[So the brief was write something in a style we hate. I don’t know that there are styles I HATE, so I have instead attempted to write something I don’t like and don’t consider to be any good… I won’t say I hope you enjoy it, because, well…]
So in the end it came down to a final showdown, just like in the great westerns; the good, the bad and the ugly, except that the bad was also the ugly, or vice versa. Max and Mr E, facing off, one with a handgun like a black slab of charcoal death, the other with nothing but the sun on his face.
As Max wondered whether there was any way to get out of this, hoping for inspiration to hit like lightning or a even just lightning to hit Mr E, the villain took a step toward him.
He smiled, a wide viscous grin that looked like the Joker as played by Jack Nicholson, and he raised the gun, till the barrel was aimed right at Max’s face, like the bit with Trinity and the Agent in The Matrix.
“Any famous last words?” Mr E asked, and Max shrugged.
“Not really. Are they very famous?”
Mr E smiled even wider, and in a split moment Max thought of a five minute video he’d seen on YouTube once of a snake dislocating it’s jaw to swallow an entire egg, and thought that Mr E was grinning like that, which was not a nice grin at all.
“Actually, I do have two more words, though they also may not be very famous.”
“Go on,” invited his nemesis, his teeth clenched like an ivory wall.
“Safety catch,” said Max, and as Mr E’s eyes flicked to the small black safety catch on the side of the gun Max jabbed his hand out and grabbed the gun, pushing his finger behind the trigger like the move Donnie Yen does in Ip Man and stopping the trigger being pulled. Then he spun, kicking his leg out and driving his heel into Mr E’s temple so hard his skull crunched, and his supposed nemesis dropped lifeless to the concrete.
Max stood looking down at him like Batman with blood on his boot, and smiled his own wide smile.
“Bye bye, bad guy,” he said, and turned. The day was still bright and clear, but if there had been a sunset, he would have been walking into it, towards his new adventure….
Novel Dreamers 