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Gage Chapter 3 ‘Colony’

Ok ok, in pretty good spirits today, although in the good spirits where I can’t tell my head from my arse and I really don’t know what to do with myself but it’s something.

I got the first nice little chunk of Diana After Dark, might be sticking with that name after all, I dunno, more sleep needs to be on it. And I’m kind of in a tizzy over what to do now, I’ve started reading the witcher books and I was hoping to be struck by some inspiration lightning and it isn’t even raining yet.

Nevertheless I finished the first go around of a plan for the second Diana book and I was triffling with ‘Delta Gamma Di’ or ‘Delta Gamma Diana’ because it’s all about her going through college and joining a sorority to track down a killer that’s using their front lawn as his own personal stage for displaying some cut on girls on. But now I might go with ‘Dearly beloved Diana’ or something like that.

As I said more sleep is needed on top of that, but how much sleep can a man have when there is work to be done.

Work time which I spent playing kingdom come deliverance as it teases me with a penultimate chapter only to throw a fetch quest at me, a series of boring fetch quests right before a big battle. I mean wtf.

I do love the game though, this just feels like padding, which tbf is understandable because it’s followed by two huge battles in a row and then a stealth sequence which had a mandatory failed state which pissed me off. I made a stealth character and then they give you a stealth sequence where your failure is unavoidable. Just fu game haha.

Nah but it’s all good, it’s still an awesome game, I love it and shall review it but I fear my passion won’t be matched by my hateful reviews, I tend not to want to analyse things I like and feel incapable of not analysing things I hate haha.

So I’ve got a lot to be getting on with, first and foremost I need to start putting a package to try and sell Diana to a literary agent and I need to stop dreaming about writing and get back to actually doing it. I think I might just go back to that lovecraft piece I dropped just to keep sharp until I get hit good and hard by a lightning bolt.

That’s about all.

See you…

~

*For the purposes of this record and continuity a transcript from Dram Johanessen (a close personal friend of Gage in his early life) original diary has been added to the text as a first hand account of events and Fords account has been removed as it was noted to be riddled with contradictions, over-exageration and outright fabrications.

September 13, 1848

Oh god’s it’s horrible, I saw it happen but I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe she’d actually do it. As soon as that tall man walked away and got into his carriage I went to his side sure he was dead, his face, oh god his face. I prayed he was dead, his suffering could no doubt be immense.

But by god he lived, his breath in his chest. His heart beating like a steam engine’s hitting the tracks, his will to live reaching up out of hades to grab at life jealously. With the use of Madame Souchang’s carriage we got him into town as quickly as we could. He reacted to no stimuli the entire hours journey and I was sure he couldn’t hold on much longer.

But there was that steady breathing through the hole in his face. There was very little blood, the hole it seemed was quarterized at the moment of penetration. But who was to tell the extent of the damage it had done to the vital organ inside. He’ll certainly never see again out of his left eye, as far as I can tell it’s completely destroyed, oh god. My stomached kicked everytime I looked under the sheet we put over him.

Madame Souchang was inconsolable, she acted almost like it was her brother that ordered it. She claimed no responsibility and was reticent to speak at all about what transpired. Fearing my own head I pressed no further and thanked her for the use of her for the gracious use of her personal motor carriage.

We got into the town of Porterville proper. Which was at the time was simply two rows of wooden victorian style building facing eachother with a well trod dirt road inbetween them.

The sawbones of the town had a practice next to a large furniture store and a grocery on the otherside. It had big protruding castle like struts with what I could only assume were weathervains attached to them. Which to me reminded of something of those books written by Shelley of the monstrous man that came back to life through arcane scientific practice.

Me and a few other of the men took him down from the motor carriage as easy as we could. The large man we had come to call friend who was once as strong and tall as an oak was layed low and meak and lifeless as we carried him through the thin wooden door of the doctors practice.

The inside of the doctors smelled stale, the wooden floor was stained with splotches of god knows what. The doctor was sat with his back to the door at a small writing desk, we set Gage down on a large wooden inspection table of which he barely fit on with his legs dangling off the edge.

The nurse was hanging off the edge of the desk smiling at us as we came in.

The doctor took one look at him as we took the sheet off and his eyes got very narrow and curious his nurse let out a silent scream holding her mouth open. Covering it with her hands screaming quietly with her eyes and then rushing out of the room bounding clumsily into a cabinet stocked with oddly shaped bottles of medicine. Almost knocking it over as she evacuated the room with a loud sound of stair foot falls and doors slamming.

The doctor was a short squat man with bared hairy fore arms under a grey shirt with rolled up sleeves, all of the hair of which was white and grey. A stern appearance with a pair of circular glasses placed at a peak of a receding hairline. He looked confused and angry at first and said something like; “What you bringing that here for? The morticians the street over! Get!”

After we’d assured him the man was still alive (which took some doing) he told us to lift him up on the table as if to humor us. He must have thought we were mad or stupid and if I were him I wouldn’t believe it either for at the time it looked like a train had run over his head or a horse had stomped it in.

He took out his instruments with a sigh and an aggrieved air of wasted time and started to poke and prod at him and then was seemingly struck by a curious itch. He reached back to get his stethoscope which he was about to warm but then thought better of it and placed it on the man’s chest after ripping his shirt. He took it away and his face turned as white as a sheet and he mumbled something the exact line from Shelley’s story, or so as my memory recreates it.

“He’s alive!”

After he’d got over the initial shock of it he started to lick his lips pointing and motioning hurriedly at a drawer one of the men was next to. A young man by the name of Gotfried.

“Get a bottle!” He instructed.

The young lad reached inside and pulled out a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and brought it over. The doctor wrenched it out of his hands like it was the last drop of water on earth and took a long drink and then slammed it down on the table. After he’d sighed and belched a few times he wiped his brow and went about collecting together knives various saws and articles I couldn’t quite identify as a layman. And he yelled for his nurse who was still in the back vomiting.

Eventually she came out and took one look at his face again and rushed back upstairs.

I looked at all the knives and saws that he collected in a metal dish. He coughed and then looked around for something before letting out an aggrieved sigh and bathing the instruments in a splash of his bourbon.

I asked him what they were for and he said almost with an air of incredulity “Surgery, he needs surgery.”

I was confused, not a man of great learning especially not of the medical variety so I asked again, “surgery for what?” thinking he didn’t need to lose more of himself and then it struck me as he said it.

“Goddamit can’t you see the thing sticking out of his damn head?”

Oh god his head was such a mess it didn’t even cross my mind that the rivet would still be lodged in his skull. It was shot right up under his chin and the spike of it was coming right out of the top of his head through his left side and out the top right out of the front like a horn.

“Oh god” I said.

The surgery took hours, but it felt like days, we sat in the doctors while Gage was worked on without anaesthetic in the surgery in the back room.

We didn’t see any of it but we could hear it, the sawing and the smell of hot bone. The shock of it sent some of the men outside and some who were lodged in town decided to head back and rest leaving just me and Gotfried.

20th September 1848

It was a week before he opened his eye again and I would swear in front of a jury it was not the same man. It was like someone had plucked our Phineas Gage and replaced him with another man entirely. He’d been sleeping, fed only liquid solutions administered to him by the nurse. His face mercifully bandaged. Unmercifully the doctor was unable to remove the rod itself. Fear further damage remove the thing might cause. And the black metal horn tip could be spied sticking out of the bandage.

Besides all that there was something about him that was just not right. The way he spoke, the way he looked at me. I’d never known of him to have a temper or a violent streak but he brought one back with him, from wherever he’d been. He snapped at anyone and everyone and I feared that if he were not unable to move he might do injury to himself and others.

I was almost hesitant to wire his wife in new Hampshire. Would it have been kinder to tell her her husband was dead than introduce her to this misshapen shadow of the man she loved. I wondered about their children, without the money he sent how would she care for them?

The doctor said the changes in mood were the result of his injuries, his brain was damaged. Specifically something about his nerves were severed he’s lost almost all sensation in his body. He can’t feel heat or cold or pain or even touch. The affects to his mood he did not further elaborate on. But it’s as if all his other non-tactile senses are heightened and his mental state is not comparable to the man we all knew.

2nd October 1848

His wife Catherine came up from new Hampshire today although I had told her to leave their children with their grandparents. The shock of seeing their father mangled like that would have been too much for them. But when she arrived Gage wouldn’t see her. He outright refused. I thought about what she would think about his face but not just that. The room he occupied had been fitted with a tubescope to keep him occupied during his long recovery but he’d smashed it almost as soon as it was installed. I’d noticed also all the newspapers I’d brought him he’d shredded. And it seemed like any knowledge of the outside world enraged him enough to put him in fits of unadulterated anger.

3rd October 1848

I put Catharine back on a train this morning, she’s a lovely woman, delicate in features and manner. It is truly saddening to see her go without meeting her goal of seeing her husband, but I honestly didn’t know what to tell her. All I could do was assure her that he would be well enough to work soon and we both hoped that once routine took hold he would return to the old Phineas Gage we once knew.

31st October 1848

After nearly two whole months of convalescence the doctor says Phineas should be well enough to continue his life and more imporantly his work. The doctor even made up for him a remarkable prosthesis to cover his scars so as not to alarm the general public. It was a piece of a light wood and some waxen substance painted and moulded to resemble a part of a mans face. He made it from a picture of Phineas we had supplied to as closely resemble his face as possible. Although minor changes had to be made, he was never a spectacle wearer but now a lensless pair was used as a frame to hook the prosthetic on so that the arms of the glasses would hook around his ears to hold it in place. To cover the horn he was instructed to wear a wide brimmed hat at all times.

The rest of the scars and missing hair could be easily covered in the same manner. It looked a lot better than I expected and from a distance you could be mistaken for thinking it was the man. But up close it gave the illusion up as the one unblinking staring glassy eye seemed to follow you around the room.

I felt for the man I truly did. It must have been even more of a crushing blow that his injuries and the time spent off work had resulted in a demotion and I had taken over his role and would do so for the foreseeable future.

Although this did not seem to anger him as much as effects of his surgery. His lack of tactile senses made it very difficult for him to complete the simple tasks I had set him. Many times he would injure himself and others and not even notice. It became very off putting for the men and resulted in vicious conflicts in which Gage was invariably the bloody victor. It was a horrifying sight, he seemed to have reverted to some earlier state of man, a vicious throw back to an earlier age.

His physical presence was also off putting yes but he also seemed to have strange new idea of life and the ruling government which was very unsettling for the men and struck up tensions between the men and the luggers.

He seemed to have gotten it into his head that there was some grand conspiracy of some sort. And that all the news was manufactured lies concocted to keep humans from rising up or some such nonsense.

15th December 1848

Unfortunately today at the behest of the company I had to let Phineas go.

The doctors had cautioned him about drink but he did not care. The great stress sent him deeper into the bottle and unfortunately I had no choice but to fire him.

It has burdened me with a heavy heart but he had become too much of a liability to keep on.

Nevertheless the company has awarded him a sizeable severance package and an early christmas bonus, although I fear he will only drink that.

I feel responsible for all of this I really do. When I told him he was to be let go he didn’t even seem angry, he almost seemed like he expected it.

A great melancholy grips me as I doubt we’ll ever meet again. I suspect he’ll return to his family in new hampshire and grow old and die a happier man now, I hope for his sake he does.

*Ford’s journal continues from here.

After that Gage fell off the face of the earth, he didn’t feel human, he wanted the earth to swallow him up.

He became a wanderer and a thief and a rogue, a bad gambler and a cheat only making enough money to keep his belly full of whiskey and his head dulled and stupid. Returning to his family would have been a lie for he did not feel like the same man. The old Gage was dead and in it’s place this man shambled on.

Sometime in the start of the new year He found himself in a small mining colony in Arkansas, in a town called Rush. They mined zinc up there, the stuff is used in certain alloys they use to make weapons for the capitol.

Needless to say it was a fairly rowdy town without a conventional form of law enforcement but people ususally kept to themselves. a It wasn’t in any great threat of bandits as zinc wasn’t high on their priorities to rob. And most of the miners money was pissed away on booze or women or just gambled.

Miners are off a disposition that any day there could be a cave in and kill them all, so they live each day as if they could be buried under rock the next.

Something Gage seemed to admire, moreover it made it easy to blend in with the revellers who on a good day couldn’t see further than their own feet. Not enough to notice a stranger with an oddly mask like face and a horn on his head.

Although on this night they were especially jovial as a recent election had taken place. A new president had been appointed, A man named Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Spanish American war. It was amusing to them as he had been somewhat of a colourful character before his presidency. Not only that but he’d riden a rising wave of anti-alien sentiment and people were sure that this would mean things would improve for their kind. To them he was the warrior messiah they had hoped to pull them out of their perdition. Although all alien media at the time had done their best to assure humans that things were better than ever for them and they were exceedingly priviledged. There had been a growing resentment formenting in the humans. As although they could fill their bellies for the most part and they were kept distracted with sportsball and a dull harmonic suggestion given off through their tubescopes. They had on an instinctual level felt control of their destinies slipping out of their hands. Sadly they were right but completely unable to understand how right they actually were. And not being smart enough or awake enough as a group to realise this it fell to petty concerns about their jobs. Replacing humans with luggers or with the coming of the industrial revolution high tech machines who would work for less. Bringing the prices down of all goods but destroying the class of people that could buy them. But it was to mask the feeling that they were no longer at home in their own world. So this election had given them hope for some kind of change and reversal of fortune for them and theirs.

The alien media had cemented this notion in them by elevating Taylor up to the level of a mustache twirling villain. A speciesist who would round up aliens and un-normals and send them to die in quarries. Bringing up the history of their supposed persecution Cyclon had underdone from the humans of the past who were to them barbaric and cruel. But this resentment the media had for him and their attempt silence him made the public clamber for him all the more to know what they were not meant to know.

But Gage could not share their optimism and joviality as to them this was a sign that the system was not corrupt. For how so could it not be a democracy if this man who the system hated could be elected to lead it? Sure that proved to them that the system was indeed impartial and this man could free them of corruption.

Gage who could see and was far more cynical and could understand. This was exactly the kind of move the system would make to assuage the fears of corruption in the populace. That this entire conflict was manufactured by the system itself. The previous eleven presidents They’d had were at least partially or ambiguously human. And each time promised the humans whatever they wanted and when their vote was assured carried on whatever policy the president before him had carried out in an unbroken chain of control.

How could there ever be a true democracy when the freedom of choice was between two alien puppets. The freedom to choose being an illusion created for this very feeling the miners were feeling now, of hope and change and a brighter future. And then within the next couple of years they’d be cursing this new president and blaming him for all the problems the system created. And then before anyone could notice they’d swap him out for someone else and the whole thing would start over again.

One thing that was key to the Cyclon agenda was that humans had a short memory and could be conditioned to forget the past. Dooming them to repeat it, allowing them to be kept in an ideological stasis. Never moving forward and always being just on the cusp of acquiring everything they wanted but never fully being able to realise or bring it into reality.

This election was different only in that it was a false triumph. A move calculated by the Cyclon to make the humans think they had beaten the system entirely by simply engaging in it. Thus deflating the rising tensions between human and aliens by making the radical human element think they’d won. At which point the majority of the useful idiots in that movement would think the fight was over and stop entirely. Leaving the more radical elements without a force behind them which meant they could be disposed of without causing too much of a fuss. The radical voices asking for changed would be exposed and defeated by their own victory. The normal people would happily put their heads back in the sand safe in the knowledge that the future for their children would be sunshine and roses from then on. Purely for their signing their name on a piece of paper.

Gage knew better than that, he knew as all men instinctually knew but had been bred to forget. That no change worth having comes without blood, torrents of blood, rivers of blood. Human and alien alike, mountains of corpses that a king would set his throne atop and then and only then would his people truly be free. Only when the system was entirely torn down and burnt to ashes and every alien and human traitor lay dead would there be hope for a brighter tomorrow. And it was this reluctance to accept this price that found Gage living like Jonah but instead of being in the belly of whale he was trapped at the bottom of a bottle.

He could not hope to see his wife and children again because he was not the same man they knew. And he would not burden them with this new terrible knowledge he had. He would forever cloister himself away in the cave of his consciousness with whatever booze he could get his hands on. For fear of what his realisations could bring about for the world and for himself and his family.

By that time booze had become his only comfort, without it he feared he might go mad. Although another man might blurt out what he had come to realise about the world he lived in, he did not. But was secure in the idea that even if he did, it would be considered the raving conspiracies of a mad drunk with a pickled brain.

Later that night he found himself in a card game with a number of these ruddy faced miners who were or at least reaching the same level of drunkiness as Gage himself. Gage was cheating, badly, but everyone at the table was too drunk and happy to notice or care.

All but one man who silently seethed under a firm cowboy hat that looked new and unused which covered most of his face. He was an odd little man with a slightly tanned aspect but with very deep blue eyes that seemed to behold everything with the most profound disdain and curiosity. Through clasped hands he rested his rounded unstubbled chin.

His manner of dress was strangely costume in it’s appearance. Resembling what a cowboy of the previous age might look like in one of the serial fictions they had in new york that cast cow chasers as these romantic figures. Killing villains and romancing farm girls in between eating lots of beans by the campfire. He wore a long black duster a white shirt with an indio looking pattern and a brown waistcoat below it with a necktie with a steerhead clasp. With his hat pulled down he smoked long black cigarillo’s that must have been imported. Nobody paid him any attention least of all Gage who was a long ways into a raging drunk almost falling over himself to spend his ill gotten winnings on more whiskey.

The man with the piercing blue eyes in the unusually tanned face that made him look like a spaniard eyed Gage vociferously. He stubbed his cigarillo out to chew a wooden toothpick in its place. Never once taking his cruel cold steely gaze off Gage who laughed and cracked up with the other drunkards happy for a fleeting moment in their meaningless existence.

After the man had lost a great deal which didn’t seem to bother him all that much. He got up from his chair and bid everyone at the table goodnight with a tip of his rigid cowboy hat before clasping his hands behind his back in an unnatural gesture and clomping his way out of the saloon.

The room went silent for a moment as they watched him go and then burst into uproarious laughter as they assumed he was out of ear shot on the otherside of the saloon door. Which to anyone but a drunken man made perfect sense.

0

Bright review (Medium level savagery)

Ok well while I try to stay active between working myself to death and recovering over the christmas period and getting ready for my trip I watched Bright on christmas day and it was alright.

Err ok well I wouldn’t even be writing this if I didn’t want to tear it apart and of course I do. I only really write about a movie if it does something so horrible it has to be recorded. Although we did watch Krampus after that and that was actually a great all round christmas movie. It looked great and was a lot of fun and had a hauntingly nice semi-happy ending. I thought it was the best movie I watched over christmas. For reference me and family, all we do over christmas is eat and drink starting as soon as we get up and watch movies christmassy or otherwise.

This year we watched Justice league (yawn), the snowman (we turned it off not even halfway through) Paddington 2 (through the magic of piracy) and Bright.

Now straight out of the gate I’m a semi-fan of Max Landis and David Ayer, that meaning I’ve enjoyed movies they’ve both done individually before. And I think I went over this in my suicide squad review, Ayer makes these tight tense little thrillers that really work and when he tries something big like with suicide squad it just gets away from him and blows up in his face.

But with Bright I thought because he wasn’t writing and directing it might be a little better, a little less scattered and since it wasn’t this huge cast of characters the narrative would have been less all over the place.

Honestly, I went into this movie ready to love it and right away I really did based on Will Smith alone really, he really carries this movie just by being Will Smith, I don’t know how else to put it. He’s just one of those guys who basically plays himself and that works and when he doesn’t a la suicide squad and after earth it kind of goes wrong.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, it’s basically lord of the rings two thousand years later. So it’s like a world where their creation myths are straight out of tolkien. So it’s modern day with faeries and elves and orcs and wizards. It’s basically end of watch meets the shire.

I honestly loved the premise, the characters were fun and funny, the action was great the world building was ok, there wasn’t really much of a story but what movie does these days?

Now for the criticism; first out the door, the racial narrative is kind of dumb honestly, I mean I like that it wasn’t too much in your face but orcs are black people I guess, but Will Smith is a black guy and there are hispanic gang members in it and centaurs that never show up and elves are basically your rich wasps/I dunno magic assassins I guess.

Other than that it’s handled ok, the problem really is with the world in general, it sets up this great big fantasy sandbox for them to play in but it doesn’t do anything with it really. You see a dragon flying over l.a and you never see it again. The whole movie is talking about the ‘dark lord’ and *spoilers* he never shows up, instead it reverts back to the standard buddy cop narrative of saving your partner from a burning building.

It just doesn’t really go anywhere or really take any risks. The reason end of watch and training day and harsh times are such gripping movies is because you realise the main character could and probably would die at the end or it could happen at any moment. But I never got that sense from this movie I knew exactly what was going to happen at the end. And if you didn’t well just fuck you haha. I mean it couldn’t be more obvious, an idiot M.Night Shymalan fan could have worked it out.

But I remember watching it and really enjoying it for the action and the one liners and Will Smith returning to his funny action stick, that was a lot of fun and I really liked the villains until I realised they were the only villains.

Because this whole time I’m watching these bad ass assassin elves tearing shit up like equilibrium or a pointy eared neo and I thought they were really cool but in the back of my mind I thought these were like enforcer villains building up to the dark lord…. who never shows up. So these villains were great as what I thought were just place holders, so I judged them as like mid level villains but then when I realised they were it and they were killed pretty easily I was like ‘Oh’.

It was just dissapointing, it builds up this great world and does all this forshadowing with Smith holding a sword and I was thinking, Will Smith is going to be sword fighting the dark lord by the end of this movie with a dragon and it’s going to be dope af but it just never happens , it just sort of fizzles out.

It has all this potentional it wasted. Basically I saw Ayer wanting to challenge himself but he didn’t rise to the challenge he just took his boiler plate movie template and added faerie tale shit. And all the time it lacks any tension because beat for beat it’s attempting to be a blockbuster and have sequels so I’m fully aware none of the main characters are allowed to die.

So all in all it was just this toothless mess of a fun movie.

After all that I would recommend this movie if you’re a Will Smith or Ayer fan and I probably will watch the sequel if and when it comes out to see if they can build on the world and actually have something interesting happen.

Seriously, why not just have the dark lord show up and kick their ass and escape. You get your ‘realistic’ ending and set it up for a sequel while having the pay off. The movie doesn’t even seem aware it blue balled us not having the dark lord show up in any form, it just ends like ‘Welp that was fun guys thanks for all that money’.

I heard there’s a sequel in the works but I don’t see why it should get one when we still haven’t gotten one for Dredd despite it holding a 78% on rotten tomatoes and this film only got a 30% but the audience seems to like it I guess, lord of the rings for people who wear their sunglasses on the back of their heads is pretty popular haha.

It’s kind of a silly tone deaf movie but it’s a fun ride, what more can you ask for these days honestly?

See you…

0

Gage Chapter One: Tupelo

And here it is, the insanity that is a steampunk western sci-fi alternative history about a dude that gets a railway spike lodged in his brain. It’s still rough as all fuck, I’ve been struggling recently with writing and my day job, I’ve just been exhausted or too scattered to do anything more productive than pick my nose and eat potatoes. So I’ve sort of just been muddling along trying to get the right amount of sleep and the right amount of food to function and sustain this odd balance of my work and personal life where I’m perpetually tired from work but also broke because I spent all my money already on airfare and a rented apartment in barbados for a week.
But I mean how can I complain, things are looking up for me in a lot of ways, got stuff to look forward to and people that love me or at the very least don’t want me dead. That’s something.
So I’m really struggling to get back into the groove of things and I probably won’t get fully back on track until sometime in January when I get back from my third trip there, must be something in the water haha. Until then don’t expect to hear too much from me because I’ll be working or generally trying not to swallow my own tongue while I play elite dangerous.
I put up the full chapter which is not something I usually do but honestly, right now I’m just like fuck inkitt, inkitt is dogshit haha. It looked nicer and there was the chance it might publish one of my books but all it puts out is slocky romance or porn books for middle age women to get moist over or even worse those fucking horrible tween novels that won’t go away written by the middle aged women who fap to the porn books haha. So now they’ve changed their review policy I just don’t really see a need to go back, I dunno, I might go back later but for now why not just keep it in house and I can shill for reviews later.
See you…
~ 
 
The following are scraps of news articles and the personal diary of one Alexander Ford a known associate and collaborator with the man known previously before the great war as Phineas Gage.
 
 
~

June 4th 1849
 
 
 
I remember I was working as a mopboy at the time in McClusky’s bar. It was in the middle of a nowhere. A border town called Tupelo. This was when I first met the man who would later be recorded in the news apparatus as a terrorist and a madman.
 
 
 
It was a fairly average late afternoon in a relatively sleepy little town all things considered. We’d heard talk of revolts and crime and violence from the rebels and real action and adventure in these parts. Mostly stories spun from wonder of the unknown. But it was rarely reported anywhere but the radial transmissions and the tubescopes placed throughout the town. But most of the time they were just playing music or displaying some kind of sports activity, or some event in the capitals. Usually award ceremonies where Cyclon dignitaries gave other Cyclon dignitaries awards for peace or love or some such thing.
 
 
 
It was before I was born that they actually came, supposedly they’d been amongst us for a long time moving around not having a home to call their own. According to the tubescope we weren’t very nice to them, hating and fearing them just because they were different so they say. And then there was a time when we, being humans, decided we wanted to kill them all. The history books didn’t really say why, but it was reckoned that we were just ruled by evil men.
 
 
 
Well after that people felt so sorry for them, using our technology and theirs we built them a home in the stars. My people felt so guilty we took them in with open arms and if we didn’t we wouldn’t even have radials or tubescopes or the sportsballs we have and we’ve lived in peace ever since then. Or so I had come to believe in my young mind at the time.
 
 
 
I’d never once questioned the way the world was, my world was what the tubescope told me it was. With it’s bright coloured and smiling faces and awards and sportsballs and dreams of a better tomorrow, love and peace. I couldn’t even conjure the words in my head to even contemplate the lingering feeling of unease until that day.
 
 
 
It was unusually hot and I remember it vividly as I write it now, despite it being almost twenty years ago. As I sit on my bunk writing this now going on possibly the last mission I will ever fly about to drop the bombs that’ll end this damn war and free my people forever. I still remember that feeling in my chest when he told his story and the look in his eye as he spoke, the look he gave me.
 
 
 
Nothing much had happened that day, just the usual morning drinkers drowning their various sorrows. There were some miners who were working up on a quarry on the ridge mining gold for shielding shuttles and circuitry. McClusky the barman was scratching his bald head and craning his neck to watch the recaps from the latest sportsball game. I remember there was a lot of controversy recently as the sportsball league had lost it’s last human player. An act was passed to allow Kaftas to play after that it was all downhill, the aliens being physically superior in everyway the human players just couldn’t compete with that and they became tokens in their own game, there only for the fans.
 
 
 
But eventually they were gotten rid of entirely and after some slight protest from the fans it went on as usual. Any hold outs were ususally shut up by someone calling them speciesest or a bigot and reminded about the constitution and meritocracy. That the aliens should replace the humans if they do a better job. They had no real argument against that, only that it was their game despite most of the owners of the teams being aliens themselves we clung to it with some ancestral memory of it being ours.
 
 
 
I was never interested in sports being a skinny lad of around fourteen. As I said it was a boring day which made the appearance of a stranger all the more memorable.
 
 
 
He was a stout scholarly looking gentlemen with a bowler hat and an expensive looking suit, a city man no doubt accompanied by two anthropoid non-humans cloaked in human garb. These were not the same stock as the ruling Cyclon but a mutt-like hybrid of human and alien, not quite human but not quite alien, the stock of which made up the majority of the sportsball teams now. Although some had speculated that they weren’t from this world at all. They were much larger than humans with darker thicker skin like that of a rhino or elephant but had a vaguely simian appearance equating somewhat to a human face but far less expressive and desirest of empathy or any such human emotions. And although the face was ape like it had an elongated quality akin to a dog’s snout. The aliens commonly used them as security or bodyguards and they made up a great deal of the cities new police force. As they could take orders without question and follow them through with fearful brutality and they were moreover entirely expendable. Another could be plucked out of circulation within a day as they were so easily bred and they aged faster than humans so as these hulking monsters could in fact have the same number of years as I had then. In fact it was probably preferable for them to have the minds of children, not as to say the adults were much smarter. They were definitely stronger and faster with heightened senses of smell and sight. They could tear a human apart if ordered to do so but their intelligence and resolve was somewhat lacking in respect to a humans but I imagine now that was precisely the point, making them more pliable to the mind control the Cyclon used.
 
 
 
In their native tongues, they were known as Kaftas but we colloquially called them ‘Luggers’ or ‘Lugs’ as they were most commonly used in these parts for manual labour. But in recent times it had become impolite or not politically correct or speciesist to use these terms.
 
 
 
They wore human clothes but that just furthermore outlined the inhuman nature of their aspect. Seeming almost a parody of humanity as they stood so huge and hunched. Monsters wearing the clothes of men, their faces ridged and apelike as they gaped their mouths thoughtlessly.
 
 
 
The man leading them was a jovial looking sort, with a fat neck and small greasy looking mustache which was pruned and neat and leapt about his face as he spoke like a tick.
 
 
 
I couldn’t rightly hear what he was saying but he smiled and tipped his hat as McClusky looked at his huge bodyguards and got a squirrelly look about him like he wanted to crawl under a giant mouse trap.
 
 
 
McClusky didn’t say much but I could see his throat swallowing and his head nodding furiously as he was listening waiting to give up his own mother. As soon as he was prompted he pointed a fat sweaty finger at a darkened table in the corner hidden as it was behind a shaft of light from the window.
 
 
 
The stranger smiled and tipped his hat before tossing him a gold coin McClusky fumbled and stared at intently as the strange city folk passed under the shaft of light and sat down at the table in the corner.
 
 
 
The bar was small with few hiding spots, so how I’d failed to notice the other stranger was just due to my own uncurious nature at the time or quite simply because at that time the stranger did not want to be noticed.
 
 
 
The inside was dark as a rule, as most of the people in the bar were just trying to get out of the sun or sleeping off the drunk they had from the night before. Or just old timers with no better place to be.
 
 
 
But I remember even Mr Rickers the pianist hit a bum note as he saw the new faces, he sat on his stool at the piano tucked under the stairs. Madame Gertrude the old whore that worked upstairs stood in the middle of the stairs balancing on the banister watching them go with a wrinkled suspicious gaze and then shot me a school teacher sneer as she noticed me watching her. Mary Sue, I suppose she was a waitress although Madame Gertrude wanted to train her up as a whore but from what I heard she wasn’t much good at it stood open mouth gawping holding up a tray of nothing.
 
 
 
The human of the group sat down at the table in the corner with a smile in the back of his head, taking off his bowler hat and placing it on the table. Without saying a word he took out an ornate pipe and lit it taking big bellowing puffs from it as his non-human compatriots stood off to his side looking out the slats in the window standing as if they were children waiting for their mothers to be done browsing in a hat shop.
 
 
 
He cleared his throat and I edged a little closer to hear what he was saying.
 
 
 
“Is your name Phineas Gage?” The strange fat man said.
 
 
 
Noticing only the slightest movement, so slight it could have been imaginary, the figure he was talking to suddenly became visible. Siting still as he was in the shade, it was as if my eyes adjusted at that minute and I suddenly had that unusual face burned into my memory. To say he was grotesque would have been an exaggeration but under the hideous scar on his face was the face of a handsome man in his late twenties with a strong jaw and dark black hair cut neatly.
 
 
 
But his face, my god his face was a monstrous mess, as if he was half demon and how I did not notice him instantly upon his appearance has been blotted out from my memory. As how I could ever forget that face seems impossible. For if it were not the face of such as I know now, a monumental figure, I would think it the face of the devil himself.
 
 
 
And that’s how I felt at that moment, and a few after as I stood frozen thinking I was half in a dream as I looked upon his waxen features. Half his face looked like it had been chewed by Cerberus himself, his left eye closed, blinded and gone although he wore no patch. Which made his appearance all the more horrifying as half his face was handsome and strong and the other looked like that of a mangled corpse.
 
 
 
I might have pissed myself right then and there if I hadn’t just come back come back from writing my name in the dust outside.
 
 
 
The stranger with the horrific face looked up from his meal which consisted of a steak and some mashed potatoes and a glass of milk, with his one good eye. His jaw was locked and strong and he took up the glass of milk with one hand, his other out of sight and unmoving as if he had no use of it and he took a long gulping drink of it like it was a magic elixir and then hit the glass down hard and licked his lips of the white liquid gasping and sighing.
 
 
 
The fat man in the chair still smiling trying to look as casual and powerful as possible. Trying not to cross his legs and look anymore than a plucked peacock.
 
 
 
“I ask again sir” he said in a city accent. “Is your name Phineas Gage”
 
 
 
“What of it?” The stranger said. He looked at them stonily as he took the fork that rested on his plate and scooped up mouthful of mash potatoes and forced it into his misshapen mouth with his good hand. Then following it up by picking up the steak he evidently couldn’t cut with his good hand and taking animalistic bites from it. The fact it was larvae steak and not beef as cows had gone instinct from over farming a decade prior made it an especially grotesque sight as the thing was essentially a giant maggot. He ripped at it and it burst with a vile grey green liquid dripping down his chin. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his good hand while his other arm was rigid and seemingly useless.
 
 
 
I wondered if he hadn’t been in some kind train accident or mine collapse which had left his body mangled. I let my eyes adjust and get a better look at him and at first he had seemed of an average size as I compared him to the gargantuan monstrous nature of the Lugs accompanying the relatively dimunuitive stranger. But now maybe just from my memory, he seemed too a giant of a man, with broad mountainous shoulders and thick long arms like a gorilla with hands that were calloused and looked as if they’d worked everyday from birth. Hard back breaking soul crushing work, from tit to shovel to pickaxe to grave. He wore a thick brown woollen coat and a dirty dusty white shirt underneath.
 
 
 
“There a bounty on my head?” The man I now know as Gage said in an uncaring way as he continued to eat in this strange savage way not looking at these city folk.
 
 
 
“Quite a sizeable one” The man tutted. He crossed his legs finally as he was accustomed moving onto the next stage of his persona. “But I’m not a bounty hunter Mr Gage, I am a medical doctor of a new field entirely, a psychiatrist sent from the city, I’m not here to hurt you, I’d just like to study you.” He said it deflating, as if it was a magic tune everyone was supposed to dance to. “Doctor Herbert Westwood at your service” He said reaching out a pudgy hand only to hold it there for a few awkward moments. Getting heavier with every second to eventually drop it with a hurt twitching of his little neat mustache.
 
 
 
Gage snorted and spat out a piece of grubby sinew and continued to eat.
 
 
 
“I’ve heard about your case and I’ve been given permission to take you in under my care, in return all your past crimes will be forgiven.”
 
 
 
“Crimes, what would they be?”
 
 
 
“Murder”
 
 
 
Gage twisted his hideous face and looked up with his one good sharp eye and said “And what if I tell you to take your alien mutts outside and fuck eachother?” He spat, his voice slaked in a cool simmering rage as he chewed.
 
 
 
“Well then I’d have no choice but to…” His voice trailed off as he clicked his fingers and the misshapen creatures poorly cloaked in human clothes lumbered forward like animals. Such a stark viciousness emitting an ape like cry to battle bulging through their clothes with grotesque muscles and sharp canine teeth bared, their backs raised in a threatening gesture like a dog or a wolf.
 
 
 
The whole bar froze instinctually like rabbits hearing the roar of a lion. The women let out tiny squeaks of fear their bodies locked tight and their eyes unshakeably focused on these creaures suddenly shedding their human façade and revealing themselves as the monsters they undoubtedly were. I too froze unable to look away from some far flung cave man instinct passed down, staring and waiting.
 
 
 
I was just a boy and I knew if it was inclined, these beasts could devour me and everyone here if allowed to do so.
 
 
 
“Ah ah” The man tutted. The beasts heeled breathing deeply and heavily their huge grotesque frames rising and falling as they seethed with a vicious vulgarity. A vile steam coming out of their nostrils.
 
 
 
“We kill dreg nuh?” One of the beasts asked without turning his dog like head.
 
 
 
“No, they want him alive.” The man straightened his mustache, his eyes making two sharp points on his round face and he said. “They’ll want to make an example of him.”
 
 
 
Gage continued eating and didn’t even look at the man anymore. He hadn’t moved a muscle since it all started except to eat. He didn’t even look at the Luggers, like they weren’t there.
 
 
 
“I’ll give you one last chance to come peacefully, it won’t end well for you any other way.” The man was sincere now, but a condescending sincerity that got a piercing icey look from Gage with his one good eye.
 
 
 
The man knew exactly what that meant and he slowly stood putting his hat back on his head, his pipe still in his mouth.
 
 
 
He sighed and said “You’re a sick man Mr Gage, I can help you.” He looked at Gage but his face hadn’t changed, he sighed again and said “Very well Mr. Gage, have it your way. Luntz, Kurbt schnell! The fat man clicked his fingers again and stepped back as the fiends fell on all fours and circled left and right from Gage’s table in what little space they had. Seemingly weaving or attempting to strike from different angles
 
 
 
The entire bar was still frozen, unable to look away as the creatures surveyed their prey. Gage looked up with his one good eye and followed them as they sized him up. Their clawed feet on all fours making a sharp clacking scratching sound on the wooden floor. The first creature sniffed and made a growling sound in his throat and said “This one not so-“ The things head suddenly exploded with a cacophonous booming noise that sounded like god clearing his throat. The shards of it’s brain and bone matter pulping against the base of the stairs spattering slightly on the Madame’s slippers, although she managed to stifle a scream. The second reacting instantly throwing the table aside and pouncing on Gage snapping at the air. It’s powerful jaws trying to bite at his face but the thing was held there by Gage’s good arm as the thing slobbered all over him. Then a another booming cracking noise shook the entire place. I could hear the glass on the bar shake and could almost feel my bones shudder at the terrible noise and the sight of the things back erupt in bone and innard debris all over the tossed table with the remnants of Gage’s dinner on the floor.
 
 
 
I managed to keep my breakfast down, although the smell alone was hard to bear. I had thought when they came in it was strong, but now, in their current state they smelled even worse.
 
 
 
Gage finally stood and I could hardly believe my eyes, he must have been seven or eight feet tall as I remember it now. It could be just that I was so small but thinking back he was a freakishly large man with hands the size of a horses head. It could also have been that he picked a table that was in the corner beside the stairs where the roof was a little lower. But at the time I was lacking the education the rebellion had given me, otherwise the sight of him would have conjured images of Zeus and Atlas towering over man.
 
 
 
There was a muted hissing wimpering noise and I could see that the second creature was still alive spilling it’s innards on the dirty wooden floor I had yet to sweep.
 
 
 
Gage towered over it now, tucking something under his good arm he reached down grabbing with both hands the top and bottom of the lugs jaws and with a quick powerful jarring motion snapped them apart. I remember the women in the bar letting out another little squeaking noise as he put the other creature out of it’s misery, the sound of it’s whimpering hissing ending almost instantaneously.
 
 
 
That was the point that my breakfast made a return journey on the bar floor and down the side of the counter, ham and eggs.
 
 
 
Then the sound of small pieces of metal hitting the wooden floor and rolling, rolling through the blood and brain and bile.
 
 
 
The fat man nervously loaded small bullets into a travelling revolver his pipe nervously bobbing in his mouth as he bit down on it. His fat swollen fingers dropping the occasional bullet as he frantically tried to load the gun a bullet at a time. His face red and hot and wet.
 
 
 
Gage rose again to his full height and the man tried to smile cockily relying on the small gun in his hand, a streak of doubt crossing his nerve struck mind, would that gun even kill such a man or just make him angrier.
 
 
 
Gage took the thing he had tucked under his arm back into his left hand and let it hang by his side and I could see it clearly as a big custom hog leg made for his giant mits. It was shocking to me having only at that time seen guns in picture as they had been banned for civilian use.
 
 
 
*note to the reader – a Hog leg in the old era was what was used to refer to a fire arm that was sawed off at both ends and fired a sort of shot dispersal projectile which proved very effective as a close range weapon.
 
 
 
Westwood saw the gun hanging at his side and his mustache twitched into something resembling a nervous smile.
 
 
 
“A sawn off shotgun” He smirked. “I do believe you’re out of rounds my goodfriend.” A certain air of shakey confidence was returning now as his mustache bounced off his fat cheeks and his fat fingers danced and drummed happily on the pearl handle of the small revolver in his hand. “Now why don’t we just come along quietly-“
 
 
 
“Count again” Gage said as he raised the gun and pointed the lead chucker in Westwood’s general direction at which point he and I and McClusky all could see quite clearly it in fact had three barrels.
 
*Note to the reader weapons such as the shotgun commonly only had two barrels although some had three or even four but were for specialised use.
 
“Three?” Westwood’s smile fell off his face like dung from a donkey’s ass and he went white and waxy losing all tension, allowing his pipe to fall from his wet lips and onto the dirty floor.
 
 
 
Gage’s face stayed hard and evil and gestured with the huge gun and in an instant Westwood had dropped his gun as if it was hot coal or a venomous snake.
 
 
 
Gage walked slowly back to his seat which lay on its side keeping the gun partially raised although he didn’t have to. Westwood knew as well as anyone a man like him used a gun only to spare his bare hands.
 
 
 
He lifted the table and chair back on it’s legs and dusted the seat of his chair off and sat placing the gun in his lap and sat silently waiting.
 
 
 
Westwood stood silently, forgetting to breath in intervals, holding his breathing and swelling and swallowing and gasping like some snuffling pig looking at a man in a butchers apron.
 
 
 
Gage nodded at him and he took his seat back up and slowly Westwood did the same. Then there was a moment where an eternity of silence passed before someone spoke and of course it was Westwood.
 
 
 
“How did you know I was coming?”
 
 
 
“Didn’t.”
 
 
 
“But the gun, you always eat with it on your lap?”
 
 
 
Gage nodded slightly.
 
 
 
“And what if there’d been four of us, what then, what would you have done?”
 
 
 
“Reloaded.”
 
 
 
“I see” Westwood had put his white face in his hand and was shaking uncontrollably and searching for his pipe forgetting that he dropped it looking down the barrel of the gun. Coming up empty he found a the courage of the damned and sputtered “Dammit, what is it now?”
 
 
 
“You wanted to know.”
 
 
 
“Know what?”
 
 
 
“How I got this face”.
3

Green Sunday Chapter 15 ‘Strange Eyes’ (Edit)

Hello lovely people,

First I want to thank all those new people who joined my mailing, so I hope and assume you’re reading this, if not who gives a shit ahah?

Ok so on to updates, personal life; still trash.
Looking at, oh shit that reminds me I can post those. I have sketches for the initial cover designs of Green Sunday. So that’s underway, having more sketches drafted. I’ll post the ones I have down here somewhere.

I’ve worked out the contract and paid for the edit of Ladies Close Your Eyes but the cover could take a bit longer, so as soon as I get the edit back I’ll just clean it up as is and send it via my mailing list to everyone on it as promised.

As usual got a little excerpt of the next edited chapter of GS ‘Strange Eyes’. It’s a fun one, had to fight to keep my inner weeb coming out haha. It’s hard to restrain yourself from writing this big stupid self indulgent action scene that runs away with itself, but I had fun so fuck it haha.

As usual you can read the whole thing by following the link to inkitt right here.

Strange Eyes

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These are just some basic sketches for outlining the finished design, so please don’t judge yet haha.

http://pagdon.com/

This is the guys page, he’s a real artist folks, not no comic book hustler haha, check him out and peace out.

–

The brief silence was ripped apart like a piece sugar of paper. A red Beetle door, with garish orange flames spray painted on it, flew across the garage, spinning like a coin flipped by a King Kong size index finger and thumb. It hit the wall of the shop, pancaking the fat biker and embedding itself in the concrete and sheet metal, load-bearing wall.

The fat biker was eviscerated by the force of the door and his body hitting the wall. He looked like he’d fallen from space. His body was only recognizable by garish, near-human-shaped body parts: hands, feet, an eyeball, a tongue, a limb with bone shrapnel perforating the skin. His wet carcass popped like a water balloon full of dark red jello, sticking in some places and plastered to the wall. Heavier matter slopped onto the floor, making a cringe-inducing, wet, slapping noise.

He looked inside out. Grown men, who watched people beat each other to death and fed people to half-dead freaks, threw up raw hotdogs onto the concrete floor.

Mojang shook as he clutched the grenade launcher in his large hands.

The bikers watched as a puckish boy hopped off the rim of the pod. He could have been anywhere between sixteen and twenty. He had a slim, strong frame, and was around five foot four.

He scanned the room. His face wasn’t visible for a carbon fibre helmet covering most of his head, making him look like a cross between a paladin from WOW and a Power Ranger. His body was covered in a skin-tight compression suit made from individual plates of space age metal. The plates moved and breathed with his body, like the scales of a dragon.

A slit in his visor revealed a penetrating stare and a strange set of blue-green eyes. One eye was blue; the other was green.

The boy looked around the room, like the Terminator, but his eyes had a faint smile to them, as if he was in on the joke. His gaze nevertheless was cold and unfeeling. When he’d finished, he flashed a cocky grin with his eyes and turned around. He hopped back onto the pod, like Peter Pan, dislodging a strange chrome rod. The rod flared out in both directions, forming two conical points. It was almost the length of the boy’s entire body.

Clutching it in the middle, by what was now evidently a handle, the boy crossed his chest with the strange, chrome, double-ended lance and let out a cocky, breathy laugh.

“What the fuck are you waiting for? This clown need to make you balloon animals? GREASE THIS MOTHERFUCKER!” Mojang stuttered, wrestling with the volume of his voice as his whole frame shook.

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Review of Black Gold by R A Sewell

Just got a lovely if a bit cunty haha review for Green Sunday so I thought, what with being a nepotistic shitlord I’d fire back and write a lovely review for the talented author and fellow traveller R A Sewell.

So thar she blows (that has literally nothing to do with the plot nor the quality of the work, I don’t know why I wrote that, probably because it’s a sort of nautical story but I can’t remove it now because I’ve written out this explanation, fuck it here’s the review).

I’m so sorry, I guess this rates my overall maturity level, as soon as I saw the captains name was James Woods, I instantly cast him as the actor James Woods and couldn’t stop thinking about videodrome (hence the odd title of my review).

Just had to get that out the way ha.

Now to the review.

I just read the first chapter so far and I thought the story was pretty good, I don’t usually like when stories get right into the action but this really actually catches you off guard. You almost feel exactly as I imagine the crew of the boat feel, caught completely with their trousers down.
It’s very pulp, with the femme fatal and the visceral violence, I really enjoyed the description of the gun fire and the use of sensory information. You could literally smell the bullets as they were fired and it added a whole new level to the description and put me right in the room.
Instantly it reminded me of a classic action movie from the mid-nineties like Die Hard three or something and that I really enjoyed, I loved that period of gritty, yet slightly campy/pulpy action movies.
The plot I found a little trouble with, not a lot is given to why this happening, I know right, der money but there are hints there that it’s something more with the mysterious tattoo. But I had to mark this a little lower just because I thought the plot was a little contrived, I liked what was happening but how could these terrorists/thieves/nebulous bad guys sneak up on this giant super tanker and take it over in a matter of moments?
Surely they have armed guards on a super tanker or radar or something they could use to detect pirates, it’s not like you really sneak up on someone in the indian ocean, least of all a giant super tanker named the ‘Goliath’, probably crewed by hundred of people, all not watching the horizon or any device that might tell them a ship full of heavily armed dudes is coming to rob them.
I do have faith though that this is probably elucidated on later in the plot but I was a little annoyed that it wasn’t made clear that it was night time at the start of the chapter or listed on the date stamp. I’m sitting here imagining this is all happening mid-morning while they still have croissant crumbs on their shirts you know. Just a time stamp or just a little description of the night would go a long way to setting the scene and adding more plausibility to them being boarded like that without them having a clue.
I loved all the technical language in regard to the boat ‘stuff’, I didn’t understand any of it, but I’m sure somebody who knew anything about boats would, and that’s the point, it’s add something.
Frankly I don’t have much to say about the writing style and the grammar and punctuation, it’s very professional and very competent and it shows what I’m guessing is a lot of experience, so I can’t fault it in the slightest.
The only thing I feel like sticking to you for is fact you didn’t delete the ‘start writing here…’ bit. Schoolboy error mate haha.
I was reading the end thinking ‘Start writing here? they just got on a lifeboat, why are they writing, what?’ then I realised.
It’s not big deal, takes two seconds to fix, I just thought my being confounded at it for a few minutes was slightly amusing.

Overall I really liked it and I would read on and recommend it.

If you wanna read it you can check it out on inkitt by following this glowing title Black Gold.

Cheers.

3

First review for Green Sunday chapter one

In a bit of a shameless quid pro quo back scratching, Florian has done a lovely review in thanks for the review I did of his story Wayward Salvation. So you know it’s completely unbiased and subjective haha.
It’s a nice review, I think he did a great job and captured it nicely but take it with a grain of salt because he’s a friend.

Thanks again Flo, don’t forget to check out his story Wayward Salvation and of course Green Sunday.

Katanas and Cheese Graters

Green Sunday chapter one reviewed by Florian Maier
Let's be honest, whether we like it or not, the Zombie Apocalypse has been done to death. From films like the legendary 'RomeroTrilogy' and TV-shows like 'The Walking Dead' to books like 'World War Z' and video games franchises like 'Dead Rising', there have been so many incarnations, they could fill the coffers of any zombiephile to last them several lifetimes.

Let me take you aside for a second, and let's look at the bigger picture: a fresh take is needed.

Yes, we've had self aware zombie comedies in forms of our 'Shaun of the Deads' and 'Zombielands', and not to forget a hammy teeny love-story/comedy called 'Warm Bodies', but none have been particularly daring, at least for modern standards, when it comes to the setting or story department. 

The gist always is: 'Zombies happen (for whatever reason), modern society as we know it crumbles and someone (or many) must step up to do stuff, or just survive, or keep their humanity intact, or all things at once..' 

Sound familiar? No? Well, then you've probably never seen 'Dawn of the Dead', or the remake.

'Green Sunday' is not only a fresh take on the whole Zombie Apocalypse shebang, it also  dares to abandon the gritty seriousness of more recent incarnations for a return to Romero-style satire and humour.

Now I know you probably think this is going to be about the Zombie Apocalypse, but to be precise, the Apocalypse has happened, and passed. Turns out our shambling friends were no match for the Military  leaving a lot of disappointed teenagers and zombie themed web-shows in the wake of the disaster. 

TJ, our protagonist, is one of those disappointed teens, a tubby neckbeard with an affinity for cutting up plastic water bottles  in his Mom's backyard with a mall katana. 
His loud mouthed neighbour, Zed, runs one of the aforementioned web-shows and brings his audience (and us as the readers) up to speed on how things are now, of course hinting (or rather hoping) the Apocalypse will return so he can finally show off his automated killer cheese graters some more (yes, you read correctly, cheese graters) instead of having them tested on toothless zombie 'stumps' in his backyard. 

TJ, meanwhile seems content swinging about his swords and imagining himself as a samurai in feudal Japan. So, why is he our main character again? Well, who doesn't like a lovable loser and underdog? I sure do. 

Right from the title of the chapter you will notice that 'Green Sunday' relies on its humour, and it's far from toothless packing a real bite (obvious pun intended). I must honestly confess however that the humour may not be for everyone, since it does not shirk away from being vulgar and upfront. Don't get me wrong, it's funny, and I Iaughed and smiled all the way through. 

Besides its off-beat humour, its writing is visual, the opening being a prime example for this. I'm a huge fan of visual and descriptive writing and found it to be one of the things that lifted it up from seeming like your run-of-the-mill piece of fiction published on the web. There was one point when the tense seemed to change abruptly but that is easily forgiven since the story flows off the page like a zombie oozes pus.

Overall, I found it to be an entertaining and not to forget refreshing read. To some TJ may seem a bit passive as a main character, but we're so spoiled nowadays by our quirky hyperactive and not to mention whiny emotional main characters that we have expected these to be the norm making it no surprise whatsoever when the protagonist does something badass or brave. 

Needless to say, the story shows off its potential right off the bat and the author definitely knows what he is doing and how to tinge his universe in satirical comedy. To quote John Hurt here:

"We can expect great things from you."
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