Big Tony

by Alex Miller

Big Tony is popping off. Big Tony is winning. So much beautiful winning. Big Tony is scrolling social media. The libtards are crying again. That’s why they lost the election, why they always lose. All they ever do is cry on social media. Fucking pussies. They are not at all like Big Tony, who considers himself an alpha male. Big Tony voted for Trump. Or would have, if he’d remembered to register. Why is voting so complicated? Whatever. In Big Tony’s heart, he voted for Trump. That’s what matters, what’s in your heart. Not what you do or say, but your secret self, locked away from the world, so far underground nobody will ever see it. Anyway voting will be much easier under Trump. Big Tony feels this to be true. A lot of things will be easier. 

Big Tony wears a Redskins jersey. The woke left cucked the team into changing their name to the Commanders, but to Big Tony, they will always be the Redskins. He also wears a dope pair of Jordans and a cherry red MAGA hat. Big Tony knows everybody wants to be like him. Fucking posers. Big Tony is an original. He lives in his mother’s house. Big Tony has always lived in his mother’s house. Once upon a time he was saving for his own apartment. Big Tony used to work the night shift at Kwik Stop. Big Tony hated Kwik Stop. All the customers treated him like he was stupid. Most of all his boss treated him like he was stupid. So what if Big Tony forgot to clean the slushie machine? Good luck running the shop without Big Tony! Any day now, thinks Big Tony, that shithole will go out of business. It has been two years since Big Tony was fired from Kwik Stop.   

Big Tony checks his Bitcoin wallet. Bitcoin is blowing up! Bitcoin loves Trump. Big Tony’s Bitcoin balance has soared to $800. The total elicits a feeling in him akin to sexual pleasure. He feels wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Everybody told him he was stupid to invest in Bitcoin. Well, what do those losers have to show for themselves? Not $800. Big Tony navigates to the Facebook page of Kerri Robinson. Big Tony has been in love with Kerri Robinson since junior high. He can’t see anything she posts on Facebook because her account is private. Big Tony keeps sending friend invites, but she never accepts them. Must be a bug in the system. He imagines how Kerri Robinson would react if she knew about his $800 in Bitcoin. Probably she would drop her panties. Probably her pussy would get wet. Big Tony imagines himself making dollar bills rain over Kerri Robinson’s baby oil drenched body. Big Tony reaches into his jogging pants to stroke his penis. He sends Kerri Robinson another friend invite. 

Big Tony types on the keyboard of his laptop computer. The computer chugs. Big Tony’s mother gave him the computer for Christmas six years ago. He thinks about asking her for a new one. Fat chance. She turned stingy around the time he graduated high school. Big Tony misses the old days, when his mother gave him thoughtful presents, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and the new Xbox. Big Tony misses feeling loved by his mother. Once, he was the light of her life. She would slip him $20 bills now and then and make him promise not to tell his sister. Big Tony wants to go back to the good old days. Trump will make America great again. That’s why everybody loves Trump. Everybody wants to go back. 

Big Tony has come to the conclusion that single mothers are what’s wrong with the USA. They don’t have time to give their sons the love they deserve. Big Tony’s mother is never around because of all the overtime she works at the post office. Big Tony and his mother don’t have conversations anymore. She just bugs him about finding a job. Same bullshit every day. Did you apply at the warehouse? Did you apply at Pizza Hut? Anyway everyone knows the economy is cooked. It’s all Biden’s fault. Old man Biden fucked us with his Bidenomics. The illegals took our jobs—that’s what everyone says. Everyone online, and who is anybody if they are not online? Big Tony will find a new job after Trump deports the illegals. The fucking illegals are the source of every problem. Crime and inflation and crime. Trump will arrest the illegals. Don’t they know what illegal means? Round up the illegals and stick them in camps. Stick them in camps and fucking nuke the camps. That will give the libtards something to cry about. 

Big Tony goes downstairs to the kitchen for some Mountain Dew. Big Tony has made this trek for almost his entire life. He has an early childhood memory of moving into the house, how the carpet on the stairs felt so thick and soft and clean. Now the carpet is flat from years beneath his feet. And soiled. Big Tony wishes his mother would vacuum more often. Anyway, nobody had better have touched Big Tony’s Mountain Dew. His mother buys the groceries, but everybody knows the Mountain Dew is for him. Big Tony is relieved to find a pristine two-liter in the fridge. Life is full of disappointments, so it is a comfort for something to go Big Tony’s way. The Mountain Dew and election are signs that everything will get better from now on, in his own life and for the nation. 

Big Tony’s mother assembles a salad on the kitchen counter while his sister does homework at the table. They eye Big Tony suspiciously as he pours a tall glass of Mountain Dew. Big Tony says Sup, my ladies, still crying over the election? His mother removes arugula from a plastic tub with a pair of tongs. Do you still live here? Please can someone, anyone, explain to me why my 24-year-old son is living at home? Big Tony makes a show of counting on his fingers. How many swing states did Trump win? One, two—all of them!? Where’s your blue wall now? His mother drizzles olive oil over a nest of cherry tomatoes and leafy greens. I can only keep you on my health insurance for a couple more years. It’s time to think about your future. Time for you to get a job, get your own apartment. I can help you with the down payment, but you have to start pulling your own weight. Big Tony chugs Mountain Dew from the bottle and burps. I’m flush. I got Bitcoin. Just wait till it goes higher. I’ll be set for life. Big Tony’s sister looks up from her economics textbook and glares at him through the thick lenses of her glasses. Now that you are Bitcoin royalty, how about paying Mom something for rent, for once?

Big Tony storms out of the kitchen. He marches back upstairs to his bedroom where he feels safe. How did his little sister become such a stuck up bitch? Ever since she got early admission to Brown, she thinks she knows everything about everything. Big Tony misses the old days, when she worshiped her brother like a god. When she followed him around the house, wherever he would go, and copied his every move. What a brat! If Big Tony played basketball, she played basketball. If Big Tony played Fortnite, she played Fortnite. Now she never has time for him. Too busy hanging out with her student government nerds. Big Tony’s sister and mother have become a united front against him. His mother won’t get off his back about finding a job. She doesn’t know how bad it was at Kwik Stop. Just brutal. Big Tony’s boss caught him stealing from the till—caught him just once—and fired him on the spot. What happened to second chances? Sometimes at night, when Big Tony tosses and turns and tries so hard to sleep, he fantasizes about burning down the Kwik Stop.

Big Tony navigates on his laptop to DraftKings. He checks in on the Steelers/Redskins game. Big Tony’s trademark smirk collapses into a frown. The Steelers pulled off an upset. Big Tony is out fifty bucks. How the fuck did the fucking Steelers beat his fucking Redskins? Everything had been going so good, and now this? It doesn’t feel right. Probably some shady shit went down. Probably the refs got paid off to throw the game. Big Tony shakes his head and mutters fifty bucks. He scrolls through X to see if anybody is talking about how the refs got paid off, but all anybody talks about is the election. Nobody cares about Big Tony’s problems. That’s what’s wrong with this country, people stopped caring about each other. But Big Tony knows Trump cares about him. Big Tony believes he and Trump have a lot in common. Not their shallow, surface-level characteristics, like Trump’s diploma from the Wharton School, or his millions of dollars, or his career as a Manhattan real estate tycoon. But alike in other ways. Big Tony and Trump share a disdain for elites. 

Big Tony switches tabs and scrolls Facebook. Facebook is lame social media for grandmas, but it’s useful because all his old friends from school are on it. According to Facebook, Ryan McGreevy got accepted to law school. What a nerd. Just the same dumb nerd who wet his pants on the playground in second grade. Ryan McGreevy thinks he’s gonna be some hotshot lawyer. Wait till he wets his pants in front of the judge. Big Tony clicks on the post to like it. He continues scrolling. Kevin Rinker is buying a house. Ann Porter’s baby turned two. So much is happening in the lives of Big Tony’s friends. He never sees them anymore, except on Facebook. For a while after high school, they all got together at parties. They’d drive to a field outside town and light a bonfire and get hammered on cheap beer. Big Tony misses those parties. The last one he attended was a big mess. Big Tony got slammed on Mountain Dew and vodka and told Kerri Robinson what he thought about her. Told her that now that she’d graduated maybe it was time to take all those football players’ dicks out of her mouth and give someone else a chance. Funny, right!? But it made those fucking prudes at the party so mad. So mad they asked Big Tony to leave. As if he even wanted to be there in the first place. Fucking loser party for losers. Big Tony navigates to Kerri Robinson’s Facebook page. He is still blocked from reading it. Big Tony sends Kerri Robinson another friend invite. 

Big Tony navigates back to X and sees where some dumb libtard posted hey Americans, enjoy your shithole country and everybody with any sense is piling on, telling him what a cuck he is. Big Tony joins the fun. Shut your faggot face you pedo rapist and keep crying I’m swimming in your leftist tears. Big Tony continues following the feed, waiting for the dumb fuck to respond, but he never does. What a pussy. He can’t take the heat. Big Tony finds it hard to believe anybody would be stupid enough to tweet like that after the election. Don’t they know X is Elon’s house? Don’t they know it’s not a safe space anymore? What do we gotta do to make the libtards shut up? Elon bought Twitter for $44 billion, and still they won’t shut up. We put Trump back in the White House, and still they won’t shut up. Big Tony navigates to an online gun marketplace. He checks out their stock of AR-15s. He imagines firing an AR-15 to defend the house from a mob of antifa thugs. BAM BAM BAM. Firing from his bedroom window to keep the pedophiles and trans-perverts away from his mother and sister. The rifles at the gun store are sweet but out of his price range. $800 in Bitcoin won’t stretch far. Maybe a handgun. Is that enough firepower? He alone is responsible for protecting his mother and sister. They don’t know how dangerous the world is. They don’t know the things he knows, how dark it gets at the bottom of the internet. People are crazy. People don’t know right from wrong anymore. America is fucked. Trump will buy us some time, but the truth is we’re fucked. The communists will never stop. China and Africa are coming for us. All the ragheads. Everybody’s going nuclear. When Big Tony closes his eyes, he can see the future. It’s just like Mad Max. A mushroom cloud rises over the desert—a disaster brought on by the feckless inaction of Democrats. Big Tony imagines himself driving a Cybertruck gunning it down Fury Road. He reaches out the window with his AR-15. Some crazy libtard with a mohawk and facepaint tries to wreck his ride. Big Tony puts him in the crosshairs. BAM. Big Tony will murder anyone who tries to touch him. Fucking woke-ass university professor swinging a grappling hook? BAM BAM. Some crazy dyke in a pussy hat leaping onto the roof of the cab? BAM BAM BAM. ACLU-looking grandma with blue-hair tossing sticks of dynamite? BAM BAM BAM BAM. Somehow, Big Tony never has to stop and reload. He just keeps killing and killing, until every last person who didn’t believe in him is dead. The future that Big Tony longs for is one where he will never run out of ammo.

Alex Miller is the author of the novel White People on Vacation (Malarkey Books, 2022) and the story collection How to Write an Emotionally Resonant Werewolf Novel (Unsolicited Press, 2019). His stories have been published in literary magazines including Flyway Journal, Bullshit Lit, and MoonPark Review. He lives in Denver.