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Cur Chapter one ‘Who wants to live forever?’

Well would you look at that, is there anything sweeter than a first chapter?

It’s a really good feeling, a feeling I thought I’d lost but then came back stronger than ever and just completely reinvigorated me body and soul. I was kind of stewing after Diana, waiting for the next wave of creative euphoria to hit me and boy did it hit me. I was just kind of going through the motions filling quotas with Gage and 3 Ring, just fun distractions this is the meat, this is heart and soul fire this is what I was born for.

You can tell I don’t really give a shit about Gage an 3 Ring because I really don’t care what people think about them and I haven’t asked for reviews, whereas with this I want people to review the first chapter now goddamit haha. But I think it’s good to keep your pen moving, keep your stick on the ice even if you aren’t feeling it. Just to keep yourself in top form ready for the big game haha. Analogy salad.

The greatest advice I could give another writer if I were asked to do so is just to keep writing, keep practising and keep doing what you love until that one day lightning strikes. Because as long as you are doing what you love it will.

But if you’re not it wont.

Ok so quickly I’m not going to rag on the witcher today, there was actually a decent fight scene in blood of elves, it lasted like two pages but it was ok, then straight back to talking and Ciri taking a bath. I will do an amazon review when I finish it, just for my own sanity, just to get all the salt out of me head haha.

Ok now back to the important shit, so this chapter is basically a character hook so I can unload a lot of backstory in the huge next chapter which still isn’t finished haha (sorry). But the second chapter is really cool and ends in a couple of really awesome fight scenes some of the best I’ve ever written. I kind of glossed over the big battles as exposition because I mean shit, how do you write big battles as compelling? Is that even possible? I mean to me as someone who was a fighter, a fight is more than just swords clanging it’s about personalities clashing ans when you just have these waves of faceless people smashing against eachother it just seems like a sex scene with two blow up dolls, there’s no fun for me there. It was a videogame I’d feel totally different but its not so :P.

I took a lot of inspiration from The Witcher which I suspect takes a lot of inspiration from the Berserk series which I absolutely adore, it’s probably the only fantasy series I follow religiously. A lot of my inspiration especially later on in the book and somewhat for Cur as a character comes from that.

Ok so enough waffling (now I’m hungry) this chapter is going live on inkitt today gonna get writing a blurb and a teaser for it after I transfer from coffee to green tea (he says as he spills coffee all over himself, fuck my life. It was just a flesh wound.

Yeah then I’m gonna try and get some first chapter reviews and get my buddies at work to read it and tell me it’s better than the witcher all they’re all fired haha.

Still proofreading chapter two which is a bit overlong and a bit of a mess and wrestling with some plot changes I made later on that I’m ironing out.

But other than it’s full steam ahead and check out that dank cover art I found haha.

If you want to read it in a mobile format without all my waffling head on over to inkitt right here.

Cur: Blood and Soil

 

–

The fire pit popped and cracked in the center of the round house. The farmers gathered close with their mead and whiskey to wait as the bard Coirpre tuned his lute. Breathing in and out deeply as he plucked each string in turn. Sitting with his back to the daub wall, where finger marks could be seen in the crudely layered earthen clay.

The ridges of the branch frame sticking out in places like the ribs of a starved horse. A facsimile of the Leinster cote of arms; that of the golden harp hung above the hearth.

A mouse ran along the beams as the wind howled outside. The cold seeping through the thatching making a terrible ghostly whistling noise and disturbing the fire.

 

The bard doffed his grouse feathered cap and smiled as he rested the lute in his lap and started to play.

 

“This poem, I have affectionately dubbed; ‘Bres the bastard’” The poet smiled glancing around the room for a covered smile but found naught but dead silence.

 

“What?!” A woman cawed at once.

 

A man in green tunic leapt from his stool “We feed you and give you a bed and you insult our king?!”

 

“Good people, it’s merely satire; you wouldn’t criticize my work before even hearing it would you?

 

“That you may die roarin like Doran’s arse we would aye!” A broad bearded man said.

 

“Please there’s no need for this, another ballad perchance, I have many”.

 

“Many a time a man’s mouth broke his nose” The bearded man spat.

 

“What’s a ‘bastard’, grandfather?” A little girl asked as she bounced on the old man’s knee twiddling her braided hair tween her finger and thumb.

 

The old grey haired man in the grey woolen cloak looked down at her and sighed “Well it’s a man ere not knowing who his father be.”

 

The little girl scrunched up her freckled face “How could he not know that?”

 

“Well ya see-“ The old man turned his long grey face to the banging shutters. Then glanced over and the small crowd gathered around the poet shouting and heckling and pulling at him.

 

“Grandfather, can you tell me the story of the other king instead?” She said swinging her blond plaited hair about her bonny face unable to keep still.

 

“Child, I’ve told you that story so many times you should be able to recite it by rote”

 

“And I could that” The little girl pouted and preened.

 

“Well go on with yourself then”

 

“I will” The little girl put her hands on her hips and tipped her head back putting her finger to her lips. “Mmm well there once was these men”

 

“Were they just men were they?” Her grandfather jested.

 

“There once were these people, mmm and they were called the Nemedians, and this was their land and they called it, erm… Inish Alga, which means; ‘the noble isle.’”

 

“Yes”

 

“But then they got sick and there was a big wave and legends say these mean monsters called the Fomori came and chased them all away. But… they didn’t all go to the same place.”

 

“No, where did they go child?”

 

“Half went north to the cities of knowledge.” The little girl’s voice droned a little as if she were reading the names. ”Falias, Gorias, Murias and…. erm…. Finias!” He caught her breathe and swallowed. “-To be with the gods and most importantly the mother god Danu. She bathed them in light and knowledge and shared with them her blood and they became the children of Danu. The Tuatha De Danann, which is you and me” She smiled.

 

Her grandfather nodded “Go on child”.

 

“The other Nemedians weren’t as lucky. They went south and were slaved and treated very badly by the dwellers of that land for hundreds of years. Those mean people made them carry huge sacks of dirt on their back from morning until night. Made to eat the worst food and live in the most horrible conditions.

 

But like the winter makes the tree bark gnarled and like iron; the children of Nemed became savage by nature. As soon as a male child was born he was thrown in a pit with hungry dogs and if the boy child didn’t kill the dogs with his bare hands, it would surely kill him.

 

Soon they became so strong growing to the size of giants they broke free of their slave masters and slaughtered them. Carrying sacks of dirt on their backs twice the size of them all the way through the desert and across the sea to the land they knew as their home Inish Alga.

 

They called themselves ‘The Firbolg’ the people of the bag after the earth that shaped this land.

 

The earth they took from that harsh realm transformed this land from craggy cliffs to a rich farmland. For a long time they cultivating the land endlessly warring amongst themselves for control of the island.

 

“Then what happened” Her grandfather smirked.

 

“Then we came” She chirped. “Although grateful to Danu for sheltering them, the Tuatha de’ never felt truly at home and longed to return to the island they left so many years ago. With the knowledge and magic given to them by Danu they set out to return to their ancestral homeland.

 

But when they got to the shore in their great flying ships the Firbolg were not happy to see them. The Tuatha pleaded that they might have only a fifth of the island to call home but the cruel king Eoichid the Prideful rejected them as he only knew war. The Firbolg didn’t know how to share the land. They didn’t know how to live in tune with nature like the Tuatha de’, seeking only to bend it to their will.

 

The Tuatha pleaded for peace with their long lost brothers but the Firbolg denied them time and time again and before long war was their only option.

 

The Tuatha were not afraid of war, they had mastered the magic of the gods and were skilled warriors. But the Firbolg were a formidable foe and they outnumbered the Tuatha ten to one. Each Firbolg almost double the size of any Tuatha de’.

 

Still they met on the field of battle and the Firbolg even with their superior numbers and even with their size and strength could not beat the Tuatha de Danann.

 

The high king Eoichid angered by this challenged Nuada king of the Tuatha to a duel to decide the fate of the isle. Knowing that he could kill Nuada with one blow. Nuada accepted and with one vicious blow Eoichid cut Nuada’s shield in half and took his arm at the root. But Nuada with the last of his strength bested the wicked high king.

 

Without their leader all the Firbolg knew was to fight and they would fight without end until they were all wiped out. In Nuada’s mercy he offered them a province all of their own so they might live. As a reward for their bravery and martial valor. They accepted and retreated to Connacht, never to be seen again. Some say a plague took them or they fled under the hills but Connacht is a strange and haunted place to this day where no Tuatha de’ dare tread.

 

King Nuada in his victory renamed the isle Inish Vale ‘The island of Destiny’ after the stone they brought with them from Finias. But Nuada could not be king because a king must be perfect and without his arm he was not fit to rule. So the crown fell to Bres the bas- the Bres the Beautiful and everyone lived happily ever after.”

 

The old man smiled and clapped his young prodigy “Well done lass, well done.”

 

She smiled and tussled her hair to take a small bow.

 

Then there was the sharp sound of fist thumping a table rife with malice.

 

“Liar” A scarred voice said.

 

“I beg your pardon?” The old man rose defiantly from his bench to scan the round house.

 

All the men were at one side of the round house pommeling and kicking the poet. The women too crowded round to geer and throw pieces of mead wet bread and cabbage at him as he lay on the sodden earthen floor in the fetal position. One of the wenches taken to wearing his grouse feather cap in jest.

 

The only other figure was a stooped cripple dressed like a druid with a long dark hood and cloak.

 

“Identify yourself stranger, who is it that calls this innocent girl a liar?”

 

“I do” A cold gravelly voice said.

 

The figure sat alone unmoving on a small round table to himself, almost unnoticeable in the darkness of the round house until now. For that was his wish.

 

The old man stood and drew a slim short sword pointing the tip down.

 

“The crows curse on you! You will stand; show me the face of the man who would call!”

 

The man didn’t move from his seat.

 

The old man angered by his silence took to his side and slammed his hand flat on the table in front of the stranger.

 

“Briseadh agus brú ar do chnámha! You will rise and give me your name cur!”

 

“Cur will do” The man said, his voice sending a chill down the spine of the old man.

 

Without cause the stranger moved like water. Without thought or pause he pinned the old man’s hand to the table with a wide oddly shaped javelin head crudely fashioned into a sword or cleaver. The head of the javelin having a rounded point like a shovel which curved into two hooking spikes. Which then recurved inward on each side creating a harsh biting cutting edge like snakes fang.

 

The blade rounded shovel point was so wide it cut right through the old man’s hand and into the table. Cutting off all his fingers above the knuckle and the tip of his thumb. His white blood poured over the ash table and over the bench and on the floor.

 

The old man staggered back wordlessly clutching his bloody hand under his armpit. The sound of his light sword dropping on the floor draw the attention of the hecklers.

 

“What’s going on here?” The man in the green tunic said.

 

The old man swallowed and tried not to vomit or pass out “Call the chieftain” He huffed.

 

“What’s this?” The man said confusedly, then he saw the blood and drew a wide broadsword in one hand.

 

“What did he do?” The stranger in the cloak asked pointing at the crowd around the poet, kicking and jeering at him.

 

The man in the green tunic tightened his jaw and flared his nostrils looking back for a moment and then back at the stranger.

 

“He insulted our kings, what of it”

 

The stranger uncovered his long sinewy arm it bulged with a vicious vile intense hatred. He squeezed his fist and the room became hot with the beating of his blood. “Give me your kings!” He said in his low gravelly scarred voice. “-Let me squeeze them in my hand!”

 

“He’s mad”

 

The old man vomited and passed out, his granddaughter loudly sobbing over him as she tried to rouse him. “Grandfather!” She cried.

 

“Here” The man in the green tunic barked at the men crowded around the poet.

 

The men craned their necks trying to see by the light of the fire pit what he was jabbering about.

 

The stooped stranger stood to his full height then, a full two feet above every man in the round house.

 

With the same hand he took his hood down and a tuathan wench turning at the wrong moment bobbed her eyes at him and let out a horrifying shriek.

 

He was completely bald, his head and eyebrows cleanly shaven. One side of his face covered in strange markings that looked like scars but seemed all too deliberate and esoteric.

 

But the thing they noticed most of all was his ears.

 

They were rounded.

 

“He’s- he’s a human!”

 

“I thought they were all dead!”

 

“You missed one” The man raised an ominous smirk.

 

The little girl lunged at the stranger with the short sword and thrust it into his gut. Half blinded by her tears she didn’t miss her mark burying the blade up to the hilt.

 

He looked down at the girl and smiled and smacked his lips kissing at her mockingly.

 

She shook letting go of the sword and stumbling backwards.

 

He laughed maniacally and pulled it out covered in his hot red blood and tossed it on the ground at the onlooker’s feet.

 

“Red”

 

“Is he a monster?“

 

“Firbolg!”

 

“Dear Deugh!”

 

“Vampire!”

 

“He should be dead!”

 

The man in the green tunic swallowed his cold feeling of dread as he watched the stab wound close by itself. The elven young lad flung himself as if dragged by the tip of his sword at the giant.

 

Cur turned faster than his size would deem possible and corked his blade from table and found it a new home in the lad’s soft skull. His face cleaved open by the wide spiked tip. His white blood and brain matter showering his kinfolk.

 

And the women wailed so.

 

The blade still buried in the lad’s face he tossed the lad like an empty sack of grain and tore his cloak from his shoulders. The man was large even for a human and was built of sinew and limestone and held together by bile and hatred. His chest heaved and his shoulders hawed but only one arm held a sword. The other was gone. Replaced only by more of the hideous scarification.

 

“He’s a cripple – all at once!” The crowd turned from the battered poet who lay bruised and bloodied and covered in piss.

 

The stranger laughed and let his tongue roll out of his mouth lapping at the air madly like a dog or a viper hungry for their blood.

 

One lurched out of the stolid pack raising a sword above his head. The odd shaped chopper swung under him fast and light and delivered a deep gaping hungry dull chop across his gut. The sound it made like an oar cutting through a wave sent shivers through the hecklers and tossed their bellies. The elf doubled over heaving, a ghastly wheezing sound coming out of his side.

 

The woman in the grouse feather cap lunged at him with a pitchfork pinning the Firbolg against the daub wall, he smiled at her with blood in his teeth. Cur snapped the haft with one powerful strike and with another he split her down the middle.

 

The other peasants dropped everything they had and ran at the sight of her bisected body.

 

“What is this?”

 

“Halt!”

 

Cur turned to the entrance and saw two heavily armored dwarves with long pikes and iron shields ready to greet him. He pulled the pitch fork head out of his guts and dropped it.

 

“You’ll come with us now!” They ordered.

 

The Firbolg threw his javelin head sword into a table. He stooped with a mocking grin and put out his one hand for them to shackle.

 

“Did I do something wrong?”

 

The one that shackled him walked him out in front of the round house; the other went inside to retrieve his strange weapon. Admiring it quizzically.

 

They walked him through the tiny village. Consisting of a smattering of stone and clay round houses surrounded by a thatched branch fence next to the Dobber river. The large round hut was communal and the smaller ones were where the families lived. The biggest round house at the fair side of the fence was where the chieftain of Tallaght lived and held court.

 

Around the village the trees and hills were a deep emerald and sparkled with dew as the sun on occasion broke through the dense grey clouds. The wind and the rain a constant steady and gentle metronome.

 

Cur smirked at a woman feeding pigs knee deep in shit. She looked up at him with abstract horror in her face. They walked him on towards the large round house, his wicked mad laughter carrying over the trees as he went.

–

0

Death Wish (Current year edition)

This is one of those movies people say ‘you just couldn’t make that today’ and those people were right.

I was just trying to see when this came out and I made the mistake of going on rotten tomatoes and getting thoroughly triggered by the reviews whining about gun control and ‘muh drumpf’ just lame basic bitch takes, the movie sucks, we get it, you don’t need to insert your limp dick political opinion into- he says about to insert his throbbing hard dick political opinions into it.

Yeah so I pirated this movie because why the fuck would I pay money to see someone ruin a cult classic I happen to be a big fan of. I’m a massive fan of the original Death Wish series, they are the ultimate in guilty pleasures every single one of them.

But the fact of the matter is movies like that just can’t exist today without some ironic filter over them, we live in a post irony society where any satire on crime and violence has to be handled with kid gloves. There’s no other way than to say we live in a ‘pussified’, what do I mean by that?

Well the crux of this movie is basically about a guy who’s wife is raped and murdered by ‘gang members’ and I knew before this movie even started that they would not have the rape angle, or even mention it. I want to say the tone was wrong from the start but the point of the original is that his life was perfect and he lived in this shitlib bubble where he could avoid the draft by being a conscientious objector and have this idyllic life that couldn’t be destroyed by the world around him and how hard he fell down from that when the worst does happen. And it’s not some grand plot or scheme it’s just run of the mill evil.

And then he has to confront the fantasy world he’s been living in and do something about it, and the something is going on the streets of new york and shooting black peop- I mean muggers.

I’m not saying I love rape, I just think it’s telling that we’re trying to remake this movie about the gritty reality of crime and evil on the streets of new york and instead of getting these lowlife ‘gang members’ instead it’s these like high agency professional burglars who shoot someone basically because she was a fucking idiot and decided to throw boiling water at someone with a gun when there are three other guys with guns.

Actually looking at the rotten tomato charts makes me want to review Annihilation because it’s fresh as fuck on there and that movie was terrible haha.

It’s just seems like a totally unnecessary remake and probably one of the most phoned in phoned in Bruce Willis performance’s I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like he phoned it in from the other side of the planet. In the original Charles Bronson doesn’t show a lot of emotion (well in any movie) but they don’t try to force it. He’s like this analytical architect. He’s more like this autistic spergy guy who instead crying and blubbering he becomes cold and calculating and methodical and does something about it. He sets out to murder people like he’s making a technical drawing and it’s really cool.

But in this they expect Bruce Willis to cry and give some heart and it just doesn’t fit. The original movie is dark as fuck (in more ways than one wink wink) but this movie has that sort of ironic wink wink nudge nudge levity that is nice but it doesn’t really fit. And the gore while cool is just over the top and silly and it just behoves me that you can show a man getting his head crushed by a falling car so his brains splatter all over the floor but you can’t see a woman simulating rape.

Or like in the walking dead where someone can be decapitated but they can’t swear or show any tits, fucking americans, amirite?

Ok now it’s time to address the elephant in the room, the bit you’ve all been waiting for, we’re going to talk about race. Trigger warnings start now people, if you’re easily offended… what the fuck are you even doing here? I write stories about zombie furries and samurai clowns killing transvestites.

Now if you’ve seen the original death wish movies it’s basically about a dude killing criminals in new york and if you were to take a side glance at the crime stats of new york you’d notice the majority of said offenders tend to be a certain shall we say ‘hue’. So you’d be forgiven for assuming most of the people Bronson guns down and in fact the people who rape and murder his wife are of said persuasion.

He goes around shooting random blacks, is that clear enough? He literally goes to like restaurants flashes cash around and walks around at night waiting for minorities to jump him so he can blast them.

See what I mean, not a movie that could be made today. But they did it anyway and it’s honestly pretty fucking laughable.

Not to say there weren’t white criminals in the death wish series, there are loads of them, the best lines of the second movie are where he’s killing that white christian guy haha.

“You believe in jesus?”

“Yes sir I do”

“Well you’re gonna meet him”

BLAM

Best bit in the movie haha. But the majority are black and hispanic which the crime stats bare out, in later movies not so much, I think in 4 and 5 it’s mostly white guys but I can’t remember. Despite making no sense because as most people know criminal gangs are almost always racially homogeneous, shock horror, criminals don’t care about meeting diversity quotas. Crime, the last bastion of meritocracy haha. So if this was a white gang there probably wouldn’t be any black or hispanic people and likewise if it was a black or hispanic gangs they’re not going to mix at all. There aren’t like honorary white members of the crips or ms-13, it just doesn’t happen, those fucking racists amirite haha?

But the funny thing about this movie is how desperately it’s trying to side step the race question. The majority of the criminals in this movie are white, and there are literally token minority criminals. I honestly expected there to be at least one black main villain a as token but nope. There’s like one mexican guy who dies in a car crash completely unrelated to the vigilante stuff, the gimmick in this movie is he’s a doctor not an architect so this guy is in a car crash and he recognises him somehow as this valet who takes his address from his car and then they go to rob him but that made no sense to me, why do they need this dudes address? Why not just go to the rich areas and rob them, does Bruce Willis just look like a pussy in this movie, I dunno maybe they tell him they’re going on vacation or something but they don’t and they get murdered.

Not his daughter of course, well not until the sequel which isn’t coming thankfully haha.

And then there’s one black drug dealer and it’s basically filler, he just goes up to him and shoots him and then there is like a mixed pair of assholes one mexican, one black who beat him up in an alley for reasons but they don’t die or reappear at all after that.

Almost all the doctors and nurses and cops and emts are black or women or mexican though haha. It just starts to be laughable at some point. Even the idea of professional burglars who also work in an autoshop is just dumb. Does this movie think criminals have a day job?

So all I can really say about this movie is it’s just totally hamstringed, it’s so fucking safe and so afraid of it’s own shadow it can’t accurately represent the world or tell a good story. It’s so afraid of triggering feminists and race hustlers it just becomes a fucking mess. And the ironic thing is the critics are still calling it racist when he kills like one black person in the whole movie while mowing down literal swaths of white people.

It’s representative of the social climate and it’s fucking clown world, it’s really sad actually that even a movie like this made by Eli Roth of all people is totally without balls.

Even aside from the political stuff, the basic bitch pro gun narratives which are fine and I’m sure still trigger shitlibs, the movie is kind of a mess. It’s all over the place with pacing and tone and it really isn’t a satisfying movie to watch really. The action isn’t really that remarkable honestly.

It makes me think of Taken and how awesome the action in that movie was and how edgy by current standard that movie is. Because it’s basically a dude killing a bunch of muslims to get his daughter back. Because he’s throughout the whole movie fighting the albanian mob who are people traffickers and albania is a muslim country and then a shakh buys his daughter.

It’s sad to think that even that movie couldn’t have been made today. Because it represents things and people that actually exist. There are muslim people traffickers in europe and this actually happens but if you draw attention to it or the crime stats in chicago you’re a racist because reality is racist.

It’s just totally pathetic and makes me sad haha.

That’s enough of that I think.

See you…

 

0

3 Ring Samurai Chapter 4 ‘Take the sword Part 1’

Good morrow fine folk, it is I your humble bard..

And that’s enough of that. Ok so updates; I fucking did it and it turned out pretty damn great. I wasn’t really intending to do my standard 2k a day word count challenge thing but I was just so fucking eager I start an hour earlier than I usually do and spent like the next four or five hours just bounding around this fictional world I was creating like a dog with a ball it it’s mouth. And before I knew it I’d written way too much and that’s pretty much how it went for the last four days but it did work out to a nice neat round a bout 8k.

So that right now shapes up to about a chapter and a half because I got a little carried away and the flashback chapter is like a short story in itself so I may have to break it down a little bit but it turned out really cool and it has one of the best (and shortest) fight scenes I’ve ever written, just the level of gravity and intensity really swept me away and I hope that goes the same for anyone reading it. If people have a tenth of the fun and excitement I got from just writing it then I’m on to a winner.

I almost couldn’t wait to get up this morning and write about and go over, this is the first time I’ve been this excited about proofreading and putting something on inkitt.

I think the first chapter is great, I had my baby mama go over it and she made me rethink the whole chapter and I’m so glad she did because I love the changes I made to it. I think the chapter really nails the character hook, she even compared him to Alucard from Hellsing, which was a character I wasn’t even thinking of but it was music to my ears. Although I hate that anime (Not so much hate it, I just found it underwhelming), Alucard is the only reason its worth watching.

Well anyway wanna keep this terse so I can actually do the proofreading I just mentioned so just want to mention inkitt a bit and then get on to some Blood and Elves hate which I find more and more of the more I read it.

I dunno, it’s weird ‘The One that Came Back’ is really popular on inkitt, it’s nearly surpassing Green Sunday which has been on way longer and I spammed the living hell out of and everytime I go on inkitt someone has added it to a list or saved it but I get new reads constantly when I never spam it at all and I literally give it away for free now haha. So that’s cool, I mean what are the odds that that is the first book I get legit published haha, that would be great but also suck since I wrote it in literally thirty days and lots of it is me just transcribing a documentary haha. 

Ok so I realise why the witcher Blood of Elves sucks so much and it does suck, it was a meme at first, when I was like halfway through but I’m near the end now and I swear this book is like 95% really boring conversations about nothing. It’s literally just conversation after conversation and any action or interesting thing that happens in like a page or two then the conversation will just be the rest of the chapter and then it’ll cut away to another completely different conversation in another part of the world and it may or may not be related. That’s the whole book. And the chapters are stupidly fucking long, it’s a three hundred plus page long book and it has eight chapters, so you just have these bloated chapters full of pointless dialogue most of which could be shortened to a sentence at most. And what’s more is the chapters don’t really need to be that bloated, the chapter breaks seem arbitrary since there are constant cutaways without transition to other conversations entirely. It almost seems like chapters are there just as a formality.

So anyway, why it sucks. It sucks sort of for the same reason The last wish fell short. The last wish is just a series of short stories not connected except that they involve Geralt, that’s it. But it’s a series of fun and action packed short stories that are interesting and varied and have lots of subtle nods. 

The problem with Blood of Elves is it’s not a novel, it’s a short story or two short stories that have been stretched out to be the length of a novel and packed with filler conversation and political commentary. That’s literally all it is. Because the main plot begins at the start to try and hook us then it’s filler city for the next hundred odd pages then there’s a smidgeon of action in the middle then the story is sort of coming back around at the end. Some people say the filler is like character fill but I don’t think so, the characters still seem really generic, I don’t feel like I know anymore about Geralt or Ciri and all I learnt about Triss is she can’t drink potions, maybe she’s lactose intolerant haha.

And it occurred to me last night that I gloss over romances in my stories because they don’t interest me. But I sort of pay some lip service to them but I make a point that it is lip service.

In this book he’s in love with a woman he literally forced to love him with magic genie powers and now they’re apart in this book but their epic romance is sort of just hinted at. So essentially *insert epic romance here*, it just struck me as really lazy having like a time jump to say they had a really great romance but now they’re avoiding eachother like the plague. 

Anyway really didn’t meet my goal of being quick and concise but I will have the first chapter of Cur: Blood and Soil (working title) up on inkitt by the end of the week probably sooner. I really can’t wait to hear people’s opinion on it, although I probably wont source reviews on inkitt until I have more done, I’ll just poll the poles at work haha. My biggest fan is a polish guy I work with who got me into the witcher and now I hate it haha.

Ok must do actual work now gah!

See you…

 

–

“Morning Ethel, hows tricks?” Deputy Pete said, a cheeky grin painted on his wooden boyish face.

“Aint run tricks in here for years, ever since that damn circus came, snatched up all the good whores from here to the crater” Ethel stated.

“It’s just an expression-“ He smiled awkwardly taking stock of the bar with a quick side eye glance. He got a weird feeling all of a sudden but couldn’t explain it, like he walked into an animal cage and found it empty. Like something was looking at him deciding which part to pull off and eat first.

He swallowed but kept smiling as he tried to be as inconspicuous as possible sizing up the strangers in the bar. So far there were only two he could see, they were sat at a booth in the corner, the same one the clown was sitting in the day before but they weren’t clowns. Nevertheless they looked strange, the one facing his way was around thirty with dark receding hair and a grotesque scar on his neck that made the skin look pale and flabby. The one with his back turned was a giant with arms as thick as barrels, he was pretty hard to miss.

There were more in the back standing around the pool table. They were playing pool but there was something off about it. Their movements looked practised and robotic like they were playing pool in a stage play. Like no one was really interested in winning. Three guys, one a short jittery guy with spikey hair and beady eyes. A thin guy who was all angles with long hair tied back, and a tall guy with broad shoulders with his back turned.

“Ethel-I-err”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing- I just gotta check something.” Pete said not looking at her.

He hitched up his gun belt, took a deep breath and approached the two sitting at the booth. He walked slow and deliberately but neither of the stranger decided to notice him. Or his heavy footfalls on the loose wooden floor.

He cleared his throat and put on his best shit eating grin. “Anything I can help you folks with?” His feet betrayed him with the sound of boot leather tensing.

The one with the scar turned his eyes slowly up to look at the deputy, one of them was milky and probably blind. He cut a weird grin that made him look like a shark. It was the kind of face someone might make if they’d never seen their face in a mirror.

“No officer” he said in a soft mocking tone with a gravelly voice.

The large man let out a grunt or a groan and Pete tried not to stare at him.

“You folks staying long, it’s just we don’t get too many strangers out here.”

“We’re not strangers” the strange man smiled again.

“Is that right?” The deputy tensed his jaw and swallowed. “You mind telling me what your business is here?”

“Just passing through” He said.

“Just passing through” Pete nodded, tapping his feet nervously.

“Is that a crime officer?”

“No-“

“You wanna ask me how I got these scars?” he smirked.

“Uh”

“Cooking fried chicken” he laughed “That hot oil does get everywhere.” He grinned at the deputy.

“Is that right- you folks wouldn’t be carrying any weapons would you?” He let his hand fall onto his holster.

“Me? Not a one sir.” He said.

Pete took a look at the large man who didn’t say anything. Hulking arms framed a large gut and barrel chest with a small head on top.

“Does he look like he needs a weapon?” The man smiled again and let out a breathy laugh. “I’m just foolin’ around, he’s harmless, got the mind of a child- wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He smirked.

“I used to pull the wings off flies when I was a child” The deputy said.

“Is that right? – well I’ll bare that mind.”

“You do that” He said. “You folks have a nice day.” He stood there for a moment trying to think of something else to say tapping his gun belt. After a moment he turned and gave Ethel a worried look trying to signal with his head as he walked out of the saloon.

He walked out into the street looking back still feeling those predator eyes on him. A cold shiver like a knife playfully dragged down his back. His fingers drumming on the wooden handle of his colt. Trying to shake the feeling that it really wouldn’t do any good.

The deputy walked at a quick clip to get back to the sheriff’s station. He entered quickly looking at his gun rack silently thinking.

“H-hey you said you’d get me outta here! A strained nasally whining voice said.

Deputy Pete turned to the source of the noise absent mindedly, it was Bull with his head still stuck in the door of the jail cell.

“Oh right, I was going to see if Ethel had any butter or cooking grease or something- slipped my mind, sorry about that” He smiled sadly.

“S-Sorry?” Bull whined incredulous with his shiny bowling ball head unable to turn and look at him.

The rest of his crew were awake but in varying states of disrepair, battered and bruised all crushed up one side of the cell. As far as they could get away from the clown who lay on his back on the floor looking up at the ceiling fan spinning.

“Well good morning!” Deputy Pete said to the clown. He opened the cell slowly edging around Bully as he was dragged around by it having his head stuck in it.

“N-not so fast!”

“I’m being as gentle as I can be”. He said still looking at the clown “Hey you, you’re released, you can go, preferably as far away from here as possible.”

The clown got to his feet and walked towards the deputy. “The sword”.

“Oh that’s right-“ He stepped out of his way letting him step around Bull before shutting and locking the cell again. Everyone else inside seemed to breathe a sigh of relief seeing the clown go.

“Here take the damn thing” The deputy said letting a little of his nerves show as he took the sword out from under his desk and tossed it on the counter top.

Pookie readjusted his pants and slid the sword into his string belt. “Who took a crap in your cornflakes?”

“You did, you took a crap in my cornflakes- and what in the hell are cornflakes anyway?” The deputy snapped. He breathed out through his nose pressing his lips together “Your buddies showed up.”

“Well why don’t you just shoot’em” Pookie smiled.

“I’d love to but they haven’t done anything yet and I don’t wanna give’em the chance, that’s why you’re getting your clown ass outta town right now!”

“Wasn’t I promised a plate of beans?”

“That was yesterday, this is today.”

“I don’t even know where I’m going, I need a map, supplies a real bed for the night would be good.”

“I can throw you back in the cell if you want, tell your buddies to come right here.”

“NO!” the other men in the cell shouted in unison.

The deputy stopped to look out of the window. “You got any tickets?”

Pookie’s stomach growled.

“I’ll take that as a no- but none of that is my problem and if you’re not outta town by sundown I’ll run you out myself strapped to a mule.”

Pookie nodded and walked out of the jail into the morning sun, struck then realising he had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do. This world was entirely alien to him.

“Hey mister” A high pitched voice said.

Pookie turned shielding his eyes. A tall kid with milk bottle top glasses hopped off the bench outside of the jail licking an icecream cone.

The kid came up to him smiling his freckled face, he had light blonde hair pushed forward on his head. And he was wearing a set of coveralls with an anime robot over the breast pocket. Despite his voice and age he was just a little shorter than Pookie although he couldn’t seem to stand up straight. A chronic sloucher who nevertheless carried himself with an optimistic child-like bounce in his step.

“You’re from the circus right?” The boy gestured with the icecream cone.

“…”

“Wooooww! I know you, what’s your name? Pokey? Banjo? Poopy?”

“Pookie”

“Yeah that’s right, Pookie- I’m like your biggest fan, the name’s Donny.” The boy smirked holding out his hand for Pookie to stare at. “-I watch all your shows when you come to town. I watched the one where you did the thing and you were like …- ya know” He started miming sword strikes with his icecream “And they were like bleurgh, ow my guts haha!” Donny smiled miming being disembowled and catching drips from his melting icecream. “My mom tries to stop me from going but I’ve got my own money” He winked.

“That’s great” Pookie said as he continued to walk on.

“Hey wait, I heard what the deputy said, you need tickets right?”

“Yep”

“What if I brought you breakfast at the saloon- and you can tell me all your cool stories?” He screeched in an unbroken line of dialogue gasping for breath between each word. “Like like like- you could tell me your cool backstory.” He said chasing after the clown trying not to drop his quickly melting icecream.. “Like maybe your whole family was killed by mutant wolves but one of the wolves raised you as their own and then you joined the circus. Or like your parents were from a rival tribe and clowns killed them but one of them couldn’t bring themselves to kill you. So raised you as their own living with the shame to one day have to reveal it in an emotional confrontation.” He paused thinking “Wait that’s pretty much the same story- I guess I’m not a good writer but I bet the real story is much cooler.” Taking a bite out of his icecream and in his excitement instantly regretting it “Brainfreeze!”

Pookie turned.

“So you’ll tell me?”

Pookie’s stomach growled even louder “Sure”

“Awesome!” The kid screamed chasing after the strange clown.

~

Pookie entered the saloon for the second time but this time the air was very different.

“Oh it’s you again- didn’t Pete lock you up?” Ethel said.

“No that was a different clown with a sword.”

“Oh” Ethel gaped.

“Morning Ethel!” The kid chirped excitedly wafting his icream around before letting a malformed blob of it fall onto the saloon floor. “My you’re looking lovely today”

“Err thanks”

“Can we get two plates of the house special for me and my new pal?”

“Sure thing kid”

The old bint disappeared into the back and Donny excitedly lead Pookie to a booth just to the left of the one he sat at when he first got there.

The kid was practically dragging the clown as he tried to get his bearings in this new ecosystem he’d stumbled into. He looked over in the back where the old men were still dozing and attempting to play some card game. The pool players replaced by the cardboard cutouts of generic pool players laughing and hitting balls at seemingly random intervals.

Excitedly the kid ushered Pookie into his seat which was facing out towards the bar and the exit adjacent to it.

Pookie was a little annoyed by the kids youthful exuberance but he promised to fill his belly so he could hardly protest too harshly. Then as if out of nowhere Pookie felt a sudden crushing feeling, the air in the room getting ten times heavier almost soupy. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising up as if someone or something was sharpening their fangs waiting to pounce. More than that, straining to stop itself from doing exactly that. Every ounce of willpower holding it back from running its necessary course and ripping him apart.

Then there was a sinking feeling and an odd warmth at his back, a cloud moved out of the way of the sun and it cast a huge shadow over his table. A giant humanoid shape.

There was an itching scratching sound and a distinct whispering.

“…not yet… patience”

A low rumbling groan.

The old woman came back with their food and it looked like that might be the cause of the distress. The smell from the kitchen causing some form of mild epilepsy. The kid looked happy enough with whatever it was, possibly roadkill or the road itself. Pookie couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It looked almost like a plate full of yellow congealed earwax. Some hitherto unknown animal species roasted beyond all recognition lying next to it.

Pookie ate with long teeth but only a few bites in there came a hideous snapping sound that he hoped wasn’t anything vital in his intestinal lining. A scraping screeching noise followed, a cold chill swept through as a huge shadow fell like a curtain over the table.

Pookie turned his head leaning over his food to see a giant figure standing over him with a broken table leg in his hand and a cracked penguin mask on his face.

The giant swung with an intense speed and ferocity aiming to pin and obliterate his head against the table.

Pookie leaned back and let the blow annihilate the table leaving only splinters. Acting on instinct alone he pulled the draw string on his scabbard making that odd winding kazoo noise. The blade launched the handle of his sword past the giant’s face. The eyes in the pommel lit up letting out that tinny cringey laugh as the bottom of the blade sliced the side of the penguins neck open.

The clown tried to hop out of his seat holding his sword only partially out of the scabbard in his off hand.

Penguin stumbled, holding onto his neck with his other hand to stop the bleeding. He lifted his enormous arm up for another strike coming down just as hard and fast as before almost as an unbroken chain of attacks.

Pookie swiftly ducked under his large arm and with his sword and sheath fully out of his belt he lifted the bottom end of the scabbard. Tilting the scabbard up allowing the gravity to empty his sword into his hand.

He took it and it laughed again as he jammed it into the Penguin’s chest. Not smoothly but with a ratcheting wrenching motion as he tried to lever the point through layers of muscle and sinew and bone. Going as deep as it possibly could.

The giant didn’t make a sound other than a low heavy breathing as it looked down at the sword sticking out of it’s chest. It dropped the chair leg on the ground with a hollow sound and took a step forward before wrapping both it’s hands around Pookie’s neck. Lifting him off of the ground.

Without his hand there the cut on his neck sprayed vital fluid on Pookie and all over the saloon floor but it didn’t seem to phase him as he kept applying more and more pressure to Pookie’s neck. His hands were so large it seemed like he might just pop Pookie’s head off like toothpaste cap.

Pookie could do nothing but wriggled like a frog pinned to a dissection table. His legs flailing and kicking as he tried to free himself, his hands occupied with trying feebly to remove the hands of the giant around his neck. In the futility of it he let go of the giants wrist and put both hands around the handle of his sword and started to try and wiggle it free.

The giant penguin let out an echoing moan and Pookie felt his grip slackening but still he couldn’t breathe and he was starting to see spots.

He wriggled it harder but it wouldn’t budge, it wasn’t coming out, at least not the way it came in.

Pookie started to wrench it and pull it like it was an awe on a rowing boat. And he was churning up really choppy water full of meat and bones cracking and shifting.

The penguin moaned louder and his grip slackened a little more but still Pookie couldn’t breathe. In his desperation he started to knee the handle and hammer the pommel with his heel driving the sword deeper into the wound. By the time the guard was all the way in his chest cavity was when the penguin finally moaned like an oxen and let Pookie flop to the floor. Coughing and gasping for breath.

Pookie put his legs under him as soon as he had a lungful. The Penguin stood like a statue, his chest heaving, that stupid clown face pommel sticking out of it.

The penguin swayed thoughtfully and put his hands out for the clown. But Pookie wasn’t about to let himself get wrung out like a dirty dish clothe again. He ducked, dipping under one of his arms and turning into a sweeping heel kick hitting the clown face pommel driving it further towards it’s target.

Penguin tilted and swept around with his other hand but he’d become slow, his movements were like he was swimming through molasses. Pookie ducked the swipe again delivered a tight donkey kick on the clown faced pommel driving it further still.

The tip was now protruding all the way out of the giant’s back. He heaved and wheezed like a dog who swallowed a squeaky chew toy. His head hanging low, a light coloured blood bubbling up from under his mask.

But Pookie wasn’t done. He stepped forward quickly sweeping his front leg and spinning in the air to deliver a powerful turning kick to the pommel. Striking it like a soccer ball and launching it all the way through the monster and out the other side. It’s final destination the mirror above the bar, it wobbled spattered blood and other such liquids in all directions as the mirror spiderwebbed on impact. That dumb clown face lighting up and laughing as it shook.

The giant groaned and stumbled and looked down at the hole in it’s chest.

Pookie stooped to peek through at the terrified Ethel who was cowering behind the bar.

“Peekaboo”. He waved through the sizeable cavity in the giant’s chest.

Ethel ducked under the counter.

Penguin fell slow and it almost looked like he was shattering under his own weight, the colossus of Rhodes made grotesque flesh. Falling piece by piece with heavy deliberate sounds like it was raining whole sides of beef for a moment. And then came the silence.

Pookie looked around, covered head to toe in blood. The old coots were continuing their card game under the table. Ethel was peaking up from the bar and the pool players were looking over. The larger one with the broad shoulders just chalking the end of the cue and blowing it over and over.

Pookie mounted the bar and ripped his sword out of the mirror completely shattering it and almost raining ethel in shards of broken glass.

Donny popped up as if from nowhere. “Holy crap that was awesome!” He looked down at Ethel over the bar “Don’t worry old gal, I’ll cover all the damages, I promise. He looked back at Pookie as he cleaned the blood and guts off his sword with a bar mat. “Are you ok? I mean it looked like he almost ripped your head off.”

“Just peachy” Pookie grinned.

He let out a sharp gasp and clung to his side falling off the bar quite spectacularly landing face first onto a bar stool, his sword clanging by his side.

“Holy crap!- Quick, help me get-im to a bed” Donny yelped.

The young lad helped the clown to his feet, and lead by the old woman he helped the dazed man up the ramshackle wood stairs of the saloon. The construction of which was almost that of a tree house, barely holding together with tape and happy thoughts. The walls a bare unvarnished wood patched with rusty sheet steel.

Ethel opened a door to one of the rooms, it was small with only enough room for the bed with a deeply sweat stained mattress. A single chair and a closet at the end of the bed. The floor was bare floorboards with a thin hide rug of some unidentifiable grey animal with six legs.

“Lay him down here”

“Yeah I know how a bed works” The kid smirked as he gradually lowered Pookie onto the mattress.

“This room aint free kid.”

Donny smiled “I’ll cover it.”

“You better” Ethel waddled over to the door “What are you doing all this for, he a friend of yours?”

“I’m his biggest fan” He smirked.

“Uh huh, I’ll be back with some linen and hot towels” She quipped as she waddled down the hall.

Despite her surliness Ethel did return with some sheets but no hot towels or happy ending was to be had at this time.

Donny had some food brought up to him but the clown slept most of the day away in a near comatose state as his body tried to repair itself.

As the sun went down patience started to wear thin. There was a tapping on the metallic roof of the saloon with steel toes. And at the window; a nervous rapping on the glass slipped into the background as a dull metronome. A claw scraped the glass and a hushed voice repeated over and over at a manic pace.

“I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I c-c-ccan’t wait!”

–

Like this? Wanna read more head on over to inkitt boiiii!

Take the sword part 1

0

Gage Chapter 8 ‘Day of Lords’

Blah blah blah Redania, blah blah blah, temeria, blah blah blah nilfgard, blah blah blah ciri- oh shit this isn’t the Witcher, stuff actually happens in this.

Yeah I was telling my brother about the Witcher books and he was like “Wait- you’re telling me the books came before the games?” because he likes to read books that are made as companions to games and I started to think how fucking disappointed someone who liked the games would be if they read these books, then I realised ‘oh wait, that is me’. I played the game first and fell in love with the card game and now am thoroughly bored by the book.

I’m already two thirds of the way through it and the first two thirds build up to one fight with some elves where I think Geralt kills all of one of them and then it just cuts to him on a boat hunting a sea monster which involves shitloads of exposition for a fight that lasts like a page.

It’s like this books thinks monster hunting will cramp it’s style, it just needs to use monster hunting as a plot point to spring into more boring conversations about nilfgards trade policy and temerian embargo on goods, I wish I was kidding. This book is so far up it’s own arse worldbuilding it forgot to have a plot or interesting/likeable characters. I don’t care if the kaedweni economy is suffering, I want to see Geralt kill monsters, is that too much to ask in a book about a professional monster slayer?

It sets up all these characters to ultimately do nothing with them, it’s so tedious and the conversation go on so much longer than they have to, a sentence is never enough, the characters swap huge paragraphs of dialogue and it still doesn’t seem to progress.

Ok enough of that, I was just reading it this morning and I was really excited by the sea monster fight only for it to ultimately let me down, both the fight with the elves and the sea monster fight pale in comparison to what I came to expect from the first book. The fights in that were so well detailed, frenetic but gruesomely precise, that’s what really grabbed me about the first book. A good story(despite ripping off faerie tales left and right) and strong characters punctuated by visceral action.

Any so yeah I hope you liked my first attempt bardic poetry, only took me all fucking day for four poxy stanzas haha.

I just recently stumbled on a pivotal character I was missing so I decided to do some research on celtic bards and poetry styles and bash up a poem to make a tyrant kings face red. I didn’t want to cop out like the witcher and just have everyone react to the poem or describe it vaguely but not actually have a poem in it. Well looking it over now it just sort of describes what happens and then transitions as if it was all a song sung by Dandelion the bard but it was never introduced as such and it has no rhythm or timbre and none of it rhymes or sounds like a song. So it’s like straight up prose that someone just says ‘well that was a song guise’ at the end, but it wasn’t though.

I didn’t really think of it at the time but it was kind of lazy and I was tempted to do the same thing and just say “The bard did a bad poem, made the king mad” but I just thought it would be more authentic and more fun to actually write a fucking poem haha, I mean I’m a writer right? That’s what I do. And sometimes things present themselves, you have the easy way or the right way and at every turn I’ve taken the hard road and felt better for it.

So hopefully today I can finish the chapter breakdown and actually start this bad boy tomorrow, I’m so fucking nervous and excited. I can’t wait and I’m dreading getting out of bed haha. I must have played the first scene out in my head a million times and each time it gets better and better and I can feel it like I’m in the room but I know when I start I’m going to have to do more research as I go and choose a location because I haven’t mapped the story out yet in terms of it’s geography (always sucked at geography, and grammar). I have a map, I have the rough story outline so tomorrow I’ll start thinking about locations and scenery and stuff like that to set it and then keep and start it off right.

Ok so enough waffling, got a chapter breakdown to finish and a lawn to mow haha.

See you…

–

A crack of thunder shook the whole house to its foundation, the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood. The yelping of inhuman creatures, their tongues clacking dry. Then another volt from the heavens and another and the scratching footsteps stopped. Only the creaking remained and a quiet mewling yelping noise and the sounds of heavy feet stomping down on the thin wooden boards.

The boys were frozen, scared stiff staring up at the ceiling their guns shaking in their hands. Then the footsteps started up again and the floor boards creaked again and the boys tensed up aiming their weapons at the boards.

The footsteps got closer to the trapdoor now and it was suddenly flung open. The boys shook training their weapons on the opening as a shaft of light and dust billowed in. But no form came through the opening just the light and the dust and every nature sound that could fill a godlessly long minute.

Then something was tossed like a sack down the stairs and the trap door was closed up again with a slamming force plunging the boys back into darkness. The boys almost fell over themselves to see what it was and then it move a little and they thought to fire but it was too dark. Jameson lit the lamp again and it was some odd mass of something, dark mat hair.

Then the thing uncoiled and sprang away from the light like a huge rat and the boys shrunk away terrified.

“Ya killed ma paw and ma maw and all my brothers.” The voice was a vicious and guttural whisper like it was pushed passed the tusks of a boar. “Now imma kill you dead”.

The thing was fast and it leapt out of the shadows and swept a clawed hand at the lamp knocking it into the dirt plunging them back into the darkness.

The eyesight of the lug akin to a beasts made darkness little more than an obstacle to them, whats more their other senses were much keener than a humans.

“Jaysus” Shaun sputtered.

“Shhh” Clarke cautioned.

The cellar was black as pitch and quiet as a graveyard, then there was a scratching noise. The sound of tendons coiling and then it leapt out of the dark and attached itself to McDonald. He swung it around with his mighty arms and pinned it to the wall of the cellar with his forearm. And he went to work on it’s underbelly with the brass knuckles keeping it’s jaws away from his face. “Sunovabitch” He shouted.

The things arms and legs were pressed by McDonalds body. But his wriggling was vicious and he cut and clawed and pawed at McDonalds arms and legs biting into his flesh but Mcdonald held him there. “Would someone please shoot this bastard?”

“Sure” Clarke said as he pressed the barrel of his rifle under it’s chin and fired. The flash lit the floor of the cellar up for a brief second before plunging it into darkness again and filling it with the smell of gunpowder.

The boys gathered themselves and slowly and cautiously made their way to the trapdoor. After at least ten or twenty minutes of listening to the still silence upstairs. They finally decided they’d face whatever was up there waiting for them rather than be starved out.

Jameson was first, he tossed the trapdoor aside with one hand. He steadied himself against the floor aiming the schofield around the room and back at the entrance to the store but both were clear.

He climbed all the way out followed by the others who filled the room slowly and quietly. He quickly threw open the doors to the bed room and tossed the schofield around the corners finding nothing.

He came away from there as they stood in the kitchen “It’s clear” He whispered.

Shaun made a little whistling noise and pointed at the door into the store front. Clarke sidled along against the door jam and nudged the door open with the barrel of his rifle.

McDonald came in low with his revolver and angled himself around the door so he could see what was there.

“You can come on out on now” They heard a familiar voice boom in the store front. “They’re all dead.”

Jameson gripped his schofield tighter and bounced into the storefront and stopped dead. As he saw Gage standing there covered in blood and fur below the waist. Some scratches on his face and hands, teethmarks on his boots.

The bodies of the other three half-lugs lay strewn around the store like some macabre tableau. One bent over one of the racks with all his spine showing. Another collapsed in the corner turned on his side allowing his brains to tumble out. And the other cut clean in half below the waist and looked like it crawled aways before it died leaving a clawed bloody trail.

“Let’s go” He said.

The boys took whatever they could carry and brought it back to stash it at the whorehouse with plans to come back for the rest later. Once they found a place to put it all.

They eventually had to bury a lot of it to retrieve later, that way it couldn’t be found if any convoys came idly by.

The food they found wasn’t much but the old man had suggested that there was a town nearby. Where he most likely got the bulk of his food.

The boys went back to that outpost and burnt it to the ground with some lamp oil. They burnt all the bodies separately on a pire until there was no trace left of them. Any passing convoys would just see a burnt out building and think it was struck my lightning or a gang of luggers that had somehow discovered fire.

After some preparation and some advanced scouting by O’Shaughnesy and Clarke. Clarke spotting from the outside and O’Shaugnesy talking to some of the locals they learnt everything they needed to know about the town and more. The power and comms that was the first thing they’d strike, crippling the towns infrastructure was the first step to taking it.

If they could shut off the tubescope delivering those pleasing numbing theta waves. They had a chance of convincing the people or failing that using force. Gage had absolutely no qualms at this point about killing his own people or forcing them to save themselves.

He was more than aware that humans hadn’t the faintest idea what was best for them and had been subverted far beyond the means for rational discussion. If he had to he’d use terror and violence to save them from themselves and he’d kill those that refused to fight at his side to save the human race.

“You’re out of your mind Gage, you know that?” Doctor Westwood spat, his face drenched in sweat his voice cutting through thick silence of McClusky’s bar. “You’d replace tyranny with tyranny where there is none. In your vision you’d tear this world apart just to be rid of a race that bares you no ill will, do you not see that this is the product of a sick mind?” Westwood was shaking as he spoke “Come with me and you have a chance at having a normal life, we can help yo-“.

Gage fired at the tubescope hanging over the bar blowing it to smithereens.

Westwood froze in terror grabbing his ears. Then scuttling his fat hands for his pistol on the table holding it low looking at Gage with wide eyes “You’re out!” He said almost like he was asking permission.

He got cooler and calmer and smiled and said “Destroying those will do no good. There’s a hundred more where they came from even if they did what you claimed they do.” As he said it the power went out, the loud tubescopes and their megaphones outside shut off and the streets were silent. “Cute trick, but you can’t save this town from itself” He said reclaiming some of his confidence as he fingered his gun with his sweaty palm. “Not by yourself”

“I’m not by myself”

Westwood swallowed “You’re out, you fired three times now, I have you, you’re coming with me!”

“I’m not going with you” Gage said as he raised his gun to Westwood’s head.

“You think I’m stupid, you want me to kill you where you sit, is that it?” He sputtered, his vision narrowing and focusing on the three barrels of the gun pointed at him. And then he focused hard on it and noticed something strange in the middle of the three wide shotgun barrels.

“Not today.”

Westwood squinted as it caught the light and he shuddered at the realisation of what it was – another barrel.

 

–

Continued here

Day of Lords

 

 

 

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Bres the Bastard

Fair of face and noble birth,

None the wiser of his worth,

His guests they gather with tale-

Knives un-greased, tongues await ale.

 

Find his Father nor his stock,

Whereforth come those golden locks?

In his hold he’ll bare no bard.

Nor gold shared, as times hence hard.

 

Our champions collect wood,

Where a worldly battle once stood.

We pay his levvies and fines.

You may your piece and me mine;

 

Without promptly a full plate,

Without cows milk a calf sate.

Without hearth in darkest night,

Without mirth’s coin for my plight.

 

– Let that be Bres’s condition.

 

 

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Diana After Dark Chapter 15 ‘The Build up’

Well here we are again, 

I’m gonna keep this brief because I woke up with a splitting eye strain headache and I’m so fucking close to finishing the chapter break down of the first of my fantasy books of which the title is fluxuating. I wanted to call them ‘Cur’ and the titular character as an homage to the character he’s based on, namely the Kurgan from highlander. 

But I was thinking because ‘the Kurgan’ isn’t actually his name, it’s his tribe and his name is never actually stated in the movie I might do a better homage just to call the book and the character by his dead tribe; ‘The Firbolg’. I’m just not so sure it has the same ring to it as the Kurgan.

It might just be me adding the extra meaning and when I write this, the name Firbolg will be steeped in meaning. I dunno, gonna have to think about it, test how it feels but right now it seems more organic than calling him ‘Cur’ since Cur was sort of the start of this project but it’s evolved so much from there I don’t see why the title should be immune from that evolution.

Also not a big fan of subtitles but I hate messy unconnected titles like the witcher, I can’t really decide. I might just call the first book ‘The Firbolg’ or ‘Firbolg – Blood and Soil’ or soil and blood, in reference to the meaning of their name and the legend of them bringing sacks of dirt over to ireland.

Still playing around with it, still storyboarding, still researching and I need to get back to it, planning to start this bad boy friday at the latest. Kinda feel like I should sacrifice a goat or something haha.

Am I worthy? Haha. I dunno, I guess I just have to get over that and get stuck in, if I doubt myself now I may never start and just get bogged down trying to make it perfect and never get anywhere.

See you…

–

Outside the air was hot, a tropical wind blowing a hair dryer in my face. Wendy’s caked make up melting like a wax mask off my face. Sirens in the distance creeping over the shoreline, a sudden feeling of impending brain fart looming.

What could I do except throw myself on the mercy of a barrage of police questions with only my cute girl routine to fall back on. ‘It wasn’t me Mr scary police man, it was the one armed man’. I don’t know what disgusted me more; the thought that I would actually have to resort to that or that it might actually work. Well good looks don’t last forever.

My number one priority right now was finding my aunt/sister and boyfriend and getting as far the hell away from here as possible. With Wendy more or less dealt with that only left her little commandment breaking brother, Denny. Although I struggled to think which if not all the commandments he’d broken, surely he didn’t honour his father nor his mother. Incest and drug taking were apparently just a given.

I thought it would be pretty slick to escape out of the back fire door since doubling back through the main hall might run me back into Wendy’s path. Considering she wasn’t buried under a tonne of chipboard, which seemed a likely resting place for the wicked witch of the west coast. Or even worse; an awkward conversation with my aunt/sister over a dead cop. Also I couldn’t pretend to hope Denny hadn’t heard the shots. Or for that matter seen the waves of startled human cattle stampeding into the parking lot and disappearing into the night.

It was a good bet that he thought he was well on his way to enacting some kind of bloody revenge on my hapless aunt/sister at home. For of course ruining what could have been a lovely evening for his demented sister and possible lover. Or option two he was waiting with his hand on a large knife or gun waiting for either me or his sister to come out. So they could then ship off to aspen in the middle of the night and blow Orange County a kiss from the slopes with new names and probably new noses.

This being in the front of my mind leaving through the rear exit was my best option. I opened the fire exit with a mechanical clunking noise followed by lots of banging and scraping and a distinct smell of week old garbage. The back of the lazer arcade was a tight and cluttered alley opening onto a strip mall behind the arcade. The sirens were getting louder, so if he was still there he’d have to be getting more nervous and trigger happy by the second.

I looked at down at myself, at the silly pink prom dress I was borrowing. What was it I was planning to do exactly? Teen movie him to death?

A grave scraping like death’s scythe in the dark around my feet sent icy shivers up my bare ankle. Followed by a bitter mocking chuckle from the dark back seat. I breathed out and reached down to pick up whatever the hell I’d almost tripped over. The moonlight lifting its lidded eyes a slant to shine down on this unholy implement. Ok it was just a pipe, some kind of gas pipe maybe, don’t ask me I’m not a plumber. All I knew is that it was heavy on one end with a gnarly looking gauge or something sticking out.

Clue it is.

Who did that make me? Miss Scarlett or Madame Peacock? Was there a pink clue character?

This will do nicely, the thing inside said not in so many words. It’s teeth bared behind its leathery wings sending a rush of blood through the tips of my fingers. Making me feel magnetized, electric, like I was sticking to the walls. Like I was Spiderman crawling unseen above everyone’s heads as I traced through the dark in my ridiculous pink dress- ruffles and all. Quietly, I worked my way along the side of the lazer arcade, back around to the front.

The alley leading onto the strip mall was cramped and smelled like old hamburger meat and was most likely filthy. But the darkness was kind to it and to me as well as I peeked around the side of the pastel coloured building at the now more or less vacant parking lot.

But for one stretch hummer.

The parking lot was pretty well lit but the moon had given me a few dark pools in which to wallow. There was a large billboard on wheels facing out towards the road and a few trucks dotted about. They probably belonged to the furniture store on the other side of the arcade.

With the pipe in hand I hiked up my skirt like lady Chatterley about to descend her carriage or walk over a puddle, skittering along the ground as low as possible. I came up behind the billboard and peeped out for a closer look.

There was no movement. Although the tinted glass and the inherent clash of the dark and the bright parking lot lights made it impossible to see inside. I smelled axel grease and looked down at my hands and dress to see that I was covered in it. Looking at the pipe, the obvious culprit making a silent yuck face and then slipping back into the dark mask.

My body was starting to feel loosely coiled, the feeling of letting go mashing against the rising tide of ultimate control. Dark powerful waves tossing tiny boats aside like they were in the bath tub of Cthulhu’s baby brother.

–

If you wanna read the rest, you know the drill.

The build up

 

 

 

 

 

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GS2 Chapter 17 ‘Heavy Hitter’

Well here we are again,

Not much has transpired between now and since my last blog, oh I got banned on facebook again for having wrong opinions but that happens so often it doesn’t even bare mentioning anymore. Also I watched thor ragnarok, stupid jokes aside, I rather liked it so don’t feel the need to write a cathartic review about it. I really don’t enjoy gushing over something I like unless it really highlights something pivotal I think the human experience or something artsy fartsy like that.

I only really want to write negative reviews because it feels like I’m exorcising those bad films out of my system by dissecting them. I’m trying to understand what made them so bad and how I can avoid those pitfalls in my own work. And although I could do the opposite with good movies, it’s less fun and funny and I’d prefer to keep the good stuff secret. So you the audience at home will never know why I liked Thor Ragnarok, I know right, it’s a crying shame, everyone is just clambering to know my opinion of a movie that’s already yesterdays news haha.

Besides that I finished to some degree a basic outline for what are set to be five books so far in the Cur series, could be six, it’s still very rough. Also been playing Gwent again, that cursed addiction and I’m thinking of stopping reading blood and elves or just skipping it. It’s probably the most tedious book I’ve ever read.

I was memeing before when I said I was halfway through and the only thing that’s happened is Ciri got her period. Now I actually am at the 150th page and literally all that’s happened is Dandelion got kidnapped for a bit and saved by Yennefer, then Triss goes to Kaer Morhen has some weird visions then they go to take Ciri to a monastery type thing but Triss gets a tummy ache on the way. 

That is literally what has happened in a 150 pages of the second witcher book. He hasn’t met a monster, Geralt, actually no one has drawn a sword in the entire book. I’m not even counting the kidnapping as a fight. And I think what’s more is the writer who’s name I wont even attempt to spell knew this book was boring that’s why he put Ciri escaping Cintra at the start and the Dandelion kidnapping in. So people wouldn’t think that a sequel to a book about a monster slayer was actually a book about a babysitter or a nurse maid, because that’s all Geralt has done so far. 

But what’s worse is those parts at the beginning aren’t even good, the cintra bit was generic fluff I basically skimmed and the Dandelion bit seems kind of superfluous now that I’m halfway through the book and it hasn’t come back at all. 
I really genuinely just feel no drive at all to read this book and I just force myself for ten minutes at a time to read it, which is why it’s taking so damn long to finish, this is without a doubt the longest it’s taken me to read a book ever.

I’m not someone that reads books especially fast, I like to take my time, I sometime reread parts just to fully experience them but I’m pretty consistently devouring books and I get through a far few. And what with putting them on my phone it’s become even easier just to use every free moment to do so, but I don’t find myself wanting to with this crap. I’m just forcing myself to read this filler.

Nevertheless, I’ll continue to slog it out in the hope the next book can redeem it.

I have rambled enough, time to do some actual work, been dying to do the scene structuring for the first Cur book and fingers crossed I might even start writer the fucker some time this year haha.

See you…

_

Zomnision watched the police station station burn. The fires reflecting in his now glassy expressionless eyes. His face was blown out and distended and looked something a kin to a Spanish omelette.

But he was pleased with himself, he wasn’t a fake anymore, he was a real psychic, a god, a zombie god. Accustomed to such, he’d given up walking. Opting instead to lounge his aching exposed joints to a throne of soft furries. Their bodies interlocked by his will. The base of which took their weight. They crawled along at the speed of a caterpillar in the midst of the thousand strong throng of his cult like followers. A sea of colourful characters wreaking havoc across the small town. Striking in unison as if they were a sword in his own hand, organised and merciless and kind of cute.

“Soon” He whispered “First this town, and then the world shall know my power is real”.

A strange disruption, a silver flash, furries flying in the air like an explosion in a build a bear store. Fluff raining down as this slim flash of sliver cut a path straight forward.

“What is that?” Zomnision said.

The Lancer was fast and precise, moving like a sliver of silver caught in an updraft. A living scalpel to cut out the cancer.

“You dare strike at me?”

The furries moved in a wave, surrounding the Lancer. Thousands of them piling all over him, moving as if connected, forming shapes even. Moving like the waves of an ocean battering against the Lancer. Pulling him down.

Zomnision’s face flaps jiggled as he laughed a cheesy comic book villain laugh.

The light forming in the cracks of the furry horde launched them upwards. A splash of them flying through the air like water particles. Fluff and blood and gore levitating for brief flashes. Silver sparks flashing inbetween brief pops of activity. The Lancer climbed the furries. He hopping them as they floated like stepping stones in some vertical zen garden. Cutting a swath closer and closer, an unstoppable immovable object colliding with mortality. A train with no tracks to rend bones to dust.

Zomnision was overwhelmed. His powers burgeoning on godhood but caught with his trousers down. His full potential a glimmer in his eye. The throne he was sitting on started to subsume him. The furries lifted and covered him. Interlocking like some horrible mix between power rangers and barnie the dinosaur. Forming on him like living armour fluffy armor. But it was too late, the Lancer had no time. No monologue would hold him back to witness some final transformation. This was a hurdle, a hiccup to correct before moving on.

He straddled the furry well, bubbling with activity like a rainbow anthill. He reached his metallic long claw deep into the pile. A crunching snapping noise like he was pulling a tooth and it came out spiked on his three pronged claw.

The head of the fake psychic.

The Lancer looked at it and smiled with his eyes. The pile of furry started to crumble and disperse. He walked down it as it collapsed like a poorly made sandcastle. He took the misshapen mushy excuse for a head. Placing it in some kind of sack made of an metallic alloy and affixed to his hip and continued on.

The furries seemed disinterested in the tall silver man. Their demeanors hadn’t changed. No magical spell was caste slaying the head vampire so easily, the effects were the same. They were still dead, sort of, and they were still furries. But now they were regular zombies, hungry and directionless. That was until an ear cracking explosion caught their attention over the horizon.

Suddenly filled with purpose. The now stringless zombie furries shambled in the general direction of the noise.

The Lancer watched them go and let out a robotic tinny laugh.

–

The donut shop was shredded by a large explosion. The giant metal donut on top was still connected on top just a little singed but still standing. The supports of the heavy donut groaning and shrieking under it’s weight.

The cooling barrel of a clip fed grenade rifle smoked in Juanitas hands. She held it in front of her crotch like a giant metal strapon.

“Nita why’d you blow up the donut shop?” Jaclyn screeched.

Juanita was shaking with her eyes closed. Satisfied sweat dripping down her pasty face as she held the giant rifle between her legs. She shook her head and opened her eyes coming out of it and said “Huh o-what?” She got snotty instantly, reaching back for that nasally vocal fry. “That and places like that victimize people of size like myself. Using their biology against them to make them fat”. She was panting a little and she dropped the guns stock to the ground. Holding herself up with it like a crutch and then said “Oh and I call dibs on this”.

Kat was loading up a mach ten looking down the sights of the compact sub machine gun. She cocked her head to the side and said “You can keep it honey, I don’t want anything to do with that thing.”

“Yeah too phallic, and too- black” Roch said as she cocked a pistol grip shotgun.

Kat looked back at her giving her the side eye but Roch didn’t look up as she loaded the compact shotgun.

Jaclyn looked at the large rifle Junita was leaning on. It looked like a huge sniper rifle, almost the length of the girl leaning on it. She differed to the users manual “Copperhead anti-tank rifle” She recited.

Juanita snatched the users manual off her and threw it into the gutter. “No one looks at these, just take this.” She said as she shoved a small pistol into Jaclyn’s hand.

“Wwwwait, I’ve never!”

“Oh stow it, if straight white men can do it then so can you girlfriend.” Juanita said clicking her fingers still leaning one hand on the large rifle.

“I guess.” She said looking down at it. She lifted her head and said “We need to get moving, they’re watching us for sure now. If we want to complete our mission we need to move fast.”

“Ok, but let me fire off another round first.” Juanita said as she lifted the huge gun with both hands burying the stock into her warm sweaty crotch. Gripping it with her huge thighs. “Ooh” She shivered as she stroked up the long black shaft fingering the trigger.

–

If you liked this and want to read more, head on over to inkitt by pressing on the link below.

Heavy Hitter

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What is mine.

But your love alone,

I will take without asking,

In the night I will,

 

What is mine shall be,

Even if it is yet known.

It waits for me still.

 

Those green hills stretch on,

Glistening and wet with due,

Many have laid there.

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3 Ring Samurai Chapter 3 “Hatin’ Don’t Pay”

Well hello there again,

As usual I don’t know how to start this, oh I rewatched all the Mad Max movies and they sucked a lot more than I remember when I was a kid and I never got why people hated thunderdome and now I totally get it haha. Like the first movie is sort of a nonsensical mess but it’s entertaining, and then I made the hipster realisation that the second movie is just in his head after what happens to him in the first. And the second movie is the quintisential Mad Max movie because it sort of gets the formula right, it gives in to the absurdist shit in the first movie but doesn’t take itself as seriously but takes itself seriously enough to make an action packed entertaining little romp which Thunderdome completely fucks up.

I was enjoying Road Warrior and thinking to myself ‘Why didn’t this become a big series, why aren’t we on Mad Max 12 Angry street? Well evidently because George Miller changed his mind and instead of wanting to make gritty post apocalyptic movies pretty much inventing diesel punk he wanted to make a reboot of Peter Pan. Because that’s what thunderdome feels like, it feels like a Robin Williams movie and it completely ruins the tone of Mad Max and turns it into a joke where no one even dies. Completely took what Mad Max was and turned it into a glorified kids movie where Tina Turner and Mel Gibson with a bunch of kids fight over a midget. And don’t get me started on Fury Road anyway onto real stuff haha.

I’ve felt really overwhelmed recently but in a good way, in the best way. I feel like I’ve been on a fucking insane bender but it was in my living room with my laptop watching documentaries of celtic folklore on youtube and scouring the internet for more stories.

I literally spent the last four days reading nothing but celtic folklore until my eyes actually hurt. My eyes were bloodshot from reading, it was like being possessed and I just felt so high building this story in my head I couldn’t stop. It felt uncontrollable and so good, just right. And I honestly have to fight the feeling and remember about Diana and how important that story is. Because I so just want to forget about it and delve into this because this feels like it for me.

So what did I do? I spent four days building a compendium of info from the internet (mostly wikipedia 😦 don’t hate me, and youtube) which is now 87 pages of frantically copy pasted articles about releveant places, people, events, myths and monsters to draw from when I start writing. This sounds like laborious bullshit but it felt so good to make it didn’t feel like work at all. I felt like I was uncovering the fucking holy grail haha.

Then I tried to start writing a synopsis but there’s just so much stuff, so much story and character I had to write a timeline first. I couldn’t just do what I usually do, take some notes, build a synopsis and then do a chapter breakdown and then start writing. I’ve spent weeks now plotting this in my head so I had to build a timeline of events to build my synopsis from. So now I’m going from the beginning and the end of my saga to see how fare the rabbit hole goes and now I’m fighting myself tooth and nail because I don’t know whether to start the first book with the synopsis I have or go through and complete the entire timeline and go from there.

I don’t know whether I should just do this one part first and build it up or try to look at it basically from a big picture perspective and build this large circular story. And it’s lots of things at play, basically my perfectionism and anal retentive streaks battling my impulsive need to just do and write and throw myself head long into it and it’s my nature to love to pull in those opposite directions. I want to just jump in and start tearing shit up but it feels too good to hold myself back to the eventual cathartic release of unleashing all my creative energy at once.

And right now I just want to stop writing this fucking blog and get back to doing that, because this is getting me nowhere haha.

Also the witcher sucks haha. (Not the game though)

See you…

~

The deputy slammed the jail door shut and locked it, Pookie lingered at the door, looking out, watching his sword as the deputy took it over to his desk. The rest of the punks dispersed murmuring angrily shooting eye daggers at the back of Pookie’s head.

 

Pookie rested his arms through the bars as he watched the deputy sit in his chair at his desk. He continued to study the weird sword like he was wondering which end was the pointy one.

 

“Now I saw this thing work” He said pointing at the ringpull on the scabbard. “Shoots it out real fast right?” He looked up at Pookie “Now how in the hell does that work?”

 

Pookie shrugged and made a face.

 

“Sure” He turned the sword over and studied the handle. “That is the goofiest thing I’ve ever seen” He laughed. “Oh and what in the hell does this one do?” He said pointing at another but much smaller hidden ring pull on the handle itself.

 

“I’d leave that one alone.” Pookie said.

 

“Is that right?” The deputy smirked as he put his feet up on his desk and cocked his chin out. He looked it up and down again. “I might take your advice on this one” He smiled and put the sword down on his desk.

 

“So what now?” Pookie asked.

 

“Now you watch shadows grow bud”

 

“Is that all?”

 

“You’ll cool your heels with your buddies in there and then in the morning you’ll get your sword back and be on your way. There may even be a plate a cold beans in it if I’m feeling hospitable.” He smiled and tipped his hat down as he reclined in his seat closing his eyes.

 

“Others may come”

 

“Oh so you’re one of those huh? – A run away, they got a name for that?” The deputy poked his hat up over his head and opened one eye. “So what did you do? Ya kill someone you weren’t supposed to?”

 

“…”

 

“I see- so now you’ve got a price on your head- I’m not about to get mixed up in all that. Not a big fan of your shows but I know what you do- all that blood really turns my stomach, I gotta, say.” He tutted “I don’t know how you stand it” He let out a spiteful laugh. “You probably like it, only way your pecker gets hard I’ll bet”.

 

“It’s not like that.”

 

“Uh huh- Well don’t you worry, you’ll leave town in the morning and you’ll never come back ya hear.”

 

–

 

“Gramps there are some weird guys outside” Efron squeaked.

 

“Eh?” The old man peaked outside his door trying to look through the distant heat haze. Blackened shifting shapes moving in his general direction. “Just look like big birds to me, probably just want some of my worm broth”. He chuckled.

 

There was a loud banging on the roof and a dent to match and then more foot steps and a strange scratching and whispering and high pitch mocking laughter.

 

“What the hell was that?” Zach said in harsh whisper. He got up on the bed and tried to look through one of the holes in the roof and saw nothing. Then for a split second he was face to face with a wooden crow face, it’s empty black eyes staring at him. He jumped back falling off the bed.

 

They watched not breathing as the dents in the roof moved towards the door. There was a flapping fluttering noise and a thud and then a knock at the door.

 

“Who is it?” Efron said.

 

“Shhhhhh!” Gramps and Zach hushed her in unison.

 

There was an ominous cawing noise made more so by the fact it was a human voice making the sound.

 

They waited a moment and the sounds stopped. After about ten minutes of listening to nothing but the wind the old man gingerly walked towards the door and peaked out. Opening the door wider to get a better look. “Take a gander through the hole again” He whispered.

 

Zach did as he was told and sheepishly probed his head around the hole, making sure not to get too close. “I can’t see nothing” He whispered back.

 

The old man feeling a little more sure of himself opened the door all the way and stepped out to look around. He instantly regretted it as a three pronged meat hook claw came down and hooked him under the shoulder blade. Picking him up like a toy grabber at an arcade.

The kids sat inside listening to his screams as he was dragged onto the roof bleeding and kicking and crying. The sounds of the claw ripping into his flesh and then it went quiet again and all that they could hear was the blood running off the tin roof.

 

The door opened slowly and a man with a duck mask was standing there. The crow dropped off the roof in a crouching position behind him covered in the old man’s blood.

 

“It might’ve been good to talk to someone around here who could actually communicate in full sentences.” Canard said.

 

“S-sorry, all the f-fun from before and I didn’t even get my beak wet” Crow tittered as he looked at the blood dripping off his claws. “I c-couldn’t help myself” He flicked his head erraticy, bobbing like a birds.

 

Canard sighed and looked at the kids as they stared up at the old man’s bloody hand through the hole in the roof. “Hey, any of you kids seen a clown around here.”

 

“Yeah he went into Woodsmoke, town not too far from here, just over the ridge.” Zach said without looking away from the old man’s hand as it dripped.

 

Canard scratched his face under his mask “Well that was easy.”

 

“W-what do we do now?” Crow said bobbing his head erraticly.

 

“Business as usual I guess”.

 

“M-me first” Crow said eagerly.

 

“Ay ya ya, hold your horses there bucko” Canard said barring the door with his arm. “We do this the right way, Finch, fetch the chart will you.”

 

Finch appeared pulling out a rolled up scroll from his coat sleeve and he walked up to Efron.

 

She looked up at this strange thin man in the bird mask as he began to unravel the scroll next to her.

 

He held it up next to her and on it was a picture of a clown with his hand out over a height chart. He stood it next to her and measured. Her head was just under the clowns hand.

 

Finch tutted and said. “This one is too small.”

 

“Come on out honey” Canard said. “It’s alright”

 

Efron cautiously walked towards the door as Finch moved on to Zach.

 

He held the chart up to Zach and his head was just over the clown’s hand.

 

“Ah we have a winner.” Finch said. He rolled up the scroll and put it back in his sleeve as he made his way out of the shack.

 

“Well what has he won?” Canard said turning to Crow.

 

“H-ha-ha.” Crow hopped and bobbed into the shack, the door slamming behind him.

 

“What are we gonna do with this one” A female voice said over the muffled sounds of Zach’s screams.

 

Canard turned to Heron and then back to Efron and patted her on the head. “I always loved that motherly instinct you have”

 

Heron said nothing.

 

“Well we can’t take her with us until we complete our mission” He said looking down at her mussing up her scruffy red hair. She looked up at him, her face screwed up into a puzzled frown. “You wanna babysit?”

 

“…”

 

Canard sighed “I guess you’ll just have to go play somewhere else kid. Auntie Heron is too busy to take care of you, she really doesn’t have time for kids, what with her high flying career and all.” He looked for a reaction from her and got none. “Scoot kid, before I change my mind.”

 

Efron didn’t take a second to think about it she just started to run in a seemingly random direction without looking back.

 

“See ya” Canard waved.

 

“What do we do now? Turkey asked.

 

“Hmm- What do you think big guy?” Canard said looking at Penguin.

 

Penguin breathed deeply and made a low growling noise.

 

“That’s what I thought- Crow! Aren’t you done yet?” Canard shouted.

 

Crow appeared behind him covered in blood from head to toe. “W-whats up?”

 

“I’m calling a little ‘family meeting’” Canard said.

 

“Who died and made you boss?” Cardinal said.

 

Canard laughed “I’ve got the biggest mouth”

 

“No argument there” Finch sighed.

 

“You got a plan Cardinal? Nah, didn’t think so, so why don’t you keep your beak shut” Turkey sniped.

 

“We were only supposed to recover the body” Heron chimed in.

 

Canard scratched his cheek under the mask. “Yeah well, ‘the body’ appears to be walking around killing wasteland transvestites and weebs, or did you not notice that?”

 

“…”

 

“If you wanna go back and report-be my guest.” Canard continued.

 

“You think Regus is gonna give you a pat on the head if you bring him the clown’s head?”

 

“You think you’re gonna get one for tattling on us?” Canard laughed.

 

“…”

 

“Tell you what, we’ll make up our minds when we get there, deal?” He said smiling with his voice.

 

~

Ah ah ah if you want to read the rest of this utter madness you must follow this link.

See ya.

Hatin’ Don’t Pay

 

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