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Cur Chapter 9 ‘Stone letter’

Hello there,
Erm almost didn’t post a poem yesterday and was set to apologise for going out into the real world and interacting with humans sort of. But then I did so…
The poem thing is something I can’t really force, but hopefully it’s something someone might find enlivening, if that’s a word. I know my stuff has dropped off a little because as with the season I’m just being a bit of a miserable cunt haha.
But I got this chapter proofread (but not spellchecked haha) and I’m making strides towards getting the pitch stuff ready for Diana to make her real world debut, fingers crossed. Could be some time yet before it’s all edited but I’m making a concerted effort to make sure it has the strongest foot forward I can give it. Nothing too drastic, I just keep going back with fresh eyes and going over it but I plan on doing an entire new read through just to make sure it flows and just to buff out some of the rough edges. 
Cur certainly needs that, I’m thinking of almost rewriting it entirely before I even hand it over to an editor because I dunno along the way I think I let it wonder off the mark a little bit. And I haven’t too clear headed these last couple of months what with the sleep experiments which are sort of working but also not because I keep fucking them up and on top of that the weighlifting messes with my sleep even more. So a lot of the time it’s like I can’t even think straight or I’m too tired to put it together and make sense of it.

In other news, thinking about the new Diana book has already begun, implying I don’t have a plan/have it half written in my head already. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile waiting for the mood to be right and for lightning to strike.

Gonna have to get back into the Dexter books for inspiration but I’m already deep into the next Parker book which is pretty good so far. It’s sort of trying to redeem the shitty amusement park book and so far it’s delivering quite, it’s definitely better, more open, more mobile, more dynamic with more characters old and new. It’s shaping up to be really good.
Anyway that’s about all I need to go cook for the fam now, making my signature (as of a week ago) spaghetti and meatballs made entirely from scratch. Kind of proud of it because it’s delicious and I do find cooking very fun and relaxing.
See you…
–
 
Birds in the forest tittered and fluttered through the trees. The sound of which made Tuan’s head feel like an hourglass turned on it’s side.
 
The campfire from the night before was dying. Cur put it out of it’s misery stamping down on it with his heavy boots, the warm embers crashing around it.
 
One of which flew close to Birog’s face as she lay sleeping. She opened her eyes cautiously to look at it as it smouldered on the ground in front of her. She turned her eyes up to look at him. Her expression that of a fawn looking up at a great mountain that might fall on her head at any moment.
 
“We ride out” Cur grunted almost as if he was talking to himself.
 
“We?” The girl said coyly.
 
Cur grimaced slightly, hearing her slight.
 
Tuan groaned and held his head and hissed. “He doesn’t like repeating himself” He paused. “Where are we going again?” The shapeshifter said squinting.
 
They set off to Sí an Bhrú, the druidess on her horse, the shape shifter accompanied her in the form of a bird flying over top surveying the roads and fields. The barbarian preferred to walk than to ride.
 
Within a few hours of travelling they were in eye shot of the temple mound known as Sí an Bhrú. The mound and cairns of inish vale were so old that not even the Firbolg knew their true origin or original purpose.
 
The mound was located on the north side of the river Boyne. It lay in an open field surrounded only by hedgerows and a series of standing stone circles moving out. The mound itself was an enormous structure, round and grassy like a manmade hillock. A retaining wall at the front, made of white quartz cobblestones at its entrance. Forty foot high at its tallest point and two hundred and fifty wide and there was no telling how deep it went into the earth if it stopped at all.
 
The Tuatha de, recognizing it as a holy site of some power made use of it as a temple to Danu. Honoring it by placing the stone of destiny on the nearby hill of Tara where Bres himself was crowned king of Inish veil.
 
They approached the enormous retaining wall and as they got closer they could now see all the engravings in the stone. Deeply set swirls and circular patterns swirling outward around the entrance. The entrance itself was a very small rectangular slot walled in by large megalithic stones with similar carvings. The temple had no door and there was no activity or guards posted anywhere around the outside.
 
Standing at the entrance looking in they could see it was lit. What little sunlight got in from the outside was accompanied by braziers on the ground every ten or twenty feet. as well as hundreds of candles affixed directly to the stone. Years of wax drippings coating them making them slick and appear almost like the inside of a throat. The flames of the candles lapped at the irregular stone that made up the inner construction. It resembled that of a manmade cave formed from rocks no tuatha de could hope to move.
 
The stones inside and the clay roof gave off a strange resonance the druidess could feel in her torque. Cur too could feel it buzzing at his scars like a mosquito.
 
Cur swept past her squeezing into the cramped entrance and listening for footsteps or any sign of occupance. He traversed a very narrow hallway with entrances onto a pair of small altar rooms on each side, little more than caves and holes in the ground. Some of which could have been a very meager sleeping quarters or an anti-room.
 
He heard then the sound of whispering carried on a draft and he followed it to another identical room. The entrance made of two bowing stones making a triangular shape.
 
Inside it seemed much larger with a high ceiling that echoed with his heavy footfalls. The whispering carried by the strange acoustics of the structure. Something about it bothered him, as if every breath gave him away. It felt as if someone at the heart was listening or even watching him indifferently, waiting.
 
The room was a hollow and the floor sloped into the centre where a basin lay. The basin formed of descending slates of stone circling each other making a shallow pit which appeared to have water in it.
 
Kneeling at the pit was a skinny welp wearing a moth eaten grey cloak.
 
Without saying anything Cur crossed the room and picked the old man up by the collar of his cloak and stood him up on his two feet.
 
“Dian Cecht?” He growled low.
 
“Wwwhat?” The man said, his breath stinking of mouldy bread and cheese. His balding head and shining flat face angered Cur with it’s oblivious sincerity. Cur spat on the floor.
 
“Firbolg?” The druidess said behind him “What are you doing?”
 
–
Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt Stone letter.
0

3 Ring Samurai: Part 2 The Space Between Worlds. Chapter 1 ‘Ice Cream’

Here I am to disappoint you once again haha.

So not really a surprise, I said I was doing this but you didn’t know I was cutting the chapters down haha. I just went over it and I was like ‘why is my fun punchy action comedy coming in these huge ass chapters and not acting as the filler I intended it to be?’ Probably to save on clown pictures haha.
So I cut it down shamelessly to better filler. But I think it makes it flow better, appeal more to audiences with a shorter attention span.
It’s a pretty fun romp, I had fun writing it. It came out a lot better than I thought in terms of getting in the anime backstory for a deeper build on the character still leaving in mystery.
I was actually thinking about the developing story last night in the shower (the place I do most of my thinking haha) and it sounded pretty good in my head, I have a strong back bone to the narrative but plenty of freedom and time to take it in any number of little side roads and alleys for fun.
That sounded bad haha.
Yeah so, not much to add, just wanted to get this chapter proofread and out there for you all, hope you like it.
See you…
–
 
“I don’t remember you” Pookie said.
 
“That hurts” Canard smiled through his words tilting his head slightly. “I’m your biggest fan”
 
Pookie wobbled a little and corrected himself with his hips. He cast a glance down at the rapid waters below bubbling with toxic waste and probably used needles from a century ago.
 
“You were always kind of weird, even for circus folk, liked to keep to yourself. But I mean most clans like to keep to themselves, clowns especially, guess you guys think you’re kinda special.” He laughed. “But I always liked you, in fact, you were the reason we joined, one of them anyway.”
 
“We?”
 
“Yeah my ‘friends’”
 
“The ones I killed?”
 
“We were more like ‘acquaintances’ really, you don’t choose your friends in this world, ya just kinda try to get by.” He sighed.
 
“We were orphans, our parents killed in the war, we had like a little gang stealing and scrounging to stay alive. One day the circus came to town and we snuck into one of your shows.” He laughed. “You couldn’t have been much older than us at the time, a boy really, but the way you fought, and how the crowd loved you.
 
“Right at that moment, we realised that life couldn’t get any better than that. We could never be kings or work a normal job like our parents. We’d never fall in love and have kids but if that crowd could cheer for us like it did for you. We could die with a smile on our face, ya know” He clicked his teeth under his mask.
 
“And then you go and do a stupid thing like kill your own master, why? He not pat you on the head and tell you you’re a good boy enough, run out of fortune cookies to read from, what was it?”
 
“…” Pookie stayed silent.
 
“Well whatever it was it’s my mission to bring your body back.” He laughed and gripped his spear tighter “I guess we should fight now”.
 
Pookie was getting his balance, getting used to the spring and using his toes to walk and cling to the rope mimicking the movement of the acrobat. He bounced on his heels and used his sword as a balance beam.
 
Canard took up a readied stance and Pookie leaned back into the rope. Suddenly springing forward he pulled the cord on his sheathe and the sword came roaring with laughter out to cut the air.
 
He was gone.
 
Pookie stood frozen for a moment feeling overextended and confused. There was nowhere to go, it seemed impossible for him to vanish right before his eyes.
 
There was a laughter and Pookie’s blood ran like ice water as the blade of a spear came up between his leg and nicked his foot playfully.
 
Canard was standing as he was before except upside down, gripping the rope with his feet.
 
“You dodged, just by falling.”
 
The spear came up again but Pookie bounced back and away. Canard stayed on him walking upside down gripping with his toes as if they were hands following Pookie’s movements.
 
Pookie barely able to keep his balance and block the incoming strikes with his blade.
 
Pookie jumped back and Canard tugged at the rope and swung himself the right way up.
 
“Impossible right? To just vanish right before your eyes” He laughed. “The others just ran to their deaths one after the other, I don’t fault them for that, they died exactly how they expected to but I watched you. I noticed there’s a split second, right when you pull that cord and the sparks fly, just a nano second – you close your eyes.” He said, an unseen grin creeping across his face
 
Pookie’s face soured and he got that cold feeling in his gut like when he needed to take a shit really bad.
 
Canard glided towards Pookie, weightlessly and effortlessly fast like the rope wasn’t even there, like he could fly. His spear flashing in the air he slashed down at Pookie’s head. Pookie barely managed to get his footing, turning side on to block the strike. But then a follow up and Pookie turned again stepping backwards barely dodging a thrust. The blade nicked his shoulder when the blade came back as he tried to regain his balance.
 
Pookie turned 180 degrees throwing his body weight forward. He launched a powerful strike holding his sheathe out to his side to act as a counterbalance. Canard was too close and overextended to block it so had to jump backwards gliding through the air and landing softly back on the rope a few feet away.
 
Pookie looked at the cut on his shoulder and the one on his leg and he felt all his exertion. His lungs burning, every muscle and sinew fighting to keep his balance and fight at the same time. How long could he last? He tried to quickly glance behind him to see how far he’d have to run to get back to the other side of the bridge. But he couldn’t turn far enough or fast enough without giving away his intention. And if he just turned and ran for it the much more experienced tight rope walker would undoubtedly catch up to him and strike him down like a coward.
 
No there was no other way, he couldn’t turn back, there was no other way but to keep going.
 
Canard looked down at the toxic rapids below “We were never afraid of death as kids. Death was all around us, it was in the streets and in our living rooms, in our kitchens, it was how we lived, how we – ate. But falling, the fear of falling that was something completely different, something we had to conquer. So we practiced, we climbed and ran and jumped and sometimes we fell but we didn’t die.
 
And in a way I guess she helped us conquer death.”
 
“She?”
 
“Our leader, she didn’t want to play our little game and she went on ahead”
 
“She’s your leader but you ignore her orders?”
 
“Geez, you really don’t know anything about us, someone doesn’t get out of the tent much. She’s the strongest but she’s also kind of a pain in the ass” He laughed. “And who are you to talk, you took a knife to your master in the dead of night, like a fucking pussy” He laughed.
 
“It wasn’t like that.”
 
“Then how was it?”
 
“…”
 
“Exactly, you’re no better than us, they followed their code and they died anyway, you broke yours and you’re still alive!”
 
Canard leapt forward again gliding across the rope and jumping launching a downward slash, his spear flashing. Pookie raised his sword and tried to keep his stance balanced.
 
Canard feinted a strike from above pulled away at the last second. He came in again from the side swiping upwards with the tip of his spear catching Pookie across the chest with a shallow but vicious cut. Pookie swirled around and swung his blade hard at nothing again as the lithe duck evaporated. Gliding up in the air back the few feet out of his reach, Pookie fought to get his balance, his frustration mingling with the searing new pain in his chest.
 
It was hopeless, Pookie could barely even move to launch at attack himself. Having to keep his balance made him a sitting duck only able to counter and each time he was getting more tired and losing more blood.
 
“We just wanted to have a little fun, what’s left in this life if you can’t have that before you die.” Canard said.
 
“Is that all there is?” Pookie looked down at the water again.
 
“Of course, can you think of anything else?” He laughed.
 
Pookie rested the blade of his sword against the rope. “Are we having fun yet?”
 
“You’re joking right?”
 
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
 
Canard looked at him and shrugged. “Well, yeah kinda”
 
Pookie flicked his wrist and cut the rope, plunging them into the toxic rapids below.
 
In the trees a heron mask watches the scene coldly surveying and then retracting back into the foliage.
 
–
 
Read the rest on inkitt by following this link Ice cream
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Gage Epilogue ‘Effigy’

Hey hey,

Here goes that experimental nano story I did that kind of didn’t work out how I expected, maybe I should stop trying to write novels in 30 days haha. Eh but I had fun doing it, it was different enough to hold my attention and be fun and for me to actually finish it despite not making the time limit because of work and that I forgot about nano until a few days in haha.

My one fan who read this said he hated the ending because they all die and no, no they don’t this is just satire on how the news lies and it’s all bullshit, kind of the main theme of the story, of course their press will say whatever they want, paint whatever narrative fits them. There are planned sequels but I don’t know when that will come. I need to do a sequel to Diana before I can even think about one for Gage or anything else. The next Diana book is just too juicy to pass up.

Not much been going on as of late, oh yeah it was my birthday haha. Funny seeing all those people I barely know on facebook sending me happy birthday messages and not being able to respond because I’m banned, I guess they’ll think I’m an asshole, eh they’ll probably forget in a year.

Still reading that new Parker book and I haven’t got that far into it but it seems like a return to form; slow plotting methodical story about a heist. Lots of interesting new characters and some old.

I did watch probably the greatest horror movie I’ve seen maybe in a decade last night and I’ll probably do a review of that just to align my thoughts. Because it’s one of those movies that you really need time to unpack. I should watch it again really.

Anywho I’ll leave you with this little epilogue and try to do some real work, going over the editing for Diana. Really hoping to make a jump on that soon.

See you…

 

–

Further news of this event are not in our record but one news clipping from the New york daily reported as follows;

GRUESOME MASSACRE A TOWN GONE MAD!

CABIN FEVER REACHES PEAK AS SPECIESIST GROUP DESTROYS TOWN AND GOVERNMENT FORCES HAVE TO RESPOND.

Sept 14th

Reports received earlier this week indicate a speciesist riot broke out in a small border town in Arkansas called Tupelo.

Earlier terrorist and anti-government activity has been reported in the area. It seems the gang activity had culminated around the town resulting in chaos and death. Even reports of rape, sodomy and cannibalism as well as predation of children.

The leader of the group one Phineas Gage who has been assumed killed in the resulting bombarbment of the town. Was reported as being a religious fanatic. He followed an outdated and archaic religion that still clings on in parts further away from civilisation. Reports lead us to believe that he was a sexual pervert. Taking many of the townsfolks young daughters and even sons to bed, some as young as eight or nine years old. He was also known to practice polygamy and human sacrifice.

Subsequently a rally will be held. Where upon the dreaded terrorist killed in the event will be burnt in effigy. So as to send a beacon to anyone that would emulate such a repugnant act of defiance. We will burn this traitor to democracy into out memories so as never to forget the aliens killed that day. Our heart goes out to the Cylon and their families who have suffered and who continue to suffer. At the hands of despicable speciesists that continue to persist in our society today.

In a more sombre note a brave attempt by a noble military unit of Lug troops was brutally thwarted by the gang. Who cooked and ate these noble American heroes. Subsequently we believe sodomizing them before and after sacrificing them to their evil god. These brave souls who died protecting their country will never be forgotten. Their noble sacrifice will remain long after their deaths and live on in the heart of the people who carry their memory.

They fought valiantly and will be remembered posthumously in a candle lit vigil in time square late this afternoon. All members of the unit will be posthumously promoted to General 1st class.

Unfortunately their bodies could not be recovered for burial as they were most likely eaten with their remains fed to animals. The resultant bombardment from the Spartan two orbital lazer left very little of the town remaining.

The government issued a statement later that day decreeing that ‘Hate would never win. And all those with hate in their hearts were on the wrong side of history’. A move that has been criticized by many heads of state as drastic and heavy handed. Nevertheless it was met with favourable support from the public after a poll was taken. With a whopping 90% in favour of vaporouzing the small border town and only 9% no and 1% undecided.

0

Cur Chapter 6 ‘Hammer to fall’

Good morrow gentle folk,
Gonna keep this super short and sweet because I sort of lost yesterday in the best way possible so had to cram everything I had to do then into today so lots of editing spamming, procrastinating, all packed into today haha.
So yeah that’s it, see really short right haha? But that haiku yesterday was cool right? Right?

See you…
*spoilers*
This chapter is really spicy haha.
–
 
A crow perched atop the highest stone structure of Tallaght. It watched as Birog of the Tuatha De’ descended her horse and cautiously entered the walls of the cursed city.
 
She stopped in the entryway and seemed to sniff the air taken by a familiar scent. She dropped to one knee taking off one of her gloves and touched the ground with her bare hands.
 
She rubbed some sort of substance between her fingers before cautiously putting it in her mouth to taste it. She instantly spat it out and said “Sea salt, how odd.”
 
She rose from the ground and put her glove back and mused to herself “All their salt is surely mined, why would sea water be here, inland of all places? When a fresh water river runs but a stones throw.”
 
She stopped and straightened rigidly as she craned her neck trying to listen for people or animals but not even the crow cawed. Just dead silence and the calm creaking of the empty houses echoing the empty streets.
 
“The village is abandoned, but I was sure they were here, perhaps they camped here and then moved on, maybe I can find something in one of these houses”
 
She tied her horse up at the gates. Briefly she glanced at the standing stone with alien symbols not of her people, she assumed it must have been left from the Firbolg.
 
She entered the small round house tucked closely by the outer fence which was a stone layered daub and thatch wall. Similar to most perimeter construction in villages at the time.
 
On the surface the house was fairly unremarkable. A simple stone and clay hut with the standard spiral thicket inlays and a thatched conical roof. The village had seemed strange to her but she had assumed the village had been abandoned but the inside of the hut seemed to tell a different story.
 
One where food was left to spoil in the pot and a table was lain ready for it to be served. A number of sets of simple hide and leather shoes left untouched and clothes slowly being devoured by all manner of insects.
 
Conclusion could only be that they fled in a hurry or they hadn’t fled at all.
 
The same strange smell of sea spray and the salt hanging in the air, so odd for it to be here as well. The building was a very simple dwelling with the fire pit in the centre and the beds on one side and a simple table for eating on the other. The beds looked slept in but untouched, a thick layer of dust covering them. One adult sized and two small wooden frame bed with hide and fur bedding drawn up.
 
A strange feeling gripped her and she took to looking at the ceiling and the inner thatch working. Staring at the elaborate patterns of cobwebs that had collected there.
 
She paused breathing in through her nostrils and closing her eyes. Then swallowing her fear and trepidation she marched over to the adult bed and drew back the covers swiftly.
 
As she feared underneath the remains of a couple clinging to each other, their expressions of horrifying finality. They had no eyes or tongues or lips but there was something there, something that struck a terrible enervation in them. Skin, what little was left was drawn and yellow and putrified. The smell of the sea salt must have masked it or else there was nothing left to rot. The beetles taking all the flesh for their own and leaving naught but cold off white bone.
 
“They must have been preparing food and then hid here” She remarked to herself. “What could have scared them so?”
 
She shuddered and covered them up again and looked over at the children’s beds.
 
“Oh goddess no”
 
She slowly walked around the adult bed and approached the children’s small simple beds. She took another deep inhale of salty air and turned over their covers.
 
She sighed in relief to see them empty.
 
“Empty?” she ground her teeth “Where are the children?”
 
A noise outside, the clopping of an unfamiliar horse on hard stone, a heavy harsh whinnying that sounded like a howl of a man pained.
 
She took to the small shuttered windows. She got low and peeped out at the cluttered claustrophobic streets seeing nothing. Only hearing the distant closing sound of devil hooves.
 
Then suddenly a black horse’s head appeared close to the window too close, the sound of the hooves completely divorced from its distance. She shrunk back into the hut stupidly trying to avoid the gaze of a dumb horse and reaching for a sword that wasn’t there. Terrifying as it was looming over her.
 
The horse passed by the window and she caught a glimpse of the rider. He was enormous, much larger than any tuatha she’d ever seen. Black armor that looked like bones and a skull death mask with gleaming red jeweled eyes. The black rider silently seemed to throb with breath. His armor rising and falling heavily, making a terrible noise like ribs being scraped with a knife. The plates rattling and shifting as the horse jossled.
 
The mysterious knight scanned the area, what was he looking for? Why here? Why now?
 
After a moment, he whipped the reigns as if angry at the air, spurred the horse and disappeared from the frame of the window.
 
She left it a moment, holding her breathe as she listened to the horses hooves get further away and it’s terrible cries cease.
 
Cautiously she approached the entrance to the round house, taking careful quiet steps on the earthen floor covered in loose straw.
 
She swallowed and listened and when she was satisfied stepped out of the small building and looked around. Without warning a tight gripping sensation around her heart told there was strong magic trained on her. She froze looking at the ground and a huge shadow growing at her feet.
 
She turned and saw the black knight on horseback standing on the thatched roof of the hut looking down at her. The horse scrapping at the straw and snorting breathing heavily.
 
“Hello girl, I’ve been looking for you!”
 
–
 
Head on over to inkitt to get the rest of the chapter right here.
0

Gage chapter 11 ‘Heel on the shovel

Good morrow fine folks,

You know I actually got up and started writing this morning haha. Forgetting it’s a blogging day. See I cycle between the two to try and keep them both in regularity, so I do tues/wed/thur blogging and then the other four days writing. Because before I would just write everyday and I would sort of get burnt out and depressed because I felt insular, I felt like it was all for nothing because no one was reading it. But then blogging and spamming and promoting made me feel hollow because I wasn’t creating.

So I thought this system would balance the two, nice regular creation with sometime to check my head space and see if anyone was picking up what I was putting down to mixed reviews haha.

But it was a happy accident because the last few days I’ve felt like I’m getting back in the swing of things, the first two days weren’t so good, second two were stellar. I think a lot due to the heat abating haha. Also part of me wasn’t feeling that part of the story, not that it was bad it was just a lull from the pulse pounding action haha. Now I’m safely back in that and feeling good. I was feeling like it was getting away from me a bit now I feel like I have a handle on it again. It’s coming into shape a little better, I don’t feel like it’s perfect or I’m putting enough world building in.
One thing I actually like about the witcher series is it has a lot of nice ‘fluff’ like stuff that’s irrelevant to the story but adds just a little something. But obviously in my estimation the whole series so far is nothing but fluff.

And not it’s time for another rant about the witcher, I just got done listening to the audiobook for time of contempt and I don’t if I just wasn’t interested enough to hold my attention. Because I listen to audiobooks all the time and do other stuff and I can still be fully absorbed and never miss anything but I feel like it was just a convoluted mess. As apposed to the other books where nothing happens that’s all this book is, a bunch of stuff happening. It’s not really a story.

The story can be summed up as an evil mage sides with the baddies and then they take over and everyone fights. That’s the plot, just add in a metric tonne of pointless dialogue and some mediocre fights in this one actually. And the book just sort of ends after a cringey lesbian sex scene between a fourteen year old girl and an elf.

I know what this author looks like, he’s a fat old polish guy and just imagining him writing this scene makes my skin crawl haha. It was bad, this elf girl like saves her from being raped by a boy only to rape her ‘nicely’???
It was disturbing to say the least, is it as disturbing as child gang bangs in the sewer a la Stephen King? Not really but I’m not in a hurry to read it again.

Short and sweet that rant, I kind of feel obligated to listen to the other books just so I can moan about them now so I might have to subject myself to that. I mean it’s good just for the writing style, I really think as a writer you should read everyday in some way. I usually listen to those books in breaks and then read before bed and when I get up. Almost finished the Parker novels, I’m not getting the stories crossed with the witcher because both their stories are very simple.

A little behind today so I’m gonna do some proofreading and hopefully get another damn chapter of Cur out because I’m running out of shit to post haha.

See you…

–

I figured Gage wouldn’t travel too far if he was with that old man and all, I mean where could he go? There wasn’t anything for miles, it was just open untamed country. He couldn’t go back to McCrory. If he didn’t just die of thirst or hunger and get covered over by the sand or get carried away by carrion. He would have stopped at this brothel and someone would remember him, how could they forget such a face?

We left the old man barely alive but he was certainly breathing when went on our way. There was no use in killing him I gathered, if he didn’t indeed die of his injuries he was of no great threat to our operation. I wondered as we left him in that state if it would have been more humane to just end his suffering.

The thought troubled me all the way to the brothel. The sun was just coming down by the time we got there but there wasn’t a single lamp lit in the building which seemed unusual.

The edifice was cold and dark but we could hear an odd rummaging sound. And see a little light bobbing in the darkness like an angler fish’s light in the deep darkness. We approached with caution and I called out like a fool before thinking.

“Hello, is anyone there?”

Ryan and the others shushed me angrily as they got off their vehicles and got low and still in the twilight and I saw the spark of a knife leaving it’s sheathe.

There was a long pause, a moment of unbearable silence. The rummaging noise stopped and the lamplight went out and I swallowed standing in the open. Just like in front of the barn awaiting another flash and a roll of thunder but instead I heard a small stuttering voice.

“HHh-hello? Who’s there?”

“Erm, I’m just looking for some service – A place to sleep and some food perhaps”

There was another deathly silence where nothing moved.

“O-ok” The man’s voice said as the lamp came back on. A few moments later a portly middle aged man wearing a smock came out to greet us in the dusk. “Hh-how you are ya?” The man asked.

“Erm we’re just looking for a place to bed down.”

“Ww-we? There’s more of you?”

Ryan and the others rose out of the falling darkness and stood in front of the porch at my back.

“I see” The man said as he moved the lamp around trying to get a good look at the strangers. “Well I hope you like beans, s’all I could find.” He said.

We sat around a table in the dimly lit brothel over meagre plates of luke warm beans not talking a great deal. I looked over in disgust watching Stein sop up bean juice with stale bread, not so much at the sight of it, but the sound. The slurping sopping suckling noise as he bit into the wet bread.

The man who greeted us came over with his lantern and said “How are you folks finding it?”

A few grunts were sent back in answer.

“Fine I said, I was wondering if you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

“Questions?”

“Yes, I was wondering how you came upon this place, how long have you owned it?”

“Oh I don’t own it” The man said shaking the loose skin on his neck. “I stumbled on it just like you did, the place was empty when I got here so I thought there was no harm in camping out here til I move on.”

“I see” I paused feeling a bit of unease creep in but I went on. “Do you know what happened to the people who ran it?”

“I have no idea mister. I used to run the bank over in town until the other day now I’m a wanderer now, trying to find a way out of the valley and this god forsaken nightmare.”

“You said something about a bank?

“You haven’t heard about it? The whole town is going up in smoke!” He sputtered.

“You’re the first person we’ve talked to”

“You mean” He stopped and put his hand on his head and looked shocked and then swallowed. “I was the only one that got out.” He said in a horrifying realisation.

“What in god’s name are you talking about man?”

He swallowed and he said almost like he was reading from an old folk tale. “A great evil has come to Tupelo, the devil himself has come to town with a red right hand and driven the people from their homes. Swept up in a murderous rage. They chased down all the sane people and killed them and maybe more got away but I ran.” He swallowed, his throat sounded dry and sore. “But I looked back and I saw him, the man with the scarred face, he looked at me and I felt the evil in his heart and I knew the end was upon us.”

“The end?”

–

Read the rest of the chapter here.

Heel on the shovel

0

3 Ring Samurai Chapter 5 ‘Take the sword part 2’

Hey there,

So this is the concluding part to the first little 3 Ring novella about favourite clown samurai; Pookie.
I’m planning to do this on and off, just short and fun episodic novellas with different enclosed little beats. I wouldn’t say ‘story’ this one doesn’t really have much of an enclosed story on it’s own but the idea for the plot is from a kung fu movie I like, kung fu movies not known for their shakesperian storylines.

It’s just a fun little series I can keep on with in between things I’m working on, maybe I could get some of it in an anthology or a magazine eventually, who knows. For now I’m just blowing off steam with it, a bit of fun between more serious work I’m doing.

Bit of a shitty week honestly, only had two solid days of writing, then I had to go to work on father’s day and it was pretty depressing. Just watching all those happy families and knowing in the pit of my soul that that would never be me. It really upset me and then even when I got home I couldn’t shake the feeling and there was no one I could turn to.

So I’ll probably have a poem about that feeling tomorrow maybe. I wrote some on my break but I got distracted.

Very little bitching about the witcher today. I’m finally getting to some of the romance between Geralt and Yen and it’s I dunno, sometimes this book strikes me as if the author thinks he’s shakespeare and he can just have people spout flowery shit and then they have sex and that somehow constitutes romance. I guess to some people but I can’t tell if he’s an idiot or a genius in this regard. But this isn’t really a romance, it’s sort of an anti-romance because all the while I’m wondering why they love eachother when every scene they share it seems they literally can’t stand eachother.
Later he has this interaction with one of her other lovers (of which supposedly she has several) and it basically rips into their romance by pointing out that Geralt has no human emotions because he’s a mutant and Yen doesn’t love her as much as she’s intrigued by him and under a genie’s spell. So basically they don’t love eachother, Geralt just fancies her and is afraid he can’t get anyone else to stay with him because he literally can’t give them the love of a normal man. So it’s not really a romance since neither of them can truly be in love with the other.

So that’s an interesting part, the characters aren’t really likeable, Yen is horrible and Geralt is just sort of a placeholder character, he’s not really interesting on his own. The story too seems more interested in subverting expectations than actually being good. I mean it’s all well and good if you can surprise the reader but if the surprise is nothing happens, that’s not a good surprise. 

I don’t mind if something is predictable as long as it’s good and interesting and fun. The first story is basically this huge build up to Geralt fighting a dragon which he decides not to do. The next story is about him having a duel with a mage which he walks away from. Oh yeah, really subverted my expectations by not having interesting things happen in your action fantasy book, really blowing my socks off here.

Well that’s enough of that I guess, the Parker book is probably the slowest and worst one of the series so far but it’s still miles better than the witcher and even the most boring parts where nothing is happening still manage to maintain tension and work really well. So it’s not a bad book, it’s fantastic but it’s just not as good as some of the others. I think it may just be that you’re seeing a softer side of Parker we shouldn’t be seeing. Because for me Parker is just this ineffable statuesque character that can never be stopped or show any weakness and in this he seems a little off and I think that’s done on purpose to show that his involvement with this woman is softening him and putting him at risk.

Anyway, enough waffling, hope you enjoy the samurai clown action and hold on for more fantasy brutality when I release more Cur.

See you…

–

The moon was high and Crow had grown tired of waiting for the clown to wake. His claw sang to him as he scratched the glass and it thirsted for the clown’s blood, whispering thusly.

He knew honor dictated that his foe should be conscious. But his mind and his claw would come up with a million and one good reasons why the code of honor didn’t apply. Such as ‘it only counted in the circus and he was a traitor, a ronin, a vagabond’, ‘no one would know’, ‘it would feel sooooo good!’.

The boy that was watching over him had long fallen asleep in his chair and Crow had given up pretense of hiding and was perched on the window ledge.

He scratched longingly at the glass staring at the mound of covers he knew the clown to be sleeping under like a cat licking the side of an aquarium.

“Ooh I c-can’t, I c-can’t wait!”

Almost on it’s own his claw started to scratch and scrape at a pain of glass in the hatched window. And as if on pure accident the small pain popped out and fell soundlessly on the inner windowsill.

Crow felt his mask rising as his face stretched into a drawn out long grin. It must be fate, the glass just fell out. The night, the moon wants me to kill him, he told himself as without thinking he snaked his free hand through the window and unlatched it.

Slowly he eased the window up, it was sticky but he managed to open it silently. Staring his empty cold eyes at the sleeping boy, his chin to his chest drooling and snoring loudly.

He thought about silencing the boy permanently, but something told him that the clown should be the one that dies first.

Crow dropped soundlessly into the room, rolling like a dust bunny from hell. He tiptoed towards the bed and then without telegraphing he leapt like he was wires. With an inhuman speed and agility he pounced on the sleeping Pookie stabbing and shredding the bed with an animal furosity.

“Huh, n-no blood, w-where’s the blood?” He shrieked and stabbed the head under the covers and was startled by a loud popping noise. He withdrew his claw attached to the end was a balloon with a silly clown face drawn on it quickly deflating with an anti-climatic farting noise.

Crow bobbed his head nervously and swivelled his eyes around the room. The boy somehow was still asleep, still snoring loudly and drooling even more than before.

He swivelled his head like an animal and looked at the closet.

“Ah s-so you’re hiding, like a coward.”

He hopped off the bed with no noise except the tired springs of the bed sighing.

His skinny sandaled feet touched down weightlessly and he came around the bed to reach the closet.

The crow fell forward as a quick swiping sound and a flash of silver caused one of his legs to fall off as it was attached by a clasp that suddenly burst. He stood looking down at it puzzled as blood began to spurt from the stump.

Pookie rolled out from under the bed and sprung to his feet putting the sword to the crow’s throat.

“I do balloon animals too- for the kids.”

The crow laughed maniacally moving the sword away from his throat with his three pronged claw “Just a s-scratch”

“Huh?”

“Even a one legged crow can still f-fly!” He shrieked as he leapt as if his one leg was a pogo stick. He mounted Pookie’s shoulders and started to furiously scratch and slash at Pookie’s back. He was far too fast and unpredictable for Pookie to fight back and too close for him strike with his sword. All he could do was feebly slam the freak against the thin wooden walls as he mauled him like a cat.

In one fluid motion he threw Crow out of the window. Without hesitation Pookie leaned out to see where he landed but saw nothing but a claw flying into his face he only had time to block with his fleshy hand. The claw pierced right through and the crow pulled him right through the window. His sword hanging on just barely as he slid down the slanted metal roof covered in broken glass.

He slid all the way down catching onto some gutter with his bleeding hand, his sword hand hanging loose as he dangled off the roof. The drop wasn’t that high but it would still hurt. But before he could even consider making the drop a slender hand wrapped around his wrist and his face was an inch away from the black crow mask.

“Need a hand?” He raised his claw.

Pookie looked down at his sword hanging loose and then up at the curved points of the claw hook. There was a brief moment of silence that seemed to last an eternity.

Then out of nowhere an odd whooping whistling sound and a spray of blood hit Pookie’s face. The Crow’s head fell off and rolled over his shoulder and then they were both falling.

“Oops” Finch smiled under his mask as his glaive boomeranged back around. He caught it in his armoured gauntlet with a mechanical locking noise.

Pookie groaned as he lay in the loose top dust on the ground, Crow’s dismembered body lying next to him. He rose to an indian sitting position with a painful creaking noise, cracking his neck from side to side shaking off the cobwebs. He looked at Crow’s body “Did I do that?”

A sudden shrinking feeling put his teeth on edge as he heard wooden sandals clacking on metal roves coming closer. Realising it wasn’t over he scrabbled to his feet and listened. It was dark now, but the moon was high and the stars were stage lights twinkling. It was deathly quiet, just the wind and the creaking of wooden buildings and the long way off call of some nocturnal beast, a coyote or an owl, both.

He’d landed in a tight back alley with lots of cover but he was out in the open, the saloon backed onto a bunch of houses that looked empty in the dark. Two story shacks with wooden shutters.

There was that damn whooping noise again, like a bat or some kind of bird swooping down on him. He batted it away with his sword and sparks split the night in two for just a moment and flew away again.

It came down again and he had to roll, which was a bad move forgetting all the cuts on his back. Rolling through the dirt hurt like hell and he probably picked up more damn glass from the window.

It was no good, he had to run and find some place where he wasn’t so exposed

He took off in a random direction that damn noise following him. The feet clacking and the blade spinning and getting closer nipping at his heels like some flying cockerspaniel.

Pookie bust open some little shack and barricaded the door with a hatrack. The whooping sound reached it’s peak as he slammed the door in the face of the flying cockerspaniel. Only to get a long curved blade stopping an inch from his face as it embedded itself with into the door.

Pookie opened the door again and yanked the thing out of the wood. It was almost like a bladed boomerang or shuriken. Made- it seemed from some kind of cross shaped tool forged into a shape reminiscent of a bladed swastika.

He looked at it with some puzzlement before sticking it down the back of his trousers and sheepishly poking his head out of the door. Looking up and around the roofs and ledges he gingerly exited the shack and started to look up and down the street. And then the noise came again louder and faster and seemingly in greater numbers.

Two of the damn things criss crossing coming right at him, he ducked one and the other cut the whiskers off his chin.

He heard a shrill laughter in the dead silence “YOU DIDN’T THINK I’D HAVE ANY MORE RIGHT?”

Pookie tried to place the voice but it echoed off the buildings and travelled all around him. He was too busy not getting his head cut off to see where the blades flew back to or if they came at all. Pookie had no choice but to get to higher ground. He scaled the ramshackle buildings using the rough edges of wood and large gaps in the planks, keeping an ear pinned for those spinning blades.

He reached the top and got his footing and then waited and listened. They came again one right at him, the other on a curved trajectory coming around his side. He dodged the first and deflected the other up over his head with his sword.

“YOU CAN’T KEEP THAT UP FOREVER.”

Pookie sneered but he couldn’t disagree, there was no way he could keep this up, the blades would keep coming and just ware him down or wait til he made a mistake. He had to think of something.

Finch quickly caught and launched another volley from his perch on a richety old wooden water tower overlooking the saloon. It creaked and moaned under him as he shifted his weight to throw the two shurikens.

He’d staggered them so he could use one hand to launch both, he just threw one after the other as soon as caught them in his gauntlet.

He watched them quickly disappear into the night only catching glimpses as the moonlight touched them. He smiled as they got closer to the clown running around like an ant on the rooftops below.

The clown flipped and flopped around barely escaping them once again. Finch simply snickered and planned a new trajectory in his head as he watched the blades arcing back to his position.

“Getting closer” He whispered.

The blades came back casting moonlight off of them like silver water. But there was something wrong, a sudden uneasiness gripped Finch. Struck by an imminent giddiness or vertigo, his face felt hot and he felt off balance as if realising a horrible miscalculation.

And at the last minute he saw it but it was too late.

He caught the first blade and before he could throw it back another – a third blade hidden in the shadow of it’s trajectory cut his hand off. It fell from the roof still holding the first blade. The second blade still coming unimpeded without any way to catch it Finch dodged uneasily, the blade cutting him along the side. He tumbled onto the rooftops below, sliding down the slick tin and onto the dusty ground below.

Finch was still for a moment. He stirred and then rose to his knees pulling his stump of a hand closer to his body. He took out another blade from his cloak and shouted “THAT WAS A CUTE TRICK, BUT IT CAN ONLY WORK ONCE!”

“It only has to work once” A voice above him said.

Finch looked up to see Pookie on the rooftop looking down at him. Finch scrambled to his feet and into a run as he flung the shuriken in his hand.

Pookie easily deflected it and jumped down to his level. He stopped and thoughtfully picked up Finch’s hand with the blade still clasped in it.

“Hey you forgot this”

Finch stopped only a few feet form Pookie in the shadow of the tall water tower, he turned holding his stump.

“You bastard, you couldn’t find me so you just copied the trajectory of their arc coming back. Hoping I wouldn’t notice a third blade under the others.”

“And you didn’t” Pookie smiled as he threw Finch’s hand down. “Can I go back to bed now?”

Finch thought for a moment and pulled out another blade and lifted it as if he meant to throw it.

“Haven’t we played this game already?” Pookie jeered.

Finch launched the blade with much more force than before but it was wild and in a wide uncontrolled arc. Pookie didn’t even have to move to dodge or deflect it.

It simply passed with a burst of air and that loud whooping noise.

“You missed”

Finch laughed.

Pookie was puzzled as he felt little droplets of water hitting him, followed by a loud creaking and snapping. He turned to see the water tower quickly buckling under it’s weight as one of it’s ramshackle supports had been cut away by Finch. The remaining supports wobbled and groaned painfully as the whole thing started to come down leaking from either side.

There was nowhere to go in the alley, and it all happened so fast. Pookie were pinned on either side by houses and there was no time to cut through Finch and outrun it.

He couldn’t think of anything else but to cut it. He held his sword over his head and watched in slow motion as all that water and steel and wood fell on him.

Finch’s continued to laugh maniacally until his laughter was turned into a high pitched yelping noise. As he was instantly crushed by the falling debris.

Everything went white for a second and he couldn’t breathe and then he opened his eyes and he was in his bed again.

“Was it a dream?”

“Err” Donny said motioning to the blood all over and the broken glass and then further swivelling to point out the street covered in wet debris.

“How did I-?”

“All that commotion woke me up and first I hid in the closet but then I thought you might need my help. So I got a little closer hiding in one of those houses and when I saw the tower coming down I opened a door and yanked you inside before the thing fell.”

“Don’t people live in those houses”

“I guess not” the kid smirked. “Aren’t too many folks live in a place like this, use to be a mining town I’ll bet but the mine must have gone dry, no mine, no miners.”

“I thought you lived here?”

“No I’m just visiting, I live in the next town over, it’s close enough so I can walk and see the shows twice.”

“You really like that stuff huh?”

“I mean, yeah, what else is there?”

“Huh, I never really thought about it that way”

“This world is nothing but suffering and blood and misery but- I dunno. I go in that big tent and it starts to feel like it’s not real. Like it’s all just one big show and we’re just performers and death is just a game we all play- there’s just something about that you know?”

The clown groaned as he turned over “You might be right”.

The kid smiled as he looked at the back of the clowns head and then he saw the scratches on his back. “You know you should really get those looked at, they might be infected.”

“Ah I dated a chick with long nails once, I’ll be fine.”

“I dunno-“ Donny was cut off by a loud whirring noise and he turned to see the door shaking. A small blade sawing through the door launching wood chips and dust into the room.

“Goddamit!” Pookie yelled as he reached for the sword resting against the wall next to the bed. “People are trying to sleep in here” He shouted as he quickly unsheathed his sword letting out that mocking laughter.

The saw cut a precise square out of the door. Turkey then retracted the blade slowly allowing the square piece of door to fall away replacing it with his masked face.

“Heeeerrr-“ Turkey was cut off as Pookie, frustrated just turned the blade over in his hand and launched the sword like a spear through the door. Pinning Turkey in place, the blade still laughing. He then rolled over and slept the rest of the night.

–

In the morning he woke to birds cawing outside, the sky was a bruised putrid orange. Pookie felt somewhat rested although he hurt in numerous places, more numerous to count. He got out of bed drowsily, he picked up his sword sheathe puzzled by it’s lack of a sword and looking out the window. Seeing the streets covered in debris like a hurricane passed through. He slipped on a patch of almost congealed blood on the floor as he stumbled towards the door. Confronted by the Turkey mask through the square porthole and the silly face of his sword pommel staring back at him.

He shrugged and pulled the sword out of the door resulting in a loud thudding noise as Turkey’s body hit the ground. He looked over the blade before tutting and wiping it on his pants and sliding it back in his sheathe. He yawned opened the door and stepped over Turkey’s body going down for breakfast.

Donny waved as he sat waiting in the booth one to the right of the one he was sitting in the other day.

The pool players were gone and only the old coots remained still playing their game.

“Morning” he croaked.

Pookie just winced holding his head in a freshly bandaged palm as he sat his sword down next to him in the booth.

“Long night?”

“Vivid dreams”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Like a baby”

“You should thank Ethel, she came in and treated the scratches on your back, your hand too. She was even more annoyed when you didn’t scream after she poured grain alcohol on them. Didn’t even wake you.”

“I’m a real deep sleeper” Pookie reached down to feel the plasters and ointments on his back. He turned over to the bar where the old woman was grimacing and polishing bar glass.

“Err- thanks – Ethel.”

She just grunted back angrily and pretended the glass she was vigorously rubbing was a clown’s face.

Pookie sighed leaning back on his seat “I need to get out of this town” He winced as he put pressure on the cuts. His side too was still giving him trouble.

“You can come back with me, my town is ok, I mean you haven’t trashed it yet” He laughed.

“Is it far?”

“Nah, just gotta go over a gorge, but it’s no big deal, I do it all the time.”

“Hmm”

Ethel interrupted them by throwing down two plates of eggs down on the table and storming off.

“I paid up for everything so we can head out as soon as you finish breakfast- boy my friends won’t believe this, I’ll be the coolest kid for miles” He smirked.

“THE CLOWN THAT CALLS HIMSELF POOKIE!” A booming voice shouted. “I’M GIVING YOU TEN SECONDS TO COME OUT AND FACE ME”

“-OR ELSE WHAT?” Pookie shouted back.

“Hmm” Cardinal thought about it for a minute before dropping his chain sickle to the floor. He started to spin it over his head like a lasoo and then threw it through the window. Hooking Ethel through the throat before yanking her out of the window like a ragdoll.

“TEN- NINE – EIGHT- screw it!” He started to spin the chain over his head faster and faster until it was spinning like a helicopter blade or a giant blender. He started to throw it and pull chunks out of the building, first collapsing the porch with a crashing snapping noise. He seemed intent on pulling the building down on top of Pookie. The chain whipped past the bar like the tentacle of a giant squid smashing all the liquor bottles and the lamp that was on the side igniting it instantly.

“We gotta get outta here” The kid said.

“Nah, I was gonna get out a packet of wienies”

“Wienies?”

There was a loud banging outside like a crash of thunder and an old man was standing behind the man in the bird mask.

“We’ve got a deal with you folks, we give ya food, our women, our kids, in return you leave us alone. – that’s the deal” The old man was thin and bowed and had a heavy looking sheriff badge pinned to a plaid shirt.

Cardinal turned and without saying anything he brought the chain down and cut the sheriff in half right down the centre.

“No!” Another voice said. “You didn’t have to kill him!”

The deputy ran to the sheriff’s body, tears in his eyes. “He was just a silly old man, you didn’t have to kill him.”

Cardinal stepped forward and said nothing. “He was your friend?”

“He was my uncle” The deputy said as he pointed the gun at Cardinal still on his knees, still with tears in his eyes.

“I see- “ Cardinal launched the chain at the deputy, it snaked and wrapped around his forearm yanking the gun loose pulling him forward. He pulled the chain back and forth yanking the deputy around by his arm. Painfully punctuating every turn with a bone cracking sound and a pained yelping from the young lad.

“But I did have to kill him, just as I have to kill you. We are all born into this world with a singular purpose and once we find it, we have no choice but to carry it out until our end.”

He yanked him forward and he fell into the dry dusty top soil, tears streaming down his face “Why? Why do we have to suffer, for that goddamn clown? Just kill him and get out of here and never come back!”

“Why do you have to suffer? Because you exist, you were born to suffer. If I did not make you suffer you would make yourself suffer, drink or bore yourself to death, is it any better than dying here in the dirt like this? Would you prefer he died of old age alone with shit in his trousers barely conscious?”

“Honk honk” A voice above them said.

Cardinal laughed and covered his eyes with his hand to look up at Pookie with the sun behind him standing on the roof of the burning building.

“I was wondering when you would make your grand entrance- you’ve done well up to now, you gave my comrades good deaths and I thank you for that. Shall we get on with it?”

“Get on with what?”

“Your judgement”

“My- “ Pookie shit a brick as the burning saloon started to collapse under him and he stumbled to tactically fall off the building landing on his arse. He got up and rubbed his bottom. “I meant to do that”.

“Pookie the clown! You have been found guilty of killing your master Chuckles the clown lord, do you accept judgement?”

“I- I mean- you weren’t there!”

“Yes or no!

“No!- fuck no!- I didn’t mean to- it was an accident!”

“There are no accidents, the chain of fate is one unbroken- err chain” A moment passed.

There was another thunder crack and something heavy hit Cardinal in the shoulder and there was a light puff of blood.

He turned and yanked the chain tossing the deputy against the wall, his body going limp and the gun dropping by his head.

Before he could turn Pookie pulled the cord and let out that ridiculous whirring kazoo noise. With one hand on the handle as a counter weight and his other hand pulling. The blade shot out at an incredible speed and Pookie cut Cardinal across his back.

Cardinal span and tossed the chain around Pookie’s sword arm flipping him over his shoulder. The sickle came down in Cardinal’s hand and he planted it right next to Pookie’s head missing his ear by a hair as he rolled.

“You can’t fight your destiny, you can’t stand against the caravan. They’ll kill you and everyone that ever laid eyes on you!”

“What’s so special about me?”

“Nothing- nothing at all” He threw the sickle at Pookie hungering for his death but the sickle stopped short and hooked into the ground. “What?”

Cardinal turned to see his chain was hung up on Pookie’s scabbard which was stuck in the ground. “How annoying!” He quickly unlooped the chain and turned to see that Pookie was gone “Huh?”

“Those masks don’t give you a lot of peripheral vision huh?” He said right next to him.

“Eh?”

Pookie slashed him across the chest and once more downward toward the groin and Cardinal fell to his knees.

“They look cool though”. He said walking towards his back as he knelt.

“Thanks” Was the last word Cardinal said before Pookie cut his head off with one quick strike.

–

A couple of hours later Pookie lead by Donny wearing his travelling gear which consisted of a wide brim straw hat. A long segmented hiking stick and galoshes to the gorge he spoke of which was crossable via a sad looking rope bridge.

“Cool huh? This would be like an awesome spot for a final boss battle” The kid forshadowed.

“Yup” Pookie’s face looked long and drawn starring at the old bridge hanging over the wide gorge. A torrent of dirty irradiated water flowing beneath it.

The kid smiled “Don’t worry about it, I’ll cross first, show you it’s safe.” He took a step forward then turned back and laughed. “Besides you fall in there you’ll probably come out with super powers or something!”

“Or an extra toe”.

“I’d rather have a spare than missing one.” He called over his shoulder as he slowly traversed the swaying rope bridge carefully holding on to either side of the fraying ropes. He made it across dismounted with a little hop as if he expected applause.

“Your turn” he shouted playfully.

Pookie hiked up his baggy pants, his sword bobbing up and down as he cautiously took his first step onto the bridge.

The bridge reluctantly took the clown’s weight moaning and creaking as he edged his way gingerly across.

It was only when he made it about halfway across before he heard a hideous snapping cracking noise and he felt the boards shifting under his feet. He struggled to get his balance as the bridge started to collapse the parts breaking away like falling leaves.

The only part that remained was a single piece of rope connecting one end of gorge to the other that Pookie precariously balanced on. Shifting his weight back and forth wobbling in and out trying to stay upright.

“I guess I underestimated you” A voice said.

Pookie turned to see Donny kicking his galoshes off as he expertly mounted the tight rope. His bare feet clinging to it tightly like another set of hands. He walked along the rope with ease, like it wasn’t even there, his walking cane held out in front of him for balance.

“I was sure you’d be washed up by now” Donny smiled as he cast a glance at the toxic rapids below.

“Who are you?”

The kid grinned “Donald Duck” He said as he slid the Duck mask over his emotionless waxy face.

He quickly flicked his cane like a switchblade and a long spear point flipped out of it. “My friends call me ‘Canard’”

–

Read the rest here.
3 Ring Samurai

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

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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Gage Chapter 6 ‘Leaders of Men’

Ok so I just went ahead and made a spot for 3 Ring on my inkitt page, gave it a little cover and a blurb and all that good stuff so you can go ahead and check that out and give it a little read and review and a little kissy and a cuddle if you’d kindly follow this link good karma will come to you in the form of hot topic gift baskets filled with cancer cells harvested from infected rhesus monkeys. So go do that.

The Man with the Laughing Sword.

So what’s new? Well I finished the witcher book and thought it was ok, although the ending was a little creepy and the story is just sort of thrown together, it has no cohesion, there isn’t really a beginning middle or end, it’s just loosely connected stories and then it details how Yennifer and Geralt met and fall in loves, spoilers he fucking wishing on a Genie to force her to be in love with him haha. I’m not even kidding. This was sort of talked about in the Witcher 3 but I didn’t really put a lot of thought into it because I hadn’t read the books at that point but it puts a lot of stuff from the games in context and just adds this little creep factor to the whole thing.

And I totally get the whole ‘Team Triss vs Team Yen’ thing now because although I haven’t read the other books yet I’m guessing Triss actually loves Geralt and isn’t brainwashed by a fucking magic lamp and probably also wasn’t an ugly hunchback who used magic to be beautiful, at least I think that’s what she was.

I really thought reading the books would make me like Yen and Triss more but Yen is pretty much a thot and an asshole from the moment you meet her until they fall in love and it’s not much different in the game. I got to the bit where he wishes she falls in love with him and I was like ‘y tho?’. He literally just met her and she was in another man’s bed and she was nothing but rude and conniving and literally mind controls him to do her dirty work potentially putting his life at risk but this somehow endears him to her.
I didn’t get that, specifically considering he literally murdered a woman in the first part of the book for attempting to do the same thing after fucking her.
It just didn’t make any sense and honestly I didn’t give a shit in the games when both Triss and Yen snubbed me for fucking around with them both. I didn’t care but having read this I’m gonna be in camp Triss until she annoys me in the later books haha. The main thing that put me off of her in the game is just her annoying accent.
Don’t you just fucking hate it in fantasy games where there’s that character that just has this grating overt american accent in a game set in some mythical universe. It just completely breaks immersion for me to hear people talk like that. I become so aware I’m watching a game cutscene or a tv show or whatever.
Everyone in fantasy should have english accents or some variant on that like irish or scottish or welsh, something like that. Geralt is an exception because his voice is just dank the way it is boi.
Geralt’s is more subtle, Triss sounds like a new yorker ordering a bagel. Just annoys me.
Honestly I wouldn’t have begrudged a game like Kingdom come being all in Czech with english subtitles, not that that game needed to be more immersive but that extra level of passion of the christ immersion could be cool and I might see on my next playthrough if I can set that up.

I will definitely be reading the next book though because the action and the writing is perfect inspiration for my fantasy book I’m planning and 3 ring and I enjoyed it despite the fact it didn’t make much sense.

Anyway can’t stay long, could waffle on indefinitely, I need to do more proofreading for 3 ring so I must dash.

See you…

~

He couldn’t say how long he waited or if he even slept like that. Days could have passed, weeks of waiting. Waiting for what? A sign? God to reach a hand down? A white winged horse? Maybe he was waiting to die.

Gage couldn’t say until he saw it and he eventually did. It came up as a dot on the horizon getting ever close until it took the shape of a group of men. As they got closer to the whorehouse they waved at Gage seeing him sitting on the stoop in his rocking chair. He just nodded and watched them come. There were about five of them on horseback leading a sixth on a rope.

Eventually they stopped their horses in front of the stoop and he could get a good look at them with the gun still on his lap

They were relatively young but looked capable and had a wry innocence about them as if they were all farm boys fresh from the tit.

Gage offered them a greeting and they returned it cordially and smiled although he could tell they held a heavy countenance.

“Good evening mister.” One of the young lads said as he approached with a wary smile on his face. He squinted with the sun in his eyes, lighting up boyish freckles on a ruddy irish face. “You wouldn’t happen to know the way into town would ya?” The boy asked earnestly like a child would. But he was tall for a boy and wore a man’s duster and stood as one and was broad with a light strawberry blonde hair and stubble on his chin. Loose springy hair on his head.

Gage shook his head.

“Oh that’s too bad” The young lad said sighing and stopping to look around. “Ya see, we was transporting a head’a cattle up from Bronson when this gang of escaped- err – you know. Them Kafta folk.” He sucked his teeth reluctant even to talk about it sighing heavily as if he were more disappointed than mad, as if it were his fault somehow. ”Well they robbed us sir, kilt one of us, lad by the name of O’Hare just cut him down like a beast.” He swallowed remembering it. “Butchered him like a hog for slaughter.” His eyes got narrow as he realised that he was probably closer to the truth than he realised. Lugs weren’t too choosey about the source of their food, we were different animals to them entirely of course. “They took as much cattle as they could and the rest stampeded off a cliff.” He spat on the ground. “But you see they left this one behind.” He gestured over to the tied up lugger, a smaller scrawny one. The runt of the litter certainly but no less dangerous. It was dressed as something like a plainsman or a farmer in a light coloured smock that was torn and dirty on bare feet. Although his kind rarely wore shoes and usually had no need of them as their feet were ususally clawed and toughened like the feet of a dog or cat. “One of the little ones and well sir, we’re planning on taking him into town to face justice there”. He paused and cleared his throat “We thought if we couldn’t get the cattle back we could at least see this done and go home with our heads held high.” The young lad smacked his lips and said “Who knows, he might even have a bounty on his head”.

“Why bother?” Gage scoffed. There was something Gage respected even in his mockery. Something only in men and only then of a certain kind, a sense of duty, even misplaced, a sense of making things right that only existed in men. Despite how bastardised this sense of honor was by a system that had learned to manipulate and putrefy it. He could still respect that but not in abstract. There was no duty to ideals or concepts or company only in blood and the soil it fell on, only that mattered. For the ideas could be soiled and stolen and changed ever so slightly as to flip them entirely.

The ideals could be and more than likely were based on lies. The concepts half baked drivel formed from the minds of men never to spill blood except with a pen. But the blood and the soil had been there much longer and would remain on when all the high minded ideals were dust and buried in rubble.

“Sir?”

“I have a rope here”

“Erm, well” The young lad dithered earnestly. “Wouldn’t it be better just to take him into town Sir?”

Gage knew that taking him into town was a waste of time, they’d take one look at the little beast and start blaming everyone but him. To the state the luggers were a class of retarded children incapable of being responsible for their own actions. And any violence they commited was the act of a mislead minor. And any violence enacted upon them was the act of a savage monster to be scourned and derided and spat upon in the streets. The state would bring down some Cyclon lawyer or magistrate to blame men for making him work, oppressing him somehow. There had to be some way his actions weren’t a product of his own nature as nature was something the Cyclon abhorred in all forms. The idea to them of creatures having a nature was almost like a challenge to them, something to be tested and broken and moulded and changed.

The human officials would just ring their hands and differ to someone else too afraid to even make comment on it. They’d think about their little wives and children and their mistresses before saying anything that could put that in danger. A danger that was very real. Such controversies erupting from the most benale of mistakes or misteps or resistance. Just some loose tongued person taking for granted that they’d grown accustomed to living in a ‘free’ country. And could say whatever they liked were of course layed low. As all free men would be in turn until they were all gone. It was only that the land was so big and the list so long that they could grow to doubt that they would be next although not next as they were waiting in a queue.

They’d say it wasn’t the lugs own beast nature but it was the speciesism and bigotry men had shown the lug. This forced him to become the wild animal he was always meant to be. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around. No that would make sense, but that’s what the cyclone did. They made up down, left right and it worked, if it didn’t it confused people long enough that it didn’t matter if they realised they’d been had, it was already done. They’d been so skilled at it they’d completely flipped the moral teachings we had had only twenty years prior. Without our even noticing it as it had been done so gradually and enacted so henpeckingly.

We didn’t ask for these beasts in our land and we could’ve built our tracks without them and been better for it. It was the Cyclon that brought them here from some different world, or maybe they made them who knows. It was them that wanted them here because they were cheap and dumb and easily controlled. And if ever something went wrong it would never be them caught in the jaws of the monster. It’d always be some human dolt who would get the axe and if he was unlucky enough to live, the hammer would come down if he ever spoke up. He’d be called every name in the book, the names that stick and he’d never work again.

There was a pause as the wind blew and the rocking chair creaked.

“Hey wait a minute” Another lad from behind said. “We can’t just kill him without a trial, that’s speciesist.” The boy looked older than the rest and had dark curly hair with freckles on his cheeks and dark beady eyes. “We gotta take him to town.” the kid protested. Something told Gage it was this kid’s idea to take him to town in the first place. Overriding the natural recourse which would have been to bash the beasts head in with a rock on the spot. The Cyclon loved rules, they loved codes and dictums because they were always for everyone else to follow but them.

There was another silence and blowing wind and they knew what justice called for and since they couldn’t do it right now the one beast would have to do.

Gage looked at the sorry thing, it was younger but given a year or two and it would be just as deadly as the others. It had an arrogant look about it. It knew it was beaten and looked sorry but it was sorry it had been caught, not sorry about any crime it had done. The luggers never could feel sorry for crimes against humans because in their minds they were justified. They were owed whatever they stole for some past grievance told to them by the Cyclon. Every killing of a human was a revenge for some long gone gripe that may or not have happened. The Cyclon would have them believe that humans and Cyclon were one and the same and it was men that had enslaved them. There was no subtlety nor a mind capable of distinguishing it in a lug.

“If you even think of hurting this fella I’ll run into town myself and tell them everything” The nasally voiced kid with the curly mop of hair said. “He has rights, they’re thinking feeling people just like us, they’re our equals and we have to treat them that way or-“. He got off his horse to get around to the front so they could see his hand wringing and gesticulation like he was making some address to public office. Taking a few steps onto the porch and talking down to them like some cutpurse evangelist. “It goes against the very nature of this countries founding to kill this free man without a trial, we’re a nation of immigrants bound by our principles.”

The other boys made faces like they were swallowing some harsh uneccessary medicine, a lie forced down with teaspoons of sugar and grit. Their faces contorting as this little rat told them that this monster was their equal. When every sense told them that it was a monster that didn’t belong on this earth. A mix of shame and revulsion at the thought of swallowing this lie and someday even believing it themselves. And forcing it down the throats of others made them sick.

Gage snorted.

The boys looked at him with astonishment. The little rat boy had said all the magic words that made normal men cringe and prostrate themselves. To make the strong bow and scrape, make even their own fathers become humble and small and itinerant but not Gage. To Gage they were just words.

The little rat boy squinted angrily almost in tears and said “I’ll report you all and you’ll be the ones that hang!” He snuffled and continued pointing at them in turn before waving his arrogant little hand in Gage’s face as he sat in his rocking chair. Then turning around to address the boys once again as he could feel some movement amongst them “My father-“

Gage had heard enough and interrupted his feeble chatter with a blast from his shotgun into the boys side knocking him headlong into the dirt. He fell like the devil himself yanked the little snots chain. Hitting so hard he broke apart like a child’s doll wrapped in meat into squishy flabby pieces.

The gun smoked under his blanket as the boys shook with fear but only for a moment. Because people only feared what they didn’t understand, and this made some sense to them instantly and the gun was only a surprise. They’d probably never even seen one this close before. There was a time when farm boys like this would be steeped in guns right out of the womb. They’d have been bouncing a shotgun on their knee while their father bounced them on his. But years of gun confiscations had left them little more than babes in the woods. Victims waiting to be robbed and murdered by monsters that roamed free, bound by no such laws. It was lucky they’d only lost one and hadn’t been raped for their troubles.

But there was some spark of boyish wonder in them looking at the gun and what it had wrought, a terrible wonder.

Gage stood throwing the blanket off his lap and said “I’ll get the rope.”

There was a little grumbling from the boy who had spoken to him first. He later introduced himself as ‘Jameson’ his partners were ’O’Shaunnesy, McDonald and Clarke the dead one’s name was Miller.

Gage instructed them to scoop up what was left of Miller and they dug another shallow grave. Not too far from the mass grave he just dug and laid his bones down there to be dug up by the coyotes and gnawed on.

It was getting later and there was some light protest. Worrying as they were about sanctions from the state. Gage assured them as he held the large bible that smelled vaguely of piss. That there was no greater sanctions than in this book if they allowed the thing to live.

There was some sense in that, although they swallowed with fear all the same. Knowing what he said was truth that spoke to their ancient past conflicting with the ‘truth’ of their modern age. It was a practice these country boys were slow to get used to and that’s why Gage knew he could use them. The age they lived in devoted itself to indoctrinating it’s young into thinking the thoughts in their heads weren’t their own property. And their natural reactions of disgust at the world around them was a result of their bigotry and small mindedness. And they had best to train themselves to be more tolerant of an alien race raping their planet. They were taught to suppress their instinctual reactions. Encouraged instead that they should instead try to befriend the monsters. If only they treated these creatures with love and kindness maybe then they’d decide not to rape and murder and see them as a source of food. To just keep putting your head in the mouth of the alligator hoping this was the time it would see sense and not bite. Failing in every sense that there was no sense to be had and in fact biting was its very nature, a sense of it’s own.

But instead of destroying the alligator or living in separation from it. Humans were forced to share a bed with it by people that would likely never even be in the same area code as the real throng. Sure the Cyclon had them as bodyguards but they made sure to pick the best most plyable subjects. Putting them through the most rigorous of screening and genetic manipulation. Further inhibiting them from turning against their masters with surgical implants in the brain.

They would never see the consequences of their actions and would never even care. For the life of one of their kind was considered worth a thousand of ours but they would never say that although we all knew it, deep down. No to the masses we were all brothers, all equals. Living together in perfect harmony towards a better future and this was the great lie that was repeated often.

The boys off their horses were all tall to average height. Strapping lads raised on beef and cows milk. Not like those scrawny city folk who were barely up to a cows eye and ate nothing but vegetables and bread from Europa.

They were strong lads raised for work, probably moving hay bales from an early age. Grown hardy and earnest from years of getting up early to milk cows and feed chickens.

Now seeking some kind of adventure or travel had taken to moving the cattle their parents had raised. The next generation of farmers and cattle folk that would keep the country crawling along on its belly. It had puzzled Gage to think how a snivelling brat like Miller had snuck into their group.

“His pa owns the bank, he’s the one got a lean on our farm, wanted us to bring him along to toughen him up, I don’t know what to tell him”. Jameson sighed as he looked at the poultry sum of dirt and rocks that made up Miller’s grave.

Gage breathed heavy with the bible clasped in both hands at his waist. He watched as O’Shaugnesy and Clarke put the noose around the young lug’s neck as he was seated on the back of Jameson’s horse. They tied the rope off on a branch and Gage opened the bible and started to read from it.

*Editors note, this part seems unlikely and inaccurate as all reports of the man known as Phineas Gage state that he was in fact illiterate. A common state of affairs for men of his time. The ability to read and write was not something commonly attained by workmen of his station and reserved mostly for the elites of the city. The aliens of which used a completely alien alphabet no human was allowed to learn.

He read a passage about justice and fairness and carrying a sword and they all listened with an earnest wonderment. As they’d most likely never heard anything like it in their whole lives nor would they be able to read and write. Their heads dipped as if they were at a funeral. The beast just howled like a kicked dog without any decorum or respect for the words at all. Just a baying disgusting cloying and begging and pleading for life when it so easily took it from others. Something in it knew it could try to appeal to us, to the mercy it had abused it’s entire life. The trusting good nature of man that had allowed these alien forces to usurp them.

Even the concept of the good neighbour in the book he held was twisted and used to promote their agenda of tolerating the intolerable. Taking in those that would eventually destroy us. As if the book Gage held sewed the seeds of extinction for it’s own people in it’s pages. As if man were not meant to live at all but to be used and thrown away.

It continued to howl over the words. It so desperately wanted to continue living but had no idea why further than the animal need to continue to exist and propagate its dna. What could this thing do if it were allowed to live but eat and consume? Could it write a sonnet or paint a painting or create a house. Gage could do none of those things either but the potential was there, this thing could not even dream of that like a wolf could not be a pig.

It’s existence was momentary, a link of moment to moment pleasures punctuated by the pain of others. It couldn’t see other things anymore that it could conceptualise of it’s own existence. It just was. No reason to wonder why. It didn’t have the pressure put on it to act a certain way as men did, or to aspire to anything greater than being a beast. Although in the media the few specimens that were of note to be more than most of the lot were lauded and held up as an example to the mean. As if this one well behaved dog was an apt representation of the mass of rabid wolves that made up their ranks. We were supposed to ignore the murders and the rapes that had become all too common in this border towns and even in the major cities. Although funnily enough they were always one sided as for most humans it was impossible tell the Kafta women from the men. No one had ever heard of a man raping one of their women or even trying. If it had happened though it would have been all over the news and you’d have probably heard of it all the way in Europa. They’d probably be making plays about it over there, operas and poems, expressing their deep sadness and empathy for the poor monster.

“No kill” It sputtered gutterily. “Please, no kill”.

The young men looked at eachother and felt some twinge of regret and revulsion.

The sun was setting and it cast amber streaks along the sky, it was a warm afternoon with a cool quiet breeze.

The boys froze and couldn’t say anything, “Amen” Gage said as he clapped the bible shut. He slapped the horse on it’s hind quarters and it started to kick and try to take off. With a yank it didn’t move and for a moment they were all puzzled as to why it didn’t drop it’s rider and let him dangle with a crack and quick pop as they’d hoped. Ending the poor creatures suffering as quickly and as humanely as possible. The same sadly couldn’t be said for the boy O’Hare. They mentioned he lay dying with his guts hanging open in the dust as they ate and bit at him while he still lived. The screams of which they would never forget.

They’d only managed to get away because the beasts were much more interested in the cattle than they were the men. Attacking O’Hare just because he yelled at them.

At once Gage knew the problem, the vile thing was holding with his feet to the stirrups. Got them loops around his clawed toes keeping the horse in place with the strength of his legs. The will to continue existing had conjured up some monstrous feet of strength.

But as Gage got closer he saw the truth of it under lamplight. The monster had buried it toe claws into side of the horse and it was bleeding horribly but unable to move. Pinned and being slowly disembowelled by the sharp claws of the lug on top.

Gage spat with rage and took out his shotgun again and painted the tree with the innards of the beast, the barrel smoking angrily.

The thing didn’t even have the decency to die like a man, instead choosing to be cut down like a beast taking the life of an innocent animal with it. Gage was disgusted in himself in even considering involving the bible and giving the thing an actual service. It was just a savage animal and needed to be put down as one and not thought of further.

The boys were in a state of shock, especially Jameson as he undoubtledly had a connection with that horse, he probably raised it himself from a fowl. Tears formed at the tender lads cheeks and his mouth quivered with rage and sadness but lacking any real direction. A deep anguished sigh came out of his mouth and nothing more, he didn’t know what to do about it.

The lug was cut in half at the waist and swung against the tree with the force of the blast, it’s top half and it’s arms swinging loosely.

“Cut that thing down” Gage spat.

The boys gathered themselves and did as they were told, Clark and O’Shaunnesy cut it down as Jameson patted the maine of his horse which he had named ‘Molly’.

As he mourned Molly the others dropped what was rest of the lug on the ground and then they went about constructing a fire as Gage instructed. They gathered up pieces of the broken furniture and they constructed a pire to burn the body of the lug and the horse.

The boys stood around it looking sullenly into the flames for a while. Gage sat in his rocking chair waiting for the flame to die.

Something had changed in the boys but they didn’t really know what. Only that the world they came from wouldn’t have them back after this and they wouldn’t want it to.

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