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April 2019

Kur 2 Chapter 3 ‘Red fox’

And a good day to you sirs and sirettes,
Kind of in a good mood today for some weird reasons. Could be the green smoothie in my hand but probably not. No I’m trying to get a new job in a new country to be closer to the person who’s most important to me. Moreover I’m trying to make some sense out of my life.
I’m not abandoning writing but it sort of abandoned me, between facebook shutting me out giving me no real place to share my work and literary agents not even replying to the majority of my emails. I feel like my work not only can’t stand out but I myself am not desirable to literary agents not being some kind of persecuted group.
I’m not going to stop writing but I’m going to stop looking at it as my only option and my only chance at fulfilment isolating myself further. It’s just a downward spiral that leads to loneliness and suicide. I’m just
I think if I can get a new job in a new place I can have a fresh start and it wont feel like inane drudgery if I can be with the ones I love in a place I love with the money to enjoy life and I can enjoy writing more as a hobby instead of a job.
And then maybe one day when the world changes or a less left leaning publisher actually emails me the fuck back I can move on with my work. Literally I feel like a leper, no one returns my emails anymore. I feel like I’m living on a space station.
Anyway I have a good feeling about this job, I have loads of experience for it, it’s just the matter of whether they want to support me with work permits and all that stuff. But even if they don’t I can keep looking and maybe get a promotion in my current job and my cv pop a little more, I dunno.
So yeah, I think I’m gonna keep job hunting today, but I’m really hoping I get the one I just applied for, that would be a dream come true, just to get out of this joke of a country. I think that’s a step in the right direction. 
This chapter as you can probably tell is me trying to subtly ease you into a massive exposition dump haha. Something I pride myself on, I am the ultimate luber of exposition dumps haha. I will make you swallow that big pill of information with a spoonful of sugar. No seriously though I think that is one of my strengths, exposition is one of those things you can’t get around sometimes and I see it done so badly in a lot of stuff even in Conan there are big exposition dumps that are really out of place and pointless. I try my best to see them and break them up and deliver them in a way that doesn’t feel like a slog. So I hope you get that and it doesn’t seem to heavy, trying to show not tell but it’s really hard to avoid that sometimes.
I hope you enjoy it and the rest of your day.
See you…
–
The sound of waves crashing, heavy limbs, rain beating, the spray of the sea. Suddenly the room is the deck of a ship and the sea is churning it, tearing it apart like it was made of kindling, the sound it sets teeth to chattering. The terrible sound rivalled only by the sounds of the screams. An unnameable shapeless mass rears up from beneath the black waves. With one stroke of it’s barbed tendril snaps the mast and pulls the ship into black oblivion.
“Wake up Firbolg, you’ve been sleeping too long – Inish Alga needs you.” A honeyed familiar voice said, the smell of blackberries, the touch of soft skin.
“That old name, – no one and nothing needs me for anything but shedding blood”
“Then so be it” The woman said. “Awaken Firbolg, embrace your destiny.”
“Destiny? Tailtui?”
The Firbolg opened in his eyes in who knows how long, his vision was blurred and he saw a blackened shape hovering over him.
A delicate white hand reached out to him and without thought he snatched it and pulled the figure closer.
“Who are you?” Cur snarled putting emphasis on each word.
The woman yanked her hand from his grasp and Cur grinned as she recoiled in shock. Her hood falling back off her head revealing a young elven girl with raven hair and pale skin.
Cur laughed, bearing his teeth and boiling off into a low cackle.
“The spurned druidess” He laughed falling back into the makeshift bed the fisherman had fashioned for him. The bed consisting of furs and old fish nets.
The girl that stood before him twisted her pretty white face and took a deep breath tucking her dark hair behind her pointed ears. She finally spoke. “It is I, the little Druidess, here to save your miserable life yet again” Birog hissed.
“How did you know I was here?” The firbolg asked.
“I saw it in a dream” Birog said.
Cur grinned and laughed that mocking laugh.
The dog bounded towards Cur sticking his snout too close for his liking, the Firbolg pushed the dogs snout away. “Away beast”
The dog whimpered.
Cur stared at the fisherman and asked “Who rules Inish Alga?” in his low croaking voice almost as if it was rhetorical or a threat.
“I haven’t heard that name in a long time” Manannan said puzzled. “Oh, still it is Bres but no one has seen him for a long time, ever since the rituals on samhain began.”
Cur looked at the Druiddess and she sighed deeply.
“Every year” She said. “Every year they take two thirds of the corn and the milk-.”
“And the children” Cur finished her sentence stonily.
“Yes” She seemed to shiver as she said it, clutching her arms around herself. “Ever since Bres went into hiding we have returned to the taxes our ancestors suffered under the Fomorians.”
She continued slowly, breathing deeply as if it pained her to say it. “Every year, the children are lead to the hill of Tara and taken down into the catacombs and never seen again.”
“It is punishment” Cur said.
“There is a new king, same as the old king- a shadow ruler, he rules but nobody knows it, he’s ruled all this time using Bres as his puppet. The power behind the throne, the unseen hand.”
“What is his name?” Cur croaked.
“He is called Balor of the baleful eye, a powerful king of the Fomor.”
“Preposterous, the Fomor are a myth” Manannan who had been leaning quietly with his arms folded against the wall of his shack suddenly chipped in. “A story to keep children from swimming in deep waters, like the kelpie.” He scoffed.
“Is that right?” Birog smirked. “They are here and they have always been here and now finally they dane to show themselves in this new tax.” She hummed to herself for a moment and walked over the silver arm that was resting on Manannan’s table.
Manannan reached for his prize instinctively. “Now wait a minute, I found that, it’s mine!” He protested.
“This doesn’t belong to you” She said then turning to Cur “It doesn’t belong to either of you”
Cur grinned broadly “The previous owner has no further use for it” He chuckled in his deep scarred voice.
“Can you stand?” Birog prodded.
Cur sneered and glanced at the fisherman and his dog before looking back at her. He pressed his one hand against the dirty wooden floor of the fisherman’s shack and rose slowly and stiffly to his feet.
He stood with some difficulty at his full height towering above both elves. He moved as if he’d forgotten how to use his limbs.
Manannan sighed seeing his difficulty “Take this ya bloody fool” He said as he handed him a stick.
Cur glared at the fisherman and reluctantly took the stick and put it under his arm to take his weight.
Birog smiled as she regarded him, running her fingers along the intricate lines of the silver arm with it’s strange magical symbols.
“Walk with me Firbolg” She smiled and walked out the door of the small scruffy fishing shack.
Cur followed his silver appendage, limping like a cripple but still with a vicious quickness to his step. His footfalls hard and angry as if he hated the ground he walked on for betraying him.
He pushed the door open.
“We meet again ‘slayer of Slaghtaverty’” Said a familiar and sickly mocking voice.
The voice came from a strange robed figure. On eitherside of him were similar non-descript and ominous comrades holding long and queer barbed weapons. The smell of seaspray and rotten fish and seaweed rose above them like a dense fog.
“Perhaps you prefer ‘Slaughterer of Slaghtaverty’, I myself think ‘slayer’ rolls off the tongue. You don’t recognize me?” The one in the centre said as he took back his hood revealing a cocky but bonnie young man, grinning with sharp barbed teeth. “Perhaps you recognize this” He said as he held up a weird and familiar sword. He smiled and tapped the edge, the sound it made was painful to the ears a singing in an esoteric and guttural language that Cur had heard before.
“Tethra!” Cur spat as he felt his scar burning with the magic of the sword.
“So your memory didn’t suffer as the crabs fed on you” He laughed.
“Who are you, get off my property!” Manannan followed after shouting at the strange oddly shaped robed figures.
“Silence! Who is this peasant?” Tethra asked turning back beyond the curtain of robed figures.
“He is no one my lord” Birog said as she passed through the crowd, the silver arm resting in the crux of her arm like a lamb being carried to slaughter. “He is of no consequence.”
“Very well” he said turning back, the corners of his mouth turning up like a snake’s to smirk at the firbolg. “You will come with us Firbolg or we will flay your friend where he stands.”
Cur looked at Manannan and grinned broadly. Manannan’s blood froze in his veins as he felt he had just sired a scorpion on his back.
Cur laughed, a wicked cackling laugh and he said. “Do whatever pleases you – ‘my lord’” He said as he dropped the grin from his and stared stonily at the traitor Druiddess.
“He is weak” Birog stated with a cold shrill glee in her voice. “He can barely stand and without this” She said stroking the strange silver arm “He cannot hope to escape.”
“King Balor wishes an audience with you last of the Firbolg, will you deny him?” Tethra said sharply with an indignant tone to his voice.
“If you knew he was here why didn’t you take him while he slept?” Manannan asked.
Birog grinned and said “I wanted to see the look on his face.”
“I will meet your king” The firbolg croaked and grinned wickedly.
–
Read the rest of this chapter on Inkitt.
0

Diana in the dark Chapter 14 ‘Two way street’ (Remurdered)

Hey there,

Been a kinda meh week, writing wise specifically, I couldn’t seem to get into the groove until yesterday really. I just sort of muddled through it a little bit not quite sir where I was going but it’s getting there, it’s taking shape.

Specifically in part two I started getting into it and feeling the story a bit more. I think the plot overall is pretty good, you have like an A plot and a B plot and then they progress separately and then intertwine and come together at the end. I think this one might be better received because there’s a lot more stuff happening and maybe it’s more or less convoluted than the first one haha. More characters more villains, tonnes more villains.

Remember this was meant to be two books so it has as many boss battles as a fucking videogame haha. Villains coming out of my ears, I ripped one right out of a lovecraft story while I was writing the synopsis so you know he’s racist! No, he’s a weird zombie thing, his personal opinions on the other races will not be divulged. Although I have a sneaking suspicion he hates fish people but so do most people in this book.

Come to think of it this whole series is about literal race wars, in fact most fantasy books are, jesus fantasy is racist haha.

But I still have a fair bit to proof read, I’ll clean up a lot of it there but I’m happy the direction it’s going, we’ll just have to wait and see. Now here’s more of this fill- I mean great content from Diana in the dark again but better.

See you…

–

Whatever the esoteric message of the photocopy meant, I didn’t have enough time to make any sense of it.

A tight popping cracking noise of a microphone being tapped and tested sounded, then a nasally voice filled the whole room. “Folks, can I have your attention please?” Principle Maria Petro said.  She stood looking down from the balcony, dressed a little like a character from the fifth element in a leopard print onesie?

Cat suit? What are those called? It actually fit with the neon space jungle theme.

She was a short stodgy woman with a nest of badly dyed hair that resembled ramen noodles. She stood under what looked like a brightly-lit star gate or arch, her hair done up as high as it would go.

Thankfully it was a high ceiling, without any fans or low hanging lights. Her face was a perfect mask of confidence and years of stored up aggression from dealing with the most spoiled kids on earth. All the make up in the world couldn’t cover up those frown lines.

“Ahem, good evening, everybody, I hope you’re all having a great time.” Pause for effect. Looking down at her subjects, expecting an answer or maybe an uproarious applause. Ms. Petro cleared her throat and continued on without it. “It’s my pleasure to announce this year’s senior prom queen and king.”

I made my way back over to Paul, strategically elbowing people in their solar plexuses. Solar plexi? Swimming through the crowd, only spilling about half the contents of each cup on other people’s rented shoes. I handed him one.

“Thanks.” He smiled for a moment, then stood bolt upright and his eyes got a little wider.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Err…”

“Don’t say shit!” a coiled voice hissed.

“Wendy?”

“No, it’s the fucking tooth fairy!”

“What are you?” Paul asked looking over his shoulder, but keeping his neck stiff.

Wendy stepped out of his large shadow and poked him in the side with that deadly DG purse, her hand inside it.

I imagined not clasped around her lip gloss. Her hair was coming undone, rogue strands now sticking in places to her patchy fake tan, running from the sweat.

“Brodie stood me up!” she said, shooting me a glare like it was my fault. “They’re about to announce it now, and the queen needs a king, got it?” She spat through her expensive bridgework. “So I’m just gonna borrow yours, you got a problem with that?”

“Err…” I said, eloquent as ever.

“It’s okay, it’s cool,” Paul said as he tried his best not to look as stiff as Frankenstein’s monster with a hand up his ass.

“Walk.” Wendy was still glaring at me.

Paul seemed as if he was resisting the urge to raise his hands like a hostage and started to pad slowly toward the balcony stairs.

There was no direct access to the stage.

Wendy poked him through a set of doors, and they disappeared—hopefully to reappear on the other side of the star gate in one piece. There was an awfully long pause and silence that followed.

“I’m happy to announce—” Principle Petro unsealed a sparkly envelope, very glamorous. She unsheathed a gold piece of card. “This years prom king and queen are…” Sudden sounds of a scuffle could be heard behind her, then a dull pop and another before a shrill scream.

The room froze trying to recognize the din.

Wendy burst out onto the stage, the small pistol in her hand. A ruby red stream of blood flowed from an obviously broken nose.

Paul was nowhere to be seen.

“Gimme that!” She snatched the studded prom queen tiara from Principle Petro’s hand, and shoved the woman out of the way. She tried to pin it to her head with the gun still in her hand. Once it was level, she scanned the room of all the faces still frozen in stunned silence.

Her existence was now a morbid curiosity, a downward spiral, a car crash happening in slow motion.

She saw me looking up at her. Part of me wondering if Paul was still alive, but the other was distinctly darker, and couldn’t keep my smirk at bay. Here I was, a peasant in the crowd watching a debutante fall face first in the mud, and I couldn’t stop the muscles in my face tensing into something like a smile.

“Fucking bitch! This is all your fault!” Wendy screamed and aimed the small weapon. She started firing wildly into the crowd I happened to be mingled in. The tiara drooped down and tangled in her hair as she cried.

Luckily this was probably her first school shooting, in her hands that little pistol was about as deadly as a spud gun and there was just far too much confusion to hit anyone in particular.

The crowd predictably woke from their frozen morbidity, erupting into a flurry of fight or flight lizard brain comprehension. They stampeded toward the nearest exit. Climbed all over each other so as not to become the lucky recipient of a nine millimeter kiss blown from a killer queen.

My first instinct, unlike that of a mere prey species, was not to fight or to flight but to hide and wait. Watch and see. I told myself I couldn’t leave without knowing what happened to Paul. He wouldn’t abandon me, and I couldn’t let my mask slip off completely without at least trying to save face. What kind of girlfriend would I be if I just ran and melted into the maddening crowd of lurching farm animals, leaving him to bleed to death?

The exits were currently expurgating a constant stream of furious humanity. The true meaning of an ancient Roman vomitorium now fully realized. Another fortuitous exit was marked out for me with a sign above the alcove that read, “The glow zone.”

I broke from the herd and darted for the exit, looking up to make sure she noticed I was distinct from the throng. She cursed in Spanish and fired a warning shot over the bow of the balcony, missing and chipping the horsehead ice sculptor. “Go Trojans!”

Wendy banged the guard rail of the balcony and disappeared into the back.

I pushed past a door with a porthole in it; it flapped shut behind me like a saloon door, screeching loud.

In the laser arcade equipment room, racks of laser tag sets hung from multi-colored racks glowing with the magic of LED. An instructional video on game safety was playing in a loop. A middle aged Hispanic man with a shaved head and set of terminator sunglasses appeared on screen, instructing me on how to safely clip on one of the vests in a succinct monotone.

Thanks but no thanks, a glowing piece of plastic on my chest wouldn’t do me much good in a gun fight.

Never bring a glowing plastic laser gun to a gunfight, Diana.

–

 

0

Cur Lord of Light Chapter 2 ‘In the pines’

Hey, 

Don’t have much to go off today but here’s the latest chapter, it’s slow going honestly, I’m not as focused as I was before. I dunno I think my writing at one point was getting better but now I sort of think it’s getting worse haha. Not worse, just lazier I guess. 

I was reading Conan last night and the story was sort of garbage, Conan goes to steal a thing finds ancient aliens and then the tower falls down the end but it had a lot of flair and it was fun and the description isn’t over the top a lot of it just plot but you get a good feel like you’re really there seeing what he’s seeing and I’m not sure you get that from what I’m writing.

But you know, I hope it’s fun at least, there’s some action in this chapter, after the sort of slow start, this new character who I sort of borrowed from Arthurian legend is a lot of fun, I just had to steal him. He’s one of these characters like Cur that takes on several mantles because in these mythological stories there’s a limit to how much stuff a certain character can do. This wasn’t marvel where you have a billion writers taking one character and stretching them across a million books of total nonsense where they fight alongside the jackson five or whatever. Total bullshit where comics are basically fanfiction where spiderman is a transgender midget polynesian hemophiliac diaper fur with glocoma.

They’re more like real life where a person does one awesome thing their whole life and maybe not even that. So I sort of had to take Cur and make a plot by combining him with a few different characters because otherwise his story would have ended after the first battle. And I sort of created my own meta universe where he was supposed to die but he didn’t creating a new time line.

Anyway, that’s enough nonsense ranting, I promised myself I would try to find a new job today. I keep thinking about starting up a youtube channel but I just couldn’t do that, my autism wouldn’t allow it. I just don’t think it would do well and I want a real job where I can be around people a couple of hours a day. I know I hate people and my autism makes me want to lock myself away infinitely but I think I need to be around people every now and then just so I don’t forget how to talk haha.

See you…

 

–

South of Meenlaragh in Corveen bog the ruins of a small castle lay overgrown by the marsh. Creeping vines covered it like a fur coat as it seemed to sink into the murk.

The sun was slowly sinking into the bog, the light bluing with the strange mists that hovered over the peat and muck. The sounds of birds in the trees were thick and deafening in their splendour. But deep in the hold of the castle there was a stolen warmth and a cloaked merriment.

 

In the keep a small group of strangely dressed brigands sat around a broken feast table strewn with unappetizing foreign dishes. Fish heads in sea brine, boiled toad, all manner of eels and snakes from the bog writhed in states of death and half-life, insects too seemed to be on the menu.

 

The feast hall was small and decrepit and dark, only a few sconces were lit, others seemed to be long burnt out or ripped from the walls. All decorations and finery the castle once had were undoubtedly pilfered long ago. All that remained were tattered moth eaten tapestries and a few decorative weapons caked in decades of rust. All but one item seemed unloved and aged. On the wall behind the head of the table hung a decorative harp made of finely hewn wood and encrusted with beautiful shining gems. The carvings on the harp were intricate and spiralled all around the finely crafted instrument. Images engraven were that of various animals and a horned man sitting amongst them.

 

The brigands feasted under black hoods and armoured cloaks. Their hands were more clawlike than human shining dimly with what seemed like scales and other malformed oddities. Their mouths clacking as they ate as some lacked teeth while others had sharp thin shark teeth shining like daggers in the dim fire light.

 

Suddenly an odd noise tickled them as if it had been there all along under the sounds of their merriment but only now had they noticed it. A strange whistling like that of many birds singing together but not coming from outside.

 

The head of the table flipped his cloak and stretched out a scaled humanoid arm. At the end of it were fat toadlike fingers forming something almost like a fin, he held it up to silence the others at the table.

 

They froze and turned to a darkened corner which seemed to be the source of the strange bird noise. Then came the sound of clinking metal and shaking of chain.

 

Out of the darkness emerged a huge humanoid figure dressed in a green armour. He had a distinctive covered helmet of which large antlers that looked like tree branches grew out of the top. On his belt hung an ornate axe. It’s handle appeared to be simply a strong birch branch holding a piece of silvery metal which had raw edges. It shone like that of a stone that fell from the sky glinting like a diamond or a quartz in the sconce light. In his hand the knight carried a bow of holly and he whistled as he walked creating an unnerving sound as if thousands of birds filled the room.

 

“Who goes there?” The head of the table called out. A slender dark figure with a sly hushed voice.

 

“Fear not, child of the dark depths, I mean you no harm”

 

The head of the table was confused but sneered when he heard what the stranger called him. “How do you come to know us?” He questioned.

 

The knight bowed humbly “Forgive me sir, for I have watched you and your countenance speaks to foreign blood, not of this soil.”

 

“Our blood is older than this soil.” The host spat.

 

“That too I am aware of, therefore we are the same sir.” The strange green knight bowed again crossing the holly in front of his plated chest.

 

The head of the table was an alien figure, with bulbous black fishy eyes and glinting scaled skin and a wide mouth full of sharp tiny teeth. “Well then, come sit with us and tell us why you have come visitor.” The man grinned and then scowled at his underling who sat at his side. The underling was a squat creature with huge whiskered lips and wide slanted slits for eyes. He looked up at his master startled and then quickly vacated his seat and pulled it out for the knight.

 

The knight rose from his bow “Most hospitable of you.” The knight said as he slowly walked around the table. Passing the other inhuman malformed creatures that sat staring up at the stranger with their wide fish eyes.

 

The knight sat upon the chair and waited for his host to speak. Closer to the light of the table the knight’s armor was more apparent. An unusual set that shone an emerald green with gold inlays and patterns that seemed to replicate trees and roots forming spiral symbols.

 

“So what is it you seek stranger?”

 

“I would that you would know me that I would not be a considered a stranger. My name Bertilak de Hautdesert but you may know me as ‘Bredbeddle’ if you so wish.”

 

The host breathed heavily and spoke through his teeth “Goodly Bredbeddle, wouldst that you would tell me why you’ve come, that I would know you!”

 

“I find it odd you don’t remember me.” The knight chuckled “For am I not memorable?”

 

“Should I remember you, have we met before?” The strange head of the table asked.

 

“I am certain sir, we have met before, in this very room no less.” The knight gestured as he spoke, his armor clinking but displaying no weight as he moved. “Are you not the one they call Forgal the wily?”

 

“You must be mistaken, I’ve never heard that name before” The host said as he turned to one of his men and signalled for him to bring them more wine.

 

“One year ago today, we met in this room and struck a bargain.”

 

“I recall no such bargain, what does this pertain to?” The host asked.

 

“But you will admit that you are Forgal the wily?” The knight turned his head up and pointed over his hosts head without raising his elbow. “For you have the harp he took from me”.

 

“Are you calling me a thief?”

 

“Nay sir, I am calling you the possessor of my harp and one year ago today we struck a bargain.”

 

“What of this nonsense, what bargain?”

 

“The bargain made here that I would let you strike me and one year after I would return the strike and reclaim the harp.”

 

“I tire of this foolishness” The host waved his hand and instantly out of the dark came a curved long blade and cut the knights head from his shoulders.

 

The helmet with the head fell on the table and knocked over a bowl of live crickets.

 

The group of brigands erupted into triumphant laughter, all conspiring in whispers as to whom would claim his armor and weapon.

 

“Fool!” The host spat. “Forgal the wily recognises no bargains made with the tuatha.”

 

“There is no need for name calling sir” A disembodied voice said.

 

The brigands instantly stopped their cavorting as the voice seemed to come from all around them. It seemed animal in aspect, as if the birds in the trees were forming words of their own.

 

The body of the knight had not fallen, still it sat upright in it’s seat and then without pretence it reached for it’s detached head. “I see that you have no desire to honour our agreement” The knight said as he stood and tucked his own head under his arm. “I bid you good day sir.” He said bowing with his head under the crook of his arm as he left the keep.

 

Forgal looking after him with his wide fishy mouth hanging open.

 

The brigands sat for a moment befuddled as if they’d been visited by a spirit or fallen to some drink that had given them all the same strange dreams.

 

Twilight was upon the bog and the world was still and grey.

 

The knight of green replaced his detached head on his shoulders and sighed.

 

“Come Daurdabla, apple-sweet murmurer!

 

Come, Coir-cethair-chuir, four-angled frame of harmony,

 

Come summer, come winter,

 

Out of the mouths of harps and bags and pipes!”

–

If you want to see what happens next, head on over to inkitt by clicking this link In the pines.

 

0

Vampyr review – it doesn’t suck??

Is that a pun? a vampire game that doesn’t suck?

Its the damdest thing, I’ve been wanting to try this game for awhile I was just waiting for it to go on sale for the right price and it’s been yoyoing in sales for some time but my friends kept telling me not to get it. But I was tempted when it went for like 85% off but it was still over a tenner so I let it go, only for it to go on gamepass a couple of days later and what seems like a match made in heaven, I still had a week left of the gamepass trial I had.

Erm this one kinda caught me off guard, I saw some trailers for it and I thought it looked ok and then I heard it was made by Dontnod and I was like “err no”.
For those that don’t know anything about dontnod they’re the people who make the award winning millenial simulators ‘life is tumblr’ and the trumps america simulator life is strange 2. They’re basically not even games, they’re just a bunch of really autistic french people trying to make social justice passion plays with kids with magical powers for reasons in an america seen through cnn. They’re really bad and cringy. So bad I watch play throughs just to laugh at them but the idea of spending money on them is ridiculous.

I actually played dontnods first game with gameplay, at least I think it was their first game, which was Remember Me. And it was really bad, I dunno, it was just bleh, the world the characters the hook of the game, just bleh, then they release Life is Strange, it wins loads of awards and probably makes no money and that was that.

Vampyr is made by focus home interactive and they were behind the really bad call of cthulhu game and they hold the license. But they did such a hack job the studio they were working with split off with them and focus home released this shitty fps walking sim that was basically dark corners of the earth but shit. So the people that split off from them went to make the sinking city which is not licensed but it looks really good. But for legal reasons might not be able to be lovecraftian haha. I dunno, but it looks good, it actually has gameplay, so that already makes it better by comparison.

So this game did not have the best foot forward to me, it even has the voice actor who plays the main character in call of cthulhu as the main character. So it’s a really bad impression I’m getting which makes it all the more astonishing that this is probably my  game of the year.

I absolutely adored it despite all my friends telling me it was boring or commie propaganda haha. I loved every minute of it and I’m going to tell you exactly why, that’s the point of reviews I guess.

There’s so much I love about it and it’s so unique, it’s hard to align my thoughts because initially I look at games and I try to categorise them. Like ‘oh this is an Assassins creed clone’ or this is a ‘gta clone’ etc. But there’s nothing to compare this to, it’s totally it’s own thing, part walking simulator part action rpg.

My best comparison would probably be a crossover between the witcher and bloodborne but good haha. Trolling aside, I loved the witcher but it’s just too long for replay-ability purposes and the choices you makes don’t feel impactful enough for me to want to redo them (also it took me forever to get all the witcher gear and I can’t be arsed to do all that again) and I don’t want to meet the person who wants to replay bloodborne.

Vampyr is the perfect length of a game and the choices you make and the builds you can design make for a hell of a lot of replay-ability. Kid you not, I started a whole new playthrough the second I completed it the first time, the only other game I did that with was probably mgs four or dead rising maybe. It’s ten out of ten for replay-ability. There’s so many choices and angles you can come at something and the builds are really fun to tinker with. The whole time you’re talking to people investigating and trying to be an apex predator vampire. You know you’re loving a game when you’re playing it and already planning for your next play through.

The storyline is honestly great, you play Johnathon Reid a newborn vampire/doctor who has to find out who turned him and find the cause of the epidemic of the spanish flu in london. Lots of twists and turns and it did subvert my expectations and also kind of blew my mind because the end boss is basically the end boss in my Cur books. I know, it’s weird that celtic mythology would make it’s way into this but it does and its awesome haha. The characters are fantastic, of course they are, they’re like central to the game. Half the game is about the characters, who you choose to kill and who you choose to spare and the consequences of that. And it all carries this sort of depression/uplifting feel of people surviving and making the best of it, the british stiff upper lip. Like you feel sorry for them and may want to put them out of their misery or you may want to help them.

Gameplay is split into two sections, you have your combat free roam exploration like bloodborne where the streets are filled with mindless ghouls and vampire hunters both want to take a chunk out of your butt and the focus is on exploring the dingey streets of London claimed by this horrible disease.

You have a witcher-esque combat system, which I heard people complain about but I liked it, really responsive, lots of synergy with the powers. You feel like a god when you get the right mix of powers and tactics, it’s great. That’s exactly how you want to feel in a game about a vampire.

But the combat is just one half of the game the other half is the sections where you’re in a ‘safe zone’ where people aren’t being prayed upon by ghouls and there aren’t vampire hunters roaming the streets. The parts where people are just trying to survive the epidemic and as a vampiric doctor it’s your duty to cure the sick and also eat some of them.

How the game works basically is you can eat certain people based on your level of mesmerism, so some people you can’t eat until later in the game where your power has grown a little. And the reason they do that is obviously just to stop you from breaking the game by just devouring everyone you meet instantly. But you can eat pretty much everyone in the game eventually. One of my defences of this game when my friends were calling it social justice bait and having really sjwy characters in it was to say well yeah there are sort of cringy characters but you can eat them. It’s like when rdr2 has the suffragette in it but you can feed her to crocodiles if you want. But in this game it’s even better because the game never intended you to feed the suffragette to a crocodile, there’s also a suffragette in vampyr but the game fully intends and prepares for you to kill her and it affects the game and your ending. It’s a really great mechanic that has such a great synergy with the world.

And honestly now that I mention rdr2 this game actually stays more consistent with it’s morality and politics with its period. In rdr2 your belief is never suspended in regard to what time you’re in, it’s very tongue in cheek and it’s drenched in modern morality and modern racial politics and social commentary. I never really felt like it was in the time it was portraying it was just a pastiche. Whereas vampyr is a near perfect period piece that handles it’s politics and morality with a bit of a progressive bent but it’s consistent and it makes you feel like you’re in that gas light era. It’s really great and even when your character spouts progressive opinions on race and gender you don’t cringe because you can just eat that person. So it creates a weird dynamic where everything Jonathan Reid says is subjective, is he saying that because he really believes that and he supports women/gay rights or is he just saying that because he wants to lower their guard for him to sink his teeth into them? He’s played very much as a blank slate and the voice actor is great. Because you can see it in like one line how he goes from soft-hearted doctor to cold blooded killer. It’s done so well in a game where you can murder someone’s child and come back and ask the parents how it makes them feel all while you and the game knows you did it. It’s eerie in a way because he knows he’s a monster and the face he wears and the things he says are just a mask. Lots of people look at that and see inconsistency, that he’s super progressive and non-violent and wants to help people but also wants to eat them. But honestly I see a person who see pragmatism in sacrifice to his hunger and also just can’t help it. He tries to be good but he knows he’s a monster. There’s even a part where you kill this guys wife and he finds out that it was you and he has to explain his hunger. So it’s as if you’re not even playing Jonathan you’re actually playing his hunger and it’s really meta because he has no control over who he eats. It makes for a great role playing experience in my opinion.

It’s such a unique game in that respect and it sort of turns you into a monster. Because I would find myself later in the game, more so in my second play through killing people not for the XP but just to see how his friends and family would react. Sometimes I’d kill people because they were evil and sometimes I’d kill people because they were good. It was a weird experience. The game sort of turns you into a kid with a magnifying glass over an anthill and lets you run wild. It’s so much fun, criminally so, it’s almost sadistic and just tickles me in the right way. I found myself having to justify killing someone and there’s not many games that make you consider that. Not just killing someone but asking yourelf why you did it.

Also it’s a little thing but another thing that makes this game so replayable is the save system, that is, it doesn’t have one. There is no save scumming in this game, you kill someone they’re dead until you start the game over, you make a decision, that’s set until you hit new game. So it adds this sense of finality and consequence. In rdr2 and witcher 3 you can load a different save in Vampyr that’s impossible, you made that decision now justify it, live with it. A little thing like that adds so much weight to your choices, it amazes me more games don’t do that. And in the second playthrough I was shocked by some of the changes to the cut scenes because some of them turned out completely differently depending on how many people I killed and who I killed, it really caught me off guard and I loved it.

Graphics are of course great, the game looks great, its atmospheric af haha. The only cons of this game I can think that jump out at me right off the bat are the fucking loading times. Oh goly gee those loading times are a fucking crime, specifically in a game where the difficulty can be punishing especially if you do a pacifist run. But that’s a minor gripe. Some weird racial choices for characters are the only weird sjwy elements and all the black people are voiced by the same dude haha. Like he doesn’t even try to do a different voice, it’s just the same guy wearing a different hat haha. I mean I don’t care but how many black journalists were living and working in London around the nineteen hundreds? Were there even any black people here at all at that time? England didn’t really do the whole slave thing compared to the U.S and when we did we put them in plantations in the Caribbean, they didn’t come to work in England as far as I know. The blacks here now are descendants of migrants who came over after world war two I think. But the french people that made this game, I guess they don’t know that haha.

So it’s really a minor gripe, it’s not really harped on, there are some indian people and that makes some sense, we’ve always had a close relationship with india. Some people were harping on the gay relationship in the game, like it was shoved in your face. Yeah I guess ‘shoved in your face’ translates to; a hidden cutscene where you have to wait and watch their heartbeats and follow them to a secluded location to spy on them. Really shoved it in my face there dontnod haha. It was so shoved in my face I had to look at a guide to get the cutscene on my second playthrough because I wanted to kill on of them to get his sword.

That’s another gameplay element, some characters have signature weapons that are more powerful versions of standard weapons, so you can plan your killing map based on what weapons you want to pilfer. Funny thing I actually got banned on facebook recently saying I was gonna kill the gay character because he has a cool sword haha. Thirty day ban for saying I want to kill a gay videogame character haha. Facebook is a joke.

Yeah so I loved it, the gameplay, the story, the characters, the world. The only things I would change is the ability to cut off that lame ass hipster beard he has haha. If you’re gonna copy witcher at least let us get a haircut but I guess barbers aren’t willing to work at night haha.

Oh yeah that’s how the game works btw. You fight and drink people for XP and then sleep to use the blood you gained and wake up the next night but during the day people can get sick and basically the consequences of what you did the night before take effect. And if you kill too many people a district can become unstable and overrun with ghouls killing everyone. So it’s a lot like a sim in a lot of ways. You really have to pick people off selectively and think about who you want to kill and who you want to spare. And you have to heal the people to keep the district healthy, another comparison to the witcher where you mix up potions to fight harder or whatever in this you make cures to help people.

Or you can just wipe everyone out and become a naughty vampire god haha. I also forgot to mention that the amount of XP you get depends on how much you know about them. Their blood gets more delicious depending on how many of their secrets you uncover, doesn’t make much sense but its really cool. Basically you have to talk to them and other people to probe them for secrets and then look around their house maybe or do a mission for them or follow them when their heartbeat raises, when they’re doing something shifty.

It’s a lot of fun, and yeah I cheated a lot looking at youtube for hints haha.

I loved this game, I might buy it when it comes off gamepass or goes on sale again. I really hope they do a sequel, I know it won a lot of awards, which it deserves. Weird thing, it’s the first game where I was playing it and listening to the music and thought ‘damn this music is good’ and yeah it won an award for it’s soundtrack. I think it made a fair bit of money too, so I hope it gets a sequel but in all honesty I’d much prefer a prequel where you play a vampire knight in the sixteen hundreds fighting the first outbreak, that would be awesome. Like the Witcher but more historically accurate but with vampires and werewolves. Or maybe they could make a spin off where you play a werewolf, that would be awesome, has anyone ever made a wereolf game not counting that morrowind expansion pack? The worst possible scenario would be just a bog standard sequel where you play Jonathan Reid again.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jonathan Reid, the voice actor made the game, but I hate sequels where you trip over a rock and lose all the powers you gain in the first game. I hate that, it’s such lazy writing and it’s why I couldn’t get hyped for Deus Ex mankind divided, it’s just too contrived, you’re gonna tell me that Adam Jensen is such an amazing character he can’t be replaced by anyone else?

Just make a new character, Jonathan can still be in it, he could even be your maker, that would be awesome. Maybe set it in present day a hundred years later or even during world war 2, nazi vampires and werewolves, holy shit, there’s your fucking sequel haha. So those are my perfect sequels, a hundred years in the future or like four hundred years in the past or nazi werewolves haha.

Get cracking dontnod and focus home interactive, respectfully haha.

But in my opinion, this game is better than Red dead redemption 2 in almost every way. Sure it wont waste hundreds of hours of your time horse riding through empty plains and you can’t go fishing or play poker but the story and characters and gameplay are great and more importantly they serve the narrative. This game is a piece of art, it’s not just a collection of popular nonsense and pointless gimmicks. It’s totally it’s own thing and it’s great, go out and play it.

 

0

Starship troopers pilot scene 6 (+propaganda)

Ok so good news bad news, well mostly bad news. 

Yeah you might have heard that they’re actually already doing a starship troopers fucking tv show. So fuck me right, someone stole my idea, plucked it right out of my head while I slept, those evil goblins. 

But you know there’s also ‘hey they’re making a starship troopers show, this is awesome, I love starship troopers’ yeah well about that. I heard the guys who made the movie are coming back to make it including Casper Van Dees (however you spell that guys name. Really dutch name though like mine, I should know how to spell it haha).

And a normie fan of starship troopers would be like ‘omg that’s amazeballs’ but your cynic realist like me is much more jaded. Obviously it’s fucking amazing to get the actual stars of the original movie to come back for a tv show, the problem lies in them reprising their roles. See this sounds nuts, you’re asking “Why wouldn’t they reprise their roles?”.

The reason they shouldn’t reprise their roles is because no one wants to see a 50+ year old white dude running around and being the hero of a sci-fi action show. Sure I would watch that if he were head of Rico’s roughnecks but more than likely whats going to happen is he’ll be a general who’ll be in a few episodes and the main cast will be all new characters most likely extremely racially and genderly (that’s a word I made up) diverse circa 2019 i.e there probably wont be a white male lead haha. I mean it’s not a huge problem, well it is considering the biggest demographic of sci fi fans are also white males looking to live vicariously through the main character and we’re currently seeing how the new star trek and star wars is totally tanking as they made their central characters women for no other reason but trying to straddle two demographics and pander to women. And yeah I saw the new star wars nine trailer and no I still don’t care.

Which from a marketing perspective makes perfect sense, you assume white straight men are baked into the cake so you then try to get women and other groups of people on board. The problem is white men are the biggest group and if you lose them in the process you’re fucked. And that’s not even mentioning the story and characters so while you’re juggling your target audience the story and other stuff still has to be good.

And will the story of this be good? I don’t know because there’s almost no way it could be based on the book. Maybe it could be based on the comic books, that would be cool. But I just don’t know. I’m glad it’s happening but I think 2019 in the era of Trump is the wrong time for it to be good. I think it’s going to be a bit silly and counter signal trump a lot in a ridiculous way. I don’t think they could resist that since it’s basically a fascist dictatorship in space. So expect hammy political nonsense chucked in, I dunno it could be ok, but I doubt it.

On the otherhand I just saw the trailer for the Mandalorian and that actually looks pretty good and believe it or not the main character is a huhwhite male which in 2019 is like wtf? Because as soon as I heard the main character wasn’t Boba or Jango Fett I was like ‘Oh here comes the black lesbian bounty hunter’ haha. And I was watching the trailer and they didn’t show him without the helmet and I was like ‘yup it’s gonna be a black chick haha’ but no it’s actually a guy and I think the casting is perfect. Because they picked someone who’s not too famous but he’s just famous and interesting enough to carry a show. He’s just been in a few indie movies and played bit parts in some big movies so he’s at the perfect point in his career to be the vehicle for this. And he is a huhwhite male but he’s a huhwhite male through the backdoor haha. 

Because he has a hispanic name and he looks a little hispanic and he has a spanish accent but he’s actually chilean spanish. So the dude is white and I was coincidentally watching a movie called ‘the prospector’ last night that he was in and his american accent is flawless and he’s a fantastic actor and would be perfect to play the mandalorian for a number of reasons.

I think his face and the way he talks and acts is perfect for playing an anti-hero because he has this sort of nice soft sort of face where he looks a bit like Nathan Fillion but he also has a ruggedness to him and a tone of his voice where you can see him being a villain. So he does this perfect balancing act between likeable and sort of sleazy and I think that’s exactly what you want from an underworld space bounty hunter/merc.

I really just have no idea how this Cassian Andor show is going to go up against this, surely they’ll have to cancel it. There’s no way that show can go up against this, I mean it’s made by Jon Favreau and it’s tangentially about the most beloved and under served character in the star wars universe. Everyone loves Boba fett and mandalorians. And who the hell is Cassian Andor? He’s mexican Han solo no one asked for. Makes me think the Han solo movie would’ve been better as a series actually. Because I actually didn’t hate that movie, I thought the casting was pretty good and the movie was pretty fun. Pointless but fun.

Ok so yeah it sucks, in an alternate universe where I had cash and connections and any social skills and I was born in L.A I would’ve made a bomb ass starship troopers show that would’ve stayed faithful to the book and the expanded universe and built out from that but ya know, maybe it’ll be good.

Anyway enough ranting, gotta look for a new job haha.

See you…

–

ExT. A park. Day

 

 

A small blonde child with his back turned to the camera is playing in the park.

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Hey there little Timmy

 

 

Little Timmy

 

 

Hey there mister

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Say Timmy do you like little puppies?

 

 

LITTLe TIMMY

 

 

I sure do mister!

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Well get a load of this!

 

 

A cybernetically enhanced battle dog jumps over a rock.

 

 

Little timmy

 

 

Woah

that’s so cool.

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Yes it is Timmy. Wanna know how you get an awesome neodog like this.

 

 

LiTTLe TIMMY

 

 

I sure do mister.

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Join the mobile infantry’s

K9

division and you’ll get a cybernetic uplink to your faithful pooch so you can do your part together!

 

 

LITTLE TIMMY

 

 

That’s so cool, where can I sign up?

 

 

VoICE OVER

 

 

Maybe when you’re a little older Timmy.

 

 

LiTTLE TIMMY

 

 

Aww

shucks.

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Why don’t you say hello to this little guy in the mean time.

 

 

The kid is handed a cute little puppy.

 

 

LitTLE TIMMY

 

 

Yay!

 

 

The kid and the puppy roll around on the floor giggling.

 

 

LITTLE TIMMY (

CONT’D

)

 

 

(

looking

at the camera) I’m doing my part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Int. Inside someone’s bedroom. Day.

 

 

A normal looking guy is looking down staring at an intranet screen.

 

 

VoICE OVER

 

 

Why so glum non-citizen.

 

 

Guy

 

 

I missed the execution of that deviant pornographer.

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Don’t worry non-citizen, we’re streaming round the clock executions on the

fednet

with highlights of the best executions and corporal punishment in federal space.

 

 

A video clip of the pornographer being shot by firing squad appears.

 

 

GuY

 

 

Awesome!

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Would you like to know more?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ExT. Outside a federal brothel. day.

 

 

A

schlubby

looking guy is trying to get into a brothel. It’s a big square building that looks more like an office. Grey stone but with flashy

neons

signs outside.

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Where do you think you’re going non-citizen?

 

 

GUY

 

 

Oh I was just…

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Federal brothels are servicemen and citizens only.

 

 

GUY

 

 

But I…

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Talk to the hand non-citizen.

 

 

The non-citizen walks away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

InT. Inside the federal brothel.

 

 

The federal brothel is a stark building where women are behind glass in what looks like a human vending machine.

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

One of the many perks of federal service is enjoying a federation joy centre.

 

 

One of the federal sex workers dressed in a sexy faux uniform smiles at the camera.

 

 

VOICE OVER (

CONT’D

)

 

 

Remember not all service roles have to be in combat.

 

 

Federal sex worker

 

 

I’m doing my part!

 

 

VOICE OVER

 

 

Hahaha

That’s the spirit!

 

 

VOICE OVER (

CONT’D

)

 

 

(In fast small print voice) Federal sex work does not guarantee citizenship)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

InT. Recruiting station. Day.

 

 

Carmem

, Karl and Johnny head to the reception of the recruitment centre to join up for federal service. A vet with one arm and no legs is behind the desk.

 

 

KARL

 

 

Good morning, I want to join up.

 

 

RICO

 

 

Me too!

 

 

The officer at the desk looks past them at Carmen.

 

 

Desk sergeant

 

 

Good morning, young lady. What can I do for you?

 

 

CARMEN

 

 

I want to join up too. I wanna be a pilot.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT

 

 

Good girl! You look like a pilot. If you’ll just head up to room 201 and ask for Major

Rojas

she’ll take care of you.

 

 

CARMEN

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

Carmen heads off to be tested.

 

 

The desk sergeant turns back sullenly to the boys.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT

 

 

So?

 

 

RICO

 

 

I want to be a pilot too.

 

 

DESK SERGEANT

 

 

You?

 

 

KarL

 

 

I’m interested in the Research and Development Corps.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT

 

 

Do either of you boys understand why they have me out here?

 

 

KaRL

 

 

Why?

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT

 

 

Because the government doesn’t care if you join up because you think it’s ‘cool’.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

Think all the girls will swoon because you have a fancy ribbon in your lapel and you can tell people you’re a vet whether you saw combat or not.

 

 

DESK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

We’ve already got too many recruits than we know what do with, you think you have what it takes to be a real soldier.

 

 

RICO

 

 

No.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT

 

 

Then go back home, go to college, get married, have kids.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

I can’t tell you what to do, it’s your constitutional right to join up and claim full citizenship.

 

 

The desk sergeant wheels around to show them his missing legs.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

They put me out here to scare people like you away.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

Take your pretty girlfriend that just went, I hope she makes it but if she doesn’t they take her anyway and she could be shipped off to

antartica

and not see natural light for two years, doing nasty dirty work.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

If you don’t make it,

that’ll

sound like paradise compared to whatever they might give you.

 

 

DESK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

Look at me, this is what service can buy you, if not the whole farm.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

But I was lucky, you might not be so lucky.

 

 

DESK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

This is not a vacation.

 

 

DeSK SERGEANT (

CONT’D

)

 

 

So,

what’ll

it be?

 

 

KaRL

 

 

I’m here to join up.

 

 

RiCO

 

 

Me too!

 

 

0

Cur 2 Chapter 1 ‘Rise up dirty waters’

So here it is I guess.
As I said before I kinda wanted to go understated because I could, I wanted to play it slow. I went hard in the first chapter of the first book because you really need to do that, and it was sort of to pay homage to berserk and the parts of the witcher I like. Sort of my interpretation of that iconic bar fight scene where Guts cuts a mofo clean in half with one strike. 
You think I feel bad about that? Not really, it was probably ripped off of Conan first, I just haven’t read that far. But I am reading it and it’s way more interesting than the Shadow even though the stories are so much more simple and really the whole thing is plot. You just get a story and it’s like ‘Conan wants to steal thing’ so he does that and even though it’s just that simple it really works because it’s just well written and fun and you want to see what happens and how does it.
I was listening to a podcast comparing Howard to Tolkien, and how they were sort of around the same time but Tolkien was bigger because he had all this lore and he invented his own language and Howard seems to be inventing it on the fly, it only has as much lore as it needs. 
I don’t really know about that because the first chapter of Conan the Cimmerian is literally all lore dating back centuries of all the different peoples leading up to the present with Conan and it was just so long that I was just like ‘fuck this’. I mean do I need to know the entire history of this fictional land to enjoy this? Is there going to be a test on this? I don’t even know most of my own history and I’m fine with that.
And it gave me the natural ‘fuck me’ sweats like ‘what if my story doesn’t have enough lore?’ I mean what more can there be? I’m adapting actual Celtic mythology and this story is sort of the dawn of the lore of their myths. The conflict between the tuatha de and the firbolg and the fomorians is the basis of their folklore and then obviously there’s more to come after.
But there’s literally only a few people that come before them and they’re all wiped out essentially so I’ve set my story at the dawn of their myths, there can be no lore because this is it. There’s nothing before this. I mean there is but it’s not lore, it’s a mystery to be uncovered in the last book.
One question that is never answered in the folklore is the origin of the Fomorians and that is a question I endeavor to answer with these books. That’s sort of the crux of the entire series, giving this mysterious race the fomorians an origin that fits with the christian historicity the stories are rooted in.
If you want a lesson on the folklore, I suggest googling it because I compiled like eighty pages of note on it and I can’t be bothered to pull it up haha.
Ok so I did the glass review and I talked about this. I liked it, building up a new character because Manannan is pretty important in the folklore he’s one of those connecting tissue characters, a little mystery a little reveal and in the next chapter I’ll be bringing back some of that bloody violent action for all that love that, me included haha.
See you and enjoy the chapter.
–
 
A heavy foot fell sploshing a muddy puddle, thick like drying cold blood. The rainfall a monotonous droning metronome to the drumbeat of padding heavy feet. So torrential it was it almost drowned out the sound of the sea crashing and cresting behind the ragged figure. The man wrapped clung tightly to himself and trudged his way through the downpour up the hill.
 
The figure was tall and dressed in a long drab coat a mutt nipping at his sodden heals.
 
“Aye steady on boy” A booming voice said. “We’re almost home now”. The figure said with a covetous smile as he clutched a wrapped item to his breast. The figure’s eyes were furtive for a moment to gaze over the hill and back along the shoreline at his boat resting, slowly filling with rain. When he was sure he was alone he continued up the hill to a small fisherman shack on the edge of the cliff looking out at the sea. It was a lonely shack surrounded by empty hills and valleys and flat lands lain with wet grass. The greenest grass you’ve ever seen and below churned a grey frothy sea that leapt and lapped at the land.
 
The shack was tiny and isolated on the edge Meenlaragh, a small fishing village on the northern coast of Ulster. The shack itself seemed to be constructed from a portion of a large ships keel. The roof of which sloped on either side to make point coming together on top forming a shape almost like a bow. The wood was dark and weathered with barnacles clinging to the sides, all manner of nets and ropes hanging outside. The door was a simple barn door bolted with heavy rusted rivets of iron.
 
There was a warm glow coming from it and a horse whineying.
 
“I’m coming Enbarr, I’m home girl” The figure shouted.
 
The ragged figure opened the door quickly and bundled himself inside, the dog following after shaking off the rain. The man closed and bolted his door and hurriedly threw his coat off one arm at a time so as to not let the package out of his grasp.
 
The man was a large and ruddy common elf with a big bushy beard, red of cheek. He was of a middle age with a barrelled chest and round gut but he held a spryness of step and a child-like twinkle in his eye. His arms were ropey and strong with large gnarled sea beaten hands. His back was broad and sloped and he walked with a creaking sound in his knee and a slight limping hop as if he was accustomed more to swimming than walking.
 
The merry figure beamed and almost leapt to a small cluttered reading table by his bed. The inside of the shack was simple, a firepit in the centre crackled with a blackened pot over it, bubbling with a foul smelling fishy stew. The furniture appeared to be crafted from similar driftwood as fit the shacks construction. His bed was a large but simple hammock made of nets and furs. The lack of windows and the rain beating on the roof and the sound of the sea churning made it feel like a ship out of port.
 
The large ruddy faced man carelessly swept away the clutter and debris that lay scattered on his table. He then carefully placed the wrapped package on down as if it were a swaddling babe. He took another furtive glance about himself as if the walls of the shack might betray him. Some crack or hollowed knot might hide an eye that spied him.
 
He looked at the dog who panted at his side seeming to share his curiosity and excitement.
 
The man licked his bearded chop and breathed deeply as he began to slowly unwrap the mysterious package. The bearded man sighed after a moment as if forgetting how to breathe. As if he feared his breath might disturb the package somehow or alert some shrouded watcher.
 
Carefully he unwrapped the object, and finally as it lay naked on his work table, the meagre light from the firepit glinting off of it. His eyes widened and appeared to turn bright and silver. His mouth hanging open, almost salivating at the sight of the object as it seemed to glow and hum with potential.
 
“Beautiful” He gasped.
 
–
If you want to read the rest of the chapter head on over to inkitt. Rise up dirty waters
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Glass – review

I, like everyone who watched split thought it was ok I guess, some people were blown away by James Mcavoy’s drama schoolkid impressionfest, I just thought it was lame and silly. I never really had my belief suspended, I never found him creepy or felt like he was becoming different people. I just saw silly James Mcavoy doing a bunch of silly voices and faces and it felt dumb and forced.

And he does a lot more of that in this movie and it seems to be the focus since the other characters are in a coma at least one is pretending to be in a coma. I watched this and the death wish remake with my brother and for those that haven’t seen it, the death wish remake is probably the most phoned in performance from Bruce Willis in recent memory. And when this movie started I asked him ‘do you think his performance will be less or more phoned in for this movie?’ and understandably he said less because it’s not a remake it’s a sequel to one of his best movies, arguably.

Oh how wrong he was. I mean it’s weird to harp on the performances of a movie as dumb as this, but it’s just the thing that pops out at me the most, and it’s not just Bruce Willis, they’re all terrible, it’s like no one but the kid who played his son in the original movie took this seriously.

Because you have Bruce Willis who literally spends most of the movie sitting down who just looks like he wants to take his check and go home, he does so little in this movie and he’s supposed to be the hero, I wondered if they just had him for the day. You have Mcavoy doing his silly impressions which got old in split and you have Samuel L Jackson doing his half hearted mastermind bit. But for the most of the movie he’s just pretending he’s in a coma. So essentially two of the main characters are old guys who are getting paid to sit down a lot.

And then you have Sarah Paulson being Sarah Paulson. She has no acting range whatsoever, she plays the same fucking character in everything. I know this from watching every season of american horror story, where she plays multiple different characters sometimes in the same season. She must have played like ten or so different characters in American horror story and they’re all the same, pathetic whiney people or smug whiney people. All she can do is sad or smug with an air of unearned authority, and that’s what she brings to this.

I really think it would have been a much stronger movie if it took her character and had a real movie actress play that role and make her the centre of the movie. Like she’s a psychiatrist hired to debunk superheroes but then the more she learns about them, the more she begins to believe. It could’ve been like a weird superhero version of silence of the lambs. But no, the movie just spends so much time dicking around with these pointless characters.

I had this movie spoiled for me so I knew it had no range and probably no budget because there’s a cool sequence at the start not the very start because that’s dumb as shit. Where Willis as a superhero is taking on the massive evil of white kids punching old asian people for viral video purposes, we really needed a superhero for that, it’s not like the police could’ve done something about that. There’s no way the police could’ve just watched their videos and then Willis could just tell them where they live. It’s like superman decides to beat the shit out of someone for speeding or spitting on the sidewalk.
I mean in the first movie he takes on a serial killer kidnapper and a terrorist but in this he’s stopping violent pranksters from going viral gee wizz. And they make a salt bae joke just to date the movie, salt bae is a meme that’s old now, people reading this now will have no idea what that meme is about because its just about a guy who salts beef in a weird way.

Why put that in your movie? Why put yourself in your movie? Every M. Night movie he makes a weird awkward pointless cameo. When Hitchcock did this it was very minor, in some cases other films would put a cut out of him in the background as a silhouette. I’m not sure he had speaking parts. But this was a guy who was very engaged with his audience, the trailer to Psycho is just him talking about it on the set and people went to watch it based on that. It was Alfred Fucking Hitchcock, M. Night is no Hitchcock and no one thinks it’s clever or funny to see him appear in his own movies, it’s just weird and sad.

Yeah so he has this weird pointless cameos where maybe three people would be ‘oh he’s playing the same character as he did in unbreakable – a movie that came out almost twenty fucking years ago!’

The ego on this guy, I can barely fathom it. I have to imagine the impetus to the movie being like him sitting and watching the marvel movies and their success with the cinematic universe and being like “I can do that.”

No, no you can’t please stop.

My brother was psyched when he saw the after credit like twist bit at the end of Split where it was in the same universe as unbreakable, I groaned and now he knows why.

Because he was thinking that this was something twenty years in the making and it would be totally epic, packed with awesome ideas, culminating in this amazing completion of the franchise.

I looked at it and saw a guy thinking he could get in on that sweet cinematic universe money like a fucking scammer by dredging up twenty year old characters like dusty Halloween skeletons. So where he saw pragmatism and culmination of twenty years of ideas I saw the true raw cynicism of this movie. All his movies are pg-13’s or 12A if you’re like me and have the misfortune of being in the UK. So Split, a horror movie about a serial killer multiple personality person is made in a way that children can watch it. I looked it up and I think all his movies are pg-13’s. This isn’t a style thing, this is a fucking marketing strategy, he sacrifices tone and any artistic integrity to mass market all his films. It’s like reverse sleaze, he makes his movies wholesome to make as much money possible. It’s smart but also I’m watching a movie where a guy is strong enough to rip people in half and you can’t show any blood or murder at all. Like what’s the point?

As I said I watched the red letter media review of this so I already knew what happened in the movie, I don’t care about it being spoiled because I didn’t care and you shouldn’t care about spoilers either because you’ve either seen it or you shouldn’t bother. And to be fair if you’ve seen the trailer you’ve see the whole movie anyway.

But the most frustrating thing about this movie is it could’ve been ok, to get back to the point I was trying to make earlier, it starts off pretty fun. You have a set up where Willis is a superhero vigilante who stops pranksters for some reason and doesn’t wear a mask in the age of smart phones and is then surprised when he gets caught.

He and the beast have a cool fight at the start and you can be forgiven for thinking this is cool to see the beast square off against Willis, and it really should’ve been the movie. Willis tracking down the Beast and then an epic showdown.

But no, what happens instead is they get captured and for some reason taken to the place Jackson’s character has been held for twenty years to be convinced they’re not actually super heroes by Sarah Paulson in these really boring therapy sessions.

That’s when you realise this movie isn’t leaving this one building. So you have this guy trying to do a little marvel universe but he doesn’t want to spend marvel money or the effort that goes into that type of movie. So his epic conclusion literally takes place in the parking lot of this one building the whole movie is shot in.

Literally half the movie is set up. It actually starts around the one hour mark and at that point I was actually sort of enjoying it. Because what you expect from this movie is that the previous two movies handle the set up and this movie can be just one long pay off, one epic third act. But no it takes a really long boring hour of people talking and the pointless side characters from the other movies coming back to do basically nothing. Like Willis’ son from the first movie comes back and it’s the same actor and his whole point in the movie is that he googles Kevin (splitguy). The girl from split does the hulk thing of calming the beast so he can be murdered and Jackson’s mother doesn’t do anything except wear terrible ageing makeup because it’s the same actress from unbreakable and she’s actually younger than Jackson.

After they’re captured nothing happens for the first hour. Bruce Willis is sitting down for ninety percent of this movie, he basically does nothing in a movie that should be about him and then he dies in a puddle. I’m not kidding.

He’s fighting the beast and then this super secret organisation that for some reason meets in restaurants and just waits for people that aren’t in the organisation to leave so they can talk about their plans. Apparently the wait staff in the restaurants are in the secret organisation too because they heard everything. So they show up like at the end of the movie and they just shoot the beast when he’s distracted by budget Alita Battle angel. Jackson is killed by the beast and the Bruce Willis is just drowned in a puddle.

My brother was like ‘this is when he fights back and beats all their asses’ and I knew what would happen so I just shook my head as they just dragged this old tired man who just wanted to sit down and get a check so he could buy booze and go home over a puddle and then drown him as he doesn’t even attempt to fight back.

The whole time I was watching this I was thinking ‘this is what M. Night deserves for making this movie’.

So they all die and the twist is there’s a secret group that kills superheroes for the sake of balance but then the peripheral characters from the other movies get together to expose super heroes to the world. Because Mr Glass’ real master plan was to die and expose the world to superheroes. Which is just dumb because we only find out they’re being suppressed at the end. The secret organisation plot line could’ve been good if M. Night wasn’t such a crack addict for twists and actually established their existence at the start of the movie. Because during the entire course of the movie there’s no threat. All you’re expecting is Splitguy to escape and do some splitguy stuff, but if you established this organisation from the start and didn’t hold it back as a twist like a retard it could’ve been a decent plot point not just seem like something you pulled out of your ass to ruin your movie.

Oh also double twist, Kevin’s (splitguy) dad was on the same train as Willis in the first movie so that train crash created both the Beast and Willis. Oooohh OMG Wow much epic such twist, it’s not like you totally just pulled that out of your ass. No this was the plan all along and it’s just genius and it comes full circle, such wow much genius.

It’s not even clever, it’s just bleh. I just didn’t care, there’s so much about this movie that’s just like ‘so what’. Like how long it takes to try and convince us that them being superheroes is all in their minds when we don’t care. We just want something to happen. I just sat there watching people sitting down talking about stuff I didn’t care about expecting a film to happen and it never did.

A weird shirtless sperg and an old man sort of had an uncomfortable wrestle in a parking lot and then they were killed. It’s less like a movie plot and more like a headline in a florida newspaper.

I mean the problem with this movie of which there are many is it has some decent ideas but they’re just so badly handled it’s not even funny. This movie isn’t so bad it’s good, it’s just shit.

And don’t look at this as a twenty year build up to this. This is just a bunch of people who are so desperate for attention and money they’re willing to dig up a movie that was pretty good just to suck the marrow from it’s bones for a sequel. It’s sad. People don’t think you can retroactively ruin movies but you really can, I’m sorry. A shitty movie doesn’t hurt a good book but a shitty sequel makes the previous movies look like shit. They don’t look better in comparison, especially if it’s made by all the same people like this. It just makes that good movie look like a fluke, or it makes you feel stupid for liking it in the first place.

With the star wars movies you can kind of say “well George Lucas had nothing to do with these movie” yeah but he did the prequels and they were panned, I didn’t think they were that bad and compared to last jedi and force awakens they’re masterpieces. But it doesn’t change the fact that there are officially more bad star wars movies/games/tv shows than good now. The franchise soured, the cow was milked so hard it started squirting blood.

So yeah that’s that, I knew it was going to be bad but I had to see it to know just how bad and I did and it was, please don’t watch it or do, who cares?

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Diana in the dark Chapter 13 ‘Daddy’s little darlings’ (Remurdered)

Ok, well I started it I guess.

Yeah started Cur 2 and it went about as well as it can be expected barely at half my usual output but it’s there. I can’t say it’s as good as Cur 1 for an opening by that I mean it’s boring-er and by that I mean Cur isn’t hacking people to pieces within the first few paragraphs. 

I wanted to go for a more slow build, actually I have no idea why I’m talking about this now I should wait until I finish proofreading it, gonna shelve this now and talk about something else, save that for another blog.

So I saw that new M. Night Shamalamadingdong movie glass and it fucking sucked. Why is anyone surprised by this?

Actually nevermind, I’ll save that for a review. Translation; I started talking about it not wanting to do a full review – which then turned into a full review I cut out for another blog haha.

So other than writing Cur which I can’t talk about and watching Glass which I also can’t talk about I’ve been playing Vampyr by dontnod, prolific developer of the award winning millennial walking simulator Life is strange. And honestly I… actually never mind, I’ll save that for it’s own blog haha.

Yeah so.. bye! X’D

–

When the darkness faded, I opened my eyes. He was there.

“Come on, I wanna show you something.” A little boy with a bowl cut hairstyle was leading me down a tight white hallway.

There was a door; he wanted me to go through.

What was on the other side?

The door was huge; I could barely reach the handle. It was turning red, the door, it was melting.

What’s in there?

“A surprise. I did it for you.”

Shapes appeared in the red goo the door was turning into. A face was pushing through the malleable material.

It’s my face, it’s a mirror.

A sudden jolt and my face hit something hard and flat. I was thrust back into the land of the living rather unceremoniously.

My head hurt, I was still seeing spots, but that was all. There was something over my eyes. I could almost feel the veins in my neck; my brain hurt like someone had slam dunked it through a stained glass window.

There was something wet and warm on my face, getting colder. Shit, blood, it had to be blood. “I’m bleeding” I cried out to the dark, to no one in particular.

“Relax,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s just drool—you can wipe it off when we get there.”

“Get where?” I asked.

“Prom, of course,” Wendy said.

I tried to move but my hands were strapped to something at my side. But I could feel the car plaining over wet roads, felt it turning, stopping. We were moving.

“Don’t move, don’t be dumb.” Her voice was tight, stern with a bitter frosty bite. “Don’t bother screaming, we’ll just crank the radio up, the windows are tinted no one can see us in here.” There was a cool commanding calm in her voice.

“Wendy, what’s going on?”

She laughed. “What’s going on? We’re going to prom, didn’t I just say that?”

The car slowly ground to a halt and I heard the driver get out.

“Just gotta make a little stop along the way,” She added.

“Wendy I—”

“I should’ve known it was you. My mom warned me about you; you’ve always been jealous of me. How did you know?” The jewelry on her arm jangled as she talked, no doubt gesturing to someone blindfolded. “I bet you felt really fucking clever, sending me those little notes… How clever do you feel now, huh?”

The passenger side door to my left opened and something big and heavy was slung at my side.

“Don’t make a fucking noise, puto, don’t make me shoot you!” a man’s voice said.

The door shut again and the large sack of potatoes started to writhe and make groaning grunting noises in the seat next to me.

“What the fuck Denny? I told you not to hurt him, he’s fucking bleeding!”

“I had to hit him with the gun, big white boy wouldn’t come on his own, thought he was a tough guy.”

“Now I’m gonna have to clean him up, you better not have got blood on his tux,” she screeched.

“What the hell’s going on? Is this a prank? It’s not very funny,” the potato sack said in between pained groans.

“Paul! Is that you?” I said.

“Diana? Are you—?” he said groggily.

“Just stay cool,” I said.

“What the hell, Di?” my boyfriend groaned.

“What’s going on is, I’m not going to let you white trash pieces of shit ruin my senior prom.” Wendy’s voice got fast and high pitch. “Already close to ruined; having it in that fucking laser arcade. I wanted it at the beach club, but noooo that wasn’t cool enough for little miss ‘ooh look at me I’m so quirky and interesting!” She made a clucking noise in her throat, as if trying to get more spit in her mouth. “Me being the great friend I am, let it slide, but no you gotta stab me in the back and try to ruin it with your little knife in the dark Marco polo horror movie bullshit!” She tutted “I wasn’t taking any chances after getting that second corny note so I had Denny camp out in my closet just in case and look who happened by.”

“Wendy?” Paul asked. “What’s she talking about? What’s going?”

“Would you just shut up, you fucking meat head daddy’s boy retard!” She sucked her gums “It was probably you who sent me that weird video at school trying to freak me out” She scoffed “and what a coincidence yours was the only locker without a head—I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now” She took a deep breath and filled herself with sweetness and light and said. “We’re gonna be there soon, and we’re all gonna dance and have a great time; and then me and Brody are going to be crowned prom king and queen and then—”

“Then what?” I asked.

She laughed and I could feel her shifting closer to me, the leather creaking under her toned brown buns.

Wendy took the sleep mask off my face and put a small gun to my head, my small James Bond-type weapon, to be precise. She looked over at Paul and squeezed her thin spider leg eyebrows as tight as they would go. “Oh, for fucks sake!” She tutted as she pulled a tissue from her purse She spat in it rubbing furiously at the small nick at the side of Paul’s head where Denny had hit him. She stepped back after she was done, to get a good look at him. “There, you look great” She sat back in her seat in the front of the limo, with the small purse pistol trained on us. Wendy was in a gold taffeta dress, looking like a real princess.

Paul was in the tux my ‘aunt’ had picked out for him, tied to one of the arm rests with a plastic zip tie, the same as I was. He was slowly fading in and out of consciousness, like he’d taken a hit of Nyquil and whiskey.

The interior of the limo was huge. The ceiling was much higher than I’d expect, and coming in at a cool five-three I could probably comfortably stand up inside. It was almost as wide as a standard bus, with black leather couches on all sides, and a large bar-like table with cushioned corners all the way around, stretching across the length of the interior. To top it off, there were blue strobe lights around the ceiling, making it look almost like a mini-traveling strip club. It was missing the stripper pole though. No fog machine either.

I was wearing one of Wendy’s hand-me down-dresses she’d worn to the homecoming dance last year. It was a mess of pink lace that looked like an explosion in a cotton candy factory. Insult to injury received. Pretty in pink my ass.

“You two make such a cute couple.” She smirked. She tapped the glass between the passenger compartment and the driver’s cab. “Denny, you’re driving like an old lady, are we there yet?”

–

Yeah well you can’t read this version because I said so, maybe I’ll give it away at the end of the year but only for people on my mailing list so there haha. But you can read the raw free version right here but don’t because it sucks.

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Loverman Chapter 9 “Night of the lotus eaters”

Hey there,
Whenever I start one of these I always have no idea what to talk about then I end up waffling for like an hour.
So tomorrow I start Cur 2 I guess, I’m not that psyched for it for some reason which is bad because I really enjoyed writing the plan for it but now it’s time to pay the piper and I’m just dreading it being shit. I dunno, I think I just need to get back on the horse and I’ll feel better, I always feel better when I’m writing. I really just need some feedback, I need someone to believe in me and there aren’t enough of those people around.
What have I been doing in the mean time, surprising yesterday was a pretty busy day, the poem was sort of prepacked honestly but I got this proofread and I managed to clean up a lot of the pitch for Cur and send it to a couple of places that might accept it. But who knows.
In other news my gamepass subscription is almost up but what should pop up within a week or two of it running out but Vampyr, a game I’ve sort of been eyeing for a while but people kept telling me was shitty and full of political nonsense. Which I believed because dontnod is famous for having these really social justicey liberal games like life is strange and life is strange 2 which is hilarious to watch lets plays of because it’s almost as cringe and on the nose as a David Cage game. They’re not subtle.
But honestly this just seems like a good game and I don’t feel like a narrative is being forced down my throat, it just feels like a solid rpg with good mechanics and I’m really enjoying it.
I think I’ll definitely do a review of it and possibly another playthrough, it kinda feels like bloodborne meets the witcher 3, but we’ll see how it pans out.
That’s about it for today I guess, no big rant planned. I think I’ll spend the rest of my day looking for reviews of Cur, maybe find some more publishers
–
Of course I had no idea what was on the piece of paper only that it seemed to spur Ericcson into a fit of furious action. He drove in almost a trance like state, gripping the wheel so hard I could hear the plastic and leather creaking. I was perturbed to try and wake him from it. I caught a glimpse of the paper and it appeared to be some kind of flyer advertising an event of some sort. I hadn’t the faintest idea what possessed him to kill those men at the gas station. And even less of an idea why a piece of paper they were carrying would cause him to act like this. It made no sense at all, well it made as much sense as it would in a dream. I didn’t want to think about that, I didn’t want to put into any conceptual process to discern whom was the dreamer and whom was the dream.
My reeling thoughts were rudely interrupted by the screeching of the well worn brakes of my mother’s long suffering Crysler. The bag I was in lurched forward and fell into the passenger side foot well.
From there I couldn’t see anything, just hear him getting out of the driver’s side and slamming the door shut behind him. Then more muffled fumblings until he opened the passenger side door and retrieved the bag I was in.
From my low angle it was too dark to make out the shape of the building he was taking me towards. There were no streetlights at all, just the sickly moon hanging half cast in the sky. There were no stars to speak of and the building seemingly had no lights or discernable activity going on outside.
But as Ericcson got closer it started to look familiar and I saw the patches of the burnt sickly pink stucco and I knew he’d taken us back. Back to the accursed place where I had died and he had fallen into this madness.
The pink bird mental institute.
Or what was left of it at least.
The building was a burnt out carcass of it’s former self, funny, I couldn’t recall a fire but it’s charred remains defied my recollection. It all happened so fast.
But why, why had he come back to this wicked place?
Then we both heard it, music, a low bass beat looped over and over.
Investigating the noise lead us around the side of the building. There was a door which seemed blackened from fire.
We approached it cautiously and as we did, the music increased in volume.
Ericcson pushed the door and it swung inward and we were assaulted by the loud bassy music blaring at us from below. Through the door was a darkened concrete stairwell leading down we assumed to the basement or some sublevel I hadn’t been privy to during the tour.
We descended the stairs following the loud ungodly music.
The basement level was fairly unremarkable service level. It housed mainly industrial size washers and driers, which seemed old and in disrepair. But they were not the source of the noise, that was deeper.
We followed a trail of shadeless hanging bulbs swaying in the complete darkness of the basement. They moved with what seemed like sentience, like the lights of an angler fish luring its prey into the crushing depths.
The darkness conjuring up such shapes in my head that would make what I had seen up to now seem like a harmless daydream. The shadows pulsed with the throbbing music, the lights swaying faster as we passed under them. At the end of this semi-dark hallway was a single green door.
There was no doubt that it was the source of the heart pounding music.
Ericcson opened the door but a crack, the music spilling out and assaulting my eardrums. With no hands to cover my ears I had no choice but to allow the din to dull and kill any sense I had until the noise became a ceaseless drone.
Although the music and the damage done to their ear drums didn’t seem to bother the shivering throngs of sallow cow eyed people dancing to it.
By my count there were at least a hundred strangely dressed people, young and old dancing in what seemed to be a large generator room. The lights strobing back and forth in time with the hypnotic drumming of the music.
Ericcson evidently saw something as he began to push his way through the crowd in the direction of the back wall. There was something, a fluttering of wings, black feathers floating to the ground. Coal black eyes looking at me from the far end of the room and then they were gone again.
I looked back at Ericcson and he was being lead through the room like a child by a woman, I could only see the back of her head. Her hair plaited down her back, she was wearing a black backless gown, her skin was pale and freckled. Looking her up and down I could see in her other hand she held a crow mask.
Ericcson was saying something to her but I couldn’t make it out over the music.
She turned and I could immediately see it was Jane, impossible, how could she have survived? But it was her, her glasses gone and her green eyes and red lips. She said something to Ericcson but I couldn’t read her lips. She smiled and turned away to lead him into the centre of the room.
He followed dutifully and I couldn’t fathom why until the crowd parted and I saw a little boy in his pyjamas standing alone in the crowd. He wasn’t crying, his face was placid and expressionless like he was sleep walking. He looked exactly like he did in my hallucination, like he’d been plucked right from it.
Ericcson dropped the duffel bag I was in and picked up his child, that’s when I noticed the strange symbol on the floor. It looked almost like a malformed five pointed star in a circle. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before except maybe through the gaps in my fingers. Or in feverish nightmares at the time I spent at that auspicious university in arkham.
I looked back at Jane, she was smiling and she held up her hand and showed him the ring. For a moment it was a parody postcard of a perfect family. She held his hand and then walked out of the circle leaving his hand to fall by his side. I watched her go, her smile turning it into a grotesque mask, a grin that seemed waxen, then she slipped the crow mask on.
–
If you want to read the rest of this weird shit, head on over to inkitt. Night of the lotus eaters
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