Excerpt: Some Idiots Have All The Luck - a novel [that tries to be a comic book that tries to be a movie that tries to be a novel]

Issue 00: WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH MODIFY THE WORLD WITH PARTICULARS…

CAPTION: On a cool Wisconsin night, at a military testing facility in the middle of “cow country”…

A maniacal sounding man’s voice rang clear through the havoc, “Boom goes the dynamite!”

An explosion ensued, roiling through the fortress and shattering walls and other nifty defenses. Apparently so, the defense’s weren’t nifty enough to keep out an odd, somewhat deranged masked mercenary from tearing through to his objective.

So it goes.

The masked merc came barreling out of the building, a strange object swaddled in a beige cloth and held tight to his chest like a foot ball while he went running, hard and fast, like a quarterback heading towards the field goal.

“Yeah! That’s right you losers, you can’t touch this piece o’ DARK MEAT, the most marvelously magnificent mercenary the world has ever seen!” the oddball went on to narrate his adventures, seemingly oblivious to the herds of soldiers dashing madly to catch up to his superhuman speed, which wasn’t actually all that superhuman, but it was most certainly above what the average enlisted man could keep up with.

The mercenary laughed a laugh twinged with madness and gaiety as he dodged obstacles ranging anything from death lasers, attack dogs, bullets, volley balls, missiles, and rotten tomatoes all while in middle of the glorious eye of the burning search light. Despite all the danger and death around him, he was having a wickedly fun time, and hoped to do it again sometime within the very near future.

Keeping up his inhuman pace and not slowing down even a second, Dark Meat opened fire on the scores of men and women trying to stop him. His machine guns, Mary and Maxwell (names subject to change), sprayed violence all over, making friends with skin and faces and going to greet hearts and jugular veins in a spectacular welcoming party that resulted in bloody fireworks and bodily collapse – i.e., the death of the host.

Marvelous.

“Oooh, thank you, guys! You’re so sweet for worrying about me and the Thingy over here,” he said to his targets – prey, innocent bystanders. “But I got it under CON…TROL!”

More blood and bullets. More death screams.

Dark Meat’s face morphed under the fabric of his mask, an ugly snarl that portrayed his delight if anybody was able to lift up the mask enough to see his lips. Tired of guns, Dark Meat skid-haulted in his dead run, and changed weapons.

“Opp, hold on a minute guys, I gotta change up the pace here,” he told them. He holstered his machine guns, not bothering to empty out the clips while he secured the Thingy to his hips via the leather pouches on his utility belt (“What do they even use these things for?”). Sirens wailed nonstop. All the while, the spot light shone bright and heavy down on him, bullets missed him by a long shot – angry bees just barely nipping past him.

Although Dark Meat was indeed superhuman, he was not superhuman enough to be considered untouchable. In fact, he was very much touchable. He had no means of inviciblity, indeed, he was wearing skin tight spandex and hardly anything else. No armor, just weapons.

Ravenous attack dogs barked and howled in the background, coming in close. The military men were starting to catch up to him.

“All right already, sheesh! I heard ya, I heard ya.” Dark Meat unsheathed an authentic katana from the custom scabbard on his back harness. “Can’t a guy take out a shiny sword to kill people with in peace?”

Dark Meat was having the time of his life, which wasn’t saying much because this was the kind of thing he did all time – all the death and explosions involved – and he was a bit of loon to begin with. For one, he was clad in black spandex, accented with red patches and maroon stripes that sort of made him resemble a deadly and mercenarial orca, also known as the killer whale – no pun intended, but extremely welcomed when discovered.

A bit of irony to digest for the victims who realize this entertaining detail just before they are actually killed by the whale-looking assassin: killer whales weren’t named because they killed an aweful lot of living things. They only killed other whales, and originally they were known by the Spanish phrase that meant “whale killer.” Unfortunately there was mix-up during the translation business, resulting in killer whales instead of the factual whale killers.

Moving along.

Regardless of sea creature name similarities, as soon as the soliders caught up to him, Dark Meat commenced into turning them into mince meat.

“Aww darn. The writer already used my lame joke – Oh well, I’ll make more!”

The shimmering blade cut smoothly through muscle, sinew, organ and bone. The victims screamed in agony, gushed their vital fluids, and then shuffled off the mortal coil. Many of them did this in fantastical spurts and fountains of gobs and gore.

“Jeez, you guys just keep comin’!” Dark Meat stabbed somebody through the trachea, and then proceeded to chop off a guy’s neck directly in front of him. “Head shot!– man, I’d really wish the writer lady had employed the Unreal Tournament announcer guy to do the voice over for this thing. Hell, I’d even taken the Halo announcer for this.” He was slicing, dicing, skewering, coring, and all sorts of other cutting verbs to all the haplessly brave men throwing their all into protecting and procuring the Thingy from the madman.

“Really sorry about this, guy, but I gotta get the Thingy to the other guy who’s paying me to get him the Thingy so he can do whatever it is he wants to do with it,” he chattered away, happily chopping and eviscerating.

Once he’d cleared an efficient and clear enough path, Dark Meat set off into another marathon sprint, completely aware that there was a solid brick wall in front of him. “No problem there, got a solution for everything….”

After sheathing his katana on his back, he reached into another pouch on his hip and branished a handful of small yet incredibly potent explosives painted with bright yellow iconic smiley faces, grinning like a devil causing mischief in a military testing facility about to do something naughty. Which he was.

“Veeeeeeery… nauuuuughty….”

CAPTION: Meanwhile, on the outside of the military building, ten seconds before Dark Meat’s second detonation…

In the middle of the night cow-pie smelling air, tendrils of blue and purple energy tore through the particles of the sky approximately five feet above ground in a thunderous portal from another world. Neon blue electricity arced and soared as a tall, imposing figure appeared from the nexus.

This man, very obviously not from this world what with his glowing-ness and portal-induced transportation, didn’t look like he was from another world: He was wearing a heavy black trench coat, black combat boots, khaki fatigues, an olive green tank top, and a round light blue pendent mysteriously glowing around his neck. Oh, and along with his normal looking clothing choice, he had stark white spiky hair, a sparse yet very sexy griseling of a goatee adorning his chin, a crisscross scar over his right eye, and he was still glowing neon blue all while hovering five feet above the ground without the aid of machinery or wings.

So it goes.

He looked to be about in his twenties, maybe thirties. His hands were in his pockets, his coat billowing from behind him, as he surveyed the facility.

Someone was quite obviously causing a stir long before the Man From Elsewhere had shown up. Saint Elsewhere checked out the scene completely aware that wherever he was currently, it was certainly not where he came from.

This pleasured him to know to an absurdly huge degree; he wasn’t even bothered that some lunatic had apparently blown up one half of the building and that the sound of bullets, sirens, and dying voices was all a result of this.

Saint Elsewhere – not actually his name, but we’ll go with it for now - was fine with this. Not with the death and dying part, but with the fact that he was most certainly not in Kansas anymore, Kansas being a metaphor for the war-ravaged dystopia he heralded from.

He was in Wisconsin, a state that hadn’t existed for nearly four thousand years where he came from. As it were, the entire contininent of North America no longer existed in his time and particular part of the universe.

So it goes.

Before Saint Elsewhere could admire the relative peace of the situation (as crazy at that seems for you, reader), another large explosion blasted another wall apart, thus returning us to the last time – panel - we saw Dark Meat, rending the building a new asshole complete with rubble and several other casualties. Fire and smoke flickered and fumed from the butthole of the building – a most deadly fart, as it were - and a masked man of ebony and crimson came hurdling from the hastily constructed exit, laughing maniacally and recklessly spouting off non sequitors.

“Boom, baby! Take that in your picnic basket and go show it to your priest, muthafucka!”

He’s rather happy about this chaos, Saint Elsewhere mused, unperturbed by the eccentric and out-of-place statement made by the spandex-clad strange guy. Feel free to imagine a thought bubble bubbling from Saint’s forehead, even though it shouldn’t actually be there at all, but whatever. You’re the one reading this, not me.

I almost feel sorry for you.

Debris from the wall crashed to the ground in an inferno of plaster and insulation, burning the greenery around the base and settling at Saint’s feet. Saint didn’t even look down. He kept his eye on the mad masked man, who wasn’t very upset at all and seemed absolutely gleeful at the destruction he was causing.

The masked man, whom we – you the reader and I as the writer - know as the mercenary Dark Meat, was heading right towards the traveler of worlds. Dark Meat was also not paying attention where he was going and was still yelling at the people behind him, despite nobody following him and that nobody on base was still alive, except the other-worlder.

CAPTION AT DARK MEAT’S FEET: Body count: 190

“And that’s why you don’t mess with a Hawaiian who hasn’t had his daily supplement of pineapple today!” His head was still turned to the opening he had caused with his Smiley Face bombs. (“Because they make me smile when they blow up things!”)

“Dang,” he said to himself for once, impressed. “I haven’t done this much damage since that time I snuck into another military base and stole something equally as important and mysteriously science-y. ‘Course, my body count box didn’t give me as high of a number, and I didn’t have my Smileys on me that day, but you know --”

Saint Elsewhere intercepted the mouthy merc by dropping down in front of him, causing Dark Meat to run right into him and his stature of six-foot-three. “—Oooof!”

Well articulated, Meat.

The speed Dark Meat was running , plus the momentum of his muscular and toned spandexed body that somehow allowed him a subtle degree of aerodynamics, was enough to knock Saint Elsewhere off his feet and send the two of them flat onto the ground with an abrupt, dull THUD.

Dark Meat was on top of Saint’s chest, angry that he’d run flat into an enemy and that he was involuntarily placed in a homoerotic situation. If it had at all voluntary, he would not have been nearly as angry, even though Dark Meat was a fairly angry man.

“Arrrgh! Why’d you just stand there and let me run into you?” He said, picking himself up and then bounding in way via a back flip before Saint could have a chance to react. “Couldn’t you see that I was in a hurry to get the fuck out of here?”

Literally thrown off by his miscalculation, Saint rose to his feet and brushed himself off in a manly man sort of way. “I didn’t count on you to be such a large mass of muscle,” he said in a gruff voice that hinted at a sophisticated sort of manliman-ness that no modern man could have achieved without years of finishing school.

“I know, right?” Dark Meat sounded flattered. He gesticulated wildly in a comical manner as he said, “I look like such a skinny bastard! It’s deception at its sexiest and deadliest.” The white eyeholes of his mask, ringed by crimson circles against the general black of the rest of the material, were upturned in an expression of happiness.

Saint got a closer look at the mercenary, and was surprised to feel a sudden jerk just behind his heart. It was warm and sickly, and yet startling and inviting.

It was also seriously fucked up, especially at a time like this.

He could tell how muscular and slim the costumed lunatic was, noticing how spandex never lies when it comes to not leaving anything to the imagination and yet giving the mind fuel enough to wonder into the dark roads of unexplained fantasy.
He presumed that the close contact from the accident earlier was to blame for the sudden rush of hormones, and promptly dismissed it.

Saint continued on with his business.

“Who are you?” He asked, trying not to sound threatening and narmy.

Trying not to sound threatening was a strange thing to attempt, considering the circumstances, as follows: the fiery ruins of a military testing facility were still freshly charred and currently on fire; the beheaded, charred and gutted corpses of a hundred or so odd men and dogs lay scattered everywhere the eye could see; and a man wearing red-on-black spandex and a face concealing mask, the one fully responsible for the number in the body count caption box, was making Saint’s heart go pitter-patter.

Damn it all.

Dark Meat struck a dynamic pose, hand on the Thingy still attached on his belt, and the other reaching behind his back to grab his sword. “Didn’t you just hear the writer telling you the answer? After such excellent expository reminder text, I don’t have to answer who I am - you should just KNOW who I am, bro!”

“Um…no, I don't...” Saint said truthfully, figuring that the presence of a writer must be part of the rules governing that particular world, to which he was completely null to. “Normally, I would just read your mind and say your name out loud to freak you out, but it seems that I am unable to do so –”

“Duuuuuude, you’re telepathic!? That’s fucking awesome!” Dark Meat gushed, swinging his sword experimentally. “Yeah, you probably can’t read my mind because I’m not exactly human, but whatever! That’s so fuck-win that you’re a telepath.”

“Hmm.” Saint smirked with amusement. “I see you’re well-versed in the arts of flattery.”

“So are you,” Meat quipped, “but who the hell complains when someone compliments them? That’s just rude! ‘Sides, I’m serious. It’s a real pleasure to meet ya. That’s why I’m gonna feel pretty bad about this …”

“About what?”

“THIS!” Dark Meat lunged at Mr. Telepath with the grace and ferocity of an enraged mongrel, body contorted for dynamic effect and foreshortening as he went for the kill. (“There’s nothing wrong with looking awesome when you kick somebody’s ass.”) Resembling a beast of the wild variety, Dark Meat had turned into speed with teeth. “RAAARW, Minoatuar! Taste the beast!”

Saint, energized blue and humming with glowing power, flew himself out of the way gracefully, effortlessly. He thrust his arm out with speed and strength, flexing as a tendril of blue solidified and whipped at Dark Meat and swatted him downwards to the ground and gravel, silencing him for a brief moment.

Saint lowered himself to three feet above the ground. “It seems you and I are after the same objective.”

“What, you mean the Thingy?” Dark Meat comically pulled his face up from the dirt, resembling a very low-budget Saturday morning super hero cartoon. “I don’t even know what this thing is, but for some reason everyone wants it and nobody’s letting me have it.”

Saint restrained himself from snorting in incredulity. “You’re telling me that you have no idea what it is or what is capable of?”

“I don’t even know its actual name. The guy who hired me said it a few times,” he said, lunging at Saint with his sword trying to cleave the distance between them. “but I forgot! My genetics make me have a horrible memory, so sue me.”

Saint effortlessly dodged every one of Meat’s attacks, as though he were playing a game. “I see…”

“So are you going to tell me what it is – you know, the Thingy -- or are you just going to continue toying with me until I make you mad enough to actually fight me?”

“I don’t want to fight you…--what was your name?”

“Dark Meat for now, until we get to know each other a bit more during the fight scene.”
“Oddly,” said Saint, “I don’t see this fight lasting very much longer.”

It was Dark Meat’s turn to smirk. He was really starting to like this telepath guy. If he wasn’t trying to kick his ass, he would probably be trying to kiss it so they could get somewhere later that night.

Oh baby....

TO BE CONTINUED IN "SOME IDIOTS HAVE ALL THE LUCK: - ISSUE
00: WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH MODIFY THE WORLD WITH PARTICULARS...