Journal Entry: The Widow’s Tongue Date: July 19; Time: 01:14 am; Location: The Widow’s Tongue, somewhere off Highway 25E
The door creaked open like it hated to be touched. Inside, the Widow’s Tongue was steeped in neon rot. Red lights above the bar. Green lights over the jukebox.
Everything else was cigarette butts and low-slung eyes, like the place had been built out of grudges and broken dreams. A place where dead men drank with their killers.
The patrons went quiet as the masked figure stepped inside. Tall, built for retribution with a matte-black combat vest over carbon-fiber armor. A skull-shaped helmet sat upon his head — the Mask of Black Death.
Someone muttered, “Ain’t Halloween.”
Frank Bolan, aka the Black Death, didn’t acknowledge the comment. He was on a mission. Reliable intel said the Scorpion had been here… maybe he still was.
His heavy boots echoed off warped floorboards as he moved past a pool table and three men too drunk to know fear. His eyes locked on the bartender, thick-necked ex-con with a spiderweb tattoo on his wrist. The man stiffened when he saw Black Death walking towards him and instinctively reached below the bar for his sawed-off shotgun.
The bartender was too slow, as Frank’s arm shot across the bar like lightning. He grabbed a fistful of beard and slammed the bartender’s head down onto the hard wood. A shot glass exploded beneath his face. Blood leaked across the bar like a spilled drink.
“Where’s the Scorpion?” Frank growled from behind the mask.
The bartender spat blood. “Never heard of him.”
Frank drove his head into the bar again. Harder. “Try again.”
“Screw you, man. I don’t know anyone named Scorpion,” the bartender said between spitting glass and blood from his cracked mouth.
Then the jukebox went silent and five bouncers stood up from a table in the far corner. All muscle, leather, and bad tattoos. Knuckles popped. One grinned.
“Too bad,” Frank said, as he released the bartender, letting him slump into a moaning pile.
The first bouncer lunged, brass knuckles gleaming. Frank caught his wrist mid-swing and twisted until bone snapped like brittle wood. A savage knee to the ribs, and Frank tossed him sideways into a table that shattered into splinters.
Two more rushed him. One from behind. Frank spun, grabbed a barstool with one hand, and cracked it across the rear attacker’s face, sending teeth clattering across the floor.
The other, an eyepatch-wearing goon, jabbed a switchblade into Frank’s back but it glanced off the armor.
Frank answered with an elbow to the throat. The man dropped like a sack of meat.
The last two circled.
“Come on, maggots, make your move.” Frank snarled.
One charged with a metal chain, swinging wild. Frank ducked as it whistled overhead, then swept the man’s legs, flipping him into the air before he landed headfirst with a sickening thud.
The last man hesitated, which costed him an eye when Black Death smashed him across the face with a glass bottle.
Frank looked down at the bloodied bartender, who was still groaning. “Now do you remember the Scorpion?”
“He was here thirty minutes ago,” the man gasped. “Left on a green Viper motorcycle. Headed north.”
Frank kicked him in the face for good measure, then turned toward the parking lot.
The night air was thick with heat and moonlight as Frank walked toward his custom matte black Harley with twin exhausts and reinforced armor. He was halfway there when he heard it.
A scream … high-pitched and muffled.
He turned — just in time to see the back doors of a semi-truck slam shut. A woman inside banged frantically against the tiny square window, her hands bloodied from pounding.
“HELP ME! PLEASE! HE’S GOT MY SISTERS—!”
One response to “Entry 2: The Hunt for the Scorpion”
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