The Big Purple Book of Badass Stories 2021

By Purple Wall Publishing

The Big Purple Book of Bad Ass Stories- 2021 is a collection of all the monthly tournament winners and honorable mentions as chosen by the editors during 2020. It features the work of Moses Utomi, Saul Lemerond, Cheryl King, Sofía Aguilar, Will Borger, Jack T. Canis, Brian Birnbaum, M.J. Beehm, William Wandless, David Pearce, M.T. Malih

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purple Wall Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578932088

Book preview

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Volume 1

The Big Purple Book of Bad Ass Stories

A collection of editor’s choices, honorable mentions, and monthly tournament winners from Purplewallstories.com which were published during 2020.

Editorial Committee

Carrol Phillips

Chaz Hager

Benjamin T. Lambright

Cover Design

Benjamin T. Lambright

©Benjamin T. Lambright

All Rights Reserved

www.purplewallstories.com

ISBN: 9780578932095

Purple Wall Stories

Contents

Moses Utomi, CARL, THE LAST DRAGON 3

Saul Lemerond, A NATURAL EXTENSION OF INNER SILENCE 14

Cheryl King, BAPTISM BY FIRE 18

Sofía Aguilar, BED 22

Will Borger, THE STORY OF THAT TIME AL RALSTEIN... 25

Jack T. Canis, TUESDAY MORNING 33

Brian Birnbaum, SPIT 38

M.J. Beehm, MONOLOGUE TO A FALLEN COMPANION 49

William Wandless, ADMIRAL SPATTERJACK’S... 52

David Pearce, PIRATES 65

M.T. Maliha, PETER PICKLE 76

Dutch Simmons, RELEASE 89

P.R. Doyle, OUR DEMANDS: SHORTER WORKING HOURS... 92

Amee Fisher, STOPLIGHTS AT DUSK 97

Lindsay Rae, KING 100

The Big Purple Book of Bad Ass Stories- 2021

CARL, THE LAST DRAGON

by Moses UtomI

Champion. August 2020

Oh no, oh no, oh geez…

Carl patted his pockets and rummaged through his glove compartment. Nothing. He must’ve left his allergy medication at home. Ohh…Stupid Carl. Stupid, stupid Carl!

He sighed, gazed out the window of his parallel-parked Fiat. The restaurant looked amazing. It reminded him of the architecture of 17th century France, even though it was an Italian restaurant. Humans did that a lot. They had bad memories and short lives, so they got confused easily, the poor things. Their historical accounts were a mishmash of truth and falsehoods, confusing things that happened in one era with another, one part of the world with the other.

They’d recently invented a similar thing called file sharing, though, a technological version of how dragons biologically kept history. Maybe their records would actually be accurate from now on.

No, Carl said. It sounded flat in the empty car. Not a dragon. You’re a human, Carl. Not a dragon. He nodded and reminded himself a few more times.

What had he been doing? Oh right, he—

His phone buzzed. Not many people had his number so it always made him anxious when he got a text message. He picked it out of the cup holder and flipped (yes, flipped; he’d never understood the big deal about smartphones when he could get on the Internet on his home computer, with a normal-sized screen and a mouse to click links; it was so much easier) it open.

No text. Which made him a little sad. He’d been living among humans for hundreds (maybe thousands, actually—he’d lost count) of years, but he still didn’t really understand how to connect with them properly. It was easier in writing, where he couldn’t be distracted by their vocal tones and facial expressions and things like that. The era of the telegram had been interactive bliss, but then the telephone came along and ruined everything. Thankfully, text messaging had been invented. He didn’t have any friends to practice communication with, but sometimes he’d text a random number and see what happened. Every time he got a response, it was like Yule. But he hadn’t gotten a text now. Instead, the buzz had been his meeting reminder. Specifically, the alarm he set after his regular alarm.

Oh no, oh geez… He’d gotten lost in his head again and now he was late. He fled the car, rushed around it to head into the restaurant before coming to a full and sudden halt. He sucked in his breath, eyes wide as teacups.

Oh no…

Daisies. Bushes of them. Bushes and bushes and bushes of them, a daisy-laced catwalk leading up to the restaurant door. Carl stared in revulsion, suppressing the bubble of flame that welled in his belly, urging him to roast their entire daisy army. In his perfect dragon body, allplants had played the same non-existent role in his life. He couldn’t even tell one from another. But human bodies were frail (also, he needed to read more human biology books; he always messed something up). He’d grown tired of the tight muscles and hormone surges of a youthful body, so this one was a bit older, a bit softer and easily tired. It also had severe, crippling allergies. Innocent daisies became white-petaled landmines waiting to detonate, an explosion of pollen-shrapnel that shredded his sinuses, blunted his throat, stabbed his lungs like a unicorn horn.

He held the breath, puffing his cheeks with air, and speed-walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Daisies. When he reached the restaurant door, he dashed in and emptied his lungs, bent over, panting, face flushed.

What kind of place would plant daisies outside? Humans were so stupid sometimes. If he owned a restaurant, he wouldn’t have plants at all, much less daisies. He’d have a ranch out front, full of (moderately) intelligent life, tigers and sloths and crows, and maybe a giant tank for the smart aquatic animals like dolphins and octopi. Actually… maybe no dolphins. They were almost as bad as unicorns. But octopi, for sure. They were smarter than humans, in a lot of ways. Humans were like ants—dumb as individuals, but smart in big numbers. Octopi were more like dragons, solitary and brilliant. A shame they couldn’t stay above land very long. All the fun stuff happened above land, especially in the sky.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spread his wings and taken flight. The spell to return to his dragon body was much simpler than the one to create a human one, but he had to play it smart. It was too risky to fly around nowadays. Humans had planes everywhere and where there were no planes they were always shooting their phallus-shaped weapons at each other.

Never mind flying, it was too risky to simply exist in his real body. They inhabited almost the entire planet, humans did. He remembered when they were less than a thousand, a few small bands of upjumped monkeys. Incredible species, really. He never would have thought that they would be the ones to survive when so many others—manticores, griffins, satyrs and the sort—had died off. They even had a presence where they didn’t physically exist, with satellites circling the planet and cities goose bumped with cameras. If he ever tried to retire to a frigid Siberian cave or a molten peak along the Ring of Fire, it was only a matter of time before a government task force showed up, or, worse, he ended up on some backpacker’s YouTube channel.

Carl?

He unbent rapidly, and then stumbled sideways as the blood rushed out of his head.

Stupid Carl…stupid, stupid Carl. He stabilized and his vision returned from black, revealing the image of a human female.

Oh Adelinda, hi, he mumbled, fumbling through the pockets of his coat for a napkin. He felt sweaty and flustered and couldn’t think of anything charming to say or do. Also, she was really beautiful. Well, human-beautiful. He’d been in a human body for so long that he had come to appreciate their apelike beauty. She had symmetrical features, full lips, thick, glossy hair; all signs of fertility. She wasn’t perfect, though. She had a serpentine slenderness to her that made her look frail, prone to sickness. He liked her sleek features, but it probably devalued her stock with human males. They preferred fleshier women, from what he understood. They wrote songs about it.

Hi, I’m late, he continued. I mean, I know you’re busy. So I’m sorry. You like to sit? Would you like to sit?

He dabbed away the dampness on his forehead, still breathing like a dog. This was a terrible experiment; his next body would be in better shape. She gave him a strange look, but then smiled gently and took the arm he’d forgotten to offer. I’d love to, she said.

The host came and walked them over to their table. Carl gazed around the restaurant, watching all the humans eat and laugh and engage in nonverbal communication—relentlessly social creatures. Dragons left their mothers as soon as they could breathe fire and only saw other dragons when mating, but humans… they were drawn to each other, always forming families and tribes, towns and states and nations full of people. Not based on genetic closeness like ants or dominance hierarchies like wolf packs, just based on…

Sense of humor, maybe.

Walking to a table at a high-class restaurant with a beautiful (for a human) woman on his arm, Carl began to feel more at ease. His breathing slowed to normal, his sheen of sweat receded under the air conditioner. What was there to be nervous about? He rarely interacted with the humans he lived among, but it couldn’t be that hard. And a human date was just a dragon mating dance, but with less threat of burns. He could do this!

The host sat them at a table for two, across from each other. He smiled.

She smiled back.

It was their first date, but they’d sent so many messages back and forth on Match.com that he felt like he already knew her. She was a pharmacist—divorced and childless. Her favorite movie was Godzilla (he wasn’t sure how he felt about that) and her favorite band was Maroon 5 (which he loved). They’d spent several messages talking about how much the band had sold out. Maroon 5 had always been mainstream, but Hands All Over was still funky and insightfulenough to be a good listen. Since Overexposed, however, they’d made nothing but money- grubbing pop, with generic lyrics and recycled melodies. It wasn’t like they were hurting for cash. Adam Levine was on that singing reality show that won all the Emmys, and every time Carl went to their concerts, the seats were filled. Musicians nowadays liked to complain about digital downloading and used that as justification for putting out gratuitous amounts of mediocre music, but Carl could remember times when musicians understood what they were: beggars.

They were beggars with a gift and they understood that it was a privilege to live off others in exchange for a service that no one needed, but still appreciated. Antolicus of Athens had never tried to copyright his songs. Mbembe had played shows for free on a weekly basis, just so people could enjoy her voice. All artists—musicians, painters, writers, sculptors—knew their role, back in the day. Well, except for Shakespeare. That guy was the worst. Couldn’t write his way out of a glade of fairies, but always went on and on about how great he was. Carl had watched some of his plays when they debuted, and they’d all just been re-tellings of other stories, but with a ghost or poison or some gimmicky twist thrown in. Human souls didn’t reincarnate, but Carl had always suspected that Billy Shakespeare had come back as that Indian American man who wrote The Sixth Sense.

He hadn’t said a