HANDBALL: A LOVE STORY

Mickey Bump: it's not Andrew Luck's fault, he needs a better O line. it is Andrew Luck's fault, he's a turnover machine. the truth depends on if you like Andrew Luck or not. it's always been this way in human history, my friends. sure we should follow celebrity opinions cos they're codified and presented in shiny bodies. sure, Demi, quash the cup controversy by having it just be winter. but when does a fir tree become a Christmas tree? when the first candy cane is hung on it? or when the star is atop? symbols: codifications presented to make our lives easier to follow. i'm chewing my peppermint mocha beans out of a red solo cup right now, folks, i do it to relive my youth which is all everyone does. instead of going to dorm parties i worked for my father on an allowance of one bitcoin, he said it'd be worth something someday. Codrus says money is worthless, always has been, it's a cosmic joke we play on ourselves, but what does he know? i don't work for nobody, folks, i'm just me, independent contractor. what is worth today? who is worthy? where has it been? has it changed over the eons? a war is being fought right now in your name, when did you agree to sign away your name? i'm big on contracts, pens or it didn't happen. is this to protect you or protect the Codrus legacy? who made him in charge anyway? i don't see his name on the ballot. in the words of my friend Wolf, what the fuck is going on? this has been a crazy campaign, folks. Hilary went round-for-round with Larry and scored a surprise KO. like they actually had a boxing match. televised. yuge ratings. you Dems sure do things differently. people's nonsense rantings always seem to involve conflict, huh? fighting. war, that is what it's good for. killing babies, kids being kids, the belt, triangular granaries for supplies and foodstuffs that fueled our ancient ancestor soldiers during their fight against the aliens. we must end the cycle, we must turn the cycle into a square as beautifully symmetrical as a square root, as square as my head. we must get back to symmetry and dynamism and community, folks, and there's nothing more all three of these things than the game of handball i played as a youth. i learned money wasn't everything, a person was, a woman whose striped feet only i saw and my first spaldeen in her soft hands. do you know why i do this? to hold that ball again. to see her again.

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Binny is quite exhausted from everything and collapses onto the cold marble of the Store's floor. she pushes her hands onto the ground in despair sweeping all around the area and cries out.

Binny: my baby! Ray Ray! this is where he died! he was just another kid in an afterschool job, it would never be as easy again as it was here for him. here he balled as any young man do, puffing himself up with rolled papers for the ladies as he stocked bread and toasters in his greasy white overalls. talkin' bout cars and music and movies he had no idea of. each boy needs space to be dumb. oh the scourge of drugs.

Quinny: but there's hope.

Kiss: there isn't but i love you guys.

Quinny: this is the only image we need to see. clear your cache. it's the one of us and mom sittin by the dock of the bay sippin' Hires. girls. our innocence shines through the gloss of the pic. and the tablet glass. mom wears a scarf over her head for dress not cos she's sick. we will always think of our mother and her strength will be our strength. with her we can overcome all evil. think positive thoughts, think of the churros.

Binny: that's right, the churros. i walk over to where the bakery is, i look inside the glass to see the freshly-made churros wrapped in hot steam. i taste the wafting cinnamon. i do my good deed of the day, i go over to that nice plump man of a baker in his white stovepipe hat that stretches up high high high beyond sight and declare my love for his churros which is a sugary substitute for my desire to connect to humanity again.

Codrus: lovely woman. and lovely man. i had a chance to meet them both. except you never quite make it to the eyelevel of the display to see if the new churros have come in yet. no churros, no talk, no talk, no walk, no forward progression. have you noticed? it's hard to really notice. you lost. the presence of your dead mother was not enough to shield you from my immense backlog of power. it was quite easy, you were already weakened by tragedy. i had to use a bullet btw, terrible greasy things, had to restrain Yayray's limbs and eyesight, he was moving around too much, that was one hulk of a growing boy you had there when i met him, he would have smashed me for sure, he was becoming too insane with the Stones, his power would have ceded mine, his mind was sharp as a butcher knife, though, he saw everything that happened to him in that growing mind of his.

Binny: devil. i spit Niagara on you.

Kiss: i am so sorry, i tried to stop him. but i am being protected by someone around here.

Codrus: nine lives, i feline feel you, cat. feelines. can't you see what's going on here? you feel your sister prop you up and the two of you walk toward the donut counter and to the man talking with the woman that isn't you. your compliment would have completed your circle. instead it's a vicious cycling back to your previous spot and trying to walk again. a piece of tape eternally caught on rewind. you'll never know if there're churros there or simply glazed.

Quinny: no, it can't be. i'll check my phone, that'll say if the churros have come in, there's an app for that.

Codrus: it is your worst nightmare, the failure of technology. you try to push the button to get to the page, the info that will save the day, but the page never quite loads, it almost does, it comes so tantalizingly close, but the blue line never quite makes it to the other side.

Quinny: my god that's annoying. if i hadn't quit earlier i'd be crazy now.

Codrus: you think why does this happen only to me. do others' phones with the right cloud work efficiently? you start to think the tech hates you alone. how can the tech know who you are? any finger of any skin color will work, even a ginger finger. maybe if you push your finger harder the screen will flash brighter and sooner. but it does, it is, the tech is deliberately targeting you and deciding not to work. it's alive, the robots have won, you have built your own destruction. the tech will decide when to work and when it benefits it to load the page and all of its annoying ads and sidelinks. it was easy to defeat you two, i simply slid my finger along your backbones till i reached the docks of your butts and you were gone. and you guys will forever be gone in a bad repeat episode of your family drama. can you tell i watched Eternal Sunshine for the first time last night? hipster heretic i am. designing hells is hard work, think i'll sate myself on a confection over there. which one tho?

Codrus smiles plainly under his scuffed-up tricorne hat.

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Cotard is motorboating. he turns the key on the speedboat motor but instead a light comes out. it's a projection of Manny.

Manny: Monk, i am not your father, you are my father. get it?

Cotard: i understand. i'm understanding.

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Uvula is still underwater. her glowing belly lights up the deep. she breathes with the help of fish placing an astronaut helmet over her head Sandy Cheeks-style. it grazes her cheek. Atalan nudges her .

Atalan: it's coming. another bomb-laden hurricane, the drones are trying to set it up, frame it. i got this. see what happens when you talk to your soldiers, when you see it from their perspective, when you socialize?

Uvula: socialism works.

Atalan: yep. you do you. i do me. meet the right people, make the right friends, get the wood or the mirroring shield. protect out of forgiveness not force. dalliance not duty. excitement not extermination. conviction not conscription.

Atalan shoots his cute vaquita body out of the water, transforms into a shark on steroids, and twists into the battalion of shooting drones, destroying them in one fell falcon swoop. Uvula lifts six selfie sticks with phones out of the water three on each arm like a circus platespinner, she continues to send out daily pokes and get daily messages from first-timers and veterans alike wanting to talk about their day.

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Bump: it started in third grade, the third year is always the best year. the monitor saw i was alone and she walked over to me clear across from the other side of the playground to give me my first and only red high-bounce ball. i cherished that toy, cherish, it was all i needed, i don't need nintendo. i practiced by myself after the bell rung each day waiting for someone to do me a solid and pick me up. hours and hours of alone time, just me and my techniques sharpening. the other kids shunned me, called me fat, they couldn't call me poor. that ball was my Wilson the volleyball. that woman was my only kindness. my friends were my serve and my competitiveness at recess. i was the wallball wizard. my currency was my ability to slaughter my enemies on the handball wall. i whipped their butts in Butts Up. all i had were my fists for my linedrive underhanded skimming shots---forget pants and cars, those were the real lowriders---and my invisible satchel of black magic. when handball fell out of fashion replaced with passing notes of doodles of bushy vaginas, i was replaced with the captain of the carpet hockey team. i lost my ball on the captain's roof and was too scared to ring the doorbell. i fell out of favor and went back to being a cipher but i drew a line through that c and then an s and i made you love me again for my money. my motivation to make more and more money was finding the means to find my ball again. all i want is my ball! and her............................that's why i'm doing this, he's making me do this...........

Bump and Larry are shackled with eight chains across both of them and hung upside down naked from two points high up on the ceiling of the auditorium. this is the first presidential debate. tons of drones are hovering over both candidates, scanning them with a green hologram for foreign objects, foreign agents, foreign tardigrades, medical and financial records and sealed divorces and any receipts for viagra. Larry's tongue is stuck out balancing a stack of eight pennies. Codrus appears on all the flying drone screens fly-eye style.

Codrus: better than moderators, right folks? humans are flawed, tech never. we'll get the truth out of these candidates using airport security. they can't hide their dirty big secrets from the populace. rest assured, folks, take some more Stones, it's a sleep aid.

there is a definite turn in the audience. they had been treating Bump as a joke but they saw themselves in his childhood plight and the general loss of innocence in the world. stories are powerful codifiers. from then on when they thought of Bump they would think of a scared little boy bouncing a ball vs. the world. they begin to slowclap and spread the yellow haze all around the arena area.

JUST THEN Cotard's speedboat, which had hit a rock and been flying in a curve on a collision course with the arena's roof, in fact collides and punctures a huge gash in the roof, sliding the two candidates out of their chains and blowing up the screens, letting all the air out of the room. no more tv broadcast but the crowd all take out their camera phones. this event creates a lightning bolt that carries on a shockwave over to a wood box underneath Codrus's desk in his NYC office, a box not quite a crate whose

RUSTY LOCK BEGINS TO RATTLE, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK.

it crunches open and out bounces a red schoolyard ball. Bump senses this, he has a pre-drug spidey sense when it comes to his ball. he silently beckons the ball over with his mind. the ball bounces out of the apartment window and bounces its way clear across the other side of the country to the debate auditorium and into Bump's hands. Bump screams with pleasure at the location. Bump starts licking the ball and soon the ball's red skin turns pink. he shakes the Stones-coated dandruff from his hair onto the ball and soon a hologram projects from it, a vision of the woman.

Bump: so beautiful. i can see your face now. your blonde hairs sticking out of your blue hood. i missed you terribly. you are all i want. i'll give up all my money, my lucre for another lesson, all my millions, all my rocks.

"FOR THE LOVE OF A WOMAN!" the crowd chants. this especially goes over well with women voters. and men voters.

Codrus: not so fast. i challenge you to a duel, or a uh handball match. i'm the best at everything.

Bump: big mistake, boss, you picked the one thing i'm better at than you.

Codrus: we shall see.

the combatants use a makeshift court, the new wall that's been left exposed from the crash. Bump starts with a strong waterfall serve, Codrus counters by running underneath it for the rainbow, Bump backs up and sets up for a nice lilypad lowrider that ricochets off to the very corner of the last frame of the court, Codrus shoots the same, Bump then quickly chains the ball not letting it bounce before contact but Codrus maintains the chain and delivers a nice hit to the corner causing Bump to scramble, Bump makes it in time but only has time to wave his hand under the ball

Bump: black magic! i need more of this.

Codrus dives on his back for the ball and just barely manages to wave his fingers and lift the ball up enough that it bounces and before doublebouncing hits the very center corner edge of the wall. legal play continues. Bump races to the spot, cocks back his fist, and punches the ball through hard for a no-bounce linedrive american which hits the bricks in the center of the wall and straight back to Codrus's rubbery face. BUMP WINS!

Bump: of course it's the american that wins it.

the video goes viral and views equals votes.

Bump consoles the woman and begins to think real hard. his aura is becoming manifest and the woman begins to materialize from her holocoma. Codrus's face crumbles, his bicorne hat is pristine, Codrus raises the bruised fingers of his left hand trying to make a fist and the image of the woman doesn't just disappear, it statically dissolves with a thudding dead spark.

Bump: mom!