"Gus? Hey Gus? You alright?" Gus was jolted out of his stupor by something shaking his shoulder.
"Wha?" Gus sputtered, the fog lifting off his mind as reality returned to him.
"Hey you ok man? You been just sitting there droolin & starin at your beer for the last 15 minutes. The fuck is wrong with you?"
Gus gave his head a shake, clearing the rest of the cobwebs & tried to regain his composure. The voice he heard, as well as the one responsible for shaking him was Doyle, his old friend & drinking buddy. They were out at one of their usual haunts, the Rathskeller, known more fondly to the locals as the Rat.
Gus Sullivan & Doyle Murray had known each other for the last 15 years, almost like brothers they were. They met in the local Boston hardcore scene. When you spend most of your free evenings going to shows at places like the Rat, the Channel, any VFW or community hall where a show was going on, even house shows, & you see the same group of regulars there that weren't FSU or in some sort of crew or clique, eventually you get pretty close. Though they were a bit of an odd pair. Gus was 23, average stature, nothing particularly stood out about him. He was typically quiet, but pleasant. Analytical almost to a fault. He was one of those guys that normally sits back & watches the world. Taking it all in, turning it over in his mind, deconstructing it all. That was him in a nutshell. He grew up in Cambridge in a middle class family, Did well throughout school. Well enough to earn him a scholarship for Network Engineering at MIT which was great, not just because of the opportunities that come with that kind of education, but also because it allowed him to move closer to his favorite clubs & go to more shows. He got himself a little roach motel type studio apartment off Commonwealth Ave not far from Kenmore Square. Rent was a bitch, but hey, Student grants covered that for him.
Doyle on the other hand, well, to say he was rough around the edges would be putting it mildly. He was a fair bit older, 38. He grew up in Southie, (South Boston for those that aren't locals). He was crass & a bit too on the nose at times, Never shied away from a fight but standing 6 foot 4 & weighing in at 273 pounds of almost entirely muscle, he rarely found himself with very many challengers. In spite of all that he prided himself as a man of honor & integrity. Stand for what is right, Do what is right, Have convictions & stand by them. His childhood wasn't as easy as Gus's. up until his mid teen years he grew with mom in Old Colony, one of the projects of Southie. He had a revolving door of stepfathers that came & went, all of them complete scumbags. His mother did the best she could, but she was a troubled woman. Doyle never talks about it much but suffice it to say his mother's taste in men stemmed from "daddy issues" she developed because of her own childhood trauma. Leave it at that. It was because of his childhood that he & White Trash Rob, member of Boston's Ramallah & Blood for Blood, were pretty close growing up, before Rob got too busy self medicating by spiking his veins. It was also because of that same upbringing that he burned all his Blood for Blood t-shirts & Cds in effigy when news came out about what Buddha did to a 13 year old girl after getting shitfaced at a Memorial day barbecue. CPS took him out of his mother's care after he finally snapped with her most recent new boyfriend, some guy named Frank. He was an unemployed bum, a junkie that got his mom to relapse & start using again after she had gotten 3 years clean. Doyle never really spoke much about what happened that day, but the fragments that are known is Frank told Doyle to get him a beer while sitting on his ass watching TV, Doyle refused, something about Frank going off about how Doyle should know his place & Doyle lost it. When the ambulance arrived, Frank had 3 fractures in his skull, 8 broken ribs, his left arm was broken in 3 places, his right eyeball was completely ruptured & dangling from it's socket, was covered head to toe in bruises & had half a broken chair leg sticking out of his abdomen. Doyle spent the rest of his teen years in juvie & then lived with his real dad after that until he struck out on his own. about a year after his mom lost custody of him, she died from an overdose. He got his GED, but never went on to any further than that. He worked mostly in construction & got by on that & odd jobs, occasionally working crowd control at some shows for various promoters, or bouncer shifts at a few local bars that didn't mind paying off the books. Though despite his lack of education & proclivity to manual labor, he was far from dumb. He loved to read. Anything he could get his hands on, he'd read it. In fact, that was one of the main things that he & Gus had in common. The Boston Hardcore scene & a passion for literature.
"Ah sorry man" Gus said, running his hand through his unkempt brown hair before wiping the spittle from his chin. "I guess I've kinda been distracted trying to figure out one of the most bizarre stories I read online the other day."
Doyle looked at Gus from the side of his eye as he stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. "An online story?" he asked as he shook a fresh smoke from the pack sitting next to his beer on the bar, tucked it between his lips & dug his zippo from his pocket. "What the fuck you obsessing over that shit so much for? It's just some online story." He continued as he lit his cigarette.
Gus went to reply & paused for a second, trying to find the right words. After all, it IS rather silly to give more than a few moments thought to some hack work of fiction online. "Ok" he started, "You remember that old 'if it weren't for my horse' bit Lewis Black used to do? the one where he jokes about how he'd be found dead on his shitter from an aneurism trying to figure out what the fuck that lady he heard mean when she said 'if it weren't for my horse I wouldn't have spent that year in college?"
Doyle nodded as he took a drag on his smoke & then exhaled, "Not really but I get the general idea, what about it?"
Gus took a swig from his beer & continued. "Ok, it's kinda one of those types of things. So the other day I was bored, nothing going on right? So I decided to check out that link that Eddie sent me about that online author he's nuts about. Some guy named Fugue."
Doyle grimaced at that. "Fuuck that, Eddie is weird man, he gave me a book to read a few months back. Something by some guy named Russ Martin. He claimed it's like Stephen King but better." Taking another drag, he went on to say "Spoiler by the way, it wasn't. It was fucking awful".
"Funny you say that" Gus said with a chuckle, "Because the story that Eddie linked me was claimed by this Fugue guy to be an homage of some sort to Russ Martin. But the story doesn't make any sense. It started off with a protag named Paul right? & he went home to his parent's place for the Christmas holidays, but when he gets there, he finds his mom prancing around almost naked, his old man is now living in a closet & this dude named Brad, who used to be one of his mom's students, she was a high school teacher or some shit like that by the way, this Brad guy apparently moved in, got Paul's mom all kinds of turned out & basically runs their lives now. The backstory on it is apparently a month prior, around Thanksgiving this Brad guy turned up at their house, talked some weak game to Teri, the mom, & this got her wicked pissed. Like ruins your whole fuckin day pissed. So pissed she ended up burning the Thanksgiving turkey the next day. Well he comes back again the next day, same story but he sneaks a kiss in on her this time. Then instantly she starts obsessing about this fuckin guy. He comes back again & she tries to maintain her composure, but come to find out, Artie, her husband set this whole fuckin thing up with Brad because 'he was sick of how frigid she was & was SOOO turned on by the idea of turning her whore'. Set up fuckin cameras & everything. Within hours, of this, she's fuckin hooked on this guy. Her job, gone. Her dignity & self respect, right in the fuckin trash. Her life becomes basically being this Brad guy's personal cumdump. So Paul shows up to this nightmare about a month after it started, & she's trying to convince him to leave & never come back so he isn't dragged into the Hell her's & his dad's life has become."
Doyle picks up his own beer. "Ok, sounds like some shitty porn story for sickos with a rape fetish. Why are you wasting that much mental energy on it?" He asked before taking a sip.
"Because it just doesn't make any sense." Gus replied. "I mean yeah, the writing was terrible & the dialogue was just fucking BAD, & the story isn't even complete yet, but the rest of the story after that is Paul staying at home spending all his time on fucking Google trying to figure out how to get his parents out of their situation & get rid of Brad while his mother spends all her time either fucking Brad or doing whatever degrading shit he tells her to do, often roping Paul into it too & then crying & feeling sorry for herself afterwards. & some of it is some seriously fucked up shit."
Doyle rolled his eyes & lit up another cigarette & tucks it between his lips. "Ok, I'll bite" he said. "So this Brad guy is holding Paul's parents hostage & Paul is a clueless, spineless fuckwit who doesn't know how to take care of business. The end. I mean is this Brad guy holding them all there at gunpoint? He has to sleep eventually, just leave when he's asleep. Or if he has some sort of leverage that he's using to extort them, just figure out what it is, neutralize it & kick him out the door. Or better yet, if what he was doing was that bad, just fuck him up. The end." Doyle then pauses, takes the cigarette from his mouth & furrows his brow in thought a moment.
"See that just it" Gus starts. "There's none of that. No extortion, no force of any kind, the mom is like a smack addict. She hates Brad & hates what he's done to her life but seems to have zero control over her compulsive need to 'please daddy' & just does whatever he tells her too. She even told her son that she'd kill him if he tried taking Brad away from him."
Doyle holds up a hand as if to gesture "yeah yeah, I get it". "So you said this story was some homage to Russ Martin right?"
Gus stops & takes a breath. "Yeah that's what it said".
Doyle nods. "Yeah, I see where that's going. He's copying the whole 'mind control' or 'demonic possession' route. Basically he's torturing them all by keeping them aware of their condition, but taking away their self control & puppeting them."
"But he really isn't" Gus blurts out. "As far as I can piece together, they're doing it of their own free will, just out of compulsion & Paul isn't even under his control. Not only that, but there hasn't been anything in the story displaying him as some sort of powerful demon or anything that could cause any real damage. I mean the closest thing to that is that Paul suspects some kind of mind control or hypnosis, but that's it. No show of supernatural strength or other abilities, Brad certainly isn't omniscient or able to read minds, his 'power' so far seems to just be limited to being able to make Paul's parents addicted to pleasing him. So why the fuck is Paul sitting on Google all day instead of kicking Brad's ass or putting a bullet in him? It doesn't make any damn sense."
Doyle shrugged. "So it doesn't make sense. It's a shitty story by a shitty author. Just chalk it up to another Twilight, forget about it & drink your fuckin beer. Why you lettin it ruin your night?"
At that point the bartender approaches them to check in on them. "Hey guys, you doin alright down here? Need a refill?"
Doyle exhales another stream of smoke, "Yeah, another Pabst for me & gimme a double of Dewars, neat. This fucker over here's givin me a headache. Gus, you want another round?"
Gus, back in thought, stirs again. "Hm? Oh uh.. yeah. Gimme another of the same." he says, pointing at his bottle of Fat Tire.
Doyle looks back at Gus & chuckles. "Man, this story really got you fucked in the head huh?"
Gus rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, it's just one of those things that just sticks in your brain right? Trying to make sense of it." He pauses as the bartender brings their next round of drinks. "I'll tell you one thing though. Part of me almost wishes it was real just so there would be the possibility of finding the guy & fucking his shit up."
Doyle smirked as he finished the last of his first beer. "You my friend just described every scumbag my mother brought home with her. Trust me, speaking from experience here, fucking them up isn't all that satisfying."
Gus side eyed him. "You're lying right now aren't you".
Doyle laughed & downed his Dewars, "You bet your fuckin ass I'm lying. That shit felt good. But can't say it was worth all the headache."
They sat in silence for a few minutes nursing their drinks. Gus started thinking Doyle was right. It's just a dumb fucking story. Why obsess over it?
Doyle breaks the silence first. "You know, theoretically you could actually get your wish on that."
"What?" Gus asks, his train of thought being derailed by Doyle's comment.
"squaring off with this Brad guy. In theory it's possible." Doyle replied. "You know multiverse theory right? The idea that there's endless universes or dimensions out there of alternate realities? Well I heard this theory once that suggested that all the fiction we see & read right? Book, movies, TV shows, etc.. The theory is that the people who write that didn't really create it all in their mind, but instead they have this kind of ability to see within their mind into other realities. So what they THINK they are creating when they write is really just them transcribing what they see in that other reality."
Gus looks back at Doyle with a puzzled expression. "Ok, so what are you saying? That I should write about him getting fucked up & that would make it happen in his reality or some shit?"
Doyle shakes his head & chuckles again. "Nah man. Alls I'm saying, for the sake of argument, is this. Think about all the works of fiction out there where traveling between worlds & dimensions. I mean there's hundreds of them out there right? So, theoretically, IF that first theory is true & all these fictional people in these fictional places are other realities, then theoretically traveling between these worlds is also possible. So, theoretically if you figured out how to do that, You could get go after him & get what you want. Though I think that if that kind of thing were possible, some brains in lab coats somewhere would have figured it out already & the 2 of us ain't got the brainpower or the resources to figure that shit out right? So what do you say you just relax, enjoy the night & drink your beer?"
Gus face lights up, like he just had an epiphany. "You know, you might be onto something man, I've heard about that too. It might be worth looking into because if we could figure that out, there's so many things we could do with it. I mean think of the possibilities man."
"Gus" Doyle said, taking another drag from his cigarette.
"Yeah?" Gus replied
Doyle looked Gus in the eye with a look that said he was done with this nonsense. "Shut up & drink your beer."
Gus gave a sheepish "yeah" & took another swig from his bottle, though Doyle could tell, Gus's mind was still going a mile a minute.