The Ballad of Bonaduke—
Episode 4: The Five
DETAILS: Series: The Ballad of Bonaduke, #4 Format: Kindle Vella Story Read Date: October 13, 2022
Recovering, I stood up straight, and stared at his right eye. His eyes bounced back and forth between mine, the gun moving with his gaze. Another one of my dad’s tricks as only professionals shoot a moving gun.
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 something.
What’s The Five About?
Bonaduke walks in on a liquor store robbery and takes it upon himself to intervene. We still don’t get a clear idea of his abilities or of whatever it is that makes this an Urban Fantasy. And wow. He’s not messing around. You get the impression that things are going to go bad for him soon–like he expected after his grift, which was a smaller exercise of his abilities. So whatever is coming will probably be even worse than that (and the last sentence seems to suggest we’ll see that soon).
So, what did I think about The Bad Stuff?
I really liked this one–good action, nice magic (or whatever it turns out to be), and I liked what we saw of Bonaduke and his motivations. If we get episodes like this on a fairly regular basis, I’m really going to enjoy this series.
Good hook for the next episode, too.
