Free Going Shogun by Ernie Lindsey

It was such a simple concept at that age.  You
sleep beside each other, you’re married.  You eat at the same table with each
other at least once a day, you’re married. 
    You fight over the red Crayon,
you’re married.
    April . 
    She had brown hair.
    I turn to Bingo.  She has jet-black,
purple-highlighted hair.  She’s also got her eyes closed.  No, not just closed,
they’re cemented shut, blocking out the moment, holding in the tears that
should be falling.  Her lips are moving and for a moment I think she’s so scared
she’s gone C-status on me right here, talking to herself, huddled up against
the door of a neon-green hunk of meaningless, meaningless metal.  It has parts,
thousands of parts.  Plastic ones, metal ones, cloth ones.  You push on a piece
of hard rubber, which feeds $25-per-gallon gas into a combustion engine and it
moves you from one place to the next.  Lifeless.  Pointless.
    Unfeeling.
    It’s an object.  We put so much
emphasis on objects. 
    What happened to flying cars?  Where
are they?
    Hell, what happened to walking?
    This car, this Machine ,it’s
a soulless object, unlike God’s perfect purple-haired creature huddled against
it. 
    God .
    Then I realize Bingo is praying.  I
can barely make out the words to The Board’s Prayer, which was instituted
immediately after Church and State were desegregated decades ago.
    “To preserve the sanctity of faith
and justice,” The Board says.
    I should probably be doing the same
but there’s no time.  I feel like I’ve been here for hours, talking to myself,
thinking about poetry and pigtails from past lives, but as I turn back to the
screaming horde, they haven’t reached the edge of The Minotaur’s building yet.
    So far, so close.
    The moment you give up is a heavy
one.  Resignation hovers over you, waiting for permission, and then it settles,
wrapping itself around you like a pitch-black blanket, like a thousand-pound shroud
made of Wishful Thinking’s Blackberry Onion Remoulade.
    I take a deep breath, readying
myself with grit and gristle.
    In the next instant, rescue materializes
in the form of a bucktoothed waiter.
    I don’t know where he comes from,
but out of the corner of my eye I see Forklift, literally flying parallel to
the ground headfirst, arms outstretched like that guy from the comics with the
blue body suit and red cape, as he hurls himself into the pack.  He’s like one
of those flower power eco-bombs that some eco-Nazis blew up over Detroit awhile
back and turned the Motor City into the Green City.
    They scream and trip and fall and
stumble over each other and turn into a wailing, writhing mass of bodies trying
regain their footing, trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong. 
    All but one. 
    Forklift left the ten-pin standing. 
Or running, rather, and he’s coming straight at us.  I take one quick glance at
Bingo.  She’s got a hint of hope on her face.  Empowered by Forklift’s heroics
and my desire to protect her, I power-launch myself out of the gate toward
Ten-Pin. 
    I’m only two steps closer to him
when I hear a soft zip through the air and his left temple turns into Krakatoa
and releases a foggy red eruption.  He falls face-first, inert, as his head
hammers Death into the concrete.
    What was that?  Where did it come
from?
    I look to my right, then up at The
Minotaur’s window.  He’s leaning out, holding something.
    A slingshot, probably bought on RollerNinja,
with what has to be exploding pellets. 
    He lets another shot of ammo fly and
shouts, “Go!”
    I pull Bingo up and ask if she’s
okay.  She says she’s fine, then sees the icky brain goo of the Roxyhead a few
feet away and immediately begins to dry-heave.
    Over in the mass of bodies, Forklift
effortlessly throws some surprisingly accurate elbows and kicks, taking out a
couple of highboys in the process, then hops up to his feet like he just
finished tying his shoes and is ready to head out for a light jog through