Untitled - Plots With Guns

 1. I FUCKING HATE WINTER
God takes shits. But his aren’t warm or brown. They’re cold and white. And right now I’m lying in a
massive pile of the stuff bleeding from a gash on the top of my head and staring up at a midget tweaker holding a
drum-fed shotgun in my face.
Only in fucking Ohio.
The midget screams at me to get the fuck up. Slow. I do as the little prick says. I mean, what choice do I
really have? I’m staring down the barrel of a pump gun. I would lay there and make a fucking snow angel if he told
me to.
When I get to my feet I look down at the midget holding the gauge on me. He looks like a demented
Christmas elf standing there in the snow. The thought makes me laugh.
“You see sumthin funny?” the midget asks.
“Everyday when I look in the mirror,” I say.
I find self-deprecating humor to be a good defense mechanism against aggression. It disarms people.
A shotgun blast obliterates my right foot.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccckkkkk!!!”
I guess not.
You might be wondering how in the hell I ended up in this situation. I can tell you the explanation only gets
more absurd. It all starts with a legend.
2. THE LEGEND OF MUNCHKINLAND
Munchkinland is a legend that’s been around for decades in Southern Ohio. The story has it that there is a
village of retired circus midgets who live on the rural outskirts of greater Cincinnati. It is said that the midgets live
in tiny sized houses and that if you approach their homes, the midgets will throw rocks at your car until you leave.
People also say that you can hear circus music when you get near the houses.
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Fall 2011
This was dismissed as bullshit in the collective consciousness of the local community of course. An
embellishment at best. You see, there was an actual village of tiny houses located on a thirty acre farm behind
Rumpke dump. Percy and Anna Ritter owned said farm. Mr. Ritter built their home halfway up a steep hill of stone
on the property. He also built a surreal collection of little buildings that the balcony of the home overlooked.
He dubbed this miniature frontier village the Handlebar Ranch. The tiny town had small log cabin homes,
dance floors indoors and out, picnic tables, pavilions, and hand painted totem poles. The whole thing done up in a
funky Wild West motif.
Percy was one eccentric dude.
According to Mrs. Ritter, Percy came home one day with some cast-iron school bells that he had bought
someplace. He put them up below the house, at the edge of the road.
Then everything started.
Kids began to come in the middle of the night and ring the bells. The Ritters would come out on the balcony
and yell at the little shits and tell them to scram. People have speculated that Anna and Percy must’ve looked kind
of small to the kids down on the road looking up at that balcony (Anna being only five-three, Percy five-nine).
Just like that a legend was born.
For the next couple of decades you had drunk teenagers showing up on the property in the middle of the
night looking for munchkins and taking shits down the chimneys of the little houses. Mr. Ritter would usually
come out and chase them off with his shotgun. That all stopped for good though when the Handlebar ranch was
torn down in ’07.
Rumpke purchased Mrs. Ritter’s land after she kicked the bucket earlier that year (Mr. Ritter died in 1990).
The company paid an estimated six million dollars for it. Can you believe that shit? Six fucking mil! The
Handlebar Ranch is now a landfill, but that’s not the end of the story.
I’m just getting fucking started.
3. THE GREATEST TRICK THE DEVIL EVER PULLED . . .
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Fall 2011
. . . was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Yes that’s a line from The Usual Suspects (a great fucking
movie, by the way). It also sums up exactly what happened.
You see, Munchkinland was the real deal.
There really was a community of retired circus midgets living at the Handlebar Ranch. These midget Keyser
Sozes pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes.
With a little help from the Ritters of course.
The clan of midget circus performers was tired of being gawked at by people like some kind of . . . well . . .
like some kind of circus sideshow. They just wanted to live normal lives away from the rest of the world. Being the
good-natured people that they were, the Ritters sympathized with their plight. Mr. Ritter built the tiny village for
the midgets.
The midgets managed to live in obscurity for years on the Handlebar Ranch. After word got around that
there was a village of circus midgets somewhere they became more withdrawn. Coming out only in the day during
school hours, when teenagers wouldn’t come around, and staying in at night. Shortly after Mr. Ritter died they
became even more reclusive, but not because they felt their way of life was being threatened. Now they feared
exposure for an entirely different reason.
Exposure is the last thing you want when you're cooking methamphetamine.
The Handlebar Ranch was the perfect setup. It was secluded, the dump next door masked any noxious fumes
put off during a cook, and most people didn’t even believe they fucking existed. All they had to worry about was
an occasional group of dumb-fuck high schoolers and Mrs. Ritter finding out. Anna was old, but she still had her
wits about her.
The operation ran smoothly up until the day Anna checked out. Then the midgets knew it was just a matter
of time before Munchkinland was no more. But these midgets made good meth.
Really good.
And the guys they were working for knew this.
4. THE MONGOLS
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Fall 2011
Ninety-nine percent of motorcyclists are law-abiding citizens.
The last one percent are outlaws.
The Bandidos, The Breed, Brother Speed, Comanchero, Devil’s Disciples, Diablos, The Finks, Free
Souls, Grim Reapers, Gypsy Joker, Hells Angels, Highwaymen, Iron Horsemen,
Mongols, Outlaws, Pagans, Rebels, Sons of Silence, Vagos, and the Warlocks.
These are the “one percenters.”
Of these gangs the Mongols are one of the most violent. The Mongol Brotherhood originated out west, a
biker gang and crime syndicate rolled into one. Years back they took control of the meth market in the Southern
Ohio region in a bloody war with the Hell’s Angels.
The Mongols are savage, barbaric motherfuckers.
They’re also the guys that buy the Munchkinland meth at wholesale and sell it on the streets for mucho
bucks.
As soon as they heard about the Handlebar Ranch being bought they took action. There was no way they
were going to let their cash cow of meth making, ex-circus midgets go homeless.
No home equals no cooking.
No cooking equals no meth.
No meth equals no cash.
All that shit equals NO-FUCKING-WAY-THAT’S-GOING-TO-HAPPEN.
The Mongols relocated them to a new home. One that would offer them the anonymity they craved and
needed to bake crystal.
5. MUNCKIN MARKET
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Fall 2011
Which brings me full circle back to where I’m at now, standing in the snow looking down at what’s left of
my right foot. I scream, "Fuck" a few more times before I feel myself start to go light-headed. Shock and blood
loss. Then I fall forward like a chopped tree. My face rushes toward the snow, a flash of white, then total BLACK.
I’m awakened by a slap. My eyes slam open, and everything around me looks all blurred out like the dicks in
Japanese porn. When things sharpen and come back into focus I immediately wish they hadn’t. Standing in front of
me is the ugliest group of tweaked-out trolls I’ve ever fucking seen.
The midgets smile at me, their teeth Pittsburgh Steeler black and yellow inside their giant water heads. There
are ten of them in all. Gas masks perch on the tops of their heads, and I wish they would pull them down so I
wouldn’t have to look at their faces anymore.
By instinct I jerk away from these repulsive Rumpelstiltskins and notice that each of my limbs are bound by
rope to the arms and legs of a wooded chair. I see I’m inside an abandoned super market. There are still aisles of
dusty shelves that food used to sit on. Tables are set up in different areas of the store. Giant flasks boil over on top
of butane burners on each table. Translucent tubes snake in and around vials and other pieces of chemistry
paraphernalia on each.
This is the new Munchkinland.
A derelict Kroger’s out in the sticks.
A goddamn munchkin market.
A rumbling comes from the far end of the building where there is no light. The sound is deafening inside the
vacant grocery store. I watch as two men on choppers roared from out the shadows.
6. STORE-WIDE BLOW OUT
The midgets part in front of me as the two Mongol bikers roar up on Harley Davidsons, a pair of burly
Mexicans with bald heads and ZZ Top beards. Their Harley’s are custom, not that out-of-the-crate bullshit you see
forty-something tools going through a mid-life crisis rolling around on. The bikers turn off their bikes and straddle
them, glaring at me with obsidian eyes.
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Fall 2011
The Mongol to my right has a .357 Magnum Colt Python tucked in the band of his jeans. I watch him reach
into the front pocket of his leather Mongol Motorcycle Club coat and pull out a baggie of crank. He also pulls out a
ghetto light bulb, a regular household bulb that’s been stripped of its electrodes, hollowed out and turned into a
pipe to smoke meth.
The biker stuffs a crystal into the end of the light bulb, and the Mongol to my left tosses him a lighter. He
puts the glass dick to his lips and burns the other end with the lighter. After he hits it, he passes it to the other biker,
who takes a puff as well. The two of them sit there on their choppers smoking meth, exhaling crank smoke out
their nostrils looking like Mestizo dragons on American iron.
The one to my right tosses the bulb after one last toke, shattering it on the dirty floor. He kicks the kickstand
down on his cycle and dismounts. The second biker follows suit. They walk over and stand right in front of me,
looming down at me with large, black tweaked-out eyes.
“I’m Tuco,” the one on my right says.
He points to the biker to my left.
“This is my homey, Raoul.”
“Don’t you think your entrance was a little dramatic?” I say.
“What?” Tuco says.
“The Harleys and the whole crank smoking bit. Don’t you think it was somewhat over the top?”
Tuco grins.
“You’re a funny guy.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’m funny, but I’ve been told I’m funny looking…”
There’s my self-deprecating humor again.
Tuco pulls the Python from his waist and clubs me over the head with it.
Okay, the self-deprecating shit does not work. Apparently, whenever I start to bash myself, people feel the
need to join in.
“Let’s cut the shit, funny man. What the fuck you doing nosing around here?”
“My car broke down on the side of the road, and my cell phone died so I was walking to find help.”
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Fall 2011
“He was carrying these.”
The little prick that blew off my foot waddles over and hands Tuco my binoculars and my fully charged cell
phone.
Note to self: kill that little fuck the first chance you get.
“Why are you lying, funny guy?” Tuco says.
He jams the Python against my temple and cocks back the hammer.
“Let me explain. I’m… I’m a reporter! I’ve been researching the whole Munchkinland legend for a story I’m
doing. I swear!”
“Kill his ass,” Raoul says.
“Not yet. We’re going to have a little fun first,” Tuco says.
He takes the gun away from my temple, turns to one of the midgets.
“Go get a car battery and some jumper cables.”
I don’t like the sound of that.
As the midget walks off, Tuco turns back to me.
“You ever had a car battery hooked to your nuts?”
“No. I leave kinky stuff like that to the porn pros. Last time I tried handstand anal, your Mom ended up in a
neck brace.”
Raoul punches me in the stomach so hard I feel as if all the air has been vacuumed out of my body. I start
wheezing and gasping for air. I hack and cough like something is stuck in my throat. Long, stringy ropes of spit
dangle from my mouth.
Tuco and Raoul laugh.
I really want to kill them.
I finally manage to start breathing normally again after what feels like an hour, but in reality is probably less
than a minute. I start to calm back down.
Then I see the midget come back pushing a cart with a pair of Durablast batteries and some heavy-duty
jumper cables on top. The bikers smile at me and turn to the testicular torture toys on the cart.
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Fall 2011
There’s no way I’m going to let them hook that shit to my nuts.
I decide to make my move.
I slide my right leg out of the rope, which is very easy, by the way, when most of your foot’s blown off.
Standing, I put all my weight on my mangled nub. It hurts like hell. I almost fall over, but I manage to shift my
momentum and slam my body straight back.
The wooden chair breaks apart on impact against the floor. I reach down the back of my pants as I shake free
of the ropes. I pull the shiv I had stashed in the crack of my ass.
People never talk about the useful things one picks up in prison.
I hop up on to my one good foot, just as Tuco and Raoul whirl around from the cart. I leap towards Tuco
with my shiv out. Tuco goes for his gun, but I slam into him, sending us both to the ground. As we roll across the
floor I stick the shiv in his lower back, right into his spine, and he screams out.
Raoul races over to pull me off, but before he can lay a hand on me, I spin around and blast him in the chest
three times with Tuco’s .357.
I pull myself up onto my one good foot again, with just enough time to dive into one of the empty shopping
aisles, avoiding a shotgun blast from the little prick that shot my right foot to shit. I roll onto my back as the
shotgun-toting midget turns down the aisle. I sit straight up and fire two shots right into the midget’s giant melon.
He’s a corpse before he hits the floor.
Cleanup on aisle 12.
A second later. I’m up and hopping past the dead midget and shoot him again for the fuck of it. “Prick.”
I tuck the Python in my waistband, reach down and take the drum-fed shotgun out the midget’s tiny fat
hands. I trombone the slide as I hop out of the aisle. Midgets start scrambling everywhere. I unload on the little
bastards. The midgets literally explode when the street sweeper hits them.
When the smoke clears it’s a horror scene.
Child sized limbs everywhere. Floor painted in blood.
Imagine the tornado Dorothy rode from Kansas spun through Oz, tore everything to shit and left pieces of
dead Lollipop men scattered all over the Yellow Brick Road.
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Fall 2011
You’d be close.
I toss the shotgun and pull the .357 from my pants.
I pogo on my one leg over to Tuco, who’s laying on his side trying in vain to pull the shiv from his spine.
When I reach him, he stares up at me with fear in his eyes.
“Who are you?” Tuco says.
I pull my blood stained shirt off over my head, revealing the black-winged demon tattooed across my chest. I
watch his eyes tick down to my abdomen where the words Hell’s Angels are inked right above my navel.
“I’m Keyser Soze,” I say.
I raise the gleaming Python and fire a round into Tuco’s skull. The shot punches through his forehead and
blasts out the back of his cranium, Jackson Pollocking the floor with blood and grey matter. Tuco rolls onto his
back.
Dead-as-fuck.
I hop over to Tuco’s bike and get on. The Harley rumbles to life when I start it up. I ride over to one of the
meth lab tables, grab a kerosene tank and roll off.
I drop the tank in the doorway of the abandoned store as I ride out.
A hundred feet from the building I turn around, stop and pull out the Python. Closing one eye as I take aim, I
shoot the kerosene tank.
It explodes and sets off the whole building. A giant, orange mushroom cloud blooms across the dark sky.
One thing about meth labs, when they blow -- they fucking blow.
I’ve killed two men and ten midgets. Midgets only count as half a kill in my book. That leaves my body
count at seven in one night. But I’m just getting started.
I plan on sticking what’s left of my foot up the Mongols' ass. Deep.
I tuck the Python and ride the hog off into the night as the building burns at my back.
One lab down. Five more to go.
plotswithguns.com
Fall 2011