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3 ring samurai part 3 chapter 6 ‘The carnival is over’

Henlo people, long time no… not see, hear? Read?

Regardless, irregardless? Gardless?

Ok whatever, the content drought is still upon me, no movie reviews because my brother is on another of his ridiculous adventures and still have writers block so the writing is slow as fuck but huzzah there is content today, hard fought content.
That’s not to say I haven’t been busy, quite the contrary, I’m lifting ten times heavier haha. Almost finished watch all of farscape which is pretty good, finished my last shadow book and straight into the next one which seems to have a pretty interesting villain and I keep spilling promix on myself haha.
But in other news I got an interview for a new job which I think I either aced or did so badly they want another interview. The first one was just a weird live recorded one, but I have one tomorrow that’s live. But get this, I get a phone call from the person who’s meant to be interviewing me tomorrow and she says there’s no current opening in the job I applied for. 
Colour me surprised since I didn’t actually apply for a job I just sent in my cv and cover letter and they suggested a job for me to apply to which I did. Why the fuck would you offer me a job that didn’t have openings? I mean wtf is that? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I got off the phone with her and I almost broke into tears because here’s me thinking I have this perfect job lined up and this person asks me if I still want to interview for a job I can’t have. So I dunno, I’m gonna do the interview and ask them how long I might have to wait because who knows it could just be until after christmas or something. But if it’s longer than that I’m gonna tell them I’ll keep looking for jobs because that’s fucking clownworld shit.
I really wanted this job, in case I didn’t put it on here, I’m applying to work on a cruise ship because I think it’s perfect for me, travel, meet new people, live rent free, bill free, free food, no commutes. I genuinely hate driving, I can drive but I try to avoid it as much as possible because it stresses me out. It sounds silly but it’s how my father died and I don’t so much fear death as much as I fear making a mistake at all. I know some people find driving relaxing, I am not one of them. I find taking the train with a good book relaxing.
I just so upset when I got off the phone, because, I mean the whole reason I’m doing this is so I can make enough money to be with her, to be close to her, even if it’s just the two months on a six months on, two months off contract. And this is just more time I have to wait until I can hold her again.
I lie to myself, my autism flares up and tells me I can’t do it because x,y and z, I need my personal space, I hate people, I wont have time to workout, I’ll get fat etc. So I’ve bribed the autism side of my brain telling it that I’ll buy it a nintendo switch lite to play in the cabin and that seems to shut it up and make it forget about how hard it’ll undoubtedly be working six months seven days a week and sharing a room with a stranger.
But mainly it’s to anaesthetise that voice in my head that reminds me how empty I am without her, how lonely I am, how much I miss her. How nothing else matters. Because every time I think about that I can feel myself breaking down, even now as I type this I feel nails scratching away at the surface. My carefully crafted armor cracking like an eggshell.
It’s why I’ve been reluctant to write poetry recently, instead I’ve just been rehashing pop songs. Because I’m afraid if I dig too deep and use my real emotions it might just start a flood I can’t dam up. And it gets worse day by day and who knows how long I have to wait now. You’d think it’d drive me to even deeper more effective work, but it’s just too much to bare. It’s easier to just shut it off. But I don’t know how long I can do that. All I have is dreaming of a better outcome but at every turn it seems to go wrong somehow. I mean here I find a job that’s perfect for me and it looks like I’m about to get it but no, I’ve stepped on a rake and it the handle hits me in the face.
Fuck me right?
–
Canard felt the blood pooling in his brain and it felt like his head were an expanding balloon that was about to pop. The wire tightened around his neck, arm and leg. He was yanked in three directions, they meant to pull him apart like soft bread or a really fucked up pinate.
With his free hand and the last of his strength he pulled on the wire around his neck. Yanking the mime with the shaved head forward and off balance. The mime allowed a small smirk to creep across his face as he stumbled and leapt forward.
Canard dragged him forward with all his might and with a last desperate effort with the only blood left in his stump. He flicked his hidden blade in his peg leg open and cut the bald mime’s arm clean off. The smile didn’t move even as his own blood spattered on his still white face.
Canard had just enough time to cut the wire around his arm before he was pulled off his feet by the wire still wrapped tightly around his good leg.
He bumped his head a little and it felt like falling in a dream. He blacked out for a split second and then allowing for the rush of blood back into his brain. The oxygen back into his lungs he was awake again digging his heel in the dirt.
The fucker was dragging him, reeling him in like a fish on a hook. The one with his arm off calmly picked up his other arm up, maybe he wanted to see if he could reattach it with a little glue and tape.
Canard instinctively shot a glance up and behind the one that had hold of his weapon arm was advancing from behind now. He had to act fast or he was fucked.
He dug the pointy end of his spear in the dirt to try and slow him down. Then he got a cute idea and tossed some dry dirt up into the air that looked like an old man farting dust. Hardly the smokescreen or the mud in his eye that he wanted.
“Fuck it!” Canard spat as he angled his spear like a harpoon and lobbed it at the mime dragging him.
The mime dropped the line turning instantly to catch the spear out of the air.
Canard cursed under his breath as he quickly slipped his foot free of the wire “Shit, that worked last time” He could feel the one behind him closing.
Suddenly he felt like a crab on his back and rose up like a spider and did a fancy break dance spin. Trying to do his best impression of a blender and maybe take out the fucker behind him.
The one behind was too fast and nimble and had seen the blade coming from a mile off and summersaulted clear over the bladed spinning top.
The three were together now, the bald one with one arm on the right still smirking holding his other arm like a club. The one with his spear and the other one on the left. They paused for a moment allowing Canard to see how fucked he was.
Canard stood up and dusted himself off, he glanced over at them and sighed a little “Well, what are you waiting for?” He said as he held his arms out welcoming them to kill him. Hobbled slightly to one side as the knife on his peg leg elevated one side like a high heel shoe.
The mime with Canard’s weapon was eager, emboldened by his new toy.
Canard pointed at him and made a stupid face.
–
Pookie drove his blade up and under the mime’s jaw and pushed it all the way until he heard a scraping cracking sound. The mime’s spiked club fell in a stunted arc and scratched Pookie’s cheek as it fell from the mime’s limp lifeless arm.
“Over here!” He heard a familiar voice calling him.
In a cloud of brown and orange dust Riki’s little buggy skidded into view on what was left of the road. Riki leaned out and signalled Pookie. Pookie hiked Jersey up higher on his shoulder and cast a glance back at Efron and the dog and then over at Canard.
–
The mime with Canard’s spear lunged at him in a full speed dash with every intention of turning Canard into a one legged duck kebab.
But to Canard that was the most obvious way to attack, the acrobat pirouetted effortlessly to one side. Letting his spear to pass and grabbing it in both hands along the shaft. In one fluid motion he stepped on the mime’s chest and rolled him backwards. Making good and sure the mime’s body weight sunk his peg leg blade deep into his liver rolling back and launching the soon to be dead prick up in the air.
He landed on his back flopping like a fish out of water before some sensory mechanism kicked in. He flipped back to his feet dropping half a quart of black blood on the sand.
“Ya know it’d be really great if you guys could stay down.” Canard spat through the hard slit that had become his mouth.
The mime who had his spear moved mechanically, as if all sense had left him and only a husk bent on primal slaughter remained. He lunged towards Canards back, the acrobat leaned on his spear giving an exasperated sigh as he heard the mime’s feet scraping the sand towards him.
Canard turned his upper body in one fluid motion and drove the spear over his shoulder piercing through the mime’s skull. The shaft moving so fast it shot in and out like a piston. The mime stood swaying the last one to get the message that he was dead.
Canard drove the point home as he drew the blade up in an arching slash across his chest. The strike splitting him from gut to sternum, he fell almost in two pieces into the loose earth.
“Hey are you done fucking around over there?” Pookie shouted.
Canard turned to look over his shoulder at the two remaining mimes who stood like they were carved out of terracotta.
“Yeah I’m done” He said as he edged an imaginary line. Never taking his eyes off the two that remained as he hopped his way over to Pookie’s voice and the rest of the gang in the makeshift mystery machine.
Likewise the two mimes eyeballed him so hard his balls started to hurt a little bit like when you sit on them wrong.
He broke away from them at a loose dash and looked back and saw them standing there, not following. The night sky behind them orange and backlit by the fires and the rising smoke. Looking like some funhouse smoke machine, the lights just leds flashing. The mimes watched them go and then vanished into the smoke.
He got to the car as Pookie was loading the girl into the back. Efron and the dog were already sitting comfortably like they’d been waiting there the whole time.
“Hey get in” A familiar but odd voice said.
“What the hell’s he doing here?” Canard asked as he gawped at the weird fumer kid Brandon sitting in the drivers seat.
“We’ll talk about that later, wait is that, Jersey? What’s with that shit on her face?” Riki asked as Pookie bundled her into the back.
“We’ll talk about it later” Pookie said. “Drive.”
–
If you want to read the rest of this total garbage head on over to inkitt.
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Metro Exodus – Review

Still working my way through game pass and I kinda wanted to save this because I kinda knew it would either be the best or a massive disappointment and it didn’t disappoint but which didn’t it disappoint in being the best or being a disappointment hmm, how many times can I mispell disappointment not caring because of the auto correct?

For awhile I didn’t really give a shit about this game because there is a notable dip in quality in my opinion between Metro 2033 and Last light but I still played them both over and over and I liked them. But I was sort of put off of Exodus because of the lack of hype around it and the negative hype because of the epic store bullshit. Which I know was entirely deep silver’s fault, which is why publishers should be totally done away with and all games companies should self publish like CD projekt red does. No fat cat ceo middle man they need to appease, they just make their own games and handle the shipping and marketing themselves and it seems to be going gang busters for them, they’ve just gone from strength to strength (if you ignore throne breakers haha).

I can safely say, resoundingly, Metro Exodus is… the best in the series and the perfect capstone ending for the epic saga of Artyom.

I dunno, I guess I was really worried that it wouldn’t be what I hoped because I was so invested in the series. I love Metro, it’s one of my favourite games, I’ve literally played the first two games over and over on every difficulty. So when I saw this it kinda made me worry because it basically looked like it was copying Far Cry, trying to be an open world sandbox game.

Oh yeah this game unlike the first two is almost entirely on the surface because they find out the world isn’t entirely fucked and there are some liveable spots so Artyom et Al set off to find one.
And yes it’s sort of copying from Far Cry but thankfully it reminded me of Far Cry 2 otherwise known as ‘the only good one’ but with less dated mechanics and gun customisation the max.

Some notably Yahtzi shit on this game for ditching the trading system for a crafting system and yeah, I understand why. Crafting systems are in everything these days and Metro sort of had a unique take on trade since your best ammo is also your currency and you can literally exchange ammo.

This game basically busts that wide open because you can literally craft bullets now, you’re printing your own money haha. But I see why they did it and I think it works really well and makes much more sense for the series in terms of immersion. Because yes shock horror, you can make bullets, they don’t fall out of the sky like in Zardoz, they are manufactured by people. And because the game is open world there aren’t little hub worlds with traders so having a crafting system where you can dismantle and reassemble your guns just makes so much sense, I don’t understand how anyone can argue with it. Why wouldn’t you just want a system where you can take an attachment from one gun and put it on yours in real time?
That’s literally one of the best mods in Fallout 4 right there haha. Fallout 4 is another comparison you can make to this game, as well as borderlands but it beats out both with I wanna say stronger writing but it wins just because it feels like the devs give a shit.
Borderlands has always just been cringe, tryhard humour from the oughts that a 13 year old might find funny. Fallout goes for that dark wry humour but Metro plays it straight, there’s some humour to break up the misery but it’s the most realistic interpretation of the end of the world out of the bunch.

And with that shift in tone you get real characters and a grounded believable story about people trying to have more than the dark tunnels of the metro.

I was really worried about this game because open worlds don’t or can’t really have the level of atmosphere you get in the claustrophobic tunnels of metro 2033. But somehow the open worlds environments in Exodus are dripping with atmosphere, some parts are dark and brooding and scary, other parts lonely and sad but when you look out at it you get the sense that it was once alive and real. It’s really gripping. Whereas borderlands and fallout are just full of locations with various loot junk to collect. That’s another thing about the crafting it’s very simple and unobtrusive, it’s not like Fallout where you’re on the hunt for tape always. It’s not annoying, it doesn’t get in the way of gameplay.

It’s not actually an open world game, there were semi open world sections to explore in the previous games and this basically expands on that. So you don’t have one big map you move around, you have two big open world maps, a swamp and a desert and then there are more linear levels like classic metro and a level in a forest that’s sort of a blend of them both. It’s linear but it’s such a huge map it has a lot of exploration. And exploration is really what makes a game like Metro really good, this balance of wanting to explore but also being terrified by what could be potentially waiting for you inside.

Metro sets itself apart from other post apocalyptic games in that it’s mainly stealth and tactics focused when you fight people. It has a really good stealth system that isn’t like a numbers based one like in an rpg like fallout but relies on light and sound like Thief. So you’re mostly lurking in the darkness with night vision goggles taking people out silently with a gas powered ball bearing gun.

But then the game switches up completely when encountering mutants who can see in the dark and then it becomes like a fps survival horror as waves of these hideous creatures try to take a bite out of you in the pitch blackness. So it has this nice way of turning the tables on you and keeping the game fresh, one minute you’re the cat the next you’re the mouse. So the gameplay never gets stale because it’s constantly shifting.

And it’s even more so in this game because the levels have such variety. In the first one you’re being hunted by a weird religious cult that hates technology and worships a giant catfish that will eat you if you cross it’s path on the water. The next you’re in a mad max desert fighting slavers, there’s also a linear level that was almost like a haunted house ride in this bunker. Then you’re in a forest fighting pirates and a giant bear then the game pulls you back to the frozen tunnels of another metro.

I keep making these comparisons to Fallout and Farcry but really I think the best comparison would be putting it side by side with Red dead redemption 2. That might sound weird but I do that because it’s as if everything red dead tried and failed, Metro succeeded at.

Red dead wants to create this kind of close nit family vibe for the gang where you stay at the camp getting to know everyone and then fall in love with them and go on missions. But the game design and the writing just make that impossible because there are too many characters really and the camp is kind of boring and pointless and they wont let you run for some reason and all the characters aren’t very likeable.

In contrast in Metro you get these interludes between levels where you’re on the train and people basically talk at you because you’re a silent protagonist even though Artyom has a voice actor because he talks over the loading screens. But it’s just how all the other games went for the sake of immersion, Metro is all about immersion, you can play it entirely hudless unlike red dead where you literally need the minimap to complete missions just to know where the game wants you to stand.

On the train when it’s moving it’s just so atmospheric with the sound of the train and the wind and the scenery outside and then the characters tell you about themselves, their hopes and dreams and you just can’t help fall in love with them because they feel real and relatable and likeable.

John’s son is a character you can interact with in red dead 2 but I never felt like he was a real kid, I never really gave a shit about him or thought he was real. But there’s this little girl you meet on the first level who comes with you and her mother called Nastya and she has to be the sweetest child character in any game ever. I literally fell in love with her, she was adorable and when she asked me to get her teddy bear I didn’t even think about it as the fetch quest it was I was just going to get Nastya’s teddy bear because I liked her and she called me ‘Uncle Artyom’.
The characters are just so endearing and strong even though they live in hell and they could die at any moment. The characters in red dead are two dimensional and unlikeable and the tone can’t decide whether it wants to be serious or tongue in cheek rockstar style and it just falls apart because you don’t like the characters and can’t take them seriously.

Another thing to point out is neither game really has villains, red dead 2 kind of has the pinkerton guy but he was so forgettable, dutch and the blonde guy kinda. But in Metro they try to steer clear of having generic villains because it’s trying to be like the real world. So although you encounter a crazy cult leader, he’s not wholey evil and his followers are just lost, you feel justified letting them live, you don’t want to kill them, I actually felt bad when I had to gun two down instead of knock them out.
And there are these nice points in the game, once I encountered these two cultists, a father and son talking about the cult and when they saw me they both drew their weapons and metro is the kind of game where getting shot at that range will kill you in a few hits so instinctively I should have gunned them down but I hesitated and so did they and then they lowered their weapons and talked to me instead and then we parted ways. It’s just amazing a game like this can have that nuance where you can lower your weapon and disengage. There was another point later on where you’re in the forest being hunted by these weird forest people and I snuck up on one of them in this field and he turned around and I saw he was unarmed and he asked me to lower my weapon and I did and it turns out he was just a farmer with a rake I almost beaned in the melon. And because I showed him I wasn’t a threat he helped me out by showing me a way through his village without having to hurt anyone and I did that.

It’s a game that succeeds in not only making you care about your companions but about the npcs in general and it makes them seem so much more real as a result.

It also ties into the ending you get whether you’re just murdering people indiscriminately. Which I wont spoil but it’s great and I got the good ending and it was just the perfect ending to the series, I wouldn’t dream of getting another ending, I won’t even look it up on youtube haha. It just sucks you in and by the end of it you’re just begging that everyone lives and has a happy life where they can be free and not get gnawed on by mutants.

It’s also the most beautiful metro game, which is not surprising because there wasn’t a lot of competition until now haha. I could literally just sit and stare out of the train window in this game for hours, the scenery is so great. Hauntingly beautiful.

Looking at the Metacritic scores now and red dead 2 is way higher and all the negative reviews are about this game having bugs haha. Seriously this world deserves climate change haha.

This is not some shitty game crunched out by interns as an excuse to make another online game to shill microstransactions, Metro has never had multiplayer, I don’t think you even need to be online to play it. It’s a lovingly crafted single player game made by people that obviously love the series greatly and it shows.

One thing I would recommend though for full immersion and I do this with all the metro games, change the language to russian, you’ll thank me. There’s nothing less immersive in my opinion than hearing americans doing shitty russian accents. Steve Blum couldn’t even be bothered to do one for the whole game so there’s just a random american character in the order haha. Change it to russian so you don’t need to hear him phone it in haha.

Two thousand words jesus, ok you get it, I liked it, there, go play it, I definitely will be doing so many more times, it’s a gaming epic.

 

 

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Three ring samurai part 3 Chapter 3 ‘The part you throw away’

Long time no listen to my drivel.
It’s nothing dramatic, just lots of boring day jobbing sucking up my time and soul. Still trying to find a new job, not holding much hope for that honestly but I keep soldiering on nonetheless.
Personal and work life aside, my consumption of product in terms of media is pretty great recently. My ascension to escapist sci-fi incel is complete haha. I’ve been watching farscape recently to give the expanse a rest because the seasons are short and I was running out of them now I can’t say which I like more because farscape is sort of more silly but I feel more connected to the characters and their chemistry. 
But I love the expanse for the realism and story but I love farscape for the characters and the puppets and all the physical effects which are literally Jim Henson puppets. So this is like sesame street in space except not aimed at children even remotely haha.
I would kill to see an escape of sesame street with Rygel haha.
Wait is Jim henson sesame street or muppets? Are they the same thing???
So I’m hooked on that and there are four seasons of like a billion episodes so I’m set for stuff to watch while I lift heavy things and grunt. My product consumption is set and I’m excited for next product.
On the book front I didn’t notice I did this but I actually stopped reading the Parker the books when Richard Stark stopped writing them for like twenty fucking years for some reason haha.
Just totally an accident. But I started reading his nineties books now and they’re pretty solid. They haven’t dipped in quality at all, the first one was not my favourite style of his books. I notice that he has like two styles of Parker books and considering the subject matter it doesn’t surprise me that it has these limitations. You either get a situation where Parker is just finishing a job and it went right or it went wrong then someone betrays him or it goes wrong and the rest of the book is him trying to deal with the new development and get away with the money.
Or my personal favourite where it starts with Parker getting the job and then spends forever autistically setting up the job only for it then to go wrong from some unforeseen circumstance which he then has to deal with and get away with the money. I like these ones purely for the great build up and excitement. I tend to think the first style is just laziness, where he can’t be bothered to come up with a clever heist so he just skips it and gets into the meat of the story which he’s great at and the action is always really great. But it’s just a way of getting the heist out of the way, I see why he does it because normal people are bored by ages of tedious planning and setup. But I think we’ve established I’m far from normal.
The first book is actually the peak of the first trope, a heist goes really badly wrong, his wife betrays him and shit gets fucked up haha. Watch the movie Payback if you can’t be bothered to read the far superior book. The book wasn’t about heisting, even thought here was a heist in it. It was about Parker being this unrelenting force that was going to get what was his nomatter what. It was setting up this character that would step on the devils dick to get what he wanted.
But the second book is what gave shape to the mythos in my opinion because it’s all about that anal setup, like half the book is about him getting this truck which he is used for like a few seconds to block off the view from the road in this armored car heist. But it was just this fantastic build off to an amazing pay off that really set the tone for the rest of the books as well establishing new characters and worldbuilding.
The nineties era books (I’m not sure what era they’re actually set in because Parker and his pals haven’t aged it seems) the first is the epitomy of the first kind, the book starts where they’re in the middle of the job which goes right. But then they’re betrayed and shit happens, looking back it was ok, not amazing. The next book I’m on now is like a mix of both kinds which is weird.
It starts with the action at the end of a heist that goes sort of wrong because Parker is climbing out of a wrecked car but he has the money and he gets away leaving one guy there stuck in the car. 
The real story comes in where this guy had another job set up which now falls on Parker when this guy dies. So we have all this good set up which pleases my autism all while shit from the previous job is encroaching on the latest job. So he’s really mixing it up with this one. That and he brings back a few fan favourite characters from the roster, not my favourite characters, I really want to see Grofield and Handy Mckay come back and I’m saving the Grofield books for when I finish the Parker series. I really wanna see Grofield because he wasn’t in good shape in the last book, as far as I remember he’s missing a few of his fingers. But it’s not like Stark really gives a shit about continuity I mean he brought back Ed Mackey from being literally dead without even an explanation. I guess he just forgot.
I mean I was planning to read all the Parker books again in graphic novel format but I can’t find a good place to pira- I mean buy them at an affordable and price from a reputable source.
Come on! Richard Stark is dead he doesn’t care if his books make money. I mean fuck, pirating these books about a master thief is some ultimate irony surely. The closest I come to being Parker is downloading comics for free and possibly lots of movies and games if I was a pc master racist.
So yeah content, finally some content and it doesn’t totally suck, yeah well ok it kinda does but it’s fun to write and until my unusual form of writers block passes it’s really all I can muster. My inspiration is in short supply right now and I can only church out ironic crap. But I think I’m gonna just throw all my other books either up for free or onto muddy boots so it at least gets out there and maybe makes some money. 
I hope is that my ultimate punishment is that the worst book I’ve written, the zombie book I wrote as a joke gets put up as a humiliating netflix show.
One can only hope.
See you…
–
A little boy with a blank expression stares off into the distance as his head is lathered and shaved in preparation for his training.
A crude clownface is painted over his dull lifeless face.
Sitting before the elder clown master. The elder’s legs crossed, his eyes closed solemnly puffing on a pipe, a few bubbles coming out of the end of it as he thinks to himself.
“My young one, you are now a clown in appearance but not one in spirit, a clown does not have to smile on the outside, but in his heart there must be laughter.” The old man put his pipe to one side and leaned forward. “Once you can take this nose from my face your training will be complet-“
Before he could finish the child ripped the nose from the old man’s face, the sound it made was a ridiculous honking as he squeezed it in his little hands.
“You didn’t let me finish” The old man spat “What I meant to say was ‘your training will be complete when you can take the red nose- without it honking.” He said as he took the nose and popped it back on his nose with a loud honk.
“Now the first part of your training will be to enter that tent over there-“. The old man raised a wrinkled tattooed arm pointing towards a large tent covered in strange graffiti clown markings. Lots of ‘Ha-ha’s and ‘why so serious?’s and other edgy stuff like that.
The boy quickly began to rise without changing his expression “Hey- let me finish will ya?” The old man scowled “On your hands” He smirked.
The child looked sceptical at the old man for only a moment, not sceptical but surprised and then accepting. As if he was about to listen to a ridiculous story but been told it was ‘based on real events’.
“Only those who can walk on their hands can truly say they know how to walk on their feet.” The old man smiled. “No man in that tent walks on his feet, to do so would shame the holy ground”.
–
The orange dust settled on a road side flea market bizarre selling all manner of goods and trinkets. The merchants wore long ragged clothing and hunched to display there wares on rickety stands made from refuse metal and wood. Their hands clasped as they sharply eyed customers over their long hawkish noses.
Pookie had agreed to accompany Riki on a quick supply run for the tent commune thing.
“Thanks for coming with me” Riki said over his shoulder.
“I had nothing better to do” Pookie said as he picked up a weird nick nack of a clown with green hair and yellow skin.
He pulled the string and the doll said in a strange mechanical voice “I’m crusty the clown hahaha”.
Pookie sneered at the little doll before putting it down and saying “Never heard of you.”
Riki continued looking forward and talking as if to no one. “You must be wondering about Jersey, what’s she’s doing with a bunch of guys like us.”
“Not really.” Pookie said prodding a stuffed dinosaur toy with one of it’s legs missing.
“It doesn’t strike you as odd a young woman like that would be in the company of all these men?”
“Take a look at me guy, ya think anything strikes me as odd?”
Riki turned to look Pookie up and down and said “Hmm, I guess not.” He smirked. “But you have been thinking about her?”
Pookie was flustered for a second before he said “What, no!”
“She came to us much like you did.”
“I didn’t come to you, we’re just passing through.”
“Passing through huh? I like that.” Riki laughed. “She had nowhere else to go, the wastes churn out so many like her, no families, no friends, no hope. We’re all like that in some way, but it’s good to find others, ya know what I mean?”
“Not really” Pookie said.
“Sure” Riki laughed as he turned back around and dipped his head to smiled with his arms behind his back.
Pookie let him walk on a little further while he messed with some beanie babies he had no intention of buying. With the no money he had before he heard an off putting whimpering sound.
“Look kid, I’ve already told you, I’m not a teacher and I don’t have time for this crap ok.” Riki yelled.
“Please master, I beg of you accept me as a student, I wont take no as an answer. I’ll wait night and day out in the acid rain and the radiation, I’ll do anything.”
“Try going away.”
“Good evening sir? Maam?”
“Who are you? Some other nutjob that wants me to train them?”
Pookie sighed exasperated and decided to go over and see what was happening.
The scene was an unusual one. That weird fumer kid from before was on his knees begging Riki to train him, on the verge of tears. But more pressing was the tall gaunt man standing just behind Riki in his blind spot.
He was slim and ghostly looking wearing a weird multicolored wrapping around his head with an unusual gem in the centre. His face seemed dark and brooding despite the bright time of day. Atop his lip was a neatly trimmed pencil thin moustache and soul patch below. The look in his eye was piercing but also seemed like a chameleon looking everywhere at once.
“I have heard you are very skilled, I would like to put those skills to the test in a duel.” The man said, his voice rising eloquently, a slight tinge of accent running through his words.
“And who are you?” Riki asked defiantly.
“I am but a humble warrior mystic who wishes to put his skills to the test. I have travelled all over this world and learned very many interesting techniques, I’d like to see how they stack up to someone such as yourself.”
“Is that a challenge?” Riki smiled.
“You can call it that” The man laughed.
All the while the young fumer Brandon was looked back and forth between them in some form of incomparable awe at the two figures and the aura they gave off.
It seemed as if the air pressure changed as these two unusual men studied eachother.
–
Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt.
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3 ring samurai part 2 Chapter 8 ‘Y’all been warned’

Hey there all you lovely people in my head.
It’s your boi coming to whine about how shitty this year is so far and drop weird stories from the tattered recesses of my damaged brain. This one is about clown samurais or some shit, I dunno.
So yeah 2019, so far it can suck a dog’s dick. I’m sure my ex if she’s reading this is rubbing her hands together with glee because I broke up with the girl I just started dating like a month ago. It was going pretty well but I got upset about her never having enough time for me and instead making time to go drinking with her friends or weirdly hang out with her exe’s family, which is just, I mean wtf? Ok. I guess I shouldn’t feel weird about a girl I’m dating hanging out with the family of the guy she was previously dating.
So I raised this, what I thought was a minor issue and she didn’t respond very well, just sort of brushed off my concerns so I gave her some space and myself some time to cool off and I think things are ok. We’ll make up, we’ll work through it and she comes over and things go pretty well, we talk and then she leaves and a day or two later she’s just like “This isn’t right”.
No real explaination what that means, I asked but everything she said just sounded really unsatisfying and wishy washy to me. Like she’s pissing me off and then turning around saying ‘this is why’ like punching someone in the face and saying ‘wow bro chill, I just punched you in the face’.
I dunno, I’m just talking shit I guess, I’m not so much sad as just disappointed because I really saw potential there and she said she did too until just recently, over this minor spat.
My ex if she’s reading this which she probably is is probably laughing and saying to herself I tried to have everything and lost it, but not really I just tried to have one thing that was mine and I never get my own way for some reason, I can’t just have one thing without it blowing up in my face.
I lost so much over this, a whole person, a whole future and it just seems like so much of a waste compared to what it could have been. It’s over before it even began.
But moreover, I can’t blame her for what happened with my ex before her and her unwillingness to let me see my daughter, because that’s my fault, but I can’t help thinking if I’d never spoken to her I’d still be able to see her now.
Losing that was heart breaking and the only thing that made it better was imagining a future with someone that wouldn’t do that to me, that wouldn’t be so callous and cruel and take away something so important. And now that’s gone, before it even really began and I don’t understand why.

But I suppose it’s to be expected. 

Good news is I have lots of work with Diana to keep me busy, I’ve started sending her out to agents now, already got my first rejection letter, so that’s great haha. But that’s nothing, I mean it was within a day, you don’t want an agent that gets back to you in a day anyway, means they have too much free time on their hands, six weeks is the sweet spot.
I am preparing my anus for many more haha.
More bad news is that I haven’t had time to write and my blogs are gonna be few and far between until I start up again sometime this month or the next when the stuff with Diana is fully done and dusted then I can just get back to writing and wait for the buttpain to roll in haha.
But hey, now that I’m single I have plenty of free time to do it, so there’s that.
Also got banned on facebook again on my main haha, first of 2019. But my troll account is still up haha. I hope I get another ban soon so I can do something fucking constructive and stop just shitposting haha.
Anyway here is the final chapter of this part 2 of 3 ring, hopefully you enjoy it, I really like writing these. They’re just fun and silly and kinda cool, lots of potential I think. I was thinking I might try and find some weird novella mag that might publish them, we’ll see.
See you…
–
“W-what is this?” The girl cried.
 
“It’s a robbery what does it look like” The robber said.
 
“Well it could be more” The other robber smirked suggestively.
 
“W-what does that mean?” She squealed.
 
“What’s up with her face?” The third robber said.
 
“Yeah what’s up with that?” The first once asked.
 
“Maybe she’s one of those ladyboys we keep hearing about” The second smirked.
 
“Ya think she’s got a wiener?” Number three asked.
 
“Maybe we should check first.” Number one added.
 
“Well I never done it with a ladyboy before, won’t that make me a homo” Number three said.
 
“Eww gross get away from me” Margherite squealed as she kicked at her robbers.
 
Ten minutes earlier maybe, I dunno who cares?
 
Margherite had been deep in thought as she traced the path the caravan had previously taken. She was hoping to catch the scent of either Pookie or Coldslaw, sure that one would inevitably lead her to the other. It was early when she’d set off hoping to sneak out before the rest of the circus was awake as circus folk almost always slept in, because why the hell not. They also didn’t brush their teeth twice a day or floss between meals or observe any sort of bedtime at all. In that respect they were kind of like land pirates except not.
 
Margherite on the other hand loved getting up early and brushing her teeth and flossing but that was just her nature. Don’t ask me where you get floss from in a post apocalyptic diesel punk future. Maybe they found a whole train car full of the stuff how should I know??
 
Anyway so she’d been walking along her merry way taking what she thought was a shortcut. Which is weird because she didn’t exactly know where she was going having never really set foot in the ‘real world’ before. So she cut through a little path in some high grass in the forbidden irradiated plains where some things still grow, weeds mostly. It was then she heard a woman screaming and struggling.
 
Naturally being curious and good natured, Margherite went to investigate the source of the noise. Stumbling on three would be bandits getting in a situation that was deeply pornographic with a mother and young daughter. The strange appearance of Margherite was enough to distract the bandits. Allowing the innocent people to escape putting her in the position she is right now. Which is curled up in the long grass with three leering wastrels looming over her.
 
“He he he, well lets see what she’s got in those shorts.” The first bandit with a big nose said.
 
“I’m warning you, if you touch me-“
 
“Yeah what are you gonna do little girl?” The second bandit said with his twisted lipped smile.
 
“Not me” Margherite yelled. “Lord Bunnynaga”
 
“Lord what?” The third bandit with the bad haircut said.
 
“What’s she talking about?” Big nose said.
 
“Yeah there’s no one else here” Twisted lips added.
 
“There is too he’s right over there on that bench eating rice.”
 
“Huh?” The bandits collectively dimly looked over at a heaping pile of nothing off in the distance, a weird mutant bird flew over and made an annoying sound.
 
They turned to see Margherite running away.
 
“Hey!” Bad haircut shouted.
 
“She tricked us” Twisted lips shouted.
 
“Get her!” Big nose cried.
 
The three men quickly caught up with her as she made little progress in the long grass in her ridiculous clown shoes.
 
They grabbed her by the shoulders and tossed her to the ground. One that had been hitching up his trousers tussled with his belt buckle and let his trousers hit the ground.
 
A rabbit ear twitched at the sound.
 
“I’m warning you, if you-“
 
“If we what?” Twisted lips smirked.
 
“He’ll slay you all! Cut you down like ducks!”
 
“Slay? What is this text based rpg?” Bad haircut laughed.
 
“Like ducks?” Big nose mused.
 
“Look missy we aim to get out rocks off and do unvirtuous things to ladies steal stuff and generally be evil doers and that’s what we’re gonna do.” Bad hair stated.
 
The second rabbit ear twitched and Lord Bunnynaga swallowed down the last of his rice bowl with a large gulp. He wiped the crumbs from his cute fuzzy bunny mouth and put the bowl and chopsticks down neatly next to his copy of samurai playbunny. He rose from the bench calmly and straightened his robe and sword belt.
 
“This is your last warning, he’s a cold blooded bunny killer!” Margherite yelled.
 
“What does that even mean?” Big nose asked?
 
“This bitch is crazy!” Twisted lips added.
 
“What the hell is that?” Bad hair said.
 
“What the hell is wha-?” Big nose said.
 
“Hng”
 
“Gah”
 
The three bandits turned in stunned silence and before they could utter a word of protest with one clean strike from his noble katana. Lord Bunnynaga had separated all of their heads from their bodies. But in so doing the cut was so perfect and precise so as to leave one flap of skin remaining. Thus stopping the heads from comically flying off and spraying Margherite with blood. Instead their heads simply drooped to the side as they fell with very little blood.
 
Margherite got up as the Bunny samurai was sheathing his katana and dusted herself off.
 
“What took you so long?”
 
“Being a figment of your imagination I am bound by a strict code.” Lord Floppy Ears said.
 
“Yeah I know, and you’re so damn cute” Margherite smiled and hugged the bunny samurai kissing his fluffy cheeks and whiskers. He resisted dutifully staying stoic and reserved.
 
“My lady, why did you leave the safety of the circus?”
 
“I have to know why he did it Lord Floppy ears”
 
“You’re sure it was him then?” The imaginary bunny asked.
 
“No- yes, I don’t know but I know if I look into his eyes it’ll all make sense somehow. I know him, he wouldn’t do such a thing, not without a good reason.” She thought about it for a second. “And if Coldslaw kills him I’ll never know.”
 
–
 
Pookie leapt from the tub wrapped a towel around his waist. He grabbed his sword which was resting against the tub and charged almost butt ass naked into the night.
 
Outside the bath house tent it was black as pitch. The only light coming from a series of dead and dying streetlights probably centuries old along what used to be a highway. The road itself long since eroded.
 
A man stepped out from under one of the streetlamps, washed out by the bright light his features hidden in shadow but Pookie didn’t take his eyes off of him.
 
Coldslaw drew both his swords, long elaborately curved Katanas with ‘d’ guard hilts like long butterfly knives.
 
“Are you ready?”
 
–
If you like this, check out the rest of the chapter over on inkitt at Y’all been warned
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3 Ring Samurai Part 2 Chapter 7 ‘4 Sho Sho’

Bonjour,
Back again with more half assery as it is the season, I couldn’t do a blog on tuesday because I was busy and I cobbled together another haiku from a song I like. I don’t know why, I guess I’m just too lazy to come up with them on my own or maybe I just worry I’ll retread too much material and sometimes I can just find a song that captures everything I feel better than I could on my own. Also the rhythm really helps.
This is probably the last blog I’ll do til january, because I’ll be busy with work and christmas and because I haven’t had time to write on top of editing Diana for the last time. So I’m running low on material.
Although I was spent most of the day spamming mythology pages on fb of which I’m not banned on currently haha. I got some good feedback, I was called an ‘excellent bard’ haha. That pleased me. Probably the best people to drop that on. Especially since Celtic folklore gets so little love from literary folk obsessed with greeks and vikings.
Work has been hell, my personal life isn’t so bad apart from the other stuff, where my heart is heaviest. But I think next year things might really turn around. I’m gonna get a new job and if one of my books gets picked up that’d be great.
Had little time to read but what I’ve read of the second shadow pulp is pretty good. The shadow is at the very least really good filler, which I guess is the meaning of pulp. It’s not great but it’s not bad, like I’m not desperate to see what happens next but it holds my interest enough to want to keep reading. The writing isn’t amazing either, just serviceable. But maybe sometime soon I might write a shadow pulp myself. I do really like the shadow and how he’s written. Every appearance is meant to send a shiver up your spine and it really works. When he shows up everything changes, it’s great.
Still playing red dead 2 and I plan on doing a review, the game is just long and honestly pretty boring. It’s like the story and characters really aren’t very engaging. And it’s a prequel so you basically already know what’s going to happen you just don’t know exactly how. I honestly felt like the story of Assassins creed 3 was more compelling. I’m not kidding, that game had a good story. You knew your goals and motivations, and your villain and it felt personal and real. Red dead is a scattered mess, the story meanders and goes nowhere ultimately. Ha don’t want to spoil my review, but I think it’s one of those games that will be forgotten in a month. And if it hadn’t launched in between the shit storm kicked up by fallout 76 and battlefront v it would have got a lot more flack.
It’s shaping up to be an ok christmas, a little melancholy slipping in for reasons I can’t say but I have enough booze to wash that away this year, here’s hoping for some resolution next year.
To all the one and a half people that read this blog, merry christmas and a happy new year!
See you…
–
 
BOOM!
 
A cannonball turned the rest of the saloon into confetti showering Canard and Efron with debris.
 
Efron shook her red mop for debris and dust, coughed and looked up at Canard. She handed him the gun “It’s up to you I guess.”
 
He took it and let it hang at his side as he watched Pookie narrowly dodge a wrecking shot at his feet.
 
Pookie had taken to running along the rooftops for cover. Unfortunately the brothers were a lot more agile than their size had initially suggested.
 
The oldest stayed below from his firing position, arching up like a mortar, the middle brother followed Pookie up on to the rooftops.
 
The middle brother retracted and spat the wrecking ball at Pookie’s feet tearing huge chunks out of the roof of the building. A bemused post nuclear family sat around a scrappy dinner table looking through their new skylight.
 
“Err sorry” Pookie said.
 
But before he could react he heard the chain tighten, the middle brother swinging it by biting down on it and turning his hips and shoulders.
 
The ball slammed into Pookie’s gut and tossed him off the building. Luckily he landed on his head and was totally fine.
 
Pookie rolled onto his back, dazed from the first strike he looked up at the sun which had peaked and was slowly going down, the sky a bruised orange colour. The middle brother smirked and swung the ball over her is shoulder and muttered to himself “For Juan”. With all his abdominal strength he turned and swung the wrecking ball at a downward angle, meaning to crush Pookie like a bug.
 
Meanwhile the oldest brother circled around and was coming at him from the other side. Aiming right at him.
 
Pookie was unable to move, looking up at the sky as the ball eclipsed the sun coming right at him like a comet just coming over the pivot point of the swing.
 
A shot rang out and the chain snapped freeing the wrecking ball which shot off careening towards the eldest brother. The ball lodging itself with some force into the barrel of the cannon just as it was about to fire.
 
There was a deathly pause and then internal indigestion noises. A bead of sweat ran down the eldest brother’s brow right before the cannon backfired and tore him in half like a piñata full of sausage meat. The entire cannon exited his body taking most of his internal organs with it and leaving an exit wound the size of an elephant’s foot.
 
Another silence, the smell of cordite, Canard stood, feet planted holding the gun in his outstretched hand. “Why did I?-oh” He said as he looked at his hand and saw two smaller hands wrapped around it.
 
Efron smirked as she sat curled around Canard’s shoulder.
 
“What if the chamber was empty?”
 
“I would have fired again” She laughed as she climbed down off of Canard.
 
But her laughing was cut short. The moment her feet hit the ground a broken chain wrapped around her leg and yanked her like a tiny side of beef, dragging her through the loose dirt and sand.
 
Pookie groaned as he raised himself onto his side only able to watch as Efron was reeled in like a carp flopping on the ground.
 
The Middle brother slurping on the chain like someone sucking a giant piece of spaghetti with a huge unwilling meatball on the end.
 
It all happened so fast, Canard barely had enough time to react. He went for his staff but before he could even flick the blade out Efron was in the middle brother’s mouth with chain wrapped around her. The middle brother devoured her inch by inch, his jaw stretched wide like an anaconda.
 
Canard was so stunned for a second he forgot he was missing a leg and tripped when he took the staff away as a support falling face first into the dirt. It was like he was wading through custard, like it was all happening in slow motion for some reason.
 
He recomposed himself and tried to get to his feet.
 
The middle brother let out a vicious chuckle which was muffled by the person in his mouth. He put one finger over his left nostril and shot out a couple of giant buggers which hit the ground and exploding into a cloud of smoke.
 
Canard instinctually froze like a deer in headlights until the smoke finally cleared revealing him to be alone with a very sore clown.
 
“What just happened?”
 
“Nothing good” Pookie mumbled.
 
“What do we do, go after him?”
 
Pookie got to his feet groaned and said. “Nah.”
 
–
 
“Gosh darn it, I’m too late!” The dog faced boy cursed under his breath as he peeped through the little hole in the big top. The one he chastised Margherite for looking through only a couple of chapters ago.
 
The sun was going down, the meeting was emptying out. The heads of the clans going back to their little pieces of turf leaving only the icecream man and the Ringmaster alone in the big top. His icecream van was his home so he didn’t need to go anywhere.
 
When they were alone, he put his feet up on the table and grinned.
 
“So”
 
“So what?”
 
“Want me to ice’im?” He laughed.
 
The Ringmaster said nothing.
 
The icecream man laughed “It’d be poetic, don’t you think?” He chuckled.
 
“He’s more use to me alive” The ringmaster said coldly.
 
“Oh so this was part of your master plan all along?” He smirked a little too wide, his lips were thin and cold looking almost non-existent, two thin bloody streaks on an icicle.
 
“Something like that” The Ringmaster smiled jovially, but not with his eyes, his eyes were fixed and issued a silent threat.
 
The icecream man let out a little breathy laugh and took his feet off the table. “Don’t you forget, you owe me” He stood and looked around the big top. “All this is cos of what I done for you” He leaned forward on the table. “And it can all go away like that”. He clicked his bony fingers.
 
“Are you threatening me?” The Ringmaster asked.
 
He smiled trying to look innocent, shrugging his shoulders “Just reminding is all.” The icecream man laughed and started to walk away. “Now if you’ll excuse me, those kiddies aint gonna get the sweet stuff theyselves”.
 
He climbed into the cab of the icecream truck, the suspension straining under him. That tinkling off key music started up again with the engine as he slowly drove away.
 
The dogfaced boy had no idea what was going on but watched as the Ringmaster sneered and spat on the ground, cursing silently.
 
“What the heck was all that about?” He whispered to himself.
 
–
 
If you liked this chapter head on over to inkitt to read the rest of it and the previous chapters. 4 sho sho
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3 ring samurai part 2 Chapter 6 ‘The long way of drums’

Hey there time for some excuses from a really lazy dude with no real life to speak of.
Yeah so no poem tomorrow, I don’t know just personal life stuff and work stuff getting in the way and likely to get in the way until january.
I’m just in a really weird place which is not too different from any other day. I just feel kind of like I’m drifting, not really sure what I want to do, instantly bouncing between manic happiness and basement depression. Because I’m like in this place where I’m not only losing lots of time due to work and other such nonsense but also I feel like I’m making the best use of the time I have and it’s driving me fucking nuts. I want to finish the edit for Diana and take my time going over it but I also just want to get it the fuck done and stuff keeps getting in the way.
And then the cloud of looming doubt comes back telling me I’m never going to get it done and even if I do it’s going to suck and no one is going to like it or pick it up and I’m just going to be a loser sitting in my bath robe writing nonsense no one is ever going to read and have nothing to offer any other living person ever in my life. Ultimately dying alone and miserable after wasting my life chasing a dream I know is impossible.
Fuck I hate christmass haha.
Also didn’t get to read any more shadow pulps and I still can’t review red dead 2 because I have no real desire to play it. I mean I get on it for a couple of hours but I just find myself sort of not really drawn to it. I mean I like the world, the gameplay is great but the story is a fucking dead weight, the characters aside from Arthur are a little flat. The villains are a little lame. It just sort of feels like a safe easy game they made that they knew would make money and didn’t put much more effort into over the lighting and graphics and stuff like that. I mean it’s good it just sort of lacks the heart of the previous games that makes you want to get into it. And I wonder if it’s because I heard that their game development is run like a sweat shop, that they’re just churning this game out as fast as possible, I dunno. I just don’t find it that compelling or necessary. Like the title says it all, you have the first game Red dead and then red dead redemption and then this is just red dead redemption 2 not red dead revolution, red dead revenge, red dead revocation, its just red dead here’s another one give us money please.
Don’t get me wrong, I like it, I think it’s fun at times, I love robberies, I think it’s got solid mechanics and costumes and all that, I just think it didn’t really deliver on hype and maybe the hype was too high. Not really from me because I didn’t expect much, I wasn’t a huge fan of the first game, I’m a niche retard who thinks L.A Noire is still the best rockstar but we’re never getting a sequel to that or Max Payne for a while, although I heard a bully sequel is coming out which would be great. It’s basically Gta as a coming of age story for a highschool kid haha. It’s great.
Yeah well those are some thoughts for the day, enjoy the new chapter and sub to my mailing list because it gives me warm happy feelings.
See you…
–
 
“I’m sorry about your brother” The stranger said as he poked at the small fire in the centre of the darkened shack. One knee raised, a sword behind it resting against the wall.
 
“Juan was a fool, always rushing in headlong.” The first born said, a large tanned Mexican with a barrel chest and a pencil thin moustache.
 
“When he heard about the man you wanted us to kill, he wanted all the glory for himself, he got what he deserved.” The second born said, almost as large as his brother sporting a goatee.
 
“We won’t fail you” The firstborn said.
 
The man at the fire lifted his head, the light from the flickering flames licked the strange acrylic clown mask on his face. “I admire your pragmatism, I know what it’s like to lose a brother.” He said.
 
–
 
Click, click!
 
“Wait Pookie! You’re only supposed to pull the trigger once per turn!” Efron squealed as she reached for the gun. “Why?” Pookie said with the gun still to his head “This is faster”
 
“Its not ab- Nevermind” Efron frowned.
 
Pookie put the gun down on the table and slid it over to Canard who was completely devoid of expression.
 
“Ok now just on-“
 
Before she could finish Canard had already put the gun to his head.
 
Click click! “-ce! What did I just say, now there are only two chambers left so it’s a fifty fifty chance that the next chamber has the bullet in it.”
 
“And it’s your turn” Canard grinned as he slid the revolver across the table.
 
Pookie’s face stayed the same as he picked up the gun concentrating on the chamber, emptying it with his mind. Breathing in deeply and tensing his finger around the trigger.
 
KATHOOOOMMM!!!!!
 
A giant wrecking ball crashed through the window and tore a giant hole through the thin walled saloon. The walls splintered like kindling sending glass, wood and shards of metal shrapnel everywhere.
 
The giant wrecking rested in the destruction attached to a chain which snaked on the ground. Slowly the chain retracted and then quickly whipped away taking half the building with it.
 
Pookie coughed as he cleared his lungs of dust and looked around the saloon that now looked like an apple with a giant bite taken out of it.
 
He looked around.
 
“Everyone ok?”
 
“Great” Canard said from underneath the booth seat he was only a minute ago sitting on.
 
A little hand with a gun in it came up from behind the bar “I’m ok” Efron said.
 
The bartender, a balding middle aged man with an unflattering haircut popped up next to her “What the hell was that, a hurricane?”
 
“Yeah, hale stones the size of your head.” Pookie shook his head like there was dust in it and got up off the ground dizzily looking for his sword. He found it underneath a pile of old magazines from a broken spinning rack.
 
“A little help for the cripple?” Canard voice muffled by the furniture on top of it.
 
Pookie sighed and attempted to push the couch off of him.
 
“IF THERE’S ANYONE STILL ALIVE IN THERE YOU’VE GOT TO THE COUNT OF THREE TO COME OUT!” A booming voice with the slight twang of a spanish accent said.
 
“I guess that’s for us” Pookie said as he strained with the couch.
 
“Just for you, I’m guessing” Canard retorted.
 
Pookie sighed and dropped the couch back on him. “I guess so” He said with a melancholy tone in his voice as he went to climb out of the hole in the side of the saloon.
 
Outside it was hotter than before, the sun was bright and glaring blotted out only by two round figures standing in the middle of the street.
 
Pookie walked out squinting at them.
 
“You’re him”
 
“The man who killed our brother”
 
“Who?”
 
“Juan Ramirez”
 
“Oh that guy, well that was kind of an accident, but yeah I guess that was me” He sighed “So you’re the masters of swallowing or whatever huh?”
 
“That’s us” The first born said.
 
“So you really think they’ll let you in the circus if you kill me? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
 
“It’s more than that now”. The second said.
 
“There’s a blood debt to pay.”
 
“So hows this gonna go down? We gonna duel one on one like last time?” Pookie asked.
 
“Hahahahahahahahahaha!” Both brothers laughed.
 
The brother with the goatee didn’t laugh with his voice only his face as his throat started to bulge to an enormous size like a toad. His jaw unhinged and a giant black ball appeared in his mouth.
 
Pookie squinted in disbelief as he watched this inhuman display. There followed a grotesque suction popping cracking noise as the wrecking was spat with a tremendous speed.
 
The ball hit like a meteor right at Pookie’s feet. The clown samurai jumped at the last second and under the cover of the dust it kicked up he ran along the chain towards the two assassins.
 
His sword at his side, his finger in the ring pull.
 
“There he is!” The second born said his voice sounding like he had cotton balls in his mouth.
 
The first born cut off his laughter, his eyes bulging and bloodshot. He opened his mouth and started to wretch, his throat distending with a long spherical shape. The opening in his mouth a pitch black emptiness.
 
Pookie caught sight of it in the corner of his eye but couldn’t make out what it was and then at once he knew he was staring into the barrel of a cannon.
 
“Oh crap” He whispered.
 
The firstborn leaned forward to ready for the recoil and somehow through some internal mechanism he fired.
 
Time slowed and Pookie saw the chain shot swirling at him, a ball connected by a thin chain swirling destruction aimed right at him. Without thinking he pulling the ripcord on his sword and it roared with laughter cutting the chain in half. The cut freed the two balls which shot off at either side of him.
 
One of the balls hit the ground and exploded with a dull thud. The other took out a storefront, both explosions bouncing Pookie like a skipping stone, skidding along the ground.
 
He came to a stop, his naked sword in his hand quivering. The clown samurai stabbed it into the ground raising himself to a knee, breathing heavily.
 
“Interesting” The firstborn said. “You’re the first to survive that”.
 
“What are you made out of, rubber?” The second born asked.
 
“He’s too dumb to die” Canard said.
 
Pookie scowled as he scraped himself off the ground.
 
Efron giggled, “It’s still your turn”.
 
“Can’t ya see I’m a little busy right now?” Pookie shouted.
 
“Are you forfeiting?” Efron sounded shocked.
 
That weird suction noise again ending the brief pause as the wrecking ball came barrelling at Pookie again. He rolled out of its way as it carved a hideous scar into the earth. “I’ll just skip my turn and get the next one.”
 
“That’s not how it works!”
 
“Hmm, but that means if this chamber is empty the next one has to be the bullet.” Canard scratched his chin, weighing his options.
 
“So if you live-“ Efron looked away.
 
“He dies”
 
–
 
Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt. The long way of drums
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3 Ring Samurai part 2 Chapter 5 ‘The lost highway’

Ok well at least you couldn’t say my week was boring, went from being on top of the world to being under it, straight up into space and right now I’m falling fast, but that I’m used to haha.
Needless to say everything blew up in my face as it usually does because I fell in love with someone who can never leave well enough alone just like myself. And when they push I push back twice as hard as is my nature, not to be out done when it comes to being a stubborn prick.
It goes without saying that my life is a fucking joke and no one should try and emulate it haha. At the very least I’m less lonely than Lovecraft but that’s not saying much and loneliness would probably help me more than harm me. Relationships only seem to be a hindrance and a time sink when it comes to my work, filler, if you will.
Well I’m cutting that shit right out, that is until someone else comes along to fuck it all up again haha. Can’t wait -_-.
Speaking of my work for a nice segue, finally I have the final piece of Diana and I have diverted all efforts to putting the lady back together again. So I’m putting Loverman writing on hold for the time being and focusing totally on editing and proofreading and the eventual debut of Diana to agents here and in the US. I’m still gonna put out regular chapters of completed work like 3 ring and Cur but Diana must take precedent because that is the real deal. Not all my eggs are in here basket but enough of them to make me nervous so here’s hoping to the first big step on the this journey I’ve undertaken so many years ago now.
(Insert one hour of looking for pictures of clowns) Sigh.
Ok better stop talking about it and get on with it, all those rejection letters aren’t gonna write themselves.
See you…
–
Achoo! Pookie rubbed his red nose and looked around the saloon sleepily amazed how similar it looked to the one in the town he just escaped from.
“Ya know, they say when you sneeze it means people are talking about ya” Canard said as he sat opposite him in a booth whittling a piece of wood.
“What are you whittling?” Efron asked.
Canard smirked “You’ll just have to wait and se-“
He was suddenly cut off by the weird dog thing Garfield biting the end of the bit of wood and fighting to take it.
“Hey ya dumb whatever ya are! Let go” He said as he tugged at the bit of wood the dog was gnawing on “Ahh you’re drooling on it!”
Efron hid her snickering behind her hand.
“What are you laughing at?” He said.
“You’re funny” She said.
“Yeah I’m hilarious, would you buzz off kid, go play or something” He said shooing her away.
Efron giggled childlishly and disappeared from sight.
He turned around in his seat furrowing his brow and cocking out his lower lip. “That’s better, I think you and me need to talk some more”
Pookie sniffled not looking at him “About what?” he said petulently.
“About what we do next?”
“’We’ there is no ‘we’, I don’t owe you nothing.” Pookie said in a disinterested way.
“I saved your life back there” Canard had an easy meaningless smile.
“I don’t remember that” Pookie raised an eyebrow and waved his hand away.
“Yeah back in the cave- nevermind, it’s not important, what’s important is we need to find someone who can look at that weird mark on the kid and tell us what it means?” He said emphatically, his movements overcooked exaggerations like he’d put too much thought into them.
“Why do we need to that?” Pookie asked with his eyes closed.
“To propel the plot dummy”
Pookie blinked.
“I know a mutual friend of ours who might know something.” He spoke a little softer and seemed to lean forward.
“What’s in it for you if we take her to see this guy?” Pookie reclined in his seat with his arms folded and his eyes half open.
He looked around before leaning in more “I owe her”
“I don’t get it.” Pookie sighed.
“The guy owes me a favour, if we can find him maybe he can hook the kid up and we can part ways.” Canard almost whispering now.
Pookie sneezed again.
“Or we could just kill eachother” Canard said letting a little ice slide into his voice as he leaned all the way back in his seat.
Pookie’s eyes narrows and his fingers crawled closer to his sword that was resting under the table between his legs.
Canard eyed him and gripped his whittling knife firmly.
“Hey!”
They both turned to see Efron pointing her gun at them “You promised you wouldn’t kill eachother!” A look on her face like someone was turning the car around not going to get icecream.
They looked at eachother “No we didn’t” They both said in unison.
“Yeah you did, when we were in that cave and I saved you from the zombies and there was like a cave in. And we thought it was all over but then the leader was all alive and like ‘I’m gonna get you rawr’ and I shot him and saved you both”. She said in a matter fact chipper way rising at the end as if expecting applause.
“Literally none of that happened” Pookie said as he rubbed his nose.
Canard just shook his head.
“So you’re just gonna kill eachother, that’s pretty boring” She huffed stomping her feet.
“You got a better idea?” Pookie asked cocking his head to one side.
“I just might” Efron said. She quickly cracked open the revolver and proceeded to empty the shells into her dress which she held out at the bottom to catch them. When she was done she snapped the heavy chamber back into place. “There’s one bullet in this gun, you each take turns pulling the trigger at your own head until one of you blows your brains out.” She said throwing the gun on the table like it was a chew toy. “But if neither of you are dead after four turns you have to both be my bodyguards for life, deal?”
“Ey esse’ I challenge you to a duel hombre!”
“Who me?” Efron said starry eyed “What’s a duel?”
“No not you!” The stranger said “This gringo with the funny face!” The man said as he pointed at Pookie who looked like he was going to sneeze again.
They turned to look at the stranger, a rotund Mexican of average height wearing a sombrero and a flannel shirt with imitation snake skin boots. A big ridiculous moustache on his face, his smile sporting what looked like gold teeth.
He waited for them to say something but they just continued to stare at the odd character waiting for him to burtst into song.
“Ahem, allow me to introduce myself. I am Juan Sandwich phillysub Ramirez of the infamous Ramirez brothers, known as the masters of swallowing. Surely you’ve undoubtedly heard of us” He said smirking and putting on a posher accent trying to sound like zorro or something.
Efron, Pookie and Canard all looked at him and shook their heads.
“Nomatter, after I kill the wasteland famous Pookie the clown, killer of a thousand men. My name will live on forever.”
“Look guy, we kinda just got done with a wacky misadventure so can you just buzz off and come back later?” Pookie sighed.
“-Long ago when we were very young we dreamed of being in the circus, fame and fortune, travel and the women-”
“He’s already doing an anime backstory monologue” Canard said dryly. “Is this what I sounded like?”
“Ah crap” Pookie said. “Come on buddy can you give us the cliff notes?”
“Huh?” Juan froze his lips pursed, sweat beading on his forehead, totally dumbstruck by the heckling.
“Summarize” Canard said.
Juan cleared his throat and began to speak plainly, all the theatrics drained from him. “Me and my brothers were rejected by the Ringmaster because he said our act wasn’t original enough. But, if I kill you he’ll have to let us in and then we’ll be super famous and get all the chicks.”
“Thanks.”
“De nada.”
Pookie looked around the table and back at Juan and sighed. “Ok, lets get this over with I guess.”
“That’s what she said” Juan remarked.
Canard looked at him shaking his head “You’re a terrible character.”
–
Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt The lost highway
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3 Ring Samurai Part 2 Chapter 4 ‘Imaginary Folklore’

Yo,

I actually planned to and wrote a review for battlefield 1 for yesterday but it was so dull and pointless I just didn’t post it, insert rant about modern gaming haha. Basically sums up what I thought of it. It was ok, considering I paid nothing for it.

Good news just got back the second to last piece of Diana and the last piece is on it’s way, our baby gonna be whole and beautiful soon enough. Then I can make the final changes, get her looking good and get her ready to shake her ass for some literary agents which in all likelihood will be all be women haha. True fact about literary agents, the gatekeepers of the industry, most of them are women. But then again most book readers today are women I think.
Well that is you see a lot of books targeting women specifically. Mostly about sex with vampires or werewolves or handsome rich guys haha. Kinda makes me wonder why that is, when did our culture move away from men reading books? What am I talking about? I literally started this blog mentioning the reason, it’s fucking videogames of course and movies and tv obviously. Fucking videogames killed men’s desire to read, goddamn it haha.

Well maybe that was when videogame stories were half decent, now they’re either totally ass or non-existent. The non gamers are probably off watching netflix or sport. But the thing is for me, my love of books really cushioned the blow for shitty videogame stories. I never really expect much from a games story and don’t care if it doesn’t even have one, in fact I prefer it. Because if I want a good story, there’s one waiting for me in a book. In the same respect if I want to see shitty cgi and explosions I go watch a marvel movie haha.

If you go looking for good stories in a videogame you will be disappointed. Even so we see novelists working with games developers to make decent stories and captivating world like the guy that wrote the metro novels which spawned the awesome metro games and yes I will be preordering the next instalment haha. Probably, if I’m not broke still when it comes out. Spent the last of my money, i.e the banks money on the last round of editing for D. If I work all through christmas I might be able to eat sometime late january haha.

To a lesser extent the witcher, though I won’t get into that because I fucking hate the witcher books with a passion and the writer is such a jackass. The games are great, they really elevate his boring overrated writing but the asshat is still suing them for more money despite the fact he thought they would fail so didn’t opt in for royalties, he just took a cash lump sum I guess. But of course now it’s like the hottest game of the decade he’s all in wanting his cut. If you read any of his books you’d be utterly disgusted by this.

They turned his boring slog into a living world full of interesting folklore and action and memorable interesting characters and GWENT! Holy of holies. I just saw they released a gwent rpg card game and I had hold myself to resist buying it at full price.

In other news the Parker book I’m reading has got lit, it’s pretty good, like it’s all out war at this point where Parker enlisted an army of his old heist buddies to take this mob town apart. Just gutting it of money, they take like a quarter mil in one night which is awesome. But the heists are a little too easy honestly, it’s nice but the hard stuff is coming and I can’t wait.

Anyhoo, gotta get back to work, got a new piece of my lovely lady Diana to clean up and I have to prioritise that obviously.

See you…

–

A dry morning wind lashed at the dusty emptiness of the wasteland as the sounds of muted activity echoed over all the stark nothing. The ambience of a frail egg shell headache, a morn after the night before, everyone tip toeing around busily packing up their lives. Still cool and dank but the sun bright and blinding coming up over another centuries old pile of garbage in the distance.

A slight figure blotted out that bright sun and cast an angular shadow on the side of a circus tent. One of the boys taking it down turned his scruffy dirty face in the direction of the shadow maker. He squinted with his hand attempting to block out the sun, a strange blinking collar around his neck.

“Mornin’” The young carny said as if it were a phrase buttoned to his tattered coveralls. He squinted harder trying to make out the figure. Rubbing his eyes as strange images of malformed birds filled his mind and he saw a grotesque heron mask. “Oh lady Hero, I didn’t know it-“

“The Ringmaster, where is he?”

“Oh, the boss, he’s-he’s still up in the big top, they’re getting ready to pull it next.”

“Thank you” Heron said flatly, slowly walking in the direction the boy gesticulated to.

The boy nervously returned to his tinkering, loosening the ties on the tent and scratching under his bomb collar.

Heron walked in between the stalls, more carny’s tinkering away to dismantle and pack away games and rides. All so they could move on to the next town, she could feel them they trying not to look directly at her.

“Hows tricks bird girl?” A voice mocked.

Heron looked coldly out of the corner of her eye, the voice came from a tall gaunt figure leaning out the window of his icecream van. He laughed and stared with his sharp dagger like beady eyes as he smoked from the corner of his mouth letting ash hit the counter without a care.

She turned her head to the front and continued saying nothing.

The Icecream man laughed and watched her go tapping ash out the window.

At the foot of the big top the dogfaced boy sat sullenly falling in and out of consciousness.

Upon seeing her he decided to be awake and quickly bound over to her.

“Ya bring me anything?” He said.

“Not this time, the big man in here?” Heron said.

“Yeah, he and Tanner are arguing about how the mutant sea lions are kept again, it’s really boring.”

“I see” She said as she patted him on the head and went on through into the big top.

Inside it was even cooler without the sun, the smell was so familiar; woodchips and blood and vomit and piss. Death and life, love and hate, there was nothing that wasn’t under this big top.

Heron looked up at the rigging, staring at it without knowing why, for a moment she couldn’t take her eyes off the tightrope.

Then remembering her purpose she pushed on into the ring.

As she was fortold the Ringleader was having a heated discussion with Tanner the animal tamer.

The Ringleader was a large man with a round belly but without hint of sagging. His roundness was almost perfect and complete, spherical and tightly packed, as if he were a baseball that could tuck in his arms and legs and roll away. But attached to the baseball were strong ropey arms and legs and a head he used to hold an oversized black top hat. His face always carrying the merest hint of a jovial smile betraying a wicked set of eyes which poked into every corner. He stroked and twirled his vaudeville mustache as he gestured wildly with his free hand.

“My good man, you realise these ‘creatures’ of yours cost an arm and a leg to feed, quite literally. I simply cannot afford any more lavish accomodations for them and certainly can’t spare the water to give them a dipping pool.”

“But you don’t understand, the heat is worse than ever this year, they’re going crazy, they need a way to cool off.” Tanner said as he stooped. Tanner was a large man with soft eyes, a lover of animals and wildly homicidally protective the particular species he’d trained from birth.

A rather unusual species of sea dwelling creatures that had with the drying of the oceans evolved to live on land. Undoubtedly with the help of the rampant radioactive fallout after the first war. One of the creatures playfully practised a routine where it would stand to attention on a podium. Then accused criminals would be dropped from the rigging for him to catch and eat. In this instance a side of beef or some other indistinguishable meat was dropped. The huge thing lumbered into position on the podium wobbling back and forth comically.

The creatures were huge twice maybe three times the size of a human. Scaly shiney skin but rough and course like sand paper. They had huge heads with large teeth and tusks but oddly reptilian features, with clawed hands ridged flippers for digging in the sand.

The ringmaster looked the creature over. The creature almost seemed to be trained to beg and look as cute as a giant reptilian mutant man eater could.

The meat was dropped and in an instant the creature timed it’s movements perfectly and snapped the meat out of the air with it’s ferocious jaws. The power of the bite bisecting the meat without need of sharp teeth, just the power of the jaw was enough to rip anything apart.

It moved with so much power, all those large muscles moving at once, spurred by instinct and training, the ground seemed to quake, the air shifting. The amount of power necessary to move that bulk would astound any crowd. The amount will to train the beast even more so.

Heron stared at the Ringmaster and he turned and noticed her out of the corner of his eye. He turned back to Tanner to dismiss him. “I’ll see what I can do”.

“Very well” Tanner said also having noticed Heron waiting. He left abruptly without saying anything more. Exiting through a large opening in the back. The creature bounded after him flopping around comically dragging it’s large finned tail.

“Yes?” The Ringmaster said crossing his hands behind his back he tilted his head as if he were talking to a child “Do you have something to say?”

“They’re all dead”

The Ringmaster showed no great surprise in his stoney features, he only let out a long disappointed sigh “I see”. He turned to walk up the steps towards his ‘throne’ on the edge of the big top. It was a monstrosity made of collected pieces of wood and metal. Different discarded weapons of the long dead clans that came before. The scattered remnants now making up most of the circus a generation or so on.

He sat and waited for her to say more “Is there more?”

“The ronin clown Pookie lives” She said flat.

He hid it well but at the corner of his eyes, wrinkles started to appear. “And why didn’t you stop him?”

Heron stood not moving, expressionless behind her mask. “That was not my mission”

“Your mission was to bring back a body, so where is it?” He gestured spreading out the fingers of one hand.

Heron said nothing.

The Ringmaster tutted “Forgive me, you’ve lost your friends and I’ve lost a headline act” He paused and thought about the implications. “I want his head atop my throne by this afternoon”

“Yes Ringmaster.” Heron said.

“Wait, I changed my mind!” He tapped his lips with a long finger “I want you to shadow him for me. Report to me on his movements through carrier pidgeon” He sighed deep in thought. “More information is necessary.” He said to himself. The ringmaster straightened his moustache and tugged at it a little more before he noticed Heron was still standing there. “You’re dismissed.”

“Yes Ringmaster”.

–

Read the rest on inkitt Imaginary folklore

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3 Ring Samurai Part 2 Chapter 3 ‘Shaolin Cowboy’

Ayo it’s your boi- I don’t talk like this in real.

Hello there fine people, I’m here again speaking the queens english with more lovely examples of why it is wasted on me.
Didn’t get any time to read last night because I was up all night pumping my guns haha. Which is why I feel wiped today, you always know when you went heavy when you feel like a zombie the next day but it’s good.
I had a good long sleep and I had a good dream, one of those great dreams where you feel like you’re in love and it’s so fleeting and perfect and then you wake up feeling like it was real. Then reality sets in and you realise that love like that only exists in dreams. It’s been so long now since I’ve felt anything like that and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel anything like that ever again. I’m sure I will someday.
But until then I just have to keep going, keep exercising, keep following my dreams, floating lazily along the river of life.
I don’t really have much more to say, I must do some proofreading today nomatter my level of deadedness haha. Diana must be ready for her big day, which is fast approaching.
See you…
–
On the otherside of the fence there were no torches at all. The only light coming from spill from over from the fence and a dull glowing radiating from the walls.
No sound but a scratching a shuffling which both seemed far off and all around.
Then a sound he recognised, the laughing of the sword being drawn, turning to the sound there was a small pool of red light flickering into existence.
The eyes of the laughing clown hilt lit up and for a brief moment he saw something, or someone.
Lots of someone’s.
A quick glimpse of grey flesh drawn taut over an angular frame.
Pookie stood still and held his breath trying not to make a sound. Just listening to them, trying to discern numbers and strength. They must have heard him land over the fence but maybe the commotion outside covered it.
He inched slowly, keeping low on the balls of his feet. Creeping towards the flashing glow of the red eyes, trying not to look at the maudlin shambling figures in the darkness. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dark now and could see their outlines against the dull glowing surface of the cave wall.
Naked gaunt figures with pale skin peeling from their bones shivering in the darkness.
It was in reach now, he could see it. The sword had come loose from the sheathe in the fall. The eyes were blinking on and off and the naked blade was stuck into the dry dirt of the cave floor, the scabbard a few feet away.
He took it by the handle and wiggled it gently free trying to make as little noise as possible.
Taking it one hand he went for the scabbard and like a total idiot he resheathed the sword causing it to make that loud canned laughter noise. The figures shifted in the dark, the air getting heavier and the sound of sniffing and opening of mouths, the smell of desiccated death all around.
“Ah crap.”
–
On the otherside Canard crawled on his belly like someone trying to sneak out of a married woman’s bed. Through a series of tunnels comprised of robed legs trying to kick and stomp him to death.
Luckily kicking people in a flowing robe was pretty difficult especially in a big crowd of total morons.
“Just a little further” He spat trying not to let his lungs collapse.
“There he is!”
“I’ve got him!”
“WAIT!” Canard shouted as he crawled toward his stick.
And oddly all of them did, being the sort that takes orders. They stopped crowding and grabbing and kicking and just stared in dumb silence. Canard took his staff and used it to raise himself into a sitting position with them all crowded around him. “Just one minute” He said as they all surrounded him looking at eachother as if they’d all ran in here and forgotten why it was they ran in here.
Canard sighed and flicked the blade out of his staff and said “Ok continue.”
They all rushed at him at once Canard hesitated for a second then it became clear. He rolled his body forward throwing out his shoulder over his good leg and launching himself forward into a roll. The blade of his spear sweeping in a broad low arc cutting off the legs of all the cultists in a three meter radius of him.
Still not rising to his… foot, he did what I believe in yoga is called a ‘teddy bear roll’. Leaning onto his lower back using his hips and thighs to leverage him into another spin. Sweeping the blade up cutting arms and hands off and pointedly one with a decorative revolver in it.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this.” Canard said as his breakdancing spins picked up speed. Violently slashing at whatever was sticking out like some terrible blender from hell.
For a second he lost focus and his guts started to churn and he felt dizzy.
“I think I’m gonna throw up.” He said as the spin he was currently in started to wind down, in the centre of a radius of blood and carnage at least ten foot in all directions. Spreading out like some kind of expressionist painting dotted with severed limbs and entrails.
“Did I do that?” He said as he used his stick to raise himself to his foot wobbling slightly.
But there was something off about it. The men on the ground were still moving and some even were picking among the maelstrom for lost limbs and organs, seemingly trying to reattach them. This both amused and bemused Canard until he started to realise that what they were attempting, was working.
Efron too saw something she liked. She smiled broadly as she picked up an arm holding a decorative revolver. She carefully pryed the fingers free and let the arm drop to the ground, the arm twitching slightly.
“Ooh pretty” She said as she regard the gun with the care and finesse of an effienado. She held it out in front of her with two hands “Pew pew”.
–
Check out the rest of the chapter here.
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