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La Vie De Fête Season 2 Episode 4: Checking On Who Hit Me

Title Of The Story Comes From: “Can’t Hold Us” By Macklemore

Big Amazon vans moved down the gravel road, the murky midnight horizon serving as the backdrop for their evil, mysterious operations. The back of the van opened up, and men with unknown intentions climbed out, carrying small packages with elephant trinkets that belonged to Mr. Landarris, and climbed into an open sewer gate. These sewers smelled like rotten apples and spoiled meat, and it was so elaborate traversing it was like navigating through one’s own house at night.

Above the surface, a long line of Amazon vans trudged down the slow road, escorting more packages filled with similar treasures, passing by a shambly house and climbing up a steep hill. Each van parked in a way that the sky blue arrows pointed at the mansion of Luciana Francesci. After the packages were dropped off at her doorstep, the vans drove back through the overcast midnight, and left in a junkyard.

Serr was a man driving one of the vans, filing out of the junkyard with the others, dressed in a red shirt and black pants and shoes. He worked a minimum wage job as an Amazon delivery truck driver, and during the night he secretly used the truck to make drop offs.

On this night, on the way out of the junkyard, he kicked a little mutt. He was a poor man that only earned enough to get by, and if he was treated badly how much better should nature be treated? His shoe, however, kicked the mutt so badly that it caused the dog to urinate on the ground and all over him. Besides the dog was a pile of similarly sized canine defecate, small lumps like charcoal whose stench vaguely reminded him of plant fertilizer.

Rasheb Nevim’s crimson motorcycle kicked up dust, a large truck careering out of the way as he moved off the highway and down an empty road. At the end of the road was what was a bare living room, everything else torn down by a ragged construction crew. He dashed past a torn leather sofa, tracing his fingers along the edges of beige walls still warm from quenched activities until he felt a hidden compartment. Behind the wall was a picture of him and Luciana after a candlelight dinner, the photo containing satisfied looks and empty plates.

Rasheb Nevim faced down men in pearl white suits and a pale woman in a tall beige dress, backing him into a corner and pushing him against the wall. He tried to reach into his back pocket, but the bodyguards grabbed his arms and dragged him outside, scraping his legs to the concrete.

He looked up at the woman in the beige dress, the barrel of her pistol and the glistening sunlight behind her meeting his eyes. Luciana Francesci traced his chin with her fingers, then swung her left arm and smacked him in the face.

Suddenly, a burly Camaro—engines heaving out smoke, the pavement trembling underneath—pulled into the driveway, and the driver stepped out. He parted half of his velvety black suit, a pistol materializing in his hand. Half of the men in their suits dropped to his feet—injured but still breathing; the others scrambling to draw their revolvers and the quicker men engaging him in explosive gunfights, bullets traveled across the wind like bees flying in and out of beehives.

Rasheb yanked Joran closer to the pavement; both ducking behind the Camaro, they heard a faint noise reminding them of untrimmed fingernails scratching a chalkboard. Two bullets zipped through the Camaro’s windows, landing at the doormat. There was the scent of flowers emanating from Joran’s dreads, evoking dreams of lavender and peonies and rose bush fields. Rasheb donned his crimson helmet and leapt from behind the Camaro, a glimmer of sunlight bouncing off his visor, a glorious glow emanating from his skin. Luciana hurried off, her beige dress fluttering in the morning wind, her reflection in the splinter in Rasheb Nevim’s visor.

Circa one month later, there were a smear of muddled, repressed memories in Joran’s mind, a visible hint of dread in his lost eyes, a trembling in his lips, shaky hands as he put his hands on the desk, as he remembered an oily, selfless red glove pull him out of a lake of darkness, but not remembering what happened afterwards. He remembered wanting to forget everything circa three weeks earlier, and nothing else about that fateful day.

Behind his still image in the one-way mirror, two men in black nylon suits under black coats, sitting in wrinkly black suit pants watched him not write or sign his witness statement, because he couldn’t bear to tell it all. Joran’s hand finally moved, blots of ink absorbing into the page. Something in the way he trudged out of the room gave the detectives subconscious pity, a longing to comfort unhealed pain.

One of the detectives, Detective Lewis Maroney, said to the other, Detective Clark Benson, “He’s gone through a lot. Do you have fingerprints?”

“We don’t have any yet,” said Detective Maroney. “What did the other witnesses say? Anything yet?”

“Nothing yet. They’re not talking.”

“They aren’t talking because you ain’t pushing them enough.”

“Jesus, Maroney.” A car passed them by, a crimson Dodge Challenger with tinted windows and a tinted windshield, fractures running across it, weaving, intertwining, tangled like a splintering spiderweb, infinitely broken. “We’re screaming our breath out of ourselves. Don’t you think we need a break from the pushing?”

“No, we’re manly detectives—”

“Manly detectives.”

“Yes, we’re manly detectives—”

“We can do this.” Benson kept talking over Maroney, and a frustrated, repressed frown appeared on his face. Benson slapped him on the back, giving his fellow detective a friendly, ignorant chuckle, then saying, “You’re going to be fine. We’ll get them to tell us what the people wants to hear, and everything will work out. Don’t be bitter, Maroney… you and I, we’ll walk into a sea of press with a sure smile and answers to every prying question.” The two detectives walked out of the police headquarters, their coats flying as they shuffled into the distance, the sunrise embracing them.

Present day… Joran adjusted his suit, and fitted the silver wristwatch onto his arm. He looked into the mirror with a confident smile and walked into the shining light, the sunlight blasting behind him as he entered the glittering, glistening party. His black shades reflected the images of several thousand people, waving their arms in the air, their phones emitting beams of lights that searched the room. He walked past noisy Krypto games, and wild sing-alongs happening by cracked TV screens, and a quiet sofa with young men solving crossword puzzles, and he went and sat by Rasheb Nevim.

Over the course of a year, Joran and Rasheb had become well reacquainted to the point where they could treat each other to drinks, parties and late night dinners by the TV at Rasheb’s house, chucking popcorn into their mouths and putting their feet on the table. There were nights when they called each other on the one, asking each other for money when the bills reached the Moon, asking each other to come over and use the microwave, or just to check in on each other. Tonight they sat by a table, playing a game of chess against each other.

Joran moved his queen to the center of the board, controlling the nearby pawns. Rasheb Nevim moved one of his pawns, keeping the pawn tension. A thrilling scene emerged on the wooden battlefield, as most of the pieces’ movements were restricted except for the knights, the queens, and a few pawns. Joran and Rasheb traded his knight for a bishop, Rasheb moved his queen down the board, Joran moved his queen across the board, and they drew by repetition.

Joran gave a sly smirk and replied, “Alright, good game.”

“Good game.” Rasheb shook his hand, their arms swiveling strongly back and forth. Pieces dashed across the board, hurrying back to their starting positions. “Rematch?”

A pale man sat behind them, wearing a pearl white suit, straightening his ties and setting a white metal briefcase down on the table, chessmen flying everywhere. He opened the briefcase, revealing a small device with a timer that ticked down to zero.

Joran whirled around, a quick glimmer and flash tackling the pale man while a nebulous red figure slammed the briefcase shut and dashed through a towering rave. Rasheb tuned out the background noise of fizzy soda and loud music as he sprinted through an endless hallway of flashing lights, more partying and alcohol. Joran caught up with Rasheb, the bomber left chained to a coat hanger with a pair of handcuffs.

There was a small crowd of drunken people line dancing down a staircase to their right, overflowing into the hallway; a parade of men spilled out of the men’s bathroom, engulfing the hallway as Rasheb and Joran darted out of the building. Rasheb hurled the bomb into the air as far as his arm allowed, a steeple of oranges, yellows, and withering grays erupting into the horizon.

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La Vie De Fête Season 2 Episode 2: Suit Game

Title Of The Story Comes From: “Can’t Hold Us” By Macklemore

His black suit smelled like mint leaves swirled in a bowl of lavender. His glossy red tie emanated the scent of fresh peonies, and his white undersuit had a pulchritudinous mix of lilacs and magnolia scents. His partner’s long, billowing gown had hints of a rose scent, and a faintly glistening yellow shimmer, partially because of the rose in Joran had betwixt his gritting teeth.

The stage lights gave off the perfect shine, Joran’s and his partner’s reflections cast vividly onto the dance floor; the audience’s noises were perfect, the cheers and roaring applauding wasn’t too vigorous; the music was fitting for an extravagant night. There were men who were also in black coats, watching Joran from afar, swords being drawn from shields hidden behind their coats. As they walked onto the dance stage, Joran slipped the rose out from his gritting teeth and pointed the stem to the floor. From the tip of the stem drew a metal blade.

He held his hand out to his partner, resuming an exhilarating dance whilst battling the foes with his other hand. Their eyes met as if Joran was a completely different person; he kept his eyes steadily on hers, holding her arm with one hand and twirling her. His other hand warded off the foes, the rose-sword like a needle in the air, a whirling, thin weapon disguised as a symbol of affection. In seconds, he defeated all of the suited foes, and the audience around them had shocked looks, and the pianist had left the ballroom.

Rasheb Nevim sat by his bedside with the book with the gray cover in his hand. A teardrop rolled down his moist cheek, absorbed into the page as he wrote. The pen dragged against the page as he wrote. He held back tears, a drained face, as he wrote, “I don’t know who I am, where I fit in this confusing enigma we call life.” The pen struggled to find its way to the other end of the page, stalling at the end of the sentence halfway across the paper.

There was familiar knocking—a muted, dwindling series of light pokes at the door. Rasheb said with a weak murmur, “You can come in.” Behind the gray door, a pair of gray loafers stepped in, then the rest of a gray suit, then Joran’s soft voice came from behind the door, drowned by the annoying blue light and the pounding rain. “I can’t hear you.”

“I know you said it was quiet time,” Joran said, walking in softly. “I don’t want to intrude for too long—may I close the door? I know nobody else is here but”—Rasheb nodded, so Joran obliged—”but I wanted to make sure you’ll be okay.” Joran asked if he could sit next to Rasheb, to which he nodded, and Joran continued, “You’re an amazing friend.”

Rasheb looked up, a glimmer of crimson light showing in his eyes, one that became more of a red sore than a sign. “I want to be left alone for a little while…” There was trembling in his hands, his strained veins floating up from his skin; and a wishless look in his eyes, a speechless look from his mouth, a sad one; but Joran knew the man—not just the idol, or the moniker, or the symbol—was in there somewhere. “Please…”

Joran couldn’t leave him alone, especially not now. Not his friend, he thought. Not his friend. “There’s something I never told you about myself.”

Joran placed his hand on Rasheb’s leg and looked into his eyes, grasping to hold their attention long enough to save Rasheb, to save his friend. “I was lost too, seeking my identity. I never wanted to be a spy. In high school I was kidnapped, tied up and forced into repeating twisted values.

“They kept telling me things, whispering lies in my ear, telling me that I was born to be a conman, that I was born to cheat people out to serve their empire. They told me that if I didn’t do their work, what purpose did I have?” Joran put his fingers on his chin, picking a garden of wet hairs on his chin. “Then one day I saw through the lies, told myself I deserved better, and I decided to work for a legitimate government agency, and now on my own terms—”

“—because you’re who you are,” Rasheb blurted. “You’re Agent Joran: the man who skydived from a plane without a parachute and landed on an armored tank without breaking a bone. I would love to have half the strength you have. You don’t cry about anything.”

“Actually,”—a momentary pause between them to listen to the thunder, to observe the lightning that fractured the skies—”some nights I lay awake thinking about all of the things I’ve done, the people I’ve hurt, and I sob uncontrollably. Not tonight, though.” Joran continued to brush the moist hairs on his chin as he kept insisting to himself: “Not tonight, though.”

Rasheb Nevim looked at him with a soft, renewed smile. In his crimson eyes, though muffled by prior dread, spoken softly were whispers of hope.

Red and blue lights flashed intermittently, swirling and blasting into small apartment windows, shortly illuminating two gray trash cans vomiting onto the side of the road. Hiding behind the trash cans were two figures, cast in the dwindling lights of police sirens, Guy Red and Joran. Once the shrieking wail of sirens came and left, they rummaged through the trash cans, digging through crumpled napkins that still had tomato paste and old, spoiled rotisserie chicken bones and plastic wraps for toys in kids’ meals and pasta, all infested with fleas.

There was a small litter of tourists crossing the street, headed in their direction, adults and children wearing tee shirts and sneakers and sunglasses, led by a tour guide wearing a generic employee uniform who rambled on about the things you could buy in thrift stores and the poorly lit restaurants nearby. Joran and Guy Red climbed up a moonlit apartment building, then continued their search after the tourists left. There were old magazines and cat litter and a small plastic toy, and at the bottom of the trash can was a big, lofty, safe in ash gray.

Joran and Guy Red, cast in the white moonlight glow, carried the safe through the ravaged backstreets of New York, carefully avoiding the balconies reaching out like arms, where an unsuspecting thief might get caught by an onlooker with a flashlight who just happens to be a police officer. Under the dim stare of a crimson lamp, the package unfolded, nauseously purging its contents onto the floor. Joran, the spy, gave a jaded sigh.

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La Vie De Fête Season 2 Episode 1: Getting Out Of Bed

Title Of The Story Comes From: “Can’t Hold Us” By Macklemore

Joran looked at himself into the mirror, seeing infinite versions himself in the reflections in his shades, feeling the soft, brushy fabric of his suit, comfortably sitting in his suit pants, hastily scrubbing away the smell of caviar from his new red tie, basking in the red sunlight that occured at the end of the day. His bed was readily made, the scarlet pillows to fit squarely within the bed’s orthogonals, and the blankets too. Soon he would bask in the flood of clear blue skies, and clouds filling the horizon like waves slowly brushing against the shore.

Rasheb, meanwhile, sat by his bedside, tucking himself in by the small blue lamp, under which his red gloves were placed by the alarm clock. His lustrous black dreads rested comfortably over the blanket, moving subtly as he drifted from page to page. By the door was a bookshelf filled with an immodest amount of books fitting tightly between each rack. His eyes slowly closed drifting through the pages, but he fought to keep his fatigue at bay.

Joran, meanwhile, had no books by his door. A flickering, animated display of lights colored his eyes,

characters in almost regal gowns and suits that glimmered in the stage light walking past the screen, not looking directly at the camera or him. He was covered behind the thick, sheep blanket, only his combed back hair and gleaming eyes peeking out.

The TV characters were fictional; they had no understanding of the world outside of them, merely thoughts in the minds of talented writers, played out by actors like puppets, only there to be paid, and only the most talented actors with brilliant accolades were hired to play these characters. It was all for the advertising of these shows; the makers wanted to rake in as much money as possible, and if this meant the show going stale, it was the price to pay for money.

These TV characters were in a fictional reality where the Sun rose and set at will, when the rain drizzled and the tornadoes hummed and heat kissed the pavement to set the scene of a grueling detective story or a thrilling superhero epic. Joran saw through this, and he only watched these TV shows on a slow Thursday night when there wasn’t anything quality anyway.

Rasheb, in the morning, walked into the kitchen, his toenails catching on the marble floor, sat on the kitchen counter and finished reading the book. For breakfast, he had an omelet with ketchup, and a small side of vanilla greek yogurt. His red motorcycle helmet sat beside him like a friend patiently waiting for his return, a reminder of a life he abandoned.

Joran, cast in a blue-white glow under a dim basement lamp, worked on a small red metal plate. The molten steel surrounded him in the form of a viscous white gas, engulfing him and his work. From the toxic cloud came orange and yellow explosions, quick needles of light poking through an impermeable storm. The faint, familiar sound of a motorcycle rolling down the road to his house approached, and Joran stopped his work for the day.

An explosion rattled the office landscapes, rifts forming in the makeshift trenches in the office room—fallen desks and chairs—bullets whizzed back and forth, as somewhere far away, pawns were traded back and forth, and the white queen advanced to the a square, checking the black king. Two sleek, shiny black loafers slipped off a pair of feet, settling under a desk. A man wearing a gray suit climbed away as bullets drilled through a knocked over sofa with a brown leather cushion, slipping behind a wall.

He pedaled around the wall in his polka dot socks, trading bullets. In the same chess match, in a rented-out school gym in Germany, white released its queen and knight, preparing to deliver a quick checkmate. The vehement shrieks of warm flames echoed through the crowded halls; men in white suits tripping past the man in the black suit, making their way down a steep staircase. A smoky crimson bike crashed through the blazes, bursting into the industrial battlefield engulfed in glorious flames, zipping next to the man in the polka dot socks.

It was the paramount spy and the paramount vigilante, standing in the midst of a paramount catastrophe, the shrill crowing of the growing inferno shaking the room. Men seated in black suits shuffled through the flames, arms out as if immune to the piercing heat of the conflagration. The crimson-clad man and the battle-worn agent held their ground, backs facing each other. In the same chess game, the black king and queen also faced heavy attacks from a pair of bishops, the closed game quickly opening up.

Joran: a professional, charming spy looking to do as much good as he can. Guy Red: a man donning scarlet in honor of his mother, seeking a better life and a new identity for himself. Sivas Myrton: a man looking to win the chess tournament happening at Erlain’s school and bring glory to his school’s name. Tyris Erlain: a man with similar ambitions, playing black, facing heavy opposition by the stacking bishops and a queen.

The energy in the chess board Erlain and Myrton were playing on seemed to emanate across the globe to the States, to that wrecked office by the coffee shop. Guy Red deployed his grappling hook, grabbed Joran by the arm and flew across the office, hurtling away like a queen dashing through an open file.

Joran leapt around the office, throwing his fists, his form darting like an imperceptible hawk, punches landing in precise timing. He leaps over a burning cubicle and slides under a swiveling chair, like a knight clearing up a claustrophobic middlegame before the queen joins it to deliver a slippery checkmate. The familiar guttural hum of a scarlet red motorcycle climbed over his back, a breeze of wind brushing through his dreads. A checkmate was decided in the school gym and in this office calamity: Erlain won in the chess match; the discerning agent and the effervescent crimefighter won in the office.

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La Vie De Fête Season 2 Episode 6: Independent

Title Of The Story Comes From: “Can’t Hold Us” By Macklemore

Several titanic, torrid shrieking monsters crept through the hallways of Alan-Roy’s house, little arms growing from these monsters’ sides, climbing up the walls. A red glaze from one of these monsters was cast onto a man wearing a motorcycle helmet converted into a scuba diving helmet, a luminescent blue glow coming from a man in a black suit as they swam through the slowly flooding basement. The floor of the mansion’s first story had eroded away, murky, bubbly greens engulfing the basement. Joran and Rasheb were trapped underground, and if they headed upstairs the normal route they’d be climbing the staircase to Hell.

Swirling around them like tempests were little air bubbles, small pockets of dissipating, fleeting hope that once popped, tasted like sodium crystals. Glistening red and blue elephant trinkets floated to the surface, chewed up by the flames, and sank back down. Joran and Rasheb swam into a locked cabinet, taking one more heavy breath of air before being swallowed by the tsunami. In the cabinet was a toolkit with a silver sledgehammer and hatchet with an ebony handle and a screwdriver with a silver handle.

Joran swung the sledgehammer far back, feeling the gentle sway of the water push against him, then swung into the wall, leaving a reasonable dent in the beige wall. Guy Red paddled his arms and legs like a penguin, kicking and pushing against the harsh current and pulled up his sleeve, revealing a series of weapons firing small pellets, another series of shrieks and a wall that inconveniently didn’t break. Joran looked at Rasheb, but not with a look of finality, but a look of determination, an indefatigable, unswaying sense of resilience.

Joran and Rasheb nodded at each other, acknowledging each other in a way not like mere acquaintances would acknowledge each other or even well acquainted friends but like brothers—the type of brothers that were there for each other through fire and flood, brothers not bond by genomes or physical traits—though that is still brotherly—but by the bond of humanity; so, reinforced by this newly discovered yet always present strength, they chewed away at the wall with everything—repairman’s tools, Guy Red’s integrated weapons, Joran’s spy gear, random pots and pans. A series of brilliant streaks of red and blue shot up the chimney of the house, Joran stumbled out, Rasheb staggering closely behind him. Police cars pulled into the mansion, men in blue uniforms crying for Joran to put his hands up. It was too late when Joran realized Rasheb wasn’t in the police car with him.

Present day, and officers approached the crimson Dodge, the driver stepping out of the red Challenger to greet them, his shoes soaking in the brewing, tumbling, muted gray storm, his figure swaddled in the overwhelming needles of gray and teary blue. The man, Rasheb Nevim, walked into the building, down the hallways, past shocked employees and rattled police officers, into an interrogation room, retrieved Joran and drove off, visible tears streaming down his face as he said something, only audible when in the vehicle right next to them.

He pulled the car into the parking lot of an old convenience store and immediately wrapped his arms around Joran, his motorcycle helmet pressing against Joran’s suited sleeve, looking up momentarily to Joran’s dull face, no hopeful smile or glowing colloquy, just a plainly listless stare, something as unattainable as dreams or perfect lives, but also in both of their faces a shared commonality of indulging in reunion, allowing a passing moment of peace to last two fruitful lifetimes, sweet like strawberries and blueberries. Joran’s apathetic expression softened when Rasheb removed his helmet, showing his bruises, moist with tears and sweat and toil, Rasheb Nevim and Joran reaching out of a void filled with despair when Guy Red and the agent couldn’t.

Sandy manila folders were littered atop high-standing cabinets, stuffed between books in bookshelves, hidden behind other paperwork, and stuffed into drawers, and opened up in front of two figures—one cast in red and one cast in blue—that searched the room vigorously. Rasheb and Joran were in the new office of Joran’s spy agency: LEVIATHAN, searching for any reason to hope, any dimly shining light, cast under the moon’s glow, rifling through cabinets and tossing out old paperwork.

There was a sharp air of focus in the room, a distinct feeling of regained purpose, a determination to find the truth to who was behind everything—Francesci or Alan-Roy, that emanated from the muted tones of gray, stuffy offices cast in aqua and crimson light, and two embattled faces. Joran’s pinky stopped at one of the folders, which contained paperwork with Francesci’s DNA after she was arrested for a previous crime.

LEVER99 wasn’t officially a government-recognized agency, per se. They had no authorization by the police to arrest Francesci, though she was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Her deep, indented fingerprints were smudged all over the pages, like signatures, almost.

Whilst Joran held the fingerprints under a microscope, Rasheb ran his fingers through a set of manila folders, each starting with the letter A. He stopped at one labeled, “Alan-Roy” and flipped through its pages: empty police criminal records, birth certificate, and driver’s license, all photocopied by police. After Francesci was brought in for her crimes, he was dragged along by police for questioning, and the police handed off these files to trusted associates who photocopied them, and the photocopied files made their way into Joran’s hands.

Rasheb held the photo of Alan-Roy’ fingerprints under a microscope, comparing it and Francesci’s fingerprints to that of the fingerprints found on multiple different gruesome crime scene photos, obscured by blur and mystique. The fingerprints were exact matches. The fingerprint matched DNA traces found at Francesci’s date with Joran, smeared all over the cough medicine on the windowsill that Joran thought Francesci was trying to spike his drink with, but it was Alan-Roy all along; the collar of the bomber had Alan-Roy’ DNA all over it when Alan-Roy was steaming his suit; the fingerprints matched those found on Amazon trucks abandoned at highways, rogue drivers under Alan-Roy’s payroll abandoning trucks full of elephant trinkets; the fingerprints matched everything, and soon the words engraved in their minds had credence: Alan-Roy was the mastermind behind a cruel operation with a distaste for elephant trinkets, but why?

Swirls of blue and red, muddled figures in the settling Sun, pink and orange clouds floating over small piles of houses that scraped the plains. These swirls of warm and chilly colors moved towards the Sun, the one emanating a crimson glow shattering his own muddled reflection, his red sneakers stepping closer to the red motorcycle. The man next to him gave off an eye-turning, confident blue glow as he got into a Camaro, driving off with the man in red to seek answers.

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La Vie De Fête Season 1 Episode 5: Put Our Hands Up

Title Of The Story Comes From: “Can’t Hold Us” By Macklemore

Tom Landarris was a shrewd man with many talents and a wonderful knowledge of glass elephants that impressed even the most thorough of trinket collectors, and a faint, timid, irresistible smile, and a taste for the arts. He perused his collection with a rifle against his shoulder, pointing down the halls, he swiveled around a corner, quickly glancing behind him to make sure nobody followed him, especially nobody from Francesci. He walked out of his small gray house, one of many in an expansive neighborhood, into the front lawn, then turned around. This was the house Francesci gave him, and now he was leaving it and his elephant trinkets behind for a new life working as a lighting consultant for a movie studio.

His entire body pivoted back around to look at the dim flames erupting from the infinitesimal soot house, a charred mess with one figure standing on the driveway, walking down towards him.

It was Luciana Francesci, standing in front of a glistening, burning Camry, with a confession and an apology. “Jesus,” said Tom Landarris. “Jesus, why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

Red, orange, and yellow blazes, blistering piles of heat fuming, propagating into the streets, overwhelming beams of warm luminescence, fiery, sizzling embers being vomited out from the core of the explosion, a whirling, torrid beast caused from a simple bomb hauled in a briefcase into a party, and out of the flames, a Camaro and a crimson motorcycle chased a ragged monster truck down the road. Bullets flew down the road, bouncing off windshields and smashing through bumpers, flying down into drains, splashing as they hit the water. A machine gun turret was mounted on the back of the monster truck shrieking, blazing fury being puked from the chambers.

Seven black Nissan Altimas chased the motorcycle and Camaro across the highway, a man firing a pistol on the sunroof. The chase swerved off the road, the cars filing into an empty alleyway of dumpster bins and newspapers with mustard stains and seafood take-out that had been out for too long. The Nissan Altimas scraped between muted gray leased out buildings, rented industrial warehouses that puffed out sooty gray smoke and had underpaid employees with tears of sweat rolling down their cheeks—the employees scattered when the Altimas crashed through the warehouses. Several more beacons of warmth consumed an empty warehouse, a shimmering, blazing landmark. Joran leapt at the men in the roaring monster truck, his swiftly accelerating Camaro kissing the flames before immediately halting.

The chase ended when the Altimas piled up against a barbed wire fence, a man standing behind it watching Rasheb and Joran make an escape. Before Joran dissipated into nothingness, becoming one with the never ending, gloomy smoke, Joran left a check of seventy thousand dollars addressed to the warehouse company and the man behind the fence. Then, Joran leapt onto the roof and followed Guy Red, scampering onto yellow street lamps, leaping from each one to the next as a monkey swings from vine to vine, his suit flying like a cape in the breeze, his suit pants quavering like an American flag on a flagpole.

Guy Red and Joran pounced through the air, a black and crimson panther capering through towers that scraped the tumbling gray tempests, rolling under the Sun’s smoldering stare and covering its bright gaze. Their movements were fluent like a slick, dashing tongue, until the swift transparency of time became muddled, and suddenly they were standing on either wall perpendicular to a spruce doorstep. When Luciana’s husband Alan-Roy opened up, Rasheb pushed him against the wall, and Joran stormed in, searching under sofa cushions, turning vases of flowers upside down, feeling the walls until he found a cell phone tucked behind a dial-up phone.

He stomped through the living room into a beige hallway, rifling through kitchen cabinets, digging through the refrigerator, throwing an old pickle jar against the sand wall and shattering it, finding another phone behind a smoothie maker, ans a phone stashed away in a pillow, and a phone in a junk drawer, and a few more in the walls. All of the phones were arranged in a single file before the husband, as Joran said, “We know you’re the one involved in all of this.”

“In all of what?” the husband cried, his eyes flinching, his lips pursed. “You aren’t telling me anything…” Suddenly, a smile came upon his wrinkly face, one not filled with kindness or incognizance or compassion, but with insidiousness that foreshadowed terror. “You aren’t powerful enough to stop me. I’ll slip away, and my wife takes the fall.”

“You manipulated her!” Guy Red pounced at Alan-Roy, his chair scraping against the floor until he was against the wall, his psychopathic demeanor trying as hard as it could to conceal itself, but a merciless smile still prevailed. “You’re manipulating Francesci, making her think she has no way out!”

“The date with Joran, the Amazon packages, the party, everything I schemed on. Discovering the truth was inevitable, but how will you make anybody believe the unbelievable?” The smell of benzene reeked everywhere, lingering in a small puddle at Guy Red’s scarlet sneakers, emanating from stains in Joran’s white shirt under his suit, coming from ovens and microwaves and the garage and everywhere but also nowhere at all, then Joran woke up in the police department, being spied on by the detectives behind a one way mirror, who later left the building whilst he sat there motionless, watching through the window a crimson Dodge Challenger pull into the parking lot, officers wearing blue uniforms, shiny golden badges and white shirts underneath darting out of the building, ready to greet it with a hail of gunfire, its engines humming to their footsteps, a cluttered mess of mops and buckets and boxes and translucent spray bottles spilling from the janitorial closet into the hallway, with silver needles of fury hailing from the skies onto the Challenger, a crimson car door swinging open and a pair of gray loafers stepping onto the sidewalk. Rasheb Nevim returned not in blazing scarlet glory, but shimmering in a dim gray light, his face muddled by the tinted car windows.

[magnumversum]

La Vie De Fête Season 2 Episode 3: Broadway

Title Of The Story Comes From: “Can’t Hold Us” By Macklemore

The package saw the mouth of a gray mailbox, the grubby hands of a mailman, the insides of a truck, which smelled like crisp toast after crashing into the side of a road and being stolen away by men wearing gray suits, and was finally being lugged away by the hands of the people stopping the ambush, an indefatigable man in a black suit with a rose red tie and blushing cheeks, and a man wearing red armor, like a knight in scarlet battle gear. Guy Red and Joran escorted the package away from the hail of gunfire; it was a treasure trove of shiny elephants wrapped in carefully woven fabrics, all addressed to one Mr. Tom Landarris. The other packages were designated to the same man, all going to the same address.

Behind the truck, the thieves were hunched over, incognizant that their scheme was crumbling. Guy Red tackled one of the crooks, a man with a stumbling voice as crisp as peeled onions. He was the leader of the group, he confessed, and his men were a part of a small gang hired by random criminals to hijack Amazon vans and steal the contents of the packages.

Joran snapped back, “Why did you rob the truck carrying things belonging to Mr. Landarris? What do you have against him?”

The thief formulated a series of staggered words, but even Joran couldn’t make sense of the burglar’s quips. There was a storm rolling over the town, dark gray clouds clashing over the skies, harsh waves over the brown shores next to the road, sand slushing against the road. The thief sighed, then confessed everything. “Our boss goes by Ms. Francesci. Word on the street is that she has something against Landarris, something about a coalition gone wrong. I don’t know anything else—I swear!”

The smell of burnt toast quickly spread throughout Guy Red’s house; warm butterflies flourished, fluttering around tables and chairs and little tea kettles. Outside of the window, the red orange and yellow embers watched two vehicles—an over embellished camaro and a red motorcycle—speed away, dashing off in two long lines of smoke. Contained in one withering picture frame was an image of Rasheb Nevim and Ms. Francesci, who herself watched from her apartment in the distance using a pair of binoculars.

She wore a gown with blue and red swirls, intermingled with orange—warm hues like the brewing flames, brewing like the storm that quickly extinguished the warmth. She had an old fashioned radio by her bedside table. She had a soft smile watching the smoke pull the small house to the ground—and an eye that also secretly watched Joran and Guy Red charge into the gleaming Sun.

“There’s something about the sunrise that brings everyone who catches a glimpse of it joy,” she said. “Perhaps it's the way it catches your eyes when you wake up, or perhaps it’s something else—the glory you can snatch away from the idea of God itself, the mayhem you can cause—unlimited possibilities, and you only have a thrilling 24 hours before the Sun inches up the horizon once more.”

Joran adjusted his debonair aquamarine suit and glossy blue tie in the mirror, touching up the glittery finish with a squeeze bottle. Rasheb Nevim stood next to him, wearing a glistening scarlet suit and a crimson tie. The superlative, scrupulous and sociable spy; and the reliable, vigorous, radiant and versatile red vigilante were classy, captivating and clever—not contemptible, contentious or choleric.

They were immediately met by the glare of neon lights that chased each other around like playful neon serpents. There were crowds of partygoers ravenously, incorrectly singing along; people waited behind a locked door, peering in as if they were peering into Heaven itself; a man wearing black headphones moved through the crowd to turn up the speakers. This wasn’t a pedestrian birthday party after supper, with a sugary birthday cake and dim candles purchased at a shifty dollar store; this was a rave going from sunset to sunset, where the fettered soul was unchained to be free.

A man wearing a pink tie, with glow sticks on his arms and a pink glow stick in his mouth, guided Rasheb and Joran to a fountain of sweetness, chocolate billowing from the peak in sugary ribbons, coating marshmallows, strawberries and other sweets in irresistible decadence.

There was riveting exhilaration in his voice, free of condemnation or judgment. “Welcome to the smorgasboard, gentlemen!”

Joran watched him shuffle away with a wily grin, then turned to greet a few partygoers, approaching him with coquettish smiles and playing with his hair until it was disheveled and covered his dark, handsome face. He held out his hand, extending a handshake to each of the guests, until a loud noise came over the speaker. There was a chess tournament happening at the party—at the dining area—where all of the tables and chairs had been cleared out—and everyone was invited to participate.

Horses galloped across the board, coronets were traded between players, a bishop running to check the king, a medieval watchtower racing across checkered landscapes to save a king. The unfaltering man in red and the unshakeable spy moved on the same board against their opponents in a game of invisible hand movements, racing against the clock to checkmate the other team’s king. Rasheb Nevim checked his watch during the game, a Rolex with a scarlet band that shuddered while he moved the wooden chessmen, before delivering the checkmating move with Qe4#, ending the game.

Guy Red’s motorcycle zipped down the road, kicking up dust and gravel. He was traveling down a road he went down many times before, one that led to the now burnt down house he refused to call home. His eyes were moist, little droplets of water burning down his cheeks, evaporating under the gaze of the Sun. There was something at his house that pulled at him like a magnet, an image burned into his mind that he badly wanted in his hands, and something he needed to show Joran.

[magnumversum]

“Il est L’Homme Rouge,” said the man, roughly meaning, “He is the Red Man.” He expanded further on this train of thought. “He rides a red motorcycle, wears a red cape and a red helmet, wears red boots and a red jacket. You can’t see his face, but you don’t have to see his eyes to see his regard de détermination.”

Another man further supported what he was saying, “Oui, he makes for a dangerous foe, and his friend the spy.” The two men were drunkards sitting at a bar, retelling something that had happened days earlier. “Bravo à L’Homme Rouge.”

“Bravo à L’Homme Rouge,” repeated the other man.

L’Homme Rouge

Starring Guy Red

Guest Starring Joran

His crimson motorcycle was just blur, extra noise in the busy streets, its gutters coughing up a trail of smoke, blinding people standing by the road. Leaping from street light to street light was a man dressed in a black suit, quickly trailing the rider—a crimson-clad vigilante. The L’Homme Rouge… the red man… this was Rasheb Nevim—this was Guy Red.

A truck swerved out of its path, pulling onto the roadside. The scarlet bike flew off a construction ramp, a crimson shooting star flying through the night sky, outshining every other star and sun. The white headlights illuminated the road ahead, as well as the tail lights in the car in front of them—a white lamborghini.

The swift, dashes of silvery red and a fluttery suit-cape caught up to the lamborghini, and the spy appeared on the sunroof, sleek black suit, flowy tie and all. Guy Red took off his helmet and breathed in the fresh air. He had luscious black braids that puffed out from his head, that ran down his neck and flew in the wind. He climbed up to the sunroof next to Joran.

Bullet holes suddenly drilled through the roof, the Herculean crimson vigilante and his indefatigable friend dancing like ballerinas. Guy Red jumped out of the path of one of the bullets, jet thrusters on his feet igniting at the same time, an exuberant, torrid display of steadfastness par excellence following him into the sky. The glass sunroof practically melted, the lamborghini caught on fire, the men in the lamborghini running away before it blew up, ducking behind their crashed getaway vehicle.

Guy Red rolled up his sleeves, revealing metal plates replacing his flesh, wiring weaving in and out, stitching together flashing red lights and blue screens with pixelated sad faces and charismatic robot voices imbued into those screens. Like a wizard preparing to cast an epic magic spell, flickers of light came from his fingers… and then more than just flickers; entire orange, red and yellow swirls of light left his fingers, an enthusiastic light show melting the windows to smithereens. Wailing sirens closed in.

Blue and red lights flashed in front of a shattered red visor, then slowly dissipated. One flickering, dim yellow light shined onto a door, where a red jacket chewed through by caterpillars was mounted on a coat hanger. On the floor next to the coat hanger was the doorknob, also subjected to insects. This crime scene was discovered seven hours later, though.

Right now, the assiduous, battlemented man—scarlet arrayed; and the intransigent, recalcitrant spy were in an ineluctable impasse. Guy Red leapt into the air and unleashed a tidal wave of scorching heat everywhere…

Joran’s brimming self stood over Guy Red with a sly, halfway smile across his face, offering him his smooth, delicate, dark hand. “You’re a tough opponent—you certainly gave them a run for their money.”

“Thank you—” Guy Red was about to say, before a tall, wrinkly woman with long black hair, wearing an orange tee shirt under a black vest crept up to Joran and stole his attention. It was peculiar, because Joran didn’t know her, and she didn’t know him.

The only reason why she, Lucia Frances, approached him was to ask for his phone number because Joran was “so awesome and talented, stopping those bad guys back there…”

“Here you go, ma’am,” Joran said, typing his number into her phone. “And what’s your name?”

Then the woman turned to Guy Red and asked for the same thing, which Guy Red hesitantly obliged to. This was peculiar, but she parted ways, taking Joran with her, and it was just Guy Red standing on the streets, watching them behind his visor, with a passive, detached expression and dwelling in motionless action.

A sign calling for one Luciana Francesci, who went under the alias of Lucia Frances, was posted on city streets. The blinds for the windows of her apartment were mangled. Guy Red’s jacket was still there on her coat hanger. Detectives for the Cartertown Investigation Department walked in, held their badge to the maid—he wore a black suit and a white tee shirt underneath, and his sunglasses were folded away and his deep blue eyes followed them across the room—and they entered the tiny apartment.

But that was eight hours later. Now, Guy Red stood at the side of the road, holding a white umbrella over his head to keep the rain out. A series of gray cars trickled past him, blurring with the storm ahead to create an intransparent smog. Parked across the street was his motorcycle… he found himself zipping across the wet road, rain pattering down his neck and onto his arms and legs.

His thick red gloves gripped the handle, rain splashing off his fingers. Behind him was a sea of artichoke green cars, an assembly of cars painted in a color muted not too unlike the tone of the grays and boring blues of the buildings around him. He heard his own retching behind the visor, and the temptation to pull over, take off his helmet and puke into it overcame his rational mind.

His motorcycle was wrecked, the wheels still scratching against the dirt, crashed into a foot-deep ditch, and he was crawling away, and there was red on his motorcycle jacket that wasn't there before. His motorcycle stayed in the ditch where it saw the Sun rise and sleep thrice until a man wearing a taffy fedora, a watermelon suit and tie, and fuchsia suit pants and shoes walked across it six hours later. He examined the motorcycle, making sure that it belonged to who he thought it was, then rode off on it, cradling the helmet he found next to it with reverence—

—But that was six hours later. Right now, Rasheb Nevim just crawled out of the ditch and walked the rest of the way home while sick, drunk and emotional. He made his way into the kitchen and gathered two slices of burnt white bread from the pantry and a slice of frozen cheese from the refrigerator, which cast a whitish, bluish glow onto his face.

He sat down on his deep blue couch, quasi-grilled quasi-cheese sandwich in hand, watching the TV while nibbling. A heavy tear rested in his lap, like a big husky sitting in its owner’s lap, under its owner’s comforting hand, watching bright, artificial colors flash in front of its eyes but not understanding what’s going on.

A second tear rolled down his face, absorbed on the bottom lip. He grabbed a sofa pillow next to him and curled up, nestling his head into it. His hair fell around him. The blue pillow absorbed the second tear, and a small, stifled whimper could be heard in his voice.

He looked back at the TV screen. His helmet was still at the crash sight—the thing that he felt made him him and he lost it in a blurry series of memories. A third tear dripped down his face.

His body melted into the couch, humpback whales watching him sink, a fourth tear streaming from his eye and parting with him as he neared the abyss.

Before he could sink into the abyss permanently, however, a force reached into the darkness and took him by the hand. Perhaps it was nature, or the mercy of a god, or his own willpower, something else entirely, but something reached in, took Rasheb Nevim by the hand and awoke him from his malaise. He found himself standing next to the coffee maker, waiting for his dark coffee to finish brewing.

He pounded on the door, his scarlet gloves leaving dents in the wood, and shouted, “Luciana Francesci, step out of your apartment. I have a warrant with your arrest. Harlem PD, open up!” No answer, but he heard a faint jingle on the other side, followed by a quick conversation by a man and his wife about leaving groceries behind at the store, obnoxious applause and cheer from at least a hundred people. Then the opera house in the apartment followed the man and wife into a new composition, the music they played implemented of a series of high notes and a comical ding at the end. A gimmicky soap playing on the TV. “If you don’t answer, I swear to God I’m breaking in!”

Posters calling for Luciana’s arrest were stapled onto street lamps around town, handed out to men in orange suits at the airports flagging down taxis—newspaper headlines read of a plane that flew over Minneapolis farmland puking wanted signs out of the left window.

Luciana held a suited arm by the windowsill, a puff of white smoke masking her date. Mayonnaise-drenched ramen noodles engulfed her chopsticks, and her candy red lipstick kissed the spoon.

Joran kept his shades folded away, tucked into the front pocket of his black buttoned up suit, a glimmer of crimson light from the TV hitting them and ending its journey on the doormat. His eyes were focused on Luciana the entire time, a deep, charming, sensitive glimmering blue behind his frown. Scarlet light climbed up his windowsill, resting on Joran’s front pocket. Joran’s polite smile slipped away, revealing a wide grin.

A helmeted figure appeared in the shadows and a man burst through the room, landing on the carpet. His helmet tumbled away, a web of splinters running across the visor.

He zipped down the road, kicking up gravel pellets, the engines coughing smoke trails into the ashy horizon; past old, happy barns; and windmills whistling a cheery tune; and buildings that failed to climb past the inevitable, smoldering flames; and buildings starting the climb in their place; and snow-capped, indomitable mountaintops where at night, wolves climbed to the peak and let out a shrewd, ragged howl; and valleys; and a pretty cottage with people outside, sitting by the campfire and crying out cheery campfire songs; he looked out to everything in life and reflected, still trapped in his own conscious.

At the end of the road was a small, shriveled up house with cobwebs scraping the door handle, vines engulfing it in mossy green flames, cobwebs strung across gray support pillars like Christmas ornaments, and a candlelight Thanksgiving dinner sitting at the end of the hallway for one—him. The rotisserie chicken was still fresh, but the casserole had become infested by a small ant colony.

This was his house, and he could barely call it a home. He had a tea kettle bubbling in the kitchen, a ubiquitous hiss as it simmered, as if a snake was slithering faintly into the laundry room to shed its skin on his clothes. He brought the tea to his chin and removed the visor to take a sip, but couldn’t even suborn himself when he caught a whiff of bitterness. He picked up his fork and attempted to eat some of the apple pie he had left from two weeks ago. He walked into the living room, picked up the dial-up phone and put in a number. Then after he had held the phone to his ear and spoke for a while, he fell asleep on the orange couch…

…until he heard a knock on the front door. Then he got off the sofa and let Joran in. They talked for a while on the couch, until Rasheb Nevim left Guy Red to hug Joran.

Guy Red was a personality with deep connections to his past, but that wasn’t all Rasheb Nevim was. He was a human being, something more than a moniker or a keychain to decorate a backpack or an emblem. He was a human being that actually existed, someone worthy of being seen. Guy Red was the helmet, but Rasheb Nevim was the man behind the cracked visor.

Rasheb Nevim climbed onto his motorcycle and removed his gloves; they reeked of benzene. Rasheb Nevim turned around to take one last look at the house, before throwing a sparkling matchstick at the porch. The gray house drenched in gasoline exploded with strong, expressive, warm colors as a scarlet motorcycle and a black Camaro (with a black suit with a white tee shirt, red tie and folded away sunglasses painted onto the hood like a Hot Wheels car) gleefully sprinted into the sunrise together.

[magnumversum]

KAXAN SEASON 1 EPISODE 1: PILOT

WRITTEN WITH THE HELP OF AI DUNGEON

Djorrhan Djorrhar and Lady Rena must fight off henchmen sent to them by Man's Grudge: a terrible poaching clan that seeks to defeat all wolves all over the world because the hunters of Man's Grudge believe that only humans deserve to speak their tongues.

It is a deadly game that the two have been playing since they formed their pact. They must choose their allies wisely, for without each other's help, they will fall. Djorrhan and Lady Rena have their disagreements, but tonight they have one common goal: raid a hunting nest and drive the hunters out of the Hisoquerkee Valleys.

Kaxan Zager introduces himself, saying, "My name is Agent Kaxan Zager. I am a fellow agent tasked with the same mission Agent Djorrhan Djorrhar is. It is an honor to work with you both."

"Likewise," Lady Rena says.

"I know you have many questions to ask, and I will answer them to the best of my knowledge." "Djorrhan Djorrhar, are we getting close?" says Kaxan, as the van they are riding in rolls down the road.

"Getting very close," says Djorrhan.

"Good. I must say, I am impressed by your work as a spy. Not many agents can survive the Krahshan Mountains." Joran says, "Thank you. My work in the Krahshan Mountains was treacherous." The van slows to a halt. Poachers from Man's Grudge march up to the truck. One of the hunters, a scar running down his face, approaches the van, pointing a shotgun to the hull of the big, gray and dusty exterior of the van. He acts clueless, asking why they intrude on the territory of Man's Grudge.

"We're getting out. Remain where you are," Kaxan says in his deep voice, opening the door of the van. Joran gets out of the van, followed by Rena and followed by Kaxan. Joran reaches into his suit and pulls out an assortment of spy gadgets. He activates a tiny, circular machine, which sticks out of the van's side, and the machine fires a small, dart-like projectile into the forehead of the scar-faced Man's Grudge poacher. Lady Rena growls at the hunters. Being a wolf, she is always ready to pounce. She flexes her sharp, shiny teeth, even shiny when the night is dim and the stars and the moon are not out, even on a night like tonight. The hunters charge at the three. Rena, Kaxan and Joran stand, each facing away from each other, slashing, shooting at and warding off the hunters, especially the one with a scarred face. The poachers' camp-out overflows with gunfire and men with scruffy beards running out to fight the three, poachers pouring out, shooting at them. One of the men aims a shotgun at Kaxan's head.

"Drop your weapons! Now!" the man shouts, as the rest of the poachers aim their weapons at them.

"We have a job to do."

Kaxan Zager refuses to drop his weapon: a sniper rifle that, when modified, can also become a rapid-fire machine gun that spits out bullets faster than the sound of them being spat can travel through the air.

"You want us to drop our weapons? You need to drop yours." The poacher explains that they kill wolves for a living, and that stopping would make them all feel demotivated. They bemoan the idea of leaving their long time hobby behind.

"If you really want to kill us, try it!" Joran says, brandishing his gun. "We can take on all of you!" Lady Rena refuses to believe it the hunting is just a hobby—the hunters want to drive all wolves to extinction because they have the same level of sentience as humans. Joran and Lady Rena fight the scar-faced hunter, Keshin De Brosse. He fires his shotgun, which only manages to hit Kaxan, but Joran is wounded in the shoulder. "This is for everything you wolves stole from us humans!" Keshin De Brosse shouts, firing his rifle. The bullet hits Kaxan in the back of the head.

"Kax!" Joran shouts.

"No!" Lady Rena shouts. She runs towards the shooting poachers. Joran follows Lady Rena. The fighting continues.

Joran reaches into his tuxedo and pulls out a pair of kali sticks. He throws the kali sticks through the air; they ricochet into his hand like eagles soaring from and to their keepers. "Wolves are not to be hunted." Lady Rena and Joran continue to fight the poachers in an intense clash of teeth, guns, and blades.

The poachers became more overwhelming in their numbers. "We're like a pack of wolves, and it's only a matter of time before the entire pack is hunted down and killed," Joran says.

"Then the pack will fight to the last wolf," Lady Rena says.

"And we will never stop fighting, until we are all dead," Joran says. Joran pulls out another spy gadget from the inside of his tuxedo. This one fires a needle-like projectile that fires out of the gadget and sticks into an enemy's neck.

Kaxan Zager reaches into his tuxedo and pulls out a gizmo: a tiny little tech piece disguised as a wristwatch. It fires lasers from the hour and minute hands, out the sides of the watch, zapping the poachers.

"It's no use, Lady Rena," Joran says. "We'll never make it out alive."

"We will!" Lady Rena says. "We will make it out alive if we put up a good fight."

"With what?" Joran asks. Lady Rena plucks something from the top of a towering oak tree and scampers back down. It is an ax, one left by the poachers. She throws the ax back, gripping it with her teeth, then throws it with the full force of a wolf's mandibles.

The ax sticks into a poacher's forehead, and the man falls to the ground. A gurgling noise rises up from his throat, and then he stops moving.

"Let's go," Lady Rena says. "They're numbered." Joran, Kaxan, and Rena climbed up and swung through trees, chasing the poachers deep into the forest. Joran followed Lady Rena, and Kaxan followed Joran. Eventually, they came across a row of trees that had been toppled over, probably by a tornado passing through the woods. "They'll never return to these valleys now," said Kaxan. "Where is the payment we were promised?" Rena distributes the payment—small chips of gold with the emblem of Dmarani etched onto both faces—Dmarani currency, as Joran and Kaxan were promised. "Our continual fight against Man's Grudge will end up being the most enduring fight in the entire history of our lives."

"We'll all do our best to keep the fight going until we win." Joran says. "We always do."

"You always do," Lady Rena says.

The poachers are gone. The Hisoquerkee Valleys—at least these regions of it—are empty. The three friends take a deep breath of the fresh woodland air.

[magnumversum]

Magnum Opus of Joran

written by Joseph M.

Author’s Note

The story features fictional depictions of events surrounding the horrendous terrorist attack that happened on September 11, 2001, when planes struck the Twin Towers and killed thousands of people; these people had lives, families, friends, and their deaths plague the survived. This story does not intend to promote the actions of the terrorists that struck the Twin Towers; it serves as a way to shame their horrible deeds. May the victims of the 9/11 attack rest in peace and remain in our thoughts, and let us hope that one day we will truly have world peace.

The hallway seemed to shrink as the man clad in red, the man donning a tuxedo, the man wearing prison garments and the wolf shrouded in the cowl of darkness ran. Men locked behind bars grabbed their elbows. The hallway ended abruptly, and through the small window the four could see the getaway car parked outside of the prison. Prison guards closed in that wore badges shinier than the Sun. The four were sent into a panic: the wolf masked in the dark had thoughts racing through her head; the man wearing red pulled out his blades, ready to fight; the man wearing a tuxedo pulled out his gun; the man in the prison uniform put up his fists. If the flashing lights set off after they broke out the man dressed in prison attire and the loud noises of the guards and prisoners were any indication, the four were in for a rough night.

The rain and howling thunder passing the roofs over their heads silenced the alarms; the flashy red lights abruptly stopped. Seven shrieks noisier than the prisoners running their mouths and the blaring sirens that ran through the entire facility, silenced the hallway. J block was dead silent; one could hear a pin drop in solitary from the courtyard. The getaway car was that close to the four—the convicted and the three there to break him out, parked quietly in the staff parking. The keycards needed to leave and enter the prison were being handed out by the warden as the prison staff checked in and out of the facility, and the warden was on the second floor, so the four needed to get to the second floor without being spotted by the guard (a guard stood by the sole staircase that led to the second floor during emergencies) and retrieve the keys. The eagle-eyed guard—who moved like one too—as always is the case of prison escapes, spotted them from what seemed like the opposite end of the earth. The four moved faster than the guard: the wolf jumped over his head; the man donning a glimmering red motorcycle helmet pushed him away; the man wearing the wrinkly tuxedo also pushed him away, and the escapee punched him in the face.

Navigating the second floor wasn’t an easier feat than the first floor; the complex hallways and multiple pathways could be compared to a never ending maze, twisting and turning into the horizon. The hallways were dirtier, the floors were grimy, the air had traces of expired prison pizza—in this prison, pizzas were especially bad—and corn. If the stench wasn’t enough to slow the four down, the four were slowed down by the guard at the end of the hallway (holding a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other—he will prove to be big trouble.) The man donning scarlet, the man wearing a tuxedo, and the wolf masked in darkness wrestled with the guard at the warden’s office—the escapee slipped away from the group before they climbed up the staircase to the second floor, taking his prison jumpsuit, spork and narcissism with him—and when the lights came back on, the warden and his personal guard were on the floor. The three felt like there was something missing—perhaps, they failed to accomplish something they had set out to do, and then they realized it: they forgot about “Zerranelli.”

If there was something to be admired about the escapee’s hideout—more specifically, his name was Brian Howard, he was a former coroner and he was arrested for possession of illicit substances—it was the lair’s ability to not give off the same putrid stench of seven thousand inmates’ dirty laundry and bed sheets that needed to be changed. The hideout wasn’t clean, sure. In fact, it was rather grimy, and not something to be admired unless the admirer hadn’t seen cleanliness his whole life. He—and formerly Lima, but they ended their partnership—only needed it to run their operations.

If Joran liked something about it, it was the noise. He loved (and he didn’t like noise most of the time, so it was astonishing that he liked the bubbling glasses and the quiet hiss the furnaces gave off.) Clearly, however, something was on his mind; something bothered him, refusing to leave him alone. “I don’t understand what went wrong in the jail heist. Everything was going perfectly, and we almost had you and Zerranelli.”

“What’s the importance of Zerranelli anyway?” “What’s important about Zerranelli? He could bring down Global Cultivation Worldwide, and with it, an entire hoard of criminal empires, street level gangs, stuff like that.” “What about my other contacts? Dale, Whithart, Cane, my man in Chicago and the brothers in Kentucky?” “They can’t do anything. Well, most of them can’t anyway.

“Maybe Whithart could help, but he owes Dale money, and Dale owes Cane money, Cane owes the brothers in Kentucky, and they work with your Chicago contact, so no, nobody can help us now. You’re right, Brian. Maybe we should just give up.” Joran giving up was rare… more rare than the man dressed in scarlet armor—Guy Red—wearing green, more rare than the wolf (who the others, like the jobless coroner, only caught glimpses of, for she was shrouded in darkness) standing on two paws, and more rare than Brian Howard leaving a life of burglary and fraud behind to pursue a quieter life. If Joran called it quits now, Zerranelli would never be found, and the perils of the scarlet vigilante, the man donning the black tuxedo and silver tie, and the wolf, whom the criminal was still unaware of would go to waste. The inquisitive covert agent, the man of crimson fame, the wolf and the man wearing prison garments each held a candle into the unknown and brought to light truth to the mysteries that plagued them: for Joran and Guy Red, it was the true intentions behind the faces of six; for Rena, it was answers for the six cities that fell when the Sun sank; for Brian Howard, it was judgment for the enemies of his circle of criminal allies.

Snobbish rich men looking to discuss issues surrounding them, partygoers looking for the fastest way to get drunk, and the lowest of the low: criminals hiding in plain sight; the Blue Gala event was for every walk of life; however, it was also the place of disaster. It was a place where different walks of life could gather, set aside their common differences and try to fix the world, it was also a place, as established, where different walks of life could clash. Henry Jones looked back to the first World War, where soldiers from the country of Traj flew in jets and tanks rolled on the soil, and soldiers on foot raided the insides, and lives were lost in the flame on both sides. But now it was different; now, however, Henry Jones was seated safely in his own office with Zerranelli—his personal guard, who was yet to be introduced to the world—at his side. Henry Jones, of course, knew that the true reason for the Blue Gala event that was hosted every 27 years—this number of years had a special meaning, for in the novel It by Stephen King, Pennywise returned every 27 years—was to gather the big criminal bosses; and this year everyone was there, and he was ready.

He was always ready when the event came around every 27 years—especially this year, 2015, whereas the rest of the events in this story happen in 2039; every crime boss was expected to come to the Blue Gala Tower (the skyscraper a block to the right of the Empire State Building) and gather in the garden below it, and every crime boss was expected to show the guards their badge before entering their building—just like Henry did before he entered—and every crime boss, like Henry, had their secrets. Henry Jones’ secrets were contained in a little folder on his desk, which Zerranelli kept safe, and that little folder had the words “PROJECT DECYPHER” inscribed in Times New Roman—not an unusual choice of font. Now though, Zerranelli had to leave; perhaps to attend to the needs of the guests, or perhaps to attend to his family at home, but Zerranelli left without explanation (which caught Henry Jones off guard, for Zerranelli always explained where he was to go before he left, but in this case things were quite different.)

Zerranelli, before he left through the petite office’s backdoor—which he never did, but Henry Jones never asked why he did this time—said to Henry Jones, “The spy and Keshin’s son were spotted outside, and their affiliates were too.” Now things were starting to make sense in Henry Jones’ head: Zerranelli didn’t want to leave through the front door—that would draw too many questions from guests' mouths—especially those of the unwanted visitors such as Joran, so he left through the back door. Once he did, however, he felt an instant sense of relief rush through him, sinking onto the floor and propping his elbows on his knees. As he whistled a merry tune, looking out at the tinted glass murals above him—such a beautiful skylight, though it was all the way at the top of the skyscraper, and he was all the way at the bottom—he heard a loud altercation of words start in the office. So, as quickly as he left, he entered again. “The back door’s handle was grimy and had been touched by who knows how many people,” he thought. “This is disgusting.”

Fittingly, a familiar and raspy voice from a TV screen—the voice of his friend, the news reporter that he had known since childhood—came on as he reentered: “This leaves officials like the FBI... questioning what his possible return could mean for the whole world.”

Henry Jones, sitting lazily in his leather chair, arms propped on his chest and legs propped on the table—and over the serif-marked letters on the file—was engaging in a quick exchange of words with Joran—and the one he recognized as Keshin’s son, though he did not know his name—until Joran put a pistol to his face, specifically into his mouth, and Joran said: “Keshin’s dead… you’ll be taking over Man’s Grudge… you are his rightful heir after all. I trust you’ll do your father’s hunting clan justice.”

“Keshin isn’t dead, and soon Henry won’t be,” thought Zerranelli as like a road tunnel, steam floated off in both directions, out Henry Jones’ mouth where the bullet entered, out the back of his neck where the bullet left and got stuck on the other side of his swiveling leather chair. “My boss won’t die—no, my boss can’t die—not until he overthrows The Silencer… not until then.”

If the smell of stale scotch and burnt toast wasn’t enough to make anyone vomit upon entering the bar, the dead bodies surely was; some weeks ago there was an incident involving a man with an orange cape and—surprisingly, Brian Howard: the coroner Rasheb met but Rena never saw—then there was an incident involving Rasheb, Joran, and two others; one wore blue attire, but it was similar to Rasheb’s, and one wore purple… it was strange, but this bar—The Healthy Joint—had seen worse. It couldn’t’ve been that bad, though, because Rena was enjoying the aura it gave off, and Rasheb was enjoying the company, like Sleepy Johnson and Weirdo Mars—who earned his name from his charges of stalking and taking Sleepy Johnson hostage over not being cast in a Spiderman film. The bar had an aura—Rena and Rasheb were right about that—perhaps because the patrons that pushed the bar’s swinging doors both ways were all from different walks of life; moreover, while this made the bar diverse, it also led to brawling over small disagreements; like today, when the wolf and the scarlet man walked into a man hitting another man in the nose with enough force and enough punches to leave a dent in a brick wall, but the drunken patron, Corey Slammer, was punching Joseph Muyuela, not a brick wall.

Rasheb, being the conscientious man, stepped in, grabbing the punching drinker’s elbow with one arm and blocking the victim’s face with his other arm. “I’m having a really bad day—like, legitimately a really bad day—but you wouldn’t understand that, because you’re too drunk to take a moment and think about how your actions affect others. If you want to fight, take it to the streets.”

The patron punched Rasheb up his chin; he didn’t feel the hit immediately, but the pain introduced itself to his body slowly. “Get away from me.”

“I’m not going to leave you two alone, because you’re not alone. Right now, if you keep fighting, dozens of innocent patrons will be collateral; so, allow me to reiterate this while you’re drunk enough to be weak, but not drunk enough to be considered overdosed: don’t be an idiot.” “I am not an idiot.” “Leave that innocent patron alone.” “He’s not innocent… he knows the secret.” “What secret?”

The drunken patron leaned in close—so close that if he got much closer he might’ve planted a kiss on Rasheb’s cheek—and whispered into his ears, and the wolf’s ears too—because she needed to hear what he had to say for some unknown reason—what he said didn’t initially resonate with the scarlet-clad rider and the wolf, but as the patron plopped his jeans-covered legs onto his bar stool, propped his arms on the bar table and licked the beer stains off his jacket, things became clearer to Rasheb and Rena. The patron’s words barely coherent enough for any sane person to understand, were clear and resonated with the scarlet biker and the canine masked by the bright white light from the headlights of a limousine parked outside—there wasn’t a limousine outside when the wolf and the red-donning biker entered, but the revelation: the jumbled, stuttery words uttered to them that, despite the incoherence, changed everything, seemed far more important than the strange idea that someone with enough wealth to buy a limousine would frequent a bar like this. The barkeeper didn’t know what the patron said, however; the other patrons didn’t know what he said either; the patron, for some reason unknown, only said what he said to the wolf that could speak in the human’s tongue and the scarlet biker; maybe because only Rena and Rasheb Nevim—who donned the moniker of Guy Red because of his attire—could ease the patron’s worries.

Whatever the reason, Guy Red and Rena couldn’t continue ruminating; the bar doors—which reminded Rasheb Nevim of an old place he used to frequent with his brother Caren Nevim: a saloon with those antique doors in the old Western films he watched when he was a child that starred his favorite actors standing on opposite sides of a town, acting out a tense standoff—swung wide open, and, to met by the silence of the bar patrons, the limousine’s owner—a man in a plump black suit and a salmon tie—stepped out of the limousine, one foot after the other, strolled into the bar and spoke: “My name is Keshin De Brosse, and I am the CEO of Rainfall Enterprises.” Keshin, to the amazement of Rena, did not say a word to or even glanced at her, instead walking into the bar with his hands at his sides, looking the bartender in the eyes and making an order: “One coffee, add a pinch sugar and vanilla flavored cream, please.” After the bartender whipped up the coffee, (with the pinch of sugar and vanilla flavored cream as he requested) Keshin sank into his bar stool—and it was uncomfortable, but it was enough—put the side of the mug against his lip, and gulped down the coffee until his lips burned—the coffee was still hot, but Keshin didn’t care; he didn’t savor the coffee eating away the crust on his lips, but he didn’t loathe it. “I have a proposition that Rena might find agreeable.”

“I won’t give in to your offer,” growled Rena. “I know about your involvement in the towers falling, and I don’t work with terrorists.”

“Don’t forget that my ‘involvement’ in 9/11 created you and your kin’s—for lack of a better word: ‘special abilities.’” “I don’t need to know your tongue to understand that you are a vindictive man, and any proposition you have is riddled with violence and needless deaths.” “The proposition I have doesn’t involve terrorism.” “Elaborate.” “While I was raiding an enemy hunting clan with my boys—this was back in the day when Henry and I were mortal enemies—I came across something I can’t explain, so I took the initiative and brought the enigmatic discovery to my higher up.” “You mean The Silencer.” “The Silencer… The Silent One… The Cryptic… he goes by many names; he tells me to think nothing of it, but Henry, who was my enemy, comes to me with an idea: we recruit Al-Qaeda to bomb the towers to show The Silent One that we don’t play around—and as a little cherry on top, we recruit scientists to create chemicals that release after the towers happens; and so, we do, and The Silent One crawls back into his hole, the wolves—y’all—gain sentience, and we never get messed with again… until the Blue Gala incident, when The Silent One—through an anonymous account—leaks the information about the Blue Gala event being a coverup for the meeting of big crime bosses to the dark web forum ZEROCHAT, and events played out as they did.” “What do you propose?” “A temporary alliance between Rainfall Incorporated, you and your accomplices in order to oust the other investors and arrest them.” “And what about you?”

It was the night of the Blue Gala, sometime in 2015 again, and the getaway van had a rotten stench (perishable food left in the open longer than it should have and the dozens of cigarettes smoked whilst inside the van contributed to this) and the outside was no better; it was vandalized (the previous owners weren’t too kind to it) and it was slow, bumpy, and the covert operative and Keshin’s son couldn’t sleep with the engines running all night. The getaway van didn’t let any light in—and even if it did, they were parked in a dark alleyway a few blocks out from the Empire State Building, so it would be no help—and they had to rely on candles (both Keshin’s son’s and Joran’s phones died. Keshin’s son was laying down on a fold-out bed in the back of the van, clamming his hands like cymbals; and Joran, a twisty puzzle in his hands (more specifically, a 3x3 which he turned with his fingers depending on which layers he had to turn.)

The cube wasn’t quiet—the brand of cube he used, Volo, wasn’t like that after all—and it forced Keshin’s son to tilt his head away while Joran finished the first layer’s cross faster than Keshin’s son could mutter a expletive-riddled sentence to himself; however, Keshin’s son was curious. Could I have a go at that?”

“After I finish the cube.” He had finished the first layer, and with precision, he worked on the middle layer; each edge in the middle layer had to match the two centers it would fit between, or he wouldn’t have a solved cube. “Middle layer, then the yellow cross, then the corners, then permute.” Keshin’s son turned his whole body like a log rolling down a splashy river bed; he lifted himself up, anchored his hands and elbows on his knees so he didn’t fall off the fold-out and closely observed the agent—Joran, who learned how to solve the cube in between missions working for TASK, could solve the cube in under a minute, and he’d invested lots of time into learning everything, evident from the time only he could see, a series of four digits on his stopwatch in his coat: 35.22 seconds, a new personal best.

“Well, if you want to pay more attention to that than to me, I’m fine too.” “I got a new PB thanks to your encouragement.” “Well, I’m sure glad I helped—” The van tremored—Keshin’s son and Joran didn’t feel it on their heels but they could smell it—the van’s floor was leaking a gooey, watery liquid, and it had the viscosity of gravy, and when Joran tripped on his shoelaces and dropped face-first into the sap, cashews, and chocolates, and syrup and salt, and butter and marshmallows and candy corn were thrown into a blender—and he gulped down the slop, and he might as well have gulped his own tongue, for the aftertaste was horrid and he couldn’t bring himself to intentionally faceplant into the goop. The swinging door got pushed away again, and—to the scarlet biker’s, the wolf’s, and the fur coated poacher’s surprise—Agent JRN22 (Joran) walked into the bar, and behind him, an entourage of similarly dressed agents, (Agent DEC-4921, Agent ZRN-01B, and Agent 555,) fitted with tools for covert ops like them: laser emitters under the guise of pens, binoculars strapped to belts, guns—which nobody in the bar could see—tucked snugly away in their coats, boots that spray bullets from the soles, and mirrored shades that had heat vision and night vision built into them; gadgets that seemed like they’d come in a distant future, and gizmos that only seemed plausible in suspenseful spy thrillers were there, visible to all the bar patrons, (even if all the bar patrons didn’t know if they were spy gadgets) and they were real. Joran, put his friend, the scarlet biker, against the back wall with his hands cuffed behind his crimson jacket, stated the reason for the arrests and the Miranda rights from memory: “Rasheb Nevim, you are under arrest for conspiracy to aid and harbor a terrorist. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say or do can be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney; if you can’t afford one, one will be provided to you by the state. Do you understand these rights?”

“I won’t let you do this,” said Rena, circling Joran like he was a lone baboon swinging through the trees, and Rena was the cunning leopard stalking him through a forest, ready to pounce; Rena was—as much as Joran was, but Joran was too plagued by fear to say it—resistant to letting the scarlet biker go to prison. Not only would the crimson-clad man’s arrest be the lost of an ally in the fight against a corporation that funnels money gathered by racketeering through shell companies and deals with terrorists, and gang lords, but it would be the loss of a friend to Joran and Rena. “I won’t let you arrest him; I know you have orders, but I can’t let you follow through. You’re his friend as much as I am.”

“Well, my friends don’t harbor terrorists, and come to think of it, I should probably arrest you—” “Just think for a moment, Joran. Keshin is a terrorist, and there’s no denying he’s committed heinous acts against humanity for his own selfish pleasure, to please his own ego, or maybe he’s just lost it; and we’ll turn Keshin in as soon as we’re done with him, but you have to see that an insider to Global Cultivation Worldwide will give us a major advantage.” “My boss at the Criminal Control Agency doesn’t care. I say he’s a terrorist, my boss says he’s a terrorist, the whole world thinks he’s a terrorist, so we’re taking Keshin now, because if he slips away one more time, we might never catch him again.”

“I’m sorry, Joran.” Rasheb had freed himself—which was no surprise, because as he demonstrated many times to Joran, he was skilled at escaping handcuffs, so Joran really should have known better—and now, he somehow had retrieved his motorcycle helmet, which still had the glossy scarlet finish even after all of these years, and now he donned it, his crimson dagger with the smooth oak handle in his right hand—and his pistol—which had the same insignia he had on his jacket in his left hand: GR, or Guy Red. In the doorway, next to a single table and three-legged chair was his crimson motorcycle, cooing like an owl on the treetops; it wasn’t as boastful as when it was in its prime; which was to say that in its prime, it was a shrieking emblem of power and strength like a cub—but now it had the epoch-making shriek of a pride leader; and it was then that, as the lights in the bar emitted a sharp crimson instead of the normal neon green, knew that Guy Red wasn’t the moniker, or the weapons, or even the outfit, but it was the man in the suit, donning the name. “I won’t let that happen.”

“I won’t let you take him.” Joran knew somewhere in him that Keshin was crucial to Guy Red, but he couldn’t let Guy Red have him; if Guy Red had Keshin and he got away, he and Rena would be held responsible for letting a terrorist get away. “I won’t let this happen.” Joran went for his gun in the left pocket inside his suit—a silver pistol with puffs of smoke still floating out the barrel from a standoff with Brian Howard—and took a fighting stance: shoes planted firmly into the ground, right hand gripping the pistol firmly, the left side of his body angled back, and his left hand clenched into a fist. The bar patrons and Rena couldn’t say when the fight actually started, for the fight started like lions pouncing at their prey, except here there was no fierce predator and fearing prey, no cunning fiend and righteous hero; just friends sending red capes, black suits and fists flying into each other. Guy Red had Joran, even if for a moment, held to the wall, punching him in the face like how the bar patrons he scolded punched each other; it wasn’t the same, and perhaps it was worse, because the patrons could barely speak, nor did their punches ever land (barring the rare instance from today,) but he landed his punches and he was perfectly sober.

The scarlet biker is taken by surprise easily—something Joran takes advantage of—as the covert op grabs hold of him when the lights go out, and has his hand on the cotton scarlet hood; Guy Red’s tools and his belt were everywhere on the floor. “You’re under arrest.”

Guy Red had his hands on Joran’s arms, spitting on the suit—he knew that Joran didn’t like having his suit spit on, because they are good friends—and stuffing his pistol into Joran’s sleeve. Joran slipped out of the black outer suit, revealing a white suit under the first suit. Seconds passed in the darkness—maybe even minutes—and Brian Howard walked into the bar with a flashlight; he was not shining it at Rena, but at Rasheb, who had Joran pinned to the bar table—and at the barkeeper standing at a safe distance, sipping a vodka that had been sitting there for years—and he slid Joran a screen that shone a calm neon light onto his face; the screen had two numbers with decimals that scrolled into the horizon, and a blurry image below the numbers was an image, and the image was of a man sitting in a swiveling chair, lit only by the candles in the dining room, flanked by an entourage of bodyguards; it was a clearer image of one Brian showed him—a cunning man in a swiveling chair that seemed to lean out of the screen more after every viewing, even in the stillness and permanence of the photo.

[magnumversum]

Criminality Season 1 Episode 7: La Vie De Fête

RATED TV-MA

I felt like I was on the cusp of passing out, until the man in black pulled into a ditch—I couldn’t see the ditch but the van and the man’s briefcase, which our hands were tied to, rattled as the van rolled off the road. I reached into my pants pocket and felt a cold brass handle rock against my jeans, my loaded revolver, and a swiss army knife in the pocket under my collar, and a pen and paper in my jacket.

The man slipped out of the driver’s seat and stomped into the back of the van. I couldn’t see his face, obscured by the black anglerfish mask he wore over it, but his voice was familiar. “My name is Agent Joran, sniper and elite assassin, and you’re under arrest in the name of the Criminal Control Agency for possession of illicit substances and the murder of Dr. Phillip Jenkins at Whistling Blue Hospital on the night of October 22, 2028.”

“Whatever the fuck you want, I don’t have it,” I said, as I worked with the rope binding me to his ash-colored briefcase. Lima was knocked out cold—she hit her head too hard on the floor of the van when Joran steered sharply right, off the road and into the ditch where Joran now parked the van. “I’m just looking for the fuckers in business suits and The Mollera because they swiped a computer off my man in Chicago that had important shit on it and sold the data to Global Cultivation Worldwide, The Rapanu, and The Qrill over the deep web.”

“The Mollera supplied GCW with fucked up pedophile shit and you were interfering in the business—it makes sense why they’d kill your Chicago contact for it.” I saw Joran adjust his suit and tie before sitting down in the trunk of the van next to me. With one hand, he grabbed hold of my arm and he pinned it to my spine as I was about to break free from the ropes. Using the other hand, he pulled the loaded revolver out of my pants pocket and caressed my thinly veiled anus. I wiggled away before he crushed my spine, went for the knife in my shirt pocket, and forced him against the wall.

His skull left a mark where the back of his head met the wall, but the back of his head was left clean. “I’m looking for the same thing, and so is Rasheb, and so Justin. I don’t like working with pieces of shit normally, but whatever we’re fighting against is no fucking normal piece of shit.”

“Don’t believe shit.” I took my revolver from his hand and I put it inches away from the side of Joran’s forehead. Joran reached into his pocket, pulled out a Gucci watch and tapped on the airtight glass seal separating the coppery inner air from the outside air. The glass seal cracked, and a cluster of holograms flashed in my face.

Joran reached into his black trench coat, which he put on after he left my apartment but before he swerved off the road, and pulled out a blurry photograph—a polaroid of a man in a swiveling chair sitting in a gloomy room—and said, “This is the last thing my fellow agent who you knew as Officer John saw before he was fucking found dead. It’s not just the investors involved in this fucking scam, but there’s a big man behind it all.”

Slowly stepping out of the van, I asked him “You see that?” There was a military grade jeepney trodding down the road ahead. The windows were tinted, and the nighttime didn’t do me any favors, concealing the faces of the men sitting behind the jeepney’s bulletproof windows. “Who the fuck could that be?”

As the jeepney got closer, I began to make out faces inside the jeepney. The tint wasn’t a one way mirror, and the outlines of the men in the jeepney were exposed to the bright glare of our van’s headlights. A familiar man stepped out of the jeepney, and this time I could make out their appearance: “The man that beat me up at the hospital.”

“The champ is fucking back!” Joran exclaimed, leaving the trunk of the van and running to embrace the man fitted in red gear. The two met in a wholesome embrace, while Lima, who was now coming to her senses, and me were huddled in the back of the van.

The man in scarlet and Joran walked to the van, and the rose dressed man saw me and knew my face from the hospital incident. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not kidding you. It’s him.”

“It’s him? I can’t work with him after the shit that went down at the hospital.”

“You’ll have to work with him if you want to take down Global Cultivation Worldwide.” Joran grabbed the man dressed in rose by his elbow and dragged him to the van. The red vigilante shielded his visor—even though it blocked out most of the light—from the van’s tail lights.

The rose dressed crimefighter grimaced at me, as if he had an unsettled vendetta with me that we had been fighting for years, but he disguised his grimace and politely introduced himself. “My name is Rasheb Nevim, and you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourselves into.” Rasheb left the van, and I heard the grenades strapped to his belt jingle as he slammed the van door shut.

Lima muttered, “What the fuck is going on?” The lights in the back of the van began to flicker, and a memory I had repressed since childhood came back—two men wearing black masks and holding revolvers to my parents’ faces dragging them unconscious out of the house during a storm, and me and my younger sister sitting there quietly while their deaths played out in a black van, just like the one Lima and I were in—and I melted into a puddle of tears. “What the fuck happened to you now?”

“You don’t fucking get it, do you?” I slapped her across the face twice, looked her point blank in the eyes and shot her with an angry expression. She didn’t know me as much as she thinks she did, but that didn’t matter anymore, because I know me. “You will never get it, because I mean fuck all to you, and that’s why I’m preparing the divorce papers.

“We’re done, Lima. We’re fucking over, because I’m tired of this bullshit.”

My ex wife got to her feet, pushed me against the wall, adjusted her collar and jiggled her tits up and down, as if suggesting that her voluminous breasts and her life as a sex worker before entering the gangster’s way of life was a reason to let her stay. “You fucking want my titties, huh?” She ripped off her tee shirt and her bra, throwing her breasts up and down and fondling them whilst naked, and whilst Lima, a sinful woman, couldn’t keep her eyes off her breasts.

I felt my penis stand up in my pants, but I didn’t bow to my arousal. “You might think you have the second biggest fucking milkers in town, and I might think you have the second biggest fucking tiddies since cow udders, but I’m not throwing the divorce papers out the fucking window just because I’m slutty for boobs.” I turned around so she didn’t see my erection, but Joran saw my erection, so I turned to face her again, reached into my jacket, pulled out the two pens and the rolled up paper, bent down, unrolled the paper and let her read it. “I signed, now you sign.”

“But I don’t want to, dammit.”

“Fucking sign it, you damn whore.” I slammed my clenched fist into the wall of the van, leaving pain and a bruise on my fist, but the van was unscathed. “I’m not giving you any other options.”

“Fuck divorce papers. Do drugs motherfuckers.”

“You’re wrong most of the time, but you’re so fucking right now.” I relented, not because I didn’t want to end our relationship, but drugs hid my pain away until I couldn’t take it. I was always fragile, insecure, and at the mercy of others until I had my first dose of heroin from a dealer named Tony. Then I felt like I could take on the world, so I started doing more drugs, made legal connections in the world of sex work—I don’t support sex trafficking—but never made true friends to share the drugs with, nor found someone who I truly cared for.

Doing drugs alone became a coping mechanism, and engaging in drug raves became an unhealthy habit. I garnered a nice sum of wealth, some prostitutes to keep me company, and had some drugs for when I hit a low, but at what cost? I always support legal prostitution, and I always support the drug trade, but I never got to see the sex workers and cartel bosses I met with outside of a professional light, and I only got temporary hits off marijuana.

[magnumversum]

Criminality Season 1 Episode 6: Mollera

RATED TV-MA

“Fuck this fucking bullshit.” I punched a hole into the wall, walked over to the couch and slumped deep into the cushion. The heroin deal we made with the Mollera Crime Family went wrong and the gangsters chased us down the streets with their guns and forced us to drive away. The gangsters’ boss, Lonnie, killed one of our men, Jaques, and we were mad.

The Mollera Criminal Dynasty had paved the streets in blood since Barack Obama was elected president, and the Purple Crime Family came together and said that if we couldn’t beat them, we would join them. It didn’t end well, and now Ronald was in the hospital and my right hand man, Ernesto, is in jail.

Lima, in her wrinkly black shorts and skimpy sports bra, slumped next to me on the couch, looking at the sprawling blueprints on the table. “We need a plan to take these gangsters on.” The blueprints were pinned to a bulletin flat on the table, with push pins and red yarn tying the blueprints to blurry polaroids. The polaroids and blueprints all tied to the long name pinned on the crazy board: Global Cultivation Worldwide Confidential. Lima flipped the bulletin board off the table, impaling the thumbtacks with the cork, then pushed me down as a thrumming jeepney burst through the wall, with a man nestled on the roof dressed in a black tuxedo, black khakis and black loafers.

I jumped for the bulletin board off the floor and reached for the pistol in my jacket. The man got off the jeepney with two pistols locked and loaded. The bullets hit the walls and pierced through the sofa armrests before they made a sound. The thick cork of the bulletin board held the bullets back like an ant’s farm holding up against mighty winds.

I moved to the sofa cushions, where Lima was injured, behind the cover of the bulletin board. The man ripped off his tuxedo and tie, leapt over our heads, and unloaded the full magazine in his pistols. As quickly as he was in our faces, he slipped back into the cover of the night. Lima and I flipped the table over, held it in front of our faces, and pushed it down the hallway.

The table bumped against the walls of the corridor that seemed to keep closing in. We climbed over the table and into the hallway, holding the bulletin board over our faces. The man in black waited at the other end of the hallway, changing out his magazine and slipping further into the cowl of darkness. He ran down the hallway, grabbed Lima by the shoulder and dragged her down the hallway with his gun pointed to her face. I slammed a new magazine into the handle of the pistol and moved down the hall.

He put one pistol against the bridge of my nose, fired ammo at point-blank range and ran down the hall more. It felt like the hallway never ended, like the hallway consumed the world and now the world was just the hallway. I put my left hand on my nose, my right hand on my glock and a finger tightly on the trigger. I ducked into a niche before the hallway turned. Two bullets grazed the side of my face before I could react, and I backed further back into the niche.

The bullets dented the walls and the muffled roars of a pistol with a silencer closed in. was running out of time, and the man wasn’t running out of ammo. His footsteps bounced off the walls, but his tempered breathing was absorbed by the hollow concrete. I ran a finger across the scar on my cheek with my left hand while digging through my jacket with my right hand until I felt the cold handle of a second pistol.

I ripped the pistol out of my jacket, leapt into the dim hallway and unloaded two bullets concomitantly. The bullets hit the wall without recoil and warning. The man clad in black only planted his feet firmly on the tiled floor.

He raised his right arm as if he were to swear an oath, pushed the pistol against the low-hanging ceiling and took out the light panels. “Don’t ask questions, and you are under arrest,” he muttered. “Stand down immediately. I have been ordered to use whatever methods necessary, even if that means bringing you in dead. Do you understand?”

“Well fuck you,” I whispered, sticking a charged explosive to the wall. “You’re not getting me any time soon.” The explosive was set to detonate in twenty four hours, and every second spent meant less time to leave the apartment before the bomb killed both of us.

There was a long stretch of wall before the end of the hallway, where the man clad in black waited for me. I held my pistol near my chest, slipped into the hallway and emptied a mag. The man in black ran up the walls, temporarily slipping away, but not before I wasted three bullets of the eight in my last mag. The door out of the apartment didn’t seem to be getting closer, and the police weren’t coming.

As my hand touched the door handle, seven bullets flew out of the darkness. The man in black tackled me to the ground, and his pistol was put to my face. He punched me up the chin, slipped his gun into his tuxedo, and punched me across the face. He turned me onto my back, cuffed me, dragged me and Lima out of my apartment, and into his SWAT van smothered in graffiti and broken glass.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking asshole?” cursed Lima. “Let us the fuck go.” The inside of the van was lit by the yellow street lamps outside and the blue moonlight, but the windows were tinted, and we were tied up and taped facing the floor of the van. The man who kidnapped us slipped into the driver’s seat, strapped himself in, and hit the gas pedal with his right shoe. A cold metal briefcase kept pounding on my skull, and I could taste the van’s dirt and expired crisps on the lips of my mouth.

I felt like I was on the cusp of passing out, until the man in black pulled into a ditch.

The man left the driver’s seat, and rushed into the back of the van. “My name is Agent Djorrhan Djorrhar, and you’re under arrest in the name of the Criminal Control Agency for possession of illicit substances and the murder of Dr. Phillip Jenkins at Whistling Blue Hospital on the night of October 22, 2028.”

[magnumversum]

Criminality Season 1 Episode 5: Officer Dennis

RATED TV-MA

Lima, her face lit by the yellow street lamp hanging above her, pulled out a yellow baggie of “pixie dust,” and a bag of money. The men standing across from her pulled out their handguns, ready to kill her. I pulled out my handgun, took out the two men standing next to each other immediately, pulled Lima to the ground, then shot down more men. Don Frisky shot me in the leg, ran out of the alleyway still dripping in his thugs’ blood, into Time Square.

After killing more of the thugs, Lima threw my body over her shoulders, offed two thugs with her handgun and climbed up the emergency stairwell on one of the dirty apartment complexes. The stairs only went up three stories before coming to an abrupt stop, and the complex was only seven stories tall. Lima went up the three stories and climbed her way to the top of the complex. The distance from the Empire State Building was nearly seven blocks, and Lima had just managed to get past the first block, and she had to think fast.

She leapt into a big chimney, scraped my head and feet against the compact walls, and landed in a burnt out fireplace. She broke the glass with her leg and ran into a random living room. The gangsters were still on their feet, and I was slowing her down. The kitchen smelled like ash and cigarettes, and two children hiding in the small bedroom watched the gangsters chase us out of the window and into the street.

The thugs met us five blocks away from the Empire State Building and backed us against the wall. Lima, running out of options, set me down on the floor, reached into her pocket and gave the pixie dust to the gangsters.

One of the thugs, Ermillo, took the pixie dust, slid it into his pocket, and chased us out of the street, shouting, “I’ll fucking get you sons of a bitches! Fuck you all!”

Lima whipped around, put her handgun to Ermillo’s forehead, and shot him and the other thugs point-blank in the head. NYPD officers came rushing around the street corner in their police cars, and thugs ran to meet them. A shootout ensued between the cops and capos, with Lima, the other New Yorkers, and me stuck in the middle. The store windows around us shattered, and we were ducking beneath a taxi crashed in the middle of the road.

One of the cops, a middle aged man with a shinier badge on his lapel named Dennis John, saw us and calmly shuffled over to the taxi. He shielded us with his chest, holding his arms out and imposing his shadow on our heads. Officer John removed his badge and let it drop to the ground, like he was lowering himself to the level of criminals like the thugs across the street and us. A thug, Mahanovsky, walked in a straight line to Officer John, continually putting bullet holes into his uniform and watching his skin as a plumber does a broken faucet, but Officer John didn’t fall.

Dennis ripped off his police uniform as if the honor bestowed by his police uniform on him had no value. “Get off these streets, or we’ll shoot up the fucking streets to take you son of a bitches out, no matter how many people we kill.”

“You’re fucking law enforcement,” said Manahovsky. “You fucking rain shit down on streets all the fucking time and get away with it, but when we do drug deals you get all bastardy with us and we’re the bad men.”

Dennis kicked away a crushed soda can, walking closer to Manahovsky’s position behind the street market under the Empire State Building, let his pistol fall into my hands, as if his body itself was a pistol and a police uniform. He let his arms fall to his sides, and planted his shoes in the hot pavement of the sidewalk. “You’re getting closer and closer to an arrest and a fucking warrant for the murder charges you’ve been let out easy on. It’s safe to bet you’re still doing murders based on the fact that you’re still on heroin.”

“The heroin trade stopped. This pixie dust shit is fucking awesome, and much better than heroin.” Manahovsky put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the baggie of pixie dust that Lima surrendered to him, offering it to Officer John. Officer John took the baggie from Dennis, and Officer Dallas took it from Officer John, and Officer Williams took it from Officer Dallas, and Officer Wendy took it from Officer Williams, Lima and I took it from Officer Wendy, and Manahovsky took back from him. “Pixie dust isn’t heroin, it’s deadlier.”

“You mask your cowardice by dealing drugs. I don’t have cowardice… or pain.” Manahovsky backed into the wall, crumpled to the floor, crossed his arms and dug his face into his arms. Officer John and the NYPD walked around their humming police cars, ordered the thugs to stand down and cuffed them. “We have a Code 90-90; all of the suspects are alive and in custody by the ESB on the leftmost side, requesting more cars immediately.”

Lima pulled me off the ground and threw my arm around her shoulder. “The Qrill Empire faked us with a drug deal, and we took the bait.”

“Qrill? Isn’t that an alien?”

“The Qrill are a drug dealing empire. I stabbed Irvan Manahovsky’s back, and now I owe him money.” Lima, holding a knife in her left hand and my collar in her right hand, pulled me into the alleyway, rested me under a dirty white street lamp. Screams pulsed through my body as she cut into my leg, peeling away the thick layers of meat and oil that had the bullet stuck in it; it was like a freshly butchered cow lathered in blood, oil, gravy.

She went for the needle and threads in her pocket and sewed up my wound. “Stand up.”

“Fuck no—and also, why the fuck didn’t you tell me you’re working with that bastard?”

Visceral screams evaporated from my throat. My right leg only shook for a second before it went numb completely. A ringing noise bounced around in my right ear, and left as quickly as it came. I felt my heart skip a beat.

She still looked at me like I wasn’t in pain. “A man just took a whole round like it was nothing and you’re here pussying out. Stand the fuck up, pussy.”

[magnumversum]

Criminality Season 1 Episode 4: Motherfuckers Fight

RATED TV-MA

Justin Williams bitch slapped me in the face. “Well fuck you and your friends.” He bitch slapped me in the face again, sending me crashing into the bar stool. The baggie of cocaine and the two baggies of heroin I had fell out of my pocket.

“Fuck all of you hoes.” The bartender slammed the bill on the table. “Burn in fucking hell.” Some of the nearby bar patrons got upset by what the bartender said, and started cracking their knuckles.

I punched Justin Williams in the face, leaving him on the floor with a bloody nose and a mild headache. He stood up, grabbed the bar stool, and hit me on the head. My skull crunched, and the gun in my pocket rattled. The bartender dove over the counter, thrown to the wall by Justin.

I picked up the broken bar stool leg and stabbed it through the bartender’s cheek. Justin Williams tried to throw himself into the air, but I moved out of the way and he hit his head on the bar counter. When Justin threw himself at me again, I used the bartender’s body as a shield, and pulled the gun out of my pocket. I fired two shots into one of the patrons, a young college man.

Justin threw himself at one of the patrons, impaling their body on the bar stool leg. I slapped Justin in the face, pulled down my pants and boxer briefs and slapped him across the face with my stiff penis. Justin Williams hit my face against the door until my nose bled. I pulled out the needle from my pocket and injected a shot of dopamine into my arm. I zipped up my pants and felt the dope pulsing through my veins.

Justin pulled out a gun and put it to my face, but I broke his arm and shot him in the leg. He fell backwards and cursed under his breath, but he got back up and punched me in the gut. “That’s what you fucking get, motherfucking suck-off.”

“Bitch, fuck you.” I said, slapping him in the neck until he begins to choke. He crumpled to his knees, putting his hands around his neck and trying to clear his throat. I grabbed the cue stick off the pool table and impaled one of the patrons, a drunk college professor. His slimy guts leaked onto the bar counter, and it smelled bad.

I pulled the cue stick from his body, Justin Williams grabbed the other cue stick off the pool table, and we swordfighted around the bar, crashing back onto the same pool table. I grabbed Justin by his collar, ripped his shirt off, threw it, landed it on the hook on the coat hanger, pushed him onto the pool table with one hand, and I exchanged blows with the other. He rejected my sexual advance, pushed me away and sliced my palm. The dopamine eased the pain.

“Fuck you, bitch,” I muttered. “Of course, being the fucking prickly ass you are, you don’t care about anyone else’s feelings. Only yours, motherfucker. Be that way, douchebag fucking piece of ass-licking shit.”

“You don’t fucking get it, do you,” said Justin. “The criminal empire I’ve been chasing—Global Confidential Worldwide, is working with the enemy drug cartels you’re also fucking with. I’m taking them out—and your gang as well—because you’re all corrupt drug-sniffing dicks and you don’t know whose pussy you’re making wet. The town The House of Jones ruled over told Chairwoman Genevieve to fuck off, Chairman Henry was killed last month in the prison incident, and I oversaw The House of Jones, reworking it into a peaceful empire. When peace didn’t work, I thought turning to violence was the solution, and that’s when I realized I need your help.”

“You don’t fucking run gangs right,” I said, drinking the last drop of beer from my beer mug and heading for the door. “You try to run gangs with peace and shit, but they end up disorderly and a fucking violent mess. I run them with order and violence, and now look: nobody fucks up under my watch.”

“Case in point?”

“You don’t run gangs, you run shitty school clubs.” I walked out of the bar and into the pouring rain, feeling the cars and trucks zip past me down the road. The skies were green and the moon was in the middle of the sky, so I had to meet my drug dealer Herb in thirty minutes before the moon was at its fullest shine. I ran through the street, into the corner store, and into the back.

Herb greeted me with, “Hey, I haven’t seen you since the prison shit. How’s it been?”

“Is Williams right?”

“No, you know he’s a hoe. Why do you ask—do you believe in his bullshit?”

“Of course not—but what if he is?” I went through his things, picking out a specific manila folder and slamming it onto the table. The file had “OPERATION LIGHTS OUT” stamped across the front in red. “The FBI busted up a child pornography slash child rape operation ten years back, taking advantage of the ‘fuck up with the wolf-men’ stirring up rivalry between criminal empires to shake up their Most Wanted list.”

“And?”

“One of the companies they fucked up for making child porn had a studio in Las Garrens, Calitexia. The cops fucked up the computers used to finish the footage, but they left one of the computers unfucked.”

“So?”

“They must’ve kept it unfucked for a reason.”

“What if it just had more messed up rapey shit?” Herb walked over to the grill sitting by the desk where he worked and began cooking a steak. Fumes filled the room, and Herb was wafting in the smoke being coughed out by the grill.

“All PCs with were righteously wiped, no matter what leads those PCs had that could help them fuck up the streets. Whatever is in that computer must be important enough that the cops didn’t fuck that shit up or erase it… instead they turned it over to my big man in Chicago… and he turned it over to me.”

[magnumversum]

Criminality Season 1 Episode 3: A Sexy Time

RATED TV-MA

I went up and down until I heard a vibrant scream that I’ve heard many times before. I crawled away, allowing myself to rest, before going in and rocking her with the sheets covering my back. She reached down and grab her thighs with both hands, squealing as I shook her around. She grabbed my face, then grabbed me under the sheets, and started violently rubbing me from under the sheets.

I squealed, put on a straight face, then removed myself from her gaze, breathed in the stale air, then went in. Her eyes and mine locked until I slipped under the covers, and came back out with the most satisfied look on my face, and we kept going. Her hand met me underneath the blanket, and my body tensed up, but I kept going. I reached my hand under the blanket, and with two fingers, I made her squeal harder.

Her body pulsed as my fingers entered her. I shook her under the blankets, then crawled away again, allowing myself to throb as she reeled in ecstasy. I held the blanket in front of me, and from where she was laying down—opposite to where I was, at the end of the bed—it looked like I was jumping up and down while sitting with my legs crossed, but I was having the time of my life.

She crawled onto me—blankets covering me and her at the end of the bed, and blinds covering the windows—and began vigorously shaking me up and down. I looked under the blanket, looked back up at her as she violently went up and down my body, and tensed up again. I put her onto her back, undid her belt while she was in the sheets, and went in and out of her until she was stiff. I went in and out of her until she squealed, tensed up again, and we both shot each other under the bed sheets.

She crawled off the bed, went into her dresser, picked out some nice clothes, grabbed me by the shoulder and led me out of her house. She pushed me out the door and slammed the door in my face. I gathered the things that fell from my purse, including my phone and a baggie of heroin. After I put the phone and baggie of heroin into the bag, I flagged down a taxi and got in the cab. Then I paid the driver to take me to the corner of Burran and Ellis Street, walked ten miles until I reached Meack Street, walked into the prison, grabbed my visitor’s badge, and walked to cell 908 in the solitary block: the cell where Herb Boulevard, my client, was being held.

There were guards standing in front of his bulletproof glass cage, behind his glass cage, flanking the right and left sides of his glass cage, and standing above his glass cage. He sat quietly in the middle of the cell with his fingers intertwined and his legs crossed. This wasn’t a moral way to treat a person, but it was the way they were treating him after he murdered Muddy Jim. I walked into his cell, looked around, and sat down in the chair opposite him.

“Where’s the orange fucker?” I got up from my seat, wiped some blood from my face, cracked my knuckles and walked to his chair. The guards standing by his cell were eyeing me with dirty looks. I backed off, letting Herb have his space again.

“The orange asshat is in this same prison in a different joint.” Herb scooted his chair back, sighed deeply, then got up from his chair, banged on the cell door until he got tired, and lied down on the inflatable mattress on the floor—which I didn’t notice walking in—and he began to doze off until I woke him up. He looked at me with sleepy eyes, rubbed his eyes, then whistled a cheery tune. The prison guards entered his cell, punched him with their bare cuffs until he stopped whistling, and left him squirming in pain on my feet.

I knelt beside him and ran my fingers across his bleeding wounds. Herb passed the beating off with a dismissive shrug, got to his feet, and smiled innocently, as if he wasn’t just taken advantage of by the guards. He smiled at me, escorted me to the cell door, and parted with me with a wave. As I left the cell, I felt a looming sense of heat and flame climb up my spine, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

Rats scurried below me, and I was crushing leaves under my feet. My knees were weak, and my arms were stiff. I could make out a billowing line of smoke gathering afar. There were men in black outfits waiting for me at the other end of the hall, and I was still recovering from the explosion.

I put up my fists, and with all of my strength, I staggered down the tunnel, tuning out the muffled gunshots in the distance. The man in the black outfit had a katana, which he swung at me with full force. I dodged his swing, punched him in the face, and jammed my thumb into his left eye. I pulled my thumb out of what remained of his left eye.

I pushed him aside, ran down the tunnel, collapsed to the ground, got back up, but was pushed back to the ground by another man wearing a black outfit. “These fuckers are ninjas,” I thought. “Fuck me, I want a blowjob.” I pushed the second ninja to the ground, knelt beside him and grabbed him by his hair, and did the same thing I did to the first ninja, but to his right eye. This time, when I ripped my thumb away from his eye socket, a chunk of his skin was dislodged.

The third ninja ran at me from the end of the corridor. He had two katanas, and was wearing a mask with a more intricate red and black design. I tried to throw a punch, but my arms grew tired. He sliced across my stomach, revealing the garments I still had on from the stay with Dongle. I kicked the third ninja in his crotch and punched him in the face. The rats scurrying below me climbed up to eat at his exposed skin, and he succumbed to their gnawing, and I was succumbing to my tiredness.

A line of smoke billowed at the end of the corridor, and big men wearing ash gray coats over wrinkly tees and dusty jeans and sneakers were moving at me. The squeaky nibbling of rats and mice had faded into the background noise, and I was cornered. I whispered, “Fuck it, it’s over.” My gaze fell from the muggers walking through the smoke to the men blocking me with their curvy backs.

The men dressed in black were running at the three men standing in front of me: one wearing a sleek black suit and tie, one clad in red and donning a red motorcycle jacket with the initials “GR” emblazoned on the back of his collar and under his hood, and one donning an orange facade. The orange man was Justin Williams, who I was acquainted with; the man wearing a sleek black tuxedo and slim shoes was the man I met at the hospital, and I also saw the man wearing his emblem on his jacket when the hospital was blown up.

“Holding Out For A Hero,” a song by Bonnie Tyler, played in my head. The backs of their heads were tilted up, and their heels were planted firmly in the mush. Whilst the figure wearing a sleek black tux, tie and shoes; and the man in scarlet shoes, scarlet denim jeans, scarlet jacket and scarlet motorcycle helmet; and Justin Williams grappled with the gangsters and the ninjas, I slipped out of the sewer, climbing up the ladder at the end of the tunnel, and inhaled the musty air of cocaine in the slums.

[magnumversum]

Criminality Season 1 Episode 2: Dongle

RATED TV-MA

“Motherfucker,” grumbled the detective, pulling out his pistol and putting it to my face. “I finally caught you, you sneaky son of a bitch.”

“You fucked up so many bastards on the street yourself, cop.” I reached into my pocket, but my gun wasn’t there, and his was. I was standing in the alley, and he was too. We were both standing under a bright yellow streetlight, watching the cars go by.

“Forgot your gun, dipshit?”

“No officer, but I’m so good in bed your girlfriend forgot your gun.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“You don’t make anything other than your girlfriend disturbed.” I fumbled that delivery—I was supposed to say, “disappointed,” not “disturbed.” It still sounded okay, so I ran with it and didn’t run away. I kept digging through my pocket.

“Motherfucker, do you want to fight me?” The detective put his gun to my face and ran me into the wall of the apartment building. I’m not just a detective, I’m a cop too, you slippery bastard. I could have you put away.” He muffled my mouth, cursed into the radio, and let me go.

“I’m not trying to pick a fight, cop. You’re just being a fucker. I told you that I’m not running a drug operation, so let me go bitch.”

“Do you wanna fucking die tonight, bitch?” The cop pushed me to the floor, put his gun in my mouth, picked me back up, and pulled me to his car. “Do you wanna fucking die? Do you wanna fucking die?

“Do you? I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Did the man hired to fuck people up tell you to finish his job? Jollop or whatever that asshat’s name is?” The gun I was looking for fell out of my right pocket. “Shit… anyway, is that what’s going on now?

“Are you working for him now? Did he pay the hit?”

“It was the shithead in the orange cape.” The detective cuffed me, picked me up off the ground, threw me into the police car parked on the side of the road, slammed the door shut and sat in the driver’s seat. “The orange fucker put a hit on you because you fucked up one of his targets real bad.”

“This isn’t a real arrest then?” I hit my head on the glass window between the front and back seats in the police car. It didn’t do anything but annoy the detective-cop, who turned around and looked at me strangely. “If you’re being paid off by that asshole… name a price and I’ll match it.”

The cop pulled into a darker alley, tucked beneath the police station and an apartment. He got out of the police car, dragged me into the alleyway, pushed me against the dumpster bin, pulled out his gun and put it against my head. This time, I felt the barrel deeper inside me—against the back of my throat, and I could taste the gunpowder—it was freshly used. “You want to try me motherfucker?

“Taste my gun, shitbag. Do it. Taste my gun, fuckface. Try it, motherfucker.”

“Sure thing, officer. Just after I speak to my lawyer, who I rarely speak to,” I said, exuding a hint of sarcasm. “Oh wait, my lawyer’s your girlfriend. She already has her mouth full with me to talk.”

“You’re a fucker.”

“No, you’re a fucker.”

“You’re a fucker.”

“No, fuck you.”

“Fuckface.”

“Dipshit.”

“You’re coming with me into the station.” We went back and forth with the insults until he tossed me into a cell, locked the cell up, and sat down and chowed down on a chicken and provolone sandwich—I could tell it was chicken and provolone by how it smelled—and he watched me intently.

“What?” I asked, looking him in the eyes.

The inmate on the top bunk said, “What’s with you?”

“I didn’t say anything to you, fucker.”

“Whatever.” The inmate climbed down the bunk bed, scooted closer to me, putting his hands in his pockets—I didn’t know prison jumpsuits had pockets, and I wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit—and leaned in until we were shoulder to shoulder. “My name’s Dongle Hoof.”

I held my laugh back. His name was funny to me, but I couldn’t laugh. I knew what these police stations were like, because I’ve been to a police station, and the fresh cellmates were rougher than the hardened inmates in actual prisons. I scooted away from Mr. Hoof, but he only scooted closer to me. “You’re a moron for thinking I’ll help you.”

“I’m not here to look for charity, dumbass. I’m here to get high. Do you have the jelly beans?”

“What jelly beans?” I got off the cell’s bottom bunk and looked at him. He was about seven feet tall, and he had long hair and a scrawny beard. “What do you think I am, dipshit? A candy machine?”

Dongle growled at me, then his growl became a friendly smile, as if we were well-acquainted colleagues. He climbed back onto the top bunk, looked down at me, then looked at the detective that brought me in. “The detective brought us both to the same point for a reason, dickhead. He also wants drugs, and he also doesn’t like the dog-fucker wearing an orange cape.”

Dongle whistled, and like a dog chasing a bone, the detective ran to Dongle’s aid. The detective and Dongle exchanged words, before the detective left the room and returned with a beef wrap. The detective handed Dongle the wrap through the bars. While Dongle opened the wrap, the detective said to me, “I’ll let you go if you promise not to attack me—okay asshole?”

“Sure, buddy. Right after you fuck right off, because I couldn’t give a shit about the orange guy anymore. He doesn’t give a shit about me either, okay?” paced around my cell, returned to my bunk, sank into the cushions, and took a deep breath.

The detective and Dongle looked at me curiously. I looked back at them, “I’ll tell you the names and addresses of the fuckers helping me reach ecstasy,” I said, taking off my wrinkly Mariners shirt and giving it to the detective. “I’ll stay in this cell for-fucking-life if that’s what the judge wants, but leave me out of whatever this is.”

“Fuck you.” The detective dropped his sandwich on the table, marched over to my cell, reached for the keys to my cell in his vest, unlocked my cell, marched over to me, grabbed me by my neck, pushed me against the wall of the prison cell in front of the bewildered Dongle, and held me for a whole minute. His breaths—sudden bursts of wind leaving his tight-lipped mouth—went down my chest. “You’re a real fucker… I like it.”

[magnumversum]

Criminality Season 1 Episode 1: Drug Dealing

RATED TV-MA

I crouched down onto the floor next to the dead body, with the detective standing beside me, and I muttered, “You know, I wasn’t a part of this shithole. I just arrived when it ended.”

The detective looked me in the eyes. “You say that, but there’s not a lot at first glance that says you weren’t a part of this.”

“I couldn’t fuckin’ see the man that walked in. He was covered in blue light.” I pinched my nose, sneaking away from the body and the busy detective. “This scene is bloody. Blood on the walls, blood on the ceilings, people’s blood on other people’s blood… lots of blood on blood.”

“There’s nothing here,” replied the detective as he turned around and walked towards me. “But, I still have to bring you in, so if you’d come with me—”

I punched the detective in the nose, sending him backwards, and ran down the hallway, turned left, ran up the stairs, ran down a hallway, ran up, ran down, ran onto the building rooftop, and jumped off the roof, hitting the pavement, getting to my feet, then running into the back alley, slipping on a banana peel, getting back up, hearing the sirens, running, muttering curses, then running under the orange street lamps until I reached the right street, then turning right, running into the second door to my left, running down the stairs, into the raggedy old basement, and muttering, “I need a fuckin’ gun. Right fuckin’ now.”

“You’ve been getting into trouble all night,” Lima said, bringing a box to the table. “That detective being a pissbag again?”

“Yeah. The asshat detective has been digging too deep into my secrets. I would stab him with the syringe of hornet’s concoction.”

“It sure seems like it. Earlier The Orange Man came in, busted up some of our glassware, and left. He seemed pissed off.” Lima ripped open the box that had “COURTESY OF TRUMAN-FRANKLIN” written with a black sharpie. “He’s saying there was some black web shit going on with the hospital you went to.”

My gaze wandered from Lima to the cluttered overflow of supplies from the box onto the study desk: C4s, assault rifles, pistols, hand grenades, DIY mocktails, and a smaller box. The box had “DRUGS” written with a red sharpie, and caution tape lining the outside. “Does that box actually have drugs?” I looked over Lima’s shoulder as she sliced across the top of the box, pulling out a baggie labeled, “COCAINE,” a baggie labeled, “CRYSTAL METH,” a baggie labeled, “HEROIN,” a baggie labeled, “HORNET’S CONCOCTION,” and a baggie labeled, “THE BIGWIG’S PRIVATE STOCK.”

Lima smiled wide at the baggie labeled, “THE BIGWIG’S PRIVATE STOCK.” She carefully held the black baggie—the stuff you’d make trash bags out of—under a bright light, held it under a microscope, then with an X-acto knife, cut a slit into the bag, and sniffed the contents into her nose, exhaling like she’d just breathed in the best air in the world. “Pure happiness comes in drugs.”

“Pure happiness doesn’t come in drugs,” I replied, quickly taking the baggie from her, and a lighter out of my pocket, “True pure happiness comes from the fucking resale.”

“You’re going to resell that?”

“They won’t know that we opened it.”

“Yes they will, asshole.”

“Trust me,” I whispered, sealing the open end of the baggie shut with the flame of the lighter. “They won’t know. We can sell all of this full, but the one empty, and they won’t know.”

Lima got up close to the desk, trying to sniff up the rest of the contents that had fallen from the baggie onto the table. “Shit, it’s all out.” She grabbed a duster from the top shelf near the door I came in through, and began sweeping the crumbs on the table into an ashtray. “Let’s try and get the leftovers.”

While she was trying to get a hit, I walked into the pantry, where there was a pile of polypropylene bags—the bags you’d lift up and they’d be heavy, because they’d be filled with rice, but these bags had more drugs in them than rice, because we sold the rice to buy drugs—stacked to the roof of our basement, which wasn’t that high. “If you wanted drugs, there’s always a lot in here” I shouted. “I don’t know why you have to dig into the fucking fresh batches, dickhead.”

“The fresh batches are always the best,” Lima said, walking past him with a box full of guns and C4s. “Isn’t that why you buy them?”

“Whatever, fuck you.” I walked past the pantry, to the closet—the door was already open—I picked up a box, closed the door with one hand, and walked into the living room, setting the box down beside me on the couch. “I want to get high, that’s all. Drugs, a high, pass out, fuck you.”

“Drugs, high, pass out.” I opened the box, “WEREWOLF SERUM” written on the front. “Bullshit, and lame.”

Lima sat on the couch opposite me, reached into my box—I didn’t ask her to reach into it, but she just did—and pulled out a baggie of heroin, 4.4 grams exactly. She cut a slit into the baggie, put the slit against her nose, and inhaled, like she was about to plunge into the sea. But this time, she didn’t feel the crushed up heroin going up her nose. She moved the baggie away, breathed out, put the baggie against her nose and still, nothing.

“Fuckin’ can’t get a hit off this heroin,” muttered Lima, crushing the baggie in her hand. “The consistency isn’t right.”

“No, no, you’re just not doing it right, asshole.” I took the baggie of heroin from her. It was a black baggie, like the one labeled “THE BIGWIG’S PRIVATE STOCK,” except I knew this was heroin, because the label was different. I cut a hole a little bigger than the one she made in the baggie, put it against my nose at an angle, then squeezed the baggie with my thumb and first finger. The pure ecstasy of heroin rushing through my veins made me smile a little.

“You figured it out…” Lima whispered in disbelief, “Fuck normal shit, do drugs, motherfuckers.”

[magnumversum]

Wolves Season 1 Episode 7

The Lost Wolves Part 2: Training

To Karuz’ left, blue whales could be seen near the shores, slowly going in and out of the water, which like a cliff, was a sudden steep drop, allowing the whales to leap out and back into the water, and to his right, frogs and crickets chirped, as they went on their merry way. In front of him there was a dojo, where the remaining wolves trained, and he had just left a meditation session with his master, Zamara. He felt at peace wandering through a garden blossoming with butterflies and flowers and tranquility. There was no more harm that could come.

He calmly sat himself on the treetop looking out to the rest of the territories in Nazanish, allowing the butterflies to perch themselves on his forehead and his nose. The views of the fallen cities seemed cloudy—and the butterflies peacefully resting on his nose played a part in this—and he could only see out to the pond, where hippopotamuses’ heads stuck halfway out of the water, and flamingos’ beaks poked in and out of the fog. From where he sat, the monkeys calling to each other from across the vines rang louder than the elephants chasing each other around in the grotto. Karuz buried himself in his paws, closing his eyes tightly, then opening them up again and lifting his head up, as the leaves were unsettled. “Zamara, is that you?”

The monkeys stopped swinging from their vines, the elephants stopped sloshing around in the water, the flamingos fully walked out of the fog, the hippopotamuses emerged from the water, the blue whales slipped onto the oceanside, the wolves were perched on benches distant from him. Zamara replied, “This is your final test before you become king. Every animal in this habitat in Nazanish is watching, hoping you complete your final task, and rooting for you to be crowned the king.”

“I am ready, Master Zamara.”

“Then your final task is to make me yield in battle, young one.” Zamara and Karuz left no prints or scratches in the ground. Neither’s breaths skip a beat. Prior to the final test, Zamara was observing the lions crawling in and out of the fuzzy area of her view, and Karuz was looking over his palace. Now, both were difficult smudges of light in each other’s sight.

Unlike time, Karuz and Zamara’s eyes never blinked. They were locked open, and the keys to the lock was Karuz being crowned as king, or spelling ultimate defeat for his lineage. Looking into Karuz’ eyes, Zamara saw the destruction of the six other cities, and her claws scraped the ground. The beasts ravaged the city of Murrith, with its skyscrapers that cut through the clouds torn down, and the spirits of Murrith were running away from their bodies; the beasts ravaged the city of Ammortith, with its border intersecting human homes, and life was ran away; the monsters tore through Drann, the city with paint chipping off walls and collapsed infrastructure littering the skyline, ripping apart the soul of Dmarani; the monsters ravaged Millash, violently spilling blood over the small huts and markets by the street side. Unlike the careful eyes of wolves, Zamara’s perception of time skipped, she was on the floor, and she was confused—and Karuz was standing above her on all fours—but he seemed less confused than Zamara was.

The trees around them had been knocked down. Where there was pristine soil, there was burn marks. Zamara turned her head. “Where am I?”

“Your eyes had no soul, and I saw in them for a moment the faces of terror when the six other cities of Dmarani fell,” said Karuz. “Master, are you scared?”

Zamara shook her head. “No, Karuz. I’m not scared.” Walking into the butterfly gardens, down the steps, into the elephant grotto, down some more steps, into the ostrich fields, down even more steps until she reached the elephant and hippo pond and the blue whale territory, she combed through the stretch of paradise walled in by the wastelands.