?”

“You keep saying ironic things like that and I’m gonna have to bite.”

Dejah threw her hands up and bugged out her eyes.  “What is it?  What?”

“Maybe I should give you the tour, y’know.  By way of explanation.”  The nurse cast a glance back toward the medical room, considering if she should stay there to watch the machine.

The tour will get me a better idea of how to get out.  Still, she couldn’t resist pressing the point.  She stepped closer to Susan, who suddenly snapped to attention.  Dejah wasn’t threatening violence yet, but wasn’t above an implication.  “Answer first.”

“We don’t exactly know, but as near as we can tell?  We’re in Hell, Dejah.  It doesn’t mean we did anything wrong or have to be here forever, but the most honest, straight answer I can give you?  Like the rest of us, you died and went to Hell.”

Dejah almost slapped her but stopped short, pointing one angry finger.  “No more jokes and bullshit, Susan!  What is this shit?”

“Please don’t hit me.  I get hit sometimes; don’t love it.”

Dejah shoved her aside and stormed the door.  She walked away quickly, to the left was as good a guess as any.  She could hear Susan walking after her.

“Be careful, baby girl!  It’s dangerous!”  The nurse stopped short and watched her go.  She didn’t want to get too far from the cradle.

Dejah broke into a run.  Her stomach was empty, her energy weak, but she had to find out.  The hall had random doors and openings that just went off into darkness or rooms with racks of whatever.  At last it came to stairs up.  That’s all you need; get where the sun is.

The stairwell still looked fully subterranean.  There was no hint of daylight from windows far above.  The lights were dim to dead, just enough illumination to see you were nowhere good.  She didn’t bother checking the halls at the first three floors she came to, then started whipping the doors open just long enough to glance.  The fourth and fifth floors were even more dark than the stairwell.  At least the stairs didn’t go on forever, even though they spent more of their depth underground than seemed reasonable.  The sixth floor she came to was the highest.

The hall there was at least as well lit as the floor she had come from, and the interior design suggested a different kind of space – tiles were broad and closely connected, waxed over in a way often used in older schools or hospitals.  Just a ghetto hospital is all.  The doors to some rooms were locked or otherwise too tight for a quick look.  The easiest to open were those swinging doors used for quick two-way access to operating rooms or walk-in refrigerators.

Again, they just looked like rooms of miscellaneous storage – deeply miscellaneous.  Gardening and mechanical tools, umbrellas, children’s clothing, boxes in cardboard pine and metal, spools of hose and wire and rope, toys, magazines, and household appliances.  The most brightly lit had two mature white men in it, kissing each other, close enough to be frotting through their clothes.  The younger of the two said, “Do you mind?,” and she kept running.

Everyone she met had been dressed in second-hand garments.  Nurse Susan’s scrubs, the gay couple’s flannel and jeans, they just looked faded and frayed.  The air was stale save for musty drafts, some ill miasmas pooling in every corner those drafts didn’t touch.  Like the air itself was growing different biota of bacteria in every still corner, disrupted and unified into a faint sewer ambience by the invisible current.

“Nasty ass…”  What?  She couldn’t complete the thought.

The hall was long, but not as much as that first hall had been.  She could imagine that one trailing away into an abyss.  On this floor, the end was in sight.  As she approached, she began to sense a change in air pressure, a shift in the white noise at the periphery of her awareness, that there was some larger area of the building coming, an open area?  Sure enough, the hall bent sharply at the end to floppy double doors, and beyond that, daylight.

It was an open courtyard interior to a tall building, each mezzanine with a stain-streaked concrete balcony, strung with drying laundry and planters of dandelions and other weeds.  The mezzanine she was on had no light but the day, and small braziers and lamps among the various tarp tents and kiosks and utility areas.  The homeless were everywhere; it was a squatter shantytown.  Had she just been in the care of a garden variety kidney thief with a weird sense of humor?

The gang wasn’t so organized that they immediately jumped on her, but she did catch a lot of attention as she briskly walked through, trying not to look suspicious.  A few cat-calls, but more of people wondering who she was, if she was new, if she was OK.  Haven’t you heard?  We’re in Hell.

There were pigeon coops and rats in cages, and enough people cooking or eating to make it clear those were being bred for food.  She whipped her head around, darting to avoid people’s eyes while she also looked for an exit.  That’s how she became aware of a growing group trailing her, trying to get her to stop.

“You should slow down!”  “Stick around, pretty girl!”  “Where are you going so fast?”

Dejah broke into a run again, ducking and weaving past anyone who tried to block her path.  She tried doors whenever she got a chance, but they were mostly locked, or clearly didn’t lead to halls.  Suddenly, she found herself cornered against double doors that seemed stuck or locked.  As they closed in, she yelled, “Leave me alone!,” but it came out so quiet and weak.

Then the doors opened from the other side, and she was able to slip past some confused teenagers to get into that hall.  It seemed so dark after being exposed to a little sun, even as filtered as it had been in the mezzanine.  Then sunlight again – an outer hall with doors to the right and windows to the left.  They were so milky from accumulated milky filth that she couldn’t tell what was out there.  The dimness of that light suggested a very narrow alley.

At the far end of the hall, some children were playing dominoes.  Close enough now, she could see that was a dead end.  Turning back, the crowd was coming in after her.

“Hey, kids.  I’ll give you fifty bucks if you block them for me.”

“Make it fifty thousand each and we might think about it,” said a girl.

She shook her head in confusion, then just started kicking out the glass of the nearest window.  The crowd quickened their pace, and their shouts.  The glass gave way easily enough, though it was run through with wire mesh that held it together in a mass of fractured layers – two panes of glass, the rime on the outside like peeling exterior paint.

No, no, no!  Dejah refused to deal with another moment of this hobo kingdom.  She leapt into the window frame, bracing herself in place and leaning out until the mesh gave.  For a moment she was freefalling, but someone grabbed her by the jacket, and she crashed back against the building.

“Don’t be crazy!  Come on, girl!”

At first she could barely see, but then she got the lay of the land – as much as she could.  Yes, the hobo who grabbed her jacket might have saved her life.  She could not see the bottom of the alley from her vantage.  But being in their grip like that was intolerable to her.  Why was she so afraid of losing her freedom?

The alley was narrow enough she could kick off the squatters’ building and reach the chain link on the other side.  She did it, almost yarding her savior out of the frame and into the pit.  People cursed and yelled after her, but she didn’t listen, hanging onto the brutal wires for dear life.

Down would be the sensible direction to move, but the darkness was also terrifying.  She crawled along the fence toward the left.  There was an end there, perhaps wrapping around a corner to somewhere else?

The fence was nearly flush against another building – just an endless wall of brick, dead ivy, ancient tar, and pigeon shit.  She couldn’t see anything worth trying to breach the fence for – no window that might lead to a more sensible way out to a street.  Or a less grabby bunch of homeless people.  She kept on, around the corner.  Luckily, the fence kept going.

Now she could see a bottom to the alley.  It was a very, very deep ramp.  Did it go all the way down to the floor which she’d started from?  A white guy drove a motorcycle down there, returning to his people, perhaps.  She might run into more traffic at the bottom, but she couldn’t resist climbing down – her fingers were in agony from climbing that nasty old metal.

Dejah was on the concrete of the alley again.  She glanced back toward the building, where the white man had driven the motorcycle.  There was no door; he must have driven straight into a dark crack in the wall.  She could almost imagine he had made the crack by crashing through it.

No more nonsense.  She jogged up the ramp as fast as he could, gasping raggedly.  So steep.  Whatever trepidation she held about the city beyond, it was overwhelmed by relief from reaching level ground.  She leaned against a wall to catch her breath.

The alley didn’t open onto the street, but onto another intersection of alleys.  They were so long she could only see the street distantly, but the traffic noise and honking was intense.  Exhaust defined the air, like to live in this city must be carcinogenic.  Had to be rush hour, and in the darker half of the year.  Dusk was falling so quickly that she wondered if she was moving in slow motion.  Her hands still felt raw from climbing on the fence – evidence that not so much time had passed.

The streets would be the perfect place to blend in, to disappear until she could figure out what had happened.  Whatever it was, it had hit her memories like a sledgehammer.  She still couldn’t remember her own last name!  She picked the shortest alley and walked briskly.

This is it.  This is the real world.  What had that fake nurse even said?  Nothing.  Nonsense.  Somebody laid this concrete down, to allow access between the buildings for trash collection of back door delivery, or egress for emergency exits.  There are doors on these brick walls that should go into businesses or apartments or even vacant buildings, waiting for new tenants or to be demolished and replaced.  Normal things.  Occasional splashes of graffiti, bits of paste left from posters that had deteriorated in the weather.  Bits of garbage here and there, a single rat scurrying in the distance.

But something was off.  Certainly, Dejah had never been in a city with this bad of air pollution.  She hated knowing that she was losing a little life with every breath she drew.  At dusk, aren’t shadows usually blue or purple, maybe grey?  The shadows here were dark rust, reflecting a sky above that was fully discolored with smog.  Vile.

Yet she didn’t choke.  It was almost as if she was used to it.  Must not have any asthma she’d forgotten along with her identity.  The traffic ahead looked so terrible.  Nobody crossed the view on foot, no pedestrians here.  The street was a slow moving wall of steel and glass and tires.

The closer she came, the more alarming that became.  They were in each other’s bumpers, all scratched up like a demolition derby.  By the time she reached the mouth of the alley, she could hear screams and cursing under the din, see sparks thrown by random low-speed collisions.  Instinctively, she flattened against the alley wall and observed them.  The hell was going on here?

Every driver was in the grip of an unreasoning fury, angling and jamming and scraping against each other to the extent every car was scratched.  Some were so damaged they were surely totaled, but could still limp along with bent frames and shredded tires.  A car burst loose from the gridlock and the ones behind it rushed into the void so fast they shoved it into a spin.  It smashed through a storefront and was stuck there, spinning wheels in place.

Dejah turned to go back into the alley, when suddenly she saw a black man coming out of there in a ragged sweaty flannel shirt and blue jeans.  She backpedaled away from him farther away from the alley, even though he wasn’t looking at her.  Intensity in the set of his frame mirrored the madness on the street – every muscle taut with adrenaline and yet slouched with the fatigue of an unbearable existence.  He reached the curb and looked at the shredded remains of a piece of car frame.

“Oh my fucking GOD!”  His bellow was loud enough to clear the ruckus.  “I fucking knew it!  Street parking.  Street parking!  FUCK!”

She fell down and quickly scrambled to her feet, now hearing bloody mutterings from the traffic that seemed pointed at her.  In the moment she glanced that way to see those jeering contorted faces, the man pulled out a heavy semi-automatic handgun.  The glint drew her attention his way again, just in time to see him pull the trigger.  His skull abruptly slackened like a paper bag, contents blown out the back and top, and he fell.  Dejah didn’t wait to see him hit the ground, before she fled in a blind panic.

More gunshots.  Helicopter drone from above.  Distant machinegun fire, like something from a war movie.  She found the only way to keep the drivers from paying disturbing attention to her was moving past them too fast to track.  That only worked as long as she could continue in a straight line on congested streets.  Any time she came to an intersection or other loosening of the gridlock, cars jerked her way, crashing into each other or crashing into walls.  She kept hoping for another alley or an open business to duck into but everything was walled off or blasted out, or had rage cases coming and going through them.

When Dejah did find an alley, a few cars tried to chase her inside and crashed into each other, jamming that entrance.  She heard gunshots but didn’t hesitate, running into darkness.  She felt like she was floating but moving too slow to escape, like in a funhouse corridor, imagining the bullet impacts as she went, half wanting it to happen.

A perpendicular side alley opened up and she nearly fell into it, crashing against the brick wall.  No way she could keep running.  She fought down rising gorge just because she was afraid it would pin her down long enough for someone to catch up, and then dared to look back the way she had fled.  Nobody pursued her.  Perhaps they had killed each other.

Dejah slumped to the concrete and gripped herself, shaking violently.  That’s why the hobos stayed in that building.  It was impossible out in the open.  There were only three ways to go in that alley, and every one led back to the streets.  Maybe she could break into a building, but would it also be full of maniacs?  Would it have running water and food, or would she die of thirst, too afraid to brave the streets again?

Something skittered into view at the end of her alley and careened off the wall, then ran toward her.  A hidden reservoir of energy shook her free of the ground and she backed up against the wall at the intersection of the alleys, trying to comprehend this new development.

A dog.  A small black dog, too large to be a chihuahua but too small to be a french bulldog.  It had slender legs but was covered in moppish curls like Benji.  Still, it was charcoal grey, face nearly black in the dark of the alley as it approached her tentatively.

“The stillborn motorrad cannot shake its caul,” the dog said, in the rich and powerful voice of a woman.

Dejah’s eyes widened and her body tensed again.  The dog stepped closer, into a weak shaft of light, revealing a face like a hideous ewok, and continued, “My lord, the Least of the Damned, would have you live.  Ha!  You’ve only just died!”

Terror moved her body and one vanished moment later her mind raced to recover itself.  Where were you?  Running from the horrible, unthinkable thing that scurried behind, howling for its master?  The street is light, it should be safety, but there’s something wrong with it.  What was it again?  Too late, she’d emerged from the alley again, and flattened against a wall.  The sluggish river of grunting steel reminded her.

One of the road ragers broke the line, leapt the curb, and plowed toward her.  Paralyzed, sure to die, she was shoved out of the way by a flying jump kick.  Metal exploded behind her, and she staggered and twirled across the sidewalk.  Racial slurs, swearing, crunching bodies, but seconds later, gunshots, loud and fast, drew her attention.

The beautiful gunman and his ugly dog turned to face her.

–

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.
–

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.

–