THE HARD WAY*
By Jon Millikin

When you cops find this note I’ll be long, long gone. I didn’t mean to do this, you see, and don’t feel I should spend my life in jail for it.

You see what happened was she was mocking my grammer. That and my spelling. It started with the motherfucking semi-colin. I know what the fuck it is, alright? It’s both a period and a comma and can do either job. Like a spork. I don’t know why they invented it, but thats cool with me and I find it very handy. But she told me I was misusing it. Some shit about “independent closets”. The bitch was fucking with me;

She told me she thinks I should pursue something else. That I’m not ‘destined’ to be a writer. Well I spent a fucking year on my first novel, “The Hard Way” and didn’t stop until it was complete; so what’s that make me? “The Hard Way” is about a guy like me that’s about my size and looks like me and will fuck your world up at the drop of a hat. And like I told her; you don’t crank out 330 thousand words in one year if your not a real writer.

So; I had her read it and in the next room I can hear her laughing after, like, only one or two minutes, and there is no funny shit in the first chapter. ‘The Hard Way’ dosen’t get really funny till chapter 72 when Glock catches the guy who has been kidnapping all the lemurs from the zoo where he works and he’s got them all in his apartment. See, because he’s got a hookup in the black market and he’s selling them. But the lemur guy is just a background charactor. Glock is the star. He’s a private detective-slash-hitman who was also trained by the CIA before he dropped out and went his own way. In The Hard Way he has to fight all kinds of dudes, including prominint members of Al-Quida who want him dead and will stop at nothing. But I will stop before I ruin it for you.

So finally I was tearing out my motherfucking hair and I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I went in there and asked her what was so goddamned funny. And she was just holding her face in both her hands and laughing so hard that she couldn’t sit up and I looked and she was still on PAGE ONE!!!! Well, she started telling me all this grammer and spelling shit, and laughing in my face about it at the same time, and I don’t know what happened to tell you the truth. The next I remember I was back in my office, next to my old typowriter, trying to clean the spots of blood off my manuscript.

So now I am going on the lamb, but I will be submitting The Hard Way to publishers from parts unknown because I’m not going to let her and her uppity fucking aditude take away my dreams. You wont catch me so don’t even try. I have not only invented Glock; but have learned a great deal from him. Look for “the Hard Way” out in hardCOVER by this time next year. Adios motherfuckers;

JON MILLIKIN is a stand-up comedian by night and a waiter … also by night. In the day he sleeps.


*"THE HARD WAY" was first printed in Out of the Gutter 4. It's a favorite of ours.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

HA-HA!

Wanda said...

What a hoot. Thanks for the laugh.
She was obviously a writing site member. The one with the ginormous ego who liked to rewrite the newbies.

The world is a safer place now. Guess she wasn't destined to critique. Darn it anyway. --Wanda

Jake said...

This is great. Grammar and usage humor mixed with pulp. I laughed out loud.

Brian said...

Loved it!

Jimmy Callaway said...

Another one I remember from OOTG #4, probably my favorite issue. Fuck that bitch, what's she know anyways;