Previously on Mark Flynn: Revenge

“Daddy…!”

“HEY. I HAVE NOT BEEN HANGING OUT WITH PETER GILMOUR, OKAY?”

“HE’S GOT A WRENCH! HE’S GOING TO BREAK IN!”

“Ayudame!”

“FUCK YOU!”

"YOU’RE NOT GETTING OUT OF HERE ALIVE!"

And now… the next chapter of Mark Flynn: Revenge
==================================================

…

Silence…

An empty room. The floor covered in a fuzzy, aged gray carpet. Walls covered with bright green paint… the occasional red child’s hand-print on the wall with a crudely written age and name beside it.

A teacher’s desk is center stage, a burgundy mat at its middle. A bright vermillion apple, glistening under the light panels in the ceiling sits at the corner closest to the door.

A door at the corner of the room has plastered on it a poster with a smiling cartoon sewer grate exclaiming how great reading is. With the sentence, ‘Reading is GRATE!’

A bell sits just above the door, fastened to the wall…

A blank viridian chalkboard, a single piece of chalk resting on the panel under it…

And a skeleton model… sitting beside the desk.

BZZZZZZZZZZZT!

The bell rings…

The door slips open…

And in pops a familiar face…

In a…

Very unfamiliar wardrobe…

Mark Flynn…

…Smiling…

…

Not… not grinning…

Not sneering…

Smiling.

Eyes bright with wonder. A warmth to his presence.

Instead of wearing his constantly decaying, torn apart funeral attire. With hanging threads, missing cufflinks, buttons dragging at the collars…

A warm red button-up collared shirt.

A pair of tan khakis.

Economical brown shoes.

And a disturbingly sincere smile.

Flynn wields a black bag over his right shoulder, he hefts it quickly as he walks to his desk…

“Sorry I’m late, guys. Just found out I was subbing in... Like, earlier this week… last Wednesdayish…”

Flynn sets his bag down on the front desk and turns to face what would be the class…

His smile wide… His teeth pristinely white…

His eyes…

…

Black…

Iris… Pupil… Sclera…

Two perfect endless orbs… Dark as emptiness…



The smile... never ceases...

“Howdy, everybody.”

“Sorry, your usual teaching professional, Professor Mark Flynn, is dealing with a serious case of the blues.”

“So, I’m here to take his place until he finds a way out of this episode of his.”

…’Flynn’ smiles as he turns to the chalkboard and slips a piece of chalk out of his pocket.

“My name… is…” ‘Flynn’ starts writing…

Then stops.

And erases the start of a B with his sleeve.

“On second thought, it doesn’t really matter what my name is.”

“Some people call me Alastor.”

“The Possessor.”

“The Avenger.”

“The Executioner.”

“Etcetera. Etcetera. Just google ‘Alastor’ if you want my resume.”


Black-Eyed Flynn looks into the camera. His smile never fading. Never even dulling for a millisecond…

“I’ve personally always had an affinity to my chosen name…”

“’The Music Man’ Chris Clinton.”

“…”

“However, since we are two souls dwelling within a single body…”

“I am physically Flynn.”

“So go ahead and call me Flynn.”

“As well as the other names I’ve heard in the deep recesses of your minds, your hidden rooms within your souls that you keep your darkest thoughts.”

“’Can’t Win’ Flynn.”

“’Won’t Win’ Flynn.”

“’Free Win’ Flynn.”

Free-Win etches ‘Free-Win’ across the chalkboard, letter by letter. His 100-watt smile blaring toward the board…

Free-Win then turns back and sits on the corner of the desk.

“Now, I don’t know what you five wacky ‘delinquent’ kids did to earn this little teaching session with old cantankerous Professor Flynn.”

“But, let me start by saying that Flynn and I, even though we are the same person, we are not the same people.”

“I’m not here to punish you young whippersnappers. Or slave drive you. Ulch, I'm a fun loving guy. Let's have a good time.

“You may notice after spending some time with me leading the classroom…”

“Flynn and I have very different teaching styles.”
***
The Cold…

Blue walls… of the HEB’s storage room… Behind the dairy section…

Flynn smashes his lead pipe against the metallic cooling walls…

The sound of metal on metal rebounding… Echoing…

“Go on, Mark. Waste your energy… Zip at every temptation to defend yourself like a mosquito…”

“Your every move making you more vulnerable…”

A voice resounds through every corner… Untraceable…

“Have you forgotten your own ‘Fighting System’ Rules…?”

“Rule #1: When the going gets tough…”

“… Fucking Run…?”

“How does it feel having your own logic, your own tormenting language…”
“Your own sentence fragments… Used against you…”

“Go on, Flynn. Try for that employees only exit…”

“Run like the wounded animal are!”

Flynn sticks his ground.

“FUCK YOU!”
***
“Flynn is… more of a deep thinker... A lecturer... Demanding that the world bow down and listen to a superior mind illustrate the hopelessness and despair humanity should feel at all times.”

“And sure, I follow the same basic philosophy. You should all feel the sense of doom and death coming upon you, your skin crawling, your very essence desperate to escape as the stench of oncoming destruction comes for you.”

“But it doesn't really matter to me if you do or not.”

“Ain’t no thang, as you kids say.”

“I'd like to think I'm a more humble, approachable being than dear Marky Mark is...”

“I'm more of a one-on-one tutor help-me-help-you sort of guy slash voice in a schizophrenic’s head.”

“So I figured instead of delivering this lengthy boring rant for you to fall asleep to, blah blah.”

Flynn crosses his index fingers to make an X. Then points a finger gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

“ULCH! Blow my brains out, right?”

Flynn leans in close over the desk.

“Instead… let’s rock talk, me and you five.”

“You five watching this little dog-n-pony show of Flynn’s.”

“Everyone will get a nifty turn on the ferris wheel…”

“And we’ll actually delve deep into who you are... Personally.”

“Try to help you figure out what's going on in your ol' heart-shaped box.”

“So, not only are you ready for this big final test on Saturday.”

“You’re ready for never-ending abyss of destruction this world has waiting for it at the end of the road and your own role in the end days, blood pouring from every orifice as a deathless fire consumes all of civilization.”

"Sound fun?”

“Good.”

“Let's begin.”

***
SMACK!

Another pummeling fist across his skull…

And just as quick gone…

Flynn’s vision goes cross-eyed again…

Another blow from the darkness…

Flynn rolls away from the walls…

Trying to peer through the black…

His sight darkening at the edges…

”Ooh, got a little red coming out of your skull… Kinda looks like…”

“Hibiscus mint jam… YOU FUCKER!”

***
Free-Win reaches into his black pack on his deck and pulls out a single sheet of paper.

“Just eyeing the old class roster so we can pick our first student...”

His finger slides down the list of text…

“We'll start from the bottom and we'll work our way to the… uh… lower middle, looking at how underwhelming this class roster is...”

“And. Here we are.”

“The very bottom.”

Ezekiel-Carter Williams the Fifth.”

Free-Win slips his roster sheet back onto his desk.

“First things first.”

“Do you have a preferred name, Zeke?

I know Flynn enjoys the whole ‘calling you by your ‘government name.’”

“But we’re friends you and I. Just decided.”

“We’re going to get to know each other.”

“Zekey.”

“Zed.”

“Big Z.”

“I get the gist.”

“I know you want to fit in.”

“Be part of the cool kid’s club.”

“Fall into peer pressure, win back the X-Treme Title, get the respect that's evaded you your entire existence… Etcetera.”

“And you’ve got a pretty impressive resume on paper.”

“You got…uh…”

Flynn glances back down at the class roster.

“Full ride scholarship.”

“3.8 GPA.”

“Music Major…Very good, very nice...”

Free-Win’s face suddenly brightens up.

“HEY! Michigan State University graduate!”

He suddenly smiles as wide as a human being can…

“That’s so crazy! I’m from Battle Creek!”

Free-Win giggles.

“What are the odds, man? Hey! GO SPARTANS, HUH!?! WOO SPARTANS”

“Oh man, Flynn & I might have gone there if Flynn wasn’t spending his formative years in a catatonic medicated state, straight jacketed as I sat inside his skull, filling his head with tales of angels and daemons battling, immortal beings slaying each other with ash and hellfire, over the human equivalent of a test tube half-full of pond sludge.”

“They didn’t give the little crybaby crayons or toys, you’d think he’d have appreciated the occasional bedtime story more…”

Free-Win smiles.

“Ah… Anyway, really impressive stuff! Great resume!”

“On paper.”

“But, then, there’s you on video tape.”

“Live.”

“Speaking. Wrestling.”

“You seem to have this weird pressure performance anxiety thing I want to help you through, Z-Man.”

“I mean, when you don’t show up mentally, it is terribly underwhelming.”

“But when you do show up and bring your best to the table…”

“…”

“It is also terribly underwhelming.”

“You present yourself as an invincible badass… But when it comes down to it…”
***
Flynn bleeds from the corner of his mouth…

Another blow to his skull… Making it difficult to stand…

His eyes…

Catch a figure…

Standing in the darkness…

Barely visible..

But caught…

And now…

It’s over.

***
“You’re basically just a Dark Shadow-esque talent”

“With a bigger head.”

Free-Win chortles. Then pauses.

“And this is the part of the promo where, if Flynn were manning this biological ship we share, he’d talk about your one weakness…”
***
David is posted on the wall… Waiting…

Flynn’s pipe slowly drops to his side…

He rotates… searching…

Flynn’s back straight ahead of David…

David lets out the lowest cackle…

“You’re DOOOOONE!”

David reels back…
***
Free-Win rises from the corner of the desk and walks around the back…

Reaching into his pristine black bag….

His arm fully extended, patting the desk through the pewter leather

“Which for him, he’d state the fact that your ‘inferior brain’ seems to think the secret to comedy is pictures lifted off of the internet.”

“Or that your most impressive performance was a battle royal won by ‘Matt Flipping Ward’ blah blah blah…”

Free-Win blows a raspberry into the air.

“Who cares right? No reason to undersell you as a competitor. You’re an XWF Superstar. You got an entertaining bout back and forth when fighting your own AIDS virus. That’s some ‘shades of Ric Flair’-esque talent right there.”
***
David aims…

“Fuck you, Flynn…” He whispers…

His left leg gallops forward…

Going for a big super kick…

Shades of Ezekiel Carter-Williams V…

SUPER KICK!!!!

To the back of Flynn’s head!!!!
…
***
Free-Win smiles genuinely, as he gives up finding it blind and just full-on tucks his head into his bag.

“However,” F-Dub continues as his head is hidded in his Mary Poppins-esque purse…

“There is one weakness in your game and I’d like to point it out if I could…”
***
…

Flynn side steps to the kick…

And wraps his right arm around David’s left attacking quadricep…

David wriggles… hopping to stay balanced…

Flynn’s arm only wraps tighter, locking around David’s Sartorius muscle… Locking David’s leg from moving…

David loses his footing with his right…

And drops to a knee.

Flynn grins. As he winds up his other arm…

Equipped with lead pipe…
***
“I’ll tell you what your big weakness is.”

Free-Win finally emerges from the bag…

As does his arm… Which is now holding…

A lead pipe…

“It’s your spinal column.” Free-Win mentions matter-of-factly.

“Your fragile…”
***
David puts a hand in the air. Words spewing out of his face at a frenetic pace

“Whoa, whoa, okay sorry all a joke let’s talk now”

Flynn brings an elbow down on David' fibula...

Shattering the thin bone in his leg...

"AAAAAAAAH!"

ECW-V's superkick... memorized.

And countered.
***
“Unprotected…”

“Vulnerable…”

“Spinal cord…”

“You’d think that for all the time I’d been on this Earth…”

“Eons… Literally millions of years, as man rose as a potential species…”

“Humans might have evolved in a way that protected the most important part of their continued functionality.”

“The only thing that lets your brain communicate with every other part of your body…”

“And the only thing keeping it in place and safe…”

Free-Win prods the middle-most vertebrae in the skeleton model with is lead pipe…

“Is weak, brittle, breakable human bone."

Free-Win reels back the lead pipe…

Here comes the wind-up…
***
David covers his face…

Suddenly, seems like he isn’t crazy… Just bleeding... And scared...

“FAH FAH FAH…”

“WHOA WHOAWHOAWHOA, DON'T PLEASE DON-“

“FUCK YOU EZEKIEL!”

AND THE PITCH!

BOOM!


***
SMACK!
The entire skeleton model crumbles like a house of cards as the lead pipe dislodges the entire base of the skeletal system… The arms split off the sides… The legs bend upwards… The whole thing unnaturally collapses in on itself..

…

……

Free-Win admires the design of the lead pipe… dragging it against the edge of the desk…Back and forth… Seemingly hypnotized by its flawless cylindrical design…

“That’s what I’m going to be taking advantage of this Sunday.”

“That’s what’s on my mind.”

“How many strikes it will take with this pipe.”

“To shatter your spine. Moving down the center of your skeletal system, the thoracic curve…”

“Hammering vertebrate after vertebrate, after vertebrate. Moving slowly south, caving in your entire back until your rib cage explodes out your chest… until there’s nothing but pink, bloody flesh to strike…”

“To render you an immobile, drooling vegetable, incapable of voluntary physical motion.”

Free-Win points his weapon at the camera.

“That’s my gameplan for how I’m going to deal with ECW-V.”

“At some point, I might pin you afterwards.”

“Or let someone else do it.”

“Don’t know. Don’t care that much.”

Free-Win shrugs.

“What’s important is your role in the project.”

“At the end of the day, you’re part of this match.”

“You’re an important cog in this machine.”

“Don’t let anyone tell you you’re the weak link.”

“And believe me, Z-Dawg. Many people this week will bring it up.”

“But, how could this match go on without you?”

“You have such an important role in this match….”

“You’re my… uh…”

Free-Win struggles to find the words…

Until he eyes the chalkboard from his desk…

“To utilize a Flynn-esque metaphor, without all the stupid animal analogies and hunter garbage.”

Free-Win picks up a piece of chalk and starts dashing it carefully against the green…

“Uh… This is like…The first dinosaur to be consumed in lava and burning atmosphere… Having his flesh fry by convection. Standing still, watching the world end as his scales turned to mush, as his skin cooked and simmered in the light of annihilation…”

“Someone has to be the first to be consumed by flame in an apocalyptic massacre.”

“You’re just number one on the list. And some might say that’s the most important role there is…”

“I’m making it clear…”

“Through you…”

“That the EMTs are not getting a night off on Saturday.”

“You’re my little lantern…”

“Lighting you gives them a sign... A message...”

Flynn stops writing on the board and backs off…

He has written on the board….

‘Five Body Bags’

“This is an important message for them to get, Zeke.”

“And I can’t thank you enough for delivering it.”

“Whether you want to or not…”
***
Flynn yanks the radio of David’s unconscious body.

And gingerly places it around his own neck….

A trophy taken from victim to victor...
END OF LEVEL 1!

Flynn throws open the back door of the HEB…

And sees the back lot where new shipments come in…
Empty…

Save for a car2go rental car, a tiny 5 foot by five foot box car…

Occupied by two necking teenagers…

Flynn grins…
***
“YOU ARE ALL FIRED!!!! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY STORE”

The time is 8:06 AM.

The HEB officially opened 6 minutes ago…

24 minutes ago, a wild homeless man invaded the grocery store. And destroyed aisles 1 through 8.

And ten minutes ago, just after Flynn had disappeared into the back inventory room…

The manager came in.

Griff.

5’2”

275 pounds of muscle. Bald. Beard like a dwarf of lore.

Built like a god damned freight train…

Rips the inventory door open…

And off its hinges.

“DAVID!”

“IT IS YOUR FUCKING JOB... pardon... WAS YOUR FUCKING JOB TO WATCH THE STORE! 70% OF OUR INVENTORY IS NOW UNSELLABLE!”

Griff turns… And sees a red smocked man, lying facedown on the floor… unconscious…

…

The manager dives to one knee…

“Soldier…”
***
“But… you just fired us… Are we all unfired?”

“No. You’re now independent contractors and bounty hunters. Your job description used to be oriented around this grocery store.”

“Well, for me, it was the Del-“

“Shut up. You’re now working for me, hunting down that asshole…”

“…Why would we do that?”

“He took out David…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…’s face. It will take two to three days for his face to return to its lovely unbruise-“

“…”

“…”

“…”

”Also, his leg is broken. He also stole company property. David’s Radio. That was $15 from Target and it is part of a set, so actually it is irreplaceable.”

“…Okay, Griff… Starting again…Why would we do that?”

“…What made you fuckheads go insane and start destroying everything in my store in the first place?”

“Two years’ salary.”

“I’ll double it. And give you your jobs back. For everyone that aids in that fucker’s capture.”

“Done.”

“Uh… Does this mean I have to give back my last paycheck you're gonna give me?”

“Just say yes, sweetie.”

“…What?”

“Anton's in.”

“And we all know Phillip’s in.”

“Hey! Just cuz… All right, Yes, I am. I LOVE THAT WE’RE IN EACH OTHER’S HEADS WE ARE REALLY COMING TOGETHER AS A TEAM! TRUST FALL EXERCISE RIGHT NOW! I’M YOUR GUY!”

”Shut up.”

“SOUNDS GOOD! GO TEAM AUSTIN 3 FRANCHISE!”

“Then, it’s settled…”

Griff turns over the radio…

And flips a small switch located on the back.

Griff’s iPhone immediately buzzes…

With four dots steady at the front of the HEB.

And one dot… slowly headed north...

Griff smiles.

“We ride…”

Out the front door…

A fleet or HEB brand rascal scooters blast out the automatic front door…

And hop onto the highway…
***
The air blows through Flynn’s hair…

Windows down.

“WOOOOOO!” He screams into the open wind…

“It is good to be free…”

Flynn turns to the passenger seat.

“How do you two feel about freedom? 250 words or less.”

The horrified 19 year old girl in his passenger seat cannot breathe…

Her beau also in the chair, holding her. Both panicked.

"That's really beautiful... Both of you... Just... Just too much...

Flynn’s hand goes for the gear shift…

And accidentally brushes against the man's hands…

Flynn’s hand tremors…

And he locks eyes with them…

Horrified.

Staring into his completely black eyes…

Free-Win smiles… Trying to break the tension.

[/orange]“Tight in here, huh?"

No response.

"Never driven a smart car before.”

“But you know what I heard?”

“It’s a lot like a vagina…”


The poor girl… has no idea how to react to that…

Free-Win then flashes a charismatic grin

“At first, you’re like… There’s no way I’ll fit…”

Flynn’s eyes smolder…

“Then, you’re in it and it’s like… WOW, YOU CAN FIT LIKE TWO MORE IN HERE!”
***
…

From the outside of the car2go…

Things seem quiet…

It rolls down the road going 30 miles an hour on the frontage…

JUST AS THE PASSENGER DOOR BUSTS OPEN…

The teenage girl stands in the door way… Her hand locked around her boyfriend’s. Both horrified and trying to escape.

“HEY! DON’T JUMP! YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO LI-”

Free-Win bursts out laughing.

“Sorry, just another joke. TUCK AND ROLL!”

The couple does just that, protecting their young thin limbs by wrapping them up against their chests and rolling…

Free-Win sighs and shrugs, still smiling as he adjusts the rear view mirror…

“The important thing, Chris…”

F-Dub stares into his own deep, hopeless black orbs…

“Is you tried…”

Flynn steps on the pedal…

And merges onto the highway…

LEVEL 2

BEGIN
To be continued…