SEAN BELA

FROM THE AUTHOR

 

When writing, I always try to be inspired by a story that I can read and be like, “Oh, damn this is not only interesting, but crazy as hell.”

 

But that doesn’t always turn out on paper since I write by the seat of my pants. I find myself writing and rewriting plots and themes and then the whole project becomes some other beast altogether. But with Gunfire Samurai, everything was different. And I mean from the beginning to end. It all started with a nightmare. Yes, roll those eyes, a nightmare. A nightmare of mostly undisclosable details. But I will tell you some fun facts.

 

One summer day, I popped out of my bed sweating like a witch at a stoning. I was drenched and thought it was because Brooklyn weather was unusually hot and I had the air conditioner off. But that was ridiculous. It was on 65 degrees all night. And I was not covered as I usually do to fall asleep.

 

As I washed my face and brushed my teeth, a cold and terrible feeling crept to the front of my mind. I felt like I was being chased by someone with a deadly weapon. I shrugged it off, since I suffer from bipolar disorder and know that sometimes, I can exaggerate emotionally when left to my own devices. An idle mind is no longer just the devil’s playground, it’s mine as well.

 

I couldn’t go back to bed for some reason. And spent the next few hours watching the news and flipping channels. I still could not shake off the feeling. It was like some specter had begun to haunt me. I turned on all the lights in my apartment and even shut every room.

 

Then suddenly, as a commercial for Nyquil came up, I remembered why my heart was racing like a 37-year-old man-virgin unhooking a bra strap. It was the dream I woke up from. No, the nightmare – it was horrible!

 

I was walking through what looked like a rural area just outside of a city and then I found myself smackdab in the middle of downtown Tokyo. I had been to Tokyo before, a very long time ago while in the service, so everything looked memorable. Except there was a big panic. Crowds, no hordes, of people came running past me screaming.

 

Some of them had no heads and they fell to the ground convulsing, leaking blood. There was a river of blood on the street that carried cars off like they were weightless. I didn’t know what to do, where to go, or who was responsible for the terror. I simply headed into a coffee shop and told the people inside to lock the door and hunker down.

 

Then I saw him. He was the embodiment of what all nightmares were meant to serve as. But I was inside this world so I didn’t know it was just a dream. There was this seven-foot-tall samurai carrying a giant silver gun and a golden katana cutting off people’s heads and gunning down those who were too far from the reach of his blade. Some of his victims were incinerated by what looked like a torch setting from his weapon. He had red eyes that glowed, claw-like long fingers and pearl white hair. The Japanese and American military came after him, I sighed and we cheered, but they failed miserably and met the same fate as the civilians. And when he was done massacring the hell out of the city, he came for us in the coffee shop.

 

He took the infant first, snatching her out of her crib and crushing her skull with his bare hand. Then her mother followed with an earsplitting sound and then the store clerk. I was paralyzed by fear and my stomach hurt something awful. I tried praying, but the words couldn’t come out – and it didn’t help that I was not a religious guy. But if there was a god, I wanted him/her/it to hear me at that moment.

 

He’d finished everybody in the coffee shop and started walking out. I was behind the drink cooler when he looked back and caught me trying to run to the back room. He moved like the wind in a tornado. I was barely able to shut the door and bolt it, but it was for nigh – he only kicked it three times before the steel door came tumbling down on top of me. Long story short, it was the first time I died and felt pain in a dream. But now, I had remembered how I woke up just as he plunged that cold and golden steel through my trachea.

 

I had spent the day before revved up on Red Bull and chain smoked like a thief in an interrogation room filled with veteran sleuths. I had been researching for my writing group about the worst action movies of all time. So, you know this necessitated a visit to YouTube and long hours watching crappy foreign film trailers. But, as you all must already know, I ended up veering to the weird side of the net. And I must have watched a hundred gigabytes or more of what I can only label unadulterated mayhem.

 

This, compiled with my rabid insomnia, made it difficult to shut my brain off at night. So, I took a sip of Nyquil. When that didn’t work, I took another sip. And then another and another, until I had consumed the entire bottle. When I fell asleep… I have no idea? But it somehow had a remarkable consequence on what I dreamt during my slumber. And to this day, I have not taken the stuff again, and had never had those dreams since. Not blaming the medicine here, though.

 

If you’re sick from a cold in the middle of summer and take way more Nyquil than is medically sound to fall asleep, be prepared for some trippy nightmarish stuff. It’s not something I would recommend anyone to do.

 

And if you spend the entire night watching violent YouTube videos for your research project for your writing group, don’t be surprised if you have offensive nightmares that leave you trembling and sweating in the morning.

 

It spooked me for days. How the hell was I going to deal with something that was not tangible? Something I couldn’t kill or ignore? Worst still was the fact that I had invited this into my life by a stupid and dangerous action from my desperation to gain some restful sleep.

 

Well, I had enough of its intrusion into my daily life. I turned it all on its head and decided that it was time to take back my dreamscape and turned the scariest parts of the narrative into a story. A nightmarish story where I could torture the characters just as the dream had tortured me and face my fears vicariously through them. And after three weeks of writing, the beast was hatched.

 

Now, is it a good enough tale or is it rubbish and who can decide? Why you the reader, of course. To be honest, your blunt input will only make me a better writer. My bet is that you will take something profound from this story no matter what you feel about it in the end. My team did the best we could to bring you something delicious, awkward and titillating.

 

And that, my friends, is how you all got Gunfire Samurai.

 

Enjoy,

 

Sean Bela

 

 

 

P.S.

Big thanks to Marry and Don Pearlman my proofreader and editor, respectively. Without you two, it wouldn’t all be possible.

 

P.S.S.

Yes, there is a slight cliffhanger at the end of the story, but, it is a standalone episode of a series. You can read episode one and be satisfied enough with the story without continuing to the next books. But I will warn you that you will be missing a lot since the story only gets wilder as it goes. Also, beware of the Easter egg planted in the story. It will cause you to unlock something spectacular.