“Bad Dudes II: Sad Dudes,” by Brian Boone

Feb 18th, 2015 | By | Category: Fake Nonfiction, Prose

Prologue

The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Blade and Striker are called upon to rescue President Ronnie.

They wouldn’t have called if they’d heard the news.

Blade must fight off the ninjas, rescue President Ronnie, and some how, some way, go on.

Alone.

Level 1: Streets of New York City

Striker had always enjoyed the city most in the autumn. He loved the way the late afternoon sun saturated everything in an amber glow, the air brisk with promise as red and yellow leaves gently fell to the earth. As he kicked a ninja in the head, causing him to flash momentarily and then disappear, Blade thought about the ephemeral nature of time and the cruelty of memory. Particularly, he thought about that farm up on Long Island where he and Striker got the pumpkins, hay bales, and cornstalks they used for decorations at their annual Halloween Bash. As ninja after ninja came at Blade and met their demise, he recalled the time Striker nearly snapped the neck of what he thought was a ninja but was really just a 10-year-old trick-or-treater in a ninja costume. Oh how they all had a good laugh!

Blade low-kicked a ninja, and his eye caught a glimpse of the wine bar where he and Striker had been on their second date. They’d sat right there, at that table, the one on the sidewalk that was farthest from the door. A couple sat there now, snuggling close in the chilly air, each other’s eyes of far more interest than the president-kidnapping ninjas getting pummeled right in front of them. They kissed, as Blade and Striker had kissed so many years ago. Blade wiped a tear from his eye and ninja blood from his fists.

Level 2: On top of a moving big-rig truck

He teased him about it, but Blade truly loved how Striker would just get the craziest ideas and then just totally go for it. This one summer, Striker got it in his head to buy a gigantic crew cab pickup truck. Blade knew that it wasn’t as nearly as big as the semi he was punching and kicking ninjas off of, presently. But it was definitely big enough for a couple of bad dudes to go look for America.

What a time! Three weeks on the road, following the old Route 66, stopping in small towns, meeting quirky local characters, fighting the occasional ninja. At a truck stop in eastern Oklahoma, Blade bought Striker a Christmas tree ornament that looked just like their truck. Blade was hanging that very ornament when he got the news about Striker. He threw it to the ground, and it shattered into a thousand pieces, a perfect metaphor, thought Blade, for his life without Striker, and similar to what happened to the ninja he had just kicked off the top of the big-rig truck when it got caught up in the vehicle’s wheels.

Level 3: Storm sewer

Life slogs on, and for Blade, it slogs on endlessly, painfully, leading him to this sewer, a spot-on for metaphor for what his existence had become: a place where wastes goes not to die, but to fester and rot, just outside of the notice of others. This literal sewer, now, was crawling with ninjas, not unlike the regrets of his life with Striker that tormented him. Striker had wanted to tell the rest of the Anti-Ninja Force about their relationship, but Blade had been cowardly. Blade beat himself up over this often, even at that moment, while he also literally beat up the ninjas that surrounded him in the literal sewer.

Level 4: A forest

Striker would have loved this. He was absolutely wild for the Sierra Nevadas. And here Blade was, fighting off ninjas no more than 50 miles from their little old cabin. There was no electricity, and the only water was from a well a little down the hill, but it was the only place where they could get away from it all and just fish, make love, bird watch, and kick in the face the ninjas who had somehow found them out there.

Level 5: On top of a moving train

Blade’s father was a big model train buff. He was hunched over them, concentrating on their silly movements, circling around a fake town, pretending not to listen to his own son when he told him that Striker wasn’t just his coworker, or his friend, or his roommate. His silence was more painful than the pain Blade was dishing out to these ninjas attacking him on top of a moving freight train.

Level 6: A cave

Blade could admit to himself that he had certain physical needs. He was, after all, human. A superhuman ninja-killing machine with a preternatural sense of where to turn and blindly punch or kick and land those blows at a ninja, but a human being nonetheless. Still, Blade began to make peace with the fact that maybe that part of his life, the physical intimacy, was over. Woe to whoever tried to follow Striker anyway.

Level 7: A factory

At some point, a man has enough. Blade would readily admit that he kept taking on these rescuing-the-president-from-ninja-missions in the futile hope of distracting himself from his emotions, from his grief. But he just couldn’t do it anymore. Everywhere he goes, there’s Striker. Every kick, every punch, every dead ninja, all Blade sees is Striker’s beautiful face.

With listless ease, Blade tracked down the head ninja, and took out all of the pain, all of the grief, all of the confusion out on him, beating the masked ninja’s head against the helicopter he’d arrived in. The ninja slipped to the ground, a tenderized mush of pulverized bone and organs. Blade slipped to the ground on top of the dead ninja, finally allowing himself to let it all out.

“I’M SAD!”

Blade wept.

He heard the sound of a helicopter door opening and felt someone standing next to him.

“Come on, Blade. Let’s go have a burger.”

“Okay, Mr. President.”
————
Defenestration-Brian BooneBrian Boone is a contributor to ClickHole, Funny Or Die, Splitsider, and Someecards, and his work has appeared in or on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, College Humor, The Bygone Bureau, The Devastator, Thought Catalog, The Impersonals, and The Bygone Bureau. He wrote a book called I Love Rock n’ Roll (Except When I Hate It) and tweets nonsense at @brianadamsboone.

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