As a kid, the only time I ever wanted to go to the grocery store with my mom was on Saturdays, because that was when the old ladies with the big hair would set out their tables in the aisles and hand out free samples of cuisine perfectly suited for my 10-year old palette. Pizza rolls and little cups of cereal. Crackers with Cheez-Whizzy type stuff from an aerosol can. My first cup of coffee came from a free sample lady at Krogers when I was a wee lad. Free samples hold a special place in my heart, as does 1980s nostalgia.
I haven’t mentioned my latest book from Grindhouse Press much since it was published back in December, so I thought, what better way to do that than by offering a sample from Samurai vs. ROBO-DICK. And not a tiny portion of dried-out Tostinos that’s been soaking grease through a paper plate for an hour sample, but a large, juicy, meaty hunk from the middle of the book, with lots of action and blood and some other fluids sort of offering.
(If you don’t know me by now, the following is most definitely rated-NC-17 material. Fair warning and all.)
So, this free sample comes from Chapter 8, when our (wimpy) hero Benson DuBois is confronted by the Brown Shirts, a neighborhood watch group comprised of a bunch of fascist assholes who run around the gated community of Grand Acres, bludgeoning non-compliant residents with their Peace Keeper batons. They’re led by asshole No. 1, Richard Belvedere, who Benson refers to as Dick, and he doesn’t much like it. Dick has just cold-cocked the girl of Benson’s dreams, the redheaded lovely Maggie Malone, after their secret meeting was discovered by the Brown Shirts. Things look bad for Benson, but then they get weird when the neighborhood Samurai and a wendigo named Kevin join the party…
* * *
“Nice try, Benson, but you’ll never get the drop on me, you spineless fuck.”
Dick stood up and raised his arm over his head.
“I should have done this the day I met you and saved us both the hassle.”
I struggled for air and couldn’t speak, couldn’t plead and beg him to spare me. But that’s not what I would have done anyway. I didn’t even care what he was about to do to me, all I could think of was what he’d done to Maggie. Despite the agony in my guts and the looming bludgeon above my head, all I could see was blood, my vision blotted by fury.
He bared his teeth and was just about to bring that thumper down on my face when a shriek from my right stopped him. He looked and I watched his face drop down, mouth forming an O of shock. I strained to look as well, but from my vantage point, sideways on the ground with the streetlights glaring down in my face, all I could see was the blood. Not those dancing spots of anger in my eyes, either.
A fountain of it, real and gushing and black under the lights, sprayed in the air like an oil rig just come in. One of the Brown Shirts staggered toward Dick, his hands clawing at the missing chunk from his neck, his own blood coating his left side and showering one of the Things as he wobbled past her. Everything stopped, every heartbeat, every lung, even the wind. The entire neighborhood froze in time as he dropped to his knees and pitched onto his face, dead and twitching and hemorrhaging gallons of black ink into the perfectly clipped grass.
The form standing where the dead man had been suddenly came into view. It resembled a human, only much larger – a hulking, huffing, chewing mass of man-like creature. Blood squirted from its lips as it worked on the hunk of neck it had torn from the dead Brown Shirt. It had to be near seven feet tall, broad shouldered and thick-muscled, with a massive, naked, filthy chest coated in grime and hair. Wild, unkempt tufts of black curls sprung from everywhere on its head and face. It flexed tremendous hands with fingers like polish sausages that could encompass my entire head. Bands of muscles rippled along its arms like twisted bundles of rope writhing beneath his skin.
I say his skin, because as I looked down, I clearly made out the thing’s gigantic dick bouncing between its legs, sprouting like a fleshy Peace Keeper out of a tangled mass of black pubic hair. As he chewed and snorted, dripping blood down his grimy front, the monster between the monster’s legs began to inch up, bobbing in time with each chomp. Only when it reared back and bellowed up at the night sky did anyone finally react, and then it was panicked chaos.
Brown Shirts scrambled to get away from the beast, which reached down and plucked up the Thing Maggie had called “Marcia”. She screamed but quickly fell silent as it twisted her head around on her shoulders until she was staring cross-eyed back at me. The beast buried its face in the back of her neck and ate, tearing large chunks of flesh and muscle away with its teeth. It yanked on her severed spinal column, snapping off vertebrae and tossing them over its shoulder, literally ripping the woman to pieces. Marcia’s head wobbled loosely on her shoulders, a grotesque bobble-head. As it chewed a large mouthful of gristle, the beast lowered Marcia’s head to its crotch and inserted its huge, mud and blood streaked dick into the hole it had made in the back of her neck. Then it began to pump, hard and fast. Marcia’s lifeless eyes jiggered around in their sockets. Her jaw fell open and blood gushed between her lips, down her chin. The beast huffed and groaned, and when it climaxed, it rammed the back of Marcia’s head so hard, its erupting penis burst from between her teeth, spraying long, arcing ropes of red-tinged semen from her mouth.
That was enough for me. All that macho bravery and anger and revenge shit was pretty much forgotten and it was time to get the fuck out of there.
I struggled to my knees, still finding it difficult to breathe. I was about to stand and join the rest of the fleeing crowd when I noticed that they were all running back toward me now. New screams split the quiet Grand Acres air, along with several limbs. Brown Shirts staggered through the street clutching at stumps that had once been full limbs. One stood in the middle of Peach Pit Pass, wobbling on his right leg and reaching down to grasp the empty space where his left leg had been. He stood straight and stared with shock at the blood on his hands, unable to comprehend his sudden loss. Then his head dropped away from his body and I saw the Demon.
It was the same thing from the other night, the figure that had separated Dick from his right hand. As it strode across the road and up onto the lawn, I finally saw what it was. The horns were attached to a helmet and the scaly, overly wide body made up the armor of what could only be described as a samurai warrior. He didn’t run, but stepped with a purpose as he easily fought off the pathetic counter-attack of the remaining Brown Shirts. His sword flashed and caught a Peace Keeper hurtling toward his head. The impossibly sharp blade sliced through the metal baton, leaving its owner with a useless four-inch hunk of steel in his hand. He gaped at it in shocked awe as the samurai drew his blade straight up to the sky, splitting the man up the middle, from asshole to Adam’s apple. The Brown Shirt crumpled to the street, his guts dropping out first with a wet plop on the asphalt between his feet.
Dick scrambled toward me, the samurai tracking him like prey. I couldn’t move, even as Dick came within a few feet of me. He let out a strange, choked cry and landed hard just inches away. He struggled with his Peace Keeper arm to push his body off the grass and turned to look back at the samurai. As he rolled aside, I saw that his legs did not go with him. Dick flipped onto his back, squealing and kicking the stubs that remained of his legs, which had both been severed mid-thigh. The stumps squirted blood in sheets over the samurai’s red boots and leg armor.
He stood before me with his katana at his side, leaving runnels of blood in the grass as it poured from the gleaming blade. From behind me came a heavy grunt and a huffing sound, and I felt the musty, thick proximity of that immense man-beast as it edged closer. A fog of animal musk, body odor and coppery gore enveloped me, trapped between the two of them. I figured, either by the samurai’s blade or the creature’s teeth, I was a fuckin’ goner.
The beast stepped close enough to spatter bloody drool on my back, but the samurai held up his armor-protected hand and issued a deep, forceful grunt that stopped the beast. The samurai turned and drove his katana into one of Dick’s legs, skewering it like a side of meat. He hefted the leg up and over my head and I ducked as the polished boot passed by, brushing my hair. It landed on the ground behind me. The samurai gestured to the beast, waving his hand as if to tell it to go away, which it immediately did. I chanced a look over my shoulder and saw the thing snatch up Dick’s leg and scuttle off for the shadows between the houses.
The samurai seemed to pay me no mind and instead turned to survey the carnage. We both watched as the surviving Brown Shirts struggled into one of their black GANARCT golf carts. Dick used his baton hand to push himself away, rolling over and over toward his comrades, slobbering gibberish as he went. They pulled the cart near and two one-armed Brown Shirts worked together to lift Dick up onto the passenger seat. The samurai simply stood still and watched.
Dick pointed his baton arm at the samurai and shrieked, “You’re dead! You’re dead, fucker! You shoudla killed me when you had the chance ’cause you won’t get it again!”
The cart sped off down Peach Pit Pass, trailing Dick’s hysterical threats into the distance as they headed in the direction of the Community Center.
I watched them around the curving arc of the avenue until they disappeared. I looked back at the samurai. But as he had done the first time I saw him, he had vanished as if the night had swallowed him.
* * *
