They say that you always remember your first love. Your first fuck. I remember my first kill…A loveless virgin at 12 years old, I killed the pimp who murdered my mom…

But as I stalk up the stairs, to find that rat fuck mayor who tried to kill me, I can’t help thinking about that first kill I did for my first employer – ‘

The Duke Rhinehart Redemptionist Church’

It was the night before Christmas, and all through the night…

Nothing was stirring except for my gun sight….

.

The sky above me was sultry. Her brooding clouds pouted with the promise of rain. The sky’s resolve broke as I got into position under her and took greedily, gratefully what she gave me.

She wept uncontrollably down upon me and the rest of Ded-troit city that had abused her. The world felt and smelled better during and after rainfall. Cleaner. More focused

But like all good things, the rain was over too soon. Cold humidity hung in the air now, replacing it. Cold as the body lying beside me. One of the seven dwarven security detail for that Fat Red Bastard.

All of them had been sleepy and dopey as I got the drop on every stunty fuck in quick succession with my Kukri combat blade. But the one beside me got an early xmas present.

My big, ol’ gat, Lucille had mailed him a special hollow point “Dear John” express delivery through his brain, Telling the fuck his relationship with life was just for Christmas…

I was really anticipating the kill now, the dwarf had been an appetiser for the main meal.

A tingling sensation in my mouth. Like you get before biting into a juicy pork chop.

Killing that guy when I was so young had given me a real taste for it.

But that was up close and it was definitely personal – this kill was from a distance with a Sniper cannon. All I wanted for Christmas was to put a bullet through his two front teeth.

But ‘The Church’ had been specific how he should die.

An example was to be made – The death dice had decreed.

That fat, red, bastard was the worst sort of paedophile. The guy commanded instant sentimentality, respect, loyalty and trust from kids. Even Adults. They would happily leave their kids with this guy. Caring little what he was really doing with them.

He began his own religion of sorts. His temple was shaped like a christmas tree.

‘The Church‘ didnt like that one fuckin’ bit…

That fat, red bastard was one of those paedos that was so friendly and not overtly creepy on the surface, that children couldn’t help themselves around him with big innocent smiles on their faces. Like they were following the Pied fuckin Piper.

Instead of music, he plied them with promises of gifts only to deliver shattered innocence.

I was hired to burst this fuckin’ Pied Paedo’s pipes for good.

I worked for ‘The Church’ as one of their ‘Die-casters’.

A Church assassin. The Redemptionists got me at an early age after I killed my first.

They tested my faith every day by forcing me to roll their sacred dice on their alter crap table to determine whether I would be executed for my sins or live to “seek redemption”

And I sought redemption by killing in their name. The dice wouldnt let me die yet.

In my cramped sniper roost, the weight of the gun for my young frame and my anticipation started to make me sweat.

A bead of it started to trickle from the nape of my neck slowly down my spine. Another bead formed and chased it. They joined sweaty, eager hands, quickened pace down the hillside of my spine like a deranged Jack ‘n’ Jill. The party really started when they fell into my buttcrack.

My ass hairs were soldiers woken to wage an itchy ass civil war on each other once again. Trying to win some battle for supremacy that would never be won by either side.

I wanted nothing more than to drop the cannon, drop my trousers and hold back the warring flanks.

As that fat, red bastard appeared it was all I could do to pull the trigger as something that felt like an epileptic spider tried to invade my asshole.

I swallowed hard, focussed, went snake eyed, held breath for a long second, squeezed the trigger.

Once. Twice. Three times. Switching targets within seconds of each impact.

Timber! The support struts splinter to dust as each 50. cal bullet hits home. The Christmas tree shaped building fell on top of that fat, red bastard – His body split soaking the ground with a wave of gristle and gore. Bones broke up and went on seperate vacations.

I love it when they fall funny…

Its a wonderful life…

Break Glass (onto the past) by Paul’Deadeye’ Dick

That freight train rush of adrenaline blood, rapidly quickened my heart beat to bursting. My body conducted a crazed, cardio-vascular concerto echoing in my ears.

It matched the rapid, heavy thud of running footsteps from reinforcements in the distance.

Wounded in the thigh. Clipped in ribs from a lucky shot. Hand numb from bullet graze. I’ve had worse. And I don’t have the time to bleed. In my short time in Ded-troit City I had a fistful of pigskins saving a she-male hooker from a razor-wielding pimp, was about to collect another 1600 from delivering enemy heads to Ded-troits’ Mayor.

But I’d fucked up. The pimp I killed was the Mayor’s pimp brother and I’d killed at least thirty of the Mayor’s personal guard to join that dickless fucker burning in hell. More would be coming through the main doors any second now.

Outnumbered and wounded, I took the high ground. No time for escape I had to find that rat-fuck Mayor. I get him – I get paid my 16 large for the last job. He’ll also be my hostage, securing my safe passage outta here.

He was in his study. Pig-shit fuelled gas lamps bathed the place in a sickly, yeasty piss yellow glow. Fitting décor for a yellow bastard.

He wasn’t armed and cowered behind his long, Gold-leaf painted desk.

His bald head bobbed slowly. A ginger-bushed dick that couldn’t decide to get hard for action or remain flaccid in fear. But I’d forgot why this guy was a survivor. Answer?

He’s a fuckin’ sneaky son of a bitch.

He hit a switch and shit happened in quick succession. More bad guys on the stairs behind me. He laughed like a comic-book super-villain. I was taken for a sucker.

He’d lured me in here. When that penny dropped. So did the floor under me.

I grabbed for the edge of the dead drop with both hands.

My .50 Cal Handcannon, Lucille, clattered away so I could gain a better hold. Digging my Kukri blade into the floor, I pulled myself up and rolled free just in time. The dead drop snapped its greedy mouth shut with a single horizontal guillotine tooth. Seconds slower I would’ve been cut clean in half. That fuckin’ Mayor had way too much time on his hands.

Flipping to my feet to throw the blade at the Mayor he suddenly made a hard clockwise pull. The desk flipped and I stared down the end of a concealed double barrell mini-gun. He had me deadbang and grinned. By this time, the first few henchman had came through the door behind me gun blazing. I chopped at the first guy’s knee taking his lower leg off. He tripped up the others,

I sidestepped. Cutting gunhands off with crescent chops of my kukri, driving the blade again and again into chests or brains, the last guy concussing him with a spinning elbow. Pitting him to work as a mobile human shield. Time to get the mayor. The Mayor had other ideas. He screamed as he fired….competing with the whistling roar of the minigun…He was clearly overcompensating….

I spun around, letting my armored coat take the brunt as bullet rain beat a fevered drum solo on my back. I grabbed the next guy who came through the door as a human umbrella and was forced next to the only exit there was. The window. It said….

In Case Of Emergency Break Glass….

The last thing I saw until everything went black was my bootlace dice tie bouncing in my face as I swam in slow motion through an ocean of broken glass. The window shattered as the physical universe did likewise.

What should have been twenty feet to impact in a Dedtroit night-shrouded alleyway outside, was instead what seemed to be thirty light years of night.

Freezing cold. Black, formless void. No up. Nor down. No left. Nor right. Only the feeling of forward motion. A horrible, claustrophobia of bumping, tumbling, rolling chaos momentum. Like being trapped in the trunk of a runaway car with square wheels and no brakes.

Or even more crazy…the feeling of being trapped inside a huge, rolling dice…

2. The Wise-guy Who Fell From The Sky

I don’t know how long I fell. Tumbling through that seemingly endless nothingness of a frigid, cubic, void until it all came to a sudden stop…

Something groaned in the dark, and I was forcibly shat into recognisable existence over a bright, shiny world that was not my own….

I’d thrown up and my olfactory sense kicked in, a river of rot-gut bourbon and stale pork sandwich stained my front and acted as the smelling salts to slap the shit out of my other senses to wake the fuck up. Hearing kicked in first. Sound of Air rushing…

True sunlight warmed me after the endless cold of tumbling nightmare. The sudden light blinded me. Searing muscle pain. Sudden air. Too much all at once. Lungs not used to such. Starting to gag. This must be what it felt like to be born.

Eyes adjusted. the sudden sight of this world made me for brief seconds forget I was very likely plunging to my death.

I squinted up above me and there were the dice which used to be my boot lace tie, whirling around like a giant pair of crazy, cubic bolas. It had been them that saved me falling to my death when I dove through that fateful window in the Mayor’s study. Insane as that sounded it was the only explanation.

Now they had become the architects of a new death by aborting me into this world at a height of around 200 ft. No hope. No sympathy for this devil. I was destined to become street pizza through an insane turn of events that made little sense. The only thing that did’ was I was going to die.

I didn’t panic, I had cheated death plenty of times, but you cant cheat it forever… When your numbers up… its up. All the screaming and crying will do you no good. You may as well sit back say fuck it and enjoy what’s around you before the end. Find the good in the bad.

So I decided to appreciate the natural beauty of my surroundings. Before I splattered into them.

The sky was a welcoming bright cerulean blue that hurt the eye and the soul with its majesty, the Sun even more so. The clouds smelled wonderful as I fell through them.

I saw a bustling metropolis beneath of many colors and hues. Even the greys were bright.

These were my sole comforts as I became gravity’s plaything. Spinning around in the air and dispassionately looking down to see what would eventually kill me.

Buildings and transport of strange yet familiar design were in abundance. They looked from this distance like shoals of brightly colored fish moving through terracotta and grey coral reefs of brick and steel.

I had seen the image of shoals of fish in an old movie before ‘the Church’ decreed movies weren’t suitable for mass consumption. People might get their own ideas and start to be happy on their own. ‘The Church’ had sent me to “torch the movie theatre and anyone turned from faith…”

But that was another life which flashed before my eyes now – when I was a “Die-Caster”, a “Church” Assassin for a crazy cult called “The Luke Rheinhart Redemptionist Church” who worshipped the random decrees of death dice that they daily threw on their altar crap tables. Life for them turned on a Die.

This was another death in front of me I had to somehow get out of, plummeting onto a colorful world I was going to make even more fuckin’ colorful with my internal organs. But the dice had never let me die yet.I saw my opportunity within minutes to impact. A group of people below me.

Five handgun-wielding gunsel’s about to kill a larger guy and some stacked dame, dressed in red.

Spreading my Radora trench, then gripping it in tight bunches, I formed air pockets. The sudden air brake turned me around from head-first to feet-first.I slowed my imminent descent just long enough for me to steer myself into a trajectory to land on clueless killers.

Aiming for the fattest gunsels in the group to break my fall. My analytical personality gave myself small odds on surviving this. But better odds than before. Though I couldnt hear what was said being too far away and air rushing in my ears, it was clear the couple below had shitty odds too… But this Dice was rolling towards them to even those odds. For both of us…

I had to get their attention to bunch together. I pulled my kukri from its sheath and threw the blade into the back of one’s head, killing him instantly. The rest turned around. And nearly dropped their guns in surprise.

The Angel of Death was upon them. And he wore a Trenchcoat.

Seconds to impact I tucked myself into a ball. Bringing my legs up, head down, arms across both. The fattest gunsel exploded in gristle as I cannon-balled into him.

Meat came apart from bone. Blood, burst its fleshy flood walls soaking me as I landed upon them. The shock absorbers in my hat and trench took most of the brunt.

My arms broke as did both my legs. Skull remaining intact was small consolation.

But nothing avoided concussion. I felt some ribs of mine splinter and muscles tear across my abdomen and back. Through the darkening pain, I smiled at the satisfying crunch of breaking bones and shattering spine vertebrae that weren’t my own. You have to enjoy the little things in life.

As consciousness started to slowly bleed out in little black waves, the last things I heard were gunshots, machine gunfire, men and a woman shouting, screaming, threats in Italian.

I assumed the couple I rescued by my surprise attack were now clearing house.

“Take dis fuckin’ message to Razzolli, ya filthy fuckin’ animal, Requiescat in Pace! Vaffanculo!“

More machine gun fire and screams of the dying…

“Papa Look out!” Gunshot followed by Two more gunshots rang out quickly

“ Anna what da fuck I tell you ’bout using handguns? It’s not lady like,”

A woman protesting, her voice was breathless, lightly rasping and husky…

“That’s fuckin’ bullshit, Papa! I killed fuckin’ two of them! I saved us..,” Giggling echoed…

“Owhoaaa –Watcha fuckin’ mouth an’ stop laughin’ like ya got dropped on ya fuckin’ head.”

“Why I oughta… “

He raised his hand to her…but instead he pinched her nose raising his other huge hand up to the heavens to enforce his point

“…If you’re mother could hear you now.”

He turned to look at me and my vision faded as a black wave of concussion washed over my eyes.

“An’ What’s wit’ dis fuckin’ guy? ‘Fuck he come from? Fuckin’ Wise-guys fallin’ outta da sky, here.”

I opened my eyes briefly one final time as I was turned around to hazily see what looked like a hulking giant with a talking tomato for a face and the fading outline of a petite, busty brunette dressed in red looking down on me.

“Let’s help dis crazy bum da fuck up, he’s da one just saved us. Put down da heater and go get da fuckin’ boys….

The world went black and swirly…..if this was Death it was such a fuckin’ anti-climax… No Heaven, Purgatory or Hell greeted me… Just darkness and the rumbling sounds of giant dice chasing me across a huge crap table….

***

Paul ‘Deadeye’ Dick – a self-styled “Jock Of All Trades” – is one-eyed, Artist/writer/sculptor, husband and father from Scotland. Despite suffering from debilitating Fibromyalgia, and half his sight gone, he strives to live an active life.

Under the pen name Paul Dick Knight, he is the creator/writer/artist on the “AkaiTaiyo -Deadeye Samurai” comicbook. A tale of a mystical blind samurai mixing epic Japanese mythology and legend with horror/superhero genres.

Paul’s 3D work can be seen on the figurerealm.com site under the name “Deadeye”.

His photorealistic, part painted 2D art features on numerous Yellow Mama and Black Petals stories. Including his Dick Dice harboiled SF/Noir tales and Black Petals Editor, Anne Stickel’s Horror/Fantasy book “Next Stop:Napper’s Holler” – Paul’s first paid work since coming back from blindness.

Like a Ronin Samurai of old, Paul’s available for any paid freelance work. His speed, precision and execution in his artwork the equal of any katana strike. Contact him at Deadeye_Samurai@Yahoo.co.uk