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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

Cur Chapter one ‘Who wants to live forever?’

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

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

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

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

But if you’re not it wont.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cur: Blood and Soil

 

–

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

“What?!” A woman cawed at once.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Well go on with yourself then”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Yes”

 

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

 

“No, where did they go child?”

 

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

 

Her grandfather nodded “Go on child”.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Then what happened” Her grandfather smirked.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Liar” A scarred voice said.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“I do” A cold gravelly voice said.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The man didn’t move from his seat.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“He insulted our kings, what of it”

 

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

 

“He’s mad”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

They were rounded.

 

“He’s- he’s a human!”

 

“I thought they were all dead!”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

She shook letting go of the sword and stumbling backwards.

 

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

 

“Red”

 

“Is he a monster?“

 

“Firbolg!”

 

“Dear Deugh!”

 

“Vampire!”

 

“He should be dead!”

 

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

 

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

 

And the women wailed so.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“What is this?”

 

“Halt!”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Did I do something wrong?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

–

0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok must do actual work now gah!

See you…

 

–

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

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

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

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

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

“Ethel-I-err”

“What’s that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Just passing through” He said.

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

“Is that a crime officer?”

“No-“

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

“Uh”

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

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

“Me? Not a one sir.” He said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“N-not so fast!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wasn’t I promised a plate of beans?”

“That was yesterday, this is today.”

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

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

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

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

Pookie’s stomach growled.

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

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

“Hey mister” A high pitched voice said.

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

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

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

“…”

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

“Pookie”

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

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

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

“Yep”

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

Pookie turned.

“So you’ll tell me?”

Pookie’s stomach growled even louder “Sure”

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

~

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

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

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

“Oh” Ethel gaped.

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

“Err thanks”

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

“Sure thing kid”

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

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

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

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

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

There was an itching scratching sound and a distinct whispering.

“…not yet… patience”

A low rumbling groan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ethel ducked under the counter.

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

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

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

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

“Just peachy” Pookie grinned.

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

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

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

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

“Lay him down here”

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

“This room aint free kid.”

Donny smiled “I’ll cover it.”

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

“I’m his biggest fan” He smirked.

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

Take the sword part 1

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Gage Chapter 8 ‘Day of Lords’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you…

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jaysus” Shaun sputtered.

“Shhh” Clarke cautioned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let’s go” He said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not by myself”

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

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

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

“Not today.”

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

 

–

Continued here

Day of Lords

 

 

 

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Diana After Dark Chapter 15 ‘The Build up’

Well here we are again, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you…

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clue it is.

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

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

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

But for one stretch hummer.

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

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

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

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

–

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

The build up

 

 

 

 

 

0

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?”

0

The One Who Came Back – Chapter 3 ‘A Little Trip to Heaven’

Herro der.

Ok so getting off my ass, really making good use of my time recently my personal life falling apart aside.
Keeping pretty tight to my new 2k word goal, spitting reviews out of my ass like confetti and getting lots of proof reading done and I got a few more people on my mailing list by offering them free shit that’s not out yet haha.
It’s coming out soon, calm your tits. Just getting it edited, we’ve already been through the quote and I have the cash. I even have an artist lined up to do the cover, which isn’t cheap considering this is a novella I’m giving away for free. I just want to make sure the product I’m giving out is the best possibly quality, but that takes time.
I will probably be selling it on amazon in hard copy as well just because why not when I’ve put so much time and effort and money into it. So you can pick that up if you feel like it just to support me but you don’t have to do obviously, you’re getting your free digital copy as soon as possible.
Been working on my latest novella just to prepare for when I wade into my next big novel project. It’s just a kind of wet silly horror novela, should be fun. I’ll be posting it on inkitt when I start proofreading it and I’ll probably be giving away ebook copies of that too when it’s edited.
But enough of my rambling updates. I just want to welcome the new people who joined my mailing and following my blog, thanks a lot for the support if you’re reading this, if you’re not I fucked your mother haha.

Ok so here’s the next proofread chapter of my nano novel which I’m really impressed with, I think this is the most professional thing I’ve done.

Here’s an excerpt from chapter 3 ‘A little trip to heaven’

If you want to read the full chapter head on over to inkitt by clicking on the hyperlink so you can get it in a mobile format and all that good stuff.

Anyway thanks again for reading this garbage haha.
Cheers!

–
“Some more pictures-“The tv was on, a home movie was playing. On the screen was a young girl’s room. White walls covered in pictures and cabinets lined with stuffed animals. “This is Peggy’s room, her bed, she even gots tv in her, aint she lucky?” A little boy’s voice said as the camera panned clumsily around the room.

“What if he doesn’t remember me?” Peggy said as she sat on their maroon couch next to her husband Brandon in their darkened living room.

“Well you’ll never know if you don’t go there and your mother sure as hell can’t make that trip, it has to be you.” He sighed and put his arm around “I wanna go with you but I’ve got work, you know that.”

“The birthday girl.” The boy on the tape said. The camera swayed into a canted angle on a young woman smiling, sitting at a table with her family. “Aint she beautiful?” Sounds of indistinct conversation could be heard as the the camera swept through the room looking around the kitchen and dining room. “And here is her brother, Johnny.” The camera jerked around as the boy aimed the lens at his own face. Giving the camera a semi-toothless grin and a direct view into his nostrils.

–

Peggy fidgeted in her seat on the plane. Taking long breathes and playing with saint christopher hanging around her neck.

She got the earliest flight she could, terrified but also eager. She’d never left texas before nevermind the country. Her heart raced and as soon as she sat down in her seat she swallowed and seemed to forget. All the hurrying and packing and walking on strained tight calves as she rushed to her flight. The hairs on the back of her neck. She felt like she was carried along by a sense of immediacy she couldn’t explain. She had to see him and touch him and kiss him and know he was ok or…

She couldn’t sleep, not on the flight and not the two days before it. Her heart wouldn’t let her, it beat and beat and it wouldn’t stop until she knew it was real and it wasn’t a dream.

The plane was crowded. She didn’t remember picking her seat, it was an aisle seat in coach. She couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t keep her eyes on one thing or another. No faces were clear, she felt like she was in a doctor’s waiting room. Something about not moving but still moving set her teeth on edge and it made her want to walk the whole way to spain. She took a mirror out of her purse and poked at one of her eyes.

Peggy was a fairly pretty texas flower with shoulder length dirty blonde hair. Maybe just a little too much eye make up to cover up the lack of sleep. Hey eyebrows were so thin they looked drawn on. She had a strong Nordic looking face and jawline she softened with flowing bangs and a dimple in her chin. She looked tired though and she knew it. She was just past thirty and the lack of sleep did nothing for the sagging under her eyes. Her mouth was slightly downturned with a touch of natural lipstick

She couldn’t see out the windows. Everyone around her was either asleep, eating or watching a movie. Three things that didn’t cross her mind. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was in a box. She barely noticed the plane taxiing for take off. Only the tight feeling as her heart sunk into her seat as the plane took off.

It was a night flight so as soon as they got going they turned off most of the lights.

She laid her head back and closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

It didn’t work.

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Constantine Season 1 Review

This is sort of a long time coming and probably one of a million reviews of this since it’s been out for maybe more than a year now. I don’t know, but I’m not the kind of person to see some new thing and just band wagon jump. I sort of just watch and wait and stew and then eventually when no one is looking I’ll skulk in and watch it. Surprisingly I actually overall thought this was ok, it was watchable. It wasn’t as terrible as I surmised it to be. I think it had some potential, so it’s sort of a shame it was cancelled but admittedly it deserved it.

The casting was ok for the most part, the guy they got to play Constanstine was ok, he looked the part but his accent was all over the place. I mean what the fuck was that? I think he was sort of a bad actor too, I mean it’s usually good when you can tell an actor is enjoying the role he’s playing. It usually adds something like with the awesome portrayal of Negan by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, adding another layer to an actually pretty bland character in the comic. In the comic, I actually prefer the governor, Negan is a little silly in my opinion. But here the actor playing Constantine seems to have a boner for Constantine and it just comes off as an annoying smugness, he’s enjoying this too much, he’s having more fun than the audience.

The rest of the casting is lame, making Chaz an american was lazy and as usual the female character is only really there to drive the plot for reasons and has no real personality that isn’t just super daddy issues. The guy from lost playing the angel was genric.

Richie was good but considering he’s in like one comic that’s not an amazing addition. There wasn’t much I recognised from the comics except one episode about a hunger demon which was actually ok. But the rest of the plot is just generic Supernatural rip off freak of the week bullshit. Just some intern googling ‘Supernatural shit’ and trying to spin it into an hour long episode by mashing in storyline from murder she wrote. Just lazy writing 101. Something I forgave supernatural for because I liked the characters and there was overarching plot sprinkled in which is not the case for Constantine.

I mean I love Constantine, the one from the comics, which is not this twat. Don’t get me wrong my problem was Constantine in the show is not nearly cunty enough. This Constantine actually looks for cases to solve and stuff to do and help people, the one from the comic just stumbles into shit on happenstance and solves the problems usually out of his own curiosity or to save his own ass. It just feels like they’re trying to square-peg a round hole, turning an anti-hero into a hero because of ‘plot’.

Oh and did I mention over-arching plot, quick tip to the writers of Constantine; mentioning you have an over-arching plot every episode does not mean you have an over-arching plot. In the same way pointing at yourself and screaming you’re a pelican doesn’t make it so.

To have an overarching plot you actually need to have events that link to eachother and become a story, a mystery slowly unravelling, not just a bunch of unconnected shit you artificially connect with the code phrase ‘Coming darkness’ or ‘Rising darkness’ or whatever the fuck it was. It’s lazy and just bad and you should feel bad.

Essentially the problem here might not be the acting or the writing but the structure of the story telling. They’re trying to fit this huge collection of stories into this cookie cutter format that’s been done to death and a lot better. It’s the same thing in my Lucifer review, it uses a cookie cutter ‘Oh look a random event has occured now lets use my gimmick to solve it’ like how the mentalist is a fake psychic or how Monk has asbergers or whatever, the difference is those shows have likeable characters you give a shit about and an over-arching plot that actually exists and is worth munching obvious filler bullshit to see.

So overall, it needed to be cancelled as I think most comic book tv shows do because it’s just hacky pandering crap most of the time with lashings of useless filler. But it’s sad because it wasn’t all that bad, it was watchable and didn’t butcher the source material (unlike Preacher) and maybe it could have done better given another season. But I guess the character and the comic was a bit too niche for modern audiences drunk on walking dead and super hero bullshit who were already tired of ten plus fucking seasons of supernatural to watch another one without Sam and Dean.

I think it had the spark of something but it failed to make it off the ground, stick to writing COD games Goyer.

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GREEN SUNDAY Chapter 13 ‘Sunday Mourning’ (Edited) Sunday returns, finally.

Ok ok finally getting around to going over these edited chapters of GS fresh out of the girl and cat publishing bakery of fine editing. Thanks as always to Nat and her time and effort and really great comments.

I’ve fallen behind on these and now seeing a gap in writing I thought it was best to strike now and get them out of the way so I can move onto editing for my newer stuff and get onto a new project.
I’m taking a little break, which isn’t really a break and will last til january. I’m just not starting any new projects at the minute and focusing on editing and cleaning older stuff up as well as plotting new stories mainly a sloppy as shit Dexter fanfic. I’ve got big dreams people, I’ve got Jeff Linday on facebook and we’ve exchanged like five words haha. I’m sure he’s just chomping at the bit to have me take the reigns of his mythos haha.

Honestly, I don’t know why I’m doing it, I should be plotting out my fantasy story or laying the solid ground work for a new Green Sunday but I just felt like doing some Dexter stuff for fun. It just bubbled to the surface of my mind and I felt like hammering it out a little for when I eventually start reading the books again and getting straight in my head.

In January, I’ll be jumping into another novella probably, just to break the pace up a little, do something a tad different, a little fantasy/surreal horror. Which now thinking back sounds pretty much what Ladies Close Your Eyes turned into but I didn’t intend it to haha.

It’ll be another adapted comic strip and I have a rough idea which one I have in mind but I’m a fickle cunt so whichever sticks best in my head on the day will be what goes down, new year new head, new flesh.

So here we are back again, I’ve got all the chapters done now, just gonna doll them out to you on here and of course you can read them all, because I’m just putting them all up as they’re done on my inkitt page which I will leave a link to below.

I’m probably going to launch the full book on amazon some time next year when I get the cover back from an artist friend of mine and do some marketing giving away LCYE as a free ebook, which I’ll do on here and facebook and twitter and probably minds.

Here it is chapter 13 ‘Sunday Mourning’, let me know what you think and don’t forget to check on out on twitter and minds.

https://www.minds.com/CallMeRyk

As always the full chapter can be found on my inkitt page.

Sunday Mourning

See you…

–

A drone camera buzzed over the scene behind TJ’s house, out of sight, too high up to be heard. Its ambivalent gaze documenting everything. Its lens flitted about like that of an insect’s eye. The monitor feed from Evergreen’s deployment truck glared as he grinned back, the feed reflected in his goggles.

“She got too close to the perimeter of the game zone. Looks like she was taken out by beta team,” The nerd at the console said as he looked over the footage again. “Very clean; she won’t have felt a thing.” Murray straightened his glasses with a morbid sense of appreciation. “They really are the best, sir”.

“Uh huh.” Evergreen’s grin shrunk a few sizes, listening to the tech gush. “It’s time.”.

“Yes, sir, beginning stage three,” the tech said as he turned back to his console.

~

Helicopter blades cut through a violent wind, casting rain in wide dispersal patterns as the heavy behemoths rocked back and forth.

These were military transport helicopters, for carrying battlements or vehicles to the field: four in all, carrying heavy metal containers. They looked like smooth industrial shipping containers, but both the containers and the choppers were completely unmarked.

“Roger that. We’re estimated four hours out of the drop zone. Good morning. If this rain lets up, it’s gonna be a beautiful day,” the chopper pilot said over his radio.

~

“You kept me waiting,” Carpenter whispered as he twisted the barbed point of the arrow under Dave’s chin. Dave grimaced, dropping his torch and kukri.

“Killing me will do you no good. I’m not a part of the game; I’m just his assistant!”

Carpenter took Dave by his shoulders and threw him down on the dirty linoleum floor. Dave offered little resistance and fell at the side of the dead woman drinking the milkshake. His fall caused her to shift in her seat, sliding down the bench until her face rested right next to Dave’s as he attempted to dust himself off. By the dim light of his torch he could see he was in kissing range of the gaping exit wound in her face.

“Oh, shit!” He gaped.

“‘Oh, shit’ indeed,” Carpenter chuckled as he picked up both Dave’s torch and his kukri knife.

“What do you want?”

Carpenter put the torch under his chin and smiled like a ghoul in an old monster movie. “A way out.”

“Why would I know the way?”

“Do you like scary movies?” Carpenter said, smiling. He poked each yellow tooth with his tongue in turn. “You don’t think there was someone like you and your butt buddy up there the last time?” Carpenter let out a bitter little breathy laugh. He shook the beam of the torch around, feigning hysterics. “It’s a sick world we live in.”

He marched up to Dave and stomped on the leg closest to him; Dave let out an anguished cry like an injured animal.

Carpenter crouched down next to Dave, shining the torch in his face and Dave cowered under the beam, guarding his eyes with his hand. Carpenter saw it immediately and snickered to himself, thinking of something poetic to say at this karmic justice he’d send on its way. “Feeling all right? Fever? Dry mouth? Itching under the skin? E-rectile dysfunction?”

Dave looked up at him and swallowed a dry gob of spit.

“There’s a helicopter. North side of town, by the abandoned railyard, but it’s guarded; you’ll never make it alone.”

Carpenter gave him that wide devil grin and turned to walk away, tossing the torch and the kukri away as he left Dave scrabbling in the dark.

“I’m not alone; not anymore.”

~

TJ couldn’t move. His body was rooted to the ground by chains of empty regret. His limbs felt hollow and heavy at the same time.

“TJ, it’s Sunday, I know we just met, but you have to trust me. I used you; I’m not a good person. But I can make it up to you, if you live,” Sunday whispered in TJ’s ear where he lay on the cold, damp grass of his backyard. A light drizzle was approaching, accompanied by muffled threats of dull, aching thunder.

TJ remained perfectly still. Sunday swallowed and turned him over. His eyes were open, vacant and grey. His mouth hung open a fraction and fluttered as if he was trying to say something but didn’t have enough energy. “TJ, can you hear me? We need to move. You’re gonna come with me, OK?” She hooked her dainty little hands under his sweaty pits, lifting him with some effort. “Urf, fuck, you’re heavy!”

She turned him around and dragged him in the direction of his house. “Ergh! This would be a lot easier if you just – hrrff, hrrff – stood up and, you know, walked.”

She got him back into the kitchen, which felt a lot colder now. Closing the door, she looked out the window. His mother’s body, lying there, looked almost beautiful. Sunday breathed in and out, feeling her icy breath swirling around in her chest. “It could have been worse,” she sighed as the rain rolled in.

~

 

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