A Meeting of Giants

Four figures sit at a table in a sparsely-populated bar. Smoke permeates the entire atmosphere and the entirety of Metallica’s “…And Justice For All” album is playing from a jukebox. One man is holding the jawbone of a donkey; one man holds a carrot; one man holds a sharp chicken bone; and one man is holding nothing at all. The conversational topic is simple: how to best kill a man.
“One thousand,” said the long-haired, sparsely-clad man.
“What was that, Samson?” asked the British man holding a carrot.
Samson holds up the jawbone. “You can kill one thousand men with a jawbone.”
The man holding the carrot responds: “Isn’t the strength of the bone important, though? I mean, not simply any donkey can do.”
Samson shrugs. “All I know is I ripped a donkey in half with my bare hands. Killed a thousand Philistines with its jawbone. Pretty easy, if you ask me.”
“Eh,” responds the French-Canadian man with the chicken bone. “I jammed a bone into a man’s temple once. Not that special to do it with a bone.”
“Difference though,” says Samson. “You only killed one man, Jean-Claude.”
“This is true,” says Van-Damme. “But you must realize zat I also killed a woman wearing a mascot uniform by way of a dishwasher.”
Samson shrugs. “In my day, we didn’t have dishwashers.”
“Why do you hold ze carrot, Mr. Owen?” asks Jean-Claude.
Clive Owen shrugs. “Good for your health. Besides, you can jam it through a man’s throat, through his eye and out his skull, and use it as a firing mechanism when your fingers are broken.” He then takes a bite out of the carrot and eyes the vaguely Italian looking woman sitting at the end of the bar.
“Steven,” says Samson, “you’ve been quiet this entire time.”
Steven Seagal nods at this. “It is not natural to kill with assistance from objects. You are only as good as what you can do with your own body. I have broken dozens of necks with my hands alone. That is the way of the man-bear.”
At this, a metallic rasping is heard for the first time. The four men at the table start gasping for air. In one minute, they are dead, strangled, at the table. The metallic breather, an unmistakable, black cloaked and masked figure at the bar lowers his hand, asks, “‘Man-bear?’ What the hell does that mean?” and spins back to the bartender. “I will have a whiskey,” he says, his deep artificial voice filling the room.
“Mister,” says the bartender, “you sure you can drink through that?”
There is a silence as the figure’s breath continues, even, unabated. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”