STRONK MUST GO (Part 3–Final) GOOD BYE

How long has it been now…?

With no real sense of time, the days bleed together like a cheap abstract painting—lines smudged, colors overlapping, the entire picture distorted and unclear.

Especially for someone lacking imagination.

Ask STRONK to picture the sun and some fluffy clouds, and what do you get? A blank, vacant stare. Maybe a confused grunt. Maybe a fart. Or perhaps a flex—because that’s what people expect from him, isn’t it?

He’s not conjuring any vivid imagery in that head of his; his mental real estate is reserved for a low, constant hum and a rogue blood vessel or two, born from lifting inhuman amounts of weight.

So no, STRONK can’t say how long he’s been stuck in this concrete monolith within an unnamed metropolis—a copywriting sweatshop turned prison, churning out STRONKisms for zero pay. He’s working off a debt he didn’t know existed until Lowell hung himself in a fleabag motel.

His time with the Whoresmen feels distant now, faded and blurred, as if it belonged to another lifetime.

Like a pot filled to the brim with oil and left on high heat, everything was ready to boil over—and ignite. Burn it all down. Straight to the box springs. Leave nothing and no one alive to tell the story of the 300-pound, muscle-bound simpleton kept hidden away, poked, prodded, and needled with corporate nonsense he could never hope to understand. Day after day after day.

STRONK had been planning his escape for weeks, months, or maybe years—however long it had been since his freedom was ripped away.

He stopped using the toilet. Instead, he hid his meaty BMs in a rolled-up Elmer Group t-shirt tucked in the corner of his cell—formerly the server room. Each day, he smashed his poops together, compressing them with his immense, almost otherworldly strength, folding and kneading the mass over and over like a well-prepped dough.

When the creation was complete, when it reached its full destructive potential, it weighed the same as a thirty-pound dumbbell. STRONK, with his uncanny ability to estimate the weight of any object, knew it instinctively. The poop brick had hardened, calcified, and become as solid as stone.

The Elmer Group had been careful not to give him anything that could be used as a weapon—not that STRONK needed one. His entire body was already a Weapon of (Muscle) Mass Destruction. But for reasons known only to him, he crafted his blunt instrument out of his own excrement and waited.

The moment came when the old man—who issued commands to the other old men, who in turn passed them along to a team of interns tasked with managing STRONK and forcing him to meet their relentless copywriting demands—began scolding him for sleeping beyond his allotted three hours.

STRONK Daddy waited patiently, biding his time until Mr. Blackwell’s back was fully turned—then KA-BLAM! He slammed the poop brick into the back of his head.

STRONK thought he saw brains spill out… though it might’ve just been bloody corn and turds.

Now, in the present moment, STRONK barrels through the office on a sweaty, snarling warpath, bodyslamming every faceless body in his way.

He hurls people into walls, through tables, and out windows. He somehow sets multiple fax machines on fire—along with a guy named Phillip.

Foaming at the mouth, rabid and unrelenting, his vision narrows to a sharp, dark tunnel, and at the other end is only one thing:

Freedom.

Growing impatient, STRONK smashes through a second-floor window, landing feet-first on the sidewalk below. The pavement cracks beneath him.

A random passerby yells, “The FUCK!? You okay, sir?” His gaze drops to STRONK’s feet, embedded in the concrete.

Without meaning to—without really thinking—STRONK powerbombs the man through a bench.

The man’s family screams and cowers in terror, but STRONK is already on the move again.

Autopilot engaged, he storms through the city streets, his bloody feet carrying him somewhere. He doesn’t know where, and they’re not telling. STRONK knows the truth: loose lips sink shits—or however that saying goes.

You can only push a STRONK so far.

—

Some time has passed, and STRONK finds himself standing before a familiar and comforting sight, with no memory of how he arrived.

The Big Wet.

A beach overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Waves crash against the sand, the dark, brooding sky above hinting at heavy rain—or maybe snow.

It’s cold, and STRONK Godson stands completely naked.

His massive, erect penis points directly toward his destination:

Back into the briny depths.

Back home to the half-human, half-not-human things with their tight clammussy and long, scaly tails. Back to the packs of lightning-fast Water STRONKs, creatures with rows of razor-sharp teeth in their unnervingly wide mouths. Big, powerful predators eager to take a bite out of you—unless you bite them first. STRONK had done just that many times during his underwater odyssey, which ended nearly a year ago.

“GOOD BYE,” he says, stepping into the water.

When he reaches waist-deep, he pauses, reflecting on the fragments of memory still lingering in his mind—his time in PRIME, with the Whoresmen, and with his beloved Mama Dick.

Gang-style beatdowns. Psychotic car rides. Soapy bubble baths. Battles by the bog. The scattered recollections are almost enough to stir something close to sentimentality.

Almost.

But STRONK feels nothing—nothing except hunger and aggression.

Or does he?

No, he’ll surely miss the Whoresmen. Those were his brothers, after all. At least until his memory purges the old to make way for the new.

He glances down at the Walkie Talkie in his hand, realizing for the first time since leaving the Elmer Group offices that he still has it. He briefly wonders why he chose to craft a poop brick for captor-braining instead of just using the Walkie Talkie, but the thought vanishes as quickly as it came—too much self-reflection for him to handle.

He lifts the Walkie Talkie to speak into it—one last attempt to contact Mama Dick, though every previous effort had failed. But before he can utter a word…

Something descends from the sky, breaking through the dark, ominous clouds.

A metallic object, the size of a football field, with a flexed arm-like structure glides into view.

It hovers silently over the water, its brushed-steel surface—or perhaps a material unknown to mankind—reflecting the restless waves below.

The massive “arm” rotates soundlessly, angling its “hand and wrist” upward, directly toward STRONK.

“PAPA BEST?”

No. That man was mercifully dead.

The “arm” extends, forming a ramp that lowers until its end dips into the water.

A booming voice thunders from the object:

STRONK’S TIME HERE IS DONE.

STRONK blinks.

His penis, once defiantly pointing toward the Big Wet, goes limp.

COME HOME, STRONK.

STRONK shrugs, muttering, “OKAY,” before stepping onto the extended “forearm.” He disappears through an opening at the crook of the “elbow.”

The “arm” retracts, flexes upward once more, and vanishes into the sky at an impossible trajectory.

And that’s it.

GOOD BYE.