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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

April 11, 2019 0

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.

April 9, 2019 0

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

April 4, 2019 0

Loverman Chapter 8 ‘red right hand’

Bet you didn’t think you’d see this, yeah neither did I.

This is basically me trying to procrastinate so I can finish this shadow book I’m reading that of course is really boring before I start the next Cur. I really hate leaving books unfinished but this book is dragging it’s fucking feet so hard man. I want to just finish it and get back into the Conan stories that are fucking amazing. So I can soak up that lovely Conan badassery and keep it in my head, pass that spirit on to Cur 2.

Because I really feel inspired when I read something like that and it’s just like rocket fuel to my creativity and energy.

So hopefully I’ll finish the boring ass Shadow book and I can get back to Aquilonia like a boss.

It might be surprising to hear that their are stories so stupid and shitty that I write that even I abandon them. Like sometimes I get halfway through something I think will be fun and interesting to write and then I’m just not feeling it and I drop it for something better.

This coming from a guy that writes weird samurai clown nonsense and that’s the stuff that makes it, even what doesn’t make it, wrap your brain around that. But I figured since I put some of it on inkitt I might as well finish it and I saw how close I was to finishing it, like a chapter and a half, there last chapter is next. So I thought ‘fuck it’ kill some time, get some content and maybe have some fun. I guess I just didn’t really get into the character of Ericcson and I didn’t really care about his struggle and if I can’t care about him how the hell is a reader going to care about him?

So I kinda rushed the ending a little but it’s a an ok ending, it did everything I wanted to do with it. I just wanted to make a fun little lovecraftian super hero revenge story with lots of gore. Maybe some people might enjoy it, who am I kidding no one is going to read this haha.

One can dream.

Ok well that’s pretty much it, gonna make a start on Cur 2 tomorrow unless some unforseen circumstance comes along and a bus hits me or something. Won’t be able get much done over the weekend because I have lots of day job stuff to do but I should have something to show of it the week after hopefully.

See you…

–

It was getting dark, Ericcson was fully awake as far as I could tell. He slowly planed my mother’s Crysler to a stop near a tight grouping of dying oak. The trees loomed over head bare and exposed as the sky burnt out and blackened like a struck match.

The car creaked under him as he got out and slammed the door in the fashion he had become accustomed. He came around the side and picked up the bag I was currently calling home and placed me on the hood of the car for whatever reason. Maybe he thought I needed to stretch my legs, or get a lungful of fresh air, having neither faculty it seemed like a waste of time.

He went around the back of the car out of sight and I heard the trunk opening and closing.

I couldn’t see much for the trees and the looming darkness, he’d angled the car towards an old broken fence. Through the trees I could see a dilapidated red farmhouse and a barn that looked like it needed a new lick of paint.

The ground was a mix of grey and browns, dry and desolate, the leaves blowing in the wind were grey and floated like ash.

I looked closer at the fence, it was more like a small coral for sheep but with no gate. A few of the planks had given way and the fence had slumped slightly to one side, the wood looking sodden and old. On second viewing the coral seemed too small for animals and then I noticed the pieces of wood propped up at even intervals sticking out of the ground. Some of them stooped with age and decay.

Ericcson without a word came around the front of the Crysler after slamming the trunk. Obviously not content with just mistreating the drivers side door of my mother’s car. In his hand was a shovel and all at once it made sense what I was looking at.

Some folks in the more rural parts of new England preferred to have their own private plots. Or if they were just too poor they could opt to intern their dearly departed on any land they owned and create their own tombstones.

So, not a sheep or pig pen but a small family cemetery.

He started digging as the sun went down and then after it was down by the head lights of my mother’s Crysler, never stopping and never seeming to tire. After a while it almost seemed like he wasn’t breathing at all. As I recall it must have been cold but as I had stopped breathing all together I hadn’t thought that his breath should have been visible also.

I decided to give it no further though. I tried to focus on the sound of shovel carving the cold earth like a butcher chopping thick slices of meat. He sunk the blade of the shovel deep into the ground with what seemed like an icy resentment for it being there.

She wasn’t buried very deep, I know nothing of the actual burial but I know most all of her family were lying beside her already, waiting. I believe I read something about it in the paper, in any regard they weren’t currently living in that farm house. She was most likely interned by the state, otherwise she’d have been filed away on a cold shelf in the morgue.

I heard the shovel hit something hard and the sounds of his effort cease. The still night and the sounds of him scratching and scraping away dirt with the cold shovel blade, then his hands. His black nails scratching at the coffin lid. I imagined for a moment that it was her making those noises from the other side of the lid. For what could surprise me now, after the impossible things I’d seen, the impossible thing I was.

It was hard to make out with the stark light of the headlights but I saw him stand. Then I saw him stab down hard and the crack of the wood as it splintered under his boot. He lowered himself down into the hole where I couldn’t see, gently like the honeymoon in the marital bed.

There was then a low sound like a dog whimpering, mad whispered talking. I suddenly felt dizzy, like I couldn’t tell which way was up and there seemed to be pictures projected on the sky. Then it was around me, a room, a padded room. Lying on a bed, my head attached to a body I didn’t recognise. Silence and then a song whispered in the night and a knock at the door, the door to a cell.

L is for love, baby

O is for only you that I do

V is for loving virtually everything that you are

E is for loving almost everything that you do

R is for rape me

M is for murder me

A is for answering all of my prayers

N is for knowing your loverman’s going to be the answer to all your prayers.

It was a woman’s voice singing but there was no music, sung almost like a nursery rhyme, whispered through the door of the padded room. But at the same time it seemed to be all around me. Me? The me experiencing something close to a memory of Ericcson himself in that damned nut house.

L is for love, baby

O is for oh, yes I do

V is for virtue, so I ain’t gonna hurt you

E is for even if you want me to

R is for render unto me, baby

M is for that which is mine

A is for any old how, darling and

N is for any old time

Like Now!

Suddenly she was there, I had no idea how, but she was on top of me. I couldn’t stop her, couldn’t want to. She was strong and forceful and hateful and my limbs felt numb and heavy and willing. A face I knew somehow but changed, a mask of some obscure emotion covered her face and she tried to be someone else and no one. Her features mashing together in some hideous parody of feminine beauty.

Her lips burning and biting into mine, a hollow sinking feeling, cold heat.

And that ring, she was wearing the ring.

The ring.

“It’s gone”

Ericcson’s voice came from the hole.

“Her wedding ring is missing”.

–

After that Ericcson was aimless, seemingly inconsolable. Driving through the night with no destination. No goal in mind but a rising foul hatred for everything outside of my mother’s Crysler. Of course he didn’t tell me this, he’d barely said a word to me after we left the asylum. His anger, hopelessness, radiated off of him, I could feel it like heat from a lamp, smell it like second hand smoke.

‘Anger’ was a poor choice of words, there was a seething boiling disdain fomenting inside of him for nothing in particular. It felt like he wanted to tear the sky down like it was some pathetic backdrop in a school play. Pull the stars down from the sky and shatter the moon and let thick cool blackness blanket everything forever.

His restlessness was getting to me so I suggested he get something to eat or drink, anything to calm his nerves and take his mind off whatever it was on. He didn’t answer me but he soon pulled up at a little roadside diner connected on one side with a gas station outside of town.

I’m not sure why I insisted that he try calm himself or why I thought food and drink would suffice to do that. Maybe I hoped some kind of routine would spark something in him. Or if I saw him eat a cheeseburger he’d seem more human and I could feel sorry for him instead of revulsion. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen him eat or drink anything since we’d met, nor had he really slept. I was starting to wonder if he needed to or if he was even still alive. Was this really Zane Ericcson or something else wearing his face?

Regardless, some part of the man remained, the part that was driving him on, that was fueling his hatred. Why else would he visit his wife’s grave, why would he feel this sucking melancholy pulling him under a writhing tide of black bile hatred? If not love, then what?

An hour of staring at a cold bacon double cheese burger and soaking under halogen lights past by. Ericcson decided to skip the slice of keylime pie and top up of coffee and fill up my mother’s Crysler instead.

The gas station was dimly lit and in disrepair with a dingy mini mart squatting behind the pumps. A dagger eyed Asian man glared at us from behind the counter. The diner across from it, I had assumed was an all night affair but after we left it closed and they turned all the lights off.

The silence didn’t last long, punctured by a loud tire squeal and the vein rattling bass beats of urban music.

I saw them pull up in what looked like a Lincoln town car, square, with box like edges, black with a dent in the rearside fender. All this I could see as through protest I had been elevated from my position in the duffelbag on the seat. To my new lofty position of hanging from the head rest by the handle so I could at least see out of the window. A strange thing lacking a stomach but still suffering from phantom car sickness, it helps to see the horizon as most sufferers know.

They parked the car at a haphazard angle and one of the youths got out in a cloud of smoke. The music louder than ever, an oddly shaped hand rolled cigarette hanging from his mouth. He started pumping the gas as one of his friends got out to go into the mini mart. His movements loose and heavy like he was bouncing, his arms swinging by his side.

The one smoking the cigarette noticed Ericcson and shouted over the music. “Hey what’chu lookin’ at man?”

Ericcson said nothing and made no attempt not to stare at the youth.

A moment of awkwardness past then there was a loud series of pops from the mini mart and the one that had entered jogged out, a pistol hanging from his side.

“Ayyo! I said what’chu lookin at man?”

“Who dis?” The youth with the gun said, gesticulating with the pistol as he spoke not looking at Ericcson but pointing the pistol in his general direction. “This nigga wanna die too?”

“Ayyo, we gonna be late to that party man!” Another voice from inside the car shouted over the music.

“I don’t give a shit, this mufucka can I.d us man”

“Then waste his dumb ass, what you think we can wait around here all night?” A moment past as the one with the gun just stood and sweated as he readjusted the gun in his hand. “Bitch ass” The smoker said as he sucked his gums and pulled out his own gun. I can’t say much for guns, my family had never been big on them so the make and model eludes me. It was silver and rather large and I knew the dangerous end was pointed at Ericcson.

“I said; what you lookin a-“

The youth with the cigarette stopped talking as he noticed the change. He focused on Ericcson who remained constant like a waxwork, but the night was silent. No birds chirped or dogs barked, no cars passed, no wind. The pumps, the cars, the gas station, the road, the diner, the sky, were all gone. All moved away like props on a stage.

The youth gaped and his cigarette fell and hit the ground with no sound as he stared at the endless nothingness. The blank black canvass that surrounded them and then there were sounds. Only the sounds of Ericcson’s shoes as he walked closer to the youth. The tap tap tapping that echoed over the dense writhing darkness sending shocks through his veins. Each footstep like a dentist drill skipping over his teeth. The silence itself becoming thick with a terrifying low hum.

His body deflated, all the muscles in his face sagged and his arms shook at his sides as if they weren’t connected to anything. His posture was that of someone floating shoulder deep in a black pool. He felt light and weak but constantly in a comatose rhythmic somnambulist motion.

Ericcson stopped too close to him and took both his hands smiling like the devil himself. He helped the youth clasp the gun tightly in both hands. Then he forced him to put the gun in his mouth.

Ericcons smiled as he bit down on the barrel of the gun and said “Pull it niggerman!”

The youth flared with a rage that was as sudden as it was flaccid, his trembling fingers pulled the trigger and blew out the back of Ericcson’s head. A thick black brain matter exploded out of the back of his head like the ink of a squid and he fell backwards slowly as if he was sinking and then he stopped.

Ericcson rose to his feet from mid fall with a queer slithering motion and he laughed soundlessly.

There was a loud thunderous bang and suddenly reality bobbed into jarring focus like falling in a dream. Everything was the same but now the gun was in the mouth of the youth.

He pulled the trigger and his eyes rolled back into his head as he covered the car in brain matter.

His friend who had come out of the mini mart froze and then started up again like clockwork firing wildly at Ericcson who hadn’t moved from the pumps. Ericcson grinned and raised his hand, out of his sleeve. A vicious stygian tendril shot out and in a blink of an eye had hold of the youth with guns arm and was wrenching him about like a dog with a chew toy.

The tendril, with an inhuman level of strength whipped the youth through the windscreen of the car. His head imploding against the toughened glass and landing in the drivers seat.

The youth in the back of the car got out the otherside and started firing over the roof. In an instant one of those foul tendrils clutched at his throat, wrapping it’s veiny muscular limbs around his neck. The tentacle yanked him across the roof of the car.

Another tentacle slashed at his wrist, severing the hand completely before the one around his neck twisted his head off slowly. His cries trailing off in a distended vile screech like a dying animal.

His body fell from the roof of the car with a terrible wet thud.

Ericcson’s feet scraped the concrete as he walked over to the dead man’s car and casually turned the radio off. He searched the dead man’s jacket pocket, the deadman closest to the pumps. he pulled what seemed to be a piece of paper out of it and walked back over to my mother’s crysler, staring at it intently.

–

If for some insane reason you want to read the rest of this chapter or this weird ass story, head on over to inkitt. Red right hand

March 28, 2019 0

Diana in the dark Chapter 10 ‘I call him D’ (remurdered)

Hey there,

Another bit of fille- I mean a glimpse at the finished product, time, sweat and tears and lots of blood. Not my blood, but it’s the thought that counts.

Not been up to much recently, watched the latest season of American horror story as I keep telling people on facebook when I wasn’t banned and it’s pretty fun. I mean it never really sticks the landing but it always starts off fun. It’s like a toybox full of nice new toys you know one kid is going to take a dump in.

Like the last season was about a cult sort of surrounding Donald Trump but not really. It started off pretty partisan and wasn’t too heavy on politics on one side or the other, sort of making fun of them both but towards the end it’s picked a side and surprise surprise which side it is haha. I didn’t really mind that but the ending is so forced it reminded me of the ending of Law Abiding Citizen. Just one of those endings that seems really forced and doesn’t really make sense in the logic of the film world.

So yeah this super genius guy who can kill people from a prison cell is basically going to take over the city by blowing up the mayor but he can be outsmarted by this attorney who has basically just been a bumbling idiot until now. But no magically he not only finds the bomb but puts it under the super geniuses bed and he dies. Like “Ooh can’t wait til that bomb explodes and crumbles this corrupt system that’s broke, oops whats that smell?”
I hate it when they make smart characters dumb. Why is the character a genius up to this point but now he’s suddenly dumb because the script asked him to be dumb. It’s so contrived, if you set up a character to be this evil genius but can’t come up with a good way to defeat him then the natural course is to let him win. Not to just tack on a good ending where he slips on a banana peel and dies. You have to establish a flaw for him to fail or he wins, you can’t just go ‘ok now the good guy win!’
It’s cheap and tacky and it completely just feels hollow and shitty.

So basically the ending of Cult, oh yeah spoilers ahead haha, is the cult leader played by Evan Peters is in prison but he’s sort of indoctrinated the prison and he’s fucking the female guards and they help him escape so he can go kill the person who squealed on him which is Sarah Paulson’s character.

So he escapes and he gets on stage to kill her but the gun is empty and the ‘twist’ is that Sarah Paulson’s character had a little ‘chinwag’ with this indoctrinated guard and somehow unindoctrinated her and she gives him an empty gun so when he pulls the trigger nothing happens and then someone else shoots him. And to a normal person you’d just go ‘ok the bad guy loses cos reasons’.

But I was instantly like, literally none of that makes sense. One how did these people even meet, so this person is indoctrinated but travels god knows how far to meet someone who escaped the cult, why? The prison probably is nowhere near this person and why would the indoctrinated person even think of doing this? And if it was Paulson did she talk to every guard in the prison? And if she really unindoctrinated her why did the guard still have sex with him and help him escape after, i.e committing career suicide? It makes zero sense.
If she was really not under his power he would’ve never made it out of that prison in the first place. It just makes logical sense within the real world or it’s own world. It was just ‘Bad guy loses’.

And the politics and message are sort of cancerous, it makes reference to that Ashley Judd speech where she read out this poem that I doubt that many people know about really. And Sarah Paulson’s character is a crazy murderer too so it’s not really ‘bad guy loses’ it’s more like ‘male bad guy loses, female bad guy wins cos reasons’.

Also lena dunham is in it playing the chick that shot andy warhol and that episode was just fucking aids tier, I almost stopped watching after that, it was just pushing too hard on the parody wall to be taken seriously. It stretched credulity to a point it was obnoxious. The story sort of fell apart after that and the ending was just small and unsatisfying and it made me mad haha. Even though I knew it was coming. It reminds me of a really good movie I watched recently called Upgrade and I wont go into it for spoilers but you get to the end and it starts to get formulaic and me I’m watching it like ‘oh here comes the generic ending’. Like you can just tell, a story is building to this one ending but you know it’s gonna cuck out and take the easy way out like Law Abiding Citizen. The super genius character is suddenly gonna just not account for an allergy to pollen or something really fucking dumb.

But no, it gave me exactly the ending that I never expected, the ending that actually makes sense and it was ten times more satisfying. That ending alone made that movie for me, but all around it’s just an awesome little movie, I recommend you watch that and skip every season of american horror story haha. I’m watching it out of curiosity, it’s just something to put on while I pump iron haha.

So, down to business, Kur is done, sort of, not really and it’s time I work on something new. And honestly I dunno, I feel like Diana and Kur are both sort of up in the air and I don’t know what to do with them just yet. I need some direction, I need to follow my instincts because this is a lot of time investment to waste on a book maybe nobody wants to read. I mean if no one like either book what’s the point in writing a sequel?

I’m starting to think I’d be better off writing more clown samurai nonsense haha. I do have something I was sort of working on a while ago and I think I might go with that and instead of writing something intended to be a series just write a one and done book like fight club (but not like fight club haha). Maybe I’m spreading myself too thin and not putting the focus where it needs to be.

So I had this idea about a super hero going through Burnout syndrome, basically a superhero who tries too hard and his powers are too strong and he ends up killing innocent people by mistake and goes to prison. And in prison he slowly begins to see the world is much too broken to be the hero he wants to be and he essentially becomes a villain. I mean he’s still the hero but the “government” becomes the villain.

I likened it to like Hancock meets 1984 meets american history X but in reverse I guess haha. Maybe old boy would be a better description but he doesn’t become evil in oldboy. It’s complicated. The reason I said that is because I want to play the politics card like ahs cult and have an evil but relate-able nazi character for fun. Like a mix of Patrick Bateman, the guy from american history X and the comedian from Watchmen. A villain who is vile but still oddly likeable, so much so you feel dirty for liking him haha. Characters like that are always fun and really make even bad media good, like Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, any wonder the second season fizzled out? Killing him off was their death nail. I heard netflix is axing all that cape shit now, good riddance, it was terrible imo.

I think I’m gonna spend some time with the notes and materials I have for Kur 2 and this superhero story which is called ‘Burnout’ now but I toyed with a few others. I wanted to call the main character burnout but of course it’s already taken haha. I was looking through the notes for it, because it started off as a comic as does a lot of the stuff I write now. But the notes I have are pretty extensive, I’m a little impressed with past me haha. I mean it’s funny looking back at my world view then comparing it til now. It’s like reading Alex Jones’s wank material haha.

But there’s a lot of good stuff there ready to be moulded into an actual story, so I think that’s what I’m gonna do for the next couple of days, just see where my head is at, see what I’m feeling. But baring a sign from god I’m feeling the super hero story mainly because I a lot of the song titles I have for chapter titles haha. Stole most of them from the excellent american psycho soundtrack haha. So yeah, American Psycho meets hancock haha. I guess that’s a thing maybe.

Should be a lot of fun, I’m gonna take my time and play it out a little, see what I can do with it.
Oh also the starship troopers pilot screenplay is done, now I need to decide what I’m gonna do with it haha.

That was a long one but I think that’s good for today.

Also did another newsletter, first of the year, sorry about that haha. I attribute it to laziness and forgetfulness. But I haven’t really been spamming much since I’ve been getting banned so much recently.

See you…

–

We cut out a lot of walking through bland bleached white halls, not too dissimilar from the inside of a hospital. Complete with the smell of death and cleaning products. I waited in an interview room. It was sort of a bland eggshell color, and it smelled vaguely of crayons.

A square room that could’ve been an empty storage closet but for the table and chairs. There was no long two way mirror, just a camera that was no doubt watching. They’d see nothing of interest, no tell or wink or me talking to myself. I lacked guilt of any kind, incapable of feeling it in fact; and as far as I knew, I was actually innocent of any crime larger than an overdue library book.

My fantasies aside, I was a pretty solid citizen, on paper. Two—or probably thirty—minutes from now, a detective could walk in here with a video of me robbing a jewelry store, wearing the barmaid’s head as a hat.

I’d pull off surprised, then again, maybe not. I’d dwelled on the possibility the dark back seat driver might’ve been taking me around for a spin in the wee hours of the night. Slipping his driving gloves on, and sidling over into the front seat while I was away with the faeries. That seemed fanciful, even for me. Although, it would explain why I felt so rundown recently, but I could just be getting my period.

I was about to delve deeper into another dark daydream, when the seal on the door behind me was broken. I turned awkwardly to watch detective Cantwell saunter in, looking down at a bland manila folder, as if I hadn’t been waiting at least an hour at this point. He sipped a hot cup of coffee, probably one of many. Our tax dollars at work.

There was something I liked about this place. Something beautifully impersonal about everything. Men and women, in and out of uniform, shuffling about in a trance, pretending they belonged, all separated out in little cubicles and cubbies.

The smell of justice was a dank bitter scent, like burnt coffee and cigarette butts. People brought together working toward something that could never truly be but was worth their time anyway. Like a maid constantly making a bed for others to sleep in, only to have to make it again the next day. Making order from so much chaos. What a daunting task, I liked it.

The detective looked up at me like he didn’t expect me to be there, causing deep creases to form on his smooth chocolaty forehead. He then proceeded to slap the folder on the table, as if it had pictures of the Kennedy assassination from an until-now, unseen new angle.

My money was on Jackie this time around. Maybe it was the butler with the candle stick.

He took a sip of his coffee, waiting to say something, this whole thing I guess was to soften me up, let me stew, all protocol no doubt.

I could’ve said something; that was sort of the point of me being there. But, I felt it impertinent to be the first one to talk in this situation, surely that would break some sort of criminal code. At least let the cop ask a question before one spills the beans entirely.

So I sat, adjusted myself in my seat a bit and looked at him as he continued to peer down and sip his coffee. I cleared my throat quietly, readying myself.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked some very guilty looking coffee grounds at the bottom of his cup.

“Err…” Eloquent as always. “Something to do with the heads in the lockers?” The words tiptoed out playfully.

The heads seemed like a distant memory now, a memento from a special day I never got to keep; I didn’t even keep the ball.

Maybe I could still get it out of the trash.

Cantwell made a face at his coffee like he got all the way to the bottom only to discover the body of a fly in a set of tiny Bermuda shorts.

He looked at me with half-lidded eyes and made a sucking noise with his teeth before setting the empty cup down.

The sound of it touching down on the table echoed right through me. We had so much in common.

He readjusted himself in his seat and made a sighing noise, like he was about to open some grand grimoire of Diana’s mistakes past and present.

A catalogue of all my thought crimes recorded for all to see. Probably even had my tween fascination with Justin Bieber and Edward from Twilight in there, too. That would’ve been truly incriminating. Especially if he found my adolescent fan-fic shipping the two. My mind was wandering, trying to distract from the dark hissing noise.

A black punctured tire, whispering to me in that mock reflection of my own inner voice.

A quiet siren ripping through the dark foggy depths of the ghost town called Diana.

The detective opened the file and split his lips as he looked at me, flipping a Photostat copy of a picture over in my direction.

In it; a blurry night still from a security camera, the vague outline of a hummer pulling out into the night.

“That picture was taken from a gas station security camera of a car fleeing the scene of the latest Headsman murder.”

I tried not to fall out of my seat. What was more shocking? The picture or the fact, not even the police could decide on a definitive name for him, Headhunter, Headsman, pick one.

I gave my best teenage ‘so what’ face. Trying both, not to look completely blindsided and also trying not to open my eyes wide enough for him to see that there was nothing behind them. Too much emotion, and too little would both be mistakes. What a tight rope I walked, how I envied Manson. He’d always just made a funny face and said something vaguely intelligible.

“I—err…”

Great work Diana, you’ve got him eating out of the palm of your hand.

“Now what would be the chances you’d be the one to find those heads?” The detective sat back in his chair, laying out some figurative diorama of events with his hands on the table separating us. “And only one day later, were photographed leaving the scene of another murder in your boyfriends car. That is your boyfriend’s car, isn’t it?” The question hung in the air devoid of any inclination of doubt. He slid a few more pictures across the desk, these ones were less blurry. Different angles of the car—and even a nice shot from the front—my ghostly white face projecting through the tinted glass windshield.

–

March 12, 2019 0

Cur Chapter 18 ‘Gimme the prize’

Yep this is the final chapter.
I kinda spaced, I forgot this was the final chapter, I thought there was one more and I was like “Oh that’s it” haha.

It’s fine, it’s all fine, this is only the first book, I’ve already got plans on the next, I actually might go straight into the next one because it’s shorter than another Diana book and all these rejections have made me a little gunshy. I’m not sure I could make the next one as good as the first, you know the one that is already getting shat on by every cat lady literary agent and her fucking cats!

I already have the ending of the fifth book in this series planned haha. Is that normal? I hope not. I think I need to set some time aside to plan out the next book and see if I get a jolt on it. I have a rough idea of how I want to start it, the other parts just haven’t fallen into place. The stuff, the rudimentary plot, the journey, the middle bit.

People always the most important parts of anything is the beginning and the end and I think that’s true but I’ve noticed this recent trend in movies and books to just have really middling middle bits. And it really hurts pacing because it makes a film feel shorter than it is. You need that journey to feel substantial and satisfying so if nothing really happens in the middle the whole thing collapses in on itself. it’s why you get that feeling when you watch a movie like you haven’t even really watched a movie, you just looked at some footage rolling over your eyes for a couple of hours. It’s because it’s not paced like the movies you actually like. Which is why Aquaman which I saw the other day did so well because it had unlike most comic book movies a decent middle with an idiana jonesie adventure and romance so the film felt like an adventure.
I’m not saying it was good, I’m saying the bar has been lowered so far that this crap passes for good, it’s the best most sparkly tinfoil covered turd in the punchbowl. The main villain didn’t appear at the start and disappear through most of the movie but still get praised as the best villain ever just cos like in Black Panther. You follow both villains through the whole movie cutting back and forth between the heroes and villains in a way that felt satisfying and bolstered the movie.

So yeah I enjoyed it like a person enjoying the interior decoration of a sinking ship.

In a good mood today which is weird because I’m actually in shitloads of pain because I pulled a muscle in my back on a chest fly. I had a really nice dream about the only person in the world that really matters. For reasons I can’t disclose, mainly pure evil; I can’t see that person but the dream let me know that one day I would. I really need to be someone they can be proud to know exists. I just need something, a clear path to being a real person.

Fuck me, why is this ‘life’ thing so hard?

Anyway, I promised I would plan something today, my next book possibly or some other hair brained scheme perhaps.

Gonna try and get some feedback on the completed book and maybe make some changes to it, there’s a lot about it that still feels unfinished.

See you…

–

“So you’ve finally arrived” Bres smirked as he bit the head off a pear. “Would you sit? Your ward is readying himself, my men and I rode all night to be here, we’re very tired.” He said staring at her as he chewed. His champion Ogma at his side, face bandaged like a mummified corpse, shrouded in a grim countenance. He looked as stiff as a tailors dummy sitting completely erect in his armor. Dian Cecht sat on the end, silent as the grave with his head hanging low trying not to be seen.

“I-I-“ The druiddess stammered.

“Sit down” Bres said firmly but softly.

Birog sat awkwardly on an ornate oak chair with a floral pattern on the green seat cushion. She almost missed the chair as she couldn’t take her eyes off the man that had been chasing her doggedly. Unable to get anything close to comfortable as her mind reeled and her fingers tightened around the box.

“I shouldn’t want to spoil the surprise but I can’t imagine what’s inside that box will save you.” Bres sighed.

“He didn’t-?”

“No, he told us where you were going but I pressed no further about the contents of that box” Bres smirked wickedly “I do so like surprises.”

“But-“

“I won’t kill you in his presence out of respect, but mark my words, this doesn’t end well for you little druid”.

Ogma narrowed his eyes making a face as if it pained him to do so, looking at his king. His king who’s face was beginning to turn an odd shade of purple with red blotches surfacing. “Look at her, she’s beaten, she knows it, we have no need to kill her my lord” He said. “She can still be of use.” He added looking at her, as if it was a question.

“Who is it that tells the king of Inish Veil what he must do?” Bres said without looking at him.

“He must kill me, don’t you see, I know too much” Birog said looking down talking into the box clutched to her chest. Then casting an erstwhile glance at Ogma.

Bres said nothing but tensed his jaw and started to grind his teeth as his face got more colourful.

Just as Ogma was about to get curious the page came back with cold meats and wine.

“You’re just as handsome as I remember you, Bres the beautiful” an unseen woman said.

Bres looked around for the woman.

“We hope you haven’t forgotten us.” Another said.

“How could he do a thing like that?” A third added.

Bres turned his head and appeared a beautiful woman with blonde hair in a white dress. And then one behind him leaning over his shoulder in a black dress with dark hair and then on his lap was a woman in a red dress with red hair.

“How could I forget such enchanting enchantresses” Bres smirked.

“Oh you are a flirt”

“As always”

“But how rarely you pay us a visit”

Bres smiled “Kings seldom have free time for such things”.

“You came to see the old man not us” The girl in white pouted.

“That couldn’t be further from the truth, I came to see the lovely three Moriggu, if I were to check up on the old man it would be a matter of course, that’s all. How is he, may I ask?”

“Same as usual”

“Away with the spirits” They giggled.

“Who’s this?” The one in red said sneeringly pointing at Birog.

“A pilgrim I met along the road perchance, she’s come a long way to see him”

“She has? Whatever for?” The one in black wrinkled her nose.

“She has a gift for him” Bres smirked.

“A gift?” The one in white said excitedly, her eyes widening like a child’s.

“You can see him, if you promise you’ll visit us again soon” The one in red said.

Bres took her hand and kissed it “Anything for you Babd”.

The other two looked on with cloistered dismay and disdain.

In an instant they transfigured themselves into fireflies of their respective colour. They flitted through an opening in the main room of the anti-chamber.

Birog entered the main chamber behind Bres who pushed the doors open wide, followed up by Ogma who looked on stonily.

The main chamber in contrast to the rest of the fortress was the definition of opulence. Every wall covered in red and purple and white silk. The furnishings were made of the finest materials, gold and silver leaf traced every nook of the room.

It wasn’t just a main chamber or a bed chamber. It was an exquisite throne room with extravagant chandeliers. A banquet table sat in the centre piled high with the grandest smelling food one could imagine.

At the far end of the room a set of stairs carpeted in a deep red velvet, leading to the throne and on it sat the once and former king Nuada Airgetlám.

“I bid you welcome Bres and guests.” He said softly.

“Hail ‘king’ Nuada” Bres said with a mocking smirk.

–

Check out the rest of the final chapter of the first book in this hopefully epic saga here on inkitt. Gimme the prize

March 7, 2019 0

Cur Chapter 17 ‘Morning Shadows’

Henlo there,

I have returned once more from the depth of hell to share my misery with you all bwahahaha!

Dramatic entrances over erm yeah more Cur stuff, not a big slashy chapter but there some big slashes coming fo’ sho. The slashiest slashes there ever been coming soon enough.

Updates updates.

Rejections trickling in for Diana as expected, erm one of them told me they didn’t understand the world in the first few pages. And I responded like ”well yeah you’re not supposed to it’s a fucking dream sequence, maybe if you actually read the whol chapter instead of scanning the first couple of pages you’d have got that!”.
Only to be greeted with one of those messages that tells you you just sent an email to a mailbox that no one reads. Imagine putting retarded criticism in an email that can’t be responded to haha. Like why bother?

I really don’t know with these people it seems like it’s total gate keeping bullshit and all the gate keepers are retards who only want something that specifically caters to them. I dunno, I think I might have to redo my query letter and take the identity of a muslim woman poc to actually get a chance of someone reading a chapter of my fucking book haha (I’m not going to do that).

I still have hope for it, all the hope in the world, what else is there? I really have nothing else but chasing this impossible dream until I get old and die alone.
I’d honestly have it no other way because I couldn’t bear to meet the woman who could put up with me haha. I’m doomed to be forever alone with maybe a few stints of being intensely miserable being with someone that hates me for a few months and part of me is totally fine with that.

Ok well that’s enough for today, I was gonna do some spamming on facebook today since I’d been staying out of trouble on there but nope. I got banned again for nothing, literally nothing, that’s not a meme, once you make it on facebook’s shit list they’ll just ban you for no reason. On multiple occasions I’ve been banned and usually if you actually did something it’ll show what you were banned for and you can request a review to appeal it. Because the algorithm doesn’t know what you’ve said and people just report you for whatever reason trying to get you banned so a real person will look at it and take the ban down.
But again I’ve been banned and it won’t show me what I was banned for because it’s nothing, I haven’t been spamming or saying any edgy shit recently. I’ve just been posting tame stuff for laughs mainly. So no only will it not show me what I was banned for because there’s nothing to show but also it didn’t give me the option to request a review, the case was closed as soon as I was banned so I have no way of getting it turned around.
Facebook just bans thought criminals whenever it feels like for whatever reason it likes, literally orwellian bullshit, I can’t stand facebook, I know I’m gonna delete my account eventually and migrate to twitter probably, although I know their free speech policies aren’t much better. But there’s no competition.

Anyway, enough ranting about that. I hope you enjoy the chapter and the conclusion of this part of this epic saga is soon to come.

See you…

–

Birog prodded the fire with a blackened birch branch and stared into it trying to think of no one and nothing. The night had fallen and the woods were alive with sounds of predators and prey and she didn’t feel like being either. It was misting with rain slightly and clouds were building overhead. She didn’t feel wet but it was seeping into the horse blanket she was using to keep warm.

The fire she made was strong enough but nomatter how close she got to it she still felt a chill. The darkness clung to the trees and surrounded her and she felt alone, truly alone.

She didn’t know why the Firbolg chose to come with her anymore than she knew why he chose to stay behind now. Surely she hadn’t fooled herself into thinking he was in love with her. Was there a chance that there was valor in him afterall? Did she bring it out in him? Was he the hero she needed all along, a hero in waiting, waiting for her to come along and give his death meaning, had he sacrificed himself for her?

She felt silly for thinking such thoughts, she wanted to laugh but the thought of laughter let cold and melancholia slip in. The more she thought about it, the colder she got. Nomatter how hard she clung to herself that chill would not out and the loneliness and fear would not abate

The night was calm and the steady metronome of light rain made her head bob in and out of sleep but something kept her awake, her thoughts wandering. Where was he now? What of the shapeshifter Tuan? he said he would watch over her but she’d seen hide nor hair of him, telling herself that he was in every owl hoot and wolf howl. She knew she was alone and although her mission was almost to an end and in the morning she would walk among gilded halls. Sleep in beds of the finest linen and eat of foods fit for a king and would be greeted as a hero, she could not sleep.

Just gazing endlessly into the fire, listening to the stillness of the night.

Then suddenly, a chime of thunder rumbling overhead. Then a horse’s nay cut over the steady beat of the night. At first she thought it a waking dream but then again, the thunder rolling overhead, the horse naying.

She shook herself from her dozing and as she became more conscious, the hairs on her arms stood and the blood in her veins froze.

A horse.

Can’t be. It can’t be him. Not here, not now. That black night is surely dead.

She stood shaking off the horse blanket and quickly stamped out the fire.

He’s found me.

She waited still in the dark, waiting for her eyes to adjust, holding herself, not breathing, just listening to the night and the horse, trying to follow it.

Slowly she could see the outlines of the trees by moonlight. She crouched to tip toe gingerly towards the sound of the horse naying between bouts of thunder.

As the sound got closer she could hear a stream. Then see the shimmering moonlight hitting the water and reflecting back against the treeline.

She followed along the stream staying shrouded by the night but with the stream as a glittering path to guide her.

Then the thunder stopped and the horse stopped naying. She stopped then, listening to her own breathing. Listening for the breath of another but hearing but a rustling in front of her and the clopping of hooves.

She halted her breathe once more and cautiously followed the noise further downstream and then by the light of the of the water she saw it’s dipped head.

Her heart became lighter as she saw it was just one of the horses from her cart that had gotten loose somehow.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she watched it drinking from the stream.

The druidess approached it and gently stroked it’s main as he it drank.

“You must have been startled by the thunder.” She said smiling. “How did you get free I wonder?”

The horse nayed in response and forced it’s head harder under her hand. “You are a friendly one, perhaps I should give you a name, how does “Ronal” sound?”

The horse nayed and continued enjoying the druidess’s fingers through his maine, pushing for her to scratch harder.

“Come on” She said as she lead him back to the camp. The weather had improved slightly, it was still fairly cold but the thunder and the misting rain had stopped. She wrapped Ronal in the horse blanket and patted him on the head “Maybe now we’ll both get some sleep” She sighed.

–

Liked this excerpt? Read the rest over on inkitt Morning shadows.

February 28, 2019 0

Diana in the dark Chapter 9 ‘Sugar lies’ (remurdered)

Ayyo wut up?

Ok well as usual it’s tuesday, the day after my favourite chest day so I am sitting here trying not to swallow my tongue, why do I do this to myself haha? I’m so rundown, I feel like I slept in a cement mixer haha.

Ok so what’s up, yeah recycling Diana again but you know I’m proud of this version so, I dunno. I read the only one star review of Green Sunday yesterday and laughed, some guy saying it was dumb, well yeah, that was sort of the point haha.

Talking about the stupid shit I write, I’ve been thinking of looking for like a serial magazine that might take 3 ring samurai for no money haha. All the glorious ‘exposure’ I can eat haha. You know just for fun, I like people reading my stuff even if it’s to laugh at it for free haha. But who knows it could get a cult fanbase, like I care haha. Anyway yeah I just stumbled on an ad on facebook for a podcast that’s like an audio serial so submitted to that so hopefully they think it’s funny and different and it could be heard by a few people.

Also looking into potential publishers for Cur which could hook me up with the right audience, I’m gonna be putting together a package at some point this week, I might start after I finish this blog actually.

Err, haven’t been reading the shadow a lot this week because it’s a really boring story I couldn’t give a shit about haha. I love the shadow, I just think there’s so much that is just fluff and I know if I read it all I can boil it down and pull out all the gold from this mess of tedium. I just need to stick with it.

On a positive note I got back into a series I sort took a step back from for a while, american horror story has been like a decent tv show I watched on occasion between like I dunno Dexter and that kind of stuff. It’s never really wowed me just been something I could watch when I ate or worked out.

But season six was pretty special, I thought it was gonna be like a period piece slog with some tedious plot line like hotel which was ok it was just bogged down in a lot of nonsense the other seasons also suffer from. I dunno I like it when it embraces what makes horror fun and doesn’t get bogged down in trying to tell a romance or something cheesy that just doesn’t fit.

But season six was like a cool reality show and I think it mostly worked, although the ending was a little flat but still cool. I was thinking that season seven couldn’t compete but how wrong I was. I laughed so hard I almost dropped a dumbbell on my head. It’s basically a whole season about Trump derangement syndrome. It perfectly satirises the insanity around Trump in a way that in the first episode at least is really non-partisan and fun.

Evan Peters plays his best role yet as this crazy blue haired trump supporting cult leader I guess and he’s equal parts hilarious and scary. You can just tell he had fun with this one. Sarah Paulson plays a lesbian who made the mistake of voting for Jill Stein because she thought the Hillary nomination was in the bag and Trump being elected basically triggers the laundry list of phobias and mental problems she has and he has a kid with her wife and it doesn’t sound funny but it really is a great satire on the complete mania some people experienced just because Trump got elected.
I’m not sure what political leaning the creators of the show are but I assume liberal as hollywood and places like that usually bias left but what I found in the first episode is funny and unbiased maybe even leaning right a little, I thought I was gonna cringe at the portrayal of right wingers but not yet anyway. I just found it overall fun and funny and I’m looking forward to watching more tonight.

That’s all.

See you…

–

We were rounding the dune-like sandy hills, the grass was a desert khaki color, and we had to drive around the whole park to get to the entrance on Elinvar Drive.

Paul parked the Hummer up at the end of the street and I hopped out into the muggy mid-afternoon. He got out without saying a word and circled back around to open the trunk. “Here grab this.” Innuendos aside, He took out a small black case and handed it to me.

It was a little heavy, but I ate my Wheaties this morning. I was a little giddy, maybe it was the slight elevation. The air was a little thinner and smelled different, less like people and more like dirt.

Paul pulled out something long and thin, wrapped in a piece of chamois leather and set off up the trail at a medium paced stride. “You coming?” he yelled.

All those juices were flowing. Must’ve felt like he was straddling a camel in Baghdad with an M60 strapped to his back heading to Osama bin Laden’s pool party.

I kept pace as we hiked further and further away from the road, getting a lot quieter as we did, only my minds wanderings to keep me entertained.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked ‘Aunt’ Dharma.

“I don’t know, I just…it just seemed right.” There was something in her words that seemed practiced, as if she’d been waiting for this.

I was being shielded even now from something darker than even my imaginings, and it made my heart skip. What could it be? Dancing just outside my peripheral vision, gliding along the edge of a wine glass, ready to crack it and slip off.

“I wanted to give you a chance. A chance to be whole,” she continued. She looked at me, her eyes welling with a cocktail of emotions I couldn’t begin to understand. She was looking into my eyes, knowing, and knowing I knew she knew.

Confirming there was nothing behind them. I was empty, and she’d known all along.

She’d hoped and prayed but her worst fear had come true. I was a monster, a shadow, a poor reflection of a human. No different from the ones we were running from.

Dharma burst into tears on the breakfast bar.

All I could do was stretch out a puppet-like hand and pat her head. “There, there.” I dropped my hand on her head like it was made of wood. The sound of an American bald eagle cawing overhead awoke me from my stuporous flashback, it was very patriotic. I couldn’t feel anything but my heart pounding and my legs chaffing, lugging the case around. There was a bit of wind coming off the coast and reaching the high-ish peaks.

The empty hilly landscape stretching out on all sides. I regretted the jean-shorts this time. The brittle dry grass slashed and scratched my legs as I trudged on.

The sun was slowly losing its grip on the sky, starting its shambolic descent into a watery grave once again. Only to rise from the dead the next day with a cock crow and a “Hey what’d I miss, no gruesome murders I hope” expression on its face.

It was warm, but the breeze and the coming night gave all the heady air needed to feel a slight buzz.

Maybe I was sharing a high.

I could feel the smile in the back of his head. Beaming like a Boy Scout heading to a magical Indian Pow Wow.

When it was quiet enough, secluded enough, far away from the road and civilization, we stopped and Paul set down the thing in the wrappings and unfolded it. “You can put the case down on that rock.” He stood the rifle up, looking it up and down.

It was a regular hunting rifle, probably one of his. Just a regular wooden hand cocked hunting rifle. I guessed he thought a tactical black semi-auto AR would’ve been too scary for me, and most likely illegal in this super liberal state.

Anything black and scary and pointy was usually banned in the utopian state of California.

I watched as he patted it fondly, cocking and shouldering it, looking down the iron sights. I set the case down on the rock and opened it. Inside were four pistols of varying caliber; no clue what they were, hi I’m a girl.

One was a revolver, I knew that much. There were two like that one out of The Matrix, and a little one that looked like the one James Bond used, but a little boxier.

“Pick one, and we’ll start.” He went over by another rock. About fifteen feet away from the spot, he put out the mat that’d previously wrapped the rifle. Now spread out like a picnic blanket.

And I forgot to make sandwiches. Oh well.

He set up a can of Diet Coke on a rock, I hastened to think where he’d found it, only fat girls drank diet coke.

I liked water, of the mineral variety, the mineral being steel from the faucet.

What about the fluoride in the water turning the ‘friggin frogs gay, Diana’?

I wasn’t that type of crazy. Sadly.

–

This is the fancy edited edition which will be made available at some point in the future but for now you can read the undedited raw version here.

February 26, 2019 0

Cur Chapter 16 ‘The big wheel’

Yeah I didn’t get a poem in last night because I didn’t really feel up to it, I skipped my workout and felt the big sad coming on and you’d think that would be the perfect time to write poetry but it just slipped my mind and I spent the time just staring at facebook like a zombie.

So yeah finally got some more Cur out and I sort of hate it honestly. I dunno it just seems so action focused and kind of messy and self indulgent, I like it, it was fun to write but I’m not sure about it and this chapter in particular I think fails to really get across what this is supposed to be about and I hope reading some more Conan will help me.

Because I was reading that and honestly I was blown away, it’s tone, the writing, the story, it’s everything I wanted for this and more. I saw so much in it, like where the influences for Berserk and others must have come from. It’s just so rich and interesting and fucking savage.

It’s one thing that I was thinking about with the Shadow, how some of it is so boring and sanitised and Conan just isn’t. It’s raw and cool and brutal without being over indulgent or gratuitous. It isn’t gross or vulgar like modern interpretations of this kind of stuff. It’s focused in the right way.

It’s fantasy but it feels so tense and real and grounded. I just started reading it and I couldn’t put this story down and I realised I had to stop because I need to save this for when I’m writing Cur 2.

Which is on the books, right after this screenplay and then Diana 2 and then more clown shit haha.

So awhile yet. Probably towards the end of the year.

That’s all, don’t want to go over my boredness and unwillingness to read more shadow pulps, like they’re ok I just feel no drive to read them and if I want to dream about making it a tv show I need to extract and refine the elements that work.

See you…

–

“Ask him what he wants” Bres instructed one of his foot men.

The footman nodded and clasping his helmet to his head ran in shouting range of the strange man who exited the woods.

“MY LORD KING BRES OF OF INISH VEIL WISHES TO KNOW WHAT IT IS YOU WANT!” The footman shouted across the field, his voice straining against the wind blowing the grass and reeds.

“The blood of kings” Cur said.

“WHAT??” The footman balked.

Cur lifted his hand and squeezed his fist bulging all the veins in his muscular arm. “THE BLOOD OF KINGS RUNS THROUGH MY VEINS!” He bellowed and tossed his cloak aside and stood shirtless in the cool afternoon, the smell of dying fires on the wind. “WHAT BLOOD RUNS THROUGH YOUR VEINS, BRES?”

Bres began to laugh almost out of a nervous response of disbelief, but he laughed alone. His men stood frozen looking at eachother as each in turn felt as if their graves were being trampled, seeing a ghost in the flesh. His body huge and monstrous in proportion, twisted by pain and suffering they could not hope to comprehend. They could barely look away for the unnameable horror it filled them with.

The knot in Bres’s stomach that wasn’t there this morning tightened and he sneered at his men. Looking about themselves like frightened little babes for a wet nurses tit.

“I DON’T KNOW YOU!” Bres shouted from atop his mare.

“I know you” Cur said.

He leaned forward, resting his hands on his horse’s mane “STEP ASIDE PEASANT!”

Cur began to laugh, a terrible haunting laugh from a flat gaunt face. As if a skeleton’s smiling jaw fell open and a horrifying mirthless pitiless noise came rattling out.

“I’ve had enough of this” Bres waved his hand at a band of his men on the edge of the procession. The five of them paused for a moment and then nodded before rattling into something of a formation. The sounds of their armor clanking like nervous teeth.

Cur watched them and they watched his chest rise and fall steadily. His vicious body looking like a piece of petrified wood, hard and gnarled and scarred.

But these weren’t peasants or bandits, these were trained fighting men of the Tuatha de’. They swallowed their fears and thoughts of his skin being as tough as bark, notions of whether or not a sword would even penetrate. Falling back into routine and order, their training carrying them forward without thought or fear. Just muscle memory pulling them forward as if on strings.

The elven soldiers spread out a long a wide arch in between Cur and the Bres, all carrying long pikes and short swords.

The one on the farthest of Cur missing arm’s side would attack first, they always did. Seeking a weakness and finding only death.

It was as so; the one soldier farthest on his stump side rushed forward with a quick light rhythmic tapping of his feet against the grass. His sword held low for an arching upwards strike from groin to neck. He rushed forward and made a loud noise in his throat expecting his target to baulk at being caught off guard stepping back into the arc of the strike.

With an unmeasured viciousness, Cur turned into the strikes arch. He chopped horizontally across the soldier’s collar bone. The blunt chopper he used could no more cut and certainly not through mail. But the force and severity in which he wielded it shattered the soldiers collarbone. Causing him to collapse to the ground almost instantly. Crumpling under the weight of the strike. A few more successive chops on the ground pulverised his head and helmet in a blink of an eye. His white elf blood caking the grass,

In the same breath the next soldier came in succession from the otherside. This one learnt from the first and did not try to force the Firbolg back. He very quickly ran with his pike aimed at the small of the Barbarians back.

Cur span around catching the neck of the spear with the crook of his blade, letting the point pass him by. The soldier froze at the sight of such speed from someone almost twice his size. Allowing Cur all the time in the world to snap the spear with his knee and elbow. He struck the soldier with one quick dull angled downward slash from sternum to gut. Moreover ripping his mail but for cutting it. It made a ghastly noise, metal straining and ribs scraping and then a splosh of hot entrails bursting onto the ground.

The third was on him in the same rhythm. None of them stopping or fighting one at time. Just one attack flowing into the next like a move in a dance or successive strikes from the same blade, wearing him down. His blade getting heavier and his lungs burning with each strike.

The third was much quicker and feinted his first strike with his light short sword aiming to come low. Then at the last second changing direction and slashing Cur across his hand causing him to drop his blade in the long grass. But failing to follow up his strike with a successive blow. The Firbolg obliged by impaling him on the broken end of the lance that had fallen at his feet.

The broken lance end was frayed and only sharp enough to splinter through his mail hauberk. The weight of his armor did the rest as Cur erected him on the long broken pike and let him slide down it using his body as a counter weight. His entrails twisting around the pike coming out the other end and splintering more.

The fourth soldier and the commander attacked perfectly in unison.

The Firbolg leapt for his blade but was stopped by an arrow at his feet. The captain was much quicker and unleashed a torrent of strikes unending and savage. The Firbolg with his quickness was only cutting his losses as each strike made contact but had no purchase but to draw a small amount of blood.

His strikes were quick but there was a pattern. They were not random nor unpredictable but a practised combination of slashes and thrusts kept almost in time to the beat of a drum. He need only slip inside that rhythm and make it his own but for the sound of another arrow knocked behind his ear.

Next there was a thrust. The Firbolg twisted his huge body with the thrust and took the captain by the wrist and headbutted him hard across the bridge of the nose. He drove the tip of his sword into the ground and snapped off the blade with his foot.

Moving the dazed captain like a puppet now. He forced the broken sword and hilt still in his hand up under his chin and the jagged blade through the top of his skull.

Seeing the captain was dead the archer let loose without fear of injuring his comrade. Cur caught the tip in his open hand, the arrow piercing him right through his palm.

He closed his fist to snap the shaft and with his teeth tore out the arrow head.

Cur croaked a wicked vindictive smile crossing his bone white face. “Now you die”

“WAIT!”

–

This is just a little teaser of the full chapter. Read the rest of the chapter over on inkitt by following this link. The big wheel

February 14, 2019 0

	Ryk Brink on Review of the Benchmade Harley…
	Upashna on Alabama
	Jillianne howard on Review of the Benchmade Harley…
	The Awesome Dad on Rain drops
	Ryk Brink on Us – Movie review

	Ryk Brink on Review of the Benchmade Harley…
	Upashna on Alabama
	Jillianne howard on Review of the Benchmade Harley…
	The Awesome Dad on Rain drops
	Ryk Brink on Us – Movie review

Darkly Dreaming Demographic.

Where weird shit hits bizarre fans.

Category

Cur 2 Chapter 1 ‘Rise up dirty waters’

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

Loverman Chapter 9 “Night of the lotus eaters”

Loverman Chapter 8 ‘red right hand’

Diana in the dark Chapter 10 ‘I call him D’ (remurdered)

Cur Chapter 18 ‘Gimme the prize’

Cur Chapter 17 ‘Morning Shadows’

Diana in the dark Chapter 9 ‘Sugar lies’ (remurdered)

Cur Chapter 16 ‘The big wheel’

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