Hello fellow heroes, villains, and Chad. I’m glad you all made it back for another week of some good ol’ fashioned wasted words. These intros seem to be getting shorter and shorter every damn week. So this week, we will get right to the gaw’damn point. The quote comes from everyone’s favorite angry Canadian, Wolverine.
I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do isn’t very nice.
I don’t know why that’s two sentences instead of one, but that’s how it’s written in the comic book so that’s how it’s written here. Go forth, my fair incubi, and do whatever it is you all do.
Title: Home again
“So, you heard the news?” Benji grins like an asshole.
Fuck. All I wanted to do was spend my day fishing, and now I’m gonna have to field twenty damn questions. “Christ, Benji, the engine is still smokin’ and you’re already asking me?”
Benji whistles and casts his line into the water. “Damn, brother, I forgot how fast that damn woman could get you from zero to sixty. Guess you’ve heard alright.”
“Yeah, I heard. Why’d you think I wanted to go fishin’?” I toss my line out and crack open a luke warm Bud.
One job, Benji had one fucking job. Ice. He showed up twenty minutes late with dilated pupils and no ice. I’ve got to find better friends.
“Figured you just was just low on yer Mega twelves. Figured if you’d known about Tami, you’d have wanted to go shootin’.” Benji holds his pole between his legs and digs a can of dip out of his side pocket.
Old mental recordings of Tami play in my mind. I can see her, our last night together, getting shitfaced at Tater’s Bar and Grill. She must have thrown back a bottle of Fireball and a case of Bud Light that night. Don’t know how she did it, but she was sober enough to tell me it was over on the drive home. Wasn’t shit I could do about it either, she was set to leave for the city tomorrow.
Maybe I should have chased after her. Maybe I was in shock. Probably I was just too much of a pussy. Too scared to leave this little hole we call a town. More scared that I might actually have real feelings for a girl Tami, the wild mare, never meant to be ridden or broken.
“You done gone all glassy eyed over there brother. Here.” Benji tosses me another beer. “Drown your self pity in that.”
“Ain’t pity.” I empty my first can and toss it the floor of my old bass boat. The can ‘tings’ as it bounces off a half dozen just like it.
“Sure.” Benji reels his line back in, checks his bait, and tosses it back out.
I focus on the ripples of the water, watching the afternoon sun flicker like a mirage in the reflection. My reel clicks as I ease the line in one breath at a time.
“So?” Benji asks, fucking up anything close to peace I’d found in the moment.
“So what?” I snap and instantly regret. Just more ammo for Benji to make fun of me.
Benji spits over the side of the boat and leans back in the lawn chair I’ve got bolted to the front of the boat. “So you gonna take a shot at her? Bosses daughter back in town. You too could hook up for old time sake.”
“Fuck off. She’s just got divorced, she hates it here, and she damn sure doesn’t want anything to do with me. And Skeet’s not my fucking boss, either.”
“First off, Skeet is everyone’s boss in this town and that’s doubly true for you. And second, how’d you know she was divorced? You been creepin’ on her ‘gram, ain’t you? Double tap anyone of those newly single selfies yet?” Benji leans over like he’s about to jab me with his elbow, but the boat rocks. Benji fumbles with his fishing pole and beer. By the time the boats settled, he seems to decide jabbing me in the ribs isn’t worth it anymore. “Just saying, maybe a couple double taps on your part can lead to some real taps in a couple days.”
“The ‘gram? The fuck are you, a middle schooler?”
“That’s what the kids say, ain’t it?”
“We’re thirty.”
“Young as the day we were born.” Benji crushes an empty can in his hand, tosses it on the pile.
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Don’t have to, long as you say it like you mean it. And I meant it.”
I don’t say anything, hoping Benji drops it. Besides, I don’t want to admit he’s right. My drunken ass looked up profile up a year back. I don’t remember sending the friend request, shit, I don’t remember looking at her pictures, but I woke up the next afternoon to a notification that she’d accepted. It was too late then. If I’d unfollowed her, I would have looked more like a creep.
So for the past twelve months, I’ve followed her life via selfie. She looks good. Damn she looks good, better than when we was kids, even. It’s her eyes that get me, though. In the old pictures, there was always something missing, like a fire had gone out. It hurt me to see it, hurt me that I could help, but then she put up a video a month back.
The shaky clip picked up in a pawn shop. Her hand slides a giant wedding ring across the counter, and a man hands her a stack of bills. The camera swings to her face in time for three words, “I’m free, bitches”. I probably watched that clip a hundred fucking times, even paused it at the very end because I saw in that moment, the fire was back.
“You know what you should do,” Benji says.
Fuck me.
“You should talk to ol’ Skeet. Get his blessing, you know?”
“Tami doesn’t give two shits what her daddy thinks,” I say. “And I haven’t talked to Skeet in months.”
“Oh yeah?” Benji sets his pole down and faces me, more interested now. “So it’s true, Dakota really is pushing his old dad out?”
“If by pushing him out, you mean fucking up a perfectly good drug trade? Yeah, that’s what he’s doing.”
“How so?”
I sigh. As little as I wanted to talk about Lori, I want to talk business even less. Talking shit about Dakota is bad business on my part, it’s a small town and Benji has a well documented history of talking too fucking much. Maybe the Buds are working their magic, maybe I just don’t give a shit anymore because before I realize it, I’m saying, “Just about every way you could. He’s trying to gouge prices, he’s pissing off the big time suppliers in the city, and he’s cutting his product too thin. I’d be amazed if the junkies even get anything off his shit anymore. It’s all baking soda and caffeine pills and shit.”
“I fucking knew it.” Benji jumps up from his seat, sending to boat rocking like we’re in a damn hurricane. “I’m gonna call that weasel fucker and give him a piece of my—”
“Benji.”
“Yeah?”
“Sit the fuck down before you scare off the fish.”
“Well…” Beni looks around for a moment, returns to his seat.
“Listen,” I say, “leave Dakota alone. He’s a kid and he’s greedy and he’s dangerous.”
My brother is a dumbass and three-quarter of a junkie, but I don’t want to see him get hurt because I ran my mouth. Why the hell did I say anything?
“He’s a rat shit pile of gaw’damn garbage is what he is.” Benji spits into the water. His fishing pole whines at his feet as the string drags out further into the water.
“He might be,” I say, ignoring the fish on the line, “but if you confront him, he might feel the need to make an example.”
“Ain’t scared.” Benji balls his fist like he’s about to knock Dakota out right here in the middle of Adam’s Lake.
“You’re right, he’s a punk kid and he’s fucking up hard, but trust me when I say this, let him.”
“Let him?”
“Listen, the word is, the old man isn’t going to last long. Once Dakota has full control, he’s going to go on a splendid Tour de fuckup. Let him.”
“Why, exactly?” Benji’s reel locks as the line reaches the end. The pole jumps across the edge of the boat and hits the water. Benji doesn’t notice.
“Because, a well-liked local entrepreneur could use that window to start up his own business.”
“Like who?” Benji grits his teeth, pissed at the thought of there being a drug dealer in town he doesn’t know, if I had to guess.
“Listen, brother,” I say, “This is what I do? I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do isn’t very nice and what I have planned for Dakota isn’t going to be very nice.”
“Ohhhhh. I get it.” Benji sits back in his chair laughing. “It’s because you’re going to bang his sister, right?”
"Just saying, maybe a couple double taps on your part can lead to some real taps in a couple days" >> DYYYYING 🤣 Great story
“After she was brutally violated, Angela suffered twenty-three stab wounds.” Borrowitz pauses, bows his head. His balding crown comes up as if it pained him to do so, he stares into each juror’s eyes.
“Twenty-three times, and she didn’t die. Then. She didn’t die then. She was a fighter. And that monster,” a purposeful look at my client Billy Daniels sitting silent next to me, “that monster wasn’t done with Angela.”
Borrowitz walks to the projection screen set up non-coincidently facing Angela’s gently sobbing mother in the galley, Belinda.
Borrowitz clicks the projector remote nestled discreetly in his palm. A picture of Angela’s emaciated nineteen-year-old body fills the screen. The track marks in her arms only noticeable if you knew to look.
Click.
A close up view of Angela’s throat sliced deep enough to sever seventy-seven percent of her spinal cord. The greyscale rose tattoos around what was left of her neck covered in her own blood.
“Angela was mutilated and killed with the same kind of knife Billy Daniel’s was known to carry on his hip.” Borrowitz holds up the knife found in the dumpster next to her body, the plastic from the evidence bag not dulling the brown blood stains on the handle.
As if on cue, Belinda sobs harder. I count at least four jurors looking at the bereft mother as the remaining eight look ready to vomit. Fuck. I need to get this shit show back in my ballpark. And quick.
Click.
A picture of Billy’s arms covered in small scratches, taken by the police after he was arrested in his trailer three days after Angela’s body was discovered. His hands have no marks.
I glance at my watch. 11:59 AM. The vice grip on my lungs eases a little, the pounding in my temples calming.
“We will continue after a one-hour respite, then the defense will present their case.” The judge eases his heft out of his tower, his mind probably already on the Cherry’s Diner and Bakery gift basket my assistant had delivered to his chambers this morning. No one makes better banana pudding than Cherry. No cheap Cool Whip for Cherry. Those Nilla wafers are topped with actual meringue, blow torched to perfection.
****
12:53 PM
Billy and I are back in our seats, his broad shoulders graze mine as he leans a little to the left to get a better look at the young court transcriber settling into her chair. Her blouse has lost a few of the buttons on the top since the lunch break. A slow grin replaces Billy’s normal nonchalance as the girl shyly tries to not look at him.
Great.
“Billy, I swear to God I’ll hang you myself.” I’m not going to ruin my reputation because of this kid’s inability to control his cock. He pouts a little but stops ogling the girl. She seems genuinely disappointed.
“Ms. James?”
I smile with lips closed in respect at the judge. He pats his belly. I thank the pastry gods for Cherry.
I swallow my self-respect, let it stew with the acid churning in my stomach.
“Angela suffered an unnatural and gruesome death. The person responsible should be made to suffer.” I pause, making sure I have all of the jurors’ confused attention. Seven male and five female eyes are trained on me. Good.
“But there is no evidence saying Mr. Daniels was responsible for the horrors Angela suffered.” Never say the defendant’s first name with the victims, there can’t be a tangible connection. They can’t have known each other.
“The unspeakable truth is Angela was a prostitute who was victimized by society,” I turn toward the galley slightly. “And her mother. Angela learned her way of life from her mother, who has been prostituting her daughter since she was eleven.” Belinda’s sobbing stutters.
“Objection, that is irrelevant.”
“Sustained.”
I knew it would be.
I make sure I look each of the seven male jurors in the eye, “Angela was murdered while selling her body.” Stay with the facts, exploit the she-was-asking-for-it mentality in these fine south Alabama men’s ingrained believes.
“The knife used to commit these crimes on Angela is a very common type found in most Army surplus stores and in any outdoors store. Billy, like any real man, did carry a knife like this.” I count four of the male jurors’ chest swell.
“Billy did use his knife that night. He used it while he was out hunting with his cousins, four hours away on his uncle’s farm nowhere near the street alley Angela was in. As Billy and his cousins have already stated under oath, the knife was lost that night while the boys were out having some beers. As you know, boys will be boys. Billy’s knife and for the record his cousin John’s knife were lost during a,” I pause as if embarrassed, “albeit immature bet to see who could hit a passing gator on the banks of the Manges River first.”
I turn my gaze to the female jurors, three of them avid Law and Order fans based on my team’s research. Women like to feel included.
“There is no DNA on the knife Mr. Borrowitz showed you earlier that links to Mr. Daniels. No blood, no sweat, not even fingerprints.” He already told me he burned the gloves he wore, of course there wouldn’t be fingerprints.
“Aside from a vague description of a young man with dark hair wearing a Carhartt jacket, and this provided from a homeless man who did nothing to help Angela, there is no connection to Mr. Daniels. If that was the only criteria to be accused of murder, how many of you or good men you know would be considered a suspect?”
“Objection.”
I don’t even protest.
****
Two days later and the hung jury verdict is splashed all over the newspapers.
I take a last drag from my Marlborough Red, flick the tar stained filter off my balcony. The city sounds of car alarms and music filtering out of passing cars drift up to me as I climb onto the concrete railing. I turn to face my penthouse apartment.
The wind whips my hair into my face, my neutral pink lipstick already smeared from the empty whisky bottle laying on my shower’s tiled floor.
I don’t step, I just let my body collapse backwards. I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do isn’t very nice.
"As you know, boys will be boys." >> America's themesong. Great job on this story!
Due to hoarding of toilet paper in the big city, I have had my employees purchase and stockpile the excess amounts left on the shelves of our stores. These and other critical items are now safeguarded in my building on the square as a service to my people.
Anyone with a wheel tax sticker and three dollars can purchase a roll at the door. Prices of other critical needs are posted at the door. I have instructed my employees to maintain purchase of all new excess supplies entering the county in order to protect my county from shortages
I have further ordered my Director of Health to shut down any business offering products, such as toilet paper, that may draw a large crowd. Those businesses are instead directed to have those items delivered to my warehouse and will be compensated for such at a bulk rate price.
Additionally, I have authorized him to hire a force of 30 agents to enforce these anti-viral edicts.
There shall be no mass gatherings inside the county limits and no persons shall be within 10 feet of another, without direct supervision of a Health Department agent to ensure no unhealthy discussion is being spread.
To further eliminate the threat, individuals in line are prohibited from talking with anyone in line. They will fill out a request for the number of which items they want and have exact cash ready when my employee asks for both. If the cash and request does not match, my employee will deduct items of their choosing from the order, without comment, until the cash received exceeds the items received.
I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do isn’t very nice.
Signed, Mayor of Shotgun County,
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If You Believe
by Jessica West
“Man, you’re the best, Santa. Did you see that kid’s face?” Angelo stared into the viewing orb with a goofy grin, and watched several scenes full of joy drift in and out of sight.
Santa remained oddly quiet.
The elf pulled his gaze away from the warm glow of the viewing orb to watch as Santa wiped a stray tear from his cheek. If not for his furrowed brow and heavy frown, Angelo might have thought he was crying happy tears.
“What’s the matter, Santa? Kids all over the world are experiencing the joy of Christmas morning. This is our best year yet! Christmas spirit is at a record high.”
Maybe the elf’s exuberance and ignorance tweaked his last nerve, or maybe he was just tired, but Santa couldn’t hold back any longer.
“At what cost?” he bellowed.
Angelo shook like a bowl of jelly. “I... what?”
Santa took in a long, slow breath. “You don’t remember the very first Christmas. You probably hadn’t even been born yet. It all began with a single wish.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take.
“God, please make Mama not sick no more. I’ll never ask for nothing else so long as I’m alive. Thank ya, kindly.
“Amen.”
No one had ever believed in anything more than that child believed that God would grant his wish. From that wish, Santa was born.
On the other side of the world and nearly three hundred years into the future, a woman in an ICU ward screamed and cursed at God for taking her baby from her.
Never in her life had she ever believed in anything as fervently as she believed in God in those moments.
She needed someone to blame.
They’d been fighting a losing battle for weeks. Against all odds, her little one had come through his eighth surgery and was recovering. Then something happened, something she couldn’t have explained even though the doctors tried to help her understand.
She’d never be able to understand it, though. Such a thing is incomprehensible. But Santa knew what happened. Magic contained all knowledge, and Santa was pure magic.
“Sounds like a good story, Santa,” Angelo said hopefully.
He only grunted in reply.
The elf cleared his throat. “Well, if not a good story, an educational one at least?”
“Magic requires sacrifice. You can’t give something without taking something away. Where do all these toys come from, Angelo?”
“We...make them.”
“From what?” Santa prodded. “Where does the material come from? The plastic. The cloth. The rubber. Haven’t you ever wondered?”
“It just...appears.” Angelo looked truly frightened.
Santa couldn’t find any pity in his heart for his helper. “Use the viewing orb to see those who go without. Watch them for a while, pay attention to the things they’re lacking. Then you’ll see.
“Every year, the faith of Those Who Receive grows stronger. I am compelled to make their wishes come true. But look at the numbers sometime, Angelo. Look at how many children there are on Earth alone. Then look at how many are on the Wishlist.
“I’m the best there is at what I do. That much, you have right. But what I do isn’t very nice.”
Dang, this is brutal. Well done, Jess
Frakkkkkkkk. Horrifying. Nicely done!!
Title: Snipped Comments: Sure! Thanks for reading. She snipped away and tiny images fell to the ground like falling leaves. In a moment she’d rake them up into a pile and carry the images away, but for now she kept at her work. This was delicate work. Harvesting memories left little room for error, though you wouldn’t know that by the handiwork of some of her so-called colleagues. She was a Level 5 Memory Technician and many of the low-level techs rightly earned themselves the nickname Amnesia Fairies. Those hacks just aimlessly hacked away at memories, leaving their employers a little richer but their producers a little stunted. These Amnesia Fairies wanted to hit their daily quotas at the chop shops and they didn’t care how they got there. A lot of their unfortunate producers got out of the bed with no memories before age 12. Not unusable producers, exactly, but as far as memory agriculture goes they were basically now a low-yield crop. Not many ultra-pure memories left to work with. A Level 5 knows that the best, the purest memories can only be handled with delicacy -- and, though the work is painstaking, it brings in the best price per memory (PPM). If done right, a good Memory Tech could clip out your sweetest memory of making cookies with grandma so that all you remember is a smell and a feeling. Just that alone would be a piece of work to be proud of -- and would make you some sweet PPM bonuses. But the best techs could leave just enough of a trace that you’d fill in the blanks yourself, imagining what would have happened that day, or extrapolating based on other remaining memories, so the memory (though a false one) could be harvested again later on. That was what you paid a Level 5 for. This was advanced crop science in the field of the mind. She dug a little deeper, following a trail of dog-related memories. The dog knocked him into the pool once -- she chuckled and with a snip that memory was on the floor, too. She snipped out from the critical moment when he was hanging mid-air over the pool until their post-swim snack time to ensure future production on this memory. She grabbed some more low-hanging fruit along the way, the images falling softly to the floor, but all these memories were just to pad her paycheck. She was after a really juicy memory -- and only she could harvest this one. This was going to be good. A pure memory from adult life is not just difficult to find, but nearly impossible to harvest without leaving a noticeable blank spot in their memory. She’s the best there is at modification -- but what she does isn’t very nice. She’ll take your one pure moment -- your one best day -- from the grind of adult life and with a little snip it will be gone. You’ll never know that the memory is missing, but you might feel like a shadow has fallen. She held her breath. This was it. It was the purest memory of his adult life so far: a tiny baby wrapped even tinier fingers around his finger and he beamed with joy. From his memories she could see that he hadn’t seen his daughter in years. Was this one moment really so important for him to keep it? Snip. He’ll never know what he’s missing.