There’s a head lying in the grass. It’s a human head, for the most part, but upon closer inspection, there are a few things about it that are decidedly not so human. First and foremost, most human heads are attached to human bodies, typically by means of a neck, but this head in particular is very distinctly bodyless. It used to have a body - I mean, there still is a body, but that body is, oh, I don’t know, maybe 20 yards away? Long story, I’ll get to that in a bit.
For now, let’s take a closer look at why this head is really, very clearly not human. Its skin is gray, and its drooping. Like, a lot. Very loose on the skull, as if someone poured mud over a bowling ball and watched it drip off the side. The head’s mouth is frozen in a frenzied snarl, though, to be fair, that may or may not have something to do with the fact that it was, quite recently, forcefully removed from that body I mentioned earlier. Most curious of all, though, and the biggest tell tale sign that this head is not like any head that you’ve seen before, is the fact that, above the mouth, and above the nose, there are two huge compound eyes, the kind you might see on a zoomed in picture of a fly.
Other than the grotesque disembodied bug monster cranium, though, the scene is absolutely beautiful. Completely tranquil. We’re in a field, a clearing surrounded by a beautiful forest. There’s a baseball diamond here. Small, probably a little league field. Or, at least, the remains of one. Nature has definitely taken over here. Vines crawl up the bleachers, what little dirt remains between bases is largely overshadowed by undergrowth, parts of the backstop have rusted and broken away And, of course, there’s a headless body sprawled out next to one of the dugouts.
I guess that last detail doesn’t really qualify as “nature taking over,” but it is a direct result of the man standing next to the headless body. Whether you would philosophically classify the actions of humanity as natural or not doesn’t really matter, because this human in particular would absolutely classify himself as the former. If we could hear him, he’d probably be saying he’s a force of nature. Lucky for us, we can hear him! Let’s see if I’m right.
“Hell yeah, I’m a fohce of natchah, kid! I’m like a grizzly beah in a dog pahk. I’m comin’ in, I’m takin’ ovah, I’m the goddamned wohld champ!”
Yep, I was right. I already knew I was right, I just didn’t want to come off as too know-it-all-y. I do know it all, though. I’ll get to that later. What’s important right now is that I apologize in advance for this man’s absolutely disgusting Boston accent, and the fact that he’s one of our main characters, which means you’re going to have to be doing a lot of translating. You’ll get the hang of it eventually. If all of the revolutionaries from New York, Pennsylvania, and all the other states could learn to understand what a drunk John Adams was slurring, then I have full faith that you’ll be able to understand our friend Cannon.
“And he hacks! And he chops! And he cahves like a goddamned ahtist. And the crowd goes wild! Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any young ones with you today, please covah their eyes, cause what we’ah seein’ heah today is nothin’ short of orgasmic beauty!”
Just to be completely clear, there’s nobody else in this little ballpark with him. There’s nobody in the surrounding forest. Hell, there’s probably not another human anywhere within a couple miles of him. He’s just saying it all out loud because, well, he’s our special little guy. Let’s take a closer look at our special little guy. He’s not so little. In fact he’s fairly tall, just shy of six feet, and he’s no slouch. He’s an athlete. He doesn’t have a ton of skin showing, but his biceps are exposed and, hoo mama, they are bicepping. Toned muscle under dark skin that tenses and flexes every time he heaves his cleaver down on the headless body beneath him. Gets a girl excited just describing it.
He’s gonna keep on chopping up that body for a while, so we’ve got some more time to soak this guy in before things really get moving. He’s wearing a full on lacrosse uniform, complete with the pads, the gloves, and the helmet. The faded maroon jersey has written on it, perhaps not surprisingly, the word “Cannon” across the chest. Long black dreadlocks spill out the back of the helmet, which are currently flipping up and down because he’s taken a break from chopping up corpses to play some air guitar on his lacrosse stick. He’s got a messenger bag full of lacrosse balls slung around his shoulder, one of which he’s taken out and is currently using as a microphone. He goes on like this for a little while, alternating between rocking and chopping, before he’s finally satisfied with his job. He stands up and digs a gold locket out from underneath the neck of his jersey. He wipes it off, gives it a kiss, then shoves it back into his shirt.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
He wipes his brow and gazes down at his handiwork. The gnarled, gray, droopy body of the decapitated bug monster lies at his feet, chopped up into nice, small, easy to carry pieces. He now goes to work picking up the large, dripping hunks of monster flesh and dropping them into a duffel bag over on the other side of the dugout. This is the boring part of the job, obviously, so between trips he decides to make it a bit more fun. He grabs a small hunk of gunk that used to be forearm and loads it into his lacrosse stick. He cradles it back and forth a few times, then points like Babe Ruth to a random spot out in the forest beyond the field.
“Cannon steps up to the plate. We’ah gettin’ down to the wiah heah. The stadium is silent. You could heah a pin drop.”
It’s a little bit ironic for him to say that considering how fucking loud he is, what with all the chopping and grandstanding. It’s also a bit silly because, as you’ve surely noticed, he’s got his wires a bit crossed between baseball and lacrosse. Truth is, Cannon has no idea how to play either one. Nobody does, for that matter, or at least not how they used to play it in The Good Ol’ Days. There’s still plenty of baseball diamonds scattered around what remains of the United States, and some people have even tried to reverse engineer some sort of game out of it, but the best approximation they have is a sort of bloodthirsty battle royale where you run around the bases and beat the ever loving shit out of each other with bats and balls and sticks and pucks and basically whatever else you can get your hands on. Cannon thinks it’s a wonderful game and he plays it every chance he gets.
Speaking of Cannon, he’s so involved in his own little universe that he doesn’t quite notice the sound coming up from behind him. The sound that’s getting louder and louder, closer and closer. If he wasn’t pontificating so loudly about how he’s the greatest of all time, he’d hear an encroaching swarm of bees, an angry cloud of buzzing and flapping and moaning. It isn’t until the source of the sound is right behind him that he finally snaps out of his Rudy daydream and whips around.
Another gray skinned bug woman, this one very much alive and not headless, swipes its arm at him. Only it isn’t a human arm, it’s a humongous, razor sharp pincer. Everything next happens in nearly an instant. Cannon sidesteps the woman’s lunge, all the while still cradling his chunk of monster meat. He extends one leg behind him to trip her as she lumbers past. Before she even has a chance to hit the ground, he launches the meat in his lacrosse stick at her. It hits her like a brick, sending her toppling back the other direction so that she’s falling backwards. Again, before she can even hit the ground, Cannon spins the lacrosse stick around and plunges the butt of it through the woman’s open mouth, puncturing through the back of her throat, effectively reverse impaling her. She struggles and gags for a few moments as white goo shoots out of her mouth and the new hole in the nape of her neck.
He’s just about to start another monologue about how he’s the world series champ, but out of the corner of his eye, he sees that this woman has friends - two more gray skinned bug monsters emerging from the forest and charging towards him. He removes the lacrosse stick from the first bug, who falls lifelessly to the ground. Now, Cannon has some time before the other two bugs will reach him, so he assesses the situation. His duffel bag is already full of bug parts, he’s gotten more than what he came out here for. The sun is getting pretty low, and he definitely doesn’t want to be out here in the middle of nowhere when it’s dark out. He tries to estimate how long this little altercation is gonna take versus how much time he has before sundown. He does some quick calculations, a little bit of mental math, but he’s actually really bad at math. Actually, wait, he fucking hates math, wha-- what is he doing math for? Fuck math, he’s just gonna beat the shit out of these bugs. Don’t take my word for it, he’s literally saying it out loud right now.
“Fuck math, I’m gonna beat the shit out of these bugs!”
And by golly, he does. I mean, he’s been through this exact same song and dance more times than he can count. Which, to be clear, it’s a lot, he’d definitely done this a lot of times, but not so many times that it’s uncountably high. Probably in the hundreds. But, believe me, that’s higher than he can count. Anyways, I won’t bore you with the gory details of this little slaughterfest, but Cannon is just absolutely going to town on these things. Thwacking off limbs with his lacrosse stick, hurtling lacrosse balls like high caliber slugs into their chests, just destroying them. By the time he’s done with them, he’s covered in little bone chunks and splotches of white paste. It’s gross and disgusting, but for Cannon, it’s just another day on the job.
Just like he’s done with pretty much every other bug he’s ever killed, he gets to chopping. He’s breaking up all the limbs that he can and stuffing everything into his duffel bag, which is already very much at capacity. He can’t help himself. Every piece of meat he stuffs into the bag now is another piece of money he can stuff in his pocket later. After a few minutes of stuffing, the duffel bag looks like an over inflated balloon. With concerted effort, he manages to sling it over his shoulder. Lacrosse stick in hand, he grabs the bike that he left standing up against the backstop and hops on and starts to pedal the long way home. It’s hard work, but he’s got a big smile on his face. He knows he’s got enough meat to make at least two dozen of his “world famous” pizzas, and he knows that he’s going to make bank from it. What he doesn’t know, though, is that his next delivery is going to change his life forever.