by Adam Clark
zombie ninjas
Andrew Nolan opened one eye slowly, the pain racking through his body was excruciating, and eventually he managed to open the other one as well. It didn't do him much good though; the view of the clean white tiled cleaning gave him just as much insight into where he was as it gave him with his eyes closed.
Through the fog in his head he could hear voices around him. He tried turning his head but that wasn't going to happen. He saw a woman's face look down on him, and then he faded back into the darkness.
He properly awoke sometime later to the sound of steady beeping, finding he could move his neck, he rolled his head around to see that he was hooked up to a heart rate monitor. On the other side he could see sunlight streaming in through the open window along with a cool breeze that flowed gently over him.
A white clothed doctor, with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, walked in absorbed in his clipboard, surprise shown on his face when he noticed Andrew looking up at him.
“Oh hello, I didn't expect you to have woken up so soon, you had quite the incident” he said in a gentle tone, “The chainsaw managed to cut off both your hands, even though you got hit in the chest. That’s quite a feat! But as with every cloud, there is always silver lining. You now have fucking chainsaw arms dude! How awesome is that!”
Looking down it appeared that he did have chainsaw arms, and as cool as they were, he thought longing to the last time he hugged someone, that feeling would never appear again. But then he thought about chainsaws, properly, and any girly emotions flushed out of his mind in a diesel driven furore of awesome chainsaw glory.
“Wow, thanks man.” He said breathlessly. He found it easier to move, and looked down at his chest, there wasn’t a single mark to show for the whole ordeal. “What happened? Shouldn’t I have scars or something?”
“Well that’s the odd thing, your vital signs are normal, and you appear to have healed up perfectly in about 24 hours. A colleague of mine reckons that the radiation from the chainsaw altered your genetic code. You seem to have an accelerated healing system now.”
“I think I read something like that before.” He moved his arms under the blanket, and they felt reasonable, heavier than before, but not aching or causing much pain. He pulled them out and stared in disbelief. At the end of each arm, where his hands should have been, were two chainsaws, each about a two foot long. He stared at them for a while, slowly moving them about, feeling the odd numb sensation they provided.
“It’s going to take you a while to get used to them, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Eating and drinking might be hard though.”
The invigorating adrenaline of how awesome the situation was made him recover almost instantly. Gingerly he sat up in the bed, swiveled his legs over the side and stood up. He had never felt better in his life. He chainsaw high-fived the doctor (mangling the poor man’s arm in the process) and left the hospital room.
“Woah, you got better quickly!” the doctor shouted after him, nursing his hand. “Oh yeah, we sold your shop and all your possessions to pay for those chainsaws by the way! Sorry”,
“Oh” replied Andrew. But he wasn't too bothered, with chainsaw arms, the world was his oyster. A flaming, golden Oyster.
Andrew Nolan had changed his name by deed poll to Chainsaw-boy. It was a month after the incident and he was living out of a cardboard box behind a seven-eleven in the downtown area of the city. Without hands it was quite difficult to get a job, and the only employable talent he had now was an uncanny ability to make ice sculptures. This was completely useless in a city where the average temperature is 25 degrees.
He managed to get by on the pity of strangers, and from royalties he received from taking part in a documentary about freaks. Feeling less awesome about chainsaw arms than he once did, he curled up inside a fairly worn box, which once housed a reasonably sized plasma TV, and had his afternoon nap.
Meanwhile, across town, Grigor and intern Dave were taking the super awesome fun slip and slide down to the basement parking lot of the Viking Bank Financiers Bureau. Today was the day they were to embark on their sail around the world, to the distant and magical lands of New Zealand, to oversee building work on the new eastern division headquarters.
They flew down from the 150th floor screaming all the way before shooting out of the tube into the basement car park. As they climbed the ladder out of the ball pit that comprised the soft landing of the two hundred mile an hour slip and slide, Grigor looked menacingly at the valet. The gangly teenager noticed this sign immediately and rushed off to acquire Grigor's vehicle.
Minutes later he returned in the armoured, personalised tank that was Grigor's quick journey vehicle. As with everything in Grigor's life, the tank was awesome, it had the world's biggest spoiler, spinners on gear wheels that ran the vehicle’s gold plated tracks, it had nuclear missile launchers mounted on top with a fully working gun turret attached, and, it was constantly on fire. Hopping into the tank he and intern Dave did the first thing any man should do when entering any car, put on some fucking rock music.
With Kiss blaring out at a hundred and fifty decibels (which was hard to hear over the top of Grigor's awful singing) they blazed through the city at over a thousand miles an hour, smashing everything out of their way without prejudice; old people, young people, sports cars, trucks, he simply didn't care. As they passed a waiting police car, officer Bill Stevens turned to his co-officer.
“Did you see that Stevens!” he exclaimed.
“Yeah, I did.” Officer Stevens Bill replied, “There goes a real man, we could do with some more like him on the force”.
“Never a truer word spoken mate” Bill Stevens replied, and with that they went back to playing Monopoly, flaming Monopoly.
Grigor finished off the last of his bottle of rum and threw the finished bottle out of the top-hatch of the moving vehicle. “Why is the rum always gone? He thought to himself, while perusing this thought Intern Dave kept rolling the window down, then up, then he started fiddling with the equalisation of the CD player, then he put his feet on the dashboard. The only thing bothering him more than a lack of booze now, was Intern Dave, Grigor thought he was a complete dick”
“What the fuck dude? You totally just said that, in like, third person, what’s wrong with you? You weren't thinking any of that! Also I'm not a dick, I've been working for you for five years! I’m not even an intern, I’m a manager, and only one promotion below your ass!” Intern Dave replied angrily.
“Shut the fuck up” Grigor told him, “we're making a detour, I need more crunk juice”
“Haven't you had enough already? I mean you're driving for god sake!”
“The day I take advice from you is the day I wake up dead” Grigor smashed the tank into the front window of the nearest liquor store and put it into neutral. “Here, watch the car” he growled as he clambered out of the top hatch.
While Grigor was at the counter being served by a very shaken up and flaming shopkeeper, he noticed Intern Dave walking away down the main street. He sprinted over to him and grabbed him by the arm.
“What are you doing? Get in the car!” Grigor expectorated into his face.
“Seriously, Fuck you, I'm doing what I should've done years ago, joining the damn circus! I don't need this kind of crap” and with that Circus Dave walked off into the glimmering sunset, which was odd, because it was still only ten in the morning. But the universe is ruled by karma, and every whiney quitter bitch needs one moment of getting their point across with the aid of visual stunnery at some point in their sorry life.
This left Grigor with a moral dilemma, on the one hand he hated to waste anything especially the extra space on his ship he had for Circus Dave. But you should never shoot down another man's dreams, especially if those dreams involve tight rope walking above flaming Lions.
Grigor looked around for a suitable replacement for Circus Dave, but everyone in their right mind had fled from the horrible warpath of destru
ction that had besotted their fair city. Looking around he spotted movement over by a large flaming pile of rubble.
A very deranged tramp staggered out from underneath the rubble, looking shocked. What really caught Grigor's eyes about this particular individual however were the chainsaws he had for arms, those were definitely cool. He would make a good replacement.
“You!” he shouted at Chainsaw-boy “Get in the car!” And thus began the wondrous partnership of Chainsaw-boy and Grigor the Destructionator!
A solid hope