A car pulls up. A man steps out.  The man starts to talk.

"Friends, now seems like a good time to announce the NEW WRITING COMPETITION.  400 - 600 words, the subject is FAMOUS DUELS THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE WITHIN THE CITIES THAT WE LIVE IN.  So that we are clear, I mean the cities that we can travel to as part of the little families that we are part of here.  Nowhere else...

Closing date and time is on Wednesday, at 9pm.

There is a three person judging panel: CoconutRandy, NotoriousBIG and one more to be confirmed.

The prize is a cool $20M!!!

I've left a copy of these rules on this lamppost.  Make a paper copy of your speech and attach it below the rules, and the judges will read it and announce the winner."

The man stops talking, gets into the car, and is driven away.

Neil looks at the lampost, then looks at the sign above obviously supplied by city hall stating 'Post No Bills' and wonders how long before the cleaning crew come around with buckets of soapy water and brushes to wash the posters off and into the gutter, were some may believe they belong. Regardless of this, he wonders how successful this competition will be given at the absolute clusterfuck the previous competition turned into, the good Commissioner's reputation had obviously taken a bad knock by refusing to pay out to people as advertised, so would anyone waste their time by writing out stories and sticking them to a random streetlight where they might just blow away. If that happened would Zvevrev pay out the $20,000,000 or would he simple offer a token payment to someone else and blame city hall for it all?

Neil shrugged to himself before noticing a half smoked Morley^TM lying in the gutter. Picking it up he lights it before walking off whistling a merry tune of his own devising.

Destro watches Neil_Anblomi put a cigarette butt that he picked up out of a street puddle in his mouth and laughs at him. He shakes his head. Disgusting.

Neil sees some jumped up little cafone Porca puttana laughing at him and simple shrugs, not everyone in this life had it easy, after all, he was just a poor boy from a poor family, doing what it took to get by, but at least he had manners, his momma had always taught him manners, and no matter how much money some folks had, they would always just be peasant pig whores.

CommissarZverev and Blackboard were cooling off following a verbal altercation in the Streets. Blackboard had chastised Zverev once again for taking the initiative to making the streets bristle with life, activity, and conspiring to disbursing the wealth of the Iron Bank towards amazing philanthropic work and causes.

Zverev, once again admonished for making the world a better place, knew that there was only one resolution to this campaign of slanderous affronts to the honor of Zverev, the Iron Bank, and even the Soviet State. Zverev arranged for the following telegram to be delivered to Blackboard in the most diplomatic and friendly of fashions and tones.

“Blackboard,

I am weary of the campaign of slander from you.  I have issued you a duel.  Let us decide.  If I fall, my won will return and he will expect the hand of friendship from you and your city.

If you fall, your son can expect the same.”

“Hah, if you think I would have any respect towards or even have the slightest hint of remorse in killing some puny Man of Honor or philanthropic banker, you’re highly mistaken. I accept.” Blackboard cackled to himself in delight. Blackboard readied and cleaned his gun while accepting Zverev’s challenge in anticipation of the joys of making this world a quieter and duller place.

The time had come. Both participants agreed to the duel. The fight was on!

Zverev and Blackboard were on opposing ends of a field of scrap and ruin, still in a state of disrepair following the last Great War. Zverev and Blackboard had their guns ready to take that fatal shot. Zverev was scouting for Blackboard, and Blackboard was doing the same for Zverev. Blackboard had hanged mirrors within gaps inside mounds of rubble, to reflect light and distract but Zverev knew better. Zverev was no stranger to dirty tactics and oppression, the journals from his forefathers had taught him greatly.

Zverev knew that the secret to Blackboard’s demise would be his pride and arrogance. Zverev moved inside one of the ruins of one of the high-rise houses along this battlefield. Zverev took off a fedora, and affixed it to a piece of string. Zverev raised the fedora ever so slightly along the frame of a window, clear in view from the outside.

BANG!

The fedora dropped to the ground. Blackboard had taken his shot, and therefore the bait. Blackboard had given away his position, outsmarted by Zverev, and was now moving to confirm the kill.

Zverev maneuvered out of the building and onto the open ground. Blackboard was moving towards the complex, moving in between two sets of trains stopped along the track. As Blackboard took his next step, he realized his mistake. Blackboard felt the cold gaze stare into his brain, Blackboard could feel that the gaze was the feeling of his doom. Blackboard accepted his fate, and took off his hat, and turned to his side to meet and accept Death as his equal. As Blackboard turned to his left, he gave one final nod to Zverev, now standing at the ready with his rifle.

With that last ringing shot that echoed through the world, the duel between CommissarZverev and Blackbeard had ended, with CommissarZverev as the winner.

Intern Grinbini listened again to CommissarZverev announcing another contest. The prize money of $20,000,000 seemed to be obscene considering he had been unable to cover the prize fund in the previous contest that was $2,000,000 less. Regardless, Grinbini was always trying to impress his bosses and a hefty donation would help. He scrawled his entry and attached it to the lamppost below the rules.

"Here's my entry, you bastard." He said to nobody.

It was a cold day in the middle of summer. The sun was shining and a young Grinbini wore an often patched coat to keep the rain from soaking him through. He wiped the sweat from his head and wondered if life would always be this hard. He hadn't yet established himself as an Intern of some renown at The Coconut Chronicle, he was just a young man, weighed down by a long arduous life as a civilian, standing on a street corner.

Moments later SHOTS WERE FIRED. Grinbini ducked for cover and hobbled towards the perceived shelter of a nearby alleyway. Having reached it, he peaked out to see what was occurring. He saw two men facing each other. It looked like SideshowBob a flamboyant mobster out of Detroit who had a reputation as an Earner for his crew. Opposite him was Supreme1, not to be confused with any of the other Supremes, known as a Wise Guy in Philly. 

"I challenge you to a duel!" Supreme1 squealed. It was hard to hear him as he had a skull for a head. 

"I accept!" Yelled SideshowBob so quietly Grinbini had to strain his ears to hear him.

Grinbini couldn't see anything. He watched as they flipped a coin, Supreme1 announcing clearly "heads" which was barely audible. The coin landed, heads up and Supreme1 smiled. He pulled the trigger 5 times. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG, the gun went and Grinbini covered his ears from the terrible sound. He shut his eyes and looked up to see the shooter striding towards him. Grinbini buried himself further amongst the garbage in the alley, hoping he wasn't seen, as he got a clear look at the man's face. You could say he was the witness to a FAMOUS DUEL THAT HAS TAKEN PLACE WITHIN THE CITIES THAT WE LIVE IN.  

"They got me!!!" SideshowBob yelled to the now deserted street. Obi-Wan Sideshow slumped against the wall of a coffeshop, where the owner was quickly yanking down his shutters, slowly covering the windows, leaving them open to let a breeze in. Bob moaned again until another man stepped forward. Where he had been before, Grinbini could only guess, but now he stood just feet apart from Sideshow, all the way across the other side of the street. He looked remarkably like the man who had slain Obi-Wan previously.

Grinbini recalled what was said that day.

"This was a Detroit matter, Obi-Wan," the man had yelled softly to the fallen former right hand. Obi-Wan had moaned but seemed incapable of further speech. 

"You bastard!" Obi-Wan had said. "Why did you do this? You shouldn't have in-" 

Having thought long and hard about it, well about as long as it took to smoke the old stogie he had found, short, but not too big around, Neil decided to enter the good Commissar's competition, $20 million which if he won would go straight to BringMeLuck without taxation or tithe, would go a long way to redressing the books in his favour. Having nothing better to adhere his composition to the lamp post with, he scraped up a piece of chewing gum off the pavement, and gave it a quick chew before attaching it to the metal upright and sticking his entry to that. It might not be the best entry, and it may or may not have been written on the back of San Izal toilet paper.

Please Note that the names have been Changed to protect the innocent, and me from Defamation of character.

It was raining in the city on the bay.

A hard rain. Hard enough to wash the slime out of the streets and back into the holes they crawled out of. The radiator behind Chalk_Eraser cracked and popped as it fought the valiant fight to keep the cold and damp out of the office. Beyond the single pane window, the deep sounds of a far-off ship's horn echoed through the fog and rain, crying out like a lost animal in the night.

He loved the city, every stinking thing about it. Being a Right Hand Man for one of the cities top Don's was no easy task, but our plucky hero performed his duties admirably. It had been brought to Chalk's attention that another so called man of honour, lets call him Cook-ee, had suffered a major blow to his reputation, a reputation that some disavowed completely whilst other simple said was unwarranted. Allegations of misappropriation of funds, gambling addictions, bad investments, breaches of City ordinance, Midget orgies and the like had been circling Cook-ee for days, but the straw that finally broke the camels back for Chalk was when Cook-ee welshed on his debts. Anyone could suffer financial hardship, but to completely disavow your debtors was a sin worthy of a whole new level of Hell itself. So Chalk took Cook-ee to task, publicly berating him for his misanthropy and lack of testicular fortitude.

Cook-ee for his part, had been having a pretty shit day. He'd been copping flack from all sides, in the streets, in the papers, he was hitlisted numerous times by persons unknown, even his own boss was getting close to taking him for a drive out into the desert. So what did Cook-ee do? What could he do? He issued a general challenge to all comers, face me in one on one combat, and we shall let the fates decide who is right in this thing. You see, Cook-ee may only have had a Colt 45 M1911a1 chambered for .22 rounds, but he knew that his time with the Iron family financial institution had purchased him a metric fuck ton of well trained bodyguards. Yes I know this is the 30s and the Metric system isn't in use, but nobody understands long tons anymore. 

Chalk, though was a man of action, a man of courage, and a man of integrity. He knew the odds where against him, but this was his chance to take the pretender to task, to end his cruel reign for once and for all, and perhaps put him in the ground. Late that cold and wet November evening, the two men met in the streets. Now, what most folks don't realise is that most gun battles take place at close range, far closer than 30 yards, and the majority of shots miss. This isn't like your heroes in the Matinees, killing people from 200 yards away with a single shot, this was down and dirty shooting. In total 18 shots were fired by both men, Cook-ee's inability to hit keeping Chalk alive, and Chalk's inability to shoot through the Armies of Darkness keeping Cook-ee alive. It was on shot 17 that Cook-ee finally scored some luck. Some say it was a lucky ricochet, some say that it was just the law of averages, but regardless, Cook-ee's final shot hit its target, Chalk's going wide of the mark as he fell dead in the street. Cook-ee was shocked and fled from the scene, the fight or flight dynamic being that strong when your central nervous system dumps that much Adrenalin into your body. It was only much later, when he had calmed down, and changed out of his soiled under garments, that Cook-ee felt he was able to gloat about his survival. But we knew, we all knew how close he'd come to dying that day.

When the rain stopped, the boulevard dried and the snakes once again slunk from their holes. That's when my door opens and the helpless, the desperate, walk through with a heart full of hurt and a pocket full of nothing. The rain unearths half-forgotten feelings the same way it digs up sleeping bones in shallow unmarked graves. It had been that kind of day for both Chalk_Eraser and Cook-ee.

Summer – A God dammed scorcher of a day, only the most prissy of the girl scouts were selling soda on the sidewalk, everyone who had sense was hunkering down like a Goomba on crew tax day, all that is except for Rory…

Rory had issues at 4ft 2inches tall he was just tall enough not to be legally considered a midget, ‘legal bastards’, in his opinion. Just another half inch shorter and he’d be entitled to $200 a month midget disability allowance as it was he got sweet Fanny Adams and was forced to pound these streets knocking doors looking for some desperate lonely broad he could convince to sell vacuums to.

The sweat dripping from his brow he’d a target of several more of the houses on this block, no joy as yet but promising. Large middle to upper income gaffs, long empty drives probably meant the husbands were away at the office for the day – bored housewife inside.  Rory had the patter and occasion got more than a simple vacuum sale.

The house he was approaching seemed just like the others, apart from the ghoulish looking purple and blue garden gnomes with oversized shoes randomly secreted about the front yard.  He crunched up the drive – instead of the normal brass knocker on the door he was greeted by an oversized squeezy kids bike horn where the bell normally would be.  Looking about furtively he went on tiptoes he pressed the horn….

BLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRR di DAAAAARR di DARR DARR di DARR da DARRR DAP

He jumped back 2 steps ‘ Jesus fucking wept… what the fuck…’ The loudness of the horn got his blood pumping, calming down he dusted off the front of his cheap nylon suit and waited for an answer.

Nothing… Nada, not even a shadow moving outside.  Sighing he turned around to make back down the drive and was greeted by a massive oversized frying pan to the face.  He went down like the proverbial sack of shite.

Several hours pass

All is quiet on the street even that prissy girl scout was just calling it a day when she noticed the smallest automobile you ever did see pull up on the drive –“looked like something kids would mooch around in at kindergarten”, she thought to herself.

The door opens and two large shoes with bulbous ends hit the ground a large ginger mass of hair follows them out of the door and a wretched looking clown folds itslef expertly out, lumbers up its back  and walks toward the door.

The door flies open…

“Dad!, Dad! I caught a troll!”

The kid shouting is a parody of its obvious father smaller in stature but with the same sized feet. The father sighs.

“Son, this better be good, if you’ve been messing around with next door’s grandma again there’ll be trouble…”

“Its true Dad! I smacked it in the face with a pan and took it upstairs – locked it in the cupboard.  I’ve been slipping jolly ranchers under the door every 10mins to keep it alive”

The two go inside shutting the door behind them.

And that was the last time Rory the Vacuum salesman was ever seen on these streets.

END

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