Wright vs. the Swamp Monster

Wright walked down the streets of Atlanta, headphones pumping Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind, coconut in one hand, clenched fist in the other. He gave pedestrians the Wright Eye as they passed. Most failed to notice until,

"Hey! You're Wright, right?"

"That's Wright."

It was some slappy ass bro dawg strutting with his homies. Not gonna cut it.

"You suck. You like strikeout every time."

Wright stopped. Flexed his pecs. This wasn't Wright. No one challenged him like this. He was going to have to regulate.

"Hey kid, what do you know about sucking? Nothing, that's what. Because you aren't even at a level where sucking even comes into play. You are like a forgotten mollusk, swept up on to the beach. Alone. Sun-bleached. Exhausted in ways your species rarely feels."

What would surely have followed is a petty verbal altercation, consisting of yelled insults and stale banter. Perhaps Wright would have gotten into the dude's face, and the dude, perhaps feeling emboldened by several less than bold beers would push him away with the tips of his fingers. There may have even been some pushing and shoving between Wright and the dude's homies.

All of this and more may have happened, had a swamp monster not emerged from the sewer, placing its disghusting, oozy hand-paw-fin on the street and pulling itself out of a grate. The bro dawgs shrieked like school girls. School girls emitted sounds heard only by the nearby dogs and bats, and also the swamp monster who was both part dog and part bat. Truant girls thought the swamp monster was cool, and went to an expensive store to spend their parents' money on clothes that would make them look like the swamp monster.  The phrase "swamp monster" was a trending topic on twitter. A local CNN reporter happened to be nearby, and she immediately produced a story about how David Wright just got a new haircut. Wolf Blitzer's interview with the King of the Ant Queens was interrupted so that the news could be delivered.

We cut back to David Wright and the swamp monster as he is chugging the remains of his coconut and a bat boy is handing him his favorite bat.

"I have come to steal your Wrightness, so that I may rule the underworld!" cried the monster.

"You're a Wright bastard!" Wright retorted. The swamp monster lunged, but Wright anticipated this and stepped out of the way. One of the bros got touched by the swamp monster and was immediately covered in glug. This meant that he would always smell a little swampy, which was bad, but also that some of the truant girls now thought he was cute, which was good.

Back and forth went Wright and the swamp monster, the monster lunging and spreading slime everywhere, Wright swinging his bat wildly.

"Your hair is all wrong! Your bat is wrong too!" Wright shouted back retorts of his own ("your eyesight is poor! you do badly on standardized tests!") but with each "wrong" the swamp monster hurled at him, David could feel his Wrightness sapping. He must fight back, but how?

A crowd had gathered around, and without meaning to, he locked eyes with a man, wearing a suit, holding a mop and watching the scene. An idea struck Wright. "Ask me a question," he said to the man.

"Ummm... what's your name?"

"WRIGHT! ANOTHER!"

"Okay... what did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"WRIGHT FUEL! AGAIN!"

"Err... what can we do about inflation and the national debt?"

"WRIGHT TO YOUR SENATOR!"

A little boy wearing a newspaper cap, and holding what looked to be a stack of newspapers but was actually just some stuff he was going to throw away, caught on with the game. "What hand am I holding up?" he chirped, holding up his

"WRIGHT HAND!" Wright was frothing at the mouth now.

"What was the New Kids on the Block's biggest hit?"

"The WRIGHT STUFF!"

"Who is the most famous aviator?"

"Amelia 'WRIGHTEOUS BABE' Earhart."

Then, in one of those perfect moments that occasionally graces our fair planet, a baseball flew out of the crowd. Silence enveloped the scene and everything seemed to play out in slow motion. It fluttered over the swamp monster, its bulging eyes tracking it, but unable to do anything about it. The facial expressions of the crowd froze in a melange of shock, awe and indifference. Only the ball, delicately flying, innocent to the commotion around it, only the ball moved at normal speed.

Only the ball and Wright. He saw his pitch. He squared it up. He kicked his leg.

He screamed "WRIGHT NOW!" as he swung and connected with the ball with a mighty crack. It lazered into the swamp monster's stomach and it tumbled over backwards into the sewer grate, down into the depths, landing down below with a splash. As he tumbled, he cried, "wrrroooooonnnnggg."

With the splash of the swamp monster, the spell was broken and all of a sudden everyone went back to what they were doing before any of this began. Walks resumed, as did conversations, errands, trains of thought and  trains of people. The only people who were affected by it all were brosef and his mishmash hooligans.

"Hey man, I take it back. You don't suck. You come through when it really counts."

"That's Wright," said Wright with a satisfied smile.

"You wanna, like play some X-Box with us. That's where we were headed before, y'know..."

"WRIGHT ON!"

They went off together, the dudes feeding David questions with right in the answer, and Wright hitting them back the way only he could. The camera pans down to the boy in the newspaper cap who had been diligently recording every detail on the papers he was holding. He looks straight into the camera, straight at us, with just the hint of a smile on the corners of his mouth...

and winked.