Tough Guy

Tough Guy
By James Cerveny

Thoughts welled up in his mind like hot lava.  The geology of his face entered the volcanic era.  He tendered thoughts of killing a lot of people simultaneously, beginning with himself.  “And there’ll be more after that,” he sneered with his Best Western bravado.

    He had colored all the swirling shadows encapsulating the multifarious cadavers of varying degrees mauve, and, laughing good-naturedly, mentally condemned to death all who begged to differ.  He considered himself to be a tough guy.

    Remember all those movies, where a tough guy (always really stupid and morally bereft) loses out to the smart, funny, much wimpier guy?

    Are those movies un-American?  I don’t see that sort of thing happening here at all, he thought, as he performed katas with the noomchuks and thanked God that he had long ago transcended any  last vestige of wimpishness, thank God!

    The next day, he was at Ralph’s Burgers ordering a double cheeseburger with fries, onion rings and a small chocolate shake.  “So what if I get a heart attack,” he thought aloud.  “Who’d give a shit?”

    He paid $3.29 for his meal.  The author of this piece was subsequently sued for false advertising.

    Subsistence farming was the last thing on his mind, when the door exploded with a dull thud that deafened the jaws of a generation.  “Holy Prometheus,” he said with what was left of his mind rusting in the wind, warranty expired, aggressively lackadaisical, wanting not.

    But he could not sustain these thoughts for long, for he was a tough guy.