Jack Grabber stripped off the last of his western clothes, picked the crisp, light, white Middle Eastern robe off the bed and slid it over his body before putting on the traditional headdress.  He could smell the myrrh that scented the cloth.  He inhaled it deeply; a satisfying scent that reminded him of the very first Christmas.  He walked to his full length mirror to see the results – It was a mixed bag;  the outfit was authentic for sure, but his skin was obviously too fair; fortunately his light hair was covered by the “towel.”  The robe was too short for his 6’5 inch frame, the bottom resting just below his knees.  “I wonder if they sometimes wear these as capris,” he thought. “I bet they do.”  He took some of his homemade fake tan compound that he had derived from the skin cells of darker foes he had defeated, it also included mayonnaise, sandalwood and the faintest hint of feces (amongst other throw-ins) and smeared it thick across all exposed patches of his white skin, being cautious not to rub it in, just kind of layered it on like cake makeup.  Next, he grabbed some dark, black hair from the loose hair bag that he kept next to the sink and stuck it onto his face where it clung to the excess fake-tan compound -  An improvised beard. Overall it looked pretty goddamn convincing.  Everything was in order.  He walked back into the bed room and climbed onto the double bed; pulled the sheets up to his eyes.  Beneath the sheets, the smell of the myrrh reached his nose more easily and was strengthened by the accompanying scent of memories.  The feel of the robe was taut against his tummy; his funny, contrived beard itched him as he lay cheek against pillow. He wouldn’t hear the footsteps leading to the flat this particular evening as Samir Gadot (his best friend and ex-Iraqi Guardsman) had been away on vacation for just under two days, but dressing up like this comforted Grabber in the moments when missing him kept him awake.  Perhaps this night he could sleep.

With the door closed it was impossible to see a damn thing in the little holding cell.  The prisoner was completely deprived of any sensory experience but his own internal thoughts; his consciousness hovered there in the blackness.  And the blackness bled into his consciousness, altered it, made it think bad things.  In his training in Pakistan the prisoner had always been tough, always come through.  He had never thought for a moment that he could be made to give up his mission or comrades, even under the worst of pressure if taken captive.  But now he was captive and now he wasn’t so sure.  Partly it was just because it’s obviously more stressful when it’s not just in theory.  Partly because of who had caught him.  The guy was huge.  Maybe 6’5.  Definitely 250 lbs.  Certainly packin’.  He didn’t know the guy’s name of course.  He had asked during his transportation and immediately realized how out of place such little chit chat was when you’re being held on terrorism suspicion.  His captor had just laughed a little and said “well you can call me Grabbs…  or Grabby…  Grabby-Grabbs” then returned to his seemingly normal, cold silence.  That was just before he’d been put in this holding cell.  How many hours ago was it?  He had no way of knowing.  The room had been completely empty when he was pushed into it.  It was still almost empty but he was slowly but surely filling it up with his own shit.  He’d had to designate one corner as the restroom.  Four times and counting.  Shouldn’t have had that double-down, but the temptation had been too great.  They would almost certainly have to re-carpet.  Then he heard it.  Heavy, deliberate footsteps.  Only one man, which would have been a relief, but his footsteps rung out loud enough to have been a whole squad.  They set off alarms in his brain.  US news stories about waterboarding and genital electrocution and man-piles.  The kind of stuff you might choose to do on a Saturday night, but wouldn’t want to have done to you by a stranger in an opposing army.  But then Grabbs wasn’t in the army.  He had claimed to have dropped out “when the Geneva Cunt-vention was signed.”  Now they just used him in special cases.  Apparently he was a special case.  He cursed the Iraqi ex-guardsman who had turned him in as the last heavy footsteps came down outside the door.  He and the guardsman had been drinking together and were raising a little hell with the girls in the village.  Well, raising a LOT of a hell.  Just as they were finishing one girl, the Iraqi, Gadot, had pulled out and run away.  He’d been grabbed from behind that instant.  Grabbed…  by Grabbs…  Grabby-Grabb-Grabb-Grabberton.  Grabbed.  Now here he was.  Waiting in terror…  yes, he, in terror…  for what would be behind that door.  It opened.  Slowly.  The huge American stepped in.  The prisoner couldn’t believe it but all the American held was a yellow whiffle ball bat and a semi-large freezer bag.  He sighed out loud in relief.  He had been expecting electrodes, a torture rack or a judas seat.  Here it almost seemed like Grabby just wanted to play.  And in a sense he was right.  Grabber threw the baggy down on the table.   White powder spilled out everywhere.  A LOT of white powder.  Cocaine.  “Why…  do you have a wiffle ball bat and…  cocaine?” the prisoner nervously asked.  “Because I plan on doing a lot of batting,” said Grabber with a smile.  “Look,” said the prisoner “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”  Grabber took a long, long pause.  18 minutes.  Dramatic as hell.  “That’s the thing,” he said, “I don’t want any information from you.  I don’t give a F*CK.  At least not about your little schemes.  But what I am curious about is how long it’d take to beat a motherf*cker to death with a whiffle ball bat.  I’ve been wondering that since I was about nine.”  The last thing the terrorist heard was Grabber yell out that no “head shots” were allowed.  Then it was just the flurry of activity and pain raining all over his body.  At 30 minutes he was almost totally numb.  But a painful numb.  The bat made a funny plastic fwappy sound.  At an hour his clothes had caught fire and disintegrated.  At 3 hrs Grabber had hit a home run with one of his balls.  At 37 hours Grabber had his answer.  At 37.5 he had hit the showers and shared that answer with Gadot.  They had slapped a wet high five.  They were always on the same team.

Jack Grabber sat relaxed (or as relaxed as Jack Grabber actually gets) in a cabana that he had paid 63 dollars for exactly four hours earlier. As his eyes followed the lines down to his toes, wriggling in the sand, he was surprised: he was wearing more clothes than he thought he would have by now. He was pleased but removed his swimming shorts, revealing a quaint pair of racing trunks; this was still more than he wanted to wear, but he felt like following the rules this particular day. He hadn’t been in the water in a while so the sand barely clung to the soles of his feet and the frog-like pads of this toes. “Knock, knock.”

It was well known that jack Grabber didn’t read. He could read, he just wouldn’t – it was rumored that he even refused to lay an eye on a menu. Samir Godot, Grabber’s only friend, thought he had seen a novel once in Grabbers messenger bag although it certainly could have been his journal. “Knock, knock.”

Grabber stretched a kitty stretch, being careful not rustle his toes from the salty grains of the Hawaiian sand as he rubbed tanning lotion on the back of his thighs and the tippy tops of his ears. Grabber’s lotion was a special concoction that he mixes himself in his kitchen sink: baby oil, mayonnaise, old bay seasoning and gold flakes. It consisted of a few other ingredients but those were more for show than anything else. The sounds of the Pacific Ocean rapped soft ghetto island tunes in Grabber’s ear, lulling him in and out of a napping state. Grabber never napped but he enjoyed very much the exact moment before an ordinary human would slip into a nap. It was as exhilarating as a hearty sneeze to our ex-army ranger hero, who was never known to rest for more than three hours a day, but somehow, some way, this was Jack Grabber on vacation. “Knock, knock.”

Even though Grabber couldn’t nap, he would pretend. He liked the idea of napping, but detested the practice. Grabber reached his gorilla arm up over his head and flipped up the white flag that was connected to the bonnet of his cabana. Within one minute a young Hawaiian man approaches and pulls out a pad and paper. “Mahalo. What can I get you?”

“Ah, yes, Senor. I’ll have a margarita.” The Hawaiian man, puzzled, adjusts, “Sir, we have rum drinks, Mai Tais, Lava Flows. Mahalo.”

Grabber is obviously confused. “Hmmm, what about taquitos? Can I get some taquitos?”

The cabana waiter sighs, “Don’t worry, Mr. Grabber, I’ll bring you something you’ll like.” Grabber nods and hands him one thousand dollars. “Knock, knock.”

Grabber’s golden mayo scented body glistened as he examined his skin. “You can really see the gold flakes.” Grabber says out loud. To his left there are 11 empty Mai Tai glasses. Grabber confused the bartender by referring to them as Mexican Yum Sips, but after six, the waiter had figured it out. “Knock, knock.”

Grabber put the flag up. When the waiter came back, he informed Jack that they weren’t allowed to serve single patrons more than 16 Mexican Yum Sips a day. Grabber understood, “That’s fine, Actually I wanted to discuss the coconuts.”

“The coconuts?” the man asked. “Yes… the coconuts.”

Every single person that knew Jack Grabber knew that he hated coconuts more than anything. He despised them and often referred to them as a “cocky fruit” and had been overheard in his sleep asking, “who do you think you are?” the “you” of course, being coconuts. He hated the taste, the smell and the sound of them knocking together. He explained to the cabana ‘tender that the knocking was single-handedly ruining his vacation. The cabana thing pointed over to a grassy hill next to the hotel pool. A luau was being set up and three heavy set Hawaiian men in authentic tribal garb were bellying up to microphones; two holding ukuleles and the third holding two coconut halves, knocking them together. “Knock, knock.”

By the time it turned around, Grabber was gone and the man with the sweet milky, hairy Hawaiian nuts was wincing in pain as Grabber had given him a coconut bra without the straps… without any straps. There was no more knocking. And Grabber enjoyed the rest of his vacation, although as I’m sure you all can assume by now… there was more to this trip than vacation and as Grabber walked into the Hawaiian horizon in his horribly tight racing trunks and nothing else, he passed a banquet hall. He stopped to look at a large poster that was perched on a stand and in big letters it read: TOMORROW ONLY – LEE CHILDS SPEAKS AND BRINGS JOHNATHAN REACHER TO LIFE. Jack Grabber smiled, the only time he had ever smiled without killing someone minutes before.

Mahalo.

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The Great Recession had settled in firmly, its boot heels dug into the dirt surrounding everyone who stood anywhere and the aire of despair it had brought with it was palpable. Employment opportunities were beyond scarce and even the need for privatized military had dwindled severely and now, for the first time since his junior year in high school, Jack Grabber was out of work and had decided that the blows of this particular time could be softened with a change of environment. Perhaps his destiny could be changed and fate would not lead him by the neck to a grave in the Panamanian jungle or in a gutter outside of a Russian gambling house, but rather, by the hand into a soft country bed where the breeze from the outside comes calmly through the window and simply takes his breath away until his next run at this whole crazy thing.

“August in Washington State was special and those that had never been could never actualize its beauty and those that have never had the blessed luck to experience it would not understand – could never understand.” These were the words that Jack Grabber had written in his journal after the second night he had slept under the crisp blanket of the Washington sky. After nine days in the Northeastern United States, Jack Grabber found work as a land hand at a Gravenstein orchard. Grabber was hired by a quiet, soft spoken black man by the name of Jibs. Jack received a moderate wage, worked long hours and spent his evenings with the boys eating ranch food, smoking hand rolled cigars and drinking backroom spirits. Grabber along with six other hands slept in the cider house that sat lovingly at the back of the property. The boys didn’t sleep as soundly as they usually did, even after their particularly long thirteen hour day; their minds were too unsettled, unable to join their exhausted bodies in a well deserved rest. You see, there had been whispers this week, whispers of the property owner, Ms. Elderod (the heir to her father’s land fortune) would be arriving in the morning to oversee the fruit operations. Grabber and his gentlemen quarter mates were concerned that the stories of Ms. Elderod were not largely exaggerated and they wouldn’t be able to sleep until they found out for themselves.

The morning came as it did every morning in Washington’s autumn; the crimson sun slowly rose over the orchards and the alarm clock woke the tenants of the cider house to the sound of the crowing goats. Of course, as always, Grabber had been awake for two hours already; sharpening sticks he had picked up on his mid-morning walks. This was a practice he was unable to shake no matter how long he had been on vacation. As the rest of the crew wandered into the small room at the front of the house, Grabber put his sticks down and waits for Jibs to give his morning speech. The quiet man enters through the side door. He limps at what seems a painful stride and exhales loudly as he pulls up a stool.

“Okay, boys, todays the day. Lady Elderod should be arriving any minute if she aint here already by now. She’s gained the land due to her daddy’s cold death and she’s been talkin’ bout makin’ a resort out here. Tearin’ down about eighty percent uh da trees if not more. Now, I have no idea how in the name of dick, this Lady Elderod thinks building a resort is uh wise choice durin’ deez ridiculous money times…”

“It’s not a resort, Mr. Mackenrow, a resort is where your peasants would stay if they had ten times the money they have now. I’m creating a luxury escape for the ultra wealthy, for those whom the recession does not even touch.” The voice of a well educated woman comes from behind Jibs. It was Lady Elderod. She was a tall woman, nearly six foot and slender but not in a grotesque Tilda Swinson way.

Jibs turns around and steadies himself as he rises to greet the woman. Ms. Elderod stops him, “Please, don’t get up.” Ms. Elderod flashes the boys a smile and exits.

Jibs stands up and takes a deep breath in order to address the boys. He hangs his head and raises it again.

“Well boys. I guess there’s no point now. I’ll pay you your dues and keep you on until she shuts it down. I guess I’ll go talk to her.”

From the back a man rises, his shadow casts coldness onto the room. Jibs catches eyes with the tower, “Yes, Jack?”

Grabber makes his way through the six other men, who, if Grabber had friends, the man would consider his friends. As he approaches Jibs, the frail man takes a painful step backwards.

“Relax, sir. Just let me talk to her. I can be very persuasive.” Grabber speaks as he pats Jibs on the shoulder.

“With women?” Jibs asks.

“With everyone,” Grabber replies.

Jibs steps out of the way, “Be my guest, son.”

As Grabber approaches the cider room, where he knew Ms. Elderod would be, doing paper work or looking at herself in an expensive compact, he could feel his fists clenching for the first time in seven months, it felt grand. He released his grip though – almost immediately. “This is a woman,” he thought. “She might be a twat, but she’s certainly not dangerous, I mean, Grabber knew the only dangerous women were those that touched his heart. He knocked at the cider room door but no one answered.

“Hello?” Ms. Elderod?”

There was no answer. In any other instance with any other person in any other state, Jack Grabber would be more cautious, more suspicious. Maybe it was the seven months of fresh air and no violence or maybe it was all the cider in his tummy that was making him sleepy, but whatever it was, it scared him. Regardless, Grabber pushes the door open, he thought he did it gently but as it crashed into the wall and a photo of Abraham Lincoln gutted on the floor, he guessed not. As the glass crushed beneath his size fourteen boots, Grabber peered here and there but he couldn’t sense the presence of anyone anywhere. He relaxed. As he surveyed the room, his eyes caught a desk by a window and on the desk were red-tagged files. If Grabber knew one thing, it was that these red-tagged files could release a shitnami of trouble. He gave his surroundings one last check before perusing through the files. He sat quietly and opened the files – the papers were from Guatemala and written in a Spanish dialect common in Belize, luckily for everyone, Jack Grabber understood every single word. Eleven minutes passed and Jack Grabber had become comfortable in the old hickory rocking chair with his feet up on a small lamp desk. His comfort quickly fades and Jack freezes… someone was in the room.

“Ms. Elderod, I presume.”

“You must be Jackson Brimley Grabber.”

“So, I assume by “Luxury Escape” you meant child slavery housing escape.”

“Clever man. Who would have thought one of Jib’s monkeys could read Portuguese.”

“That’s not all this monkey can do. You know I’m going to stop you, Ms. Elderod.”

“You know I’m going to stop you from stopping me, Mr. Grabber.”

“Not if I stop you from stopping me from stopping you, Ms –“

“Silence!”

Grabber hears the cocking of an old featherweight colt pistol. He’s been out of practice for almost a year but he knew what to do. But before he could execute his plan, Lady Elderod shoots Grabber through the rocking chair through his left shoulder. Grabber couldn’t believe it; was this woman more insane than he could have ever imagined or was he that out of practice? He couldn’t take the time to figure it out. Thank goodness for Grabber, he’d been shot so many times in the shoulders that he barely felt a thing. Grabber kicks the chair out from beneath him, cracking Lady Elderod at the waist, just as she gets another shot off. Grabber leaps through the window and out the cider room. The child trafficking land baron fires numerous shots through the walls.

“C’mon and get me, Sweetheart.”

Grabber takes off down the cobblestone path that leads to the press room – where the juice gets made. It worked. Elderod was following him firing shot after shot, missing Grabber with each one.

“How many bullets does she got?” Grabber says out loud.

Grabber bellies to the ground and sneaks into the press room through the side door. He knew if he could get her in, facing him, he could take control of the situation so he makes it in and sits in the back corner. Now he waits, surrounded by baskets of Gravensteins and a gigantic cider press, sticky sweet with apple juices. Grabber waits and waits and then he hears the footsteps around the press house side door. With one hand full of apples and the other grasping an apple corer he waits for his moment, the door slowly opens… his hands tense and sticky he gets ready to pounce, he could almost see her and just as he’s about to unleash, Ms. Elderod bleats. Grabber slowly rises, it wasn’t Lady Elderod, it was Tallulah, the morning goat. Grabber puts his apples down and Tallulah wanders over to him and licks his face.

“Hi, sweetie, what are you doing in here.” He playfully asks.

“It’s me, Samir. An Iraqi wandering sand witch cast a spell on me and placed my spirit inside this goat, Jack. I can’t be returned to my original form until my name is cleared in Iraq. Please help me.”

Jack couldn’t believe it. He tickled the goat’s funny mustache. One minute he was being chased by a child slave trading monster and the next he’s talking to his old friend Samir, ex-Iraqi Guardsman currently on the run from a rape charge that Grabber just KNEW probably wasn’t true, whose essence had been caged inside a morning goat. “The whole thing with Lady Elderod must have been a dream,” he thought. “Yes, of course, a female land baron turning a Gravenstein orchard into a child slavery trading post… that’s preposterous.” Just as he went to get up, to help his friend Samir, he felt a terrible aching in his head. All of a sudden, Samir the goat was going out of focus, until it disappeared all together. The room suddenly got brighter and he was tied to a shelving unit at the back of the press house and in front of him, Lady Elderod stood, holding an old fashioned hand operated apple peeler.

“Wake up, Mr. Grabber.”

“Dammit. I must have fallen asleep in the press room waiting for her.” He whispered, “I guess my adrenaline doesn’t keep me up like it used to.”

“I guess not. I saw you through the window, you were fast asleep and muttering the name, Samir. Friend of yours?” She asks.

“You don’t worry about him… I’d be worried about you.”

Jack Grabber looks around the room, “AHA!” Elderod has her back to the old cider press, but she’s walking closer and closer, putting her farther and farther from the press. He had to act fast. Lady Elderod turns the handle on the apple peeler slowly.

“Let’s see what your situation would look like… peeled, shall we?”

As she goes for Grabber’s braided belt, he launches a boot into her chest, rocketing her onto the slab of the cider press. She moans in shock. Just then, Grabber tears the shelving unit that he’s been tethered to out of the wall and kicks a large turnstile as hard as he can, releasing the press that rests six feet above Elderod. The press slams down on the feisty charlatan, engulfing her completely. Grabber breaks from the shelves and looks around in panic, then he finds what he’s looking for. He grabs a mason jar from off the floor and places it under a spicket beneath the press slab just in time to fill it with a crimson liquid that comes dribbling out. Grabber stands and takes a long swig of the Elderod juice.

“Mmmmm… 100% bitch. NOT from concentrate.”

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“When you know you’re gonna die, there’s only one thought that you face: “I’m not gonna die!” Of course I couldn’t say this with a gun in my mouth and my hands bound to my feet with zip-ties, so I showed him instead. I didn’t know exactly where I was, all I could make out were repair kits for some kind of truck, piles of gravel, holes in the floor and fresh Concrete. The sonuvabitch with the 11-inch steel colt in my mouth turned his head just for a second; I knew this was my only chance. I bit down hard on the gun and yanked it out of his hand with my mouth. I could hear the crunching of my incisors on the barrel, but I didn’t care, it was either that or a dirt nap…and I wasn’t tired. Shocked the dark man reached for the gun I had whipped across the floor. As he lunged forward he stepped in a hole in the floor, it was dark, we were blind as bats in whatever this place was. Just my luck, he goes down about mid-thigh. I roll over to the repair kit and there’s razor wire and all sorts of things to help me on my way. I used the razor wire to cut through zip-ties. It didn’t take long, but then again every minute felt like a second. I grabbed the gun and spit out a tooth. I raised the hand cannon and shoved in the mouth of the dark man in the floor. Through his gun-muffled voice, I could barely make out what he said, “Jack Grabber.” I spit out a glob of blood, “Always have been, and always will be.”

    It was noon, and the center-most part of this large area of jungle still smoldered.  The chest-high grass and thin, looping trees had just been through 7 straight hours of landscaping by high powered, 21st century artillery.  Uncharacteristically, at this moment Grabber realized he never got to enjoy a quiet moment with a pristine jungle forrest.  His “moments with nature”, if he even had any, always had to come at times like this: when the smells of gunpowder, blood, piss and fear were still in the air… the last earthly remnants of whoever it was that had just crossed his path.  Grabber took all of this in with a gigantic inhale, and turned around to find the worshipping gaze of thousands of indigenous eyes, all joyous in their new found freedom and also silently pleading for their hero to stay and lead them.  But Jack Grabber isn’t a leader.  He much prefers landscaping.

    “Fuck these guys,” was the last real thought he had before making his move.  Sure, he kept on thinking, but it wasn’t anything that could be expressed in words.  A man can realistically only devise how to disable 6 men by himself, 7 tops, depending on their alignment.  Grabber knew beforehand how to take out the first 11 of these bastards, but after that it would be all improvisation.  At this point things would be totally out of his control, just the way he liked them.  The 4 or 5 bullets he’ll have inevitably acquired wouldn’t mean squat, he’d barely notice them.  It was what to do about the 12th, 13th, 14th, and so on.  But you can’t think about them.  Well, maybe you can, but it’s just, “Fuck these guys.“