The Fort

This was a short story I tweeted over three days for the #TwitterFiction Festival. I'd pitched my story to the Twitter Fiction judges before the festival, and made it to round two (of three)! Last year I didn't even get considered. I didn't make the final round this year, but maybe I will next year! Enjoy :)

CHAPTER ONE

“Bars, pubs, watering wells or whatever your word for it; always have a motley collection of regulars, kid,”

Lance had the back of the young man’s neck in a cobra clutch and had leapt over the fence of what usually constituted private space about five drinks ago.

“You have the piss drunk patrons that you can always count on to be unconscious, no matter which day and no matter what hour,” he slurred in Tiny Thulani’s ear.

“You also have the types always looking to pick up inebriated voluptuous females. The ones you wouldn’t be happy to wake up next to in the head-pounding morning.”

Tiny Thulani looked around the smoke hazed room and could identify all the unsavoury characters Lance pointed out. The unconscious one drooling on his collar but firmly clutching his beer; the borderline perverted one that was only there for the voluptuous but lacking in the pretty facial features department--

--“…and then you have the fisticuffs instigators. The ones that’ll start a fight over any debate, wrong look or slight brush of the shoulder. I’m the latter,” Lance turned and smiled at Tiny, “I love a good fight,”

Lance was the resident shit stirrer at The Fort, a dingy little bathroom corner that attracted all the kind of people he loved to shove fists down the throats of. He regularly precipitated knuckles on unsuspecting and most times, undeserving people.

Small, dirty drinking holes deprived of coats of paint, properly functioning plumbing and award winning customer service came by the dozen. But what made The Fort special was that it was one of a handful of establishments that still catered to super powered humans [one of the reasons why the pub had a ‘no frills’ policy. The Fort’s proprietor squeezed out just enough of the profits to install reinforced adamantium counters and doors; special padding and easily reassembling furniture, because fights were commonplace among supers. The bottles and pitchers however, remained glass].

“Since I’m out of conventional employment, I spend most of my days here!” Lance said spilling a little brew on his listener’s sleeve. He practically lived at The Fort.

Things had not always been so grim. About ten years ago, Lance was a celebrated superhero and he’d spent his days foiling super villainy and fighting in the pantheon of champions like Stronghold of the Power Squad! and the Tenaka Twins in Japan. The world sang their praises and built statues in their honour. But all that is now just a stain on humanity’s collective conscious.

CHAPTER TWO

Unlike the pretty picture pop-culture will sell you, superheroes aren’t always nice people. There were ‘incidents’ people no longer spoke of; incidents that led to the policing of all supers and passing of legislation that strictly prohibited the use of powers--supernatural or otherwise--if it wasn’t in the service of respective governments. All vigilantes were arrested and sometimes even executed. Heroes for hire and their unions were disbanded and unfair taxes and fines imposed on them. Those that hid their tails between their legs and enlisted for national service were the few that remained ‘heroes’. Not even a whisper of super criminals and villains passed the lips of people. They were dealt an even harsher blow.

Lance and others like him refused a life of forced servitude. They vehemently opposed the new legislation and chose to live away from the newly prescribed society. They formed little communities that resembled ghettos and were policed regularly by drones and armoured humans. Places like The Fort were a kind of refuge.

“I still wear this uniform as a sign of honour, Tiny” Lance said with palpable nostalgia. He held his beer mug as if searching its contents for a particular memory.

“WE WERE GLADIATORS, KID!” He’d gotten up with one boot on the bar stool and another on the counter, leaning toward the bar like a triumphant hunter with a foot on the neck of his trophy. Tiny Thulani was nervous.

“The people would come out to watch us do battle with monstrosities cooked up from the darkest labs and lairs!” Lance was beating his chest and spilling beer all over the counter, “The people braved flying debris and even harmful radiation to watch us triumph over evil!”

Lance paused, “Until they became the evil…”

“Ah, Ba Lance naimwe! Spare us the sob stories! We’ve heard it all before,” said Chilu, the hero formerly known as, Ember.

Lance turned to look at Chilu. He didn’t like to be interrupted.

“Mind your own business, Ember! I wasn’t addressing your face!”

“Get over it, you bum!” Chilu replied, “We all have! Get a real job. Maybe even start a family and sentence someone else to this punishing story time you inflict on us daily!”

The Fort erupted in laughter.

“So I can grow up to be just like you, huh, Ember?”

“I don’t go by that anymore,”

“BECAUSE YOU LIVE A FAÇADE!” shouted Lance. “At least I stay true to myself! You all just took on different masks! You became a bloody accountant for goodness sake, Ember!”

The Fort was silent.

“You all cowered and pretended we never fought for any ideals. Like we didn’t symbolize anything. Like we were all just merry men in tights prancing around for the cameras! Dammit, we inspired the very sheep that turned into wolves on us and forced us into this dirty little corner! Why should we live like we never mattered?”

“So what do you suggest we do, Lance?” said Chilu, “Start a revolution? Isn't this the same guy that takes part in that barbaric Friday night fight club? Tearing at each other for peanuts and the entertainment of brain-dead individuals!”

“I do what I need to, to keep food on my table and keep the ZESCO on,”

“What you need to do is go home, you bum. You’re drunk and pissing allover our solace,” Chilu said.

Lance got down from his stool and walked over to Chilu’s table. His drunken act seemed to have subsided and it looked like his anger had burnt all the alcohol in his blood. Chilu stood up and towered over Lance. The two stood toe to toe and stared each other down.

CHAPTER THREE

“Or do you not have a home?”

The patrons of The Fort correctly predict it, but they didn’t actually see Lance’s fist connect with Chilu’s jaw. It happened so fast it would make a bolt of lightning cower in shame.

Chilu was knocked across the room, crashing through tables and breaking beer bottles in his path. Lance then lunged at him and received a concentrated heat blast from Chilu’s palms; his hands glowing in a fierce red and giving a visual anecdote of how he’d earned the name, Ember. Lance didn’t notice the flames on his beloved uniform jacket. All he could see in his mind were his fists making contact with Chilu’s face and landscaping his facial features. The flames did little to harm Lance’s skin; his power was near invulnerability. The heat blast intensified and flung a toasty Lance towards Tiny Thulani. Tiny shrunk to the size of a shot glass and dodged his frying friend.

Lance picked up the shrunken Tiny and leapt at Chilu again, dodging flares as he charged on. He grabbed Chilu by his throat and forcefully shoved his miniature friend down Chilu’s oesophagus.

“GROW!” Lance commanded Tiny.

What sounded like a muffled protest could be heard from the shrinking-man inside Chilu’s neck.

“I’ll do worse than that if you don’t! Now GROW dammit!”

A lump began to grow from the flame thrower’s throat, choking him in the process. He clutched his neck and streamed saliva from the sides of his mouth. Lance and the rest of The Fort watched, both in disgust and crude amusement. Chilu placed his palm on the growing lump and sent a pint-size heat wave through his neck. Tiny Thulani jumped out of the mouth he’d been forced down wailing in pain and growing back to full size by the time he hit the ground. His clothes were sizzling and patches of his skin had scalded.

Chilu coughed and spewed out his last beer, tasting the trail of Tiny’s travels that day since his boots had been on his tongue. He placed his hand on the adamantium counter top and sent his rage through his palms. Lance had not noticed this and blindly went in for a head-butt. Chilu side-stepped to dodge the blow and palmed the back of Lance’s head. He then bashed the head in his palm onto the sweltering hot counter top and sent a fiery fury down Lance’s ear.

“You tried to kill me, you asshole!” raged Chilu.

Lance’s face began to smoke and even his near invulnerability would soon not be able to take the solar flare of Chilu’s hands.

Before Lance could retaliate, the two former heroes received crippling shocks of electricity from two very large bouncers. “No fighting,” they said simultaneously.

 The fighters both got up on one knee and looked at each other. “You bastard, you ruined my jacket!” said Lance, “You ruined my friggin’ jacket!”

Chilu said nothing and wiped the blood from his swollen lip. He lit his index finger and lightly burned the cut in his lip closed.

Superheroes and their abilities vary. Some may be invulnerable or are able to take immense amounts of pain; but even they got their feelings hurt. Their words had cut through the cigarette smoke and smell of hard liquor. Lance and Chilu; both tired from the fighting and the current state of their world dusted themselves off. Each man had spoken the truth, neither more truthful than the other. Each man cut deep. Their physical wounds would heal at an accelerated rate, but both were yet to heal from the wounds humanity had inflicted on them so long ago.

The music continued to play and in a few minutes, the pub was buzzing like nothing had happened. It was just another Thursday evening at, The Fort.

THE END

Days of a Not-So-Distant Future Past

In the not-so distant-future, society would have visited every possible destination on the planet. Every nook and cranny, every crevice of the earth will have been a holiday destination or the subject of a tale of adventure and exploration. Man’s curiosity will have led him to the fiery pits of hell if there is promise of a new tourist attraction accompanied by a discount on travel costs and accommodation. But as with all things man touches, he will soon become bored with it all.

 “It’s not the same!” adventurers and tourists will wail, “Our curiosity just isn’t piqued anymore”. Curiosity will have already killed the cat and mad scientists will bring it back to life, and then in their spare time, provide man with alternative tourist destinations and activities. Virgin Galactic will face stiff competition from low cost carriers making no frills space trips and the future of travel will be brighter than the supernova you may see on a future Christmas day.  Here are a few popular destinations and activities that we might see somewhen:

 Nc’wala Traditional Ceremony  - February 20X5

Long ago, on their escape from the ruthless Zulu king, Shaka, the Ngoni people searched for arable land and engaged in fierce battles with the many tribes they came across. On their trek towards what we now refer to as Zambia, they left the southern most parts of Africa spattered with blood, and integrated weaker tribes into their settlements, diluting only their dialect but never their warrior spirit.

For decades the Nc’wala ceremony has been a celebration of their victories and the harvests of their bountiful pastures. In the not-so-distant future tourists will relive the battles through realistic holograms and eyeball exploding virtual reality technology. For a minimal fee, they shall experience the sights and smells of the original battles and be a part of the actual thanksgiving ceremony afterward. They could gain an authentic appreciation for the Ngoni customs or opt for a less vivid experience and just enjoy the vigorous dancing by the animal skin clad warriors.

The Zambian Art Gallery, Asteroid 1964 – Octember 20X5

Free land and real estate will be hard to come by in the not-so-distant future, so an innovative group of artists will curate and amass a definitive collection of Mother Zambia’s arts and cultural heritage, displaying it all in a gallery built on an asteroid that flies close to earth every 50 years. Its passing is an event the entire planet will look forward to and a once in a lifetime chance to see stunning works of art from memorable periods in Zambia.

Little boys with their orballoons, souvenir t-shirts and wonder-filled eyes will clutch their grand parents' hands tight as they weave through the halls of the world's most marvellous gallery. Universities will offer scholarships to budding art students and usher them to the asteroid on raggedy space buses. Struggling artists will boycott this event as another injustice to them and claim it is a commercialised exploitation of our heritage.

Regardless of the 'true artist's' opinion on exploitation, all will agree that the art housed and displayed on Asteroid 1964 is work that even the gods have always been in awe of. Unbelievably realistic Wood carvings, sculptures and visually breathtaking paintings; all visages of time's immortal memory of Zambian culture will flash across the earth's sky, painting a fiery streak on the planet's canvas. It will be stellar to say the least.

The Fiftieth Annual Jozi Film Festival – February 20X5

The Fiftieth Annual Jozi Film Festival will take place every February 30th in South Africa, showcasing the very best in filmmaking and presenting a multi-genre slate of films from emerging and seasoned filmmakers. From conscious films to passion projects, topics will touch on issues that affect our communities and will be awe inspiring.

Technological advancements will have made film making a lot easier and given those who dare to imagine a platform to create wonderful pictures. 5 dimensional films will be pioneered in South Africa, and Zambian cinema will be a festival favourite because of its attention to aesthetics.

The holographic erotica of France will have been scrapped from the program long ago because of its provocative nature, but one French artist will sneak a surprise into one of the screening rooms and earn himself some admiration and notoriety amongst his peers for his bravery. The Jozi Film Council will consider readmitting these holographic films into one of the festival categories. The matter will come up for hearing on a chosen future date.

International films will be screened over a three-day period at several venues throughout the country, including The Bioscope Independent Cinema in Johannesburg.

The Lost City of Atlantis

Too good a tale to be kept only in the imagination of lovers of mythology, pseudo historians and fringe scientists will come together to create the wonderful underwater paradise of Atlantis.

With its aquatic wonders, the carefully constructed city will attract more than a million visitors a year. Housed in an airtight transparent dome will be an architectural marvel that will shame even the Taj Mahal.  Exotic bricks and marvellous glass walls will be imported from around the world to build it. The entire structure will be self sustaining and run on 1000 Aquamegawatts of powerful hydroelectric power.

The attraction will come complete with bizarre marine life and even its own Merpeople. Some will say the Merpeople are genetically engineered specifically to dwell in this man-made wonder, but the sceptics will say they're just costumed kids willing to do anything for minimum wage. Still, there will be no denying the magic of the place. Gigantic multi coloured fish will swim around Atlantis's protective dome and provide the stuff of marine biologists' wettest dreams. Flash photography will not be permitted because it will scare and aggravate the aquatic denizens. The mermaids will be very popular with male visitors.

 Sunny Siavonga

Aside from a better road network and a dedicated airport, nothing much will change in Siavonga in the not-so-distant future. Conservationists will decide to keep this little slice of Zambia free from wretched metal technology and its pollution. Its sandy beaches will be a relaxing tourist destination and its beautiful sunsets the muse for countless poems. This will become one of the few places on earth where you can spot some hippos and if you’re lucky, you might even get mauled by a crocodile!

Families will enjoy boat cruises and take tours with the locals to remember what Zambia was like long ago. The tweens will bitch about how the boats do not travel as fast as the WaterFly 3000 or transform mid-cruise into a submarine, like the WaterFly 3000, and that the worst thing about Siavonga is that it does not have a single WaterFly 3000. A few vacations will be ruined by this constant wining, but none of it will take away from the serene beauty of sunny, shiny-metal-free Siavonga.

Image courtesy of Wallpapers Acknowledgement Portal

Mr. Blow Kills Again

“Aaand we’re back! If you’re just joining us, I have here on the show with me, Steven Pee-ri! I finally got it right, didn’t I?”

“Hehe, yes, you did.”

“I mean, your name isn’t the easiest to pronounce! Well, it is, but reading it you’d think it’s pronounced, Firi! Because, you know, it’s spelt, P-H-I-R-I.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mike. I have been getting that a lot since I started travelling around Europe and America,” replied Steven in his Zambian accent.

Mike Stone turned to camera one and spoke to the audience at home, “If you’ve been living under a rock for the last three years or so, Steven is the bestselling author of, Assassin Rising.  A page turner of a book about a brutal freelance assassin, who in his spare time, is a friggin’ aspiring author!”

Steven Smiled.

“How ever did you come up with a concept like that, Stevie? Mind if I call you, Stevie?”

“Not at all,” said Steven shifting in the couch next to the host’s desk, “I quite literally stumbled upon it. I think it was the Italian artist, Michelangelo that said about his stone sculptures, ‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.’ I found this unfortunate scene at the hotel and I saw a potential story in it.”

Steven Phiri had literally stumbled upon his now world famous story. He had been a cleaner at a five star hotel in the backyard of high society’s streets. It didn’t pay much, but it helped him fund his education at a local college. He went about his work in the same half-assed manner millennials at the older end of the scale carry out their mundane tasks. But sometimes, on a good day, he would come across something valuable on the floors or in the crevices of the overly priced hotel rooms.

The occasional hundred dollar bill, used condoms, traces of cocaine or marijuana, gold chains and sometimes even semi-new clothes were some of the items he would find. He and the other cleaners would fight regularly to take on recently vacated plush hotel suites because they knew there could be hidden treasures within them. You could say Steven found a diamond in the rough.

“So you found this bloody scene in a hotel room you were cleaning, and you were inspired to write a book based on it,” Mike Stone asked, fingertips touching and elbows resting on his desk, “most people would be horrified by such a thing!”

“For a while I was truly horrified,” replied Steven. This probably being the only true statement he would make on the Stone Cold Show that night. “But people deal with trauma in different ways. My process was through story telling. I thought,” he said with his eyes looking up at the studio ceiling, as if the perfect lie or quotable were written there in bold, “How can I turn this tragedy...into triumph?”

“Admirable!” said Mike in that vaguely sarcastic tone late night TV show hosts employ. “Isn’t that absolutely admirable, folks?”

The studio’s ‘APPLAUSE’ light box lit up and the audience obliged enthusiastically.

On that fateful day at the hotel, Steven had rolled in the hand trolley with his cleaning supplies like he always did. He was playing soft music in his earphones like he always did, and he set out to raid the room of misplaced valuables like he always did. Because Lost and Found be damned, he figured. Once a suite was vacated, the area became his domain for the duration of his cleaning process and whatever he found was rightly his. He felt the universe owed him something for all the nasty messes he had to clean and wipe up. But no pot pourri scented multi-surface cleaner would have been enough to clean and wipe up the nasty mess he came across that day.

“I’m sure the people in the audience and the folks at home are just dying to hear you read an exciting excerpt from your book! Why don’t you grace us with a little something, Stevie?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Steven smiled, leafed through a copy of Assassin Rising and cleared his throat:

Roman was the type of mark I actually relished killing. I’d told myself long ago not to derive pleasure from my work, but there was a certain satisfaction that came with stopping the pulse of a fat parasite like him. I felt that I was doing society a favour.

I’d watched his place for weeks and knew his routine like the back of my glove. In my profession, even though you always showed up unannounced, you still had to set an appointment. And even though the party on the other end of that appointment didn’t know you would be visiting, you wanted them there when you arrived.

I could have used a muzzled 9mm pistol, a knife or even poisoned the burley leach, but I wanted to hear the saliva curdle in his throat while I choked the air out of his clogged lungs with my wire. I wanted his end to come slow and painfully. I wanted to rob him of his life the same way he robbed so many poor bastards just trying to make an honest living.

Roman didn’t see me coming. I was death in the flesh. He had collected millions in racketeering and ‘protection’ dollars, and now I had collected from him too. I had collected on his life.

Steven rummaged through the room carefully and methodically, turning over each pillow and throw, patting down the sheets of the queen-sized bed. He scanned the carpet for any tiny jewellery and checked the room’s closet for anything remotely valuable. He picked up a thick manuscript from the bedside table and tucked it under his trolley, naive to the fact that what he had just tucked away would propel him to superstardom and overrated bestseller lists.

He almost gagged when he walked into the bathroom to find a very hairy man sprawled naked in a tub of blood. Steven froze at the entrance in disbelief, staring at the blood smeared hand prints on the tiled wall and little puddles of blood-water on the floor. He’d seen dead bodies before, but they hadn’t been ragdoll contorted and this gruesome. Before he knew what he was doing, he was lifting the furry dead man’s hands and checking for rings. The thud from the lifeless arm dropping on the side of the bathtub sent him flying toward the toilet bowl and heaving his noodle breakfast.

The police questioned him for weeks and he was in therapy for about the same period. Every so often he would have a nightmare about the dead man coming alive and pulling him into the bloody abyss of the tub. He had almost forgotten about the manuscript he had found at the crime scene. Handing it to the police was out of the question. Unless he wanted to be grilled further and raise his prospects of being a murder suspect.

“That made the hairs on the back of my neck stand! You can actually FEEL the assassin’s emotion!” shouted Mike Stone. One could never tell if he was genuinely excited or he was just faking his enthusiasm.

“That is what I was going for,” said Steven, “I wanted to convey the same depth of emotion that I had felt when I found that body, except repackaged in a different form.”

The manuscript was filled with post-its and annotations on almost all its pages. Little notes were made by its author to remind him to change some bits to make his ties to the gruesome tales inside less obvious. How a world class professional assassin had left this gem lying around at a crime scene was unfathomable. This book was no work of fiction, it read like a chapter by chapter confession of a hired assassin. Fake passports, disguises and stakeouts had never seemed so real. The world had to see this.

Steven read it cover to cover multiple times before finally pitching it to a few publishing houses. Of course a number of them turned him down, but one of them was bound to take the book on. He worked with several editors and made various changes and grammatical corrections, but essentially it remained the same. As soon as Assassin Rising hit the book shelves, Steven feared for his life.

He didn’t make any public appearances when the book was propelled to the New York Times bestseller list for months on end. He instead went into a paranoid spiral and surrounded himself with a security team and even food tasters. For a whole year, his dread of the author whose original story he had stolen added to his mystique and the book only sold more copies. People were intrigued by this man from Africa that had written a literally heart stopping book and chose to remain out of the public eye. He only began to feel safe after roughly two years had gone by.

He still suspected it would all come crashing down on him. He thought maybe the assassin would come forward and confess his murders, telling the world what a fraud Steven Phiri was and that the balance of the universe would finally teeter against him. So he occasionally made large donations to charities, giving him a false sense of the universe starting to totter in his favour.

“The big question now is: what’s next for Stevie Pee-ri?” Mike Stone said excitedly.

Steven smiled and crossed his legs, “I can’t speak on it just yet, but I have a new book in the works. People will just have to wait and see.”

“I can hardly wait! Well ladies and gentlemen, that’s all from us today! Look up Assassin Rising on Amazon, do yourself a favour and buy yourself a friggin’ copy! It’s to die for! Good night!”

The audience applauded and the studio lights dimmed as the credits rolled on the screens of the viewers at home. Steven made some small talk with Mike Stone and then made his way to his dressing room with no bodyguard or security in tow. He’d began to feel a lot safer after three years.

“I guess I really should be thanking you. You got my book to number one and that’s really something.”

Steven wished he still had an army of bodyguards standing outside the dressing room. He had never heard that voice before, but he knew without a shred of doubt that the universe was cashing its cheque.

“I’d tried for ages to get my work to a willing publisher, but they all thought my story wasn’t real enough. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“...I—listen –I – I’m terribly sorry... things just got out of control,” Steven wept.

“You stole from me,” the assassin said.

“....”

“I suppose there was nothing you could do. It’s not like I had left a number that you could reach me on, ‘Hey! I made millions of dollars off your work, I just thought you might like to share some of this money!’ My fault really, I shouldn't have been carrying my manuscript with me.”

“I cou—I could write you a cheque right now!” Steven sobbed.

“I don’t want your money,” the assassin said tearing a few pages from what originally was his book. He wore a black suit and tie that were so dark they absorbed any light in the room and complimented the emotionless look he had on his face.

“I’ve been waiting for the right moment,” the assassin said stuffing a page down Steven’s throat, “Patiently stalking the shadows and waiting for you to let your guard down. Patience is such a virtue,” another page. And another page. And another. Soon Steven had half-swallowed a whole chapter and his eyes had rolled back in his head, tears and mucus streaming down his face.

The assassin turned and left the room. He still had a page in one hand and he let it fall to the floor. It read:

As dark as the contents of this book are, it is still my wish that they should see the light of day. Death and murder are not matters that should be taken lightly, nor matters that the world would receive with open arms. But it is my twisted, and yet sincere hope that people will read about the good I have done; that they will look upon my work not as evil, but as a service to humanity. I hope that they will see that even though I am death in the flesh, I am an agent of the universe, restoring order and balance.

THE END

Benny Blow is a retired assassin with a penchant for fiction and offing publishers that reject his work. Follow him on Twitter, @Benny_blow.

Bridesmaids: Shotgun Wedding

I wrote this piece for a bridal magazine that was due to come out early this year. But due to circumstances beyond my control, the magazine did not get off the ground. I sent it to another established magazine, but I guess they didn't like fiction. I couldn't just sit on it, so I thought I might publish it here:

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! Stuff like that doesn't happen! Especially here!”’

“I’m telling you! I heard this from a reliable source! A source under the influence of alcohol, but a reliable source nonetheless.”

“Buy anyone of the many bandits in this town a cocktail or two and they'll tell you enough gossip and fiction to make a movie and two bad sequels!”

All the bridesmaids burst out laughing at this. Their laughter made for the perfect image you could sometimes find in the mystic land of billboards. The photographer gave little instruction, the girls were naturals. Not to mention the fact that he was relishing the tales of the gun toting, wedding crashing bridesmaids.

“These wedding crashing bridesmaids obviously couldn't crash the Sata’s wedding at Pamodzi. I hear they seriously beefed up security at the hotel. Armoured limo, double the bodyguards and a strict guest list too.”

“I heard it wasn't even at Pamodzi. Heard those pictures were taken for the media and the actual location was secret!”

They laughed again. The camera snapped.

“Oh snap! I heard they left the guests at the last wedding they crashed with absolutely nothing. They got jewels, wrist watches, rings, nose rings, piercings, cufflinks, and even clothing! They took EVERYTHING!”

“What? Imagine having to see your father-in-law in his undergarments at your wedding!”

The camera snapped some more.

“More embarrassing than funny, you guys.”

“What the hell would they do with slightly used suits and dresses anyway?”

“Probably sell them. I hear they only hit up ma wedding yaba ‘upper mwamba’. Those tuxedos could fetch something reasonable even if they've been worn before.”

“But surely, how could they get away with all that and nobody protested or alerted the police? I find all this hard to believe.”

“Obviously they confiscated everyone’s phones first. And I don't know what you're on about; I know it doesn't take much to convince you to strip. You and mister best man over there.”

The ladies giggled and watched the groomsmen as they posed for their photos on the beautifully kempt lawn across from where they were. The Southern Sun always had bridal parties snapping pictures on weekends like this. The water fountains and green grass in front of the hotel made for some memorable pictures.

“And it was such a memorable experience. I’d gladly strip for him again!”

The photographer shifted his angle.

“What’s their angle?-- Steal from the rich and all? And what type of women carry guns and rob people?”

“The type that lead police through high speed car chases. They must have some serious motive. Terminally ill children in need of life saving surgery? Or maybe knee deep dept.”

“More like a deeply rooted psychological problem. Someone told me that they're doing this out of spite. That they can't stand to see other brides happy after their own weddings went to hell.”

“What happened?”

“Word is, one of them had gone against the wishes of her tyrannical father. All in the name of true love! But sadly, true love didn't show up at the altar. He took a big cheque from the father and split.”

“Aww, that’s so sad!”

“Yeah. Bridesmaid number two had invested her life savings on a lavish wedding. Ice sculptures, wedding planners… the works! She found her groom with her chief bridesmaid in bed on their wedding night.”

They all went silent feeling a little sorry for the urban legendary bridesmaids.

“If I didn't think it was all an urban legend, I would shed a tear! Come now! Let’s get on with our own wedding. Our blushing bride just signaled us to leave.”

They all treaded lightly on the lawn, afraid their long, thin heels might sink into the soil. Each bridesmaid reached her groomsman and hooked her arm around his. The bridal party walked to their motorcade and they were off for the wedding reception.

Before the first car could exit the premises of the Southern Sun, an armoured truck pulled up and blocked the exit. Two pretty young ladies leapt out of the vehicle and stood on top of its roof. They each pointed double-barrel shotguns at the bridal party and grinned maniacally.

Benny Blow is professional wedding crasher and aspiring writer. Read about his real life adventures here and follow him on Twitter @Benny_blow.

Illustrated by London ‘Lo’ Kamwendo, professional wedding cake taster and cartoonist. See more drawings on his blog here and follow him on Twitter @inkerblood.

A Prelude to The tale of mighty Siavonga Music Festival

BIGINNEN

I'd been looking forward to this event since the last rains, and the day had finally come. Last year, I was at the Kariba Music Festival for but a night and I had resolved to gorge on the festivities in their entirety this time around. My tribe had assembled and our brother, Yosa ferried us to the land of sun and sand in his metal chariot.

I still did not have my press permit and I needed to meet with one Dan Hartwright to rectify this. My email attempts had been futile, but I was still determined.

We arrived at the mighty Eagle’s Rest just as the blistering sun was setting, and Karen, overseer of the fabled lodge, saw to it that we had a place to rest our heads. Brother Dabz and I would be resting in a tent by the lakeside. But sleep was for the weak. We were weekend warriors; we were there to feast and be merry, to dance to the sounds of the bandsmen and women! We were there to be mighty!

As we marvelled at the beauty of the beach, friend Mutale, an acquaintance of brother Dabz told us the tale of his time there last year. He was looking forward to hearing the enchanting music of Mumba Yachi.

“I was drunk and sleeping at around 4 AM, in a Ford right over there, and I heard Mumba Yachi playing. I was like, ‘What IS that sound?’”.

Mumba Yachi’s sound is deeply rooted in traditional Zambian music. His ballads had even me, who is more inclined toward the music of the west, anticipating his set.

The people had already begun to sip on their ales when Pompi, the Giant Killer was executing his sound check.  “The keyboard artist needs more vocals... We can hear more of the instruments than our own voices,” he said sending commands to the stagemen. The brew-thirsty crowd demanded more music and called for an encore. The Giant Killer obliged.

The stars studded the sky and J-bus officially struck up the acquaintance with, ‘Nice to know ya’. The crowd had multiplied in number and danced merrily to the reggae sounds of J-Bus as the stage strobe lights stroked their sunburnt skin.

“WE LOVE YOU, MUMBA YACHI!” was the call from some nubile female in the audience. Clearly his song and act was the stuff of legend. The stagemen employed their sorcery and a cloud of smoke floated up from behind Mumba while he strummed his guitar and told the tale behind his song, ‘Tute’. It was a metaphor for how like cassava, some relationships can be bitter to taste.

Brother Dabz spewed something about music I cannot quite recall. It was mostly inaudible and my mind would drift to the bodies on the sandy beach. Unbeknownst to us, the Poet PilAto was also among us.  “I just want to be here as one of the people,” he told me. He would not be performing at the festival this year. He was not dressed in his usual performance attire, and if not for his black bear-size beard, I would not have recognised him.

Sometime before the witching hour, a three man band took the chaflet. They played a trance inducing form of rock, whose techno-colour sounds you could almost see. The lead came from a bearded man playing some mystic instrument. Shamus of Shamrock, whom I had met many moons ago at the Siavonga Canoe Challenge informed me that this instrument was an electric violin and that the men hailed from Southern Africa. They answered to the name, Albino Beach.

Albino beach cared not who was awake at that hour. They played on until I stumbled into our tent and yielded to the sandman. Karen the overseer had handed me my scribe’s permit by then. She had managed to acquire it from Dan, he whose Heart is Right. The next day had more in store.

The Mystic Mumba Yachi

Benny Blow is a weekend warrior that has never lost a fight to a bear or beer. Follow his tales on twitter HERE, and read of his adventures on The Best of Zambia HERE.

You can read the entire tale HERE and see the pictures I took HERE.

Detective Benny Blow and the Curious Case of the Character Assassin

INTRODUCTION

The second annual Twitter fiction festival ran from the 12th to the 16th of March this year and this story here was my entry. The idea is to use Twitter functionality to tell bite size stories over the duration of the festival. People from around the world took part and hundreds of authors showcased their amazing talents. Search #TwitterFiction or visit the site here.

I'd always wanted to write a hardboiled detective story, film noir has a certain gritty appeal to it. The Twitter fiction festival seemed like a perfect place to do it seeing as I had the #TwitterPolice hashtag. I'd taken a slightly more serious tone with this story; the #TwitterPolice was usually me busting people for committing so called crimes on the network. Hope you like it!

The sky seemed to constantly weep those days; like a broad whose heart had been broken with a sledgehammer. It was always raining around these parts. I was pretty certain our little social network was lodged in the drain of the big blue, because all we got was dirty bathwater. And rightly so, the timelines had become a mess.

Twitter was overrun with Facebook scum that peddled bad bios; Instagram divas that flaunted soft porn and nut cases that still thought cat videos were funny. The grammar Nazis were a link away from going holocaust on the lowlifes with poor spelling and people’s accounts were getting hacked with an axe that could split the whiskers of an alley cat. We needed some kind of regulation.

The #TwitterPolice had been set up to create sort order on this forsaken network, but that was like making a spider monkey ringmaster in circus of gorillas. Everyone had gone ape shit, or app shit if you will. The police had no jurisdiction here. They couldn't keep the sTWEETs safe. I had to quit the force as soon as I got my detective shield.

I wasn't calling for censorship, not at all. All I wanted was to scroll down my timeline without having to worry about some two-bit robot asking me if I wanted to be in a Justin Bieber video. Memes were funny at one time, but now memes made me want to maim someone. All I wanted to do was meet interesting people, maybe DM a dame and meet her in person. All I got was more spam than the canned food section.

I decided that I would play by my own rules; a lone gunman enforcing the justice that once prevailed when that little blue bird first left its nest and tweeted. I greatly admired The Batman, but I wasn't about to become a vigilante. At least not yet. I decided I was going to go into the private dick game.

I still believed there were some good people out there; people that would need a shamus to right a few wrongs when they had no one else left. I didn't get many cases. Half the time I was hired to find out just who the hell #oomf was.

Being a private detective meant the pay was crappy. I would live on a shoe string budget, wearing battered shoes to dates and I could barely foot the bill. It didn't bother me though; most of these broads were total heels anyway. Until SHE walked in.

She walked into my office with the aura of one of those Greek goddesses. If I was a lesser man, I would have apologised for my cheap furniture and humble workspace. I could smell the wealth on her perfume, and her body was a work of art that would have Zeus himself in thunderous applause. She was mythology in motion.

“Can I take a seat?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said lighting a cigarette. “But only if you’ll return the heart you just stole.”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind. What can I do you for?”

“I have a problem,” she said.

“You and every other person on this network, doll.”

“Well I’m not used to this sort of thing. I didn't ask for any of it.”

“Ask? You don’t seem like the type that needs to. Let me ask you something, where's your shield?"

"What shield?"

"I imagine you have to carry a shield to defend yourself from all the gifts and compliments men throw at you?”

“Are you always this charming?”

“Are you always this smashing?”

Our eyes met. They locked in what seemed like an eternal waltz. It’s a shame I had two left feet.

She tore away her gaze and looked down shyly at her clutch purse, “I have a sensitive issue. Someone has been trying to make me look bad online and I don’t like it one bit.”

“An assassin,” I said pulling my cigarette.

“Yes. He’s been posting nudes of me. I suspect it’s my ex. Please get to the bottom of it and put a stop to it at once.”

“Sure thing. I charge twenty twitter credits by the hour, plus expenses.”

“Money is no object Mr. Blow,” she said as she rose from her seat, “I just want this to pass.”

I watched her as she walked to the door. I hated to see her leave, but...you know the rest.

“Wait. I didn't get your name...”

“It’s, Belle,” she sang, “shouldn't be hard to find the pictures if you search me,” she said smiling.

It wasn't long before I found a trail of the pictures online, sleazy hashtags akin to the #BoityReaction not too long ago. I could understand the allure of it all though. Belle had one banging body; gun fights had nothing on her. The tattoo on her thigh had me staring at her pictures longer than I should have. I had to take a shower before I left my office.

If there was anyone that could get me on the right trail, it was Scribe, the bio peddler. He sold Twitter bios to users that couldn't create their own or just wanted something fancier than the usual ‘fun and down to earth’. I couldn't knock his act. A man did what he had to keep the lights on and his phone charged.

‘The type to cuddle afterwards’; ‘I’m the comic relief in this movie we call life’; ‘You don’t need to use protection on your tweets, I’m safe’; a lot of those bios were quite interesting. All sorts of people came to Scribe for his little epithets, so he was bound to know something.

“Belle? Never heard of her,” Scribe said with a straight face.

I lit a cigarette. “A wise guy huh? Funny. Last one I asked lost his wisdom teeth.”

“Oh yeah! #TinkerBelle! Smoking hot!” he said wiping his brow. “What’s a copper like you want with a dame like that?”

“Working her case. She’d like the perves to back off. That can only happen if I find the slimeball that started this.”

“So whuchu come to me for? I sell bios, I don’t know nothin’ about no softporn!”

I took a long drag of my smoke and looked Scribe square in the eye.

He couldn't meet my gaze. “Alright! Alright! All I know is she had a falling out with her ex and he’d threatened to post the flicks!”

“Thanks for your help. Now beat it. Don’t let me catch you peddling that crap here again.”

This ex guy had a great motive. Dumped by a girl whose body could be the cause of world thirst, and so got back at her by plastering her nude online. Made a lot of sense. But I didn't expect that he’d be a reformed Christian; a bible basher with constant motivational tweets. He sure was spreading some kinda gospel.

Dames’ll tell you all men are dogs. I couldn't agree more and I couldn't agree less. Most chumps are territorial. So it was no wonder Belle’s ex tried to mark his spot.

Motivational Mo, they called him. Followers in the thousands and some quotes I could actually agree with. But I could never trust a man that wore a suit from Tuesday to Tuesday. His act came off clean as a whistle. I just wondered if he would come clean on the dirty pictures he posted.

I had to stake out his account and wait for him to come back from a campaign. ‘No reTWEET, no surrender’ they’d dubbed it. Apparently it was an effort to sensitise people on how retweets were actually endorsements. And if you endorsed worldly things, let’s just say God wasn't going to favourite your tweets.

“Please, smoking is not allowed here,” he told me as I put a smoke to my mouth.

I shoved it back into my coat and told him why I was there.

“Belle, you know her?”

“I knew her. I knew her when I still walked in the wilderness. And now that I walk in the light, I regret having certain knowledge of her. The body is the Lord's temple.”

“Knowledge is power. Why’d ya do it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, friend.”

“I’m not your friend, pal.”

“Then we have nothing to speak about,” he said.

I’d never hit a man in glasses. Too bad for Mo, he wasn't wearing any. He and I weren't friends, but his face and my fist were now well acquainted. And soon we were speaking like old buddies.

“I swear to you! I didn't post the pictures! I did ask Scribe if he knew someone who could do it for me, but he was no help!”

“So you helped yourself?” I asked letting go of his bloodied collar. “What pushed you over the edge though? Was it the tattoo? Had she desecrated The Lord’s temple?”

“What tattoo?”

And those were his last words. Because as soon as he spoke, Motivational Mo met the business end of a bullet.

I recoiled and pulled out my Colt .38 all in one motion. She was the only dame I had ever trusted, and she was louder than my mother with a bottle of wine on Christmas Eve. When she spoke, people went dead silent.

Mo’s shooter sent more lead hornets my way. A couple of inches closer and I would have been stung. My lady had something to say about that. I fired three rounds and ducked behind a table. Unfortunately the shooter had already buzzed off.

Mo was dead now and I couldn't pin the guy on intent to post pictures. Plus Scribe’s word wasn't as good as that of the gospel so I needed something as solid as St. Peter. I picked up Mo’s phone and took off. The fuzz would be there soon.

Every man, no matter how low on the totem pole they are, has an ego. Some egos have been beaten into dark and dirty corners, but they’re still present. You just have to throw the right scraps at them to feed them.

I told the Joe at the internet café down on Cairo that I was part of a special task force trying to eliminate social network spam and phishing. I told him our inspector general believed in this Joe but I needed to know whether he was worth any salt.

Half a bottle of Jack and a sluggish internet connection later, this guy had shown me more than enough. All the trending topics in this part of town for the last three months and Motivational Mo’s paperless trail.

Turns out Mo had deactivated a previous Twitter account and then set up a current one. Funny thing was he did that about a year ago, but the Joe showed me the old account had tweeted the pics around the time #TinkerBelle was trending. That was only weeks ago. Something wasn't quite adding up. There was obviously ‘Mo’ to this story.

Light showers, drizzles, precipitation, rain; whatever you wanted to call it, it never stopped. Sunshine was foreign around these parts, but Belle was a close substitute.

I could hear her long heels tapping the pavement as she ran through the rain and reached my car. She quickly flung the door open and hopped into the passenger’s with the grace of a cat. Her trench coat was dripping with the tears of the sky and the seat made a great shoulder.

Lightning tore up the sky and someone in the heavens drummed something to usher the light show. My ashtray was only half full, so Belle hadn't kept me waiting long. She knew how to make an entrance.

“Do you have something for me, detective,” she said with her eyes wrenching the life out of me.

“That depends. Do you want the bad news or the bad news?”

“Give me the bad news.”

“Well, your guy got bumped last night. It’ll probably be all over the newsfeeds soon.”

“Oh my Lord,” she said gasping.

“Yeah. And I couldn't get much out of him. Trying to interrogate his corpse was a dead end.”

“That is highly inappropriate, detective!”

“Not as inappropriate as those pictures of you. Tell me, why did you break up with Mo?”

She looked at me scornfully, “Many reasons. One of them was my tattoo.”

I stayed silent.

“When I got it, he was just getting into his Christian phase, said my body was the Lord’s temple.”

“I see. And when you were together, did you send him any pictures?”

“What is the point of all this?” she asked.

I tossed Motivational Mo’s phone in her lap, “Everything points to those.”

She swiped her finger across the soft glow of the phone screen, looking at the tasty treats she’d sent that poor bastard.

“None of those has a tattoo in them. And Mo seemed to be clueless about your ink,” I said igniting a cancer stick.

“So? You don’t need to be a private DICK to know these are from before I got my tattoo.”

“True. But this dick did some poking around. Mo’s old handle hadn't sent out any tweets since he’d switched religions from you to Christianity. Then a year later, out of nowhere, the same handle posted tweet pics and went dormant again?”

“Yeah, easy cover for him,” she sneered.

“Maybe. But the ISP says those tweets came from an address in Rich Hills. YOUR address.”

She was silent.

“Mo had actually turned over a new leaf and you weren't happy that he’d gone to worship at a new temple. You knew his password and so you posted those images yourself in an effort to assassinate HIS character. You brought me on board knowing I’d find the trail, but you didn't count on me actually doing my job.”

She raised her head and looked me in the eye, she was no Greek goddess. I saw her for the Medusa she truly was. I turned stone cold towards her.

“What can I say, I love the attention,” she said smiling.

“Oh, you’ll get all the attention you seek where you’re going. Mug shot photo shoots and cuddles from Gorilla Grace, your new cellmate.”

“I guess you've done your job then, detective Blow. How much should I write this cheque out for?”

“Doll, I wouldn't accept a cheque from you if it was the coveted blue one. Your money is dirty.”

“You’re an honourable man,” she said looking at me with sinful eyes.

“If only honour paid the bills.”

She kissed me long and passionately. The rain tapped the asphalt, making that constant shushing sound it always did. It flowed down a dirty drain somewhere and soon its sound was drowned by sirens.

THE END

Detective Blow drawn in my likeness by the talented Lo

Follow me on Twitter, here

Follow Lo on Twitter, here

Check out Lo's blog, here

The Alchemist

There came a time, when the magic faded completely from our fickle society. The straws of popular opinion were bundled tight in society’s norms and the proverbial camel’s back broke under the pressure. We had all forsaken the principles and beliefs that actually made us human.

Behemoth corporations bought every advertising space imaginable, from t-shirt sleeves and fronts, to the dirty corners of bathroom floors. Billboards covered the sides of houses and no man was free from the empty promises of primetime adverts.

The tentacles of the spider-squid known as the internet had caught every last human in its vast interweb; draining them of individuality and turning them into shuffling zombie-puppets.

They would absently walk into each other in crowded places, as if they expected to phase through one another. Their eyes focussed solely on their handheld touch screens, taking photos of their faces with the front cameras of their mobile devices. Selfies all resembled expressionless I.D photos because no one could focus on anything outside the rectangular field of their small screens long enough to take a picture that dared to be different. The selfie that looked most like the next one got the highest ‘Like’ count and retweets. Quite rarely, these zombie portraits would make an attempt at change using the veil of a filter. But their faces remained the same—dead and banal.

Music had long lost its aesthetic value. Albums had become things of the past, ghost-like echoes in the wind. Singles took up less effort than full works of music and with the immediacy of the interwebs; they were churned out like knock-off sneakers in a dark factory. These songs had no meaning or depth. The only purpose they served was to drown out the sound of any on coming bodies so that people could walk into each other. No song was deeper than a puddle of acid rain in the polluted metropolises the zombie-puppets called home.

The magic was lost. Nothing wowed. Nothing amazed. And nothing inspired.

Until one day.

The zombie-puppet was terribly confused. He had walked right into a brick wall—a rarity during those dark days—and looked up. Usually one of them would walk into a high definition screen, look up, and be captivated for a few minutes by some repetitive advertisement before a notification on their handheld would relay the same message from the bigger screen. ‘Click here for a more personalised experience!’ and then their heads would lower again; easing them back into monotony.

The puppet-zombie saw for the first time in what seemed like eons, his fellow drones walking to unknown destinations. He saw them bump into each other, look up for the slightest second and show a hint of familiarity. They all somehow knew each other from The Facebook. They amazed him. None of them spoke. They all went about their business and shared nothing but a fleeting moment of meaningless body contact.

The jumbotrons and billboards spoke to him and he had heard it all before, but he had never taken the time to actually LISTEN to the words of the advertising man’s song. He listened attentively and marvelled at the special effects. The words told him to ‘Visit their Twitter page for more interaction’. He slowly obeyed and looked down at the screen in his palm again. He would be immersed in thecommercialised consumerist whirlpool that was his handheld once again. He took a step forward. His sluggish movement was halted again, this time by a large wooden door. The door was a little battered and old. Its wood had yawned into cracks and splinters and its old varnish had peeled into chaffing skin. It was thick and wide, still showing some of its old strength like a proud retired body builder, sloughing a little with age. The zombie-puppet stood staring at it. Inside his mind, something was changing. Little sparks and explosions ignited in a brain that had not been kindled in a long time. He knew not what was happening. A confused look slowly crept across his face. His free hand involuntarily rose to the door’s old handle and turned it. The door cracked open into a dark room frozen in time.

Power Squad!: From Henchforth

Now, your life does not absolutely depend on it, but I suggest you read the first installment of Power Squad! by clicking here.
If you have already, then jump right in!

NOBODY MOVE! This is a stick up!!”

The customers inside the bank took one nonchalant look at Chanda and then continued about their business. Chanda was baffled. Surely the mask he had crafted by cutting eye-holes into the oversized head-sock his grandma had given him last Christmas was menacing. It may have been bright and multi-coloured, but everyone knew that masks were meant to be menacing, didn’t they?

“I said, NOBODY MOVE!! This is a friggin’ stick—”

“Allo, boyi, this isn’t the time or the place for that nonsense.”

Chanda looked back to put a face to the voice that had interrupted him. The large security guard before him towered about 7 nephilim feet over him.

 His muscles bulged and stretched the fabric of his uniform shirt so tightly that if one of his buttons shot free, it could have taken somebody’s eye out. He was clutching a baton in his huge right hand and kept smacking it against his left palm in an intimidating gesture.

Chanda swallowed.

“Do you know how many masked maniacs we get here every day?” the guard continued. “And they at least have the decency to come with a real gun. Even the most bat-eyed customer here can spot that silly kindergarten paint on your BB gun.”

If Chanda hadn’t been frantically blinking and tearing up because of a stray strand of wool caught in his eye from his badly cut head-sock, he would have been looking down at his plastic gun in shame. It was a pretty pathetic paint job he had done, but he had to make do with half a can of black spray paint.

“This is one of the roughest parts of town, super villains bank here and every once in a while they try to start something.  Even the customers don’t take shit.”

“See that sweet old lady over there?” the guard said nodding his head in the direction of a prune skinned old woman standing at the ‘Customer Service’ counter. She looked like she had lived at least a century.

“Why, just last week that very same lady took down Doctor what’s-his-face and his über lazertron gun or whatever because he cut in line and tried to hold up the place.”

Chanda’s eyes twitched and blinked some more.

“So you see son,” the guard said almost empathetically, “if you’re going to rob THIS bank, come with some serious artillery and don’t leave your nuts at home. Now get out of here before I shove this baton down your throat.”

To say Chanda’s caper had failed terribly would be an understatement.  Forget bruised, his ego had been scraped with sandpaper and beaten with a standard issue security guard baton. He sat down on the ground outside the bank with his back against the wall and began to reassess his values. He started to listen to that inner voice that proceeds to beat down your self esteem after you have just received an emotionally scathing verbal thrashing.

 What were you thinking? The voice asked. You couldn’t have pulled that off if you had the devil himself's face for a mask, and a bazooka for a gun! Get real, you can’t make it out here. Grams told you to stay with her. But no, you had to go and move to the big city, didn’t you? You had to become a man. Tell me Chanda, do you feel like a man now? Are you blazing your own trail like you thought you would?

 Leaving everything he knew and coming to the big city was a tough decision for him. His Grandma had tried to convince him otherwise, but she realised it was something he felt he had to do.

“You go ahead and leave good ‘ol granny all on her lonesome,” she had said trying to make him feel a little guilt, “I’ll be fine. I just hope you will too. I’ve heard funny stories about the city. Flying men and scantily clad women are the norm according to the television. But I trust this desire of yours to move is embedded deep in your bones now. Just remember you’ll always have a home here,” she said, and then whispered, “As long as I’m alive.”

 Chanda asked his Grandma to dismiss that kind of talk and assured her she would probably even outlive him. He promised he would visit her often and even send some money every now and then, and then he hugged her.

 Heading back home seemed like a great plan right about then. Grams would probably poke fun at him and be a little cynical, but she’d definitely be glad to see him. She would probably prepare his favourite mash and ribs too. His stomach growled in agreement.

But this was not the time to be feeling sorry for himself, no! This was not the time to tuck in his tail, lick his wounds and cower in fear! It was the time to take action! A time to be proactive! He got up and dusted his rear end. He was going back to the drawing board.

 If luck and coincidence had a love-child, it would happen to manifest itself in the form of a marital squabble that broke out right across from where Chanda was standing. Of course this was no ordinary fight between spouses. Being the town that it was, two super villains were bound to break into a heated confrontation in the street. He would never have guessed that it would be between a married couple.

The two villains had been arguing violently from inside their car and had halted traffic in the process. You could see arms flailing and finger pointing from outside the car windows. When the argument had gotten intense, they both stepped out of their vehicle and began to hurl vulgar unmentionables at each other. But unmentionables were not all they would hurl.

The lady opened the back door of their vehicle, pulled out an M1 bazooka and began to load it with a round. Her significant other guessed she meant business and fidgeted with his watch before it suddenly morphed and wrapped him in a suit of battle armour.

Divorce proceedings would not be necessary between the two, as they simultaneously blasted each other into oblivion within seconds. Their bodies became nothing but plies of human mincemeat with traces of nanobots and metal alloys. The lady villain’s bazooka remained intact. Chanda saw an opportunity.

He quickly ran toward the scene of the violent marriage annulment and picked up the heavy bazooka. It had a camouflage finish and looked like it could take out the hide of any tank. He then proceeded to the car of the now deceased couple to see if there were more rocket rounds. He found only one. It sat right under a diablo mask. How’s that for the devil’s face?

Chanda had to move quickly before the fuzz arrived on the scene, but he contemplated getting a little practice before he could return to the bank. This was no time to practice his marksmanship though, he only had one round. And besides, who could possibly miss their target if they were toting a friggin’ bazooka?

How’s this for serious artillery? Chanda thought as he remembered the words of the security guard. We’ll see who really left their nuts at home when I come knocking at your stupid bank door with this baby!

One or two people fled from Chanda’s path as they saw him walking across the street and struggling a little to lift the canon he’d just commandeered, but it was not unusual for someone to be flaunting heavy duty weaponry and wearing a devil’s mask in this town. It was not unusual at all.

Chanda stood a few meters away from the bank’s entrance and waited for his security guard friend to notice him from inside the glass doors. When they had locked eyes, he brought his bazooka up and flung its length onto his shoulder, mustered up the best Scarface impression he could and roared, “SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!”

The rocket fired from the bazooka spiralled in a corkscrew motion and propelled itself toward the glass doors. The sinister shark head painted on the front end of the rocket made it look like it would chomp right through the glass and shatter it into a million pieces. But as fate would have it, luck had filed for a paternity test on that love-child it had with coincidence and it turned out that child did not belong to luck.

The security guard flashed a smirk as the rocket ricocheted off the glass doors with a ‘thump’, leaving only the faintest trace of a scratch. People would not usually flee from a madman with a bazooka in this town, but they sure as hell fled from a rocket fired from a bazooka. The missile flew wildly and spiralled out of control leaving a trail of smoke while missing a number of passersby and hissing toward Chanda with its menacing shark-toothed grin. He ran for his life.

The rocket exploded on impact and sent him flying across the pavement along the busy street. He landed with his head in between his arms and scraped his elbows as he slid across the ground. The bruises running down his forearms stung a little, but Chanda had expected to be in much more pain if he had been hit by a missile. But the missile hadn’t hit him.

When he got up to see what had happened, he found Captain Justice—the town’s self appointed super champion of justice, and leader of the Power Squad—floating above him. He had taken the impact and detonated the explosion from the rocket.

“You must be new around here son,” said Captain Justice, “everybody knows that those bank doors have reinforced fibreglass. Not even Doctor what-do-you-call-him’s mega lazertron gun or whatever could penetrate those doors.”

Chanda stood there in silence, sweating profusely under his mask.

“Now, regardless of whether you are new here or not, you do know that what you were trying to do is illegal, and you will have to face the full extent of the law?”

Chanda nodded. Perhaps he should have stayed back home with Grams. He had ruined his clothes, he would probably face criminal charges and worst of all, a superhero was carrying him by the scruff of his shirt and delivering him to a police car.

The large security guard slapped some handcuffs on his wrists as Captain Justice removed his mask. That self-esteem-beating inner voice began to speak again as he sat in the back of the police car but was suddenly interrupted by another voice coming from outside the car window.

“Hey, wait!” said the voice. Chanda looked outside.

A man in a perfectly fitting tailor made suit was doing an awkward trot up to the police car window.

“Hi kid,” the clean cut man said. “Looks like you’re in a bit of a fix aren’t you?”

“You think?” sneered Chanda.

“Do you need a job, kid?”

“Well, if you had come thirty minutes earlier, I might have said yes. But now it’s looking like I’m going away for a long time.”

“Not if I can get you legal representation,” said the man.

“Look, I don’t have any money and I don’t think I can afford to—”

“If you promise to work for the organisation I represent, I could get you out of this jam without any difficulty. You won’t even have to pay for a thing.”

Chanda knotted his brow, “Are you the illuminati?”

“Haha, hardly kid. But I would like a devil like you to work with us; we need people with your... tenacity.”

He thought about what the man was saying and weighed his options. What did he have to lose? “Can I at least think about it? I don’t even know what it is your organisation is into.”

“Ha ha, sure kid. Give me a call when you’re in and I’ll explain everything.”

And with that, the clean cut man handed Chanda a business card and left. It read:

‘YOSA GRANDMAN YOSA- LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE  HENCHMAN INC.’

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

 

Wicked art by my cousin Mutale, alias Styles. He came through and saved me with this one!

You can follow me on twitter (click here) 

 Friend me on Facebook (click here)

Add Mutale on Facebook (click here)