Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,6

I don’t want to be pushed around anymore.”

“I can definitely help with that,” Schumann says. “Training starts now. Let’s stop for some pizza on the way home from the ER. Demand that I pay for it.”

“Buy the pizza, please.”

“A kindergartener can be scarier than that.”

Bob pauses for a couple seconds, then screams, “You’re going to buy me a pizza. And there will be several expensive toppings.”

A smiling, hand-shaking Schumann says, “That’s the spirit.”

“And cancel any plans you might have for Friday. You’re chauffeuring Jane and me to a magic show.”

Scroo Dat Pooch

Dumper Games is decorated like a dignified day care. That’s all the rage with greedy corporations these days, disguising themselves as elaborate romper rooms with Ping-Pong, billiard, and foosball tables, entire walls of vintage video games from the 1980s, kegs of microbrewed ale available whenever an employee fancies a pint. None of the young workers wear shoes, all lollygagging around in argyle socks.

Malcolm Dumper, wearing his patented #99 Gretzky uni, invites Bob and his team into the conference room to plop down on one of the beanbags (of course, there’s no conference table or regular chairs in the conference room) and brainstorm. To powwow. To spitball ideas. To come up with a game so good it will boomerang DG back to its glory days. Specifically, Dumper wants this new game to corner the highly desirable and highly stunted eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old male demographic: a land where scatology is king, a sad, lonely world where a certain segment of guys game and game and game their lives away, only taking breaks to jerk off or eat a Hot Pocket. And then quickly back to gaming. And then maybe another jerk. Another Pocket. Ad infinitum …

Once everybody takes a seat on a beanbag, as is his tradition, Dumper launches these brainstorms with a speech, macerating his metaphors to pulp: “The Dumper family needs to make some immediate changes to our catalog and make them fast. Imagine Dumper as a massive ship. This ship of ours needs to bore full speed ahead to generate revenue, yet it also needs to do a 180-degree about-face to get away from the boring titles we’ve already put out this year. Of course, no sailing vessel can do these two contradictory things at once. But we have to try to accomplish them, or who knows how long our doors will be open. Am I saying there’s imminent door closage? Not exactly. But the Great One is saying that our doors might get antsy to slam if we don’t start raking in some serious bacon.”

“Are you talking about buying a company yacht?” the mouth-breather says. He’s almost half Coffen’s age, has only worked at DG for eight months. Bob can’t wait until he gets fired, pursues an industry more suited to his talents, say a tenured position as the chief mouth-breathing lackey at a sleep apnea clinic. “For, like, fishing trips?”

“The Great One is talking about us. I’m talking about us taking the eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old male demo and bouncing it on our knee and entertaining them with something edgier than they’ve ever imagined. And you’re the team to do it. So dazzle me with your pitches. Let me wet my beak on your fantastic ideas. Let me douse my beak. Submerge it underwater, deeper than the Titanic.”

“What about a stoner’s quest,” says the mouth-breather, “in which a guy goes on a journey to find the perfect bong? Early levels give him pretty good bongs—nice draw, a properly placed carb—but each new level the bongs grow by a foot. The last level he can get a ten-footer. That’s like the Sistine Chapel for bong aficionados.”

“You suggest that same idea at every meeting,” Dumper says, his humungous tongue safely stowed in his mouth, alerting everyone that he’s not impressed.

“I’m pretty sure I nailed the pitch this time,” the mouth-breather says.

“These drug ideas are a different demo. Teens. Maybe preteens.”

“Bongs never go out of style, like turtlenecks.”

“Dude, turtlenecks are completely out of style,” another young team member says to the mouth-breather.

“Focus,” says Dumper. “Please. Shock me with your edginess. Let’s get back to our rightful Disemboweler throne.”

Coffen had masterminded the whole Disemboweler franchise: Disemboweler I: Flesh for Breakfast; Disemboweler II: Tasty Comrades; Disemboweler III: Zombie Happy Hour; Disemboweler IV: Let’s Get Bloody! The first game had been Bob’s breakthrough success, and he built it back before computer advancements made it so simple to design games. Coffen did this before all the drag-and-drop technologies simplified the process so any novice could put a half-assed