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  Chapter 5: The Silver Shines Bright

  Four months passed since that day. The woman had called Billy as soon as Elliot woke and stayed with them the whole time. Her name was Stephanie. She was the woman on the dock that Elliot had saved. She explained that her husband had left her, her daughter had gone with him, and all their friends seemed to turn their backs to her. Her husband it seemed was a very rich man and it was easy to see that the affections of everyone around them were paid for rather than earned. She realized that every person she knew was just a phony, only interested in her husband’s fortunes and quite uninterested in her.

  Elliot was the only person she ever met who didn’t think along monetary terms. He had no way of knowing if she had money or not when he risked his life to save her. She was barely conscious when she felt him slip under the water and she desperately reached out, her hands clutching and grabbing at the nothingness under her and then, as if the world stopped turning for a moment and God himself reached down to help, she felt his hand grasp hers. She pulled him back to the surface and held on to him…for two days in the river she held on to him. She refused to give this man up, this man who was sent by an angel to bring her back to the light. Finally a boater spotted them and called the Coast Guard.

  Weeks turned to months and finally the months turned to a year. Stephanie remained at Elliot’s side and helped him through his divorce. She tried her best to hold back her anger when Julie walked into the courtroom and cried to Elliot how Don had left her and how she was alone.

  That night after the divorce was finalized, Elliot and Stephanie went to dinner. Elliot seemed to be slightly down as his previous life had officially ended. As the meal ended the waiters took a huge cake with dozens of candles to the table. Billy was behind them along with Joe and a few other friends.

  “A party?” he asked incredulously. “I guess it is a happy occasion after all. I ended up with a gem and she ended up with a rock…it doesn’t get better than that.”

  “It’s about to get happier.” Stephanie said slyly. “While all this was going on with you I was orchestrating my own divorce behind the scenes. My former husband may have gotten rid of me but it cost him plenty in the long run.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Joe. “So how much you worth now?”

  “After the lawyers and courts are satisfied you mean?” she replied. “My net worth will be around twenty-five million dollars. And I know exactly what I want to do with it.”

  “I want to spend it on someone who never asked about it.” she said softly, looking into Elliot’s eyes. “Someone who accepted me for who I was and not what I was worth. Someone who I hope loves me as much as I love him.”

  No words could have expressed what Elliot felt. Stephanie had saved his life as much as he saved hers, and furthermore she gave him a reason to carry on. She had become that silver lining that he always looked for. He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately to the sound of applause from everyone there.

  From an empty broken heart love was once more in hold. Just a year earlier Elliot’s life had crumbled under him and taken with it his will to live. Now the light had returned…love had returned.

  The silver lining shone brightly…

  Popeye The Sailor

  Popeye The Sailor – An Autobigraphy

  Popeye the Sailor (American: 23 November 1927 – 16 June 1979), born Marion Jacob Coleslawski in Norfolk, Connecticut was an American Naval figure and prominent spokesman for the American Spinach Society or A.S.S..

  The Coleslawski family was very poor and young Marion was their only child. When he started school he could often be found with a dunce cap on his head. His first grade teacher Agatha Hagg often scolded the young man calling him “two ants short of a picnic”. Another problem with the boy besides his inability to learn past basic motor functions was his low self-esteem. He felt his name was too effeminate and was often the start of his too frequent fights. When he was 12 years old a bully named Rocco Blutoricci was transferred to the school and found young Marion an easy target.

  In a particularly savage beating “Bluto” as he was known, accidentally poked young Marion in the eye causing it to swell shut for well over a week. Being the overly dramatic child he was, Marion carried the closed eye with him for the remainder of his time in the school earning him the nickname “Popeye”.

  In 1943, growing tired of his 5th pass through 7th grade Popeye decided to drop out and join the war effort by enlisting in the Navy. Upon reaching his first base, a fuel depot hidden on Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean, he was horrified to find the only other person there was CPO Blutoricci. The sailor was beaten daily until his reassignment to Milwaukee in 1947.

  In 1949, while on vacation in Atlantic City, New Jersey Popeye would meet the woman who would send the sailor on a spiral descent to self-destruction. He was drinking heavily that night at the infamous Cocoanuts Nightclub when he saw Elizabeth Boop for the first time. Known as Betty to her many male friends she was dancing topless when her eyes met the love-struck sailor’s. For the next 2 years the feisty flapper would lead the sailor on endless nights of alcohol and drug abuse that she would use to lure him into contrived sexual escapades in her world of BDSM before he was finally arrested in Intercourse, Pennsylvania trying to steal a mule from an Amish family to satisfy Betty’s voracious sexual appetite. That was the last time he saw Betty.

  He was dishonorably discharged from the Navy in 1952 and spent the next 3 years wandering from job to job, falling deeper into the hold of alcoholism and drug addiction. In 1955 he found himself working as a pig massager in Tarzana, California at a farm owned by Castor Oyl. It was here that Popeye met Castor’s younger sister Olive.

  Olive Oyl would turn out to be Popeye’s saving grace. She took the rag-tag ex-seaman and pushed him to go to rehab. He chose the lesser known Wimpy Clinic for Eating Disorders that had an excellent alcohol clinic as well. He would spend the next 6 months of his life re-learning to be responsible and trustworthy. He spent 2 weeks on each step of the program and returned to his beloved Olive in July of 1957.

  Bliss was not to be his yet as an old nemesis from his past reared its ugly head once more. Rocco Blutoricci had also drifted to Tarzana and had found Olive. When the still small and thin Popeye arrived to find his beloved sitting with Bluto he attacked the larger man. Bluto easily defeated him and tossed his unconscious body into the garden and returned to Olive. Upon regaining consciousness Popeye found a leaf in his mouth and remembering what he learned at Wimpy’s Rehab Center he began to chew it. Moments later a certified miracle happened.

  Popeye was transformed into a muscular and powerful he-man. He looked at his arms and saw his forearms had swelled to 4 times their regular size as had his calf muscles. His upper arms were still small but when he made a muscle they moved under his skin and formed a pyramid-like stack of bowling balls. With renewed vigor he once more attacked Bluto and punched him so hard he knocked the man out of his clothes. Olive felt a sensual urge within her and declared Popeye her man.

  Together they had 4 illegitimate children that were often passed off as “nephews”. The youngest was not even given a proper name and just called Swee'Pea . In 1965 Child Protective Services stepped in and forced the couple to give the child a proper name. He was called 'Scooner Seawell Georgia Washenting Christiffer Columbia Daniel Boom'.

  Research discovered that the source of Popeye’s mysterious transformation that day came from a large radioactive pool of chemical waste that was below ground near the garden but Popeye continued to scam the public by telling them it was the spinach that caused it. He and Olive parlayed the money he received from speaking engagements and opened the Oyl Spinach Farm in 1968.

  The money rolled in and Popeye and his mistress lived the high life until his death in 1979 from a massive syphilis infection. Olive said her farewells to the legendary sailor and returned to her mansion with her new lover Bluto. Bluto passed away just 2 years later and Olive ended her days by wasting away th
e family fortune on male strippers and pornography. All 3 “nephews” died in a theater fire in 1988, ironically watching a short on their famous father. Scooner is still alive and works as a boat mechanic in Spokane, Washington.

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  The Real Enemy

  The Real Enemy

  0400 hours and I’m still awake. The air around me has gone stale and the myriad sounds of the night are echoing through my brain. The jungle around me is alive with millions of bugs, snakes, rats, and almost anything else you could imagine. Tigers sometimes follow behind units, drawn to them by the sounds of battle. Their natural prey has all but disappeared so scavenging the remains of dead soldiers has become a new trait for them.

  I look up to see the moon or stars but the sky is blocked from view by the thick tree canopy and the smoke from the still smoldering village just five clicks behind us. We didn’t torch this one, Charlie did. Apparently the village Chieftain refused to allow the young men in the village to be taken so the Viet Cong burned the whole thing down around him. From what we could find out from the few survivors, they had come in the dead of night and when the chief denied them they tied him to a pole. They made him watch as they raped his daughters and his wife before killing them. Then they took an iron rod and started to break the bones in his body one by one. He passed out after only five minutes of the torture and they waited for him to come to before they lit the village on fire. Then they slit his throat.

  Charlie was never shy about leaving messages to other villages or the troops who chased after them. We had been chasing this particular bunch for three weeks now. They knew we were after them and they just continued to bring us deeper and deeper into the jungle and that idiot Lieutenant Jameson just followed them like he would follow the high school cheerleader squad. Thank god Baker knew better.

  Sargent Tom Baker was the squad leader. He had been in country for three tours and knew pretty much every trick Charlie had up his dirty sleeve. He had alerted the squad to traps and saved our asses on more than one occasion. For some odd reason he was content with following Jameson into this hell hole and we all blindly followed him as well. There had always been a method to his madness so far and we saw no reason for this to be different.

  A tap on my shoulder makes me jump and I turn to see The Chief in my face, whispering it’s my time to take watch. Chief’s real name is Mason Redfield, and he’s some kind of half-assed Cherokee medicine man from Oklahoma. He got his nickname from the tribal tattoo that covers his entire back. He claims it was a rite of passage but once when he was drunk he told me he used to date a girl who got turned on by tattoos and she talked him into getting it done. Amazing how much power such a small piece of flesh can hold over a man.

  I sit up slowly, the stiffness of lying in one position evident in the look of discomfort in my face. A soft rain starts to fall somewhere above the canopy and leaves collect the water before releasing them in gigantic drops that fall on us. You would think the rain would quiet the sounds but it just adds to them and yet somehow it brings them all together like some symphonic masterpiece played by Mother Nature herself. I hear the Chief moan in disbelief at the rain spoiling his last chance at sleep for the night before we move out once more.

  The sun will rise in about an hour, not that it means anything here in this part of the jungle. The canopy is too thick here to let much light pass through and the rain means there are clouds obscuring even that small amount from us. There are fifteen of us in total, hidden in a circle near me. Most are sleeping or trying to, like the Chief but I can see Baker sitting with his back against a tree. In one hand he’s holding a blowgun dart. Of all the stupid things to bring on a mission like this, he picks a blowgun. I can see him picking it up slowly and dropping the dart into it.

  I’m suddenly aware that the jungle has gone silent as a grave around me. Every sense I have is on high alert and I start to signal Baker when I see him wag a single finger telling me to stay put. My ears can pick up the soft sounds of feet making their way through the underbrush in excruciatingly slow steps. Jameson snores for a minute, making some kind of idiotic noises from a too-dry pallet and my face twists at the sound. I turn again to look at Baker and see that damned blowgun aimed right at me and his big chest filling with the air to launch the deadly missile within it at me.

  The soft “swoosh” sounds loudly in my ears as I throw myself towards the ground. Behind me I can hear it impact followed by a moan and the thud of a body hitting the ground hard. Claymores start exploding as Charlie rushes towards us and the sound of M-16’s and AK-47’s filled the air, combined with the cursing of the unit and the high-pitched orders yelled in Vietnamese by the officers of the attacking NVA. I preferred a shotgun in these close quarters and carried a Stevens 77E with the barrel I had cut down to almost nothing. If the target was close enough I could almost rip it in half with that gun, pretty much insuring they wouldn’t get back up. I also carried my standard issue M-16 and a pair of Colt Commander pistols. I had found out early on there was no such thing as being over armed when you moved into the bad bush.

  Bullets ripped through the still morning air, occasionally hitting a target but most often imbedding themselves into the maze of trees around us. I splatter an NVA I see rushing towards me, placing pellets from his belly to his brain in two quick shots while the rest of the unit forms a circle and sprays death and destruction in all directions. I watch Jameson crawling towards the circle from the spot he had chosen to sleep in. Behind him I can also see a Vietnamese regular taking aim at the crawling man. My shotgun wouldn’t work in this and by the time I could get my M-16 out it would be too late. I frantically looked at Baker who was in range.

  His eyes had a strange look to them as he raised his rifle towards the NVA getting ready to kill our commander. As if in slow motion I could see his hardened face relax as he lined the other man up in his sights and then…waited. He should be taking the shot I thought to myself but he wasn’t. The NVA shot at Jameson, the bullet kicking the dirt next to him and causing him to scurry even faster. He looked up at Baker and screamed an order for the sergeant to shoot and I could see the cruel smile form along his lips as he waited still longer. The second shot hit Jameson in the small of his back, twisting his body in pain and still Baker waited. Jameson sat up, pulling his own pistol and raising it towards his attacker just as the third bullet ripped through his head. Baker only needed one shot to drop Charlie.

  And just as quickly as it had started, it was over. A quick count showed five dead NVA and another two wounded. Baker quickly raised the tally to seven dead. On our side only Jameson hadn’t made it and Oliver “Writerman” Lambert had a shoulder wound. “Cookies” the medic was working on him as Baker patrolled the perimeter of the camp to make sure Charlie had indeed left. As he walked back in he tossed a body bag to Jamie “Icecream” and pointed towards Jameson.

  “Bag that asshole” he said gruffly, “and let’s get the hell outta here!”

  Several weeks later after the inquiry into what happened that day had ended and Sergeant Baker was found to have acted valorously in getting the unit out of harm’s way after the loss of the commanding officer we all sat quietly in a local bar/whorehouse and lifted our glasses and toasted Baker for saving us…not only that day, but in the days that would have followed had Jameson lived.

  All Fall Down

  When the Music Stops

  All Fall Down

  A 1D/Batman Crossover

  The Final Concert

  The final note of the final song falls before the thundering crowd’s cheers and screams. More than eighty thousand fans had just watched the amazing boy-band 1 Direction end their final show
at the Gotham Arena. The lights within the venue sprang to life as they crowd started to make their way to the exits while below them the five lads prepared to exit their own way.

  Waiting just outside the big corrugated gate sat their limo complete with blackened windows. Of course everybody knew where they would exit and hundreds of die-hard girls lined the ramp that led from the door all the way out to the street. Most of the police officers who had been assigned to keep things orderly had cotton stuffed in their ears to counter the incessant screaming. The girls wouldn’t have to wait much longer, as evident by the limo driver lifting his cell phone to his ear and then briskly getting in and starting the long, black stretch.

  Moments later the elevated screaming of those in front told the rear guard the gate was indeed lifting and the first two people out ran and opened the doors to the limo. Seconds later the boys emerged, flashing those world-famous smiles and waving to the crowd. The screaming fans showered them with scraps of paper with their phone numbers written on them, flowers, candy, and a few articles of clothing best described as intimate. The one named Harry caught such a gift and holding it open for his mates to see allowed his eyes to bulge at the size of them. The other four laughed hard as they entered the limo and the guards shut the doors.

  The driver expertly drove through the throng of girls and without running any of the lovely young ladies down, exited onto the street. The plan was to go back to the hotel and meet Simon for a quick night shoot with the lights of Gotham City’s famous Golden Chip Casino as the background. A half-decent night’s sleep and then off to the next spot and last stop of the tour, Madison Square Garden in New York. That was the plan but then again, as the saying goes “the best laid plans…”