LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD

By L. David Wheeler


Belinda Budge was as stubborn as her last name implied, and on this particular day she was resolute in refusing to fulfill her duties. As she was a guardian angel, this left her charge, Darrah Rongweld, in something of an awkward situation, as she was marked for humiliation, desecration and ultimate annihilation by the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence.

Why Darrah Rongweld was marked by said Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence as their particular repository of wrath, why they feared her as they had few others – the Galilean, certainly; Merlin, quite possibly; Gary Cooper, most definitely, for the magic was strong within him – is obscure. For Darrah Rongweld was a file clerk. In a third-string American city named Rochester, New York. Who collected Snoopy figures and played piano badly and made decent chili and occasionally gave bums a dollar. She grew up in the thickest suburbs and lived a thickest-suburban life. She had a boyfriend named Murray who sold advertising for a free shoppers’-rag and had a rockabilly band named The Burnin' Beulahs. She named her two cats after Jane Austen characters. She was smart but not brilliant, cute but not beautiful, steady but not resolute, strong but not steeled. She was, in other words, perfectly ordinary.

Belinda Budge figured, rather, she knew in her sinews that she was made for grander things than to guard the perfectly ordinary Belinda Budge. She had guarded Winston Churchill! Miguel de Cervantes! Abigail Adams! Joan of Arc – well, that hadn’t turned out all that well, but it was quite a gig while it lasted. Just because the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence had apparently made some appalling clerical error didn’t mean she had to waste however many decades the wretched creature would live, just because the Secret Lords of Lofty Luminescence said so. Just because they said Darrah Rongweld was this era’s Chosen One Who Beats Back The Forces of Entropy Simply By Existing. What did they know? (And what kind of title was that, anyway?) They weren’t real archangels, any more than she was a real angel or the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence were real demons. Those folks existed, but traveled in different circles, it seemed. No, the Secret Lords and their associates – once Malcolm Mudge called her and, she supposed, himself, “minions,” and she disemboweled him extra disembowely for the affront – were free-lancers in the field of Meddling in the Affairs of Mortals. And subject to the occasional lapse in intelligence gathering, it seemed.

Let Darrah Rongweld get hit by a truck today. No, a bus! A train! A cruise ship! The space shuttle! Let her get eaten alive by mad dogs – cows, bears, kangaroos, dinosaurs, basilisks! Let her Diet Dr. Pepper turn to arsenic, hemlock, Drano, acid, even that foul draught they call Mello Yello! The Earth would continue to spin. Evil would not run rampant over the cosmos. Both the Secret Dark Lords of Malevolence and the Secret Lords of Lofty Luminescence would sheepishly realize their error and root around for the real Chosen One.

And maybe Mudge would finally shut up.

“Hey, come on, Belinda, the day’s half-over and we haven’t even started.”

She was sitting on the Court Street bridge over the Genesee River, welcoming the meaty fumes from the nearby Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, wishing her kind were corporeal enough to eat. He was standing behind her on the sidewalk, nervously stroking his moustache and making entreating eyebrow motions even though she had her back to him, because that was his way. This is the kind of demon the stupid Secret Dark Etcetera send to stay the Chosen One? Stupidity and folly.

She’d done battle with some of those Teutonic hunks of virile vileness that hovered around Hitler and his posse. Malcolm Mudge just ... sucked.

“What we?” Belinda asked, never taking eyes from the river. “Do whatever you want. Shoot her. Stab her. Lase her, tase her. Boil her blood and bake her bones. Toss her off the Xerox tower. Force-feed her Garbage Plates til her heart ignites. Feed her to the zebra mussels. The choice is yours.” She hopped down to the sidewalk and looked Mudge in the eye. “The day lies spread before you, and it’s all yours. I won’t stop you, 'cause I quit. Abdicate. Surrender. Hit the road. Shuffle off to Buffalo. Bet I can make it in an hour.” She smirked. “You’ve won – or you will if you quit bugging me and destroy her already. She’s a Chosen One” – she poured as much bitter irony into the term as she could – “your promotion is assured. You’ll get out of Rochester! Just cowboy up and do it. Be a man!”

“I’m not a man, Belinda, I’m ...”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“... an Incorporeal Spectral Personified Entity. Just like you. And you know it doesn’t work that way.”

“Who says? You try to kill Rongweld. I try to stop you. Today I stop trying. Ball’s in your court, Mudge.”

“It’s in our court. Because I can’t do anything to her unless you resist. The victory isn’t won unless it’s taken. That’s the rule.”

“Rule? What rule?” She had never heard of such a rule – but then again, she had never heard of any Incorporeal Spectral Personified Entity, on either side, refusing to do her or his duty. She was, as far as she knew, the first, for she was as stubborn as her last name implied.

“The Deepest, Truest Canticle from the Well of Portentious Power Ere Eternity’s Onset Decreeing Ever Matched and Met Combat O’er Reality’s Covert Hinges, of course.” He crossed his arms. “Really, Belinda, you should study up on this stuff.”

“The Deepest, Truest ...” she muttered the litany to herself, trying to recall the ponderous title, than stopped short at “Onset.” She jabbed a finger in Mudge’s face. “You made that up!”

“I most certainly did not!”

“You made it up just now!”

“All right, all right. What gave it away?”

“What didn’t give it away? What the hell is wrong with you?”

He was silent for a moment, but his face was moving, various shadows passing across his eyes while his lips ... trembled, they truly did. Then he spoke, looking her square in the eye. “I don’t want it to end.”

“What to end?” she snapped.

“This. Well, not this, but that. The fight. The battle. The sparring. The parrying.”

“What are you talking about? The sparring and parrying don’t stop when one of the mortals does. Your bosses will find another alleged Chosen One for you to harass, and my bosses will send someone out to stop you. And you can fight and battle and spar and parry to your heart’s content.”

“I don’t want to fight anyone else. I’ve got my heart’s content.”

Belinda’s confusion and honest curiosity had almost overwhelmed her anger and annoyance. Her gaze softened, if only a mite. “Mudge. Malcolm. What are you saying?”

Malcolm Mudge looked more miserable than Belinda had ever seen a free-lance nondemon look. “I’m saying I love you, Belinda. I’ve loved you for years – since Darrah Rongweld was in preschool.”

She didn’t know what to say. So she pushed him off the bridge. And hoped that didn’t turn him on.

And she cursed Darrah Rongweld, while getting back to work protecting her worthless but possibly pivotal life. She preferred Malcolm as ardent adversary to whiny stalker, so Darrah would get her guardian angel back.

Belinda perched her incorporeal, invisible body atop Darrah’s cubicle wall, watching her nibble on Lean Cuisine fettucine as she worked her way through her lunch break. She leaned forward and stared into unseeing eyes, addressing her charge’s unhearing ears. “Bitch, all I can say is you’d better save the whole damn cosmos.”

And, as they drew swords, Malcolm Mudge smiled. Someday she’d come around.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI (Take 30)

by L. David Wheeler, who's silly enough to admit to writing the following.

SCENE OPENS in INTERIOR OF SMALL HOTEL ROOM, lit dimly by BEDSIDE LAMP. Camera pans to BACK OF MAN, face unseen. Removes COAT, drapes over CHAIR. Loosens TIE. Camera zooms to head/chest view, pans to view FACE. Man YAWNS, then SUCKS IN AIR, revealing TELLTALE BRIDGEWORK.

JAWS continues loosening tie. RAPT KNOCKING at door. JAWS, startled, GLANCES QUICKLY AROUND, grabs REVOLVER from under PILLOW, then STARES MENACINGLY at DOOR. Slight, nearly noiseless GROWL escapes his lips. JAWS slowly walks to DOOR, OPENS it ajar to length that CHAIN allows. Camera frames to JAWS' view: YOUNG WOMAN with long, wavy SCARLET HAIR whose body appears to be constructed ENTIRELY OUT OF CLEAVAGE.

SCARLET WOMAN (uttering breathily): Hello -- Mr. Jaws?

JAWS (suspiciously yet intriguedly): Mmm, yahs?

SCARLET WOMAN: I'm Bambi. Mr. Scaratelli from the agency sent me over. (one beat) He said you were past due for a bite.

(SLIGHT SMILE crosses JAWS' FACE as he reaches to UNFASTEN CHAIN and SET-FRAMING MUSIC BEGI --

No!

Nonononononononono!!!!

Jaws-Bambi porn?!? Have I sunk this low? Apparently my muse is a crack whore.

Every night for a month, every night, I stare at the laptop screen or the blank paper before me. Do I start my Crimean War epic? Do I work up my sitcom treatment about a midget cop from the Hood and his partner the Evangelical Druid? Do I even write Lara a damned poem?

No. Because every night for a month, I'm bidden, inexplicably, irrevocably to heed the voices, the incessant, keening, insistent voices that shriek three words, ever and ever: Jaws meets Bambi. Jaws meets Bambi! JAWS MEETS BAMBI!!!!

I thought writing a little trifle about the fawn lapping water at the stream only to be eviscerated by the killer shark from Hell would be enough. A little exercise to be worked out and tossed aside. But the next night, the voices were back. Louder, more insistent.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI!!!

Some of them weren't too bad. I was kind of fond of my story about the aged buck and shark meeting up at a Home for the Aged Anthropomorphic Non-Humanoid Fictional Characters, where the crueler residents like Cujo called the shark "Gums." And my psychological think piece about Bambi the deer's dreams haunted by visions of a tireless, vicious killer of the depths -- and Jaws' dreams likewise haunted by visions of a little deer wobbling about on an icy pond. A touch meta, but it worked ...

No, it didn't. Because I hear it still.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI! JAWS MEETS BAMBI!

Jaws has been the Spielberg shark -- and that's a lawsuit and a half waiting to happen -- as well as a young, soulful street-gang second-in-command with braces; an office worker who never shuts up with graphic stories about her fiance (untrue) and her medical conditions (all too true); and a sled. (We'd only learn Jaws was a sled in the final scene. Of course I realize it's been done before, do you think I'm an idiot? It's never going to be published or released, it's a damned EXORCISM, don't you GET IT ... who am I talking to? Ummm, no one. myself. ummm ...

Bambi's been the Disney deer -- and that's a lawsuit and six halves waiting to happen -- and all manner of nubile young women of loose virtues, because, quite frankly, if your name's "Bambi" and you're not a nubile young woman of loose virtue, you'd better be a deer. Well, to change it up, I threw in an utterly nonconvincing drag queen.

I even tried to play with it a bit: "Jawas meet Babar." Because Lucasfilm would never sue anyone, of course.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI!!!

But a porn movie following the illicit adventures of a minor henchmen from a couple of the more forgettable James Bond movies? (Nobody liked "Moonraker," right? I mean, come on.) That's a couple lawsuits and halves waiting to happen: the Fleming estate AND MGM. Whoopee!

I can't take it anymore. I think I'll need a bigger boat.

Kinda wobbly, aren't I?

And again, it starts.

JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI!
JAWS MEETS BAMBI ......

AVAST

The town's in ruins,
treas'ry looted, coffers gone;
but what really hurts:

Seared into my brain,
pumpernickel, ham and Swiss
impaled on cruel blade.

Weep for ravaged lives
and savage, stark injustice.
I miss my sammich.

-LDW

Crossover Bloggage

Howdy Hack Fans!
Marcy Here.
Here's an old Hacks post that originated on my blog, Playtime at Hazmat. I meant to post this on the Hack blog a long time ago and never got around to it. Dave, Bryan, and I were playing Lego Star Wars and somehow managed to write this story at the same time. Enjoy!

We'll meet the ninjas at the Barbary Coast

This post brought to you by:
Marcy, the Media Ninja
Dave, Lord Ledley the Ravager and
Bryan, Hooch the Destroyer

I just asked two guys playing video games in the same room as me to give me a sentence to start this story with. Then I made them write it with me off the top of our heads, each of us trading off a sentence at a time. Here's the pathetic but entertaining result:

"We'll meet the ninjas at the Barbary Coast."
"No, we shall not; have you so soon forgotten the Black Ninja Eradication of 2023?"
Halsom shook his head and pounded his fist into the wooden plank table, toppling Mardon's ale jug.
Truly, it was a strange conversation to be having at Wal-Mart but the furniture delivery was late and the stock clerks were restless.
And Myron the assistant manager was nowhere to be seen; they suspected he and Marge from layaway were off somewhere, uh, laying away.
"I assure you, the ninjas will be there, and they will be bringing with them the lost cheese of Zandlar," said Mardon, scratching his head and tossing the twelve sided dice aimlessly as he was thinking.
Before Halsom's reply, a bay door creaked to life and light flooded the room, casting gold sparkles atop the ale.
"Crap," Mardon hissed, "so much for cheese."
"I thought I told you morons no roleplaying on the job," bellowed Dan Yonker, the wall-eyed night shift manager as he strode through the goldish haze of the loading dock security lights.
And before the clerks could pick up their board, before their last thoughts could return to the loving crush of their mothers' arms, two ninja stars pierced their hearts, thrown from the able and mastered wrists of Dan Yonker, the last remaining ninja of Sheboygan and lone survivor of the Black Ninja Eradication of 2023.

Dave's Hill Story

There it is. My city. The humble skyline, such as it is, of its business district, such as it is. The sleepy streetlights that don't illuminate all that much action -- this isn't Chicago, or even Cleveland. The steeples -- United Methodist, First Presbyterian, the Missionary Baptist on the west side next to Uncle Fran's BBQ. Ribs were top-notch, but Fran's brisket truly was to die for ... if you pardon the expression. Focus focus focus. Immediately below, at hill's bottom, the bypass. The truest route to elsewhere. Second-truest.

Heh. There's old Van Buren, where I didn't learn algebra or Earth science. Learned plenty about Darwinism, though, which is what middle school's for: Only the strong survive, or at least pass on their genes. Yep, it's still got the old-school jungle-gym, the metal monstrosity that marks a real playground -- none of these lawyer-approved mazes of nets and chutes and ladders. Cold, hard metal. Heh. When Randy Larsch got the upper hand during that fight over -- over something, I guess, middle school fights don't need to be about anything -- and smashed my nose into the third rung three times in rapid succession, the important thing at the time was that it was hard. Now, the thing that stays with me is how cold it was. Must've been one of those November afternoons that precede the first snowfall but see it coming on the horizon. Gave as good as I got, though -- a few weeks later, it was his blood on the jungle-gym. Heh. Ended up becoming friends, sort of -- in fact, these days Randy's my CPA. Was.

There's the old A&P -- or there it would be, were a Wal-Mart Supercenter not feeding off its bones. Three years of wearing aprons and Mr. Kelly's store of spare striped woeful ties, weilding the cunning pricing gun and stocking the shelves -- the bane of stock clerks, if you've ever wondered: tiny cat food tins of the Fancy Feast variety, which never stack quite straight thanks to their pull top and always seem to fall over and tilt and look slovenly and occasionally roll down the aisle. Heh. Blizzard of eighty-eight, we closed up and waited out the storm, and tapped an Old Milwaukee keg from the dairy cooler. Kelly didn't say anything other than he didn't want to know -- then he'd send us out to the front end for some pretext of another and pour himself a healthy draught himself. A&P's to thank, or blame, for Amy the unbelievable redhead and that one unforgettable summer -- and that one unbearable autumn. She was running register, I was bagging. Heh. Hey, everyone -- double entendre. We spent our share of time up here -- well, okay, not right here at the bluff but back there where the woods begin, exploring whatever we'd care to explore. It was like that old Seger song about mysteries without any clues. Sometimes I think my whole adolescence was scored by Bob Seger. Everyone's adolescence was scored by Bob Seger. Still the same.

Yup, there's the channel-13 affiliate I interned at back in '91, after taking one broadcast class and figuring to give it a real-world whirl. (Didn't take.) And my favored comics shop, World of Krypton, where Mike kept the old Curt Swan Superman designs in the windows, even in periods where the market was all big-gun-toting, big-vest-with-way-too-many-pocket-wearing, big-we-scoff-at-basic-rules-of-human-anatomy characters. And there's Martinez's place -- mecca for hot pastrami and cigars and racing forms and five card stud (red queens tended to be wild, just like real life, but enough about Amy). and, when Marty was of a mood, free shots of bourbon. You could spend enough time in his place and forget that women even existed, if it weren't for the calendars from his brother Oscar's garage. And there's Pine Haven ...

Yep. Down there are thirty-some years of memories and twenty-some thousand souls. And twenty-some thousand bodies.

Plus one. Mine. In Pine Haven, as of ten-thirty this morning. Or elevenish, if you want to go by when they shoveled in the last of the dirt. My family was there. Randy was there. So were Mike and Martinez and his brother Oscar. I suppose Uncle Fran would've been there too, if I'd known him other than to order brisket -- I guess I always felt too dilletanishly white in that place to strike up a conversation. And I suppose Mr. Kelly would, too, but he'd been otherwise occupied in an urn on Mrs. Kelly's mantle three years now.

I make my way downhill, not all that gingerly. Like what, I'm gonna fall?

Twenty-some thousand souls.

I clench my fists of ether.

And one's a killer.

--Dave W., 3-8-07

Dave's Costume Story

NOTE: By way of explanation, sort of: I haven't dressed for Halloween for years, sad to say, so I thought back to the last time I wore a costume: a trip to the Sterling Renaissance Festival, when many Hacks and I dressed as warrior Celts. Ah, but what if an actual warrior Celt woke in my body?

The world’s an inky blur and me tongue is furry and ten thousand shileleighs be pummeling me head. Arrrgghhh. Metaphors aside, that last part may actually have happened.

Not quite sure where I am, other than the cool grass under me back, and the inky blur has yet to uncloud. But I hear voices.

“Dave? Dave? Hey, is he OK?”
“Ehhh. No surprise – he’s not a big drinker and he had like eight honey meads.”
“Uh, no, babe, YOU had like eight honey meads.”
“Oh. Yeah. Need more.”

English. They’re speaking English. When was I captured? How was I captured? How many did I take with me? Why have I no memory of anything since departing County C....

Mmmmm .... honey mead ...

The dark cloud is partin' from me eyes. Tis a sunny, warm day – and I’m clearly on no battlefield. There is no carrion strewn about – just paths and buildings and smiling people milling about in mingled, strange garb – some almost normal yet off just a bit, some garbed as if they came from some far-distant century. The buildings – an ale house, a leatherworker, a potter, a luthier – all look just a touch off, as if they’re not quite real. Not false fronts, quite, but contrived nonetheless ...

Tis a false village. No doubt intended to lure their enemies – my people – into a deceptive security, then set upon them. Such is obvious to one of my unquestioned cunning and sophistication. I no doubt must have let meself be captured to spy out the land. Now all I must do is shake off the effects of whatever treacherous draught they’ve poisoned me with, slay a couple hundred English, and make me way back to the kindred. Such is stark simplicity to one of my unmatchable might and ...

Where’s me broadax?
Where in all the hells is me BROADAX?

Begorrah. Slaying a couple hundred English shall be a mite harder. A mite, mind. Aye ... two mites.

For the first time, I glance around at my band of captors. Two scarlet-tressed wenches, two men dressed, as I, in furs and tartan – like they think they’re fooling anyone – with a third watching an artisan make a bodhran. Ehhh – that drum doesn’t even look like it has ANY human flesh in it. Fools and knaves. He leaves the bodhran-maker and approaches, and I squint at his features – clearly a Hibernian. This “Mahooch,” as his drunken colleague calls him, is clearly a turncoat whose demise shall be slow and brutish. Argghh. Me poor broadax.

A wench speaks. “Ally and I are hunting down the ladies’ room. Stay out of too much trouble.”

“Hey, Dave’s awake.”

I say something in my native speech, but by the time it gets from me bowels to me tongue, it comes outsounding simply like, “Bee–hheeeerr.”

“Always a fine idea,” says Mahooch, and for that he canna be faulted. “Kiosk across the path.”

I know not what a kee-osch is, but the men and I approach a small lean-to of sorts, a makeshift pub with one long slab of wood covered with bottles and glasses and the heaving bosoms of two heaving wenches. What satanic crafter carved their corsets? Not that I complain, mind.

They pour us something that call Whore’s Garden or some like, a sweet yet tangy confection that warms me gullet and eases the pounding in me skull. I set the glass down, and another appears as if by sorcery. The wenches clearly are paying little attention to me; they haven’t registered I’m the same man they just served. They’re clearly entranced by the turncoat Mahooch, their eyelashes fluttering and their fingersa twistin’ their locks as they stare lustfully into his visage. I shan’t tell the ladies that by dawn on the morrow I’ll be lacing me boots with Mahooch’s entrails. Not as long as they keep feeding me Whore’s Garden. A third! A fourth!

“So yeah, this Ren-Faire thing will end up covering board, but it doesn’t dent tuition. So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I dance over at Knockers Pub outside Trumansburg.” Flutters eyelashes and manages to shift her weight so that even more, dangerously more, of herbosom protrudes from her bodice. “Any plans forTuesday?”

I gulp my seventh Whore’s Garden and see the crimson-tressed ladies approaching from a distance. Not yet, not yet – I need another Guard’s Whoredom! Er, Horde’s Gargoyle? Hard Gorgon? I’m finding it hard to care all much about me broadax ...

The one lass – Krull, they call her and sure as that’s a worthy warrior’s name that – returns and links her arm in Mahooch’s. The wenches at the bar contemplate vile acts of torture and homicide – then they look at me and realize they’ve fed me fourteen Hog’s Gargles. Gore’s Wardens. Hoegarten. Whate’er. Sure an it’s been a pleasure, lassies.

We head off lookin’ for turkey legs. And I’m thinkin’ the massacre can wait a day or two. Or five. Must gather intelligence and all. May even spare Mahoochs’ entrails, as twas his sorcery that filled me gullet with Horny Gollum.

I begin to bellow a heartfelt paean to Eire. But instead, I belch.
Tis close enough.

Bad Poetry Night in Hackland!

Hello Hack Fans!
Here it is - as promised. The No-Talent Hacks take a swing at pretend teenage poetry!
Keep in mind the youngest member of the Hacks is 27.
(Bonus points to whomever guesses which one of us is 27!!)
(Pete - you don’t count, you know the answer. Thanks for playing though!)

Sunshine and Light
By Matt

Why does school have to be so crass?
My entire life ruled by the hall pass.

Across the street the slackers smoke
I envy them their lives without care

My parents are always in my hair
I’m just not good enough
Does anyone here care?

My soul is ripped.
My mind a waste.

Why’d you leave?
I hate you



Grounded
By Marcy

No one listens to me
It's like I'm not even here
A voice in the dark
Faceless
Formless
Sound from everywhere
So loud it becomes nothing
Background noise
I am static
I am wind
I am the grinding screech of a dot matrix printer
Annoying
Repetitive
Obsolete
And they tune me out
Nothing I say is important
So I hide in the dark
Soundless
Barely breathing
And I scream



SOUL SQUISHER
By Dave

Crippled cockroach climbing
warily, gingerly, erratically
up the basement wall
hanging on with
furious insectoid desperation shrieking
I am more than vermin
I am life
I am your soul
Suddenly it topples
dead as a dead bug
How do I pay it due tribute?
Choking back a sob
I squish my soul



Angst
By Allison

No one understands
the dark
I'm here alone
without him

I felt the fear
of losing
I tried to fight
it won

Now my life
gray, torn
No one understands
I'm trapped

There is time
now for
breaking free from
the dark



Title: Combustible
By Bryan

The universe has swallowed me
wallowing in the haze
Shut me out don't let me in
shout at me my name
Am I girl? not yet a woman
Mother of the cosmos, speak
I will hear you and come
the class bell rings but I wait
to hear you speak once more
Shut them out don't let them in
My mind is yours, my womb is mine
The universe spits me back out



A snippet from a love poem
By Kris

"Watch me and take it
as I extend my love.
I'll only give it once."



The meeting
By Matt

You said meet behind the bleachers
I was there for hours
You never came
My tears were fertilizer

You were my idol
For you I'd do anything
Did it make feel good,
Your little prank?

My dreams were crushed
Life is over

I hope you enjoy the flowers



You Know What You've Done
By Dave

You've put it all behind you.
Such a luxury.
Such effrontery.



Breakup Haiku
By Marcy

Back of the school bus
Track meet races on outside
I cry tears alone


Waring souls
By Marcy

Who will win the long battle
Chuck Norris or Screech
Only Pete can tell