By Rob Vilar
02:37 a.m. On a seaside pier, parts unknown.
With a splash of some unknown abrasive alcohol awakening me out of my stupor, I find myself bound to a straight jacket on a seaside pier. A foreign-looking Henchman and two of his goons look me over.
“You were gone there for a while,” says the Henchman in his thick South African accent.
“Yeah tell me about it,” I reply.
“Rob Vilar,” he says while taking a shot of the rough stuff from his flask, “You don’t know me but I know you. I am the man who is about to change the course of your history. Months ago we were running illegal MP3s on music blogs for advertising revenue from California Apparel. It was a great windfall for us… the money, the skanks that would sleep with us for publicity. It was a dream. We also ensured no artists got any cash for their original compositions. Anyways, it was all running perfectly, until you had to come with your Story Time reviews, and try to be funny, call our shit out and everything. Fuck you, Vilar. But you know what? Now you are alone. All your colleagues dead, except that slut partner of yours.”
“Well, knowing her, I’m pretty sure she has someth-”
“SHUT UP!” He screams as he pistol whips me across the face. “You see that house burning on the beach? That was your home, I presume. Well, just think in the morning when there’s nothing but a smouldering ash of what was once your house, you will be laid to rest at the bottom of this ocean. Fully intact and preserved for the rest of time. Our way to honour you Vilar. But your partner, once we get ahold of her…”
“You son of a bitches!” I yell while struggling to get out my straightjacket.
The Henchman takes one last swig from his flask and throws it to the ocean. He shouts to his goons, “Jonsi! Armelio! Make sure Vilar has the last sip of that!” His goons pick me up and toss me into the sea.
While sinking down to my watery grave, I see the moonlight slowly fade away from view. Then I notice my record collection scattered all around me. “They dumped my records too!? Asshole! That’s it.”
I settle. Then with a surging stream of adrenaline stirring my body like a 4:00 a.m. shot of Jager, I forcibly pop my arm out of my shoulder socket…
***
02:47 a.m. Same seaside pier.
Two goons are listening to music from their car‘s stereo. One of them is singing along.
“In De-cem-ber, drinking Hor-cha-ta…”
“I like that song. It reminds me of the homeland.” says the other.
Then, with a rake of chains held in my good arm, I jump onto the dock and belt one of them in the face. The other goon notices and charges towards me. I kick him in the groin, wrap the chains around his neck, and flip him over. Breaking his neck in the process. The other goon gets up and pulls out a gun. I immediately disarm him with a toss of my chains to his shooting hand. I hurl towards him then, throw him into a car window, open the car door, put his head near the lock…and fully slam his head in with the car door. His head rotates a full 360 and plops off. I pop my shoulder joint back into place and puke.
I get into their vehicle, pull their iPod from the stereo, and toss it into the ocean. I then pull a disc from my jacket, Beach House’s Teen Dream, and pop it into the CD player. “Well, at least these things are water resistant,” I say to myself. I ignite the car’s engine and peel off. I find a mobile phone on the passenger seat and call my crime-fighting partner.
“Hey, you there?”
“Vilar!? OMG I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!” she responds.
“You safe?” I ask.
“I am. You don’t know what’s been going on! All our squad is down. Wilson, Stewart, Henkelman, Sigurdson, Radford, Michaelson, Kives…are all down.” she continues.
“Scoundrels! OK, listen. Tonight I’m not a music critic, you hear me? Tonight, like every mean-spirited first time reviewer, I’m going for blood! Pricks, they even destroyed my record collection and burned my beach house down.”
“Speaking of which, is that the new Beach House you’re listening to?” she asks.
“It sure is! It seems on this new release, their first for the Sub Pop record label, they’ve refined their sound somewhat. Take the lead off track for instance, “Zebra.” It gets more at what they’ve been striving for the last couple albums. A little more variation sound wise and greater urgency in tone, but oh, still retaining that dreaminess that we love them for!”
“Wowwie zowwie, sounds dreamy. Well listen, Vilar, don’t go blowing your cred on transparent hateful music writers, we’ve got an assignment to get to tonight. Apparently there’s gonna be an illegal shipment of something going down at the shipyard. Rendezvous there in 40?”
“See you in 40,” I answer. I turn the mobile off and crank the stereo up.
***
03:58 a.m. Ship yard entrance.
I lay low beside a freight carrier when my partner arrives.
“Hey I was listening to that Beach House album on the way over here, too! I gotta say that song ‘Norway’ is probably my favourite. Has this great midtempo ’80s rock feel to it.” she says.
“Yeah, it does, sort of in a similar vein to another song—’Lover of Mine.’” I reply.
“Wow, you look really battered! Not bad at all,” she says as she slowly runs her hand along my face and chest. I stand there puzzled for a moment. “Oh yeah, here’s a couple things of yours I brought.” She hands me a red baseball cap and 9mm Beretta.
I put the cap on, check the gun clip, and reply, “Let’s scout these freights out.”
***
04:16 a.m. Ship yard, beside zebra freight carrier.
“OMG, look at this,” she says as we both enter a freight carrier with zebra insignias on it. “The shell of this freight looks like the album cover of the Teen Dream album, which is a great cover by the way.”
“Holy shit, check this out,” I say. Inside the freight carrier we find a rich bounty of MP3s, along with a Smart Car and some artillery.
“These MP3s are probably unreleased and illegal. Shit, do you know how much revenue we can generate diverting web traffic to these things? I’ll probably be able to buy that cappuccino machine I’ve always wanted,” she says.
I stare coldly at her and respond, “Why don’t you take it? I like a good cup of cappuccino too.”
“Nah…“ she says as she ponders for a second. “Its douche money. I want no part of it.”.
Suddenly we hear the freight doors close on us and begin to feel our carrier getting elevated. With a rushed sense of panic overcoming us, I immediately turn to her and say, “Sleep with me.”.
“Wait, I got a better plan,” she says, putting on her own baseball cap.
***
04:26 a.m. Ship yard docking platform.
The Henchman (seen earlier on the seaside pier) is beside his Boss now. They both look at the suspended freight carrier with a sense of accomplishment.
“My dear boss, they should be well dead when our cargo arrives in Cape Town next week,” says the Henchman.
“Good work, Lionel. I just hope their rotting corpses won’t stink up my cute little Smart Car too much.” says the Boss.
Suddenly without any warning, a Smart Car busts out of the suspended carrier, plunges on down wards into the sea, and disperses a whole whack of MP3s along with it.
“My precious MP3s!” says the Boss.
“Yes, it will be very hard to retrieve them in the water now,” replies the Henchman.
“Kill them,” commands the Boss.
***
04:27 a.m. Ship yard, inside zebra freight carrier.
With ropes attached safely to the carrier and full artillery on hand, we quickly slide out and onto the platform.
“Go set up the clapper device! I’ll take care of these goons!” I instruct her. With a whole squadron of goons charging towards me and Beach House’s “Better Times” resonating in my head, I slowly start to construct a portrait of carnage on the platform’s floor. “Bloody well right, good times,” I say to myself. With one remaining goon now in sight and one last round left in my Beretta, I unload the rest of it until the clip falls out. I stop for a moment, take a breather, and slowly begin to feel my eyes swell. In all my time of killing, I never knew until now how many shades of red there existed. Then out of nowhere, a silver dagger comes swooshing through the air and into my calf. I hear a familiar voice…
“Do you know that every Boer is a ninja?” says the Henchman as he greets me with a boot to the face.
I fall to the floor in excruciating pain.
“I’m like a butterfly too,” he announces while flaunting a series of tae bo moves.
I remove the dagger from my calf and stab it his foot.
“Ai!!!” the Henchman screams.
I get back on my feet again.
Taking the dagger from his foot, the Henchman then says, “A fool like you only deserves to die by the knife!”
I disarm him with a roundhouse kick.
Pulling a gun from his pants, the Henchman now says, “A fool like you only deserves to die by the gun!”
“Do you like pancakes?” I ask him.
The Henchman stands there bewildered for a brief moment and then answers, “Why yes…I love pancakes. I eat them all the time.”
“Well you’re gonna become one.” I reply as I clap my hands and quickly jump out of harm’s way. A hovering suspended carrier unhinges itself, plummets straight down, and flattens him.
I look up to my partner and give her the thumbs up. She does the same. Then, out of the blue, I get taken down with five gun blasts to my chest. My partner quickly turns around, spots the shooter (that being the Boss), and shouts to him, “Drop it asshole!” She pulls out her Smith & Wesson.
With a smile on his face (and iPhone in hand with the words “Best New Music” inscribed on its screen), he counters and says, “Critic immunity!”
With a full moon lighting her half shadowed face and her hair fraying wildly in the night‘s air, she then lifts up her Smith & Wesson, takes aim, and blows his head off. “Its just been revoked…motherfucker.”
Turning over towards me now, where she finds me laying in a small puddle of blood and listening to my Discman.
“Anytime, anywhere, this Beach House album is perfect!” I say.
“Any bad damage on you?” she asks as she rushes over to me.
“Couple of new holes but nothing vital. Doesn’t that excite you, anyways?”
“Shut up,” she says as she takes one of my ear buds and rolls into me, “’Silver Soul,’ what a song to end the night with…”.
“Hopefully we can cheer all this nonsense down before the paramedics come.” I reply as I tear my bullet vest off and make my move.
From here on out we get a panoramic skyline view of the ship yard with arriving police and ambulance squads. A sunset in the distance comes into view…and then slowly fades with the song.