Steve The Undead (Working Title, In Progress, Profanity) - WritingForums.com - Writing Forums, Writing Challenges, Critiques and Help for Writers

The Tao Of Spike · 07-01-2004, 04:07 AM

There he was, standing erect, with his nose pressed up against a dry desert-like wall built of dried mud. His hands were feeling the wall in a desperate attempt to figure out where he was. His head felt like it had after his twenty-first party. You know, it wasn't the first time he had gotten drunk but it was the first time he was able to drink to his heart's content because he wasn't being gouged on the price by that hobo outside the 7-11 and he was able to drink past the point when his brother didn't feel like getting up for another beer run. As soon as he had felt the feeling, it began increasing ten-fold. It was more like a really bad brain-freeze now and his hands moved from the wall to the temples in a futile attempt to soften the pain. It was a miracle that he was still standing there until he realized that the ground, ceiling and opposite wall were missing. It was then he realized that he never really was standing and tried pushing himself up off the ground, but his wobbling arms failed him as he collapsed to the ground, getting the wind knocked out of him in the process.
“God, I feel like someone ripped my brain in two and super glued it back together,” he said, wiping his breakfast from his lip and chin.
“Drama queen,” the man sitting across from him said, lighting his cigarette.
The man on the ground swaggered his head from its position on the ground to see a heavy-set and terribly Caucasian man with a beard and disturbingly high socks sitting in a roughed-up leather chair staring over at him from about fifteen feet away. “Fuck off,” the man on the ground got out before having the rest of his tomato garden soup come up. “Where the hell is this?” he finished.
“With a shit-bird attitude like that, I don't think I'll tell you,” said the man in the chair. The man on the ground managed to pull himself up to the roughed-up leather chair about ten feet away from the other man. “My name's Tohru, if you were wondering.”
“I wasn't, but, you don't really look all that, you know, oriental,” he said, still leering from his throbbing head.
“This is your fault, Mr. Steven Jerome Huxley, age 34 of Flint, Michigan. Two marriages, two divorces, social security number ***-**-****, Truman High School class of '89, who has three false teeth and once , wow, once convinced a drunk high school girl to have sex with him while chaperoning at a dance for his cousin,” Tohru read off while putting out his cigarette.
Steve stopped rubbing his right eye and stared at the ground. “Bullshit, that bitch said she was eighteen,” he said quickly looking up to see Tohru reading from a sheet taken from an enormous stack of files placed next to him on the ground. It looked like Tohru was now reading to himself. “The hell is that?” Steve asked, holding out his open palm to the stack of files.
“Yeah,” Tohru half-heartedly started, “I really should read up on the stuff before the job actually starts,” he said thumbing through the pages, “but, you know, shit just piles up and it's not necessary for me to know all this to do my job. These are just footnotes, but the boss just yammers on. You know what I'm saying. It says here you were a human resources guy for The Right Stuf International. What the hell is that?”
“It's a, uh,” Steve swallowed and began talking with his hands, “North American distributor of Japanese animation based in the Midwest. We translate it and re-dub it and such then sell it to vendors or straight to consumers.”
“Really?” Tohru asked, not really wanting to know as he continued to flip through the files. He was just buying time to bone up on the info for this guy.
While this was going on, the gears in Steve's head began turning again and he started processing all this information. Finally realizing that his first question was never answered, the question almost bursted out of his mouth again. But, he was able to control it and kept it to an indoor voice. “Where the hell is this?” he inquired calmly, looking at his surroundings and rubbing his knees.
“Mr. Huxley, I have some bad news,” he began as Steve got comfortable in his chair, “you are dead. Well, sort of dead. You're alive in the sense that you're still on earth but you're dead in the sense that you're body is now a mangled corpse that to which you will never return and your mind/soul/brain is the only working part of your worldly self.”
Steve looked un-fazed, then cracked a little smile. “Ok,” he said, looking around, “where are the cameras?” Tohru lit another cigarette in anticipation of the oncoming drama. “Seriously, where's Ashton?” He looked over the side of the chair in search of a camera crew. Nothing. “Okay, listen,” Steve rested his left elbow on his left knee and leaned towards Tohru, proposing an offer. Tohru raised his eyebrows while flicking the ashes off of his cigarette. “Let's say I am 'dead' that still doesn't answer my question.”
“Fair enough. You're inside of your own head. Or imagination or mind, soul, I dunno. I haven't really read the part on what your philosophical beliefs are. Basically you're existing inside you own consciousness until you come to grips with your own death. And to say some farewells and what-not to the body that carried you for thirty-four years. And to experience mortal thought for the last time. Consciousness gets really interesting once you die. Opens up real doors for thought. Hell, even being in a mortal mind gives me a major mental cramp. I feel all closed-in in here.” Tohru looked up from the stack of papers to see Steve sitting there, once again, not convinced. “Not convinced?”
Quickly, “you know, this is one hell of a story to cook up just to drag a guy out to the desert and rape him.”
“You know, you give yourself too much credit, Mr. Huxley. Why would someone want to rape you?”
Steve gave a slightly angry, slightly discouraged look at Tohru. He began thinking that if he were a middle-aged overweight chain-smoker, he'd want himself. He began calling up mental images of himself and stopped, for two reasons. One: he wasn't in the mood to see himself like that and two: he is a middle-aged overweight chain-smoker. At least, he was.
“Not to mention,” Tohru started up again, “it wouldn't require someone to drag you all the way out in to the middle of no where to do it. I could take you down easily in, say, a dark alley. Hell, not even, on the way to your car or in the john. Look at that pudge on you, fatty. You couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag.”
Steve shot back with, “Hey, look who's calling who fat. You've got more flab than I do.” Pointing to Tohru's gut.
“Like I said before, this is your fault,” Taking another drag and crossing his legs. Steve fired him a surprised look, and before he could ask his question, Tohru responded. “Whenever a guide enters a human mind, he takes on the image of a god or person that the mortal revered. It's usually, like, that really famous painting of Jesus or it's Buddha or Vishnu. Sometimes Muhammad or Moses. Uh, I've gotten a few Hilters. Satan, yeah, with the horns and pitchforks. Uh...” Tohru kept thinking other shapes he's had to be.
“That's who you look like!” Steve exclaimed, pointing, “it was so obvious, I was just a little dazed from the whole hang-over thing. You're Kevin Smith. Oh man, this is so awesome,” he began yammering like a school girl, “I love all your movies. Except 'Jersey Girl', that sucked, but, yeah, I basically worship everything else you've ever done.”
“Like I said, I'm not Kevin Smith. I'm Tohru Momochi who looks like Kevin Smith because it seems you had an unhealthy obsession with a writer/director. Who sucked, by the way. Couldn't direct an action scene to save his life.”
“But he could write.”
“Yeah, dick and fart jokes. Crappy ones, too. I saw Clerks.” Tohru switched to his overbearing tone, “Ohh, it's in black and white. And independent! Not to mention the big words that appear before every part of the move. It must be good.” He said, now waving his hands as a part of the mocking act.
Steve just gave the flipped Tohru the bird, and, in the process, realized that he was still rummaging through the files. Half of the them being on the left, the other half, on the right.