Hey, you there at the back dressed in your Enter the Dragon jumpsuit, twirling your shuriken and watching Samurai Jack: somebody just turned your thoughts into Shank, and he’d like to make your acquaintance with a chainsaw and a couple of home-made blades. He’s not big on shaking hands, you see. Unless their somebody else’s and detached from the forearm anyway.
That’s probably because he’s a very angry man, not that he says much through the all the brooding, mumbling and revenge-driven brow-furrowing, of course. He did mention something about a murdered girl at one point, but to be honest the crew that he rolled in with worked as extras on Kill Bill so I paid them far more attention. Sure, their exploitation-cinema persona’s were cliched to the hilt, but, much like the bloke in the pub that insists on wearing his Bon Jovi trousers every weekend, I had to admire their balls despite knowing better.
And damn those boys could move. Even as they walked in through the door, it was with a grace and fluidity that I can seldom recall witnessing outside of the cartoons of my youth. Every step appeared choreographed and crisply defined, their pliable limbs smoothly transitioning from run to walk to smoke to… well, let’s just say that somebody overstepped the mark and things things got heated. Real quick.
I don’t know what some of these fellas did to piss him off, but no sooner did they show up than they were greeted by bullet or blade, and sometimes both. Wave after wave of them poured in to see what the commotion was; some were gutted with a kitana, some were clipped right in front of me with a pistol, and one even had a grenade stuffed into his mouth as if it was some kind of delicious metallic apple of death. If it was, let me tell you that Shank is in the business of shifting fruit; wholesale.
It was when he shotgunned the neighbourhood dog that my nerve finally broke and I called you here. I know I’m not the most sensitive of people given my predilection for videogames, but that was a bit much. It was almost like it was all for show, and he wanted me to watch; the sick, silent, beautiful bastard. If I’m watching, you are too damnit.
Through the haze of arterial spray and chunks of dismembered flesh that flew through my peripheral vision, I seem to remember a couple of big folk popping in at various intervals, but they were dispatched like clockwork; staggering towards our main man as if driven by some kind of unbreakable routine. They all went down, even though the toughest sucker managed to break out of his trance and throw a couple of moves of his own, which surprised us both. Predictably he earned even more wrath than the rest, even though the fates of his ill-equipped compadres remained splayed on the floor as a lesson. He shouldn’t have come.
Shank is still here though and he won’t leave. He’s prowling around, muttering about telling us his back-story. Apparently he didn’t want to do it over the phone, he needs us both in the same room for some reason. Must be a technophobe waiting beneath that cold, hard steel and bandana made of human blood.
But whatever, I’m glad I let him in.
Professional enthusiast, videogame "journalist" and all-round spectacular sofa dweller. "
