The Ballad of Bonaduke—
Episode 26: Something Awful
DETAILS: Series: The Ballad of Bonaduke, #26 Format: Kindle Vella Story Read Date: June 23, 2023
My boot connected with his face. I felt a squishing sensation through the heel of my foot and watched as his entire head collapsed inward like an oversized cadbury egg.
The Story So Far…
A drunken Michael Bonaduke decides to use a grift (with maybe some sort of magic/magic-like “help”) to win on a scratch-off lottery ticket so he has money to buy more to drink. He pulls off whatever he did, gets his money and some booze and stumbles off into the darkness to drink himself into oblivion so he can start again the next day. He’s hit by dark memories (probably what’s driving him to the drinking) of fire, pleading, and screaming. There’s going to be a price to pay for his grift, and he’s trying to be ready.
Before then, he gets himself drunk and we get some of his tragic backstory. As he ponders this, he decides to use some of his ill-gotten-gains to buy more booze and walks into a liquor store robbery. He foils it in some sort of magical fashion, gets some more to drink, and heads off to the park to drink until he’s arrested (probably for the failed robbery). At least that’s his plan, but it gets interrupted by being hit by a car. He wakes up on some sort of short, metal bed and is unsure what’s going on. It turns out that some group is subjecting him to a test—if he passes, everything will be explained to him (and hopefully the reader, too). He passes—and is brought somewhere for answers, or maybe training, or maybe another test. Time will tell (or things are going to get really annoying). Answers aren’t quick to come—but the mysteries and questions keep piling up.
Things get hairy and Bonaduke leaves and finds himself back in the neighborhood he started from. Taking refuge in a homeless encampment, Bonaduke has to make some decisions. He starts to get his thoughts in order when the police begin a raid at the camp. During the raid, he’s apprehended by…well, we need to find out. But first, the interrogation kicks off—Bonaduke tries to work his grift to get him out, and while that effort starts off promisingly…it didn’t quite go the way he’d intended. He finds himself by a group of squatters who seem to have strapped a woman to a chair for reasons that can’t be good. He attempts to rescue her before he even realizes what he’s doing, and…
What’s Something Awful About?
We left Bonaduke in a tight spot—surrounded by a lot of people being led by someone with some sort of interest in their abductee. We don’t know what that interest is, but we know it’s not going to be easy for him to get her out of there.
That’s what this episode’s about—just how hard it’s going to be when all of these people decide to stop Bonaduke. There’s no magic, there’s no grift, there’s no navel-gazing, or anything. It’s just an all-on-one brawl. Bonaduke’s better at that than I’d have guessed—it might just be a combination of fear, adrenaline, and oddly good luck. But it might be working for him.
So, what did I think about Something Awful?
This was nothing but action. The plot didn’t move forward at all, like with many other episodes, but this was so action-packed, who could notice?
There were a couple of lines where I wasn’t sure exactly what Slaywood was trying to accomplish, but by and large, he did a convincing job with this brawl. I was glued throughout and can’t wait to see how/if Bonaduke gets out of this one.
