Literature / Pinot Noir

"This has to have been the stupidest night in my entire life."

—Pinot Noir, summing up the story in a nutshell.

Pinot Noir is an action/comedy/horror/sci-fi/supernatural story written by Therealjackieboy on Fictionpress.

Pinot Noir is an assassin working in Kaos city, a crime-ridden hellhole that really comes alive on Purge Night, where criminals, gangsters, and other violent miscreants are allowed to commit any sort of debauchery they can. Pinot however, chooses tonight to instead get some rest, as he hasn't been able to get any for a few weeks. But when things get too hectic outside, and Pinot realizes that he can't get any sleep at all, he decides to grab his weapons and trenchcoat and gun down every criminal organization in town- all the way up to Big D, the biggest crime boss in town and the organizer of Purge Night- in order to acquire the shuteye he needs. Hilarity Ensues.

A prequel anthology is in the works, showcasing the lives of a majority of the characters before the events of Pinot.

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This story provides examples of:

• Affably Evil:
  • Timmy, despite being Big D's high ranked servant, is actually not that bad a guy. When confronted by Pinot near the end, he politely tells him that he's planning to leave, refuses to fight him, and even gives him a snack and some water to keep him fed.
  • The Master Torturer, given his namesake, is the leader of a gang of hedonistic torturers. Nevertheless, when he confronts Pinot, he has a friendly conversation with him before he begins his torture process, even calling him a "brother" should he survive his torture methods.
  • The Pornomancer, Luc Reno, despite being a pimp who injects Pleasure into his stock, treats his women with friendly respect and acts affable towards Pinot when he spots him in his store.
• Affectionate Parody: Of over-the-top action films, video games, vigilante stories, and B-grade exploitation flicks.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The time period isn't stated, yet has cell phones, tape recorders, cassettes, boom boxes, high tech cybernetic weaponry, and phone booths being seen as outdated.
• Arc Villain: While the story has its own overarching antagonists, each chapter starting with the third has its own villain for Pinot to take down and kill.
• B-Movie: The story is written in the style of one, with over the top scenarios, larger than life characters, hammy dialogue, and a plot that is just an excuse for crazy action-packed antics.
• Batman Gambit: Kleetus knew that Alexander would play the hero and deliberately set the key to his and everyone else's cages, knowing that he would devise a plan to save him and the other captives. Knowing this, Kleetus, seeking to get rid of the other kids before Purge Night ended, waited outside the door to freedom and killed the escaping kids, except for Alexander.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Completely averted. Everybody gets physically damaged one way or another, and the women are no exception. Examples include Greta's general hideousness especially after Pinot blows her up and leaves her face physically scarred and destroyed, and Himiko's face getting pumped full of shotgun shells that leaves her unrecognizable.
• Big Bad: Big D is the crime boss who rules over all criminal activity in Kaos, and is responsible for Purge Night, a single night in which criminals are allowed to commit whatever crime they want. Eventually, he sends his men after Pinot himself, who is killing the criminals of the city to get himself some sleep. However, the real villains are Greta Ludwig von Hertz, D's head Mad Doctor who has her own plans that involve the death of D's son and the capturing of Pinot for her own personal needs, while also being the one to pitch the concept of Purge Night to D, making her just as responsible for everything that goes on in the story; and Kleetus Klementine/Christopher Cogswell, a separate villain and preacher who's responsible for multiple child kidnappings, hinted to be responsible for the rampant crime in Kaos via Black Magic, and is actually an immortal servant of Shub-Niggurath that wants to destroy all living things on the planet.
• Bittersweet Ending: A lot of bad guys are dead, the world has been saved from Christopher and Greta's plans, Big D has died, and Pinot has accomplished his goal. However, Pinot commits suicide due to only getting a minute of good sleep until his alarm wakes him up, and over 2 million people have died that night. The ending also hints at a possible, bloody battle for Big D's position.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Pinot Noir is a violent assassin who nevertheless shows himself to have standards compared to the cutthroat murderers, pedophiles, a sadistic drug kingpin, a cannibalistic organ harvester who wants to unleash a Zombie Apocalypse, and a child trafficking preacher who is an immortal worshipper of the Old Ones.
• Body Horror: Greta's experiments, from what Pinot glimpses at, are this, with limbs growing out of one woman's mouth, a man's eyes and lips being sewn shut, and a human blob with two faces.
• Can't Take Criticism: CrunkFam, who would rather bust their critics' heads open than actually take advice for their music.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The story, while having its share of dark moments, is for the most part an over-the-top fest of dark comedy and parody. Then the ending of Chapter 6 happens, and the tone darkens considerably, continuing that way into the next chapter.
• Chubby Chaser:
  • Implied with Schultz. He would've found Greta's physique more appealing had she not been a disgusting person with a belly full of human flesh.
  • The narrator is implied to also be one, referring to Himiko's actual, bloated figure as "beautiful".
• Crapsack World: With a town called "Kaos", one isn't expecting sunshine and rainbows. Murder, crime, rapists, organ harvesting, child trafficking, and a special night where all of that and more commences.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Timmy's battle with Richie's gang in Chapter 3. Four dangerous, armed criminals against one butler with a gun and a knife. Timmy wins.
• Death of a Child: Junior witnesses the corpses of several children when he's trapped in the Richie's orphanage, and later on several children are killed by Kleetus, who knew that they were going to escape their cages.
• Deconstructive Parody: Of dark action B-movies and Wide-Open Sandbox video games. The main character isn't a selfless hero or vigilante, but a psychopath who wants some sleep and is willing to take down everybody in order to do so. Action tropes are constantly being questioned and lampooned by either the narration, or the characters, and even Pinot's dumber decisions are mocked by the narrator. At one point, Pinot questions whether he's murdering these people for fun, or because he actually wants some rest. However, most of the humor involves amping up the insanity of certain action tropes for comedy.
• Didn't Think This Through: After Crank detonates his employees' heart bombs, he suddenly realizes that he would need to hire over 100 more people, which would end up costing him more money and time, meaning that his business would be heavily affected by this.
• Dreadful Musician: CrunkFam are described as such by Pinot and everybody else.
• Eldritch Location: One possible interpretation of the Torturer's hideout. Despite it being about a three floor building on the outside, it took Pinot a long time just to walk down an enormous amount of stairs, plus all the surreal torture moments and whatnot.
• Excuse Plot: Pinot's sleepless rampage is really just a silly excuse for action, gore, explosions, and other over the top scenarios. Interestingly, there is a plot in the background, mainly revolving around Big D, his cohorts, and a separate one involving Kleetus. But because we're seeing a majority of the story through Pinot, none of these are given much gravitas, with Pinot not even being aware they're going on.
• Explosive Leash: Somewhat. Crank sews explosives in his employees'—both the chemists and dealers—hearts, detonating them should they give away his location or fail at their jobs.
• Foreshadowing: One of Penelope's many jobs she tells Pinot in Chapter 2 includes "recording audio books on cassette." Greta would later lure Pinot to her by pretending she captured Penelope, using one of said audio books to trick him into coming.
• Frame-Up: Greta does this to Pinot by brutally murdering Junior, pinning the blame on him and allowing D to become both broken and willing to bend to her every will. That, and it allowed her to have an excuse to bring Pinot back to her and continue experimenting on him.
• Genre Savvy: After Greta announces her plan to Pinot involving creating an empire of zombies and rule over it as their queen, Pinot tells her how stupid and illogical her plan is. This causes Greta to become so mad, she cancels the plan entirely.
• Gilligan Cut: A flashback showcasing how Big D arrived in Kaos when he was young ends with him hoping to live a better life than the one he had a day ago. The next sentence has D, in the present, getting drunk, feeling miserable, and having lost everything in his empire all because he couldn't let go of his son's death, and even allows Pinot to kill him.
• Genre Shift: While most of the story is considered action with elements of surrealism, comedy, and science fiction, Chapter 7 introduces two genres not seen throughout the story.
  • Lovecraftian themes. Christopher is a follower of Shub-Niggurath, and seeks to use her powers to make him a god above mankind.
  • Fantasy elements are introduced, specifically black magic, which allowed Christopher to maintain his immortality.
  • Chapter 8 involves the story turning into a giant monster film, with a miniature size zombified Pinot tackling the large, transformed, eldritch Christopher.
• Gorn: The story doesn't shy away from the amount bloodshed and carnage committed by everybody. Especially prominent in Chapter 5 when Pinot transforms into a beast that slays countless goons in creatively violent ways, painting most of the room with blood.
• Greed: A recurring theme of the work is criminals using people as a way to earn money, whether it be as fighters, as organ carriers, as playthings for pedophiles, and as slave labor.
• Groin Attack:
  • Pinot shoots one of Carl Gangrew's members in the groin point blank with a shotgun.
  • Big D shoots Jerrel in the groin with his solid gold desert eagle.
  • Schultz getting castrated by Greta is shown in Chapter 7 to have genuinely traumatized him, to the point where he has a breakdown once he recalls the event to Pinot.
• Hell Is That Noise: People under the affects of Pleasure who have not taken another dose of it will experience an ongoing, horrifying siren noise that drives them insane until they take another dose.
• Heroic RRoD: Pinot's act of staying up in the wee hours of the night starts to take its toll on him later on in the story. He starts feeling drowsy, tired, and unfit to do a lot of fighting.
• Hope Spot: In Chapter 6, it looks as though Alexander will successfully lead the captured children to freedom... that is until Kleetus arrives and kills everybody but Alexander. This was actually invoked by Kleetus, who wanted to give Alexander hope and shatter it all for nothing but his own enjoyment.
• I'm Standing Right Here: D says that he values his son's life over his own follower's lives, even that of Timmy. Timmy, who was standing right next to him, lets out a loud sigh of annoyance.
• Kevlard: Pinot couldn't properly punch Himiko in the stomach due to his fist bouncing off her flab.
• Killed Offscreen:
  • Melon LaMar, though it's at least implied that he was shot in the head.
  • Poor Junior is brutally murdered by Greta offscreen. However, we see the remains what what she did to him, and they aren't pretty to say the least.
• Knockout Gas: Junior gets a whiff of this twice.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Once Pinot kills Red and aims his weapon at the final three members of her posse, the three gunmen just throw their weapons down on the floor and call it quits, as they have no longer have a leader, and Pinot had already killed nine of their own, so why bother trying to fight him.
  • Similar to the above, in Chapter 7 Timmy quits D's gang along with everybody else because of D's anger and grief destroying his own business, and his minions.
• Last Episode, New Character: The epilogue introduces Deacon, aka "Deke", a mysterious man in black who has captured Pinot's corpse and is bringing him back to his superiors.
• Large Ham: Everyone has their moments, but Pinot, Greta, Melon, and Crank especially stand out as the hammiest.
• Lemony Narrator: The narration is a character on their own, often speaking their opinion on several characters, and even lampshades a good chunk of the story.
• Mind Screw: Chapter 6 is mostly this, thanks to representing dreams. Was what Pinot had seen inside the Torturer's building real, or was he just imagining the events inside? Pinot himself even questions whether the building or the entire story was nothing but a bad dream he's having.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • The town is named Kaos. That town is a Wretched Hive that makes Roanapur looks like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
  • One of the assassins possibly able to fight Pinot Noir is named Jennifer Bullets. While she isn't seen on-screen due to her offscreen death, she certainly had her reputation.
• Orphanage of Fear: The Mother's Keep Orphanage, a dark, abandoned building where Richie Sallinger and his gang hang out and murder children.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The boys who comprise CrunkFam, who make rap mishmash albums and talk like black people, right down to saying the N-word.
• Prone to Vomiting: Pinot's constant vomiting thanks to a combination of coffee scotchka and the fact that all the adrenaline is building up is ruining his body, combined with his lack of sleep.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Junior gives one to D in Chapter 3.
• Rule of Cool: 50% of the story runs on this logic.
• Rule of Funny: The other 50% runs on this.
• Running Gag: Pinot passing out for contrived reasons, to the point where he lampshades it at one point before he passes out again.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: In-Universe. Pinot, while fighting Red and her goons at an arcade, decides to intentionally kill them without using bullets so that he may save his ammunition for a fight that actually matters to him.
• Sequel Hook: Big D's position is up for grabs in a ruined Kaos, and the enigmatic Deacon has taken Pinot's corpse to be used for some mysterious project of sorts.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog:
  • In Chapter 6, Alexander's painstaking plan to escape with the kids is foiled when Kleetus arrives and kills them all.
  • The ending. Pinot accomplishes his goal, tackles a giant monster, and gets the sleep he's been craving... until his alarm clock wakes him up after only a minute of rest. Pinot promptly pulls a gun from his mattress and blows his brains out.
• Shout-Out: Dozens upon dozens, from multiple B-movies, to dumb action flicks, to music, to animation.
  • One of them includes mentioning Gabriel Scraggle becoming a Lovecraftian fiction writer under the pen name Light Snakewood, an explicit reference to Lightysnake and Scraggle's Web Original Fiction The Neverkind Saga.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: While everybody's a little foul mouthed, Pinot himself is the dirtiest of them all, almost every sentence of his containing a curse word of some kind.
• Suck E. Cheese's: Happy Rat's Magical Funland of Fun is a pretty gross place, with broken down animatronics who sing songs with disturbing titles, a disgusting ball pit, a tube maze area that tells children how to finish it, children being repeatedly captured by Mr. Pow and Mr. Blam, and a character named Penis Pete.
• Stylistic Suck: CrunkFam's music, which contains way too many music genres crammed into one mixtape, and their lyrics aren't exactly creative, either.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Pinot's attack on Melon's meet-up in Chapter 3 involves loads of explosions, and loads of gibs.
• Take That!:
  • CrunkFam is meant as an attack on egotistical, horrendous white rappers who can't take criticism.
  • Crank Gibson is one towards John Kricfalusi. Both are selfish, racist Canadian businessmen who run their businesses like tyrants, have very short tempers, work their employees to the bone, and are disturbing child groomers.
  • A more lighthearted example, also from Chapter 4, is Unleash the Rat, a show that tried to turn the lovable Happy Rat gang into a dark and edgy action show, mocking not only poor attempts at making darker kids shows based on cuter franchises, but also Loonatics Unleashed. Granted, Happy Rat wasn't exactly "soft" to begin with given the songs they sing.
• Third Line, Some Waiting: There's a lot of plots happening in this story. The first being Pinot's sleepless rampage and taking down every crime syndicate in Kaos. The other plot concerns Big D and his doctor Greta, who plans on murdering him after acquiring Pinot for her own personal project. A third subplot involves the priest Kleetus and his child trafficking operation, which seemingly has nothing to do with the main overarching story until the end where Kleetus/Christopher kickstarts his apocalypse plan.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: We get a brief insight as to how Big Daddy Donny views the world. He sees Pinot as a frightening tentacle creature that must be destroyed, which is probably how he sees everybody else.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Necronomicon itself makes an appearance in Chapter 7.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Pinot's next-door neighbor doesn't bat an eyelash to the amount of bloodshed he committed a few seconds ago.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Multiple characters are introduced per chapter, though they're often dead by the end of their introductory chapter.
• World of Jerkass: Almost everybody in the story is an asshole, a murderer, a psychopath, or worse, all perfectly willing to murder one another or do horrific things to children.
• Wretched Hive: Kaos is a massive one, filled with all kinds of lunatics and parasites who really come alive every Purge Night.
• X Meets Y: The story can be best summed up as Crank meets John Wick meets Postal 2.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In Chapter 6, just when the kids are about to leave their prison and escape the church, Kleetus arrives and guns everybody sans Alexander down.
• Your Head Asplode:
  • Jerrel's head explodes after D shoots it.
  • Jacky, one of Richie's men, has this happen to him courtesy of Timmy.
  • Implied with what happened to Melon LaMar.
  • Defied by Pinot when he encountered Big D. He intentionally shoots him in a part of the head that doesn't cause it to explode, all as a way of giving him a more dignified death.
• Zombie Apocalypse: What Greta plans to cause throughout the entire story, all so she can rule over a world of the undead.