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Diana After Dark Chapter one ‘Darkly Dreaming’ *remurdered edition.

(posted late because there was a freak storm here that knocked out my internet for a day haha)
Yes I’m this lazy, rather than proof reading and posting another chapter of Cur (of which I have lots of) I’m re-using Diana chapters haha. Ok well they have been fully edited and now I’m going over them again for the final proof read before I submit them so it’s a little different.

This is essentially the final version so it’s a much more polished version than I give the plebs on inkitt haha. And honestly looking at it, it has changed a lot, it’s really grown up with the help of my new editor and I’m really proud of it and really glad I went over it again because some of the formatting was fucking broken from the editing software haha.

I’m just posting the whole chapter because this is not going up on inkitt, this is just a sample. You gotta pay for this haha. Or maybe I’ll give it away for free next year who knows. I really hope I don’t have to.

Feel really shitty today because I missed another day of work and I really really need the money right now. I just fucked up and I feel really fucking frazzled trying to reset my body clock coming back from the holiday. I feel like a zombie only getting the 4/5 hours again so it’ll be a couple of days before it becomes normal again and this fucking heat is not helping. I feel like I’m fucking melting, two fans on me and I feel like a polar bear in an oven.

Maybe I should switch to drinking cold green tea.

Actually fuck it, I’m gonna do that right now brb haha.

*30 minutes later

Well that took longer than I expected.

Not much to report beyond that. I like this Parker book but it’s not really delivering on characters and suspense in the usual way. I like it when Parker is just this unstoppable force like in the first books he’s going against the whole mob and they can’t touch him. Because he’s this one guy who can dissapear and reappear wherever and he has a network of people just like him who’ll help him and the mob is this stalwart force with names and faces and addresses he can find. The third book is when it hits home that really the mob can’t touch him because he’s not a real person with a real name or even a real face by that point he’s already had facial surgery.

Parker basically lives like a ghost and they’re vulnerable because they have houses and families and cars in their names and he can just roll up to their front door and kill them which is exactly what he does. Because nomatter how rich or powerful you are you can still be gotten to if someone knows where you are and wants you bad enough and has the balls to do it.

It’s such a good book, the first three books are so solid. They really inspired me. In regards to Diana and especially LCYE and TOTCB. Just tight tense terse stories with great action.

This one is a little more loose and it’s good but it’s scope is a little small so far and I just feel like Parker is whining and being kind of a bitch. I just feel like he’s getting softer and I don’t like that. I mean in some of the books it’s almost like he’s the bad guy because he’s like this unstoppable monster and most of the books swap to his quarry and they’re fucking terrified of him and you really feel like they’re being stalked by the devil.

In this he’s like a little lost sheep hiding in a barn. It’s different but I like the stories that are about the job, I think this book and the last Stark got a little tired of the same formula and wanted to switch it up but in my opinion if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I want to read a book about a hard as nails master thief planning the ultimate job, it just seems a little bit like Stark is running out of ideas for cool heists so he sets all the book after the heist to get around doing the same things. Which is a good idea to stop the books from getting stale but it’s just a little underwhelming and there isn’t any direct interaction Parker has with another character so there doesn’t really feel like there’s progression or structure or pacing because he’s in this one place the whole book trying to do the same thing.

In the other books he’s moving all over the place talking to different people and doing stuff, this book is just small in it’s scope and I don’t mind that, its fresh for a Parker book but I really hope it goes back to classic Parker in the next book. And the next book is called ‘Plunder squad’ so that sounds promising haha. A cool cast of characters and lots of loot.

It’s literally taken me all day to write this because there was a lovely little storm knocking out my net and power and since I live in the middle of nowhere I just have to wait.

Anyway I’ve waffled enough, must dash.

See you…

–

My high heels tapped on the wet concrete like anxious teeth clacking. It’s dark, I’m alone. Scared.

It’s a good kind of scared.

A fear of coming waves of something unexplainable, something inevitable.

I’ve felt it building for so long, and now as I walked the street, alone in the dark, it’s all around me like the tropical heat.

I picked up the pace, it’s a neighborhood I didn’t recognize, low slung houses, high fences with glass teeth. Dogs barking in the arid heat of the night. Salsa music played in the distance, muffled shouting in Spanish.

I swam through its want, waded through its need.

It called to me, it’s hunger passed down through what feel like eons. An insatiable hunger. Teeth strain against gums. I tasted blood, and it felt good.

I heard a splash, and it’s my feet hitting a puddle, it watched, and it waited, the hunger growing.

The moon reflected in the puddle, its smile so wide and manic. Those white teeth, sharp and ready, it’s just right. Projected on my back, it filled me with that white pure light. Filled every corner, carried me like I was on strings.

My steps were weightless and without agency, carried by a wave of lustful righteous anger.

His eyes landed on me before I heard his silent voice.

I heard a fluttering of dark angel wings. A leathery tightening inside, as it whispered and laughed, it told me to keep going.

Told me to be patient even though that’s not a word it understands at all.

A cool breeze blew through the little hairs on my neck.

He called to me, and I’m out of it for a second.

A man—but I couldn’t see his face reflected in the glass of a bus stop because of a huge hairline crack down the middle. He walked down the street on my side, toward me.

I saw myself, dressed in my best impression of a hooker from a nineties cop movie in a car window. The fishnets might’ve been a little too on the nose but it seemed to have worked.

 

I caught a big fish after all.

Just the one I wanted.

He called to me again, but I can’t respond now.

My tongue is somewhere far removed, and words seem like pointless frail things.

I kept going with my arms folded like I was cold, when nothing but cool clear clarity and vicious joy washed over me.  Faster now, the puddles and the car windows revealed he was following.

He looked around and kept pace, how far will he go?

I went along a pink stucco wall that seems to stretch on for miles, passing houses all with their curtains drawn tightly, small dirty lawns cluttered with broken children’s toys, dry dying grass.

The shadow inside shifted and wriggled, like a kid in a bean bag chair. So excited, it hissed and tossed, just where it wanted to be, so close.

The man called to me, something crude in Spanish, but I couldn’t react, not yet.

A little further.

My heels clicked louder and faster, almost breaking out into a run, and what do dogs do when someone runs?

They chase of course, and predictably, he’s caught the scent of something he likes.

Me.

I knew him, his name escaped me, and his face seemed familiar but unimportant right now. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, just a blank pale face not unlike the face of the moon.

Maybe I’m giving him too much credit.

Who’s hunting whom after all?

His need is palpable; I’ve watched him. A small petty monster, a dog chasing cars, not sure what he wants until he gets his hands on them. A bottom feeder, a wanton monster with no attempt to hide it, no need. How free he must have felt, not like me at all.

Something inside me called to him but he can’t hear it, he’s just along for the ride.

I moved faster but I’m not out of breath, it’s a humid night with a cool ocean breeze and I felt brisk and tight. I quickly checked in another car window. He still shadowed me.

Good, almost there now. One more block, follow me little rat.

The thing inside shifted like an eel in a glass vial. Happy, tensing and releasing like a balled fist, electric, with terse excitement.

Impending release just over the horizon.

The man is still following, muttering to himself, looking around, he put his hood up..

The streets are dark and desolate, and lined with houses full of people that don’t talk to cops about strange goings on in the dead of night.

That’s why he picked this place, that’s why I picked it too.

A perfect playground for Diana the Dark Dabbler.

The pink stucco wall ended abruptly, and I rounded the corner fast down the back alley of a Chinese restaurant with bars on the windows, breaking line of sight.

Hidden in the shadow of the large smooth square building. The clear black sky overhead.

He made some sort of noise in his throat that somehow I heard.

I kicked off my heels already and tossed them into the open dumpster. It was neatly tucked away, behind a chained metal fence until I came by earlier and freed it.

That dull thudding sound sent the rats circling.

I ducked behind the spot I picked. A pile of cardboard fortune cookie boxes was all I needed.

The odor sent shivers up my spine. Old shell fish, the smell of the ocean, the spray, maggots—refreshing—like smelling salts.

He rounded the corner fast and confused, like he’s the only kid that doesn’t get the magic act at the birthday party.

My lips parted and curved up; my heart beat hard in my chest, can he hear it? Can he hear the wings beating, can he hear the moon’s teeth clacking, feel it’s beaming maniacal smile?

I hope so. He will.

The man looked around, pulled his hood down tighter. All those chemicals rushing, he felt it too, the chase, the thing inside of him that fed on my fear. Got high off that night air, stumbled into my trap.

I took my cellphone out of my purse and dialed the number of the burner I put in the dumpster.

It rang with a mocking eight-bit Mariachi band song.

He heard it, and swung around taking offense at everything.

Stired up that rabbit in head lights feeling. Trapped in a beam of ambivalent bone white moonlight.

It carried me, gave me goose bumps- goose bumps. Teeth chattered, but I’m not cold, not even close, I felt nothing but pure icy potential. The thing inside purred and waited.

He poked open the dumpster with the barrel of a Glock and looked inside.

We waited until he reaches in for the phone. It took the wheel and we fell out of our hiding spot, lithe and ready in a sliver of moonlight. Invisible, invincible, stun gun in hand, as we moved low and slow and sleek toward his back.

I shouldn’t look..

He turned but it’s too late; It pressed the stun gun to his neck and his legs went limp.

We caught him, took the gun out of his hands like a child with a squirt gun. “You’re mine now,” I whispered and heard not my voice but another vibrating just below the surface.

He heard it too, that eternal voice that speaks to both of us.

His heart beat faster but he couldn’t move. I hiked him up and leveraged him into the open dumpster.

The gun held in my hand, my heart sped up, pumped all those good chemicals hard. The Glock bounced and scraped into the gutter from my toss. Can’t risk some little kid picking it up and blowing his face off—that would be tragic.

I climbed into the dumpster.

Diana the Dumpster Diver, c’est moi?

Afraid not.

A dumpster is just a big metal coffin. It can be cleaned and prepped like any other space.  Prepared it I have; it didn’t take that long, a little tape, a little clear plastic. A battery lamp hooked on a loop of duct tape.

Then there was light.

It still didn’t smell great, cramped and hot, with a faint smell of soy sauce. It wasn’t a room at the Cali Hilton but it’d do fine for about the four hours this would take.

Then home and a lot of showers later would let all those good vibrations course through my muscles. Loosening and straightening out all that bad juju that’d been building. Making me tense and not quite myself.

Set up another light, I blocked out a lot of it in that tight space. Made quick work of taping his hands and feet, cutting his clothes away with garden shears. Shaved and buffed out the areas I wanted to work in.

He didn’t know, couldn’t know or feel what was about to happen. What was about to happen?

My tongue touched all of my teeth; I let out a little laugh.

Just had to have gotten the most powerful stun gun they had; he was out like a light, complete reboot.

A quick slap to his face and he made a noise like someone finding a hair in their lingquini and muttered something in Spanish that might’ve have been, “Ten more minutes, Mama.” I suck at Spanish.

Found the bag I’d stashed there. A small black overnight duffel, and I plan to stay the night. Inside, a sharp fillet knife, a scalpel, a razor and a framing hammer. The gangs all here!

The dumpster was cramped but I could move, as well as lay him out flat. The restaurant it was attached to was closed today. So I’d had all the time I needed to make it ready. Then leave my own trash behind in neatly wrapped packages ready to garnish the local landfill.

We slapped my friend again and his eyes opened wide. I taped his mouth shut.

He couldn’t scream muffled Spanish slurs.

We showed him the knife and his eyes darted back to absorb his surroundings.

He may have well been buried six feet under already.

He had to know he was ours.

The man didn’t seem too impressed with the knife, so the framing hammer was the next item in show and tell day. He didn’t like that, not one bit, his eyes got wider, his pupils shrinking.

It seemed like he was getting it.

We breathed out a cool controlled breath and we watched him shrink, his muscles tightened feebly against the tape, his veins popped, we breathed in his fear.

The pretty girl thing might’ve thrown him at first, or maybe it was a prank.

I heard the mirthless tinny laughter inside and I think he heard it, too.

There was no turning back, one step on the dark path was enough.

There would be blood, a lot of blood.

I could almost hear it rushing inside him, that disgusting hot sticky stuff, waiting to come out.

He was mumbling something; I could feel his panic rising. His longing for release reaching up and touching mine. His eyes were talking, he was drooling, his mouth moving.

There was something really important he had to tell me.

I was hungry for anything. I’d been watching him. What he liked, young girls with wide scared eyes looking up at a knife or a gun or a framing hammer. Feeling him on top of them heaving and sweating, then nothing.

He’d killed four in the last month, and it was nothing to sniff at. Mostly prostitutes, because he was an amateur, no procedure, just pure bare need.

A pathetic creature, but I didn’t hate him.

How could I? We were the same, sort of, but more than that, I loved him; he was a brother.

He sputtered.

His eyes tried frantically to reach inside of me and find some small tear. Like some buried motherly instinct would battle the forces of darkness in the dungeons of my deep dreadfulness. Seeing fit to spare him and maybe take him out to lunch..

I was curious, bad form for a cat.

Didn’t like begging, but was ready to hear anything.

He looked up at me after the tape was ripped off. “Diana, you’re gonna be late for school.”

“School?”

“Yes, school.” I heard my aunt’s indignant voice break through the cozy wall of the pillow over my head.

A dream?

How you tease me. I can still hear the laughing, it’s taunts. Me, Dark Dreamless Diana.

I don’t dream, I never dream, it’s just serene blackness every other night, or I don’t remember. I miss the cool crisp void of sleep, the nothingness. What happened to my nothingness? Bring back the void.

Not to say the dream wasn’t, stimulating.

I moved the pillow off my face and started to rend myself of my sopping sheets. I was drenched in a layer of thick cold sweat.

It isn’t the first time, different people, men, women, different places, times.

It seemed like the dreams were getting more frequent and they always end the same way.

Unsatisfying, they always end just before…

Murderus interruptus.

“Didn’t you say you had a test or something today?”

“There’s always a test or a final or a quiz,” I tell my aunt Mary-anne, a fat girl’s name, but she wasn’t fat, not yet anyway.

A soft and pretty woman, not much older than myself. Kind of a hippy dippy sort but a good soul, raised me from an egg to the velociraptor I picture myself as now.

She had that ‘good hair.’ The type that’s long and straight, a deep chocolatey brown she nevertheless always tied back in a tight ponytail for work. Delicate straight features TV pretty people had, but she never really liked to flaunt it with make-up or fancy clothes; I guess it runs in the family.

I’m Diana, the poor orphan, boohoo. My parents died when I was just an innocent tot. Oh woe is me, the poor child, parents taken so young.

Is this a superheroes backstory? Afraid not.

Were they slain by a wicked murderer or super villain? No, not unless the truck that hit them was a Decepticon. A petty car accident robbed me  of any parental love I was owed and cast me as the martyr in my own passion piece.

“Well, that’s school for ya,” she said, she smiled with her hands on her hips as she waited for me to fully ascend my damp throne.

It’s not that I don’t like school; in fact, I love school. All those plastic minds clinging to some form of identity or another. Forming their own sense of self, all those people pretending to be human hoping the shape would stick. I fit right in.

Maybe I’m not very good at this, I feel like I skipped a step. I’m completely hollow inside. It sounds like teen angst, which is an easy way to pigeon-hole it since I am a senior in high school.

But it’s been this way since before I can remember. Since before I could think, I’ve felt nothing.

My aunt tells me, even as a baby I wouldn’t cry or laugh or smile, nothing. Every emotion I fake is for other people. I’ve been forced to become the perfect mirror of every person I’ve ever known, but I’m good at it.

I’m the best.

I trudged my way to the shower, down the hall from my modest bedroom. It’s hot today, it’s always hot in Cali. That’s why I keep my hair short, easy to clean, easy to dry and it looks cute.

What does anyone else’s opinion matter anyway? Only, that’s a lie people tell themselves on occasion. I don’t, I’m not people. Other people’s opinions are all that matters. It’s the glue that binds this world together. Without it, the world would be the perfect clean chaos of my dreams.

The world where that mocking laughter I hear comes from.

Lies we tell others, and the lies we tell ourselves, are what stops this world from falling apart and it’s what keeps me out of a sanatorium. Are there any sanatoriums in Long Beach? Probably some rich kid day spa with Vicodin vending machines that take hundred dollar bills. So Miley Cyrus can clean up for the next time she needs to squeeze her ass inside a rubber glove.

Rubber gloves, was I even wearing gloves in my dream? Need to write that down.

The things that you remember in the shower. Running water stimulates creativity, or some such other new age nonsense. Massages the chakras or stimulates the karma flow, vibrates the mediclorians. I toweled off and wiped the mirror with my hand. Empty blue-green eyes stared back. I made a toothy fake grin, showed those pearly whites. Such a practiced grin, straight out of the Sears catalogue, 1997.

It’s easier for girls I guess, people don’t look too closely at a girls’ smile. As long as it’s there, it’s good enough, a perfect disguise.

The mirror steamed up again, and I’m gone, poof.

The test was easy, done and gone and I was already forgetting what it was about. The dream was growing stronger and taking up more space in my head. All I could think about was that night and the ripple of the plastic wrap.

I looked outside; it was nice day. Every day was a nice day in California, starts to get boring after a while.

University High was the number one ranked public school in Orange County, go Trojans. It looked like a cross between a prison and a high end motel on the outside. Monstrous palm trees swaying behind sturdy chain-link fences. A backdrop of concrete covered in coral white stucco.

It was a standard mix. An even smattering of Hispanic, caucasian and black kids, the motto, ‘Unity through Diversity,’ as supercilious a statement as the American flag outside.

This wasn’t America, this was some place all new, a fantasy island floating in the clouds where all the beautiful people and one or two monsters lived. Every day, I was rubbing elbows with the future career criminals and politicians of the greater California area. Was there a distinction? I felt blessed walking through the halls. A real rainbow family of love and diversity.

I had no idea how my aunt got the money to put me here on a rookie cop’s salary, but we have a don’t ask don’t tell relationship that seemed to be working for us even better as I got older.

She chose the school because the campus tour video gave off a distinct ‘cult vibe’ and the teachers were nice enough. They really went out of their way to pretend they cared, despite fading into the background in Dark Diana’s World.

I wasn’t bad at school, I was too good at it. It’s amazing the pointless facts and figures you can memorize when you don’t have all that teen angst or hormones or any emotions whatsoever clouding your mind. Pure emptiness to fill with whatever the school board wanted. The perfect clean slate.

I made my way to my locker before I realized I forgot to eat breakfast, a common occurrence. But that’s not to say I’m anorexic. I love to eat, but I could never put on much weight, compliments of a super-fast metabolism, must be genetic, or maybe I was a sleep jogger.

Sleep walking?

I hovered in front of my open locker.

Nah.

As soon as I slammed the door shut

Whom was standing behind it? None other than the notorious Wendy Vargas. How cliché.

Another cliché would be that the most popular girl in the school and I would be bitter rivals.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Morning, bestie,” she crooned in her best vocal fry valley girl as she opened her locker.

It might have something to do with my painfully cringe-inducing habit of flattering everyone. A trait I polished like the turd it is. I say things most people with any sense of dignity wouldn’t dare.

Happily, I lack any of those mortal inhibitions; my gag reflex was never there. When your goal is to blend in and make people like you, lacking any shame is pivotal. So I can tell everyone everything they want to hear and keep a straight face while I do it.

Funny, it’s not even that hard. I can usually tell at first meeting someone what they want to hear. No one even bothers to hide it, they might as well write it on a sign around their necks.

Wendy’s locker being next to mine also tipped the scales of fate. I can’t remember exactly how we met or became friends but I assume proximity is what allowed me to use my powers of butt-kissing to full effect.

Maybe I just complimented her on how she opened her locker. How she applied her lip-gloss in the mirror she had inside the door, or some other banal little detail I’d felt wasn’t worth the storage in my head.

“Looking sexy as always, my love. Wendy Vargas, when will you marry me?” I say in a perfect mocking impression of her voice; she will of course ignore that, and only hear the compliment.

“Thank you, my dear but you know as well as I do, I’m taken and I am a one-woman man,” she said, as she pursed her snake-bitten lips.

She was a beautiful golden goddess one might expect to see in some Spanish soap opera, with a set of expressions just as fake. Heir to a fortune in Cuban sandwich shops. Head of the cheerleading squad, of course, but also a strange passion for ‘nerdy stuff,’ as she called it. Mostly kitsch nerdsploitation, like The Big Bang Theory. Big lens less glasses, wearing comic book superhero T-shirts and pretending to like the new Star Wars movies.

It was all an act so she could rule over a hoard of thirsty geeks in the AV club who’d do whatever she said.

I still have no idea why she likes me. I really could’ve slipped right through the cracks right where I wanted to, if it wasn’t for her.

It might be because I’m the only one in the state that knows she poisoned her stepfather with anti-freeze, and framed her mother.

Did she tell me? Not in so many words. I wasn’t an accomplice or anything, either. Poison’s not my style.

That’s such a ‘girly’ way to kill someone, and I’d never stoop so low as to kill for money. No, a passion is best left free, like all the good things in life.

She didn’t confess to me, but something did. That little voice, that little clawing thing that rolled around deep inside the dark depths of Diana.

It could smell it on her, not her guilt, not her shame, her complete indifference. She had a monster too, a dark secret, but it was a small and covetous thing, a greedy opportunistic monster.

“Where’s that handsome new beau of yours?” I enquired.

Wendy’s new boyfriend was some chad from out of state, what was his name? Bradie? Brodie? Brodo?

She tends to go through them quickly, but this new one had peaked her interest. He was a transplant from Miami, very exotic.

“He’s off collecting that order of red cups and plates for prom.”

“I sense, we’re about get down to business.” I winked.

“You’re senses are keen, as always, my young padawan,” Wendy bowed with her hands pressed together, like she was going to Kung-fu me.

“I learned from the best, master.” I dipped my head.

“I need you to print off some fliers for me.” She smiled, like she was doing me a favor, her arms swaying at her sides, as her voice rose at the end.

Wendy was head of the prom committee, they put on the senior prom every year, and this time it was our turn.

I, Diana, sweetness and light, am on the prom committee, too. All because it would’ve been too strange for me not to, being best friends with the head of the committee. Oh, sweet nepotism.

Part of the practice of being normal was doing things ‘normal’ girls do. I’m not a cheerleader, that was too much for even me to stomach, some things truly are beyond even me. I can’t remember how I got out of that one, must’ve made up something about having one leg longer than the other or something, extreme corns perhaps.

Cheerleading is also surprisingly time consuming, all those pep rallies and practices and incessant parties. Which could prove a problem for my other ‘interests’. I looked around at the fliers already up around the hall. They were on almost every locker, and bulletin board and classroom door. I cast sparring glances at people who don’t need to make conscious efforts to be normal. What blissful cow-like expressions they all had.

“What’s wrong with the old fliers?” I asked in a robotic fashion, but I already knew exactly what she was going to say.

“They’re old,” Wendy shook her head like it was obvious; which it was.

“Okay,” I said without argument, because, what a waste of time and energy that would be.

She sucked her lips like she was tasting her cherry lip gloss and she liked it, then looked over my head. “Oh, there’s a sight for sour eyes.”

I looked over my shoulder, and stage left appeared my stalwart boyfriend Paul.

An ordinary name for an ever so ordinary boyfriend. He was practically perfect in every way, the male Mary Poppins of University high. Tall, but not too tall, smart, but not too smart, conventionally handsome but not too conventionally handsome.

He was into sports, basketball mostly. An army brat through and through, his dad was almost always away on maneuvers.

If I was painfully honest, I mainly liked him for his car, and for the places he was willing to take me in said motor vehicle. I had my license already, but no car of my own.

My aunt was sort of an eco-nut, forcing me to take the bus when possible and if she did buy me a car, with the no money she had saved. It would end up being one just like her work car. One of those terrible eco-bubble little hair dryers powered by happy thoughts and bunny farts.

Did I mention his dad was deployed most of the time? So if I ever did go visit we had the run of the house, and from time to time, his gun cabinet.

His mom was a mystery I didn’t care to explore. Seemed like a sore subject I had no interest in. Sobs stories are no fun, unless they’re your own.

Most of all, I liked him because he was normal. Painfully normal, bone achingly, teeth rattlingly normal. So much so, just being around him made me feel normal by osmosis. Like he absorbed some of my weird into himself and excreted it as a form of non-toxic handsome. He was kryptonite to my superman. Paul is the perfect disguise.

His upbringing, one of strict discipline had forced him to become the perfect gentleman. Thus, his urges were dutifully restrained, not unlike my own.

I really have no interest in sex. I have no hang ups about it either, we’ve had sex.

Honestly didn’t much care for it, a sweaty messy thing, waste of time and sheets. The smell of it was enough to keep him by my side, and to drive me where I wanted to go and do most of anything I wanted.

Being a woman is pretty easy when you have no shame. Anyone that says different is a liar.

Men will put up with almost any shit from a woman if he thinks sex may possibly happen at some point in the near future.

Paul was presentable, neat and clean and always smelled good, never a blond hair out of place, or a blue eye in the wrong direction. A stern solid posture always maintained for some hidden watcher like someone stuck a broom up his ass without any KY and expected him to clean the ceiling.

The perfect scarecrow he was, scaring off all those hangers-on and beta orbiters that like to cling to pretty girls who don’t carry mace on a key chain.

The bell rang, and Wendy looked up, as if to make sure. “Shit, gotta get back to class, see you guys later.” She said as she vocal fried her way down the hall. Swished and swayed spreading a sweet fake scent as she floated away.

“Hey, baby, what’s up?” Paul said.

He speaks! He Leaned in for a hello peck, his arms wrapped around me.

I dutifully resisted, pushed back against him. “Hunger,” I said, without a hint of irony.

0

Gage Chapter 10 ‘Something must break’

Hey there,

What’s up? rhetorical question of course everyone knows it is the sky. That is the ultimate answer to that question, actually now that I think about it, what is up? Is it up or are we up? Hmm? Hmmmmm?

Ok enough of that nonsense. Been a pretty tame week, just prepping for my trip, been pretty much checked out really. A combination of the insane heat and the lack of a working shower. It’s like a dribble, keep getting it fixed and it breaks again. The shower is an oddly mystical thing and without a steady beat of running water I become very dull and very dumb.

It’s something to do with the water hitting you, like sitting under a waterfall aligns all your chakras probably I dunno, rinses your third eye (technically it does). It’s where I do most of my best thinking, where I lay things out straight, hash things out. If I have a problem with a plot point or a scene I take a shower and I think it through and I’ll innevitably have solved it by the time I get out which is usually an hour. I take ridiculously long showers for pretty much this reason alone.

It helps that I’m a germaphobe, but I’m always wary of people that take like 5 minute showers. How is that possible, I don’t have one part of my body I could wash in under 5 minutes (nudge wink).

If I could I’d probably live in the shower and just get a waterproof laptop if that exists. Maybe if I become a millionaire I’ll buy a hot tub with a waterfall going down my back and just stew in there as I write… this is a terrible idea.

Yeah so long story short; I didn’t get much writing done and I’m probably not going to do any proofreading today or the next day because I’ll be too excited, I have to wake up at 4 in the morning to get a half 5 train to the airport and I’m thinking about just not sleeping or just napping throughout the day and then sleep on the plane.

So I figure today I’m just gonna go over my pitch for Diana, read through the whole excerpt and just make sure it’s nice, maybe do a bit of spamming, oh yeah banned off facebook again haha. Just for a tasteless joke as usual, I think there are people that actively report me because there’s no way it was just some random triggered person this time because it was a post on my own wall. So there’s a pc spy on my friends list haha.

Anyway, I dunno Gage is probably one of the worst things I’ve written just because it’s kind of experimental and done for nano. Essentially weird ideas plus 30 day time limit equals; not so good haha, but it was fun so whatever. I was trying some new things but I think this is the part where it sort of comes into it’s own a little I think. The opposite perspective captures what I was trying to do a lot better and it’s far less self serving, less self indulgent less focus on the action more on the world and character building in a fun way, I think.

I started reading the next Witcher book, time of contempt and honestly it’s not really grabbing me. It’s basically like an x rated Harry potter no one asked for haha. It’s a shame really because the first ever witcher story I read was the best and what I thought the series would be. It was basically a noir pulp fantasy story, this stuff is more generic fantasy game of thrones shit but more boring. It could have been this really tight slick gritty action adventure but instead it’s this ponsey political drama with dragons and shit, such a let down honestly. Well nevermind the Parker book is all those things and more but not fantasy haha. Just had to slip in some witcher hate haha. I’m just really disappointed more than anything, I thought this series would be amazing and hook me into fantasy and it just hasn’t.

Been talking too much already, I need to do some work at least, just been too excited to think really, going to see the most important people in the world to me and my time with them is so fleeting.

Must dash.

See you…

 

–

As it happened Lugtroopers were forbidden from drinking alcohol. It had some sort of neural effect that could be passed on to the Kafta they were linked with. I didn’t really want to get bogged down in the technical aspect of it. Nor would I want someone with a highschool education like Gable trying to explain technology he most certainly did not understand.

In fact Ryan was so concerned about it he chose to use those god awful electronic cigars as opposed to the real thing. Although what in heavens name the effect of tobacco on one of those things could be is anyone’s guess but he wasn’t taking any chances.

I didn’t much care for drinking alone so we decided to skip the formalities and get straight to asking questions. First stopping off to get the latest paper. The headline was regarding some sort of unity rally in the capital and new york. It was in response to the death of the Cyclon boy and a number of terrorist activities down south from what were described as ‘Speciesist groups’. The rally was celebrating the harmony between the different species in the cities living together. It was a celebration of the strength in their diversity. The rally was the freed Kaftas and humans and all breeds in between lead by Cyclon organizers. They marched through the streets and conducted a ritual burning of pre-alien literature. Anything that denoted aliens as wicked or capricious in some way as a device to divide the races. They chanted in unision ‘Kill the speciesist’ as some of the group got a little rambunctious. They began pulling out and beating those that wouldn’t leave their places of work and march with them. But the paper made sure to highlight that this was a tiny minority of the events that occurred and those that commited violence were motivated by a devotion to love and unity.

Unfortunately this time Ryan insisted on accompanying me on company business. Which I opposed as he was just a contractor and not actually in the full employ of the company. But he told me he’d feed me to his lugger (which thankfully were kennelled for the time being until they so needed them) if I ever spoke to him again. That pretty much ended every interaction we ever had from that point on.

The bar was your standard border town saloon as might be described in some trashy novella you buy in railway stations. It of course smelled no different from the jail cells, being the source of the drunkiness and general filthiness. The bartender was a thin man who looked rather young. But on closer inspection his forehead was very lined and there were deep lines around his eyes signifying all the late nights. He had very light hair over tanned freckled skin which made it seem like his light hair almost glowed or wasn’t there. It was odd and apparently everyone called him ‘Whitey’ because of how pale his hair was and of course because his first name was in fact ‘White’. I cant say the folks here had much of a creative imagination. Which is surprising as most of the greats like Shakespeare found themselves almost continually soused.

I felt bad for the chap as Ryan went about torturing the poor sod almost immediately, he’d broken two of his fingers before he even asked him his name. It appeared he’d let me talk to the sheriff purely because he was incapable of having a conversation with someone without first making them swallow their own teeth. I almost shuddered but for the efficiency of the brutality. And when he finally did ask a question McGruber tripped over himself to implicate his own mother in misgivings.

It seemed to be a policy of the Lugtroopers to display such needless barbarism for barbarism’s sake. Brutuality was it’s own end to them as they were soldiers after all and must have seen this land as a hostile territory which in some respects it was.

But what could I have done? Argue with him and lose some of my own teeth and anger the people charged with defending me. All for some local yokel that would have drunk his teeth away eventually anyway and who’s face I would hopefully never see again. So I said nothing and pretended not to care.

–

Read the full chapter here on inkitt.

Something must break

 

 

0

GS2 Chapter 19 ‘You can be the boss’

Hey there,

Not much to talk about, mostly been dayjobbing it and sinking deeper and deeper into general misery and misfortune, which is standard recently. I just can’t seem to catch a fucking break recently.

Although I watched like two thirds of deep blue sea 2 before me and my brother turned it off and decided an hour was enough time we were never getting back from what is essentially a really bad low budget copy of the first film. Part me almost wants there to be a documentary about this movie just to learn how it came about.
Did they win the rights to the name in a poker game, how did this pile of shit get made and why? I really just want to know how this went down and what drugs they were on when they thought this was a good idea.

I’m not saying the first movie was a masterpiece but it was competent with a good cast and decent writing and visuals and budget, this was like a daytime tv remake. So much so it doesn’t need a review because I wasn’t really paying it any attention after the first ten minutes. The acting was ridiculous porno tier, the story was basically the same as the first movie but dumber, the characters were cookie cutter, the sets looked like they were re purposed from a sci-fi movie. It looked like it was made for the scy-fy channel.

The plot is basically they’re experimenting on the sharks and then the sharks overhear them saying they’re gonna kill them all when the research is done and the go berserk, I know it’s fucking stupid. But what’s even stupider is how this is put across is by the shark like looking through a window like “hmm that’s what they think mwahaha”. So dumb. 
It just amazed me how bad it was and reminded me a lot of those movies like sharknado and sharktopus versus gatoroid or whatever and it was actually worse. Because those movies are fully self aware of how awful they are and they just have as much fun as they can with it.
They’re trash but they’re enjoyable trash, deep blue sea 2 is not self aware or funny at all, it’s just trash and I don’t know why it exists or why I even attempted just reviewing it. I’m just so curious as to how it exists. Mind boggling.

Anywhoo back on schedule with regular chapter posts and I’m amazed how long GS2 is, like why? Why is a zombie book so long? That’s just sad. I put so much effort into a book about zombie furfags haha. What is my life?

Ok well enough of that, gotta do some actual work, kinda shitty here because my boiler dyed so I’m just wallowing in my filth and trading in warframe which is more addictive than the actual game. Love life in the crapper as usual even worse than usual actually and I broke my toe because I was so angry that I couldn’t have a shower that I kicked the banister, genius.

But it’s not the first time I’ve had a broken toe, after years of martial arts my toes look like fucking twiglets they’ve been broken so many times haha.

Eh whatever just gonna spam and maybe do some proof reading, now that I think of it I should probably go over the pitch excerpt for Diana after Dark. I went over the other parts last week and really cleaned it up, I found so many mistakes I thought I might legitimately have undiagnosed down syndrome haha. 

It’s really a good thing nobody follows this blog otherwise I would get a tonne of hate mail haha.

See you…

–

“Turn around, slow”

“Who th-“ Murray was cut off by a shotgun barrel poked hard into the side of his head. “Ow!”

“We ask the questions, you do what you’re fucking told.” Roch said through her teeth. She was feeling it, her adrenaline pumping, blood boiling, she wanted to hurt someone.

“That’s right, girls rule, straight white men, die!” Juanita came around the side of the truck. Trying to not look out of breathe as she lugged the giant anti-tank rifle around. Trying to look comfortable resting it on her shoulder.

“Freeze cracker!” Kat screamed trying to sound like a cop pointing her mach ten at him with both hands clasped tightly around it.

Jaclyn had her laptop in her arm, pointing her gun forward but not really aiming at anything. Concentrating on making her face look as mean and serious as possible.

Roch pulled Murray down the steps of the Van and span him around hard against the side of the truck. “Ow” He said “What’s all this about?”

She hit in him in the back of the knee and got close to his face and whispered “We’re asking the questions asshole”.

He straightened up grimacing and said “So ask away”.

“Jacy do we need this piece of shit?” She shouted. Clammily fingering the short shotgun pressed tightly to the back of Murray’s sweaty neck.

“I just need to access his network so we can broadcast our signal piggybacking off theirs so..”

Roch smiled, her blood rushing in her ears. Murray closed his eyes and swallowed hard and said “Fuck me”.

“But we might need him for verification.” She perked up. “We have no idea how many security protocols they have, they could even have iris or voice recognition.”

Roch poked her head out of her bloodlust stupor, Murray squinted.

“I’m just saying. It’d be better if had him and didn’t need him than blew his brains out. Only to discover he’s the only one that can access the network.”

“Err yeah, that’s exactly right” Murray said.

“Shut up” Roch said giving him another little love tap with the shotgun.

“Just bring him inside and sit him down.” Jac said.

“Who died and made you the boss”.

“Just do it Roch” Jac sighed as she climbed the small set of stairs into the mobile hq. She took a deep inhale of breath as she entered. It was everything she hoped it would be although it smelled more like ass and doritos than she imagined. She sat down at Murray’s console moving his mountain dew bottles to make way for her laptop. She opened it up connecting it to the terminal and started to type in command prompts.

Roch lead Murray. A nasty look on her face as she pushed him up the steps. She sat him at another one of the screens in the van on a chair connected to the floor. The van evidently was intended for an entire team of people watching the cameras, budget cuts.

Juanita felt like a million dollars. She was starting to see herself as some kind comic book hero. Fighting some righteous daydream as she dragged her oversized gun into the truck. Parking herself in a seat next to Murray with the gun by her side. Panting and sweating profusely she said “Who’s this guy?”

“He’s their tech guy, monitors all the cameras” Jac said with her back turned typing at her laptop.

“How didn’t he see us coming?” She wheezed.

“He’s just one guy.” She shrugged looking over at the sad sack that was Murray. “There’s no way he could have known we had the kind of tech to ping his signal or the man power to take down his guard team.” She scrunched her face like she almost felt sorry for him. “Plus I’ve been patching into their drone traffic. There’s activity happening all over town, there’s not enough eyes on the ground to keep track of it all.”

“So what now?” Juanita huffed.

“Roch would you mind tying him up and then just guarding the door with Kat? We need someone to keep an eye out.” Jac said with an air of aloof superiority.

“Sure thing” Roch sneered and flounced out slamming the door behind her.

“What the hell your cracker as-“ Kat was cut off by a neat balled up fist tapping her on the nose and knocking her onto her ass. The french man picking and palming the mach ten out of her hand as she fell.

“I’m very sorry.” He said as he looked at her on the floor dazed.

As soon as Roch came out of the truck she was too pissed off to notice the smell of the crazy homeless guy. Which waiting for her at the side of the steps with his back flat against the truck wall.

“Hi” He said cherrily as he snaked a hand onto the barrel of the shotgun. Wrestling control of it away from her and tapping her on the nose with the top of the barrel. She folded like a cheap pic nick table at a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

The Frenchman gripped the mac ten in his hand looking over at Carpenter. Gauging distance and spread.

Carpenter clocked him looking and gave him a cheeky little wink as he cocked the shotgun. Liking his chances.

The Frenchman seethed and slackened his grip on the gun.

“After you, my friend” The Frenchman said.

“I don’t mind if I do.” He smirked.

–

Read the rest of the chapter here.

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Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest – Review (Le supreme gentleman savagery)

It’s probably a bad sign if the blurb gets an eyeroll.
Wow that is like half an hour of my life I’ll never get back, jesus where do I start? This has to win the award for the most spergy thing I’ve ever read on inkitt. I have no idea what you’re going for with this but if you intended it to sound like a severely autistic alien wrote it, you nailed it haha.
The first thing that hit me when I finished the first chapter was ‘why is it even sci-fi or fantasy?’ you’re going for this mix of sci-fi fantasy which never works, it’s just a mess when you blur science and magic, I mean what’s the point?
But fantasy/sci-fi settings are supposed to serve the story in someway, you could literally rewrite this and just set it on earth and make it a regular teen drama. Why would you make a teen drama sci-fi? Do one or the other. Because what really holds this story back and hits your straight out of the gates is all the exposition, there is way way too much exposition for a first chapter.
I mean I might care about the world building if he was some mech pilot fighting god knows what on pluto but it’s just about a kid who wants to get laid… in space. It really doesn’t need to be sci-fi and it certainly doesn’t need to be a blend of sci-fi or fantasy, just pick one or pick none.
Show don’t tell, if you have to reel off literal text book definitions of your world for world building it doesn’t work. You can’t drop a text book on your readers in the first chapter and expect them to be engaged because you renamed the moon “Blarglemunch7” it doesn’t work.
The world building in the story basically amounts to using weird or made up words in exchange for normal ones and the only reason for the use of the sci-fi setting is to squeeze in the weird sexual morality politics.
In terms of technical writing, it’s kind of hard to read, big blocks of text and some really weak similes.
I can’t make heads or tails of this story, I can’t tell whether or not it’s trying to be funny. From the blurb and the subject matter I thought it would be kind of fun and light with lots of humour but it doesn’t seem like it’s trying to be funny. So all the sex stuff is delivered seriously which makes it really weird and cringey and seem like it was written by a school shooter.
How is rape even a thing in this society where kids are having sex in school and no one can stop them? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I dunno what to do with this, maybe add some jokes, I don’t see how anyone can take this seriously. It’s like Tommy Wiseau tried to write a sci-fi book, so it’s either comedy genius or it’s something else entirely.

Read it here… I guess.
Elliot Rodger in space

boomer

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Cur Chapter 3 ‘A kind of magic’

Hello there dudes and dudettes,

Ok sliding in another Cur chapter because I realised I wanted to release a chapter a week and I kind of fucked that up so I’m gonna release two chapters this week to get back on track haha.

Pretty decent week of writing, I’m cutting out filler left and right which is great, really getting into the meat of the story and riding that wave, some things I need to change but I’m really liking where it was taking me. I kind of felt for a little bit that I was going with the motions and not feeling too inspired or if I was tired or fucked, my new sleep routine puts a lot of strain on my eyes because I’m just literally using them more.
My general philosophy when I feel kind of uninspired is just to keep going and go over it later, which I find works for me because I always write detailed synopsises of my work so I never get stuck looking at a blank page, I always have the next thing to go to. I always have something I can refer to if I get stuck.
I know there are lots of writers who don’t use plans and just go at with a blank page and their balls in their hands haha. I have no idea how they do it, to me that’s like fighting a fucking dragon with a toothbrush haha.
I always like to have a plan and a detailed structure at my back so I’m not stuck looking at a blank page with just my dick in my hand. I can always keep my flow going and if I hit a bump I can just take a break and sip some tea and come back to it.

But I was looking back at it and I was pleasantly surprised, it needs work but there’s something there, I won’t be polishing a turd just clearing away the crap on an unfettered gem.

Now for some witcher hate haha. I just don’t care about any of the characters honestly, not one of them, I just can’t care about them, I dunno, I just don’t think I’d get on with any of them and I don’t know what this author’s life is like but he must have some really complicated relationships with women. Every female character he writes is more obnoxious than the last.
Not saying women can’t be obnoxious but it’s every one of them, there’s maybe one woman in any of his stories that isn’t Ciri that has any redeeming qualities at all and even then it’s kind of only in comparison to the others who are awful.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not some rabid feminist by any means haha, I get that women can be assholes but when it’s literally every one of them it just gets tedious and loses all it’s power.
I mean the queen of brokilon was just an endless stream of unfettered cuntiness that I could barely stand. You could replace her dialogue with just farting noises and it would have been less obnoxious and tedious haha. It just reaches a point of parody and I can’t take it seriously and I never thought I’d actually be clambering for a likeable/identifiable female character.
Even in my work I don’t want to put women on a pedestal but represent them as they are warts and all but I also want them to be likeable enough to care about even a little bit and honestly when you find yourself rooting for the people that might rape and murder a character in a book you’ve done something wrong haha.

The Parker novel is pretty good, definitely one of Stark’s weaker ones, but the whole series is the perfect example of unsubverted expectations still being excellent. The witcher is so preoccupied with subverting expectations it forgets to be entertaining. Whereas in the Parker novels you know exactly whats going to happen and you can’t wait to read it haha.
Someone fucks over Parker and you know he’s going to track them down and curb stomp them and you’re tearing through chapters to get to it haha. The mystery comes into play when the why and who and the how are revealed. You what’s going to happen because you know Parker and what happens to people that cross him but you don’t know how he’s going to do it and who he’s going to do it to and that’s why you keep reading for that glorious catharsis that is nowhere to be found in the witcher books, the stories generally go nowhere or full circle, just generally unsatisfying.

Anyway enough of that I need to get proofreading the next chapter of Cur or I won’t have anything to post on thursday haha.

See you…

Ooh almost forgot, The One That Came Back for whatever reason has become super popular on inkitt so I thought fuck it, I uploaded the full edited version to inkitt so if you don’t want to download it you can just read it there.

A kind of magic

–

That night a dense bluish fog came low over the village. The calls of hounds barking filled the silence as the moon rode high on the crest and half full overhead as the village slept all, all but one.

 

Some form of morbid curiosity and fascination drew her to the empty mucky bog that would be the stranger’s grave. As proclaimed, no markings but a heavy stone pressed down on the grave. The grave that lay far from the town.

 

What she was going to do not even she knew herself but the druiddess felt some unearthly pull to the spot. Maybe a morbid trophy would belay her curiosity maybe not.

 

She approached the grave with trepidation, as if it were the steps to a grand and foreboding house. With no torch whatsoever and the necessity arising. The young girl tutting pulled her sleeve back revealing a gold half torgue around her wrist, with which she gave three quick taps.

 

On the third tap the torque began to give off an errie glow almost like a will-o-the-whisp. A slightly greenish hue that gave her all the light she needed to see the grave clearly.

 

“I have to know” She told herself “I just need to see the body for a moment, I can’t let this opportunity pass me by.”

 

Her curiosity had betrayed her as she was not alone. Too late she noticed the noise, a slight drawn out scratching noise and veiled breathing sniffing sounds and a low growl or whine or whistle.

 

“Who is that?” She called out but no one answered.

 

The scratching sounds got louder and the breathing deeper and faster as she approached the grave. Her footfalls sinking into the loose wet earth of the bog.

 

“I warn you, I have a weapon!” The druiddess swallowed her fear as she approached fumbling her small hands over the clasps. Moving her robes awkwardly to reach the handle of the strange sword she had found herself the owner of.

 

The druiddess drew closer to the noise. Her and on the hilt of the sword and her other on the oddly designed scabbard but she did not draw the blade as she feared to do so. The blade it seemed to her analysis had some magical properties but to the nature of which she had hitherto not discerned. Drawing it in anger could have unforseen consequences.

 

“I have use of magic” She croaked, her voice breaking as she said it, casting the light from her torque over the grave. A dark small dark figure hunched over the grave was digging in the loose earth around the stone.

 

The druiddess forgot to breath, she tensed her cheeks as she tried to swallow the lump of fear in her throat. Having no choice but to pass the light of her torque over the squat stygian figure scrabbling in the muck.

 

To her relief, the light revealed little more than a shaggy mutt. A dog of an indetterminent breed was digging and scratching at the freshly laid grave of the stranger from a by gone age.

 

“Shoo!” she cried. Feelings of anger and relief washing over her. Anger more at herself for being scared of something so pathetic looking.

 

She assumed the beast was just after the freshly planted dead flesh as a not so easy meal beneath the heavy stone.

 

“Away with you!” She swiped her hand in the air but the dog took no notice, continuing to paw and scratch at the soft earth.

 

Birog looked around her feet and found a small piece of sandstone and hucked it at the beast landing a few feet away from it. The creature lifted it’s head to growl and bear it’s teeth briefly before skulking away into the mist again.

 

 

 

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Cur Chapter 2 ‘The executioner’s song’

Oh my god, I wasted so much time writing a really savage review of this story on inkitt. Another salty exchange, one of many on inkitt haha.
I just logged in to find a three star review on inkitt from someone who had a weird name and no avatar and the review basically consisted of “Hur durr, the characters are mean, too much violence”. Then I was like ‘seriously a three star review because you thought the characters weren’t nice’
Then he’s like “Hurr durr, I like to give constructive criticism and harsh reviews” And me not knowing I was dealing with the Rodger Ebert of inkitt deigned to read his abortion of a story which literally reads like it was written by the Isla vista shooter. This is literally what Elliot Rodger would write if he wanted to write a sci-fi fantasy mash up story instead of being a weird incel spree killer.
The story is basically all about sci-fi rape and it’s- I can’t find any other word to describe it but as Todd Howard would say; ‘Degenerate’ haha.
But the difference is I actually gave constructive criticism in my review instead of just saying ‘the characters are too mean’.
I mean honestly I don’t care about the reviews on inkitt, really I just put it up there for ease of reading and general feedback but you’re not gonna get a good critique from that page. But when someone just pops up out of nowhere to shit on you it pisses me off. And it pisses me off even more so that the critique isn’t even good. There’s nothing he said that was constructive criticism, I literally can’t make my characters nicer because they’re supposed to evil and cruel because of what happened to them. And then on top of that his story is a steaming pile of literal garbage that is literally like Tommy Wiseau wrote a sci-fi novel haha,
Anyway, I’ll post that next week or you can go on my inkitt page and read it and his review if you give a shit, which I suspect most people don’t haha.
No bitching about the witcher today because I haven’t read any this week because I don’t fucking want to haha. I’ll probably read more tomorrow. But I’m really into the Parker novel I’m reading and it’s getting to the good bit.
So that’s about it, woke up with butthurt in my heart and needed to vent and fuck a schedule for chapter releases I’m planning to release a Cur chapter a week for my one fan haha.
Other than that I’ve wasted too much time already and I need to do some spamming or proofreading or quit drinking coffee haha.

See you…

The executioner’s song

–

Cur awoke with a bucket of water in his face, locked in a pig pen for a day and a half, stinking as he was. They only let him out once to torture him but too little avail. The pigs snorted and snuffled him as he sat shirtless and dirty as one of them. His head down, suspended by his one arm tightly wrapped with a piece of fibrous twine to the thicket fence.

The dwarves cut him loose and he grinned at them as they shuddered, shrinking behind their pikes at the sight of him.

They lifted him to his feet but he could stand on his own well and they walked him at pike point to the large round house on the hill.

The chieftain of Killaloe sat cross legged on a beautifully decorated hide rug. An ash wood tray with clay pots on it and a large ornately decorated axe at his feet. The hut itself was not anymore grand than the one used as a tavern but it smelled less of piss and old mead.

“Leave us” He said waving his hand.

“Sir he-“

“I know, I said leave us”

The chieftain was a wide portly clean shaven dwarf, only a few tufts of hair on his face he’d missed. He was wearing a gold trimmed tunic that still smelt of smoke and pig shit like everything in this village did. A gold torque around his neck and a conical cap made of birch bark on his head symbolized his status. “Please sit” He said pointing at the rug on the floor.

Cur sat crossed legged with one knee raised.

“Do you know me?” The dwarf’s face was sallow and looked slick to the touch, bouncing up and down as he spoke and dropping when he stopped.

Cur looked through him with a set of icy blue eyes. “I know your name” He hissed.

“Good” He had a pot of some liquid in front of him that he poured out into round clay mugs. “Are you really of the Firbolg?” He said without looking up.

“The Firbolg are dead”.

“I see.” He handed one of the cups to Cur. His down turned face unchanged and grim.

Cur batted it out of his hand letting it roll around on the deer hide rug. The chieftain’s face didn’t move, it stayed perfectly still as if numbed by snake venom.

He cleared his throat.

“We hear many rumors here as you may imagine, a small village like this, all we have are rumors” He tried to smile shyly but his face seemed almost too heavy. “Two in particular interest me, one of a strange series of attacks by blood suckers or ‘Dearg due’ as they call it. Whole villages are slaughtered for not adhering to some elder god or some such triviality. And another about a wandering mercenary that kills for coin and cheaply at that who lacks the good grace to die.” The dwarf managed a pinching at the side of his mouth that might have been a smile.

“Perhaps those rumors are much the same” Cur grinned speaking from his throat.

“We face hard times, some love Bres for his beauty, the fools, women mostly, others.” He paused and breathed out letting his face sag even further “Loathe him for the unfair taxes he levies. A third of our corn and of our milk, its extortion, I and a few others outright refuse to pay it.”

“This doesn’t concern me”

“You’re right of course, but I’m a farmer, it concerns me and that’s why I didn’t deliver you directly to the gallows.”

“Your point?”

“Very well, you’re very skilled and are attached to no clan as no clan alive would have you because of- well look at you.” He scratched his sagging jowl and tipped his head as if to speak to his own round gut. “Kill Abartach of Slaverghty. Do this and you walk free.”

“I walk free now”

“Hard times make desperate men Firbolg.” He sighed deeply and lifted his eyes a little looking for mercy in the man before him and found none. “I see a deadly pattern emerging, the Offaly villages of Annally and Lusmagh were hit first. Formally parts of Connacht as I remember.” His sharp eyes darted to the Firbolg for confirmation and found none. “All their people scattered or dead never heard from again.”

“Then how do you know it?”

“Travellers pass through, say the villages are deserted, all their livestock taken or dead. Not a man woman or child alive, almost no signs of struggle at all, no weapons, no survivors, no witnesses.” He narrowed his eyes to scrutinize the stranger yet again and found only a scornful calm.

“This Abartach?”

“He is the one profiting from their deaths.”

“How?”

“Abartach moves illicit goods from ports in Munster up and down the Shannon river from Slaverghty. Forbidden items smuggled out of the cities of knowledge and other such places. all the villages along the river know of this as it’s safer to transport them by water. Bandits can’t swim. As those villages are aware of this practice they expect tribute for silence. I suspect Annally and Lusmagh got too greedy.”

“How does he do it?”

“That’s what I hope you will find out for me, your freedom and a weight silver.”

“Petty squabbles between dwarves don’t interest me.”

“Well surely your freedom and your life interest you.” He tone shifted became faster and more breathy. This is more than just petty squabbles this is conspiracy, this fratricide.” His face was red and his eyes began to bulge out of their socket, spitting as he spoke. He may well be working for Bres himself!” His face was hot, a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek and then he paused for a moment “How did you know he was a dwarf?” He said as his blood rain cold.

Cur smirked wickedly.

The chieftain’s face became drawn and white and he coughed. “You’re an assassin then?”

“Sometimes”

The chieftain’s face drained of color as he looked at the ghostly white visage of the man before him. “Then the scene in the tavern, just so you could be before me – How much is he paying you? I’ll double it, triple it!”

“He offers me more than mere silver.” He croaked ominously in his gravelly voice.

“What then? Land? His ugly daughter? Spit it out!”

Cur breathed in deeply, his eyes wide and manic as he smiled like a ghoul. “A future!” He said stonily.

“Ahhhhhhh!” The chieftain wailed his flabby face rippled as his ornate axe leapt into his hand. He swung at Cur’s neck getting one good but shallow whack in it at the base of his neck.

No blood just a gaping wound like a notch in a tree. Cur’s head tilted to one side with that manic insane smile on his face still, laughing low and menacing like a demon.

The chieftain crying out pulled his hand back for another strike to free the monster’s head from its shoulders.

Cur caught the little man’s stubby hand in his gargantuan fist with a hard sapping sound. He squeezed the dwarf’s hand letting the heavy axe drop on the hide rug.

“What now dead ma- ahhhhh!” The chieftain cried as Cur pulled him by the arm like a tavern strumpet and lunged forward to rip out his throat with his front teeth.

–

 

 

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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

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Real Fantasy by Sonya Gammon (I review sci-fi mommy porn)

(Yes that header image is what you get when you google “sci-fi mommy porn”)

It probably says a lot about me that my first concern is that the vr suit must stink haha. But she has some sort of magic suit washer maguffin which is fine but I would have just laughed my ass off if she couldn’t wash it and it just started to smell like a dead body haha..
My first impressions are are not bad but not great, it’s not something I’d really read, I was thinking it would be more sci-fi and less straight up mommy porn haha. I’m not like a prude but it just doesn’t do anything for me and I couldn’t tell if the dialogue was cringey on purpose as part of a satire or it was just my natural reaction to cringe at some of the lines.
The plot is pretty straight forward and I can pick out a lot of the plot points right off the bat, the glaringly obvious one is where she takes time to highlight that the ‘end game’ command always works, so obviously a plot point later on will lead to it not working.
The problem is it’s not really that original, it just takes two over used concepts vr and mommy porn unfulfilled housewife and combines them. I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do but not being an unfulfilled housewife I can’t say it really appeals to me. I mean the crux of it is by the end of the chapter do you want to know who her stalker is and I really didn’t find myself caring. He didn’t really do anything more interesting than have sex with her.
The sex stuff wasn’t that gripping honestly, there wasn’t any actual eroticism above just describing the organs and their various states and functions. I’m not the market for it but I’m sure lots of people would find it very titillating.
The writing was good though, I like the perspective and a lot of times it sort of made me think of Dexter. It just gave me this vibe like there was something darker there. Like maybe if you’d set it further on in the story where the stalker had actually done something or was some kind of crazed murderer or something along those lines and then cut back to how it started their meeting might have felt more impactful.
This probably sounds weird considering it’s a story about Vr but there isn’t a lot of setting going, she’s in her house, and then whoosh she’s in a magic vr room behind a bookcase.
For me it’s either start her in vr or describe the house and room and do some place setting, you just kinda went ‘she’s in a house- woosh magic vr room’. Might have been more fun just to start her in vr and then to establish the vr premise by having her change games mid vr session instead of her going into dexter’s lab haha. Or if you’re going that route have an establishing sequence where we set up the house and the family, show don’t tell.
That’s what I found really unsatisfying, lots of the exposition just feels crammed in between thrusts forgive the analogy but awkwardly jammed in there haha.
Overall I think the premise is fresh for mommy porn as vr is sort of more of an otaku weeb thing so it could go over well for that demographic. I just think there needs to be more work on scene setting, I get that its hard to restrain yourself and you want to get right into the meat of the story ‘the action’ if you will but some deferred gratification is necessary to lay the ground work to avoid the needless exposition.
I have no real problem with exposition as you can probably tell from my work but only if there’s no other option and it’s done in a way that’s interesting or fresh. I really think that everything she says in exposition could have been shown to the reader in a more interesting way than just her telling us.
So just some constructive criticism, it’s not bad, it’s just not for me but I think lots of people would like it and I wish you all the best with it.

If you wanna read it, links below.

Real Fantasy

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3 Ring Samurai Chapter 2 ‘Masked Avengers’ *Content too hot for inkitt haha*

Ok so this is a first.

I’m kinda surprised actually that it took this long but as of today this is the first story that has been rejected, I repeat ‘REJECTED’ from inkitt haha. 
Maybe it’s something to do with the a clown samurai killing a hillybilly tranny in the first chapter haha.

But yeah, this is now an exclusive to my site story, novelette series because it’s too hot for inkitt, because fuck if I’m changing it. I’m not altering it one iota for some pc culture bullshit coming from germany of all places (imagun mi sherk!). They can fuck right off, I’ll just fight it and see what they have to say and have a damn good laugh doing it haha.

So that’s a thing and if you’re on my mailing list right now there should be a nice little copy or two of two of ‘the’ best e-novellas in the world written by yours truly with all the love attention and wit I could muster stored inside them. If you’re not on my mailing and just joining, you’ll have to wait until next month.

Arms literally feel like noodles, last month of the heavy lifting routine then gonna move onto some lifting cardio type things to mix it up a bit.

Aside from all this bullshit, I did finish the first part of 3 Ring and it’s pretty fun. I don’t know if I’ll move onto the next, I might just keep it episodic and keep coming back to it. As soon as I finished the first part I started jotting down ideas for the Cur the fantasy novel I’ve been brewing.

It’s helping a lot reading on into the second witcher book, although I read it and there is a lot of world building that people think is essential to a fantasy book which I find sort of superfluous. I mean it sounds great and all but all you’re doing is talking about a story within a story while I’m I don’t know how man chapters into the Blood of elves and Geralt hasn’t even shown up yet haha. 
So you’re like stuck with probably the least likeable characters in the series; Dandilion and Yennifer talking about Geralt and Ciri.
I also found the intro super generic, I don’t know how many fantasy stories that started with a battle or some kind of horrific event described from the perspective of a little girl or something. I dunno, it just seemed kind of cringe worthy and I’d rather it from Geralt’s perspective and had more action. It was just like action without any actual action. Like ‘Look at all that action going on over there isn’t great?’.

I finished editing the chunk of Diana after Dark I got back from Chrissy, awaiting the next chunk. Paying for it in segments because I am broke haha. I’m just chomping at the bit to start throwing this at agents but I have to be patient, I can’t start emailing people until the package is ready to ship. I need to take my time with this one, I won’t get another after this.

That’s all for now, if this was available on inkitt I would have posted a link but sadly it is not haha.
But still head on over to inkitt or wherever you spot me on social media and send me happy joyjoy feeling.

Also fuck inkitt haha.

See you…

_

A flock of bird-like creatures flapped their misshapen black wings blocking out the sun as they passed. Making an ear aching warbling sqwarking noise. Their shadows passed over the mound of garbage left by the circus caravan. As their shadows passed and their dirty black feathers fell; seven humanoid shapes started to appear. The curtain of shadow slowly rising to reveal a group of odd hooded figures picking over the mound like carrion. Their movements light and ethereal like the spirits of the dead looking for unfinished business.

 

“He’s not here” One of the figures said.

 

The figure at the front turned his head, the orange bill of a strange vaudevillian duck mask he wore protruding out. The emerald green paint was dull and faded and chipped. With what looked like deep gouges and cuts. “I can see that.”

 

~

 

The crowds cheering became a dull metronome in his head slowing in time with his heartbeat. He felt the warm spray of the blood on his face, the woodchips shifting under his feet. The steel biting into bone and sinew, the smell of cheap popcorn, candy floss and vomit.

 

The sword in his hand laughing, laughing, endlessly laughing, never satisfied. Grey flesh shifting in front of him, an endless see of grey leathery flesh. The crowd are replaced with a stampede of raging elephants coming at him from all around. His enemies replaced with grey flesh and tusks and trunks getting closer and he can’t escape.

 

Pookie woke in a cold sweat, he wheezed as the pain in his side came back and his hood came off. He must have made a sound because some old geezers on a table in the back were laughing at him. He quickly pulled the hood back up over his head. He must have dozed off for a moment with his head down on a table in the only watering hole in the town he just left behind. He picked up a long coat with a hood and a scarf to cover his face from a washing line on his way in and was trying to keep a low profile until he could move on.

 

Three old geezers were yammering incessantly to each other as they played some card game.

 

“Who’s turn is it again?” The old coot in the straw hat said.

 

“It’s your turn you old coot!” The old coot with the corn cob pipe said.

 

“Yeah it’s your turn and we’ve been waiting!” The old coot with the slack jaw said.

 

“Goddamn ungrateful sumbitches. You wouldn’t even have this place lest I built it with my own two hands” Strawhat said banging his old fist against the table.

 

“You built it?” Corncob said pointing his pipe.

 

“Is that right? Slackjaw said drooling a little and staring at the ceiling fan.

 

“Yeah I built this whole town after the real badness with my two good buddies” Strawhat said scratching his grizzled chin.

 

“We’re the two good buddies you’re talking about” Corncob said gesturing at himself with the pipe.

 

“Yup” Slackjaw said.

 

“I planted all the crops and put up all the fences with the sweat of my back.” Strawhat whined

 

“I planted those crops right along with ya” Corncob scowled.

 

“Me too” Slackjaw said.

 

“You was always planting crops of a different kind though” Strawhat said giving him a sideways glance through tight wrinkly slits. “To think I was a big guy on wallstreet before the crash”

 

“I thought it was a zombie apocalypse” Corncob mused

 

“Wasn’t it a solar flare?” Slackjawed dozed.

 

“Zambies? You see any zambies around? Strawhat said.

 

“I seen plenty of’em, I’m looking at one right now!” Corncob chuckled.

 

“I killed a zombie once” Slack jaw said. “Hit it with a shovel”.

 

“Nevermind about that, those damn circus folk come here every goddamn year and rob us of our hard earned food. Leave us barely enough to get through the season – and they steal our kids for their goddamn shows. It’s like those damn white haired guys from that videogame, what was it called, the snitcher 11?.

 

“You don’t have any kids and you don’t have any vidya games neither” Corncob said as he chewed his pipe and looked over his cards.

 

“Grand kids” Slack jaw said.

 

“Your grand kids all left for the circus!” Strawhat said.

 

“Little bastards!” Corncobs said staring at his cards like he wanted to fight them.

 

“Ungrateful little shits!” Slawjaw yawned.

 

“And for what?” Strawhat said thoughtfully looking at his hand.

 

“I don’t even like the circus” Corncob said.

 

“It clears out the jails I guess” Slackjaw said wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

 

“I bet half of’em are innocent” Strawhat interjected pursing his lips.”No trials or nothing.”

 

“I wish someone would come along and wipe’em all out” Corncob said biting down on his pipe.

 

“Yeah so someone worse can take their place I’ll bet.” Slack jaw said.

 

“Yep sounds about right.” Strawhat said.

 

“Uh huh” Corncob said.

 

“Yup.” Slackjaw agreed.

 

“Oh yeah” Strawhat said as he studied his hand. “I fold.”

 

“Oh goddamit” Corncob spat.

 

“Everytime” Slackjaw sighed.

 

“Shut it you old coots!” A large man with a head like bowling ball with a thin strip of hair on it shouted over a pool table.

 

He and a group of solid citizens wearing loose dirty coveralls were loitering around the pool table cursing and talking about women.

 

It was a small border town that Pookie hadn’t actually set foot in before. The circus set up further out and then carnys would put up posters telling people where and when they’d be there. No one had actually seen his face but it just made sense not to make a big song and dance about the tattoos.

 

The bar was laid out adjacent to the saloon style doors. Pookie had picked a spot right at the back, parallel to the bar so he could watch the door without being spotted right away.

 

The poker game quieted down as a tall slim young man walked cockily through the swing doors smiling like he owned the place and everyone in it. The old hag behind the bar smiled at him and greeted him like she was his nurse maid.

 

“Morning Pete” She said with a lilting fondness in her voice.

 

“That’s deputy Pete” He laughed feigning an air of formality, and then dropping his elbows on the bar like a kid about to ask for a strawberry milkshake. “Morning Ethel, hows it hanging?” He smirked tipping up his ten gallon hat that looked just a little too big for his head and a little too small for his cocky smirk.

 

“Lower everyday” She cackled.

 

He laughed as a formality but Pookie felt a crude and quick searching glance. Then he saw the light hit the sheriff star and he tensed up and lowered his head. “What’s the agenda for the day?”

 

“Same old, same old, pick up after these old bastards, maybe mop up some vomit and break up a fight, whoop de fucking doo.” She said with her hands on her wide hips.

 

“Absolutely thrilling, as always Ethel-“ He stood erect and adjusted his gunbelt. Took another shrewd but casual glance towards the back of the saloon sighed and wet his lips. “Welp, you keep me posted now.” He smiled wide and said “Just holler and I’ll come a running.”

 

“I’m sure you will” She said with an added withering glance.

 

He laughed and tipped his hat again before walking out the way he came.

 

Pookie knew he couldn’t stay here all day, but he didn’t know what else to do. He had to find a place to rest before he could move on and even then he had no idea where he was going or even had a reason to go. What choice did he have but the life of a wanderer?

 

Waiting around here made him a little too conspicuous. Even with the coat and scarf he stuck out like a sore thumb in a town that probably didn’t get a lot of visitors.

 

He shuffled along the booth he was sitting in, doing his best to hide the sword on his hip under the long coat and he walked out of the saloon. It was midday by the time he got to the town, so it was getting cooler in the afternoon. The sun slipping behind the rows of houses and stores along the mainstreet. The town was basically one street lined with business and the more houses on the outer sides making up the backstreets. All the houses looked like they were cobbled together from old furniture and packing crates.

 

Making his way through the alleys and side streets to avoid undo attention was his best bet. But apparently he’d already failed at it if heavy footfalls padding in the dirt was any indication.

 

He turned keeping his head dipped and saw the solid citizens from the pool game, bowling ball head standing in front still with the pool cue in his hand.

 

The sun seemed to shift and duck behind the houses again and cast the alley into a cool semi-shadow and for a moment they said nothing.

 

“Yyyou think I wouldn’t recognise you?” Bowling ball head stammered, his tongue loose and full of spittle. “Tttthhis is a small town, strangers like you stick out like a boil on a hhhhogs ass!”

 

Pookie looked him up and down and said nothing.

 

“Yyyou think you’re too good to talk to me?” He said as he squeezed the pool cue in his hands. “Yyyyou don’t look so tough without your fffreakshow pals” He looked around at the swelling faces of his hapless cohorts. “Ttten tickets say I can take him on my own”

 

“Yeah go for it Bully!”

 

“I’ll take that!

 

“Break his ass Bull!”

 

Bull smirked with a wide open half toothy grin. “I’m gggonna kick your ass!”

 

Pookie tossed the hem of his coat back revealing the hilt of the sword with the silly face.

 

“Yyyyou’re not allowed that, nnnno weapons in the city limits, ttthose the rules.” He said as he turned to look at his buddies.

 

“Heh, he doesn’t know anything”

 

“What an r-tard”

 

“Yeah, r-tard.

 

“Ggguess I’ve got to ttteach you a lesson.” he said like a basic bitch anime villain. Without turning, looking with the corner of his eye he swung the pool cue in an upward arch trying to catch Pookie under the chin. All he saw was a ridiculous clown face pommel coming at him like a freight train right between the eyes.

 

Pookie pulled at a decorative yellow ring attached to a string like the rip cord on a parachute, pulling it as if he was starting a lawn mower. It made a strange noise like a kazoo or some kind of wind up toy as it propelled the sword out of the sheathe. Rocketing the clown face pommel into the middle of Bull’s bowling ball head. Unleashing the cringe inducing mechanical laughing sound and sending Bully reeling backwards followed by an arc of thick red blood and snot.

 

He bent over and groaned with his hand over his face and said “Yyyyou broke my nose, you mmmmother fucker!”

 

The sword hadn’t fully left the sheathe and Pookie let gravity pull it back in with a click. The string he pulled retracted quickly back into the scabbard with a tinny mechanical noise.

 

Bully looked at the blood in his hand as he took it away from his face and he got redder in the cheeks and seemed to stand a foot taller. “Iiiit’s on now” He said as he took the pool cue and snapped it easily into two sharp stakes.

 

Pookie made his eyes into hard uncaring slits, threw his hood back and moved his sword around to the front of his draw string belt.

 

A loud thunderclapping sound stopped them all in their tracks. Bull with the sharp stakes in his hand and Pookie with his thumb in the ring of the pull string on his scabbard.

 

“Well that didn’t take long did it” The voice from behind the crowd of yokels said. “First day in my town and you’re already causing trouble, and you wonder why folks don’t like outsiders.” The deputy pushed through the crowd as he holstered his gun and walked up to Pookie and had a good look at him. ”Especially outsiders who look like you” he said jutting his jaw out and tutting.

 

The deputy turned around and looked at the crowd both his thumbs under his gun belt “You’ll relinquish your weapon and accompany me to the local jail.” He turned to Pookie and pursed his lips, “Well?” He put his hand out.

 

Pookie looked at him, narrowing his eyes and he took hold of his sword by the scabbard gripping it firmly.

 

After a moment of silence, only the wind and their breath making a sound. Pookie lifted the sword out of the cradle of his belt and put in the Deputies hand.

 

The Deputy looked it up and down and it was a strange thing to behold, multi-coloured like a lollipop with seemingly useless tassles and ball-balls hanging off the scabbard and the unusual pommel.

 

“Well you don’t see that everyday.” He looked up from the odd blade and then gestured with the hilt “Welp, I aint got all eternity, follow me.”

 

The two men passed the crowd who sniggered.

 

“What are you giggling like school girls for, you’re all coming too, more the merrier at this barbecue.”

 

“Aww come on Pete” The crowd collectively groaned.

 

“Wwwhat for? He the one done broke my nose!” Bull spat.

 

“Public assholery, not being welcoming to our new guest” Deputy Pete quipped. He gestured with the sword. “Move on now”

 

They all groaned and dipped their heads like school kids as they followed him towards the jail.

 

~

 

“Sch-a-gdm-pssy” The trapper in the dungarees blubbered “Guy-kilt-yer-kin-cnt-ebn-shoot!” He was frantically rummaging around in drawers trying to pack a threadbare suitcase, tears and snot streaming down his face.

 

“Is this a bad time?” A voice said behind him.

 

He craned his neck around to see a man dressed in a long dark raincoat with a hood wearing a dark green duck mask standing in his open doorway. He froze like a deer in headlights and then started towards his filthy stained bed which was just a dead mattress on the floor, where his crossbow lay.

 

The man with the duck mask watched him slowly edge towards the makeshift weapon in the dingey trappers house. Which consisted of a large dirty single room operating as bedroom, kitchen and living room all in one.

 

He made it to the bed and picked up the cross bow and pointed it at the man in the duck mask.

 

“Git-ya-gdam-knky-werdo!”

 

There was a thudding skiting noise on the roof. He turned to see something that looked like a big crow in the corner of his eye flutter past the mesh windows of the house.

 

“What are you gonna do with that?” The man in the duck mask said.

 

“Git-of-mi-prprty!”

 

There was a sudden heaving creaking behind him, near the backdoor. The man in the dungarees turned to see a giant figure looming over him dressed exactly like the first but with a horrifying cracked and stained penguin mask. Black and white with some yellow around the rim and the same empty haunting hollow eyes staring at him. The man shrieked and instinctively fired the only bolt striking the monstrous figure in the shoulder.

 

But the hulking man made no sound of pain, barely reacting at all. Only lifting a gargantuan hand to snap the bolt off and the other slamming down with some sort of cudgel made of burled wood and covered in barbed wire. The blow splintered the already weakened floorboards sending the man in the dungarees down under his house.

 

Operating on survival instinct alone the man in the dungarees skittered under the house like a dung beetle looking for shade. Fighting for every terrified breath. He waited for a moment in the crawl space, holding it in, listening to the creaking of the floorboards.

 

After a moment he heard a strange whooping noise getting closer and then as it reached it’s peak he felt a stinging waft of air and then his face felt wet. But before he could inspect what it was he was shaken awake by a loud buzzing noise and a wrending of the floor boards as a slim chainsaw-like knife poked close to his face.

 

He flattened and wriggled away from it as fast as he could but the buzzing knife kept cutting until it had opened up a wide hole. A man with a turkey mask stuck his head through and looked at the man in the dungarees.The mask was a rich blue colour with a red neck.

 

“He’s here!” The man in the turkey mask said.

 

The man in the dungarees was breathing hard and sweating as he dragged himself to the edge of his house and out of the crawlspace.

 

The sun was setting and cruel twilight had descended, the sun still blinding but in a numbing darkness that surrounded the hapless figure. He touched his face and looked at his hand and there was a little blood there. He touched a small cut running down the side of his face confused, looking around.

 

There was a loud crashing sound as a man wearing a bright yellow and black finch mask landed on a junked car. He cocked his head to the side to look at the man as he turned and ran deeper into the junkyard.

 

He saw the jet black crow again in the corner of his eye hopping and bobbing on rusted out tractors and buses as he followed closely. The man in the dungarees ran frantically trying to get lost in the rusted maze he’d constructed for himself.

He quickly turned a corner around a stack of crushed cars and he saw the reflection of a slim feminine figure standing on top of them in a car window. Looking down at him with some large covered object strapped to her back, the long beak of a black and grey heron mask following him as he ran in the opposite direction.

 

The man in the duck mask yawned “Annnd I’m bored of this now.” He turned to a broad cloaked figure wearing a cardinal bird mask, a black faced bird with deep red spiked feathers at the top and around the edges. “Cardinal, if you’d be so kind.”

 

“My pleasure, Canard”.

 

Cardinal dropped off his perch on top of a rusted out trailer and landed right in front of the man in the dungarees who fell back onto his ass.

 

Cardinal laughed and let a small sickle on a chain fall out of his sleeve and land in the dust at his feet.

 

The man in the dungarees instantly started to scuttle in the opposite direction.

 

Cardinal stayed where he was and started to spin the chain over his head, letting more and more slack into it, getting faster.

 

The man in the dungarees was in a full sprint, going as fast as his little legs could carry him now straight in the opposite direction. Noticing more masks following him in the corner of his eyes as he went. He was seeing them everywhere and then suddenly something small with weight landed in front of him and he stopped in his tracks trying to see what it was.

 

Something snaked and writhed in the sand next to him. The chain growing taught and the sickle coming up and back fast cutting off his left leg and leaving him flailing on the floor in the blink of an eye.

 

He lay on his back still trying to crawl away despite bleeding profusely from his leg. He heard a fluttering light thudding noise behind him and he looked up and saw an upside down duck mask looking down at him holding a piece of shiny paper.

 

“Have you seen this clown?”

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