Balls Capone

In my dreams last night, I was opening my own tavern, or remodeling an existing one into what I wanted it to be. It was called the “Adultrap”, because they said the ratio of rats to regulars was pretty good. Yeah, I’m not sure what to make of that either. It was a large wooden building, rustic and old world style with a decent sized drinking floor and an old bar at one end that was made out of gnarled roots of giant trees. There were old creaky, yet sturdy tables and chairs scattered about the place, you could tell it was once a hopping joint but had been closed for several years now.

This was a strange world I was living in, there were strange creatures, ghosts, spirts, entities, and the land outside was very odd. It all resembled a misty swamp where you'd expect a creepy old witch to live, in fact the whole town gave off that vibe. The sky was always grayish and dark, the land was blackened, the trees were twisted and dead looking. The whole of the town was located on the top of a high mesa. It was all way up in the sky and below was so far down, all you could see is was clouds and darkness. No bottom. It seemed no one was sure what was down there, but the vibe it gave off didn’t really make you want to go find out. Also, if you blew it and fell off the edge, you would plummet into the cloudy darkness below, never to be seen or heard from again. So, you had to be careful here, certain death was literally a few wrong steps away. But was it really death?  We all seemed to be dead already.

I felt like everyone here was already dead or in some kind of transformative state, I heard one of my patrons call it the Intermension, not really a dimension, but certainly not life on earth either. There was a rule around here that folks were supposed to follow, but sometimes didn't. No Re-Killing, because if you Re-Killed someone, they had to start over on the ladder of dimensions, the bottom ones really sucked and are hard to get out of. When you're down there, you have this horrible brain fog, like being really really stupid, and you can't remember where you're going or why and it takes forever to find your way out and up to the next level, which is similar but you're less stupid. It's not impossible, it just takes a LOT of time, and is super annoying to have to redo. So Re-Killing was looked down upon, but it wasn't a law or anything, just something that made you an asshole if you did.

Then there were the Trippies, these little beings that ran around everywhere, they were about a foot tall, skinny, never wore shirts, were fast as hell, walked funny, and wore bright green pants. They had high pitched voices and talked super-fast, you could never understand anything there were saying, but they would often steal your food or booze, get in your house and trash things, crash your car, cause general property damage, and sometimes trick people into falling off the edge of the town to their splattering death, or as I explained earlier, Re-Killing. They got a big kick out it and would laugh hysterically over it, they were nothing but annoying little shits and everyone hated and wanted to kill them on sight, but they were so fast, you could never really catch them, and they also got a big kick out of that. All the rats didn’t seem so bad after you had to deal with Trippies on a regular basis. There was one way to keep your place Trippie free, it was to go get a “Bolgrus”, an ugly squatty giant frog like thing that would just sit in the corner of the room and wait, but it was a natural at catching Trippies and eating them on the spot. The only drawback was the sound, the horrible crunching of bones and the high-pitched death screams and gurgles made for an uncomfortable working environment. So, they were only used when the need was dire.

I was very excited at my new adventure in Taverning. I was also going to build an Inn attached to the bar so that my patrons could stay safe and not wander off the edge of the town to certain doom. I had swept out and got the main bar room all set up now and I was super stoked because I got my curtains in for the windows and behind the stage, they were a dark grey and had little patterns of holes to let the light through. The patterns were made in the faces of the Stone warning face guys from the movie Labyrinth, you know “Don’t go on……this is not the way, beware, beware, soon it will be too late”, yeah, those guys. They were super cool looking curtains, and the faces would shine on the walls and floors in either natural or colored light. It was so cool looking! But now I needed employees to help me run the place, so I put out a help wanted sign, and soon I had many applicants who were all very, um, special characters.

Robert Yancy Turdner – Bartender

“Yep, you heard right”, said Robert. “Turdner, like you squeezed out yer butt this morning!”, he jokingly said. “You can call me whatever you want, Turd Man, his Royal Turdness, Turd Time, the Man pile, whatever, I don’t mind at all, just don’t call me Bob”, he said in a laughing manner. "I really dig the vibe of your soul-hole, man!", he quipped.

He was a tall slender man with big black 60's like dork glasses, a black vest, and a black cap on. But his clothes looked unusual, like they were part of his body, and come to find out, they were. He had his favorite outfit surgically implanted into his body so he always looked his best and was always ready for anything. Okay. Not really sure how you wash your clothes that way, but whatever, at least he didn't stink. His Royal Turdness was also one hell of a dancer and could serve drinks while in the middle of a dance without spilling a drop. So welcome to the team, Man Pile.

Jeffrey Martin Turdner – Head Chef / Bouncer

I was welcoming Mr. Turd Time to his new position when the door blew in, shocked, I flipped around ready to defend myself for whatever was coming. There, in the doorway stood a rainbow Velociraptor!  But his Royal Turdness didn’t seem to be scared of it at all, in fact he smirked and walked up to the beast, smacking it on the nose.

“Ouch, that hurt!”, I heard a voice say as I watched the giant lizard slowly turn into a man. In fact, a man exactly like Turd Time, but with a brown vest instead of a black one. Again, also surgically embedded into his body. This was Turd Time’s twin brother, Jeffrey. “Two Turds don’t make a right!”, announced Jeffrey as they gave each other a high five. Okay. Turd Time walked up to me and introduced me to his brother and how I would be a fool not to hire him to feed my patrons, as he was the best Chef in the western 6 (dimensions). He’s also a part time Velociraptor, so he’s pretty good at security when needed. Dangerous, ludicrous, slightly revolting, but hey, I like it! Welcome to the team.

Beth – Bouncer / Security

Beth was scary, that’s all anyone really could feel around her, she made the very air cold. She was a former Daemon woman who had found a way into the world of the living where she terrorized many human beings. They were like the gentle banana people to her, as she smashed their statues and scattered their books! She was great at terrifying, possessing, or murdering any living man she encountered. But at some point, she haunted the wrong people, and she was cast out of the world back to the hellish nightmare lands from whence she came.

There, she was punished for eons, being cast into the great Black Prison for escaping to the world of the living, which is apparently a high crime in the netherworlds of evil. You’re supposed to let the living be and do what they will, then haunt them when they arrive, you're not to interfere with them otherwise. But she had paid her price, done her time, and was now released living in this world looking for a job, you could say she was kind of on soul parole from hell prison. She was evil as shit, but she had to behave, if she didn’t she'd end up back in the Black Prison.

She looked like a normal run-down middle-aged white woman with long stringy black hair and a bad attitude, nothing special, but if you pissed her off, she would skeletonize, her eyes turned bright white, and her hands became broken off wooden planks with ragged sharp ends and rusty nails that could easily pierce through the trunk of a fully grown man. It was horrifying, so you wanted to stay on her good side, the small one she had. Welcome to the team, Beth.

Carly Carlisle Carrington – Waitress

Carly looked like a living, but dead, version of Betty Boop and talked just like her, except she was super hyper, annoyingly upbeat, and always loudly chewing gum, which is something that bugs the hell out of me. But she was a fabulous waitress though and according to her she had, “Thousands of years of experience”, now how can you argue with that?

Beth hated her with a passion and wanted to turn her into a kabob. Beth told me if I hired her that she would find her way back into the world and haunt my ass forever, but it was an empty threat, she knew she no longer had that power, and would end up back in Prison. So, she had to deal with it. Apparently, they had been sisters in a life thousands of years ago and they hated each other so much in life, the bitterness had spilled over into all the other worlds and times in which they had lived. So, yeah, whatever. Deal with it.

So, were we all really dead and living in some strange between world? I don’t know, but I opened my tavern and business was good. Most of the information I wrote in this experience was learned from my regulars at the bar. There were all sorts of creatures and souls that dropped in for a beer or two. There were even smarter Trippies that would show up, they were less annoying, and wore red pants, they were kind of like the leaders, the smart ones. Still extremely mischievous, but not as bad as their green pants wearing counter parts. We had a good discussion and had come to an agreement that if they would keep the Greenies from destroying my bar, that I would never get a Bolgrus to consume them. It really helped keep a lot of my customers from Re-Dying, which was good for business.

It felt great, I was strangely happy here, my business was booming, I had a cast of very unique characters that worked for me, and life was good, this strange otherworldly life.

"What'll it be, pardner?", Bone Burbon? Corpulent Vodka? Corn Whiskey? Black Bitters? Beth could make a drink called the Devil's Dance, a crazy looking orange concoction that could bring a little bit of hell to the mouth of any soul. A walk on the dark side, it was popular! Then there was Randy, Randy had been Re-Killed so many times that the stupid of the lower dimension had kind of stuck forever, so Beth would give him a Devil's Dance and watch as he ran around in pain and eventually off the cliff, back to level 1 with Randy. It was kind of going joke around town. Fucking, Randy. If you were going to Re-Kill anyone, it would usually be him.