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https://www.amazon.com/Chuck-Steak-Meat-Casper-Pearl-ebook/dp/B07KGDSBD8/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542243227&sr=1-2&keywords=chuck+steak%3A+not+the+meat

FRIDAY

Chuck soars downhill inside the car he commandeered. It’s rust-colored. The make and model are up for debate. The owner sits dazed in the middle of the road nearly two miles back with a goose egg rising on his forehead.

The jalopy rattles violently at 72mph due to a bent rim. The peeled paneling and half-attached passenger seat and unclamped hood don’t help matters, either.

But Chuck will make it. He always does.

His radio bounces around the backseat. He spots it in the rearview mirror for a fraction of a second before it disappears and clangs against the window. It tumbles and flips and tries to yell above the noise, “Steak, goddamn it, where are you?” That’s his lieutenant speaking—Lieutenant Anderson. Lieutenant Anderson is a man packed full of treats. His mustache is a skirt of hair which conceals his entire mouth even when he’s screaming. “Goddamn it, you should be at the hostage situation by now! Goddamn it to Hell!”

Chuck hits a bump and goes airborne. The jalopy lands in a heap of sparks. The tire with the bent rim pops off like a cork and flies into an alleyway. Despite this setback, Chuck pushes 60mph. He grinds through the street. To the few he passes who are out and about, he is a giant nail on a chalkboard.

Chuck peels a hand from the wheel and flips his wrist. He’s wearing a brand new chrome watch. Despite its sleek, futuristic appearance, Chuck’s still ashamed to wear it. In some sense, it’s comparable to having a big, juicy piece of spinach stuck between his top central incisors. Or ratty toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his boot. Or a mustard stain on the thigh of his white washed jeans.

Fact is, who wears a watch nowadays? Not somebody anybody wants to associate with. Irregardless, Chuck has been stripped of his choices, so he checks in with the expiring timer. Under two minutes left. Okay, so it’s going to be a close one, but he’ll make it.

“Goddamn it, Chuck!” The radio is juggled from side to side. “Now it’s on the news! Every goddamn channel, even the shitty one! The maniac’s got some poor lady out on the ledge!” Anderson shouts and hollers everything he says. As the youngest of eleven, the lieutenant often found his voice lost amongst his rambunctious siblings. As a result, he had to duel the family dogs for scraps of attention. Young Anderson was no match for sister Pit Bulls. His scarred arms are proof. They look like tiger stripes and have been mistaken, quite often, for suicide attempts. When present day Anderson catches someone casting judgment upon his torn-up arms, he screams, “Goddamn it, you! Goddamn it to Hell! If you must know, my siblings overshadowed me, my parents ignored me, and two sister bitches abused me!” That’s why he shouts—to be heard. That’s why he obsessively gorges on everything in sight—in fear that one day, the food will run out, and he will once again starve and become frail, and his bones will snap apart upon touch, and he will become weak and delirious and want nothing more than to sulk in a dark corner and drown in self-pity.

But enough about that.

Present day Anderson shouts, “She’s screaming, for the love of everything, that she’s got kids, Chuck! Five to be exact! FIVE!”

Chuck smashes the steering wheel with a meaty fist. It snaps right off. He tries to fit the oblong wheel back on, but it doesn’t work like that. The jalopy smacks a parked truck and gets spun around in circles.

“Goddamn it, Chuck, her name’s Sally, and she works for a nonprofit organization!”

The jalopy punts a mailbox.

“When she’s not chiseling out time to spend with her family,” the radio yells, “Sally can be found at the local homeless shelter!”

There goes a telephone pole along with the street’s power.

“Jesus H. Christ, Chuck, she’s also a pastor!”

Since he’s not strapped in, Chuck’s head jackhammers the roof. It takes nineteen thumps to turn the jalopy into a convertible. Nineteen thumps to knock Chuck Steak senseless.

He awakens in a puff of smoke to this:

“Sally’s being nudged, Chuck! Do you hear me? A devoted wife, a beloved pastor, a selfless mother of five, a patron saint of community service—this female Swiss Army knife of everything good and decent in the world is being nudged off a thirty-story ledge!”

The door has already been torn off, so Chuck stumbles out of the car. The engine’s caught fire. It’s the only source of light for blocks. Everything’s a bit hazy due to the concussion, but when his double vision merges together, he confronts the timer.

Twenty seconds left.

He’s arrived at the correct address with a busted nose and two fractured ribs. There’s no woman trapped on a ledge. There is, however, a blackened bank with an entrance barricaded in thick, steel bars.

The timer strikes zero, but where’s the crime that’s supposed to take place? Chuck wonders if the thieves are hitting the bank from underground, but then the radio cries out from inside the smoking car, “She’s dead, Chuck! Flattened! It’s horrible! If you were here, you’d be able to see for yourself! Since you’re not, just flip on any ole goddamn TV to any ole goddamn channel!”

The neon blue zero flashes on and off. Zero. Zero. Zero. But there’s no crime. Save for the crackling fire, there’s not a single peep to be heard at this dead intersection. Chuck rushes over and grips two of the bank’s fat bars. He pulls with everything he’s got, but not even the mighty Chuck Steak can budge steel.

He throws a frustrated punch and busts every knuckle minus the thumb (because according to the laws of physics, that would be impossible) on his right hand. “I barely felt that,” he mumbles while desperately scanning the area. There’s an elderly man clinging to a walker trying to cross the street. Chuck catches him halfway and asks if he’s seen any suspicious activity.

The old, pale, spotted, bald, stick-figure man barges by.

“You hear me, Sir?”

“Piss off.”

Chuck’s taken back. “Excuse me?”

“Piss…off.” He talks with his hunched back turned. “And get your hearing checked.”

“You best watch your dentures.”

“Or what, ya knucklehead? Are ya gonna whoop an old man?”

“I’m a cop.”

“Are ya gonna shoot me in cold-blood even though I don’t pose a threat?”

“Listen, old man, this conversation is veering off course.”

“You listen, Meathead McGee, I’ve got orders. Now unless you’re gonna ask me out on a date, piss off.”

The radio cries out, the plastic melting, the distorted voice drowning in flames, “And now Bruce is dead! If you’re just tuning in, Chuck, he’s the gentleman who erects wells in third world countries to give poor people fresh drinking water! He also owns and operates the local animal shelter!”

Chuck spins. There’s no fucking crime anywhere. But then an idea bores inside his thick skull. What if?

Yes?

What if it’s the old man?

Preposterous!

“Hey, old man!” Chuck jogs toward him.

“The name’s Bill, and piss off yet again.”

“Freeze!” Bill stabs at the street with his walker and drags his body closer to the curb. Chuck places a hand on his shoulder, engulfing it, and says, “You’re jaywalking.”

“Get your lousy mitten off of me.” Bill tries to bat at it with his chin of hanging flesh.

“Come on,” Chuck says, slowing every action in order to work delicately, “I don’t want any—”

It’s swift. Maybe the concussion made it so, but Chuck feels each tooth slide out of his neck. He feels the lines of blood rush down his bulging deltoid and soak into his shirt’s collar. He feels the numbness rapidly spreading and stumbles backwards.

Bill cranes his neck and smiles red. After spitting out his vampiric dentures, he’s all gums.

“All right,” Chuck says, pausing to feel his body sway, “pappy,” his lips have become bricks, “I’m going to,” his head slumps to the left, “knock you,” he strains to lift it to no avail, “into—”

“Let me guess,” Bill’s gummy hole says, “next week?”

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrn’t!” It’s the sound Chuck believes erupts when a contestant on a game show answers incorrectly. “A nursing home.”

“Been there, done that.” Bill stabs at the asphalt with his walker and drags his body forward. Stab and drag. About ten more stab and drags and he’ll have completed the crime, at which point Chuck’s girlfriend will be executed.

Chuck figures a smack upside the back of Bill’s head will apply enough force to knock the stubborn man out for good. But after waddling into position, Chuck’s right arm feels anchored.

Stab and drag.

The numbness has bitten into Chuck’s right ankle. He finds out the hard way when he puts all of his weight on it, rolls it and takes a dramatic, flailing side-fall to the ground.

Stab and drag.

Chuck tries to speak, but his lips won’t allow it. Just as his tree-trunk neck won’t grant his head movement, forcing his chiseled face to lie there horizontally.

Stab and drag.

A numbing agent has knocked half of Chuck’s body out of commission. With his workable half, he reaches for his weapon. It’s not a standard issue tube of pepper spray. Not a standard issue taser. Not even a standard issue pistol. Chuck Steak only deals in customs, so he takes hold of his trusty, illegal hand cannon and tries to steady the heavy chunk of metal in his weak hand. But the sights frantically hop from target to target. From Bill’s poor, shriveled head to Bill’s barely beating heart.

Chuck can’t kill this man. Not only is he a senior citizen, but Anderson specifically yelled in Chuck’s good ear, “Goddamn it, no more casualties, you hear?”

The cannon sways with the wind. It’s a split-second decision to pull the trigger. After a deafening eruption, it takes a moment for the discharged gust of smoke to clear. Chuck squints and assesses the damage. He’s taken out one of Bill’s legs. Not one of his actual legs—one of the walker’s. It’s slowed Bill a hair but hasn’t ceased his jaywalking.

Stab and drag.

Chuck fires again with henchman-like accuracy and misses by a mile.

“Faaaosoooookkkkkkksssssssssqqqquuueeeee,” Chuck slurs, which translates to, “Fuck me.”

“Sssoaoaoosoafaskfoksfowjkiojfaekfjsjfowfskfs,” the melted blob of radio cries from inside the inferno, which translates to, “There goes Jennifer Davies! She was the valedictorian of her graduating class! She had a full ride to M.I.T.! Did you hear me, Chuck? M.I.T.!” Even though M.I.T. isn’t what it used to be, it’s still M.I.T.

Stab and drag.

Chuck fires another wild shot that splits the walker in two. Bill takes a nasty face plant which gives him rubble for teeth. He then goes on to whine that at least half of his body has been broken. Then he goes on a tangent about police brutality—how he wishes he didn’t hate technology so he could record their event to share with the world so they’d see the injustice suffered here today.

Chuck slurs, “Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb,” which, if finished, would translate to, “You deserved it, you baked potato bastard.”

But the baked potato bastard isn’t broken enough, because he reaches forward and fits his fingers inside a pothole in order to pull himself closer to victory.

Of course O.D.O.T. didn’t repair this highly-traveled street after the bat-shit-crazy winter the city just endured. Why would they?

Bill has become a zombie. He sticks out his tongue and tries to lick the curb, but he’s still a good three feet away.

If the radio inside the car wasn’t already smelted into black liquid, and if Bill was the next victim nudged out onto the ledge, Anderson would probably scream, “Goddamn, Jesus H Christ, Holy Shitballs! This is Bill Flannigan, Chuck! He’s a vet from every war imaginable! He’s also a cancer vet, having beaten stage four brain cancer twice in his lifetime! Back in the 90s, he was wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and sentenced to life in prison! He wouldn’t be released until twenty-two years later only to discover that every member of his family tree had died off! How goddamn sad is that, Chuck? Bill Flannigan is a goddamn survivor if I’ve ever heard of one, but he couldn’t save a single person he cared about. Goddamn it, goddamn it right to Hell!”

Bill swipes with his tongue again, strike two.

Chuck aims but can’t fire, because at this angle, he’d plug a bullet right into Bill’s anus.

Bill uses another pothole to pull himself within licking distance.

There’s no other option than to fire and give the old man a lethal enema.

Chuck musters forth the power to steady his cannon for just a moment, and in this moment, he fires a perfectly aimed shot that blows off the fire hydrant’s bonnet. The desired effect was for a gushing line of water to strike Bill in the chest and roll him up the street, but what is actually transpiring is this: the fire hydrant has lost its head, and it vomits a funnel of water into the sky. The funnel eventually peeks and casts a torrential downpour upon the street below. Bill laughs at the audacity. He’s not stupid—he has, in fact, been kickin’ for ninety-two long years. He knows there’s nothing left to stop him from completing the crime at hand. Well, except for the flood of water building in the storm gutter, and that storm gutter is located right in front of Bill’s face.

The flood rises abruptly due to the uneven foundation. Thanks O.D.O.T. The taxpayers should demand a refund. But that is neither here nor there, because Bill is suddenly drowning. He is up to his eyeballs in a raging river, and every gasp forces an elevator of fluids down his throat.

“Yaaayayayaaaaaakaaakaaammmmmm,” Chuck spits and sputters, meaning, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

There’s no timer for this one, but Chuck’s sure the geezer doesn’t have long. He abandons the cannon and stretches his reach for the first pothole. This feels like the equivalent of performing yoga, and Chuck Steak doesn’t like yoga. He’s not a fool—he knows its purpose. In fact, he knows the very definition:

A means to create strength, awareness and harmony in both the mind and body.

Chuck Steak is also not color blind. He respects pink and knows it has a place in the world. That doesn’t mean he’s going to wear it. He prefers his clothing and actions to portray his true feelings. That’s why Chuck Steak wears black in abundance, like his current tee-shirt, and why he allows himself to have bitchy-resting-face—because he’s always angry about something, whether it be tailgaters on the freeway during severe weather conditions, or jackasses aiming guns at his forehead and threatening to blow his brains out the backend.

Or ignorant shoppers who angle and abandon their carts diagonally in the aisle while they stand and search, nonchalantly, right where Chuck needs to get.

Or a painting service he called to receive a quote, decided it was a blatant rip-off, so instead of making the situation awkward, he just ignored the calls for two months straight, thinking by the time the third rolled around, the business would take a hint and stop calling, but they never did, and every time they left a sincere message, stating, “Hi, Mr. Steak, this is so-and-so from Color Place,” and these dumb bastards would go on to say, “you contacted us for a quote about painting your basement, and I’m just returning your call,” neglecting the fact that they had since rang at least four dozen times, and they would go on and on, avoiding the elephant in the room—the fact that Chuck didn’t want anything to do with their overpriced service—and they continued to spam Chuck until he couldn’t take it any longer. They made Chuck Steak angry. And when Chuck Steak’s anger bar filled and surpassed the max, he knew picking up the phone and cursing out whatever secretary happened to be calling wouldn’t suffice. So he went down there, and he booted their front door off its hinges with a single blow, and he crunched through the glass as several nobodies took shelter under their fancy desks. Chuck had printed out the quote on a single piece of paper. But a single piece of paper wouldn’t hammer home the point, so he copied that single piece of paper until he had a stack of fifty. He held that stack high in the office and flapped it around as to draw attention to it. Then he said, quite loudly, all Anderson-esque, “Here’s the quote!” A tiny man, looked young and full of energy, poked his head out from under his desk and said, gulping, “Um, what quote, Sir?”

“To paint my fucking basement.” Chuck made a fist and turned the rectangle of papers into something spear-like. “Now who’s ass am I cramming this up?”

Once he left the office, Chuck never received another call from Color Place again. Sometimes he enjoys calling their office. They let it go to voicemail when they recognize his number.

Anyway…

After dragging all of his two-hundred-and-fifty-pounds through another pothole, Chuck stretches his reach one last time and latches onto Bill’s black tube sock. The thing comes right off to reveal a stank-ass foot. The yellowed, cracked nails seem to have gone untrimmed for at least a decade. But Chuck has to take hold. He pinches the old man’s big toe and tugs…and dislocates it. The toe now feels like a testicle, but Chuck yanks on it anyway and pulls Bill back far enough so he can grip the man’s tender ankle and pull him back even further. Chuck’s then able to reach Bill’s thigh. This is the awkward yet necessary part in order to drag Bill’s soggy face out of the river, so Chuck Steak sets aside his dignity and wraps his paw around an old man’s mushy thigh and heaves with everything he has left.

Bill is now beached. After some moments pass them by, Chuck realizes he’s dead.

The time it took to summarize a few of Chuck’s previous run-ins with jerkoffs seemed more than the ample amount of time for the average person to, in fact, drown.

Not knowing exactly how much time has passed, but knowing brain damage occurs after two-and-a-half minutes without oxygen, Chuck thinks back to that resuscitation class Anderson enrolled him in. He thinks a little bit more but nothing comes to mind. Then he realizes why—he had excused himself to pee then proceeded to exit the building. He signed the little book ahead of time so he’d get credit for the course, and it worked.

“Fuuuuuggggggkkkkkk.” There’s still quite a bit of slur left on Chuck’s tongue. And half of his body is still pinned, so he grips Bill by the beltline of his khakis and pulls him down further. Then he grips Bill’s breast pocket and pulls, but it tears right off. So he squeezes a clump of Bill’s plaid shirt inside his fist and pulls, only to rip that clean off, too. There’s nothing left to grip except the bush of white fuzz on Bill’s chest. Chuck retches as he takes hold and pulls, this time gently, causing some of the fuzz to tear like a 92-year-old Band-Aid. He pulls with tender care, whispering, “Cooooommme oooooon baaaabaaay.” And like that, Bill and Chuck have come head to head.

“Coooma unnnn Brillllll,” Chucks says, raising his hand high, “drrrroooon’t youuuuuu drrrrrrrrry beeeeecauseeeee aaaaaaa meeeeeee!” He bitch-slaps Bill’s Rhomboid major. That doesn’t work so he bitch-slaps Bill’s Rhomboid minor. That doesn’t work so he searches his limited view for any peeping Toms. Then he grips Bill by the back of the head and turns him around. Now they are face to face. Chuck retches one last time before reeling Bill in and engulfing the man’s withered, stale lips with his own. They won’t open, so Chuck makes a crowbar out of his tongue and pries them apart. He has to hurry, because the vomit is building in his throat, so Chuck blows and blows and blows. He feels a draft rush out of Bill’s flaring nostrils, so Chuck pinches them shut and blows some more.

It takes a few more blows before Bill convulses back to life and regurgitates what amounts to a cup of water. Once the seriousness of the situation settles, the two nestle into the street. Chuck lies there curled with his left cheek pressed flat against the asphalt. And Bill lies there spread eagle with his arms thrown up haphazardly above his head. Bill’s pruney hands are caught in the river’s flow. They sway left.

Bill stares up at the bright stars in the sky. He thanks whoever’s up there looking down over him.

Chuck stares straight across at the weird patches of white bushes rising and falling on Bill’s chest. A melted gumdrop is trapped inside one, fused with the hair. He curses whoever Bill’s thanking which Chuck believes, a fraction of a second later, prompts the next event to unfold in this absurdly ridiculous chain of reactions.

The jalopy explodes. It was supposed to wait until Chuck regained feeling in his body. Wait until the badass motherfucker stood tall, patted himself off, punched Bill in the face for all the trouble, then walked away, slowly. Then, and only then, was it supposed to spit a hot-air-balloon-sized flame ball into the night.

But of course the jalopy works on its own timetable—a timetable comprised entirely of appalling inconveniences. For the previous owner, still sitting dazed and confused in the middle of the street miles back, who’s still awaiting any sort of assistance, he’s probably head over heels about some dumbass relieving him of the source of all of his problems.

But that is neither here nor there, because the unnamed owner has no further role in whatever transpires from this point forward, so onto the massive flame ball, and onto the way it’s belched into the sky. The hues, the brightness, the swirls of orange and red and yellow are, for a moment, breathtaking. But flame balls are highly dangerous, especially when they eat through telephone poles. One poor telephone pole in particular gets torched right to the bone. The bone snaps, and the cord above snaps with it. That cord spills to the ground and slices across the river, zapping the water with a surge of electricity. It flows upstream and shocks Bill’s pruney hands ferociously. It seems like old times again with Bill dead and everything.

Chuck can’t believe this bullshit. If it weren’t for that shady call that came through on the mysterious phone which had to have been eased into Chuck’s back pocket when he wasn’t looking, maybe he was chowing down on a bacon-double cheeseburger, if it weren’t for the guy on the other end who said all deep and raspy, “Hey, Chuck, I’ve got remote-access to the bomb inside your girlfriend’s liver,” and if it weren’t for Chuck hanging up but hanging onto the phone (which came with two accessories—a used, once-ivory-now-yellowed wedding planner, and a futuristic watch), if it weren’t for him going, “Huh, what if?” and wandering over to his girlfriend’s place since they don’t live together even though they’ve been dating for over a decade, if it weren’t for him arriving, her asking, “What’s the matter?” and him going, “Um, never mind—that’s preposterous,” and if it weren’t for the unknown phone ringing with an unknown number and Chuck picking up to confront the unknown caller only for him to say, “Listen carefully,” and if it weren’t for Chuck listening carefully and hearing a beep inside his girlfriend, her going, “What’s that?”, him passing it off by saying, “You farted,” and leaving abruptly, if it weren’t for him putting the phone to his ear and listening to the madman’s plan which consisted of, “Having coaxed some poor schmuck into committing a crime,” Chuck would surely just let Bill pass violently into the night. The guy has, in fact, almost lived a century. He has probably done everything imaginable except lived a full century.

But for all intents and purposes, Bill is yet another victim in this villain’s twisted game.

With the wire hopped up on the curb, dancing from slab to slab, Chuck’s able to yank Bill’s arms from the water. Then he French-kisses Bill again, blowing to no avail. Then he burps out globs of bacon and meat and cheese all glued together by grease. It oozes down Bill’s neck, making it appear as though he’s wearing a vomit turtleneck.

Hell no, Chuck thinks to some more French-kissing. This time he pounds each bush of fuzz on Bill’s chest like it’s an arcade fighting game. After a few rounds of this horseshit, Bill shoots upright, gasps, and yells, “Whaaaaaat?”

Chuck hasn’t even come close to sniffing real action, yet he finds himself completely spent. Upon reflection, he comes to the conclusion that saving one measly life is definitely light-years harder than taking out a drove of bad guys.

And like that, Bill’s on the move again. The old man swivels and has the nerve to get back to crawling on his belly. He swipes with his brittle tongue in an attempt to complete the crime.

You son-of-a-bitch, Chuck thinks as he latches onto Bill’s left pant leg, pulls, splits the thing from seam to seam, pulls some more, tears the khakis completely off, then latches onto Bill’s grey tighty whities and pulls, revealing Bill’s crater-filled moon, but still pulling until they are again face to face. Before Bill can whine about being let go, Chuck pulverizes him in the face with a fed-up haymaker. If the old man still had any teeth left, they would’ve been knocked a block over yonder.

By the time a squad car finally shows up, Chuck has regained most of the feeling in his body. He’s able to stand and hold a corded radio which stretches from the inside of the car to Chuck’s outreached hand and say to Anderson, “Shit, my bad,” after of course Anderson says to him, “Goddamn it, Chuck, are you even kidding me right now? You mean that for the first time in forever, you’ve finally listened to one of my orders? You saved a man from certain death not once but twice? Chuck, goddamn it right to Hell, Bill is a serial child molester who’s been on the loose for over twenty years! If there’s one goddamn person in the entire world you should’ve killed, it’s him! Goddamn you, Chuck! Goddamn you straight up and down!”

Chuck drops the radio and plucks the ringing cell out of his pocket to answer accordingly: “You’re dead.”

“Of course, of course, but not in chapter one, Chucky. Don’t be silly.”

“Don’t call me Chucky.”

“Don’t look down.”

Chuck looks down, there’s nothing there.

“Made you look.”

“Bastard.”

“You know my fiancée used to do that to me all the time. She’d tell me I had a stain on my shirt, and when I’d look down, she’d flick me in the nose with her finger. She got me good every single time.”

“Dumbass.”

“That’s not nice, Chuck. I told you my fiancée was killed by a man in uniform such as yourself.”

“I wear tee-shirts, boots and jeans, Asshole.”

“Stop striving for cleverness.”

“It comes naturally.”

“Good, because I’m going to put that to the test in the next chapter.”

Another car on the other side of the street which was struck preciously three minutes ago by the downed, snapping power line, has since caught fire. It has since turned into another inferno.

This car has great timing. It has always been reliable for its owner. It is a foreign car. They’re built well.

“Welcome,” the killer says, “to the greatest action story ever told.”

Click.

Dial tone.

The foreign car explodes.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2: Grace