Jungle Style

Prologue - ’AMBUSH’

Ceaselessly stalking, eavesdropping on Santo’s conversations with other members of the Penny Journalists through the utilisation of modern hi-tech counter-terrorism and armed police spyware and gadgetry whilst banqueting on local delicacies, bunnies, squirrels and even a fox’s ribs and heart, drinking the dawns urination in the thickness of the bushes for five days, heating himself with Bolshevik brutality... Polugar Classic Rye; Mr Rivers, a glory soldier for gold bars and a pirate soaring on the three-winged bird of the dark triad, living with nothing to lose, ambushes his prey, Santo... suffocating his jugular, sadistically staring, sending his final exhale away with samurai certainty... his tantó... hijacking Santo’s position in the pecking order of Wilderness City... a jungle in which style is the only survival tool.

T-minus 3 Hours

Perusing Mikey’s telegram, resting his feet on Santo’s corpse, bathing in the lively aroma of his red wine, deoxygenated blood, extinguishing his final fag, growling like a half-man, half-hound, organising real estate on the ground, territorialising himself there, Mr Rivers assumes Santo’s post, initiating a blazing trail of blood and fire.

Beaming boldly, yet... the sun camouflages Mr Rivers’ stealthy, abstruse intrusion of foreign sovereignty.

T-minus 2 Hours 55 Mins - Telegram

Santo,

Unexplained brazen broad daylight disappearances, murders, massacres and exemplary executions are rife, sporadically sprouting like springtime sunflowers, repelling the weeds, public disturbances, loud parties, and petty theft.

Santo, it is clear that one alpha group blots the line, eroding its demarcations by dominating the betas.

For instance, four London teenage gang members trespassing in Wilderness City last week never returned.

The following morning, nailed to Wilderness police station’s entrance, their four heads... decapitated... ironic... what will Wilderness police do?... nothing lol... what about the journalists... of course, likewise... lol.

Bizarrely and interestingly, almost all victims of the enemy’s predatory proclivities are gang members.

There are some innocent civilian casualties... serendipity, I guess... wrong place, wrong time, like Phil, a member of the Penny Journalists (PJs).

You haven’t met... I’ll tell you later... tragic.

Although Mr Rivers, the scarce enigma of a man, says Phil’s still alive - months ago... no one’s seen or heard from Mr Rivers since, nor Phil, more importantly.

This callous signature pillaging Wilderness City points to one organisation, one person, the perpetrator we can’t yet find, the one I believe severed your son, Raphael.

By the way, sorry about that, Santo... five is too young. Tragic.

Santo, it is clear that Wilderness City police are cowardly and submissive. The enemy instructs the police and the ’journo-nerds’, as Mr Rivers calls them, impregnating their pockets with gold... again, Mr Rivers’ term.

The corruption is terminal cancer, Santo, plaguing and pestering Wilderness City. Downing Street, London, do nothing... feeble neck dimwits.

I have proof, and Mr Rivers has some more: photos, videos, audio recordings, transcripts, classified documents and offshore bank accounts. We will pool our evidence together.

The Penny Journalists are the wall of Constantinople now.

Santo, the PJs can exterminate the enemy if we work alongside Mr Rivers.

But it will cost us everything; the advanced, mysterious enemy is professional, powerful, and secretive.

I’m constantly followed, Santo; I fear for my safety.

I’ll arrange a clandestine meeting with you and Mr Rivers soon.

It’ll probably be our last.

Let’s act,

Mikey of the Penny Journalists (PJs).

T-minus 2 Hours 53 Mins

Measuredly opening his laptop, Mr Rivers closes Mikey’s telegram.

Machinating his next square on the chess board, working behind schedule, and seeking to abscond Santo’s public park shack before they arrive, the countdown is born.

T-minus 2 Hours 50 Mins

Riding the dragon, pugnaciously battering laptop keys to a pulp, frantically tossing words like Caesar’s salad into an orchestra of sentences which leak lyrically onto a page, chorusing the secrets I’ve gathered through prevarication, deception and cunning, I exercise my fingertips which sizzle like a hot iron rod.

My exclusive exposé into the Wilderness City standoff will popularise my name across the United Kingdom and maybe Europe.

Epic music, minus an audience... imagined... hummed... desired, jeers me on, taunting and attracting a nastier aspect of my psychology.

Cheering, "a journalist for truth", the public will observe in awe as the money-hungry journo-nerds, a faction subservient in mind and body to the enemy, squirm, flapping their wormy cretin gobs for clemency... which they will not garner.

Sinking in quicksand, the incompetent puppet police pantomimes in this cartoonishly terror-packed theatre, the caricature and epitome of a toddlers’ drug-fueled nightmare, inebriated by ignorance and cowardice, will sell tickets to the extravaganza in which they are participants.

And as director, I will entertain.

T-minus 2 Hours 45 Mins

Repulsively etched into oak wooden walls, defying science, Santo’s silhouette... and... outer skin, thinning the consistency of my saliva and grasp on... reality.

Animating in his direction, a stratagem to distract the creepy worry latching onto my chest, annunciating my beliefs, gesturing as though Santo’s still here... in a sense, he is, so I begin... "Spanish tourists can’t wait to visit England. Forget about the London Eye and Big Ben; people want to grate their teeth, dodge exploding guts, evade bullets, slip and slide, shapeshift, dip and dive, diverting swinging blades and consuming (human) intestines for English brekky, a rollercoaster Thorpe Park can’t trump.

Come on up to Wilderness City.

You or your loved one are guaranteed to witness a primitive gang-style execution of rival gang members.

If you’re lucky enough to be too close to the action, it’ll blow your head off... don’t worry; fortunately, I mean that literally.

Digging into the Cheshire oak cupboard like a limbless, blind, burnt-orange rabbit... nature’s mistake... clinking glasses into an arranged marriage, maundering hastily to the glass table two and a half alcoholic, capacious strides ahead, stumbling, high on zombiac zeal, adrenaline and the strikingly fabulous dose of rotting human flesh, which I love, placing two cognac glasses (I abhor cognac) on the pauper’s table... my laptop beams, reminding me of the task at hand.

Shutting it with light brute force, hoisting premium vodka in the air, swishing the bottle, hypnotised by the pitchy ’grr’ of the domestic vodka, a jewel to the wasteland economy dotting the spider web-infested desktop, to dine with my old pal, Santo, assiduously positioning to pour an equal measure into both glasses, I... derail... "in life, you were a pauper, Santo... Glenn’s vodka".

Considerate, stimulating my tactical crossbody bag, my classic rye returns... naturally.

"Cheers to life and death"... taking a shot of vodka which blurts, whining with Formula One racetrack intensity and intrigue, destroying rubber, like Schumacher in his heyday.

Pulverises my oesophagus remorselessly, the vodka grins suavely.

T-minus 2 Hours 30 Mins

Flirting with death over the cliff of life, a mountain higher than Everest, screeching louder than authentic fireworks, quaking society’s fabric and gutting it with the sword of truth in a ground-breaking, agathokakological manner, my story flosses its humungous, melon-like cleavage, gyrating them with blinding vivacity.

Performing as my fireplace, pasting my laptop, sharpening the pen mightier than the sword, the Bolshevik brutality embraces my liver, chaining its neck, slapping me with juvenile drowsiness.

The jagged spikes beyond the cliff remind me whose crosshairs I’m infesting like hair lice.

I’m familiar with the enemy Mikey spoke of, though his message wasn’t for me, and I believe I know who the leader is.

If it’s who I suspect... he knows where my wife, Steph, unexplainably disappeared for twenty-three months and fifteen, nearly sixteen days, drinks the bitter wine of tergiversation.

T-minus 2 Hours 25 Mins

Internally contesting, fighting to annunciate each thought, sparring fastidiously, nailing each word with my hammer, the weight of Mikey’s telegram resounds in my head, pinging as perspiration prospers on my forehead.

Contradicting my mental Olympianism, an unexpected soporific spell, charging like a bull, encloses... "Santo, you’ve spiked me!"... "How?!"... shooting for the takedown, passing guard, gaining half mount, then full... neck exposed... rear naked choke... tapping, loss.

But injected vim resuscitates me.

T-minus 2 Hours 07 Mins

Toxifying my taste buds with another vodka shot, grimacing, wrestling with the vodka’s warrior spirit... victory.

Re-reading my ornate, eloquent ejaculatory vomit, a self-deceiving, plastic ruse, swathing my ball of ideas against the half-up tennis table of the open air, cerebrating, I decide, halting, to enter the hiatus train.

T-minus 1 Hour 43 Mins

Disembarking, another shot down with many more to go, switching platforms from assured safety and tipsy, which to a consummate professional such as moi, is sobriety, to euphoria and mullered ecstasy, scorching my throat with the French fire of Grey Goose, scourging my doctor’s advice, I marvel, witnessing the renaissance of the dragon.

T-minus 1 Hour 30 Mins

Ascending onto the scion of cow skin and earthy honey, bum sweat, my back-stabbing, spineless obsidian-black throne burrowed like Blackbeard’s treasure in a public park shack, I mount my opponent, linguistic jiu-jitsu, terrorising my keyboard.

I take another shot with less grimace and more enjoyment, less scorch and more soothing.

Mikey’s telegram reverberates hoarsely, mashing into the tablets of my memory.

T-minus 1 Hour 20 Mins

Buzzed.

My eyeballs horseplay tag with each other, futilely attempting to re-align. My Herculean legs, scrawny in my imagination, are on annual leave.

Smiling like a heroin goblin mixed breed, deciding to quit heroin for one day (his birthday) to joyride a new vehicle, crack, I spin jovially on the sceptre of my power, forming my own tornado.

But conscious of the nuggets divulged in my truth quest... dynamite, TnT in words, attempting to reign the dragon, my equilibrium destabilises.

T-minus 1 Hour 04 Mins

Dizzy.

Brandishing my santoku knife, a gift from Phil, also the accursed weapon of his perishing, advertising his right index finger on the tip like a chilli-maple syrup cocktail sausage, searching for an audience to propel me, a vicious void encapsulated by a venomous custard-yellow viper digests my soul.

Sucking and strangling my essence, I plead, lashing my gaunt cheeks with crocodile tears... reptiles recognise family; the viper vanishes, slithering away, and its venom is vanquished... for now.

T-minus 40 Mins

A beguiling shadow manifests, tasering the testicular fortitude of my courageous chuckle and distracting my rhythmic imitation of a paintbrush’s light caress against the skin of a snare drum.

Rattling, skipping two beats, chiming like a bell as though commanded, my heart thuds with the energy of a sonic boom.

Doused in the beguiling shadow, a legendarily defined face appears like lightning and stills time silently.

Statuesque for two ticks, it evaporates.

Robbed of excitement, gifted trepidation on a tray of rats, worms and fungi, feeling the vodka’s strength tugging triumphantly, I bundle on the wooden ground, spent.

Roaring with pristine intensity, drenched in pleasurable poison, and croaking, my inanimate body exerts itself, sweating, aching and shivering in the springtime heat.

People say the man appears suddenly and then evaporates.

T-minus 20 Mins

Rendezvousing in reality, after sailing the seven seas, scaling the stratosphere, submerging in the Arctic, thriving in the Sahara, and dining with a symmetrical, Michelangelo-sculpted resplendent model atop the moon, served a twelve-course tasting menu by oscillating stars, I successfully smash my laptop off the ground... ire at the death of Phil, an erroneous stroke of my santoku, self-hatred at Santo’s current circumstances or lack thereof... perhaps shame at how I acquired money last week, audacious avarice, and other... unspeakable things... you can’t tell Mikey... anguish that my wife, Steph, is gone.

At least she’s relishing the vinification of bitter wine mingled with worms, red-black berries, and lamenting blood.

T-minus 14 Mins

On my hands and knees... bundled, chained and intensely inebriated, the furious dragon declining my reigns stages a coup d’état. And yet inexplicably, compelled by ritual or hypnosis, another twenty-five-millimetre zest of petrol streamlines through my body.

Scrabbling to my feet, wobbling, caught by my (now mine) Italian leather chair, I embrace the notion of Mikey’s telegram once more.

Obambulating through the forest of imagination, desiring a parachute to invade the eagle’s territory, stalking and shocking them, outstretching for the grasp of my trustworthy Russian friend of twenty, the pungent perfume of vengeance, starker than blue cheese whizzes, popping with grenade-like might.

Subtly peacocking for the audience I desperately desire, venturing towards my friend, posing then stalking like a lion in the savannah, salivating at the perception of the odour... I pounce, claws first, chipping the packaging of nic-sticks.

T-minus 10 Mins

Prancing with the musical patterns of piano music smooching the atmosphere, gulping another shot, gritting my teeth with tremendous pressure, humming, swaying from side to side... another shot, burning another finger, the left index this time, watching my dinner roast, acquiescing to further intellectual musings, my throne takes centre stage.

Again.

T-minus 03 Mins

Nic-stick number one.

Grabbing my Sobranie Black cigarette, liberating it, slicing it past my nostrils with knife-edge precision, as the tobacco fumes swirl acrobatically... lighting it, my nicotine parachute provides me vantage above the forest of imagination.

No longer begging and pleading like a bastard of masculinity, daring the dragon with my Russian samurai nicotine sword, I take another shot.

Uppity, collapsing with flavour and flair onto my chariot of charismatic mutterings, mental song and dance concluding, concept masturbation climaxing, Mikey’s telegram submissive, I’m ready to write... on paper.

Unleashing my pen... gradually... not that one (the santoku), a homemade mini-machete, stabbing it through the head of the amoral congregation of white paper... dipped in a bowl of pigeon blood, declaring and pronouncing my domination and authority, winding my blood-ink ballpoint pen (mini-machete) from Santo’s divorced left hand, perching to my two o’clock... on the table... the architecture ensues; I’m coming for the enemy.