{"id":23264,"date":"2026-01-17T07:54:54","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T12:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=23264"},"modified":"2026-01-17T07:58:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T12:58:39","slug":"getting-the-ray-liottas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/flash-fiction\/getting-the-ray-liottas\/","title":{"rendered":"GETTING THE RAY LIOTTAS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This day\u2019s gone bad. True, at the tables it\u2019s hard to tell day from night, but one thing\u2019s for sure, this bad has gotten way, way worse, and my chest is real tight, my blood\u2019s pumping fast, my head\u2019s gonna burst, like them black clouds of rain hanging up there over the car, and I\u2019m driving mad, running lights, swerving lanes, leaning hard on my horn, and there\u2019s a clank in the engine that shouldn\u2019t be there, but I can\u2019t give the head space to figure what should have been fixed, \u2018cause I\u2019m thinking I got the Ray Liottas like from<em> Goodfellas<\/em> when he\u2019s coked to the eyeballs, he\u2019s truly fucked up, knowing shit\u2019s gonna hit now he\u2019s under the eyes of the feds, and the buzzing, buzzing in my ears is the hover \u2018copter in the film, tracking my moves inch for inch, yard for yard, spotting me from above like when we were kids, holding a magnifier glass, lying flat on our bellies in the summer school yard, and now I\u2019m sorry \u2018cause I\u2019m the ant burning up, getting ready to pop, and anyways Tyler always hung onto the glass and I guess he could be up there in that copter \u2018cause he always was a mean, scary dude, the smooth who did the bad things without getting stung, who smiled his way out of trouble while kicking some sorry kid in the arse, and I figure he\u2019s up there behind Ray-Ban reflectors, born and bred for the feds, seeing as those guys learn how to lay fists without leaving a mark, and how to plant dope, loot or guns on the loser they\u2019ve picked to put down for that day, and that loser, yeah you guessed it, that loser is me, and I know I\u2019m damned well gonna get caught, sure as hell I\u2019m running the line, like the big fish (only smaller), the one my dad hooked that day from Gilbie\u2019s fifty-grand launcher, the fish who played out for miles and needed hard winching in, and my dad\u2019s hands, they were ripped to shreds, though he held on and held on being the big man he was, held on same as I\u2019m holding this wheel, gripping it like the harder I hold, the harder it\u2019ll be to let go, and my breathing is ragged though I suck on my tabs lighting one from the other hoping I\u2019m inhaling answers and will find a way through, though I\u2019m just one cell call away from my number being called in and my wife finding the papers, spilling the repos\u2014shit\u00ad\u2014all the unpaid bills, from the sharks or the bailiffs kicking in my front door and the clanking, kicking, buzzing is making my head explode though I\u2019m not sure which sounds are for real \u2018cause I don\u2019t seem to be goin\u2019 nowhere so could be I\u2019ve reached the end, and I\u2019m sitting here, all still, and wondering if you could reel in an ant or fry a fish with a magnifier glass and if so how it might taste?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe pretty good.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe the skin would just blister.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe inside it\u2019d be bloody and raw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018cause I\u2019m thinking I got the Ray Liottas like from Goodfellas when he\u2019s coked to the eyeballs, he\u2019s truly fucked up, knowing shit\u2019s gonna hit now he\u2019s under the eyes of the feds, and the buzzing, buzzing in my ears is the hover \u2018copter tracking my moves inch for inch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":24179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[4656,4655],"class_list":["post-23264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-goodfellas","tag-ray-liotta","writer-emily-macdonald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23264"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24180,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264\/revisions\/24180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}