Fictional Reality

TW: Bigotry, specifically of the racist and homophobic variety

I do not know if it was actually called the Bashful Bigot. It could very well have been called that. There are people who think such a name for a bar housing primarily drunkards discussing the superiority of the White (with a capital “W”) race over the lesser people. Indeed, many of them would frequent such a bar. At the same time though, it could very well be a derisive nickname that stuck while its true name was lost to the sands of history like wood in a bonfire. Regardless, to call such a place a “bar” would be a bit of a lie. I’ve tried what they called alcohol and believe you me; it tastes more of Cod than of Ethanol.

Within five minutes of entering the Bashful Bigot, Billy was booted out. The only surprising aspect of this affair was the fact that he survived it. A black bisexual walks into a bar calling itself The Bashful Bigot and walks out with only minor injuries isn’t a thing that typically happens. One would expect him to, at the very least, be externally bleeding, but there were only a few bruises. Then again, Billy was known to be quick on his feet so perhaps that was what allowed his momentary survival. On the other hand, not hitting on the biggest guy in the room would have also helped in his survival. (In his defense, he probably thought the bar’s name was ironic, mostly because he recognized the man from The Flaming Wanker that, ironically, was burnt down two days prior.)

As Billy picked himself up, a rather peculiar gentleman walked up to him. There was an air of companionship to this man despite Billy never having met him in his life until that moment. The man was dressed in a pair of plaid shorts, wore a tan tee shirt with the words “Oh No, Not Again” written above what appeared to be a falling bowl of petunias. He had curly black hair (though it was starting to recede); a slightly thick beard dyed scarlet, and discolored eyes (one green the other teal). His smile was a bit toothier than one would expect.

But perhaps his most peculiar feature was that he looked to be well fed. This was an oddity for most people within the City, as the food supplies had gone down immensely ever since the larger food banks collapsed in the last economic crisis ten years back. The crisis was so large that it bankrupted all but two billionaires (both of whom, coincidentally, had controlling stock in the Fuzon Corporation, though one of them was reported to have committed suicide shortly before the dust settled, believing all was lost. Then again, it would be very easy for someone to make a murder look like a suicide). It could be that the man was from outside the City, though that was unlikely as only Spiders willingly went into the City, and the man lacked the outsider flair of a Spider. This would be one mystery that Billy would never discover the answer to.

“What the hell are you still doing here,” asked the man with a mischievous grin.

“I’m sorry,” cautiously replied Billy, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“My apologies,” said the man slightly confused, “I’m Ryan.” Billy’s expression remained as it was. “Ryan Chack.” (…Ryan Chack is not a real person. Ryan Chack is a fictional character I made up. Not for this story mind you, I have tried my best to be as honest as I can possibly be, but Ryan Chack is not a real person. I wrote a couple stories in my youth wherein I would stick the character Ryan Chack in as a background feature, never once keeping his appearance the same in them. Sometimes he’d be a name on a list while others he’d be a delivery boy on an errand. Sort of a personal in-joke about a different story I liked, but can’t remember the name of. And yet, I met up with him in my time wandering the ruins of the City. He was a FtM guy then with the sides of his hair shaved in such a way as to make one question if it was a postmodern statement of the way appearances dictate how people view others or if it was just a shit haircut. He lost his arm [though I have no doubt he’ll grow it back] and had a tattoo of a snake eating its own tail with the hole it made being white. His eyes were blue like an ocean of corpses. He was wearing a ripped up red shirt that probably once belonged to someone who liked to golf. He approached me while I was looking for a cat my neighbor lost. She was a good cat and I found her shortly after I finished talking to Ryan. He tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped like a shotgun shell. He introduced himself and I called bullshit. To prove it, he quoted one of my short stories with him in it, one that I decided not to publish on the grounds that it was too… kinky. After coming down from an existential crisis over the revelation that my thoughts actually became reality like everyone else’s [“No, not all of your thoughts,” I remember hearing once, “Just the interesting ones. Fairy tales and imaginary friends and other fictional realities.”], we talked for a bit about how life was treating us. I told him about the thing I was working on, and he said he met Billy at a bar once. I asked him to elaborate…) Billy remained confused. “You’re James Day, are you not?” (I asked him why he was fucking with Billy in such a way, and he looked at me as if I damn well knew why he did it. I still don’t.)

“…Yes?” Billy lied. When Ryan later asked Billy, after the lies had been revealed, why he lied, he would say that the reason he lied was to keep talking with Ryan. I suspect that that too was a lie. Ryan was a bit of a self-aggrandizing asshole that thought everyone wanted to sleep with him. The truth was most likely that Billy needed to talk to someone in hopes that the hulking murderer he narrowly avoided wouldn’t see him.

“James “Spike” Day?”

“Yes.”

“The same James Day who has been sending me these delightful letters for the past few months.”

“Yes!”

“Oh good! Did you get my last one? I was hoping for your opinion on-“ It was at this point that Billy stopped listening to the peculiar gentleman. Instead, he focused on other things. Even Ryan could tell he wasn’t paying attention, and so instead of having a conversation, he started quoting The Talking Asshole routine from memory. In Billy’s defense, there were a lot of things to think about. There was the matter of the recently departed Jonathan Lucas. How had he known Billy was in the City? He was certain that he covered his tracks efficiently enough as to not be too noticeable. For that matter, why did he care so much about whether or not Billy died? Surely a minor criminal such as he did not merit such devotion to imprisonment. Then again, was he still in the law enforcement business? There were those who had sworn vengeance upon Billy for-

But before Billy could finish that thought, one of the patrons of the bar he had been booted from came out with what appeared to be a small knife. It wasn’t. In actuality it was a shard of glass from a bottle of beer (though that minor detail didn’t make things any better for Billy). Evidentially, the bottle exploded when he tried to get it ready for glassing and he had to work with what he had. The shard was held so tightly, the man started to slightly bleed, but his attention was more focused upon shoving the glass into Billy’s perineum, a word he learned while procrastinating from building the foundation for the City’s artificial intelligence. (I asked Ryan how he knew that, to which he replied, “I asked the City. You should try it sometime.” Nothing has come of my attempts. He never did tell me what the giant’s name was.)

“Oh shit,” said Billy in the tone of voice of someone who just realized why flirting with a same gender patron of a bar literally called “The Bashful Bigot” while being a person of color is an awful idea in most circumstances, but an even worse idea when said person is closeted. Rather than take the slim chance on the Hollywood ending of “love overcomes bigotry” (as Billy was likely well aware of the difference between love and wanting to fuck someone), Billy fled.

Ryan, who was trailing just behind him, asked, “Why are we running, James” as if the man chasing them with a bladed weapon while screaming things like “F****T FUCKING SHIT EATING C*NTWEASLES” wasn’t a good enough answer. Billy pointed to the muscle bound giant with the thick beard and a shard of glass essentially protruding out of his hand as if it was an extension of said body part, who was, at that moment, shouting “DIE YOU FUCKING F****S! I WILL NOT BE SWAYED BY YOUR F****TRY!” Ryan remained perplexed. “Look, I’m sure this can all be explained if we just sit down and-“

“I WILL RIP OUT YOUR SHIRMP DICK AND SHOVE IT INTO YOUR GAYBOY’S EARS!!!!!”

“Well that was just uncalled for. Now James, do you have anything to say to the man that might …elevate the tension?”

“OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK OHFUCK”

“…Anything more productive?” Ryan asked with nary a hint of sarcasm. The chase went on for what felt like a good couple of hours, filled with expressions of obscenities on both sides of the chase, most of which is perhaps best left outside of polite conversations. Many twists and turns within the City were made; the City was practically a psychogeographic maze to the enraged and the terrified. But neither predator nor preys were able to get to their desired distance from their focus. Eventually, the chase led them to a dead end. As with many of his type, the man with the glass shard decided to walk slowly up to the pair. Each step echoed within the alley louder and louder. The sky began to darken, the clouds opened up, and it began to rain. Lightning silhouetted the man.

“I’m going to enjoy killing you.” Said the man with an undead calmness.

“You,” stammered Ryan, “you don’t have to do this.”

“Oh,” humored the man, “and why not?”

“Well… we’re nice people and you look like a nice person. And nice people tend not to… kill other… nice… people?” The man was tall, taller than most people. Some would call him a giant, though never to his face. There was a coldness to his pale brown eyes not helped by the perpetual scowl on his face. His hair was dyed blond, though deep enough that it would take a microscope to see his natural hair color. (“How do you know that!” I asked Ryan. “It smelt like cod and a hint of petrichor.”) The man’s teeth were filed sharp as a dagger. He had a set of tattoos on each of his arms. His left arm was adorned with a set of four numbers (which, when combined, added to 21) and three skulls, one of which was cracked in the center. The other arm was a recreation of a black haired man with a rather rubbish moustache that didn’t even cover the whole of his upper lip. He too had a perpetual scowl on his face. In short, he did not look like a nice person.

“That’s funny,” sternly said the man, “cause you don’t look like nice people.”

“Well, I can assure you that-“

“Nonono.” Said the man with the smallest amount of mirth, “ You look like deviants. F****ts. The kind of people who like it up the bum.” Ryan tried to interrupt with an explanation about how, while he was gay, he preferred to give rather than take, but finally realized that this would only dig his grave quicker and kept his mouth shut. “So the question I’m left with is… which one of you do I start with?”

Billy was petrified, muttering the phrase “oh fuck” to himself again and again as if they were magical words that would protect him from being murdered. Meanwhile, Ryan stepped up to the man with the glass shard, ready for what was about to happen. The man dramatically raised the shard into the air with the precision and speed of someone who’s aspired to be a B-Movie villain. But as the makeshift knife was about to reach Ryan’s face, he grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it towards his neck. What Ryan intended to do was lodge the knife in the man’s throat, forcing him to either flee to someone who could safely dislodge it without killing the man or pull the blade out of his throat and instantly kill him. Unfortunately, Ryan put too much force onto his push and the makeshift knife escaped through the back of the man’s neck. The man’s last thoughts were a prayer that his contemplation of sodomy would not damn him to Hell. Out of all his actions, this seemed to be the least likely.

“Are you ok,” asked Ryan as he reached out his hand towards Billy.

“Y-Yeah,” replied Billy with the kind of terror of someone watching a stranger they’ve been lying to murder someone.

“You’re not James, are you?”

“…no.”

“…I think I saw a bed while we were running, do you want to get some rest.”

“Rest would be nice.” The pair proceeded to walk out of the alley, making sure not to step on their would-be killer’s corpse. There was a long gap of silence until Ryan broke it with:

“So, what is your name?”

“Billy. Billy Blake.”

“Ah, a Spider. I haven’t seen one of yours in ages.”

“I’m uh… I’m not a Spider.”

“No”

“No, my mom was just into poetry is all. Mostly for the symbolism.” (LIES. He would later tell other people that he was called “Billy Schultz” on account of a family friend and “Billy Wilson the Third” to keep on a family tradition. I didn’t know that when I talked to Ryan, and was perplexed by his last name actually being Blake. More curious is why Ryan thought such a name would make him a Spider. Referring to yourself as by some famous author’s name was more of the Archivists’ game.)

“I see.”

“So… what was James like?”

“Oh, you know bit of a snarker, but a well meaning one. Least, that’s how he came off in his letters.”

“So you’ve never met him?”

“No, never. He didn’t have the decency of telling me what he looked like. The bastard. Still probably wouldn’t have worked out between us.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you see… he was married last time I heard from him.”

“Ahh. Wait, why would you think he’d be at The Bashful Bigot?”

“In his last letter, he claimed he was planning to go in there and-“

“I think I know what happened to him, and I’m sorry.”

“Why are you-oh.”

“Yeah.” It was a bit awkward after that. (I asked Ryan why he was actually at the Bashful Bigot, to which he just smiled the toothy smile of a smug cat with a mouse in its paw right before a hammer bashes its face in.) Not a word was spoken between the two until Ryan asked:

“Are you sure? I mean, maybe he got out like you did.”

“It’s possible, but if he didn’t, the bartender said ‘We hang your kind’s balls on the ceiling.’ So you know, hope for the best.” It should be noted that Billy found very little wrong with that sentence, which disturbed Ryan to no end.

“Jesus.” Eventually, the pair reached the bed. It wasn’t the best bed in the world; in fact it was probably lice infested. Then again, most beds in the City had lice in them, so it didn’t make much difference. They sat together in each other’s company for a bit.

“So, where did you learn a move like that,” Billy asked while taking his shirt off.

“It was on a television show I watched as a kid,” Ryan lied as he took his pants off, “This biker guy is surrounded by a gang of knife wielding gangsters. One of them comes up to him to slit his throat and WHA-BAM!!! Straight through!”

“Sounds like a pretty good show.” Billy, now completely naked, pressed his hands on the bedspread.

“Ehh,” Ryan replied. And then he proceeded to shove his cock up Billy’s bum. Billy… No. I’m sorry, but no. I know you’re reading this Ryan, and no. I’m not writing your fucking sex fantasy into this book. There’s literally no reason for me to write this scene other than for your sexual pleasure, so no. Besides, prose is the medium sex is hardest to depict. To make a sex scene truly work in the way you want it to, you have to be able to control the speed it’s happening in. It has to feel like a machine gun firing at ten rounds a second, you have to build and build and build to the climax of the scene and explode into the perfect unity of image. But there are people out there who don’t read fast enough for such a sequence to work. Such things work best in more visual mediums. I suppose I could describe the various sexual acts you and Billy “preformed,” but then I realized that’s probably what you had in mind all along, what with you being a fictional character and this prose being the closest thing to you actually getting some. This is an honest telling, and frankly I don’t believe you ever had sex with Billy. So I’m not going to do it for that reason and most assuredly no others. Anyways… In the end, Ryan and Billy lay atop the bed, exhausted and enraptured.

“So…” panted Ryan, “you see that corpse?”

“Which…” said Billy, each word separated with a wheeze, “which one?”

“The one… the one that’s standing up.”

“Oh yeah… yeah, I saw that.”

“Kind of obvious, don’t you think?”

“What, that she got her throat slit. Yeah, I suppose…”

“No, no. I mean who did it.”

‘Yeah, it was a suicide.” Billy exclaimed, barely convincing only one person.

“No it wasn’t. I mean, look at the angle of the cut.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” His expression started to turn curter than Ryan would have liked.

“Alright, calm down. Maybe it’s obvious to me. I get that. Do you want to know-”

“No! It’s fine.” It was not fine. Billy just wanted the last word. The pair slept in the same bed, but when Billy awoke, Ryan was gone. In his place was a note that Ryan forgot to take with him. On the front, it read “12200 Art Sea Blvd. 2:03” on the front and had the words “Decorate You Scars” and a heavily detailed picture of a zombie with one eye and no nose on the back. Billy recognized the words from a song his ex sang to him while drunk once. Though to be honest, all… Cate, he thought her name was… Cate, all Cate could remember from the song was the melody and when to sing “Decorate Your Scars.” (Though from what I’ve gathered, it was less of an actual relationship and more of a “they had sex more than once” situation. Or, at least, that’s how it looked from the outside.) Billy had no idea why someone would write that on a note, but he decided to follow it. Deep down, he hoped that Ryan was meant to go there, but left it on the bed by “mistake.” Billy hated to leave things on such a sour note. If nothing else, it was a nice enough drawing to keep.

(Ryan never saw Billy again. He was sure that was the reason Billy went to the show. He did not know of the two people Billy interacted with at the show, or of their relationship to him. I asked Ryan why he thought the lady had been murdered instead of simply committed suicide. He said that he worked in the field of fictionality to know when something was staged, even after being made into art. I thanked my creation before we went our separate ways. I felt a bit sad leaving him there without any answers about what happened to Billy. Those were things I would have to discover on my own, and I suspect the same would be true for Ryan. As I walked back home, I heard the meow of my neighbor’s cat. Silver linings, I suppose.)

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