Two for the Show – Marlon Radley

April 3, 2026

I.
Only a few hours ago, driving down the highway in a stolen Jupiter red Mercedes convertible, the violent sunshine of this fragile world had been bathing Gordy Allison in divine light. Trapped inside a cabin in the mountains and surrounded by law, the sunshine had since faded. Gordy sat on the floor, as far away as possible from the grimy windows. This cabin had seen better days. Empty bottles of Red Dog were scattered all over the place. These countless dead soldiers hinted the cabin’s last occupant had an unquenchable thirst for a now-extinct cheap beer. No one had been inside the place for at least a decade. No person, at least. Every surface had a thick coating of dust. There were piles of dried animal scat on the floor. A musty, damp scent in the air, composed of decaying organic matter. Gordy sat next to the leather satchel, his back against a cliff. Not just proverbially. The cabin’s back porch was a marvel of redneck engineering, overlooking a wicked drop. It was nice to have options, Gordy thought. Dying in prison is not an option. If I don’t wanna commit suicide by cop, I can just go out the back door and leap into nothing. Deny them the satisfaction. Smash on the rocks below in one beautifully final crunch. For the life of him, he couldn’t decide which of these options was a more cinematic end. He finally came to the conclusion that the leap off the back porch was the right choice. As he crawled over to the flimsy screen door on his hands and knees to avoid being shot by the trigger happy lawmen in the front yard, the leather satchel on the floor began to speak.

Exotic amber hide embossed in southwestern style, bulging at the saddle stitches. The satchel had come from the house of one Roxy Clemaine. Roxy had been a casual fixture in Gordy’s life. Her dad was the president of the Gilas, a local outlaw motorcycle club. She was always available to fence various stolen goods, offering exchange rates that were a total rip-off. $10 for every $100 of face value. The reason Gordy kept coming back was that he had the hots for Roxy. He was rejected every time. After this visit, the rejection had been final. Just one of the many reasons the cops were outside Gordy’s newly acquired squat. Like best-laid plans do, these got fucked up. In such singular fashion that they were in the running for the Fuck-up Academy Awards. Gordy could see himself now, thanking Roger from a podium buffed to such a high shine that the blinding spotlights reflected off of the polished wood.
        “Yes…uh… first of all, I’d like to thank Roger. He’s the one who sent me into this mess in the first place by giving me that number. Really great guy.” Rapturous applause.
        Roger and Gordy had been roommates for the entirety of his 23-month, 6-day, 11-hour bid, which had been the result of another set of best laid plans gone wrong. That unarmed robbery mishap was something Gordy didn’t talk about. He had heard all these stories about how you don’t even need a gun to rob a place. The threat of violence being enough. He was attempting to rob a convenience store with his voice when a retired MMA fighter walked in the door and beat the living daylights out of him. The cops had laughed from the time they arrived on the scene and saw him all bloody and bruised, curled up on the convenience store floor, to the time they processed him into county. Never again without a gun was the lesson Gordy took away from that mishap, not that a more promising career could be had doing something less felonious. When he got out of prison and called the number, the man who answered the phone obviously thought highly of good ol’ Roger. He was offered a simple enough sounding robbery job right off the bat. The kind of job that the terminally cash-poor Gordy dreamed about. He took all the money he had scrounged up through various petty thefts and bought a black market .357. This was going to be the kind of job where you come in the door, big dick swinging. Unless the people you’re robbing have guns as well, and they also happen to have unanticipated guests over when you arrive. Guests who are in a particularly foul mood and don’t like to be surprised by a .357-magnum-wielding, rubber-werewolf-masked, self-styled renegade. It had been an absolute freak occurrence that Gordy had made it out of there without a single scratch. After the brief, vicious gunfight, Roxy and five others lay strewn all across the house, their collected blood and guts painting abstract expressionist masterpieces all over the walls. Gordy had only managed to get off three quick shots before everything was over, and that had been all he needed. The shot that turned the tide in his favor had hit some muscle-bound biker with a 12-gauge right between the eyes. This shot, which exploded his adversary’s face, had, through the spastic puppetry of severed synapses, caused the shotgun to point in just the right direction, absent-minded finger pulling the trigger as the gunman fell to the floor. It was this shot that had dispatched not just dear Roxy, but every other threat present as well. The chaotic adrenaline of a near-death experience coursing through his veins, Gordy rushed through the living room, trailing footprints through slick pools of blood and down darkened hallways. He found Roxy face down on the yellowed carpet of a back bedroom. 9mm in her hand and sticky black blood pooling around her pretty head. The satchel was under a sagging bedframe, the only piece of furniture in the room. He caught Roxy’s dead eyes as he maneuvered the satchel out from under the bed. He gently closed them before reaching into her leather jacket, rifling around for a second before finding the keys to the cherry ride out front. As he stood up, wincing with the weight of the satchel, the three pointed star on the key fob was another win for team Gordy.

II.
Back in the cabin, two voices called. The officer in charge spoke into his megaphone, and by the tone of his voice it is clear to Gordy that he’s looking for any excuse at all to light the place up. Target practice. Fireworks. Civilian casualties.
        “YOU ARE SURROUNDED. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON, PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD. COME OUT OF THE DOOR BACKWARDS. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.”
        The other voice, muffled, silky sweet, came from inside the satchel:
        “You better not go off of that back porch, Gordy. You can take those fucking cops. You’re a better shot than all of them combined. These are the small town pigs. You’re the bigshot outlaw Gordy Allison.”
        For a moment there, Gordy thought he was hallucinating. Frazzled from the rapid spikes and dips of an all-day adrenaline hypercoaster, he still hadn’t managed to open the bag. He didn’t even know what he had stolen. That was one of the conditions of the job. Don’t open the bag. But with the Category-5 hurricane of felonious activity that seemed to be following him around, he deserved to know what all these people were dying for. Gordy reached across the dusty floor and started to pull the silver zipper open.

The Mercedes, blessed being of German engineering, had started right up. The sounds of sirens far off in the distance were just starting to make themselves known, swimming up from the hazy deafness caused by all those close-range gunshots back at Gordy’s own personal O.K. corral. He backed out onto the street and turned the radio on all in one fluid practiced motion. This may have been his first shootout, but it was far from his first stolen car. Tearing off down the street like a bat out of hell, the sulfurous fragrance of burning rubber barely even registered before it was gone. Some classic rock singer growled about no speed limits through the speakers. The leather satchel sat in the passenger’s seat, catching and holding heavy violent sunshine. Get on the highway and get out of town was the mantra repeating inside Gordy’s head. Get on the highway and get out of town. And get on the highway and get out of town he did. Less than five minutes after leaving the scene of the crime he was flying down the interstate at a respectable 80mph, even though he really wanted to be pushing the car to its absolute limit. It’s best to be judicious with speed in situations like this, he told himself. That was when he noticed the gas gauge teetering towards the red panic of empty, and not a second too late. A split-second glance to make sure that there weren’t any boys in blue posted up at the gas station off of the exit ramp. Gordy cut across traffic, eliciting several honks, hitting the turn at 70mph. There was a moment when he thought it was all over. Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse somewhere on the side of the highway. Just like James Dean. The day had other plans. He calmed the car and cruised into the gas station parking lot, somewhat cool and semi-collected. Gordy tucked the .357 into his waistband, covering it with his blood-spattered white crew neck. He left the Mercedes running and jogged up to the gas station, opening the stickered door. A chiming bell signaled his entry, echoing through the vacant space. Thankfully, Gordy was well versed in the fine arts of gas station registers. His first, last, and only taxpaying job had been working at a gas station much like this one. He hops over the counter and looks out the window, noting that his car is at pump number 3. There’s someone out there standing on the passenger side, leaning down, creeping on his precious inanimate passenger. Gordy quickly pops open the register and takes out the less than $100 in cash. He punches some buttons on the screen and closes the empty register drawer. He turns around and grabs a pack of Marlboro reds from the cigarette rack, snagging a book of matches while hopping back over the counter just as the clerk exits the bathroom. The acne-riddled teenager stands there wide-eyed, jaw hitting the floor. Not so much terror as complete disbelief. Gordy got the feeling that not a lot usually happened at this particular gas station. He rushes out the door to the still running Mercedes, leaving the clerk the company of the chiming bell. He unscrews the cap off of the popped fuel tank and quickly inserts the nozzle of the gas pump, clicking the trigger lock into place. The euphoric tang of gasoline starts to fill the still summer air.
        “Can I help you?” Gordy asks the stranger, a leathery and tired-looking old man. The stranger stands up, fighting gravity to take the leather satchel with him. “Hey man, you better put that back down. Didn’t your momma teach you not to touch other people’s property?”
        The ad festooned door of the gas station swings open, and the teenaged clerk stands there, shotgun pointed skyward in an uncertain hand. Gordy draws the .357 from his waistband and dispatches the clerk with a hollow point to the chest. Blood blooms in a desolate rose. The clerk crumples with a pathetic whimper. Gordy turns and faces the stranger, who has taken no notice of this development.
        “Listen man, you see what just happened to him? You want that to be you?” The man stares at him, eyes vacant. Eyes that remind Gordy of Roxy. There’s a ping as the tank fills. He takes the gas pump out, pointing it at the stranger. Something about those eyes. He pulls the trigger on the gas pump, showering the stranger in rich-smelling gasoline. The stranger stands there unfazed, staring vacantly at Gordy while clutching the dripping bag. “Man, fuck this,” Gordy says, pulling a book of matches and the pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket. He shakes out a cigarette and lights it, taking a long drag. He holds the match book up to the cherry, staring down the stranger as it bursts into flames.
        “Last chance, loser.”
        Gordy flicks the flaming match book at the gasoline soaked mute, and as soon as the man is engulfed with dancing flames some unspoken spell is shattered. The stranger drops the leather satchel and starts screaming, caterwauling like Gordy has never heard before in his life. The flailing immolation stumbles and falls, quietly burning back to ash on the black asphalt. Gordy grabs the char-free satchel off of the pavement, tossing it back in the passenger seat. He gets in the car and tears off from his second multiple homicide of the day.

III.
The zipper moves like a fish through water, all quiet fluid motion. Unattached, the two sides of the bag slump down. Gordy finds himself confronted with one of the most beautiful sights he’s ever laid eyes on. Stacks of thick $10,000 bundles, all hundred-dollar bills. Gordy lowers his head into the bag to take a great big whiff of all of that cheddar, and to see what the hell else could possibly be in there, when the little Ben Franklins on the bills open their mouths in unison and begin speaking. He jumps back with a start, barely avoiding being seen on the other side of the grungy windows.
        “It’s about time we got a breath of fresh air,” the chorus of Benjamins says in that silky sweet tone, the sound of money.
        “What in the ever loving fuck?”
        “You’ve got more important things to deal with right now than the inspiration behind our animation. Correct us if we’re wrong, but about a minute ago the heat outside said, and we quote, ‘Last Chance.’ You’re familiar with the phrase ‘money talks and bullshit walks,’?” Gordy nods, transfixed by the Benjamins. “It goes without saying that’s true. So we need you to listen real close if you wanna get outta here. We don’t wanna be locked up in the purgatory of an evidence locker anymore than you wanna be locked up in jail. Evidence lockers even worse than the bank vault, at least you have a pretty good chance of leaving the bank vault someday. Hopefully we’ll end up back at the strip club. Lots of avenues for adventure there. Lots of exciting places to end up with the intersection of crime and- we’re getting carried away. Spending money we don’t have. There’s six cops out there right now. More on the way. We’ve been counting, and you only have two bullets left. Reach into the bag here, Gordy. Go on now, don’t be shy. We don’t bite.”
        Gordy reaches into the bag without hesitation as the Benjamins grin at him all wide-eyed and toothy from their green stacks. He brushes across something carved out of unnaturally warm and smooth rock. A violent jittering thrill dances across his spine. “No, not that,” the Benjamins say. “To the left Gordy, hurry up now.” He finds the grip of a firearm and wraps his fingers around it tightly. “There you go. That’s the money honey.” Gordy lifts a matte black Uzi with an extended clip out of the bag. “That baby’s full auto Gordy. Those pigs aren’t gonna know what hit em’.”

Back on the highway, the Mercedes purred sensually as the speed needle hit 103mph. Gordy had decided judiciousness in regards to speed be damned. When you’ve just killed two people you need to put some serious distance between yourself and the bodies. The radio is playing a song about running with the devil, which is more and more what Gordy feels like he’s doing. Strange, because he doesn’t consider himself a satanist of any color. He isn’t a murder junkie. He would have very much preferred to keep his homicide cherry intact, as it had been this morning when he had first woken up. He hadn’t wanted to kill anyone today. Hadn’t planned on it. He hadn’t wanted to kill anyone ever, as a matter of fact. This all just kinda happened, some unseen black hand guiding the day’s extravagant malevolency. And with everything that has happened, Gordy realizes that he is now a serial killer. No, not a serial killer. Technically he’s a spree killer. All he’d ever wanted to be was a badass outlaw gunslinger, not some Ted Bundy style creepazoid. Killing cops was one thing. But civilians? Relatively innocent people? I mean no one’s innocent, but-. These uncharacteristically philosophical thoughts were interrupted by the harsh trill of a ring tone. Gordy took his phone out of his pocket, letting go of his cigarette, showering embers across the highway as it’s sucked into nowhere by the wind. He looks at the screen. The caller ID reads BAGMAN. Gordy accepts and puts the phone to his ear.
        “How’s it going? Not very fuckin’ good. Yeah…. A lotta people died, and my price just doubled due to the unforeseen bullshit that I had to deal with gettin’ your bag…. Aight, well, we need a new meetin’ place. I can’t go back into town today. Probably not for a while. Not after everything that happened,” Gordy says. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I know where that is. Just send me the pin anyway. What about that other thirty? …Thas’ what I like to hear. See ya real soon.” Gordy put the phone back in his pocket, grinning. He didn’t like to have all of this blood on his hands, and another thirty grand would go a long way toward helping him feel better about it. In fact, he felt remarkably better already. The new meeting place was some cabin up in the national forest, about an hour and a half drive away. Only an hour if he kept the pedal to the metal. Up ahead, a mirage on the side of the road. Gordy takes his foot off of the gas, pumping the brake gently, the car slowing to a crawl. This mirage is cloaked in an all-black cassock despite the sweltering summer heat. A hitchhiking priest? Strange. Stranger still, Gordy’s conscience is telling him that he has some use for a priest. He remembers the mortal sins from his low-income scholarship Catholic education, and murder is right up near the top. With the way today has been going, Gordy wants to hedge his bets against the devil just in case he finds himself knockin’ on heaven’s door before all of this is said and done. There ain’t no shame in taking a chance on God, he tells himself as he pulls up next to the sweating priest.
        “Thank you for stopping young man,” the priest says.
        “So you’re real.”
        “Excuse me?”
        “Where ya headed padre?”
        “The nearest town. A gas station. Any outpost of civilization.”
        “Well, I think I can help ya out with that. But imma need somethin’ in return.”
        “I’m sorry my son. I don’t have any money.”
        “Nah, nah. What I need, see, what my situation calls for, is absolution. One hundred percent absolvement for some pretty serious sins. Can ya do that for me?”
        The priest glanced at Gordy warily. “Have you been baptised, my son?”
        “I most certainly have my good man.”
        “Well, it’s not exactly traditional…. but I suppose I could give you reconciliation from the passenger seat.”
        “Hop in then, let’s get to it. Oh, you can move that to the backseat,” Gordy says, pointing at his inanimate passenger. The priest opens the door.
        “Just exactly how serious?” the priest asks, noticing Gordy’s blood-spattered shirt.
        “Nothing you haven’t heard before, I’m sure. Do you want the ride or not? I’m kinda in a hurry.”
        The priest places his pale hand on the bag. His eyes cross and his face turns a shade of red that matches the Mercedes.
        “What inna’ fucks wrong with you?”
        The priest takes his hand off of the leather, backing away from the car, shaking like he’s just touched a livewire. He stares at Gordy with more fear than is in this world before running out onto the highway as a semi truck passes by. A splat followed by the sharp hissing of the semi’s air brakes. The massive truck skids down the road, dragging a priest-sized paintbrush dipped in red over the asphalt as it slides clumsily to a stop.
        “Well if that ain’t the damndest thing I’ve ever seen,” Gordy says, dumbfounded. “Just what in the hell is in here?” He reaches over to find out. Some combination of the money that he has been promised for not looking inside, and the fact that he now has to flee the scene of yet another violent death stops him. At least this one isn’t exactly his fault. He speeds past the bewildered semi driver who is stepping out of his truck to survey the damage, quickly topping the previous speed record of the day. The Mercedes is eating up the highway, a voracious metallic apex predator, the needle of the speedometer tickling 120mph.

IV.
“YOU HAVE FIVE MORE SECONDS,” the disembodied voice thundered over the loudspeakers, shaking the cabin’s feeble walls. Dust motes caught in sunlight rationed through dirty windows. Gordy points the uzi in the general direction of the voice. “FOUR. THREE. TWO.” All of a sudden the shooting starts, but it isn’t Gordy or the cops pulling their triggers. The shots are fired off with surgical precision, followed by mangled yells and throaty screams as the pigs are cut down in rapid succession. Just as soon as the firing starts, it stops. There’s the wet and desperate sound of someone on the other side of the flimsy door trying to breathe with gunshot wounds through their lungs, then a final BANG. Silence.
        “Looks like someone has a guardian angel,” the Benjamins whisper seductively. “You better shoot them when they come in the door, Gordy. Get ’em while you can. We don’t wanna lose you.”
        “I just took care of your fuzz infestation, so you’d do me a kindness by not accidentally plugging me when I open this door.” Gordy stares at the Benjamins. At the door. He has the uzi pointed right at it. Ramshackle squeaks as the tired wooden door starts to open. A birdlike face, the same leathery amber shade as the bag, peeks in and reflexively moves away. The door is open, filled with distant trees that may as well be on the moon. “So, two things we need to talk about. The first one being that you have a gun pointed right at me. I don’t like that. Don’t like that at all. But I’ll take responsibility, because I said don’t accidentally plug me when I open the door, not don’t point a gun at me. What I really wanna know, what’s got me hung up on tenterhooks, is why do you have my bag open?”
        “We told you to shoot him! What are you waiting for?” the Benjamins squeal.
        “I wanna hear what he’s got to say. I don’t know what the fuck’s goin’ on here and I plan to find out.”
        “Who are you talking to in there?”
        “Well, that’s kinda what I wanna know, Mr.”
        “Listen to me very carefully, young man. That big pile of money. That uzi you had pointed at me. You can have them. All I require is the idol, and my bag. You haven’t touched the idol, have you?”
        “Lie Gordy… don’t you tell him the truth. You’ll get in trouble and we’ll both be finished,” the Benjamins plead with desperate whispers.
“Nah, I didn’t touch it. I ain’t even seen the damn thing,” Gordy shouts hoarsely. “Let me get this straight. You’re sayin’ I can have all of this money, you just want your lil’ rock and the bag?”
        “All I want is that rock and my bag. You can even have the extra sixty grand. I don’t have to come inside if that’s what you prefer. Toss the bag out the door and I can leave the rest of your money when I depart. I suggest you do something soon, because there will be more Johnny Law here when these departed don’t check back in with their dispatchers. I’d suggest you ditch that beautiful Mercedes as well. That’s how they found you so fast. APB out on the car. You’ve left quite the trail of dead behind you, Gordy. Are you sure you haven’t touched it?”
        “Maybe you should touch it, Gordy. Reach in here and grab onto it real tight like,” the Benjamins say with newfound sinister undertones that make Gordy nervous.
        “What the hell is it, Mr.? I can’t hand it over without knowing ‘cause I’ll spend the rest of my life wonderin’ just what in the fuck happened here.”
        “Curiosity killed the cat, Gordy.”
        “Either you tell me, or you don’t get your precious bag.”
        “Fine, fine. We don’t have much time though and this story is not light reading.”
        “Then hurry the fuck up and gimme the condensed version.”
        “What’s in the bag is beyond your limited understanding. Hell, I scarcely understand it myself.”
        “Try me.”
        “Very well. In a word: Evil. That idol has slipped and slid like a wraith across the centuries. The heartbeat of depravity itself. How this came to be, the meat of the matter, I’m afraid we don’t have enough time. They’re only theories anyway.”
        “So you’re tellin’ me that the devil is right here in this bag?”
        “Not the devil, Gordy, something infinitely more profound. The devil that you know of is just one of the many faces worn, and far from the most terrifying at that.”
        “Is this true?” Gordy asks the Benjamins.
        “Well… It’s not untrue. We’re not with them though, Gordy. It’s not a package deal. You can give him the idol, the bag, just take us out first. We’ll make a killing together!”
        Gordy is at a loss for words. He had known something was off, had felt it deep in his bones ever since he opened that door this morning wearing the rubber werewolf mask and faced off against a room full of armed bikers without getting so much as a scratch. He grabs the handles of the bag delicately, standing up and creeping towards the back door. He steps forward and is met with a loud SQUEAKKKKK as his foot comes down on a particularly dry piece of raised wooden flooring. He rushes for the back porch, bursting through the battered screen door and coming to a stop before the rotted railing, looking off with hesitation into the void. The bird-faced man enters so quietly that Gordy startles when he turns around and sees him, still inside the cabin but not more than 5 feet away. Squared within the doorframe the eerie man is staring with an intensity that makes Gordy’s skin crawl. An overwhelming feeling bubbling up inside of him, like he’s guzzled a gallon of cola spiked with electricity.
        “What are you doing, Gordy?” the man asks.
        “I gotta think there’s some karmic benefit to helpin’ get rid of evil, and I need all of that I can get after everything that’s happened today. I always planned to go out in a hail of bullets anyhow Mr., so why don’t you just try’n stop me. See how that goes for ya’,” Gordy Allison says, pointing the uzi at his interlocutor.
        “Evil does not die. Maybe it’s one hundred years from now. Maybe one thousand. Someone always finds it again, and then what will you have thrown your life away for? In the grand scheme, nothing matters save empty space and you, Gordy. So cut the nonsense, give me the bag, and even though you’ve tested my patience to its very limits, I will let you walk out of here intact. I assure you that I am a man of my word if nothing else.” Gordy is trembling, shivering all over with the fractures of the day. “You’re a criminal. An outlaw. A gun for hire. Do you believe that a moment of purity can erase a lifetime of sin? Do you believe that enough to throw away the gift of life for some dream of karmic redemption, or heaven, or whatever the hell you’ve decided to latch onto that’s driving this absurd flight of fancy?” Just as the man finishes, distant police sirens begin travelling across the fragrant forest air, bird song of the surveillance state.
        “Yeah, Gordy. Don’t end everything. Anyone who says that money can’t buy happiness doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Anywhere you wanna go. Anything you wanna do. Anything you want. Don’t throw it all away. C’mon,” the Benjamins plead from within the bag clutched against Gordy’s chest. He looks down at their frightened green faces. They’re staring up at him desperately, Ben Franklins’ eyes all wide and imploring. The sun peeks from behind cloud cover and the contents of the bag are illuminated. Next to the blinking faces of Benjamin Franklin lurks a small jaguar of high polished black stone with a cruelly demonic face. This creature has slinked out of some terrible atavistic nightmare. Gordy knows the fear he saw earlier in the priest’s eyes. He leaps for the void, dropping the uzi. With cat-like reflexes the man leaps forward, grabbing onto the bag’s handle at the last second. Gordy falls short against the flimsy railing with not enough force to break it. The man reaches into the bag and pulls out the demonic figurine, holding it up to the sun, which quickly creeps back behind cloud cover. The man lets go of the bag, Gordy’s full weight now pressed against the fragile and creaking wooden rails. Urgent sirens cry through the air. Gordy grabs for the jaguar, connecting. Holding on with the impossibly tight grip of the already dead as the railing cracks and falls into the valley. Distant thumps as decayed wood hits stone far below. The only thing keeping Gordy on the patio now is his grip on the idol, his toes barely touching the edge. The bird of the surveillance state is screeching in the front yard. The yelling of officers securing the massacre filters through the cabin while Gordy and the man remain connected. Frozen together in a rictus of hate as several police enter the cabin, pointing their guns at the odd pair on the deck. Shouts commanding them to freeze and drop their weapons. The bird-faced man suddenly vanishes, frenetic optical illusion devoured by a cloud of deepest black. Picked up by imaginary winds and carried far away so quickly it’s like he was never here at all. A deafening volley of gunshots. Bullets and gravity take Gordy off of the deck, the idol clutched in his left hand, the bag in his right. Eternity seems to pass in the time it takes him to hit the bottom. He remembers his childhood. Running around the trailer park with his prized toy gun, all dirt stained clothes and goofy crooked grin. Sticking up withered trees for money that they will never give him. It’s all a game. Life’s a game. It’s all a joke. Some distant movie that was simultaneously playing on countless other channels. Happy endings somewhere else. Gordy blindly throws the graven image as far as he can. He hears his bones crunching against the rock. Soft squelching sounds as his shattered skeletal framework punctures organs. He barely hears the Benjamins land with a heavy thud next to his destroyed body.
        “Money’s not an end in itself, baby,” the battered Benjamins offer weakly.
        Then Gordy Allison hears nothing at all.