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Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Sortmind Press
ISBN-10: 169700427X
Pages: 154
Copyright: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN-13: 9781697004274
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Berserk at missing his five hundredth point in a row, psychopathic Junior Dropout Basketball League star Billy Bolamme kills a taunting radio announcer with hand grenades, then blows up an entire sports arena to erase all witnesses to his crime. But his fame and luck can only grow as he joins shamanic forces with Guenevere “Universe” Ryder, fellow high school dropout, art gallery receptionist, and unwitting accomplice to thirty thousand murders.
Art gallery receptionist and high school dropout Guenevere "Universe" Ryder watches her sixteen-year-old boyfriend, star center Billy Bolamme, curse out fellow players, commit dozens of fouls, and punch out referees who challenge him. Dan Ryder, Uni’s father and the Bolammes main announcer, and Frank Chester, Dan’s younger sidekick, playfully discuss their prejudice for the home team, the Billy Bolammes, over the public address system.
Billy is huge, meaty, and psychopathic. He wears camouflage shorts with a dozen hand grenades at his belt. His father Hiram, coach of the team, is an ineffectual, dreamy art gallery owner who started the Junior Dropout Basketball League with his wife Madeline, director of the Bolamme Center for Hurt Feelings.
Raging at insults from the announcers, Billy throws a basketball through their glass booth, injuring Dan. When a backup player crosses him, Billy gives him one of his grenades along with a request to sneak a beer out to the court. As Billy scores sixty-six points in a row, a muffled explosion signals Wally Raphael’s death in the locker room.
Before a game at Baltimore with the Bazookas, Billy plants five Billy Bolamme Supreme basketballs by a natural gas line in the Dreamsong Arena basement. He starts the game with 450 points in a row, but at 498, he misses a three-pointer and rages at the crowd.
Frank Chester, announcing in the absence of the injured Dan Ryder, ridicules Billy’s resulting temper tantrum over the P.A. system. Billy batters Chester, ties him up, and leaves him to stare at two hand grenades wirelessly connected to Billy’s basketball. When Billy goes to the court and completes two baskets, Chester’s booth explodes. Then, to eliminate all witnesses, Billy triggers the Billy Bolamme Supreme basketballs stored in the Dreamsong basement by the gas lines.
Excerpt
Last night she’d gone over to see Gail and Karla. They hadn’t dropped out of school, but they seemed glad to be around Uni. Maybe they thought they were there to ease her back into civilization. Uni had pulled out her tablet to play DoomReilers of Mars, but Karla insisted they play her brother’s old board game of Risk. The point was to conquer the world with your little plastic armies. Rolling the dice to see which army would win.
She wanted to be away from Billy anyway, so she’d played this stupid game, even though none of them knew the rules and they had to keep reading them aloud to make sense of them. Karla said Russell played in tournaments and had explained it to her once, so she knew enough to get them started.
Uni was the yellow army. She was like the Napoleon guy they were reading about when she’d dropped out. She rolled the dice and she was Ms. Aggressive and she conquered most of the world straight out. Gail and Karla really thought she was being a bitch. Man, she was wiping them out! But then they all saw what was going to develop from there. Before too long Uni was too thin on the ground, strung out all over the world, and finally they penned her up in Australia and destroyed her.
Was Billy the same thing? Rolling the dice? Yellow armies conquering the world? Was she just like Billy? Didn’t they both blast away to grab whatever they could? But at least Billy was hers now. No one could do him as she did. Not Cimmara, not anyone.
Did Billy really not know that he’d been the major force in Universe’s life since February 19th, the day they’d waited in the rain at the high school basketball court for the Pharmacist and his drugs? She’d never thought he’d notice her because he was always hanging with Cimmara, arm around her shoulder, fingers dangling over her giantess boobs.
Uni would never have taken a job at his father’s art gallery if it weren’t for the chance of seeing him now and then. The problem was, as Billy later told her, he hated the art gallery and would never set foot there unless he absolutely had to. Two and a half weeks ago he’d finally showed up, needing Hiram to sign something. Hiram had no idea what was about to happen, no idea that when Billy drove her home he’d reach inside her art gallery receptionist dress and fondle her breasts, no idea that they’d screw in the back seat of his car.
How had she gotten into this? How had everything come up so suddenly? How could she sit here and take it?
One day she’d been on mesc and Billy was on acid and they were laughing about her mother of all things. She was trying to explain how much she loved her mother’s library. “It’s not just a library,” she’d told him. “It’s a library school library.” He had no idea what she was saying. She said her mom was the dean of the library school, but that just made him laugh harder. She told him about the miles and miles of old encyclopedias they kept there even though nobody in their right mind would ever use them now that they had the Internet, but she couldn’t pronounce the word encyclopedia to save her life. She always had trouble pronouncing things when she got dizzy.
They’d laughed about encyclowhatever until they could hardly breathe. She tried to get across to Billy how much they needed civilization. That the old library school library was really an important thing. It was so dark, with those weird low metal mesh ceilings. She’d even told him she wanted to go back to school. They were tripping and she was telling him she’d liked school! He’d thought she was nuts. All he’d wanted to do was bang her.
There was no way to control Billy! What was she thinking?
A deafening buzzer cut though Uni’s thoughts.
“The--the game!” she gasped. “I forgot all about the game!”
“It’s over!” Hiram laughed. “We won, 131-34. Billy scored 106 points.”
“And the last sixty-six all in a row--no misses!” Billy said, coming to Uni for a wet hug.
“That--that’s great …” Uni said. “I--I’ve been flying, I guess!”
Without any drugs? Did that mean she was losing it? What had been going through her brain all this time?
“Huh,” said Billy. “It’s a lotta damn points in a row, if you ask me.”
“Sixty-six!” Neil Wilson said, moving for the locker room. “He was in the goddamn zone.”
“Hell yeah. I was tripping my brains out the whole time. No way I could miss. I just kept connecting--through this magical arc--the ball’d leave my hands and I knew, I just knew--”
“Well, it calls for a celebration,” Hiram said. “Pizza and beer for everyone at Mushroom Paradise!”
“And LSD! Everyone’ll be in the goddamn zone!”
“I … I don’t know,” Uni said. “Maybe I’ll just walk home … my dad, you know. Gotta see if he’s okay … I’m so dizzy all of a sudden.”
“Crap, I’m outa acid,” Billy said, unscrewing a hand grenade and shaking nothing into his palm. He turned to Universe. “Honey, call up the Pharmacist and see if he can’t refill my goddamn prescription tonight, will ya?”
“I … I … I’m really … I don’t know …”
Hiram pulled her aside and whispered, gazing so far down her undone blouse she was sure he could see her braless nipples: “Oh, please do come drink some beer with us, Guenevere. You have no idea how thrilling you look tonight.”
She shook her head. “Not--not here! Not--not now!”
Neil Wilson came screaming out of the locker room. “Oh my God! Oh my God! There--there’s something--there’s meat in there! Meat everywhere! Something blew up!”
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