“Fang Bastardson Must Die!”

So when I turned 45 recently, I asked a writer friend, the Lovely Salome, to write me a birthday greeting in the ‘voice’ of the lead character in her work-in-progress. Said work is a riff on the Robin Hood legend, and her lead character is Robin’s eventual Merry Man, Will Scarlet.

All I expected was a line or two, but instead she turned in the first page of a cool-ass short story. I immediately informed her I was not worth the effort she put forth, but that I thought it was pretty cool anyhow. I also secretly harbored a desire to write the second page, which I did a couple days ago when I had some wicked writers’ block and The Missus suggested 30 minutes of free writing. Finishing “Fang Bastardson Must Die” immediately sprang to mind.

So at my wife’s urging and with my friend’s permission, here is our co-epic. I think it will become pretty clear where her work leaves off and mine begins.

* I must disclose for the record, after reading my half of the story, Ms Salome’s only note was an emphatic “Will Scarlet does not wear tights!”


Fang Bastardson Must Die
By L. Salome and F. Bastardson

Will Scarlet strode along the hallway, his temper short and hot. He had to find the man known as Fang. The son-of-a-bastard had reached the ripe age of forty-five, an achievement no man of his low ilk should be permitted to boast.

Although he cared not for the tight confines of the office corridor, a narrow span of drywall that permitted little room for hand-to-hand maneuvers, Will preferred any building to the forest. Cheap paint puckered in the humid air, and the collar of his tunic itched and tugged at his sweat-slicked neck. Compulsively, he clasped the hilt of his claymore, a nervous tick he never bothered to hide.

But Robin, blast him, never showed his nerves. He simply charged into any situation with aplomb, verve, and a perfectly strategic plan. In fact, had Fang Bastardson been Robin's mortal enemy, the man would never have reached the dawn of his forty-sixth year.

Will shook free of the thought, narrowing his eyes to focus on the end of the corridor. His target. His destiny. Anger pushed blood through his body in furious circles, making a fog of sound and doubt. How his uncle would have fared, how he wound up on Christmas Island, how he'd traveled through time -- none of it mattered.

By Will Scarlet's sword, in the span of a heartbeat, Fang Bastardson would die.


As usual, Fang woke up sore in all the wrong places and wondering where the hell he was this time. Was it the Korn fan with all the piercings and the e…? Fang searched his memory, but all that came back were images of naked dwarves and red plastic cups of wine. Wincing as he sat upright, Fang shook the thought away and surveyed the alley until he located his clothes.

Shortly, pants on backwards and head pounding like minute 15 of a Tommy Lee drum solo – including the vertigo that accompanied being upside down for that long – Fang stumbled through the back door of the filthy pay-by-the-hour hotel he called home. He had to throw up before he went to work, and it was always better to do that over the disposal in the kitchen sink than the alley, if possible.

Despicable, disreputable swine that he was, if Fang had a saving grace, it would be his attention to punctuality. He pulled up outside the office he’d toiled in obscurity at these last eleven years and marveled at the poor construction of this sentence.

“Somebody’s pressed for time,” he assured no one in particular.

As Fang fumbled with his keys at his office entrance, he was at least grateful for the few moments of peace and quiet the darkened interior promised. As crazy as the Christmas Island Gazette could get during the day, he’d take his peace and quiet where and when he could find it, thank you.

Besides, the boss kept valium in his desk drawer, and this was as valium a morning as he could recall not wanting to recall.

Even in the darkness, Fang could walk the path to the lightswitch – conveniently located at the far end of the long, narrow corridor bisecting the shoebox-shaped office space into neat, becubicled halves – in his sleep, as he was demonstrating that morning.

Whack! Off came his head, while his body lurched forward on muscular memory alone, reaching and fumbling blindly around the surface of a light switch he could no longer feel.

Fang’s last thought, looking up at valiant Will Scarlet looming triumphantly over his severed head, was “Fuck… What’s with the tights? Have I just been killed by a ballerina?”