by T. C. Clover
“Turn off the cameras,” Stoney said to the crew as he stepped closer to the pair of women in the kitchen. “I need to talk to them in private,” he added while scratching his stomach through a plain white tank top.
“What’s up, Stoney?” Jazzy mused with a twisted smile, watching the police officer as he stumbled across the tiles in his boxer shorts. “Did you skip a few steps this morning?” She inquired after seeing that the man’s hair was messy and his eyes were half-open.
“Litz, I had some officers show up yesterday from a precinct in Manhattan,” he relayed with a sober gaze. “They were asking questions about the Ned Jones abduction.”
“Do you know what he did to me, Stoney?” The comedian prodded with a pensive demeanor. “He’s lucky that Litz and CKB didn’t dump him into the ocean.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” the Japanese officer responded and held out his right hand with the palm facing forward. “Look, I empathize with you as a victim, and I’ll do what I can, but they’ll catch up to you eventually. I’ll try to stall them if they come back.”
“Thank you, Stoney!” Jazzy exclaimed with a smile of jubilation, and gave her co-star a tender embrace.
Mud Rituals – Newark, New Jersey
The atmosphere at Mud Rituals was filled with pulse-pounding excitement as a team of men dressed in traditional Mayan loincloths wore face paint and banged on war drums. There was a mud pit at the center of the amphitheater, and it was surrounded by a dining area that stretched up over eighty feet to rounded black walls of concrete. The mud pit was enclosed in Plexiglas like a hockey arena and featured lavish decorations such as gargoyles and Tiki torches. Fires burned throughout the establishment within concave pits of rock, and clusters of yellow and orange lights emphasized this effect.
There were four sections of the dining area, each using a color to represent one of the combatants for the evening. The four divisions of the arena were: red, blue, black, and orange. During the event, members of the audience could use their phones to control the water cannons and mud pipes in their quadrant of the arena. Each audience member would cast a vote on their digital device during a live countdown. A majority vote would cause staff members to shoot a chosen enemy combatant with their water cannon, or to cover a colored section of the platform in slick mud. When a champion won the event, the audience members seated in that combatant’s section would be awarded a free meal.
Litz wore a black ninja outfit and stood atop the black quadrant of the platform. She looked up at the foreboding mud pipes that stretched above all four sections of the combat area. Each mud pipe was retrofitted with a black skull that displayed an open mouth as if in mid-scream. When mud flowed from their mouths, each skull’s eyes would light up blue and white like oxyacetylene torches. These pipes were mounted over the stage at odd angles and had varying ranges of mud flows. The curious woman raised her head to see four water cannons, each five feet in length, mounted on the ceiling at the center of the arena. One water cannon was designated to each section of the platform and painted with the same color as its combatant. The water cannons could shine green lasers, allowing employees to target combatants with pinpoint accuracy. However, staff members were only permitted to target combatants when the crowd voted to douse them with water. The arena had four screens to display points, and there were countdown clocks that showed the audience when they could release a mud flow or fire their water cannon.
“Welcome to Mud Rituals, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer began when a spotlight shone down on the center of the stage, and a plume of white smoke emerged. “I am your host, Thor, the god of thunder, and we have a special show for you tonight. All of our combatants are stars of the hit television series Shots Fired in the Melting Pot.” When the smoke cleared, a muscular man with blonde hair was seen posing at center stage in a Norse demigod outfit. “In the black corner, we have everyone’s favorite hot plumber, Litz Rack, and she will be performing as the ninja.” The host spoke into the top of a large plastic hammer that was equipped with a microphone and gestured toward Litz after the introduction. “In the orange corner, we have our sexy punk rocker, and one of New York’s finest, Stoney Akuda.”
Litz and Jazzy smiled when Stoney raised his hands to gain applause from the audience. He was dressed in a wild black leather outfit, sporting a pink Mohawk hairdo, and his face was adorned with gothic black and white makeup.
“In the red corner, Mud Rituals salutes our sexiest vampire of the year and a comedian that will make your heart bleed, Jazzy Auburn Michelle.” The announcer played to the desires of the audience and bowed slightly toward Jazzy with his hands raised toward the ceiling.
Jazzy shifted her hips in a bold bad girl pose and let the crowd take in her athletic body beneath a bright red vinyl suit. Her face was brushed with the finest pale colors of death, and she blew a kiss to the audience from her bright red lips before showing off some impressive fangs.
“And, last but not least, we have a rapper from the Twentieth Century, who never died.” Thor beamed with his left hand held high to build excitement in the crowd. “In the blue corner let’s welcome Tupac Shakur, as embodied by the stunning Fassim Johnson.” He broadcast from his powerful throat until the crowd roared with anticipation. “Now, before we begin, I want to give a quick recap of the rules. Hitting or grabbing the face is not allowed. You have only one objective, which is to knock your opponents off of the platform into the mud pits. When there is only one challenger left on the platform, they will be declared a winner. If you get knocked into the mud pits, you can climb back up, but only if there are at least two challengers remaining on the platform. Please wait for a count of ten, and when you hear the war drums pounding at full speed; it’s time to stop being friends. Are we ready to do this?” The performer asked with both arms outstretched toward the crowd, resulting in a unified cry of ‘yes.’ “Okay, everyone start clapping with the beat of the drums. It’s time to begin Mud Rituals!” He finished with a bow and hearty smile, and then the stagehands lowered him until he disappeared into the center of the platform.
Jazzy felt her body tense as a series of drum beats echoed through the arena from the Mayan performers that sat just outside the Plexiglas barrier. She decided that the vampire teeth could injure her during a fall and elected to zip them up in the outfit between her breasts. Her heart began to pound when the drum beats commenced like the intro music for a giant marching to his or her death. The comedian glanced around the platform and saw square holes where competitors could fall through into the mud. She tried to memorize their positions but realized that they were opening and closing at random intervals.
The other combatants were poised to attack, and before the comedian could form another thought, the drums surged to life in a barrage of tribal thunder. Jazzy sprinted toward Stoney, who stood in the orange quadrant to her left. The punk rocker turned to face her, but he also saw Litz Rack running up to engage him in her ninja outfit from the opposite direction. Stoney looked across to the far end of the arena and watched Fassim running in her Tupac Shakur outfit toward Litz. He decided to distance himself from Litz and barreled across the non-slip orange rubber tiles to take on the vampire.
Litz turned to her left when she heard an aggressive war cry coming from Fassim. She began to laugh when her co-star emerged as an iconic rapper. The moderate Muslim had on a blue do-rag partially concealed under a black baseball cap, which she wore backward in the tradition of hip-hop music. Her oversized black T-shirt depicted a portrait of Dr. Dre, and she moved with a spirited gait in a pair of black cargo pants.
A two-foot square panel slid out from under the path that Litz was traversing, but she was able to leap over it in time. Fassim saw the panel open and adjusted her route to gain some ground on the agile ninja.
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.” The crowd started counting down with voracious authority, which caused the combat
ants to freeze in their tracks. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
A buzzer sounded, and Stoney looked upward in unison with his co-stars to see the eyes of the skulls glowing with blue and white fire. The mud pipes shook all around the arena, and the colored padding that enveloped their steel cores emphasized this effect.
Jazzy looked up and noticed that she was standing directly beneath an orange mud pipe, having only enough time to cover her face before the warm earth-tone liquids drenched her. Stoney took this as an opportunity and got into a position behind the vampire, waiting for the mud flow to stop. When the mud ceased raining down, Jazzy cleared off her face, but she felt someone shove her in the back and slid off of the platform in a daze.
Litz had crouched down and covered her head when the mud pipes began to drench the black platform. She raised her head and saw a green dot appear on her chest from the red water cannon across the way. The limber woman did a somersault and laid flat on her back. After a brief pause, the water cannon soaked the entire left side of her body but washed away the mud in a three-foot area of the quadrant. Litz could feel intense water pressure threatening to wipe her off of the