Bully Wee

Are you anything like me? Too old? Too lazy? And too crotchety to pick up new interests and hobbies?

Well I have the perfect solution for you!

It’s not testosterone replacement therapy. Nor is it psychiatric therapy for clinical depression!

It’s buying ownership in a sports club on the other side of the planet!

For years, I told myself that I needed to get into European football, sometimes known as “soccer” in the United States. But who has the time to learn new rules, players, strategies? I don’t have time for that shit.

So I came up with a brilliant solution: I will buy ownership in Clyde FC, a Scottish football club outside of Glasgow!

Have I ever been to Scotland? Nope!

Can I point Glasgow out on a map? Also no.

But here’s the best part: You don’t have to have any geographical knowledge to be a part of sports history. All it takes is pulling out your wallet and forking over 80.00 USD to own a share of the club and becoming a part of the Bully Wee family. Think about it. Now that I have a stake in the club, I’m REQUIRED, by law, to be invested in its success by familiarizing myself with Scottish football culture.

It’s genius in many ways.

A few people from Motherwell FC were like, “invest in our club 😭😭😭”. But it’s too late. As a club owner, I’m fully invested in building Clyde FC into the finest club in Scottish sports and I will never, EVER, step foot across the River Clyde into Motherwell. Hell, I wouldn’t piss on your town if it was on fire.

So what are you? Stupid?

Buy your own share of Clyde FC and let’s build something together!

Mer Rouge (Part 51)

The eunuch stood with his large hands and arms folded. His golden robes sparkling in the candlelit room. Dirk observed him. “The Judge is disappointed,“ the eunuch said. 

“It’s an entire sheriff’s department against a few men,” Dirk told him.

“Their poor decisions could lead them here.”

“We’ll find them before they do.”

The judge laid onto the old organ. The haunting sound startled Dirk. The decrepit old man lifted a chalice and drank from it. “I’ll gladly hear any input you may have, judge,” Dirk said to him. 

The judge lowered the chalice and wiped his mouth. He looked to his eunuch. “The judge will speak through me,” the eunuch said. But the judge again laid onto the organ.

The eunuch bowed his head. “Forgive me sire,” he begged. 

The judge stood and stretched his black velvet jacket. He cleared his throat and approached Dirk. It was the closest the sheriff had ever been to the old man. His eyes were gray. His teeth yellowed and crooked. And he smelled like an open grave. “Do you know how long I’ve been around?” he asked the sheriff. His voice barely registered above a whisper. 

“A long time, judge.”

“And for all of it to end because of a priest.”

“And a Roman soldier,” the eunuch interrupted.

“I have every officer surrounding the perimeter. There’s no way they’ll break through,” Dirk said.

“Do you have any idea how resourceful the priest is?” asked the judge.

“Yes sir. We’ve met before. In Seville.”

“Then why didn’t you recognize him?”

“Because I figured him long dead. I hadn’t seen his face in centuries.”

“Foolish,” the judge said. “The same could be said of you and me.”

“Yes sir. But the way I saw him. I couldn’t believe he was still alive.”

The judge approached an old wooden chest. He opened it and removed the sword and armor of the old conquistadors. He removed the pork pie hat and placed the helmet on his head. “You were in Peru, weren’t you?” the judge asked.

The sheriff thought the old man looked ridiculous. “I was,” said Dirk.

“Then we must learn from our old master Pizarro,” the judge continued. “As with our hearts, we must prepare this place as a fortress. For there will be no other.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Sam

The lord giveth. The lord taketh away.

First he gave by taking away Lindsey Graham. Now he takes by bringing to heaven Sam Neill.

These things never get easier. Watching your childhood heroes die. From Omen III to Event Horizon. From the Piano to Jurassic World Dominion. He’ll forever remain in the air of our heart. Like a whiff from a godawful fart.

I’ll forever miss you Sam. You could have been James Bond. Like your friend Pierce Brosnan.

Mer Rouge (Part 50)

He loosened the knob. The flame grew brighter and he unleashed it on the shack. A bright torrent of fire covered the shanty building and the wood cracked and popped before it collapsed in on itself. The priest was livid. 

“What the hell?! I was living in that!” he shouted at DuPont. 

“I’ll tell you boys what, when we’re through with this operation here, all y’all better stay the hell outta Louisiana,” the sheriff retorted. “If I see any of y’all again, I’ll kill you. If any of y’all claim I helped ya, I call yall a liar and then I’ll find ya and kill ya. Understood?”

There were no responses.

“Good,” DuPont continued. “Now the first rule: only I get to use the flamethrower.”

“Then what the hell are we gonna use?” asked Moses. 

“Excellent question!”

Without missing a beat, Deputy Chaz came rolling down the dirt path in the beat up Honcho. Oren couldn’t believe his eyes. With all the windows busted out, Chaz parked in front of the gaggle and shouted at DuPont. “Hey Sheriff!” he said. “I couldn’t find a vehicle big enough to transport all this dynamite. So we just fixed the cab and threw all of it into the bed of this truck. Goddamn! Honchos are one hell of a vehicle!”

“Well boys,” the sheriff announced, “you have your answer. We’re gonna take this dynamite and blow the shit out of Castor’s house and collapse that cursed spring once and for all.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

and yet another shot at the title

I hate summer. It’s hard to feel inspired when you’re sweating your nuts off. So while I’m feeling sorry for myself, I began going through some of my old shit and I came across And Yet Another Shot at the Title, which, if you recall, was the sequel to Another Shot at the Title, which is the sequel to A Shot at the Title. Apparently, I wrote over forty sections of AYASATT which, to be honest, I don’t recall doing. From what I can remember though, I wrote it under extreme duress before abandoning the project altogether. I got tired of writing from the perspective of a raging asshole. But that was a mistake. I now recognize AYASATT as potentially my greatest work.

So maybe James Pietermeister isn’t dead yet. Not that he ever died canonically speaking, but MAYBE I have the energy to crank out one more adventure for him.

Mer Rouge (Part 49)

There was a faint cracking and the man fell to the floor. Looking down at the corpse with its head unnaturally contorted, the patient assessed the officer’s size. It wasn’t a perfect fit. In fact if it wasn’t covered in blood, the other officer’s uniform would have been a better fit.  But he knelt down and stripped the dead cop of his clothes. He checked himself in the mirror. Now donning a Monroe PD outfit, the patient strolled out into the hospital corridor while twirling his baton. As he calmly whistled towards the elevator, he tipped his hat to various medical staff passing by. Then he recognized his nurse walking toward him. When she looked up and saw his face, he already had a gun to her side. “Scream and you’re dead,” he told her.

Her face whitened as he nudged her toward the elevator. Inside, she asked him where they were going. He said nothing to her. The doors opened into the lobby and he motioned her to walk forward. Outside, the squad car was parked near the entrance. He opened the backseat and handcuffed her inside. Then he proceeded to the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove out of the parking lot and in the direction of Mer Rouge. 

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked him.

The driver didn’t acknowledge her.

“Please let me go,” she pleaded. “I have two sons. They’re twins.”

The driver looked up from the road and glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “I was a twin,” he said to her. “I never knew my mother and father. My brother and I were raised by beggars and horse thieves on the Milove steppe. We should have died there. But salvation came in the form of a golden eagle as the Roman legions swept through our fields. Most of the people were killed, but our caregivers saved themselves by selling us into slavery. My brother and I were taken many miles away. Away from the sea of grass we called our home and into the land of the civilized. They taught us the way of the sword and the arrow and they made us soldiers in the greatest army in the world. That bought us freedom. It bought us celebrity. And ultimately it bought us immortality. Many years have passed since. I don’t know how many. The difference between now and so many years ago seems no different than today from yesterday. I don’t know how many lives I’ve lived. Seen how many people I have loved die. You think that death is the worst possible outcome. But there are worse things than death.”

She sat in petrified silence. Occasionally she’d stare out the window and take in sights she had seen so many times before. She’d wonder if she’d ever see them again. 

Many miles down the road, the driver turned the squad car down a concealed dirt path. A mile or two away from the main road, the car stopped near a thicket of southern pine. The driver climbed out of the front seat and opened the rear passenger side door. But he didn’t let her out. He walked several feet away and dusted away mounds of dead pine on the ground. Underneath it all was a buried locked wooden crate and he knelt down and opened it. He took out two swords and the golden roman eagle. Then he lifted the empty crate and sat the eagle on top of it. Taking one of the swords, he remained knelt and lowered his head to pray. She watched him the entire time. He was silent. Motionless. Minutes later, he lifted his head and dropped the other sword into the crate pit and reburied it. He stood up and walked back to the car. He opened the front passenger’s side door and placed the sword and eagle in the front seat. Then he undid the handcuffs and let the woman out. 

“Please don’t,” she said.

“Be thankful that this is your only life,” he told her. He tipped his hat and got back in the car. He started the engine and roared back toward the main road.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 48)

Simon and Simon quietly played on the old black and white television set. The brother’s eyes shifted back and forth from a shirtless Gerald McRaney on the screen and the two simpletons slightly sloshed over as they engaged in a game of poker. His left wrist was handcuffed to the bedside railing. A nurse rolled in with a tray for the patient and the two bumblefucks watching him. She set up the table and raised the patient’s bed. She lifted the lid and a plume of steam rushed out. It was steamed squash and broccoli with a side of chocolate pudding. The nurse gave the patient one eating utensil. A singular metal fork. The two officers were provided with superior food. Cheeseburgers and Coke. “I’ll be back in an hour,” the nurse announced. The officers waved and she rolled out her cart.

The door closed and the patient reached for the fork and buried it under his blanket. He ignored the food and feigned interest in the television. An officer looked up from his plate and shouted at the patient. “Hey buddy! Are you gonna eat your lunch?”

“I ain’t hungry,” the patient said. 

The officer shrugged and shoved the burger into his face hole. Afterwards, one took a flask and poured whiskey into their cokes. “Ready for another ass whoopin?” he asked his partner. He shuffled the deck of cards. 

Underneath the covers, the patient bent back three of the fork prongs with his right hand. His left hand was exposed. He pushed back his food tray and adjusted the blanket. The entire bed was covered, including both guard rails. The patient slowly moved his fork in hand across his body and jammed the remaining prong into the keyhole of the handcuffs. 

“Shoowee!” one officer cried out. “That burger is going right through me!”

He excused himself from the card game and rushed out into the hospital corridor. The remaining officer looked at the patient. “Hey! Hands where I can see them!” he barked. He stood up and tugged the covers off the bedrails. The patient’s left hand was still handcuffed. Satisfied, the cop picked up the TV remote and faced away from the bed. “Do you actually like watching this shit?” he asked the patient. He flipped through the channels until finding Cannon. “Now here’s a good ass show!” he declared.

Before he turned around, the patient had the fork prong jammed into the officer’s posterior auricular vein. Blood spewed onto the walls. And with his left hand, he crushed the officer’s throat and he gently helped the corpse drop to the ground. Not a sound was made. As blood pooled around the body, the patient dug through his belt and pulled a pair of keys. He rushed to the window and opened the blinds. He was four stories up and with no way out. He stood by the door and waited for the other officer. And when he came, he saw his partner’s bloodied body on the floor. But as he reached for his radio, the patient lurched at him from behind and broke his neck. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 47)

Alone in the cave, he took the flask out and emptied it in his mouth. Then he patted on his leg to test the pain. Feeling content, he stood up and hopped up and down thrice. With his leg fully healed, he sat back down and rested his back against the cavern wall and rested his eyes. Then the mayor strolled down the stairs and side eyed him. Dirk wasn’t far behind. The sheriff reached to his belt and pulled out his 9mm. With his eyes shut, Fornier hardly noticed the men. 

“How’s your leg feeling?” Dirk asked him.

“Much better,” the deputy said without looking up.

Dirk aimed the firearm and fired a single round into Fornier’s thigh. The deputy screeched and writhed on the cave floor. “Goddamnit Dirk!” he cried and cried.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” the sheriff said. “One officer is dead and every inmate escaped! How the hell does that happen?!”

“I did the best I could!”

“Who was it?! The priest?”

“Yes!”

“And who else? He couldn’t have acted alone.”

“I didnt see anyone else!”

Dirk shot him again, this time blowing his ear clean off. Fornier’s screams were horrid and intolerable as they echoed down the cavernous halls. The sheriff lowered his gun. “Ahhhgghh for fucks sake Dirk!” the deputy cried while blood squirted from his head. 

“I’m not stupid!” Dirk yelled. “The precinct was torched! There had to be someone else!”

“Alright alright! The Nine! It was the fucking Nine!”

“Those two assholes?! Were they with the priest?!”

“I dont know! I think I got one of them killed!”

“No shit?”

“No shit!”

Dirk reholstered the pistol. “Well shit,” he said. Then he stood with hands on his hips. “How did they find you?”

“How the hell would I know Dirk!”

The mayor interjected. “Your cousin was killed over in Vicksburg a few days ago. In a fire no less. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”

“It was a coincidence!”

“In a fire? Like hell it was,” Dirk said. “I’ve always wondered about you Fornier. Was you moonlighting?”

“What do you mean sheriff?!”

“I mean was you dealin? Like profiting off the spring?”

“God no! You know I’d never do something like that!”

Dirk faced the mayor. The mayor shrugged. The sheriff rubbed his face and scratched his head. “So you’re telling me you killed one of the Nine. There’s only one left?” he asked Fornier.

“Dirk, I’m almost certain I killed him dead. That fire got him good.”

“And what about the other one?”

“We got a few good licks on him but I can’t be certain if we got him.”

“The last surviving member of the nine,” the Mayor said. “We’d be better off facing the entire legion of them. Those men have been around for close to two thousand years, Dirk.”

“I know that.”

“And the last one won’t go down without turning this place into a pit of hell.”

“To say nothing of the priest.”

“So we don’t have long to prepare,” suggested the Mayor. Dirk nodded. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small cloth. He tossed it at the blood soaked deputy and spat. “Get yourself healed and cleaned up,” he told Fornier. “We don’t have long.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 46)

Hutch found an old faded porno laying in the grass on the south facing side of the church. He picked it up and knocked off the spiders, grass, and other critters that burrowed its way into the pages and thumbed through it. A few feet away, Oren had the windows rolled down and the driver’s seat eased back in the Toyota. He heard Hutch strolling his way towards his corner of the yard and he lifted his head. He saw that his brother was all smiles as he glared at the full bushed woman from the December 1981 issue of Penthouse. Oren knew that issue well. He called out to Hutch. “Get in the car man!”

Hutch was slightly startled and promptly dropped the magazine. “Shit! I didn’t see you there bro!”

“Just get in!”

Hutch shrugged and strolled to the passengers side. He opened the door, sat his rotund ass down and took out a cigarette. “Whatchu thinking man?” he asked his brother. But Oren inserted the keys into the ignition and started the car. “I’m thinkin we’re gettin the hell outta here!”

Oren laid on the gas, kicking up a cloud of rock and dirt. But just a few meters down the dirt road, Sheriff DuPont stumbled into their path. Oren slammed on the brakes. The Sheriff didn’t budge an inch as he glared at the brothers through the windshield. He slowly approached the driver’s side and he ordered Oren to roll down the window. He complied and the officer leaned forward and rested his forearms on the sill. “So uh, you boys just goin for a Sunday drive?” DuPont asked.

“Yessir,” said Oren.

“Nosir,” said Hutch.

“Well I reckon that would be alright as long as yur back n about thirty minutes,” the sheriff explained. “The problem is that this is an illegally obtained vehicle. Now don’t worry. I get it. This is unusual circumstances. But after we’re done with this little operation here, we’ll need to get the car back to it’s rightful owner, see. I hope you understand.”

“Yessir.”

“Now I’m supposin that yur Oren Waites of Utah, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then I got some excellent news for ya. I got that Honco of yours in impound.”

“You do?”

“Oh yes. Still runs like a charm too, I’ll tell ya. Sure the cab and windshield are busted up, but I got the gas tank patched up. Now mind you, you’re gonna have to pick it up come tonight. Else I’m gonna have to charge you impound and towing fees, ya see.”

Oren swallowed hard. “Okay, I understand,” he said.

“Good,” said the sheriff. “Now why don’t you turn this piece of shit around and pull up to the shack down yonder. We’re fixin to head out soon.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 45)

The priest gave everyone a cup of boiled peanuts and a shot of bourbon. Hutch took one look at it and passed. “I ain’t touching this crap,” he said. Moses dug his fork around in the cup and shrugged. “Better than the shit we ate on the inside.”

Sheriff DuPont raised an eyebrow and glanced at the priest. “You know that no one likes this shit down here, right?”

“More for me then,” the priest said.

Oren sloshed his fork around in the cup and gave up. “I’m gonna go take a nap guys,” he announced. He excused himself from the table and found a shaded corner of the yard. DuPont lifted his bourbon glass and sipped. “So uh, where do you come from priest?” 

Peanut juice dripped down his beard and he wiped it away with a cheap napkin. “I’m not sure you’re ready to have that conversation yet, Sheriff.”

“What the hell does that mean?” 

“It means he doesn’t remember where he comes from,” Moses spoke up.

The priest looked up and glared at Moses. The sheriff’s eyes shifted back and forth between the two men. “You don’t remember?” he asked.

The priest sat down his cup and picked up the bourbon. “What do you know about Judge Castor, Sheriff?”

“Almost nuthin. Except he’s been around forever and he’s always trouble.”

The priest nodded. “That sounds about right. What say you, Mo?”

“How the hell would I know?” Moses spat.

“You seem to be a man that’s been around a while,” the priest said. He casually sipped on his drink. “You never crossed paths with this devil?”

“I only know what the sheriff knows.”

“Uh huh,” the priest shrugged. He downed the bourbon and slapped the glass on the table. “Well Sheriff, to answer your question, the judge and I go way back,” he continued. “At times we was allies. But not no more. And that’s all I can say about that.”

The sheriff drowned his shot of bourbon and then smirked. “Gimme another shot of that, will ya?” he said. He stood up and straightened himself out. “I gotta piss,” he announced. And he excused himself from the room. 

Out of earshot, the priest began replenishing everyone’s drinks. Then he looked at Moses. “So I guess Mount Hebron wasn’t the end of your story, huh?”

“The hell you talkin about old fool?”

“C’mon. You’re amongst your own here. How old are you? Two thousand? Three thousand years old?”

Moses guffawed. “Well first off father. You should know the good book better than that. It wasn’t Hebron. It was Mount Nebo.”

“I don’t give a goddamn what it was. Just who the hell are you and why was ya in Mer Rouge?”

“I ain’t nobody, preacher man. A better question is just who the hell are you?”

The priest drowned another shot and then he poured another. “Drink up,” he ordered Moses. “We’re fixin to find some truths this mornin’.”

TO BE CONTINUED…