Anarkos

[disc:524de06d0e]Profanity, violence, organs, prostitution and all the other shady hobbies of the other half... [EDIT: This is post number 187, how fitting...][/disc:524de06d0e]

"Five hundred of the red stuff, clean, three kids and one heart, unbroken. No smokers. Have we got a deal?"

"Make it six-hundred and you're on."

Karl's was the sort of place where you could buy anything. Guns, people, governments. You name it, someone's selling it. The only things that aren't for sale are the beer and the prostitutes, which you only rent. From Karl.

Karl, the big man behind the bar, with his gut cascading out over the belt of his old black jeans like a breaking wave. Karl, with no hair and no eyebrows. Karl, with a Colt between his arse cheeks and balls as big and hard as any you'd find at a bowling alley.

Even though his beer tastes like piss and comes from no recogniseable brand, you still buy it. That's the way things are done, down at Karl's. Spending five bucks to rent a glass full of fizzing piss is a small price to pay for the privacy of a nice wall alcove down at Karl's.

Nobody comes here for the beer. The girls? Well, they're not the best looking in town, but provided you don't leave a mark, they'll let you do anything, or so I'm told. Of course, if you do leave a mark, Karl won't be too happy, and the chances are, he'll be leaving a mark on you too. The sort of mark that results in you leaving a mark of your own. On the pavement. Outside. Red and bloody, with a chalk outline.

You get my drift. No one fucks with Karl.

People come here because it's discrete. The last straight cop seen here went out the back door, with a brick tied to his neck. Oh, didn't I mention it? Karl's backs onto the harbour.

So, whether you've got a body in your trunk or you'd like one, Karl's is the place to be.

Rumour is, the man on the grassy noll got his rifle here, and the missing parts of the Watergate tapes must've changed hands here at least five times.

In the corner there, we have our humble hero, Joe. You see him? Facing the door, slouched by the last table, trying not to catch anyone's eye. That's Joe, the greasy looking character, making an Italian suit look cheap.

"Six hundred? Six hundred?! Next you'll be asking me to sell you mine! Five-fifty, no more!"

He's the closest thing to a sponge you'll ever see around Karl's. Every night, another shady deal will go wrong for Joe. He'll sell you anything. The trouble is, of course, that most of the time, what he's selling belongs to someone else, like the suit. He picked that up from a drycleaner's about a month ago and hasn't changed it since.

Other people come here just to do their business or unwind. Joe, he comes here to soak up the sights. My theory is that he can pretend that his life matters, when, really, he's strictly small-time.

Just look along that wall. First alcove, the three guys on one side are Russian mob, and they're facing off with a man in the kind of cheap suit that just screams "politician", or maybe "bureaucrat". You can work out what's going on there, but here's a hint: That's the mayor's secretary, and he has a thing for rope, leather and latex. Next up, we've got what looks to me like the Yakuza - you can tell by their little fingers - and someone with a briefcase and an ape with a gun on each side. Drug deal, nothing small; tetro would be my guess. Oh, you've never heard of it? Tetrodotoxin, the shit they make zombies with. Next along, we've got, ooh, the Smythe twins. Hope their ol'daddy doesn't find out that they've been playing around down here. More money than sense those two. Opposite them, you'll see their buyers; Libyans by the looks of it. Daddy won't be happy to know they know what he knows.

And, then, last of all, there's Joe, a little man wearing an Italian suit and a Pulp-Fiction hairstyle like it's going out of style. He'll sell you anything. Sold the Brooklyn Bridge once. That cost him a thumb when the deeds turned out to be forgeries. He's shaking a little, can you see it?

You get my drift. Everyone fucks with Joe.

"Okay, I'll give you five seventy, fine! Deal, deal! First shipment tomorrow!"

Trouble is, Joe doesn't have five seventy of the red. Joe has four hundred, and it's about as far from clean as it comes. Joe never was very good at reading labels.

"I swear it's clean, shit, I'd transfuse myself with it! And the heart and kidneys! Top grade! Top grade!"

The only heart Joe has is still in use, and, well, he's just sold two kidneys, and he only has one left.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. You're wondering how someone who makes deals as crooked as a paperclip survived this long playing with the big boys. Well, the truth is, Joe never normally takes risks quite this big.

But Joe, Joe has a problem. A big problem. Joe fucked with Karl. Now, you and me both know that you don't fuck with Karl. But Joe? Joe's the pane of glass being carried across the road in the car chase of life. He's the cute little kitten stuck in life's washing machine. When there's a sign saying "don't walk, or you'll be hit by a big motherfucking bus", Joe's the guy who starts walking, even when he can see the big goddamn bus.

Normally, Joe has the survival instinct of a moth and, somehow, the survivability of a cockroach. But, well, today, he's more a like a lemming, on both counts.

Never mind what Joe did to Karl. You really don't want to know the details. Key point is, Joe broke something of Karl's, and Karl wants a new one.

If I told you what it was, even the most bent porkie in this city would arrest us both. Things that sensitive, well, they're hard to get. But it's Joe's lucky day, because the man sitting opposite him just happens to be selling.

Well, trading. Cash is easy to forge. Organs and HIV-negative blood? They're fucking hard to get in this town.

You see that? Joe just shook on the deal. Stuck his wet-fish handshake into a grizzly's paw. He's got two hours to deliver blood and guts he doesn't have to a man who does not play softball.

He's walking towards us, don't look now. Not Joe, he's no threat. But the man he's with - you don't want to know who he works for, but let's just say that his wee-wee got the chop-chop and he helped sink at least one American cruiser and 32 UN Security Council resolutions - well, that man, he's trouble. Not trouble in a sexy Masumi Max kinda way. More trouble in a "Mossad gonna kill your bitch arse" kinda way.

Joe's in trouble. He's been up shit creak for years, but now his canoe has sprung a leak, and, well, he just plugged it by breaking his paddle.

Now, what Joe should be doing now is picking up his four-hundie of dirty heroin-addict blood and trying to find someone with some organs to spare. Failing that, Joe should be running real fast, to somewhere like Pitcairn Island. They just might not chase him that far.

Joe's not doing either of those things, of course. Joe just walked over to the bar and ordered a beer. Sure, you can't see through the bottom of your glass, and the murky green liquid tastes like - and probably is - cat piss diluted with meths, but it gets you drunk and comes in big glasses.

There's another thing you've gotta know about Joe. When he's drunk, he's talkative. Now, the other scumbags around that bar, they know just what time it is: Time not to be seen talking with Joe. As he approached the bar, you would've seen them shifting their stools with all the subtlety and elegance of an M1A1 tank - which, by the way, one of them happens to have for sale, if you know a buyer.

Of course, you weren't watching Joe slither over to the bar, were you? You were watching shittty-shitty-bang-bang there stride on out, weren't you? That's because you're an idiot. If it wasn't for me, you'd end up dead in a place like this.

So, Joe's only got one person to talk to, and that person is Karl. Now, you might think that this was a bad plan. Karl is hardly Joe's best friend right now.

But Karl, beneath his crustie unwashed exterior, he a heart of rusty iron. And, like anything rusty, it breaks down after a while. Karl is lonely, like only a man with a bar full of scumbags, a back room full of whores - male, female and other - and enough piss to kill a Texan and a beer belly with its own gravitational field and a shotgun can be.

Truth is, Karl needs someone to talk to just as much as Joe.

But Karl, Karl has appearances to maintain, so he pushes Joe off his seat and tells him to stop being a silly little faggot.

Being pushed off his stool is the least of Joe's worries, so he gets back up and orders another beer - a sure-fire way of making Karl happy.

Of course, two hours and six jugs later, his deadline's up, and our friend is back, with his friends. Four of them, and they're all wearing sunglasses inside. It's time to make the trade. If you're dumb enough to look at him, you'll see the briefcase.

You looked, didn't you?

Joe is, as the English say, proper fucked now.

The way this deal should go is that Joe and the other five men should walk back over to the corner table, and Joe should pass over his briefcase full of ice and organs and a sample of the blood. At the same time, our man there should uncuff his briefcase from his hand and pass it over.

But Joe doesn't have any organs to spare, and Joe's drunk. In fact, it looks like he's just passed out over the bar.

Five minutes later, it's all over. Who'd have thought Joe had it in him?

Now, we all know that every barman keeps a shotgun under his bar for self-defence. But Karl's isn't your ordinary bar, and Karl isn't your ordinary barmen. He keeps a shotgun down there alright; a fully automatic French-made SPAS-13 loaded with twelve sabot rounds designed to crack through body-armour like butter.

And, as luck would have it, Joe just happened to fall forward across the bar at just the right spot for his flailing hand to knock the gun's pistol-grip.

Somewhere in Joe's little weasel brain, something must have gone click.

"Yeah, I've got your stuff right here." Can you believe he said that?

After what happened next, I can. Twelve shots, four dead men. By my reckoning, that's three sabot shells each.

"That good enough for you? I'm sure you can get one heart and two kids from that."

The bar's patrons suddenly looked happier after that. Everyone likes a bit of entertainment, and, well, they'd rather four dead strangers than one dead Joe, even if they wouldn't admit it. Besides, the bar was getting just a bit too tense.

Funny how five minutes can change how you see someone, eh? Five minutes ago, Joe was a lowlife. Now, Joe's a lowlife with a smoking shotgun in hand and a wild gleam in his eyes.

The survivor, he doesn't feel lucky. He doesn't know if Joe fired twelve shots or only eleven, and, well, Joe wasn't counting either, and his hands still clutch the gun like a vulture's claws hold onto ba dead rat.

In fact, our man feels so unlucky that he drops the briefcase and runs. Lucky you, eh?

"That's yours, Karl."

And, that, my friend, is a day in the life of Karl & Joe's, the best bar this side of Baghdad. Yeah, it's a tale with a moral, alright. All good stories are, and I'm gonna save you the trouble of trying to guess what this one means.

It has two messages, and they're as simple as killing a man with a shiv and selling his organs. One, even weasels have claws, and when you push them hard enough, their claws come out. Two, even grizzly bears have balls, and when you grab them by the nuts, you own them.

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

falco

This is nice! The narrator has a great voice and that’s definitely the strongest part of a very strong piece.

Here's a few specifics:

I really like this except for the “breaking wave.” That seemed too energetic for a belly.

I think you can drop “the” before chances as well as the comma. Put the comma before “too” instead.

Outside seems kind of repetitive after pavement.

Should be knoll.

Very nicely done, in my opinion.

I just couldn’t picture/hear ooh coming out of your narrator’s voice.

I think the repetition of Joe is unnecessary.

Creek

Has?

Certianly this time lapse had to be made. However, it stuck out at me because I wouldn’t expect your narrator to stick around. Part of the time, it sounds like he’s telling the story in retrospect (this is one of those times). But part of the time (for example: “You looked, didn't you?”), the narrator and “you” seem to be right on hand at the time of action. This isn’t necessarily a bad contradiction, especially because the rest is so good. However, you might want to look into changing a couple things.

This appears to contradict with this:
Twelve shots, four dead men

Not much more I can say except that I really like this. Great job!

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gohn67

Awesome story Anarkos, I know how you like critism, but I really don't have any.

Didn't see any plot holes or anything.

The characters are developed well.

I agree with Falco, the narrative voice that you used was great and very effective.

I really liked this line, it really stood out to me when I read it. My heart beat a bit quicker when I read it. It's just seems so true to me.

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eggo

I liked the story alot,

Some very nice imagery,

nice
Excellent antithesis
Loved it.

I had a couple of mixed emotions about the narrator. At the beginning He(could be a woman) was a freindly host who walked us through and towards the end it seemed we were "Idiots" who were more of a nuisance to him. Maybe it's me.

The use of the narrator was very well done around and added a element to the story that made the reader feel comfortable in that rat hole.

Thanks for the read

Anarkos

I think he's actually the weakest of the first-person/ltd-third-person narrators I've written for a while. He certainly has a unique style, but I prefer, for example, the narrative voice I penned in Reconsumption/Deconsumption, which you'll find floating around these forums.

Cheers.

True. I intended that slightly odd imagery to serve two purposes. One, showing a little insight into our narrator and, two, being just inappropriate enough to catch the reader's intention, while still showing the image well.

Perhaps it did not work too well.

I disagree. It is repetitive, but I think that jolting series of sentence fragments is crucial in showing us just how real the prospect of Karl killing someone is to the narrator...

Argh, man, would you believe I even checked the spelling of knoll, on my first (and only) edit of the piece, and then knowing full well the correct spelling (which had been in the first version), changed it to be incorrect?

I'm going insane, I really am. I blame my exams.

It's a little uncharacteristic, and the idea here was for you to visualise this line taking on a sort of sarcastic, mocking tone. He's a washed-up ex-surfer who hangs around lowlife bars and sells dodgy things to dodgy people on the street for a living, and they're rich kids selling daddy's secrets...

It's not necessary, certainly, but I think little idiosyncracies like the narrator's habit of repeating names and other nouns help, one, call attention to things, and, two, develop the narrative voice as unique and 'real'.

I. Knew. There. Was. Something. Wrong. With. That. Sentence.

You're right. The problem was, I can't really think of any more fitting way to work this...perhaps have you and he have a drink while he rants on about his life and the bar's other patrons?

This is really a limitation of this present-tense style. Hmmm.

Actually, wait, here's a chance to build the characters of Joe and Karl too.

It's true. I also move from present to past tense often, although hopefully always with reason...

Cheers.

Not quite. The man who made the deal brought four friends along. He didn't die; his four friends did.

Thanks.

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

Anarkos

Cheer Gohn.

Eggo:

Thanks.

He's supposed to be gradually losing patience. The idea is that you're a newjack in his underworld, and he's happy to take you under his wing...but he's still a scumbag and jaded old bastard.

Cheers again.

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

Chris Miller

Congratulations on a very well-written character study. I found it so good that I am embarassed to say, I looked around via google and found a copy of it in "The Green Room" another forum, where you also posted it. Have you plublished it anywhere else?

I liked its specifics, the poison, the gun, etc.

I really liked this description (maybe not the lemming qualifier). The moth and cockroach metaphors were great. I know people like that.

The whole thing seems to take place in the instant, in one loud scene, albeit with some reflection. Does this make it flash fiction?

This ending is nice. On an emotional level it felt right, but I wasn't sure exactly how it tied into the story.

Anyway, I just wanted to say you impressed me with this piece. It had almost a cyberpunk (Gibson) voice to it (without the cyber). Very unique too though.

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Barcelona Review story: http://www.barcelonareview.com/64/e_cm.html

Anarkos

Cheers Chris. Most of my stuff here is also posted (or was first posted) in the general section of AtomicMPC's forums, which has now received the terrible name of "The Green Room". That's the only other place I've posted or otherwise published it.

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

Anarkos

By the way, did anyone pick up on the hints that Karl and Joe were well on the way to being a couple?

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

semtecks

I've got to say, your style, your prose . . . awesome. You got skills, boy

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ToucanMan

Good story. Not bad writing either.

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rigas1980

i liked your story, the plot and the characters.
Professional writing

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Anarkos

Thanks for the compliments.

ToucanMan - Any tips on how I can go from "not bad" to "great" writing?

Cheers.

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My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.

ToucanMan

Hi Anarkos.
I wish I had that formula, I'd be a great writer myself.
When I critique anybody's work, unlike most people, I do it from the point of view of a reader. I've read stories here which were very imaginative yet badly written. I very seldom comment about the writing, because most times it could be much better. I thought yours was above this forum's average and I said so. I could not call it professional like Rigas did, because it isn't. I think it's a disservice to stop someone's progress just to make him/her feel good.

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"A toucan can't keep toucankind ticking, but two can."

Anarkos

I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment; all too often here bad or mediocre pieces get dazzling compliments. I'm not searching for that. My ego is large enough; it doesn't need stroking. The vast majority of posters here (myself included) are ameteurs, hacks and/or kids. That in itself is no bad thing; everyone starts somewhere.

However, detailed criticism both of the plot and the writing style is crucial in helping people improve their skills. One or two line comments tend to do very little in that regard. As arrogant as it sounds, I know that I am a technically proficient and competant writer (yet no author; I can write, but my plots leave much to be desired...). I also know, on the other hand, that I am far from the best.

Trouble is, I don't know why I'm not. I can see some flaws in my own work, but I am naturally blind to others, and need others to point them out to me. If my work isn't brilliant, then I'd like to know both that and, most importantly, why not, so I can learn from my mistakes.

Cheers though!

__________________
My latest work: Bags - The Hooker - Going Rogue - Flashing Out - The Problem with Being a Grifter
I always appreciate fair criticism, and will endeavor to reciprocate.