Bronwen O'Connor
Not a Hope In Hell (that you'll live through this) Part I.

I’m tripping on mescal tequila, and somehow managing to keep my bike on the road, when unexpectedly my destination arrives amidst the choppy colorful streamers of my dusk-timed hallucinations. It’d been a few weeks since I’d degenerated into some head-burning mess with some unhealthier-than-usual coping skills, and a real bad case of spooky-in-the-brain.

I strode into the small dingy shop, Till’s words still ramming around in my cerebellum,
Consider it a learning experience…

Blood had exploded from my husband’s doppelganger in a vision so real it had haunted me for days after, despite the fact it had been a seeded illusion, something far sinister—an anticipatory twisting of a cruel onyx blade—sacrificial. A sacrifice had to be made, this was certain, but to what end, I had no idea—still just had no fucking clue—only realizing that in a short period, a dalliance, my life was forever changed. I’d become haunted, in the very sense of the word, by an apocryphal entity.

And she knew it the minute I walked in. The crone behind the counter, skin a dark olive, paled visibly as I approached the counter. Wormwort and ginger roots hung like shriveled genitalia in strings from the ceiling, with various other herbs and supplements lined on counters and shelves in clear jars. Mysterious goos and promising powders all sat innocuously. I watched her fish a paradoxical talisman out of her shirt from where it had rested warmly in the fold of her darkly wrinkled breasts. St. Peter, the slayer of demons, the patron saint of flight.

“Fucking Catholic,” I snorted, “in this joint?” I studied the Anarchist’s cookbook, dusty on the shelf behind her. I’d always secretly wanted a copy, if only to see the homemade recipes of my youth in print, some proof and resonance of things I strangely held sentimental. Baby’s first pipe bomb, and how it was constructed, complete with instructions on taking out vital limbs of the foe. Charming.

“I can’t help you with your problem,” the old woman snapped, and she gestured towards the door. “Get out.”

“Ye don’t even know what I’m here for,” I replied. Stupid cunt.

“I know damn well why you’re here,” she spat. “It’s that djin you’ve got…he followed you in, and now he’ll follow you right back out, so leave. Now.”

“Djin?” I asked.

“Malignant spirit, demon, evil attachment…” she sputtered, “it’s all the same, and I don’t care to entangle myself in it.”

I was riveted. Have you ever been totally tripping, and sworn you’ve seen a black Labrador follow you for seven blocks, and then someone with you affirm the very same hallucination? I was validated, and I wanted to throw myself over the counter and kiss her old grizzled face.

“What can I do about it?” I asked. She smirked.

“Kill yourself, before it’s too late.”

“Well that’s fucking helpful,” I growled.

This is pointless…but you are very amusing Bronwen. What I am , who you will be because of it, goes far beyond the simple majickery of a voodoo and magic card store…

I scowl and lean across the counter, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and pulling her towards me.

“Let me rephrase my initial request. If ye don’t help me, I’ll fucking kill ye, no doubt, all right?”

She smiled thinly, unafraid, “you wouldn’t kill an old woman like me. Not with the shape you’re in. It wouldn’t weigh on you now, surely, but it would in …oh, say about three weeks.”

I cocked my head quizzically at her, “three weeks? What are ye tryin’ to throw me off with bogus precognitive shit? I don’t buy that, ye fuckin’ grandma.”

“Ease up on the drinking and the substance abuse,” she advised, smiling at me knowingly. “In fact, you may want to quit altogether.”

I push her away, and she stumbles slightly, a noticeable limp as she steps back. Great, beating up the aged—maybe I was a shock jock after all. I stared up at the ceiling for a moment and gained some semblance of composure before looking back into her tepid brown eyes.

“I need to get rid of him,” I said more quietly. “I really don’t know what I can do to get rid of him, but I sure as hell need to try. Cost isn’t an issue.”

She leaned on the counter and put her head in her arms for a minute, looking up at me as she meditated on my plight.
After a few minutes, she burst into laughter.

“Do you honestly think that this is something one would have to be financially motivated to do?”

I shrugged and looked at her with a hint of desperation I’m sure must have been a neon sign on my forehead. She sighed and reached across the counter to shake my hand.

“I am Mala,” she said, her voice leathery and firm. “ Bronwen, if you are willing to do all that I ask of you in utter compliance, I will contact you in three days. You must be ready at a moment’s notice. I will try and help you as best as I can, but cannot guarantee complete success.”

“Doesn’t Mala mean—“ I interjected. She smiled and laughed, “malevolent being? Why yes it does.”

“Well wait though, how did ye know my name was Bronwen?” I asked, somewhat stymied by the mysticism still quite marginal to me about this life I’d become victimized by. She smiled sagely and winked.

“I am all knowing, and all powerful. It is but a paltry notion that I would of course know your name the moment I was able to search your soul in your storming eyes.”

I stared at her, somewhat shocked, and she burst into a sharp cackle.

“Whomever loves you so dearly in your life,” she finally wheezed, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye, “has written your name on the inside of your helmet.”

“Oh.” Well, duh…he was always nervous you’d lose it, after all.

Bronwen O'Connor
"The Awkward that is Nathan Gust"

You know, I’m getting tired of this rigmarole, I really must say. You Nathan Gust, you baby F1X like a wet dream you never want to go stagnant, and yet, you’re slowly poisoning it, just like everything else you touch. You don’t deserve to be where you are, you don’t deserve accolades or fatherly affection—you just need a goddamn curb-stomping, the good old fashioned way, from a time where fucking promises meant something and people were good on their word. You are fickle. You are shit.

What happens when you beat your dog? Your dog eats you alive one day, because while a dog secretly roots for it’s master to love it, life is still life, survival is still survival, and death…death eliminates suffering. If a dog can’t escape from a fire unscathed, it will wake it’s master. If it can—you’re fucked. And man are you fucked Nathan. You’re pissing off an awful lot of people, and it’s about time you put down your Boone’s and paid some fucking mind to it before it’s too late. Simply, NCV will rape you and run you over in the dark, and that will be a cruel but necessary lesson.

Cruel and unnecessary…like your face. Even if all I’m doing is leashing Bessette for this fight, exercising one of the boys in this bout, you know we bring in the money, the crowd, the attention…and you’re pissing it all away because you’re king shit. You run stuff. Whatever, we run you—without us, your strings would be visible for all to see. You would be left with …Sean Walsh and his Gay Parade, or whatever the fuck their names are. And let’s face it, no one’s down with watching queens scratch it out in the ring—that’s just seventies she-male porn waiting to happen. Shit like Sean Walsh and Seth Dryden, that makes people uncomfortable = you lose because you’re retarded.

I hope you get yours, whether it is by my hand, or someone else’s—of one thing I am certain, it is fucking inevitable.

You’re fucked.

endo