“Peter!”

Eun Yin.  Outside the house.

He rolled over and threw a forearm across his eyes.  “Go’wayI’llkillyou.”

“PETER!”

He stuck his face into his pillow.  “Iwillfuckstartyourfacefuckoff…”

The front door snicked open.  Footsteps echoed from the downstairs living room, growing louder as she walked up the stairs.

Maybe she’ll leave.  Maybe she’ll—

His bedroom door swung open.  “Peeeeeeter…it’s time for schoo-ool…”

“There is no Peter,” he grumbled.  “There is only Fucklor, thousand-cocked demon king.  So unless you want to fight off an army of dicks, I suggest you—”

Eun yanked back a curtain, flooding the room with dazzling light.

“AHHHH!”  Peter shot up and threw a pillow at her.  She snatched it from the air and flowed into a spin, sending it rocketing toward his head.  It hit him square in the nose—WHOOF!—and he fell onto his sheets, clutching his face.

“FUCK!” he yelled.  “Why’d you—”

“Peter, you threw the pillow.”

“Goddamn aikido.”  He swung his legs onto the floor.  “You’re the only person in the entire world who can actually use it.”

Eun shrugged.  “I’m talented.  Doesn’t make me better than anyone else.”

Peter snorted.  “The fuck it doesn’t.”

“Peter—”

He glared at her.  “That’s my slave name.  My real name’s Chongha.”

“—have you heard of the Han?”

He kept glaring.  “No.”

She clicked her phone on.  “According to Wikipedia, ‘Han is a theorized, culture-bound syndrome among Koreans that denotes a collective feeling of oppression and isolation in the face of insurmountable odds, the overcoming of which is beyond the nation’s own capabilities.  It connotes aspects of lament and unavenged justice.’ ”  She clicked her phone off and gave him a weighted look.

“So?  I was born here—I’m American, not Korean.”

“Research implies that a lot of our behavior is determined by genetics.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Peter scoffed.  “There’s not a thing around me I can’t control, least of all my own behavior.”

“What about Atherton?  Just last week you said it would never evolve beyond its evil chimp paradigm.”

Peter fell silent.  Then he muttered, “The Fuckrising.”

Her brow crinkled.  “What?”

“Nothing.”

She let it go.  Over the course of their friendship, she’d gotten used to his random non-sequiturs.  “You hungry?”

He didn’t respond; he was lost in thought.  He slipped on some jeans, coated himself in Axe body spray, and threw on a t-shirt.

 

 

When Peter was five, his mom and dad had died in a car accident.  Despite the lack of parental guidance, he’d gotten along just fine.

Not a surprise—he was a goddamn genius, after all.

The government knew it too.  On his seventh birthday, they’d asked for his help.  In return, he’d made them promise to leave him be.  They’d readily agreed—turning a blind eye to an underage minor was a small price to pay, if said minor could repel an Insectoid invasion, or thwart a shady organization bent on summoning Astaroth.

They didn’t force him to go to school, but he went anyway.  For some reason, his brain only made delta waves while sleeping in bed, but sleeping in class put him in theta.  So his body repaired when he was at home, and he generated ideas by snoozing at school.  (He suspected it had something to do with his boring-ass teachers, but he never got around to actually researching it.)

As far as money went, Peter was covered.  He had a unique skill, one that amassed obscene amounts of filthy lucre:

Peter Lee was a blowjob king.

Via the dark web, he solicited rich, deviant men who wanted a toe-curling slob-job.  He’d set up a 2 a.m. meeting at a truck stop restroom, then secretly film them.  Over the years, he’d built up an arsenal of incriminating evidence.  Powerful executives were beholden to Peter, and consequently, provided him with a steady flow of cash that would blow the socks off Warren Buffet (figuratively, in this case—as far as Peter knew, Warren wasn’t one for oral deviance).  They thought they were paying to fuck his mouth.  In reality, they were paying him to keep his mouth shut.

It was goddamn beautiful.

Three years back, he’d attempted to target some Illuminati moguls, but it had all gone pear-shaped.  Operatives had kidnapped Eun and Reptar, snatching them up in the dead of the night.  After a tense standoff in an abandoned warehouse, everyone had gone their separate ways.

Later, Peter realized the assholes he’d threatened had just been front men.  Somewhere out there, a shadowy cabal was watching him closely.  They let him know it through an untraceable email, sent weekly without fail.  The subject was blank, the body comprised of a single sentence:

DON’T FUCK WITH US.

Despite his cutting-edge mind and pendulous balls, Peter Lee—for all intents and purposes—was trapped in a prison.  There was nothing he could do.  Shit, if the goddamn president couldn’t change things, then—

“Peter, you need to eat.”

“Huh?”  He gave his friend-girl an irritated look.  “Eun, we’re halfway there.  You should’ve said something back at the house.”

“I did.  You weren’t listening.”

“The Fuckrising,” he muttered.  “Once I deploy it, everything will—”

“Peter!”

“Huh?”  He pinwheeled his arms, keeping his balance atop his clunky unicycle.  “What?”

“Food.  You need some.”

He scratched his head.  Hmm…he was kinda hungry…what to eat, what to eat…his gaze settled on a two-story Victorian.

Ms. Powolski’s flower garden.  Perfect.

She cocked her head, puzzled.  “What’re you—”

He sped toward the garden, legs pistoning, forcing the Bite Mobile to its prothagonous limits.  Eun caught up with relative ease—she wasn’t encumbered by a heavy-ass unicycle.

“What are you doing?” she called.

He hurdled the fence and proceeded to maow down tulips.  His eyes bugged and his cheeks bulged—for a brief moment, he resembled a psychopathic chipmunk.

Eun ran up to the white picket fence.  “Peter!  What the hell—”

He kept chewing, meeting her gaze with Han-filled eyes.  “Fucking delicious!”  It came out as fuffing dilisha!

“HEY!”  A second-floor window scraped open.  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”

Ms. Powolski burst from her door at the exact same moment he hurdled back over the fence.  Eun took off, thumbs hooked in the straps of her backpack.  Peter sprinted to his unicycle, jerked it up onto his shoulder, and ran down the street like a bat out of hell.

A short while later, he rushed through the doors of Atherton High, his face colored by pulverized flowers.  Eun had gotten there five minutes prior.

 

Here’s the link to the book on Amazon:  Kor’Thank:  Barbarian Valley Girl