Money Slay
Author
Mark N. Penn
Mark N. Penn is an author of fiction who refers to himself as a writer instead of the pretentious term of the author. He grew up as an American military brat mostly in what is now known as Germany. He resides in the United States of America and has attended many colleges earning a degree also studying at university.
Mark N. Penn has worked in numerous industries for a multitude of companies with all walks of life. He has written journalistically for many print and online publications all the while, never getting the byline. Mark N. Penn is okay with because he feels it is the final product that is important not the artist. He has extensive experience as a copywriter.
Mark N. Penn spends as much time in the outdoors, exercising and traveling as he can because that is where he feels at home, exploring various adventures on the move. He had pets. Mark N. Penn was married with children and divorced. He has both loved and lost. Mark N. Penn lives his philosophy which comes through in his unique style, cheeky voice, and insightful perspective. Finally, he has written the novel “Money Slay” which he is proud to have his name on. And we agree, he should be proud.
Description
The immersive heroic legend of Maxwell Johnston, who learns he can transform humanity with his dreams. Maxwell Johnston displays all the frailties that people exhibit through his high adventures of love, revenge, truth, and intoxication. A race towards fame, fortune, and world peace involves finding and nullifying Osuma, a terrorist organization leader. Maxwell Johnston finds out that his competition includes Douglas Miller, a bureaucratic special security officer, and Amethyst Felucca the lucky hedonist, who also want to take a ride in the “Money Slay.”
Superficially, “Money Slay” is a cheeky treasure about 280 pages of blood, sex, and rhetoric. Genuinely, it is dense philosophical piece set in an extraordinary journey to battle modern terrorism with the thrills of traditional thriller and the chills of a horror. Edutainment in its highest form, “Money Slay” tests one to solidify one’s preconceived perceptions or make a change never previously considered. Must one abandon who one is, to become who one will be?
Playfully irreverent, “Money Slay” takes one on an exciting undulating ride that most novels evade provoking. It leads to deep introspection and surprising rewards for those who dare. A trip of discovery to be taken, an expedition for the initiated, treasures to be plundered. Paradoxically, what is observed is something else unexpected that is concealed with twists, misleading distractions, and questions to be answered.
Mark N. Penn’s latest penned thriller opens with Guy, a person who is not as he seems, who becomes invaluable in discovering the terrorist organization leader, Osuma. Maxwell Johnston, Douglas Miller, and Amethyst Felucca all have different reasons to go on their separate escapades, but it leads them all to the same place. Endure long enough, and we all come to the same conclusion; what we do with it, makes us who we are. Osuma may awaken, but he falls back asleep.
Maxwell Johnston, Douglas Miller, and Amethyst Felucca all awake with a brief, sudden realization, an insight that calls them to action. They put aside interferences and focus on their needs. Adjusting philosophical perspectives to achieve greatness in their mission, they conciliate to do what they must as opposed to what they have to in this black book of gritty, raw, bold, and unrestrained adventure.
Book excerpt
Money Slay
By Mark N. Penn
Prologue
This morning awoke with an immense brilliant sky. It was the kind of morning that started and left one far behind as it rushed toward the noon. The light stole slumbering souls, as it got progressively brighter. The sky opened its’ eyes wider and broader as noontime approached. The wind’s breath transformed from soft, sweet dew at breakfast into harsh, spicy scorn after lunch. The birds and insects calmed down from their daybreak cheerfulness to a meager commonness as midday drew near. The day was full and prepared to sleep, but it was the instance to stir before the darkness presented itself.
“I am awake!” Guy says internally as he observes fuzzy surroundings. He just finished receiving a relatively noninvasive exploratory procedure. He is awakening from sedation in a modern surgical-center aftercare room. It is extremely bright. It is vibrant white, fuzzy chrome, and an unclear bottle green. The room feels uncomfortably open, wide, and large with many patients just coming out of their anesthesia nearby. For the most part, they are still not awake, and it is an eerie scene. That is if Guy could comprehend his feelings other than he is alive, groggy, and a bit grumpy. Guy does not care about anything right now except for the most basic of concerns, “Am I okay?” Moreover, “When can I leave?” In addition, “Where is my friend?”
The nurse enters with a male urine bottle and has him urinate for a laboratory sample. Guy urinates blood, which the nurse explains is normal. Guy is moved to his recovery room that is the same room in which he occupied before the surgery. The nurse brings in a sausage patty breakfast sandwich. It has pork products, contrary to his religion as is noted in his charts. The nurse shares a sick sense of humor along with her assistants. They tell Guy that it is all beef and that he must eat a least a few bites worth before he can be discharged. He does as they request, tasting the thicker viscosity than beef grease, then he stops with inquisitiveness. A nurse assistant opens the curtain separating his room from the hallway and enters.
Guy grumpily states, “I need some drink.”
The nurse assistant politely asks, “Which would you like? We have diet soda pop, orange juice, apple juice.”
Guy with a slightly questioning, weak voice responds, “Orange juice, please.”
The nurse hooks Guy up to the vital sign monitoring equipment. The nurse assistant leaves and notifies Guy’s friend, Mister Abdulla who is sipping sugary tea in the waiting room, that Guy is done with surgery and that he should go and visit him while the doctor reviews the results of the operation. The nurse assistant then goes to get Guy’s juice and dress it with a straw. While she does that, Mister Abdulla walks down the hall of the surgery ward to hear nurses laughing about somebody eating pork when he is not supposed to, per his silly religion, because they switched it. That is all he got from the conversation as he passed the secondary nurses’ station. When he gets to Guy’s room, he figures out that the nurses did the switcheroo on Guy, when he observes the half-eaten breakfast sandwich. Mister Abdulla keeps his observations to himself until Guy is safe.
The doctor enters and quickly articulates that the procedure went well, no problems were found, and the effects of the sedation, namely memory loss, will fade soon. The doctor says this a lot during his work week. He does not seem to take pleasure in reporting to his patients. Mister Abdulla listens intensely since Guy will probably not remember the doctor being there.
The nurses’ assistant enters again to deliver Guy’s orange juice. She also lets him know that he should feel some discomfort in his abdomen because of built-up gas during the surgery and he should move around there in bed so that he passes out some of the built-up gas. Mister Abdulla takes note of her name and decides that since she was retrieving him and Guy’s drink at the time that she was probably not in on the deception involving the pork sandwich.
The nurse releases Guy after thirty minutes of good vital signs and a drink of orange juice and a sufficient passing of internal gas. His friend Mister Abdulla wheels him out to the car in a hospital wheelchair. They drive off into the desert. The ride coaxes Guy to squirrel out more farts that channel up his crack to exit the coin purse.
Tonight, Guy has a unique barbeque get-together to attend. However, after the fun is over, he will collect himself, since tomorrow is a big day. Surgery generally is not courteous to the convenience of the patient’s planned schedule. Mister Abdulla hands Guy his hospital discharge papers and tells him, “The doctor says it went well, no tearing or obvious reason for your pain. They’ll know in a week the results of the biopsies.”
Guy complains back:
Doctors suck! They can never find out what is wrong with you to fix you. They just refer you to professionals who cannot understand why you would be feeling any pain there or what to do next except start back at square one. Going back to hospital departments that you already went to, especially when they say they cannot find any problems, is the runaround. You would think that they would be able to say, “Well, it’s not in my specialty, but usually others with that pain go see this specialist and or this other specialist.” You must figure it out on your own. You must doctor yourself. Then you must convince them that you are right and they should consider it. It is like passing notes between angry parents. They can only find things that you cannot see. If you are lucky enough that, they test for it. They never do a complete body scan and make a real overall health assessment. I just pass stones all the time, and nothing gets better. I still hurt. It’s unreasonable. Why don’t they fix the pain? Why don’t they do their job?
Mister Abdulla asks, “Didn’t they give you any Vicodin?”
Guy answers, “It doesn’t take away all the pain, and it makes me too loopy. I just sit there switching channels on the TV for an hour before I notice what I’m doing. I think they just give me pain pills until I am incapable of complaining.”
Guy complained about healthcare specialists and authorities, “They give you a pill. Then to combat side effects of that pill, you need to take more pills. This pill will upset my stomach, so I need this pill, which stops me from defecating, so I need to take another pill. It’s just on and on.” Guy had health problems that were not being solved or understood by those, which he paid large amounts of money, to do. According to society, they were the correct people to go visit. What is wrong?
“Why don’t they just do their job and figure it out, instead of making referrals when they feel like being lazy?” Guy says, “Why can’t professionals just get it together and do what they claim that they to do? They should fix you as a mechanic fixes a car. Mechanics don’t say that they don’t know what the problem is. No, they fix it. Then you pay them when it’s fixed. You don’t pay them to practice their vocation.” Guy complained about other things also, “I want the power!”
Mister Abdulla attempts to calm down Guy’s rant by saying, “At least they don’t have to fix your face.”
Guy replies while pointing at his mouth, “They still got to get rid of this grimace.”
Mister Abdulla texts, on his mobile phone to some of his friends, to have them invite Guy’s doctor, nurse, and a couple nurse assistants to the get-together tonight.
Mister Abdulla says, “We’ll do the old switcheroo like we did before. That’ll make you smile.”
It is not that Guy had meant that he wanted electricity or some form of work power formula from variables in an equation. No, he did not want that kind of power. Guy wanted more control of his life, his environment. Guy wanted the sort of control where you do not feel that sense of things just happen to me. He wanted more than nondairy creamer and sweeteners not derived from sugar. In his ideal philosophy, Guy would live, and there would be no surprises. Everything explained quickly and easily by his philosophy, his religion, and his way of life. All the people that agreed with his ideal would live forever off those who did not. He hated other faiths and other governments or groups that did not concur with his worldview. That is why he is where he is today.
Tonight, Guy is cooking for about twenty of his friends, and their boys, who do agree with his ideal, his philosophy, his religion. They are tailgating in a rest area, cleaned once a week by a team of three mentally challenged individuals, on a lonely highway out in the desert. It is somewhat like a father and son picnic. Guy is tending a split wood fire cooking processed wild meat while he drinks and talks with his friend Mister Abdulla. They are all men, men who pass on vegetables or any side dish. For here and now, the meat is king. Guy positioned the brand-new logs with a stick and stone as though he was a Neanderthal. He fanned them to flame with a large piece of cardboard that he had found in the rest area’s recycling container. We are all just great water apes who struggle it out, on land.
Mister Abdulla was one of Guy’s best friends. Most of Guy’s friends are friends that he met when he hired them as employees for his father’s construction company from jails or through friends in the corrections systems meeting other friends and so on. There is not an abundance of steady, legal vocations available for most newly released convicts. Guy and his father provided them with an option that was difficult to pass up. All of Guy’s friends agree with his ideal way of life and his approach to achieving those goals. This makes them a close circle of Guy’s friends. Mister Abdulla was as round as he was tall. He was the spiritual heart of the group.
Mister Abdulla rolls over the cooking meat to even its doneness and to get a good smoke ring penetrating the surface of the meat. The meat was so fresh, processed merely hours earlier today, and being the only food, it just had to be prepared to tame the wildness just right.
Following, he shows Guy a new book he found, “Here read the first little bit of this story.” Mister Abdulla hands the small brown and avocado green, abstractly, decorated book over to Guy. Guy starts to read, “The Life of Mike Howard”:
You are reading. You look over the page trying to divine the idea of where this writing goes. You pause in your reading when encountering a period. You notice that your pause is longer than when reading a comma. Then you simply let that thought float away so that you can be open to form new ideas. Continuing in your journey, you read onward to discover what it is all, just all, about. Is this book written specifically, to talk to you, the reader? As if, the book was a dynamic living object. Did you write this book as a note to yourself? You do not remember anything like that. Did you do it in your sleep? Did someone slip hallucinogens into your breakfast? Maybe it was your lunch. How did you miss that when they did? You think, “Wait for a second, how many copies of this little book are there? Is anyone else reading this part right now?”
“It is a paranoid, a kind of hypnotic, weird sort of read,” Guy states, while questioningly looking at his friend Mister Abdulla, for validation.
Mister Abdulla excitedly replies, “Yeah. Pretty neat, huh? It’s rather hard to wrap your mind around it; it just goes on the same way for like the whole book.”
Guy nods and makes a grunting sound to acknowledge as though he understands. However, Guy was not that type of person who would continue to read that kind of book. “The Lies of My Coward,” as he would describe the title, was the type of book that he would never understand. He was fine with that. Guy could only go so far into exploring alternative ideas. Some are interesting for the newness quality. However, other ideas like theoretical math were just concepts beyond his realm. Guy is like an ala carte Christian who picks and chooses what parts of the religion fit with his secular vision.
Guy scholarly mentions, “Hister wrote a book which changed the way a whole country thought. He got rich. Then he got powerful. He influenced a country weakened by an economic downturn. Words matter.”
Guy, this barbecue’s master, applies his final application of glaze sauce to the meat. It really smells so appetizing, meaty and juicy. Dinner will be ready soon. It is going to be good.
Mister Abdulla speaks with Guy about how great it is to post blogs, recruit using message boards on up-to-the-minute websites, and do journalistic TV-styled web shows to broadcast anything to everyone, “Anyone can do it! There’s unlimited, unregulated access to the web and to post videos on popular sites that might get a viral following. Like our latest production that has close to thirty million views. That’s how we’ll revolutionize the world, from the roots on up.”
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