Friday, March 26, 2021

Core Values, Chapter Fifty-Five. Louis Shalako.

Trying to feed one.

 

 

Chapter Fifty-Five

 

Mayor Hope Pedlar…

 

 

 

When someone finally got around to remembering about the Mayor, her body was found on the balcony. She was missing her right arm, and something had been feeding on her plump carcass.

The face was almost unrecognizable, but it was her, all right. They say she bled to death, and that it was very quick.

Investigators found a green plastic Tupperware bowl beside her and a used piece of Blaran Wrap on the kitchen counter. Apparently the Mayor had been trying to feed one of the creatures some leftovers, according to police, a home-made tuna salad consisting of elbow noodles, onions, celery, tuna and mayonnaise.

With a million dollar grant from the Scow Corporation, the Mayor Hope Pedlar Memorial Art Gallery and Public Library is under construction at the time of this writing.

No one begrudges her that.

Andy Bandy, inconsolable, read the eulogy at the funeral, a closed-coffin affair, and died six months later.

As some said, he died of a broken heart, or just plain uselessness.

 

***

 

The Guardian-Standard soldiers on. For a few days it was put together by guys like Bruce Lipshitz, brought back out of semi-retirement, and Les Purvis, who has been awful quiet lately, Ken Noble and others. Barnes is on sick leave for psychological problems. It is unclear when and if he will return to his duties.

Transferred to Afghanistan.

Bill O’Keefe died of a heart attack, running up the stairs to the second-floor newsroom. Decades of easy living, two packs of regular smokes a day, and a litre-a-day whiskey habit finally caught up with him.

Mackenzie Schwartz was reassigned to the war in Afghanistan, where she reports daily though the written word, both for her News Service employers and as a free-lance journalist.

She’s probably more man than some will ever be, and more woman than some will ever have.

Les figured that out after a while, and has also applied for a transfer.

This writer wishes them well.

 

***

 

The Hot Dog Bandit was no more. Bru didn’t really care what happened to him, but from now on there were no sharp-fingered pinch marks in the buns. Hot dog buns, hamburger buns, any kind of buns, they were all good now.

Whether the Hot Dog bandit was killed by a giant mutant ninja salamander, as the media was now calling them, was unclear and in Bru’s mind irrelevant.

For all he cared, the guy got picked up by the Detroit Tigers.

Or perhaps it was just some construction worker, headed out to Calgary or Fort McMurray. Maybe some electrician, or a pipefitter gone home to Prince Edward Island, or somewhere on the east coast. Maybe it was the Mayor. Or some guy who worked in research at Buncor. Or maybe it was some simple-minded old foreign lady, or Chief William P. O’Shaughnessey, whose body was never found. It could have been anyone, but whoever it was, they were gone—perhaps picked up in a meth lab raid somewhere, or died with a needle in their arm in some alleyway.

Maybe they got eaten. No one could say for sure.

Who cared?

Certainly not Bru.

He still had plenty of problems of his own to deal with.

It really didn’t matter to Brubaker, although he occasionally wondered if somewhere in Canada, somewhere in the world for that matter, someone was even at that exact moment going through the rack. So fresh-smelling, all warm bread and plastic, pinching every damned one of the friggin’ things.

Some poor stock boy getting blamed for it. You would think the Hot Dog Bandit would notice after a while that there is a little plastic tag, and that it has a date on it.

For them it’s not about freshness. It’s just plain ignorance. A kind of mega-abuse on a nanoscopic scale. Totally random and arbitrary.

Life isn't fair sometimes...

The fourth kind of stalker.

Certainly some people are stubborn, but there’s more to it than that.

Something sick, something evil, something menacing, something deep, and latent in their subconscious mind, deep in their very souls, something rubbing them the wrong way.

They know who they are. And life isn’t fair sometimes.

They say there is a kind of justice in the world, but sometimes you wonder.

As Chuck Brubaker once said in a letter to the editor, “You don’t need any training to be a philosopher.”

(But it might help.—ed.)

Ultimately Brubaker learned a lot about himself.

When things are going good, that is not the measure of a man. It’s when the chips are down, and the whole world seems to be against you, it’s what you do then.

That is the measure of a man.

 

***

 

Walter LaSally drove around and around and around, pushing snow across the parking lot at the Charity Casino, grateful to have won the bid for another season. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth he went.

With a pudgy little wife, three ill-behaved kids, a house, a business, people depending on him for their wages, he managed the stress by never being seen without a beer in his hand. Walter was aware that he was a little man, with a high-pitched obnoxious voice, no obvious skills, and no real education. He was trapped and he knew it. He would be cutting grass, plowing snow and drinking beer by the pool for the rest of his life.

He would be rooting for the Leafs for all of eternity, and hanging onto his own set of core values.

(And probably not getting much joy out of either one. — ed.)

He knew who he was.

In this writer’s opinion, a more perfect fate could not have befallen him.

Life has a way of taking care of all the little injustices.

END

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

"That's all, folks." - Butt Plug.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

Chapter Thirty-Four.

Chapter Thirty-Five.

Chapter Thirty-Six.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

Chapter Thirty-Nine.

Chapter Forty.

Chapter Forty-One.

Chapter Forty-Three.

Chapter Forty-Four.

Chapter Forty-Five.

Chapter Forty-Six.

Chapter Forty-Seven.

Chapter Forty-Eight.

Chapter Forty-Nine.

Chapter Fifty.

Chapter Fifty-One.

Chapter Fifty-Two.

Chapter Fifty-Three.

Chapter Fifty-Four.

 

Images. Louis. He steals them from the internet.

 

Louis has books and stories available from iTunes. He also has some art on ArtPal.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Core Values, Chapter Fifty-Four. Louis Shalako.

 

When all else fails.

 

 

Chapter Fifty-Four

 

The battle lasted for three days…

 

 

 

The battle lasted for three days, but the outcome was never in any real doubt. The giant mutant salamanders, driven by instinct and lowering water levels, had no place left to go.

It was a bloodbath. The others, good to eat as they were, were everywhere. They had sticks that made loud noises, dispensing pain and death from a distance. The elders, the big ones, soon knew that they could not win. The tragedy, the heartbreak of seeing the little ones die, calling for their mothers, was more than they could stand. It was more than a battle of survival. It was more than self-defense. It was more than a newly-learned hatred, or a war of extermination. In the end, knowing they could not win, it was a kind of vengeance.

Those who know that they will soon die, must try to take as many of their enemies as they possibly can. Acting together and thinking as one, each individual knew the true meaning of loneliness and despair at this moment. This was a moment each would face alone, in his or her own way. They huddled together and comforted their children in this time of troubles, the genocide they saw all around them. The massacre of innocents continued, even as they gathered themselves for one last push.

No one among them could have spoken what they all felt, for proper words did not exist for that.

It was the hollowest feeling inside.

A kind of disbelief. A kind of bereavement.

A sense of emptiness.

There was a coldness, an unspeakable bleakness of the soul.

Their hearts beat as one, as they slowly backed into the only space left open to them.

The path they followed was wet and slick with their own blood, and the blood of the enemy.

Finally herded into a place they could not retreat from, only a short distance from the protecting water, they made one final attack, a suicidal attack which they knew had no hope of success.

The only hope for the future was if some of them survived.

Some of their children, some of the young pregnant females must survive.

Keeping the little ones in the centre, hiding and sheltering them from the scourging fire and thunder, the pain that killed from the inside, they huddled briefly together one last time.

Communicating their thoughts to each other, drawing pictures and symbols in their minds to share, they made their plan and carried it out. Finally the small phalanx of attacking amphibians made it to the river’s edge.

They got no further.

Before the last one died, she had the satisfaction of seeing her son make it into the water, and there were several others. Seeing there was no further point to the struggle, exhausted physically, knowing it was her time to die, she turned to face the pursuers.

She waited patiently, knowing that she was going to a better place.

She had done no wrong. She had carried out her biological function to perfection. She prayed to the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens to take her away. Her sides heaved with the simple exertion of breathing.

She was a spent thing, passively expecting her fate.

She prayed for her child to grow up big and strong and that he might live in a better world. She prayed for it to be over, and she wept in her own fashion. One of the others approached her.

It would not be long now.

She had one more thing to say.

“Brubaker…”

“I’m sorry.” There was water, the precious water, streaming out of his eyes, the very windows of the soul.

She saw the torment inside of him.

“I forgive you, Brubaker.” She whispered.

She heard a loud noise and felt the things enter her body. The last thing she saw was Brubaker standing beside her, making a strange song. Somehow she knew that he prayed to the sun and the moon, perhaps even The Eternal One, just like she did.

The blackness closed in.

The horrendous pain stopped and it was all over.

 

Enough lived for a possible sequel... #lolz

 

END

 

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

Chapter Thirty-Four.

You guys know Louis is on ArtPal, link below.

Chapter Thirty-Five.

Chapter Thirty-Six.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

Chapter Thirty-Nine.

Chapter Forty.

Chapter Forty-One.

Chapter Forty-Three.

Chapter Forty-Four.

Chapter Forty-Five.

Chapter Forty-Six.

Chapter Forty-Seven.

Chapter Forty-Eight.

Chapter Forty-Nine.

Chapter Fifty.

Chapter Fifty-One.

Chapter Fifty-Two.

Chapter Fifty-Three.

 

Images. Louis. He steals them from the internet.

 

Louis has books and stories available from Amazon. He also has some art on ArtPal.

 

Thank you for reading.