Four-Walled Playoff
There Are Still Grindhouses In The Future. What They Play Hasn't Changed Much...
FOR NEWCOMERS: Red Light Bytes is also the name of our weekly flash fiction series. Our first story of the month is always FREE to all readers, and the remainder available to paying subscribers. Here we take you into the world of Haven and the Wastelands in pure anthology form, from familiar faces to one-off encounters. A “living” body of worldbuilding. Today’s tale is from the seedy streets of Haven’s underground. Do enjoy. If you dare...
That’s rough stuff right there. And I mean bludgeon-your-brains-out rough. Kinda shit hounds always pay good money to see.
Of course they don’t think it’s real. Hell, how could it be for all those cushy bastards? She keeps the streets “oh so noice and toidy! No riff-raff, no muggas, none of the bad stuff, hun!” Bitch keeps the big five districts good clean and Christian and everyone thinks she’s swept the streets solid. Pre-crime, post-crime, the big C itself. And yet, what’s a hound to do with all this evidence?
Every stick-up, every hit-and-run, every cold-blooded stabbing. I got a server full of dead wolves and nothing doing for ‘em. You tell the cops and they say you’re fibbing, wipe the tapes, and lock your ass up. You hack the Comm/Ent. line and you’re lucky to get five seconds on air. A.C.E.S. pulls an Uno reverse, hacks your terminal, and boom! Cops come on like Johnny-on-the-Spot just the same as before. I was smart enough to fry the chip in my neck, but there’s nothing stopping dear ol’ Mother Acc in all her fiber-optic glory from cruising up to my console’s hindquarter.
So what’s a hound to do with all this stuff?
Moviemaking. What other chance I got?
All I gotta do is make nice pretty pictures for all the fine folks on the net to watch. It ain’t even snuff. How can it be snuff if it ain’t “real?” These crimes never happened, these wolves never existed. It’d be bad publicity if they did. I ain’t got the stomach to make ‘em for the yank-n-crank crowd, so I just cook ‘em up like regular horrors. Scare pictures for the modern age. Always with that little tagline at the tail. “It could happen to you! Or you! Or YOU!”
They all come up to about an hour a piece, post ‘em on my site, watch the hits and coins roll in, keep ‘em fed for another week. I’m sure some watch it just ‘cuz they’re curious. Some watch it ‘cuz they like being scared. They like the tension before the knife goes in, the anticipation just before hound’s head goes under the wheel. They get an electric buzz because they know it’s terrible, they know it’s an awful thing to do, but they know it ain’t them on the chopping block.
And yeah, some get their rocks off to it. You can’t fix all the freaks, they keep the shit we call this city seasoned. I’m sure I got someone’s felonious demo reel. One of these bastard’s a serial killer, and I’m secretly he or she’s great admirer for having shot their “greatest hits.”
It’s all enough to make you throw yourself off the top of the fucking building if you ask me.
Then why do I keep doing it? Easy slick: remember that line. “It could happen to you.” I sign off with that every single goddamn time because I want that drilled into every fucker’s skull. I want them to know there’s real danger out there. I want them to see what’s really happening. Even if I gotta dress it up as fiction, even if I gotta make ‘em believe it’s all just a pageant of crime. I got ‘em in a four-walled playoff, watching reality as close as I can take ‘em. Maybe it breaks through to one of ‘em out there. One spreads it to another, and another, and another, until I got folks all over the city standing up for themselves. A mugger gets his shit pushed in. A bad driver gets dragged out his ride and scorched by his own hovercraft. Justice finally finds its way back on the streets where she’s needed the most.
Why don’t I just kill the bastards myself? As a matter of fact, I do. I got a big beautiful .357 for the job. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re next on my list. And you’re quite the piece of work with all this blood on your hands.
Smile for the camera, they’re gonna love ya in this next one.
