"Cowboy Bebop Forgotten Session: Guns and Fungus
Written by: Adrian Santiago
Studio: Dejection Films
------
"This is an old cemetary. A lot older than anyone alive today,
anyway. I remember coming here to bury my grandmother way back
when I was maybe ten or eleven years old. Hell if my memory of
this place is different from what I see now... I remember all of
it like it was just yesterday.
My grandmother died from a stroke when she was about 55. I can't
remember who she was or anything good she may have told me, but
I remember standing here, knee-deep in mist. The headstones on
the hill over there seemed to be floating in the air over the sun
and the fog. I remember this same old gray-haired preacher
giving the same old eulegy back then that he's giving now. I
guess the classics never die.
The scene is the same, but the story is different now. This
time around I'm here to bury my older brother, J. This was one
cool cat that I grew up idolizing, and I was lucky enough just
to know him let alone work beside him.
We were bounty hunters, you see? We used to be the world famous
Shaft Brothers... and now, I'm just the younger of the Shaft
Brothers.
Our last run together was supposed to be short and sweet: Pick
up this illegal mushroom dealer on Mars, turn him in, and take
home a cool 200,000 woo's. 200,000 woolongs, man... it seems
like chump change now, and I would pay twice that if we never
had to go on that bounty.
Me and J get to Mars, we find this fat bastard, and being the
wormy little snake in the grass he is, he tries to buy his way
out of the bounty. Kinda funny to me that he would try to buy
freedom with fungus, but for J, this was no laughing matter. J
knew all about these mushrooms and how much things like that
sell for on the streets.
In J's mind, if you sell drug addicts their death, you would be
killing two birds with one stone. We take home the woo's, they
go off and jump from a building. Nobody's ever the wiser. But
for some reason, J wanted to try one of these mushrooms... I've
never heard of him interested in stuff like that before. Still,
J was always called the shots. I was there to back his play.
After he swallowed it, I looked him in the eyes and I saw them
just glaze right over. I talked to him... shook him around a
little bit but he was pretty much dead. What the hell can I say
about what happened afterward? It was just too damned freaky
to explain.
After about a minute or two of trying to talk to J, he looked
up at my afro and said something real quietly. I got in close
to listen to him say it again, and that fool just started to
laugh at me. I yelled at him and told him to get real, but he
just kept right on laughing.
The doctor said that his lungs had split apart at the seams
long before he finally stopped laughing... and that being
beaten to death with a metal rod would have been less painful
for him.
So now here we are... my brother's dead, my mother's crying,
and I'm on fire inside. I want to find that bastard Domino
Walker and bring him to justice. If I killed the mother fucker,
I would be no different from that rat."
The priest closed his book. J's coffin began to lower into
the ground.
"Thus, children, concludes the final prayer for the eldest son
of the Shaft family. May God's radiant light guide his soul
towards the heavens, where he shall be awaiting our arrival to
the hereafter. God bless us all."
With that, Momma Shaft began to lose it. Momma Shaft, who had
maintained her composure, began to let her tears flow freely.
"Oh lord! That's not my baby J! My baby wasn't going to go
down like that! He did your work, lord! He worked with the
law and brought criminals to justice! Why did you take him from
me? Why did you take this angel away from us, God!?"
The mist in the cemetary got thicker, the air grew cold. It
was sparse at first, but it soon became a full rain. God heard
Momma Shaft, and God was trying to wash away her tears.
I grabbed ahold of her and said, "Momma! Come on, momma...
alm down! Everything's gonna be just fine momma! Let's go home
now, J wouldn't want us to get our Sunday best all wet and
catch a cold."
This only went to rile her up more. "NO! I want my baby back!
I already buried my husband, I don't want to see my son go
too! Please God bring him back to life! Take this old woman
instead!"
The priest came to my momma and hugged her. Momma began to
cry into his shoulder.
"Momma Shaft... you need to get ahold of yourself, baby. I
was here and helped see off your grandmother years ago, and I
was here when your husband passed away shortly before your
youngest was born. I've seen your grief before, and now it's
much too great."
Momma spoke between quick breaths of air, "I just want my
baby back..."
The priest began to pat her back and said,"Would you be so
selfish that you would take away his place in heaven from him?
Would you try to barter your life for his everlasting peace
in holy paradise?"
Momma took her head off the priest's shoulder and looked him
in the face. She had a look of understanding on her face, and
her eyes lowered slightly.
The priest went on. "Understand Momma Shaft that J died doing
the lord's work, and that he fought against evil, making the
world a safer place for everybody's children. It was not the
will of God that took his life, but the will of evil men."
These words inspired me, and I knew they filled my mother with
confidence and gave her some peace of mind the moment she heard
them.
"Momma Shaft... those who are wicked of spirit shall be the
ones to feel God's vengeance and the Devil's torture in eternal
damnation. The man that tainted and killed your son will have
the venomous saliva of Satan himself dripping on the back of
his neck in the afterlife, and your son will be welcomed and
embraced in the mercy of the lord. It's the simple matter of
divine retribution."
I had felt guilty over J's death, and still do. I wondered if
by letting him eat the mushroom, I was no better than the fool
that gave it to him? Now I wonder if I'll be spending my days
up in heaven or down in hell.
I asked the priest,"What's this divine intervention again?"
The priest looked up at me and said,"If you do bad, you get bad
paid back tenfold. If you do good, then good things happen
your way. Any act of good overpowers an act of evil... but
sadly, most evil men never do good, so they always get what's
coming to them in the end."
Now, I really liked that concept. "Evil men always get what's
coming to them in the end." That is some cold-blooded, mother
fucking fury of heaven shit right there. These were some damn
powerful words the priest said to us, and I think that Domino
Walker would feel moved by it too.
If not, I've got a bullet that would love to move some teeth
out of his face.
Just like that, a lightbulb turned on in my head.
The only way to purge my guilt, my sin, is to help speed along
Walker's deliverance to justice. The only way to do my good
deed that outshines my bad deed is to make Walker settle his
debt to my family and to the world through this "divine
retribution".
I grabbed my momma by the shoulders and looked at her and said,
"Momma! I'm gonna go find the man that did this to J, and I'm
gonna take him down... this is my new purpose in life."
She looked back at me and said, "Boy... don't you know any
better than that? I've lost my husband, one of my sons, are
you just gonna go off and leave your momma all by herself for
the rest of her short life?"
I understood where she was coming from.
"Momma, this is God's will. God's words delivered by his
servant, the priest, have inspired me, and now I'm gonna get
prophetic on Domino Walker's ass. I've got the protection of
God, momma... I feel it. You've gotta trust in me, and I will
set things right."
Those were the last words I said to her... I said that I
wouldn't come back until I got Domino Walker, and so far I
haven't.
It's been three damned years, running between Earth and Mars
time after time. No matter how close I've come, I've never
caught up to Domino Walker. As the time goes by, his bounty
grows and grows, every single woolong a slap across the face
of me and my family.
No matter how many guys I pay off, no matter how many times
I grab an express to where Domino's going to be, he's always
one step ahead of me! It's enough to make a man go crazy...
...and some people say that I have gone crazy! They look at
me like I'm some kind of psycho... walking around eating a
child's candy bar, dragging this big wooden casket behind me
wherever I go. I bet they wouldn't think I'm crazy if I had
pulled my shotgun or my grenade launcher on them! Then we'll
see who's whack and who's not... if they only knew.
I've heard a lot of talk around that Domino's right here
near this town, or that he's coming soon. All of the old
cowboys me and J used to hang with are coming... Cleopatra,
Foxy, Jackson, Coffy, Dolemite... and even some guys I've
never heard of... like the Richland Brothers, the Forney Girl,
or the Bebop.
One thing's for sure... I'm here now, dragging along this big
ass casket... waiting for oppurtunity to knock on my front
door. Then I can avenge my brother, go home to my dear old
momma, and-
"Noooooooo! Meanie!"
What in the hell was that?
"Gimmie something to eat!"
Damnit all to hell... I hate neglecting fathers worse of all.
Wait a minute... who's that the kid is talking to?
"Dammit! Quit hanging off me, kid!"
I ran across the street... this is it! This is the moment I
have waited three years for! DOMINO WALKER! I'VE GOT YOU!
See you, Space Cowboy...
------------
Enjoy "Cowboy Bebop: Forgotten Sessions"? Feel free to
contact me for previews of upcoming chapters.
e-mail: y2washu566@yahoo.com
aim: Tactical Hobo
Written by: Adrian Santiago
Studio: Dejection Films
------
"This is an old cemetary. A lot older than anyone alive today,
anyway. I remember coming here to bury my grandmother way back
when I was maybe ten or eleven years old. Hell if my memory of
this place is different from what I see now... I remember all of
it like it was just yesterday.
My grandmother died from a stroke when she was about 55. I can't
remember who she was or anything good she may have told me, but
I remember standing here, knee-deep in mist. The headstones on
the hill over there seemed to be floating in the air over the sun
and the fog. I remember this same old gray-haired preacher
giving the same old eulegy back then that he's giving now. I
guess the classics never die.
The scene is the same, but the story is different now. This
time around I'm here to bury my older brother, J. This was one
cool cat that I grew up idolizing, and I was lucky enough just
to know him let alone work beside him.
We were bounty hunters, you see? We used to be the world famous
Shaft Brothers... and now, I'm just the younger of the Shaft
Brothers.
Our last run together was supposed to be short and sweet: Pick
up this illegal mushroom dealer on Mars, turn him in, and take
home a cool 200,000 woo's. 200,000 woolongs, man... it seems
like chump change now, and I would pay twice that if we never
had to go on that bounty.
Me and J get to Mars, we find this fat bastard, and being the
wormy little snake in the grass he is, he tries to buy his way
out of the bounty. Kinda funny to me that he would try to buy
freedom with fungus, but for J, this was no laughing matter. J
knew all about these mushrooms and how much things like that
sell for on the streets.
In J's mind, if you sell drug addicts their death, you would be
killing two birds with one stone. We take home the woo's, they
go off and jump from a building. Nobody's ever the wiser. But
for some reason, J wanted to try one of these mushrooms... I've
never heard of him interested in stuff like that before. Still,
J was always called the shots. I was there to back his play.
After he swallowed it, I looked him in the eyes and I saw them
just glaze right over. I talked to him... shook him around a
little bit but he was pretty much dead. What the hell can I say
about what happened afterward? It was just too damned freaky
to explain.
After about a minute or two of trying to talk to J, he looked
up at my afro and said something real quietly. I got in close
to listen to him say it again, and that fool just started to
laugh at me. I yelled at him and told him to get real, but he
just kept right on laughing.
The doctor said that his lungs had split apart at the seams
long before he finally stopped laughing... and that being
beaten to death with a metal rod would have been less painful
for him.
So now here we are... my brother's dead, my mother's crying,
and I'm on fire inside. I want to find that bastard Domino
Walker and bring him to justice. If I killed the mother fucker,
I would be no different from that rat."
The priest closed his book. J's coffin began to lower into
the ground.
"Thus, children, concludes the final prayer for the eldest son
of the Shaft family. May God's radiant light guide his soul
towards the heavens, where he shall be awaiting our arrival to
the hereafter. God bless us all."
With that, Momma Shaft began to lose it. Momma Shaft, who had
maintained her composure, began to let her tears flow freely.
"Oh lord! That's not my baby J! My baby wasn't going to go
down like that! He did your work, lord! He worked with the
law and brought criminals to justice! Why did you take him from
me? Why did you take this angel away from us, God!?"
The mist in the cemetary got thicker, the air grew cold. It
was sparse at first, but it soon became a full rain. God heard
Momma Shaft, and God was trying to wash away her tears.
I grabbed ahold of her and said, "Momma! Come on, momma...
alm down! Everything's gonna be just fine momma! Let's go home
now, J wouldn't want us to get our Sunday best all wet and
catch a cold."
This only went to rile her up more. "NO! I want my baby back!
I already buried my husband, I don't want to see my son go
too! Please God bring him back to life! Take this old woman
instead!"
The priest came to my momma and hugged her. Momma began to
cry into his shoulder.
"Momma Shaft... you need to get ahold of yourself, baby. I
was here and helped see off your grandmother years ago, and I
was here when your husband passed away shortly before your
youngest was born. I've seen your grief before, and now it's
much too great."
Momma spoke between quick breaths of air, "I just want my
baby back..."
The priest began to pat her back and said,"Would you be so
selfish that you would take away his place in heaven from him?
Would you try to barter your life for his everlasting peace
in holy paradise?"
Momma took her head off the priest's shoulder and looked him
in the face. She had a look of understanding on her face, and
her eyes lowered slightly.
The priest went on. "Understand Momma Shaft that J died doing
the lord's work, and that he fought against evil, making the
world a safer place for everybody's children. It was not the
will of God that took his life, but the will of evil men."
These words inspired me, and I knew they filled my mother with
confidence and gave her some peace of mind the moment she heard
them.
"Momma Shaft... those who are wicked of spirit shall be the
ones to feel God's vengeance and the Devil's torture in eternal
damnation. The man that tainted and killed your son will have
the venomous saliva of Satan himself dripping on the back of
his neck in the afterlife, and your son will be welcomed and
embraced in the mercy of the lord. It's the simple matter of
divine retribution."
I had felt guilty over J's death, and still do. I wondered if
by letting him eat the mushroom, I was no better than the fool
that gave it to him? Now I wonder if I'll be spending my days
up in heaven or down in hell.
I asked the priest,"What's this divine intervention again?"
The priest looked up at me and said,"If you do bad, you get bad
paid back tenfold. If you do good, then good things happen
your way. Any act of good overpowers an act of evil... but
sadly, most evil men never do good, so they always get what's
coming to them in the end."
Now, I really liked that concept. "Evil men always get what's
coming to them in the end." That is some cold-blooded, mother
fucking fury of heaven shit right there. These were some damn
powerful words the priest said to us, and I think that Domino
Walker would feel moved by it too.
If not, I've got a bullet that would love to move some teeth
out of his face.
Just like that, a lightbulb turned on in my head.
The only way to purge my guilt, my sin, is to help speed along
Walker's deliverance to justice. The only way to do my good
deed that outshines my bad deed is to make Walker settle his
debt to my family and to the world through this "divine
retribution".
I grabbed my momma by the shoulders and looked at her and said,
"Momma! I'm gonna go find the man that did this to J, and I'm
gonna take him down... this is my new purpose in life."
She looked back at me and said, "Boy... don't you know any
better than that? I've lost my husband, one of my sons, are
you just gonna go off and leave your momma all by herself for
the rest of her short life?"
I understood where she was coming from.
"Momma, this is God's will. God's words delivered by his
servant, the priest, have inspired me, and now I'm gonna get
prophetic on Domino Walker's ass. I've got the protection of
God, momma... I feel it. You've gotta trust in me, and I will
set things right."
Those were the last words I said to her... I said that I
wouldn't come back until I got Domino Walker, and so far I
haven't.
It's been three damned years, running between Earth and Mars
time after time. No matter how close I've come, I've never
caught up to Domino Walker. As the time goes by, his bounty
grows and grows, every single woolong a slap across the face
of me and my family.
No matter how many guys I pay off, no matter how many times
I grab an express to where Domino's going to be, he's always
one step ahead of me! It's enough to make a man go crazy...
...and some people say that I have gone crazy! They look at
me like I'm some kind of psycho... walking around eating a
child's candy bar, dragging this big wooden casket behind me
wherever I go. I bet they wouldn't think I'm crazy if I had
pulled my shotgun or my grenade launcher on them! Then we'll
see who's whack and who's not... if they only knew.
I've heard a lot of talk around that Domino's right here
near this town, or that he's coming soon. All of the old
cowboys me and J used to hang with are coming... Cleopatra,
Foxy, Jackson, Coffy, Dolemite... and even some guys I've
never heard of... like the Richland Brothers, the Forney Girl,
or the Bebop.
One thing's for sure... I'm here now, dragging along this big
ass casket... waiting for oppurtunity to knock on my front
door. Then I can avenge my brother, go home to my dear old
momma, and-
"Noooooooo! Meanie!"
What in the hell was that?
"Gimmie something to eat!"
Damnit all to hell... I hate neglecting fathers worse of all.
Wait a minute... who's that the kid is talking to?
"Dammit! Quit hanging off me, kid!"
I ran across the street... this is it! This is the moment I
have waited three years for! DOMINO WALKER! I'VE GOT YOU!
See you, Space Cowboy...
------------
Enjoy "Cowboy Bebop: Forgotten Sessions"? Feel free to
contact me for previews of upcoming chapters.
e-mail: y2washu566@yahoo.com
aim: Tactical Hobo
