When Shadows Rise | II: The Count

Ch. 1 | God Shits In My Dinner

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NEW YORK CITY, YEAR 2016

Casey

Casey thought one of the perks of not being super religious was that he didn't believe in karma. He didn't believe there was an equalizing force out there that made feelings follow the law of physics. If such a thing like a balance scale existed, wouldn't there be less good people getting fucked over by the selfish and powerful? Wouldn't ninety-nine percent of the people in charge not be around for long? Wouldn't God stop shitting in innocent people's dinner for most of their lives? Like Casey's dinner, for example?

He was getting ahead of himself. First, he had to hop into a time machine, go back eight years and take a peek into the old mindset he grew up with. The mindset where, even if he had little to no interest in going to church and praying to the almighty Jesus Christ, he still believed this: the bad guys get what's coming to them, the good guys get rewarded; karma. A mindset he knew he had nothing to thank for other than the cops and robbers shows he would watch on Saturday mornings.

Sure, there was yet for 'the bad guys' in his life to pay what they owed and it was past due for Casey to be 'rewarded' for having to shovel so much shit out of his dinner plate, but the cosmic energy of the universe would take care of it, right? That despite having his fair share of crappy luck, it would even itself out, right?

But that was exactly the thing. It wouldn't even itself out. Why? Because this was Casey Fucking Jones. He figured he had to be cursed from the moment he was born because there was no way his luck was this bad.

God shitting in his dinner took the form as him holding on for dear life in the back of a kidnapper van, holding a duffel bag close to his chest as if he were guarding it with his life (which was funny to say, since those were his instructions), and wondering why the hell he went along with any of this in the first place.

Note: when he said 'kidnapper van', he didn't exactly mean he was being kidnapped or that the van itself looked anything like a kidnapper van. The van was the most popular kind of van kidnappers and robbers alike preferred in the movies— a Chevy Express Cargo Van, but Casey remembered the outside looking like it was a service van for a Catholic school or a daycare with the letters on the side painted in disgustingly bright neon colors and a Jesus fish.

On the inside, however, the barrier separating the front two seats from the rest of the van (along with a metal guard rail behind the two front seats) and window guards were measures to insure Casey couldn't strangle either the driver or passenger or even jump out the window. It was starting to look like Casey was a victim of kidnap after all.

THUD! BANG! Casey surrendered to gravity and slid back and forth like a ping-pong ball, whacking his head against the steel surface. By Gandolf's Beard, was the driver trying to get everyone killed here? Oh, wait a minute. . .

Casey glared daggers in the direction of the two hooligans up front, who were busy chatting away as if they didn't have a human life stashed in the back with their precious cargo. "Will you guys please drive a little more slower? Some of us can't die before meeting Scarlett Johansson."

The conversation of foreign chatter paused for a second, as if the driver and his friend momentarily remembered they weren't the only ones putting their lives at risk with the driver's reckless driving, but then the chatter resumed.