Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall

War of the Christmas Spectres - A Story

I promised you a story. Here it is.

The heat surprised him. The smoke hed had some inkling of, if for no other reason than the repeated exposure to PSAs on cartoons hed watched as a child. Stop, Drop and Roll were almost engraved on the matter of his mind. But the heat, like a slithering thing that would like nothing better than to sear away the lining of his lungs, that he had not expected.

It seemed kind of stupid to him that he hadnt expected heat from a fire that was devouring a house. He knew fire was hot, after all.

Lit by the fire, the ghost stood in all its glory, tattered rags dancing in the tarantella air. The bones of its frame took on reflected radiance from the plumes of flame dining on the walls, the trails of orange and red like autumn on mescaline and amphetamines streaking everywhere there was fuel. Inside the black only made deeper by the shimmering light, two ruddy eyes stared out at him.

He matched the stare. The chains of his leather jacket rustled in the swirling air, and his hand gripped the cloth tape around the baseball bat in his right hand.

Waiting for death to make a move.

When it came, it was a subtle thing. A keening, like a razor blade dragged along a stone and magnified, fired into the air between the two figures so that every breath inhaled was tinged with suffering. The hum of a hundred hundred hardened hearts shattering under the weight of their own selfishness, the hiss of regret. It had broken evil men and crushed greedy souls beneath the realization of their own avarice. It had redeemed the wicked and made manifest the price of lamentable actions. It had eaten men's souls.

It did nothing this time.

The bat flashed upwards, and then tumbled through the air, unbalanced. As it flew, the man in the leather jacket threw back his head, hair the artificial color of deep ocean swirling around him, and grunted a storm of words in a language that did not suit human throats.

Haset! Aldon gohia zhro yiblistha lonsh kron! Kron! ZHRO!

A storm of cyclonic fury burst around him, whipping the green lengths of his hair and flinging sparks of St. Elmos Fire from his eyes as it extinguished the flame threatening to devour him...extinguished it, and slamming the unlikely projectile forward like a straw caught in a hurricane.

The tumbling club crashed into animated bone, which then could not evade the glowing green nimbus of light and wind which caught it in talons of air. Powdered, the second blast scattered the fragments of its ossified form in with the ashes of the snuffed firestorm that had nearly eaten the room.

A leather boot scuffed and scorched all around the heel stepped onto the rag and bone shop which was the pile of its remains, the few fragments that had not been shredded by an angry wind. The bat was splintered, useless to him now...and if he remembered as well as he knew he did, there would be two more spirits that night before the whole thing was over. Grunting, he stepped over the ruin and out of the bedroom of the house he hadnt called home in years.

Was it any wonder he hated Christmas?

As he passed, he stopped, reaching out a hand to straighten the picture streaked with soot and charred by heat...half his mothers face still remained, and most of his father, but flame had eaten away all of his own image and now only the knowledge that he had been there that day reminded him that it was gone.

Every year time eats you a little more, until theres nothing left and no one to remember. Who will remember me when Im gone?

He knew the answer already.

Down the stairs and into the living room. Why hed come back to a deserted house on the single most ghost-haunted night of the year, a home that had seen his greatest failure...images of a shuffling, howling mass of dead things made alive when they should not have been, brought low again by anger and the same will that had called them back...do not call up that which you cannot put down...he shook his head to force the thoughts back into their cage. The tri-lobed eye on his right glittered in the light as he dropped to his knees on the dirty rug and drew a small dagger from his boot.

Then he hacked away at the rotten fiber.

Time was not on his side. Indeed, time favored the dead. So he hacked and as he did, he tried to recreate the mantra in his mind, the formula that would draw power down from heaven through the branches of the Otz Chaim and into his body. The spheres hanging from the tree...it brought back memories of gleaming globes dangling from a conifer or fir (he knew not which) his father had bargained his way into possession of, strings of tinsel like false lightning draped from branch to branch. Oddly appropriate. He'd take his miracles where he could get them. The merkabah becomes a sleigh drawn by eight tiny reindeer, the one-eyed crucified safely esconced behind the reins...gods and monsters and the dead and the birth of the unmade, all danced in his head between the shadows of the emanations of the limitless light. As he etched the last branch of the tree into the rug, he could hear the dust swirling around him and knew he was not alone.

"What is the builder's word? Why did he hang from the tree? What is the draught of the well?" rasped out of a dry throat even as a corpulent mass, gorged on all the fodder it could cram into a mouth that split its ham-sized head, oozed into existence before him. Chuckling, leaving a trail of oil and decay behind it, its bulk barely covered in patchy fur robes which only served to heighten its girth by leaving holes for it to strain against, bits of decay in its matted beard and eyes like those of a starving pig.

It brought his gorge rising up just by existing. For one terrifying moment, he contemplated his own end at those yellowing teeth he saw as it licked quivering lips.

"What is the builder's word?" He screamed, and the tree at his feet burst into rainbow light, and a fire that burned and did not consume tore up into his body, setting his limbs to quiver and every hair on his body to dance as the glittering light lifted his fear from him.

He was a lone star in the sky, lighting the way.

The gluttonous thing saw the fury of the light yet could not deny itself. It was a being of hunger, not of fear. It could not be cowed. So it poured itself forward, floorboards creaking beneath it as it moved.

He smiled, a tight crescent that held grim mirth like a bough of mistletoe held death for the sun, and leapt in a pivot that smashed a blazing foot into the snout that held yellowing teeth, scattering them in a cloud of pulverized enamel and aerosolized spittle. The glutton staggered back, pain and surprise warring for control of its face, and so opened itself to the talons of a hand made a claw, the incarnated hand of the corpse-tearer that lives at the roots of the world-ash.

That hand shredded putrid suet and sprayed mercury-hued ichor across the floorboards. The glutton howled, even with his chest torn open, and swung an arm that could have crushed a hippo, but the intended target had not stayed in one place. It weaved, a living thing made fluid by desire and power, and drove another kick into the greasy flesh of the glutton's back, and another into the knee, and another into the hip, finally toppling the great pile of unsatisfied, insatiable greed forward into the glowing shape of a tree ripped into the floor.

The surge of light and heat blinded him, even infused as he was with power, and the sound of wood bursting and splintering caused him to leap away...as the floor of the living room collapsed, sending the whole room tumbling down into the blackness of the deserted cellar. The sound of slime and rotten flesh bursting rose up, as did the smell of putrefaction, and the cackling laughter of a thwarted creature which could never be truly destroyed.

Supine on the peeling tiles of the kitchen floor, he panted, the purity of the moment lost to him, fully a man and bleeding from a gash on his cheek from the kiss of the floor as he'd leapt. Two down, one to go.

"Christ, Mithras and Saturn, I hate Christmas. Why the hell did I come back here?" He spoke just to hear himself speak, to know he still could. No damn way was that an hour. No damn way. What did he have left? He had to put down the unquiet spirits of a whole damn time of year and he was running out of ideas. Ideas were the currency of power. No two could be the same. What patterns could he find to deal with this last one?

Dragging himself upright, he licked his lips and tasted the copper of his blood. The yellow floor was faded, but somehow the leeching away of the color matched the seepage of his memories, the muted recollection he had of his own life. The countertop was blistered, the drawers yanked out and looted...local kids had carved their names into the wood while using the place as a shelter to rebel tamely from the loose bonds of authority that defined them. It was to be expected. Neglect is rarely as benign as we'd like to think, and he'd neglected this building with all of his heart, hoping time would rot it away for him. I need something, he groaned beneath his voice. What can I...

On the edge of a cabinet he saw a flash of light even as he felt the rustling of the plants outside the house, saw it translated into the vines crawling in through the windows. Instinct grabbed hold of his hand, and he reached out and grabbed, prying it from the wood and squeezing it until it drew blood from his hand while chanting softly the first mantra he'd learned as a child.

"Praying?"

She crept into the room, all tendrils and shoots, a wooden face with viney hair and thorns for teeth. The walls gave way as more and more branches and roots forced their way into the kitchen, crushing and smashing as they came. Soon only the island he stood behind and the wall behind him was left untouched by blighted growth and scraping leaves.

"I wouldn't have imagined you for the praying type." She smiled, and a sap-coated mass of fronds in the vague form of a tongue played along her needle teeth. Her skin was the bark of a birch tree, her long plumes of tangled vines and shoots mimicked hair yet moved on their own in the absence of wind. Her eyes were berries, glimmering and perfect. "You know, you've displeased us greatly with your resistance. But you can still give us a kiss under the mistletoe."

"Not going to happen." He felt the pain in his right hand and smiled.

"Stubborn."

"I prefer willful."

"Prefer whatever you want...your head is going to be the crown of my tree, and your innards my tinsel." She moved closer, hideous shapes with hunched bodies of bundled branches and ears like pine boughs flowing in behind her. "What do we care for your will?"

"Because I will this." His smile widened, and his right hand opened to reveal a green pin in the shape of a train lantern. "And I shall shed my light over dark evil, because the dark things cannot stand the light."

The last pure memory of childhood spent chasing after what others held lightly in their hands burned like a meteor as the power uncoiled, roping green flames that flickered in his hair, in his eyes, and in the reclaimed lost badge of the boy he'd been in that very kitchen...the last good memory, the last gift burned with all the rage, all the longing, all the need, all the hope he could bear to recall.

Even as they gaped, unbelieving, rings of fire surged out of him, fire yoked to his will. Green fire. Like serpents, the flames hurled themselves into the brush of the elven shapes, sweeping them aside into contrails of ash. A steady jet, a roaring hearth, a yule bonfire...call it by many names, it consumed the twisted forms and the rotting walls, roaring and leaping into the heavens, and when it was done, there was nothing left.

Nothing but a man standing in the scoured leavings of a lost home. Soot clung to him, and in his hand the slowly cooling metal pin seemed to stare, reminding him that memory could hide the good as well. A half smile clung to his face as he regarded that unbroken green circle.

It was the work of moments to attach it to the jacket. He could hear sirens in the distance, but it didn't concern him. He would be away before they arrived. The day owed him a present, after all.

Maybe hate was a bit strong a word.

War of the Christmas Spectres - A Story

I promised you a story. Here it is.

The heat surprised him. The smoke hed had some inkling of, if for no other reason than the repeated exposure to PSAs on cartoons hed watched as a child. Stop, Drop and Roll were almost engraved on the matter of his mind. But the heat, like a slithering thing that would like nothing better than to sear away the lining of his lungs, that he had not expected.

It seemed kind of stupid to him that he hadnt expected heat from a fire that was devouring a house. He knew fire was hot, after all.

Lit by the fire, the ghost stood in all its glory, tattered rags dancing in the tarantella air. The bones of its frame took on reflected radiance from the plumes of flame dining on the walls, the trails of orange and red like autumn on mescaline and amphetamines streaking everywhere there was fuel. Inside the black only made deeper by the shimmering light, two ruddy eyes stared out at him.

He matched the stare. The chains of his leather jacket rustled in the swirling air, and his hand gripped the cloth tape around the baseball bat in his right hand.

Waiting for death to make a move.

When it came, it was a subtle thing. A keening, like a razor blade dragged along a stone and magnified, fired into the air between the two figures so that every breath inhaled was tinged with suffering. The hum of a hundred hundred hardened hearts shattering under the weight of their own selfishness, the hiss of regret. It had broken evil men and crushed greedy souls beneath the realization of their own avarice. It had redeemed the wicked and made manifest the price of lamentable actions. It had eaten men's souls.

It did nothing this time.

The bat flashed upwards, and then tumbled through the air, unbalanced. As it flew, the man in the leather jacket threw back his head, hair the artificial color of deep ocean swirling around him, and grunted a storm of words in a language that did not suit human throats.

Haset! Aldon gohia zhro yiblistha lonsh kron! Kron! ZHRO!

A storm of cyclonic fury burst around him, whipping the green lengths of his hair and flinging sparks of St. Elmos Fire from his eyes as it extinguished the flame threatening to devour him...extinguished it, and slamming the unlikely projectile forward like a straw caught in a hurricane.

The tumbling club crashed into animated bone, which then could not evade the glowing green nimbus of light and wind which caught it in talons of air. Powdered, the second blast scattered the fragments of its ossified form in with the ashes of the snuffed firestorm that had nearly eaten the room.

A leather boot scuffed and scorched all around the heel stepped onto the rag and bone shop which was the pile of its remains, the few fragments that had not been shredded by an angry wind. The bat was splintered, useless to him now...and if he remembered as well as he knew he did, there would be two more spirits that night before the whole thing was over. Grunting, he stepped over the ruin and out of the bedroom of the house he hadnt called home in years.

Was it any wonder he hated Christmas?

As he passed, he stopped, reaching out a hand to straighten the picture streaked with soot and charred by heat...half his mothers face still remained, and most of his father, but flame had eaten away all of his own image and now only the knowledge that he had been there that day reminded him that it was gone.

Every year time eats you a little more, until theres nothing left and no one to remember. Who will remember me when Im gone?

He knew the answer already.

Down the stairs and into the living room. Why hed come back to a deserted house on the single most ghost-haunted night of the year, a home that had seen his greatest failure...images of a shuffling, howling mass of dead things made alive when they should not have been, brought low again by anger and the same will that had called them back...do not call up that which you cannot put down...he shook his head to force the thoughts back into their cage. The tri-lobed eye on his right glittered in the light as he dropped to his knees on the dirty rug and drew a small dagger from his boot.

Then he hacked away at the rotten fiber.

Time was not on his side. Indeed, time favored the dead. So he hacked and as he did, he tried to recreate the mantra in his mind, the formula that would draw power down from heaven through the branches of the Otz Chaim and into his body. The spheres hanging from the tree...it brought back memories of gleaming globes dangling from a conifer or fir (he knew not which) his father had bargained his way into possession of, strings of tinsel like false lightning draped from branch to branch. Oddly appropriate. He'd take his miracles where he could get them. The merkabah becomes a sleigh drawn by eight tiny reindeer, the one-eyed crucified safely esconced behind the reins...gods and monsters and the dead and the birth of the unmade, all danced in his head between the shadows of the emanations of the limitless light. As he etched the last branch of the tree into the rug, he could hear the dust swirling around him and knew he was not alone.

"What is the builder's word? Why did he hang from the tree? What is the draught of the well?" rasped out of a dry throat even as a corpulent mass, gorged on all the fodder it could cram into a mouth that split its ham-sized head, oozed into existence before him. Chuckling, leaving a trail of oil and decay behind it, its bulk barely covered in patchy fur robes which only served to heighten its girth by leaving holes for it to strain against, bits of decay in its matted beard and eyes like those of a starving pig.

It brought his gorge rising up just by existing. For one terrifying moment, he contemplated his own end at those yellowing teeth he saw as it licked quivering lips.

"What is the builder's word?" He screamed, and the tree at his feet burst into rainbow light, and a fire that burned and did not consume tore up into his body, setting his limbs to quiver and every hair on his body to dance as the glittering light lifted his fear from him.

He was a lone star in the sky, lighting the way.

The gluttonous thing saw the fury of the light yet could not deny itself. It was a being of hunger, not of fear. It could not be cowed. So it poured itself forward, floorboards creaking beneath it as it moved.

He smiled, a tight crescent that held grim mirth like a bough of mistletoe held death for the sun, and leapt in a pivot that smashed a blazing foot into the snout that held yellowing teeth, scattering them in a cloud of pulverized enamel and aerosolized spittle. The glutton staggered back, pain and surprise warring for control of its face, and so opened itself to the talons of a hand made a claw, the incarnated hand of the corpse-tearer that lives at the roots of the world-ash.

That hand shredded putrid suet and sprayed mercury-hued ichor across the floorboards. The glutton howled, even with his chest torn open, and swung an arm that could have crushed a hippo, but the intended target had not stayed in one place. It weaved, a living thing made fluid by desire and power, and drove another kick into the greasy flesh of the glutton's back, and another into the knee, and another into the hip, finally toppling the great pile of unsatisfied, insatiable greed forward into the glowing shape of a tree ripped into the floor.

The surge of light and heat blinded him, even infused as he was with power, and the sound of wood bursting and splintering caused him to leap away...as the floor of the living room collapsed, sending the whole room tumbling down into the blackness of the deserted cellar. The sound of slime and rotten flesh bursting rose up, as did the smell of putrefaction, and the cackling laughter of a thwarted creature which could never be truly destroyed.

Supine on the peeling tiles of the kitchen floor, he panted, the purity of the moment lost to him, fully a man and bleeding from a gash on his cheek from the kiss of the floor as he'd leapt. Two down, one to go.

"Christ, Mithras and Saturn, I hate Christmas. Why the hell did I come back here?" He spoke just to hear himself speak, to know he still could. No damn way was that an hour. No damn way. What did he have left? He had to put down the unquiet spirits of a whole damn time of year and he was running out of ideas. Ideas were the currency of power. No two could be the same. What patterns could he find to deal with this last one?

Dragging himself upright, he licked his lips and tasted the copper of his blood. The yellow floor was faded, but somehow the leeching away of the color matched the seepage of his memories, the muted recollection he had of his own life. The countertop was blistered, the drawers yanked out and looted...local kids had carved their names into the wood while using the place as a shelter to rebel tamely from the loose bonds of authority that defined them. It was to be expected. Neglect is rarely as benign as we'd like to think, and he'd neglected this building with all of his heart, hoping time would rot it away for him. I need something, he groaned beneath his voice. What can I...

On the edge of a cabinet he saw a flash of light even as he felt the rustling of the plants outside the house, saw it translated into the vines crawling in through the windows. Instinct grabbed hold of his hand, and he reached out and grabbed, prying it from the wood and squeezing it until it drew blood from his hand while chanting softly the first mantra he'd learned as a child.

"Praying?"

She crept into the room, all tendrils and shoots, a wooden face with viney hair and thorns for teeth. The walls gave way as more and more branches and roots forced their way into the kitchen, crushing and smashing as they came. Soon only the island he stood behind and the wall behind him was left untouched by blighted growth and scraping leaves.

"I wouldn't have imagined you for the praying type." She smiled, and a sap-coated mass of fronds in the vague form of a tongue played along her needle teeth. Her skin was the bark of a birch tree, her long plumes of tangled vines and shoots mimicked hair yet moved on their own in the absence of wind. Her eyes were berries, glimmering and perfect. "You know, you've displeased us greatly with your resistance. But you can still give us a kiss under the mistletoe."

"Not going to happen." He felt the pain in his right hand and smiled.

"Stubborn."

"I prefer willful."

"Prefer whatever you want...your head is going to be the crown of my tree, and your innards my tinsel." She moved closer, hideous shapes with hunched bodies of bundled branches and ears like pine boughs flowing in behind her. "What do we care for your will?"

"Because I will this." His smile widened, and his right hand opened to reveal a green pin in the shape of a train lantern. "And I shall shed my light over dark evil, because the dark things cannot stand the light."

The last pure memory of childhood spent chasing after what others held lightly in their hands burned like a meteor as the power uncoiled, roping green flames that flickered in his hair, in his eyes, and in the reclaimed lost badge of the boy he'd been in that very kitchen...the last good memory, the last gift burned with all the rage, all the longing, all the need, all the hope he could bear to recall.

Even as they gaped, unbelieving, rings of fire surged out of him, fire yoked to his will. Green fire. Like serpents, the flames hurled themselves into the brush of the elven shapes, sweeping them aside into contrails of ash. A steady jet, a roaring hearth, a yule bonfire...call it by many names, it consumed the twisted forms and the rotting walls, roaring and leaping into the heavens, and when it was done, there was nothing left.

Nothing but a man standing in the scoured leavings of a lost home. Soot clung to him, and in his hand the slowly cooling metal pin seemed to stare, reminding him that memory could hide the good as well. A half smile clung to his face as he regarded that unbroken green circle.

It was the work of moments to attach it to the jacket. He could hear sirens in the distance, but it didn't concern him. He would be away before they arrived. The day owed him a present, after all.

Maybe hate was a bit strong a word.

Ultraviolence

What I really want right this second is to write something mindlessly violent. No plot, no characterization, just heaps upon heaps of violence, brutality, rage made manifest with no redeeming social characteristics and no attempt to illustrate, edify, educate or preach.

So let's see if I can. Right here and now, just as an exercise. Let's see how long I can keep it going.

The tearing, crackling yet pulpy sound an arm makes as it splinters. The look past shock as pain screams its way up the nerves and into the brain, stamping out all the nuance of the expressive human face. A face I ram my elbow into, crushing bone and cartilege into a spray of froth and blood, and then he drops to the ground at my feet. It makes stepping on his neck easier as I pivot, grinding the tread into his windpipe but missing the next one.

I have to throw myself backward to avoid the cleaver. Kitchen utensils, now. Does the winner eat the losers? It's been a long time since I cared. I roll myself over the island, grabbing the lid off of a Farberware pan as I come to my feet and taking the cleaver with my left arm, turning as I move into his center of gravity. Keep him off balance. Keep him moving the direction I choose. Keep his right arm extended, so that I can drive my own into the small of his back hoping to spring ribs, maybe even slip a disc.

The impact takes him off his feet, and I grab a handful of long, greasy black hair and pull him back to me, the force cracking his body to a halt and tearing a mass of his hair out as he falls. Swearing and shaking the hairs loose from my hand, I stomp on his right wrist as fast as I can, grinding and repeating until I hear more of that sound somewhere between celery and a handful of pencils being twisted. I can see individual veins in his eyes, which are an arresting blue, flushed and pinkish from the force of his fall to the floor.

Then I move, knowing the door will give way in a few seconds, knowing the only thing I can do is to run at the front window. Kicking off of the coffee table, I twist to the side and take the glass and rotten wood with my shoulder, flecks of green and faded once-brown paint flying past my eyes. I grab for the edge of the fire escape.

My hands catch only air.

I may come back to this post. Or not.

Ultraviolence

What I really want right this second is to write something mindlessly violent. No plot, no characterization, just heaps upon heaps of violence, brutality, rage made manifest with no redeeming social characteristics and no attempt to illustrate, edify, educate or preach.

So let's see if I can. Right here and now, just as an exercise. Let's see how long I can keep it going.

The tearing, crackling yet pulpy sound an arm makes as it splinters. The look past shock as pain screams its way up the nerves and into the brain, stamping out all the nuance of the expressive human face. A face I ram my elbow into, crushing bone and cartilege into a spray of froth and blood, and then he drops to the ground at my feet. It makes stepping on his neck easier as I pivot, grinding the tread into his windpipe but missing the next one.

I have to throw myself backward to avoid the cleaver. Kitchen utensils, now. Does the winner eat the losers? It's been a long time since I cared. I roll myself over the island, grabbing the lid off of a Farberware pan as I come to my feet and taking the cleaver with my left arm, turning as I move into his center of gravity. Keep him off balance. Keep him moving the direction I choose. Keep his right arm extended, so that I can drive my own into the small of his back hoping to spring ribs, maybe even slip a disc.

The impact takes him off his feet, and I grab a handful of long, greasy black hair and pull him back to me, the force cracking his body to a halt and tearing a mass of his hair out as he falls. Swearing and shaking the hairs loose from my hand, I stomp on his right wrist as fast as I can, grinding and repeating until I hear more of that sound somewhere between celery and a handful of pencils being twisted. I can see individual veins in his eyes, which are an arresting blue, flushed and pinkish from the force of his fall to the floor.

Then I move, knowing the door will give way in a few seconds, knowing the only thing I can do is to run at the front window. Kicking off of the coffee table, I twist to the side and take the glass and rotten wood with my shoulder, flecks of green and faded once-brown paint flying past my eyes. I grab for the edge of the fire escape.

My hands catch only air.

I may come back to this post. Or not.

A new experiment

Again, I have no idea where this is going, or where it comes from. But at least it's something.

Imagination is the key. You have to be able to imagine, so that while the needle drives into your head between your eyes, you can imagine that you don't hear or feel the bone giving way like rotten wood, the creaking everywhere at once, your head a drum with the head popping. A needle taking cell samples from your hypothalamus while you're still awake is the kind of shit you need to be able to pretend is not happening.

I've been here for my whole life. I have no memories of anyplace but here that I can admit to.

My name is Four. I was the fourth subject, you see, the fourth one they grew. They didn't bother to name us until the subject pool got so large that they didn't want to have to call us by number anymore. For instance, it's easier to say 'Come here, Mark' than it is to say 'Come here, One Thousand and Seventy Seven' and so they adopted names. But me, I'm Four.

My room is very nice. There are ten cameras hidden in the walls, the floor, and in my toilet. Not actually in the toilet itself, in the wall across from my shower. I don't get to be private here. The imagination comes in handy with that, too, since I shouldn't know anything about privacy.

There's a lot of pretending to do. I know they know I'm the same as the others physically. So I have to keep them thinking I'm different otherwise, or they'll study me the way they did One, and Three, and Seventeen. I don't want to be studied that closely. I don't need an imagination there, since I have enough of an idea of what it would entail from Doctor Uldesch before she retired. I say retired, when I mean died slowly from a neurotoxin she administered to herself because she couldn't take it anymore.

Sometimes I pretend so well I almost forget it is pretense at all.

There are ten of us in the study room. The needle is out of my forehead now, and the hole is already almost closed, a benefit of being designed instead of merely evolved. Hit and miss, though: Two died when her healing got so efficient that it closed up her mouth, nose and windpipe before they could help her, if they had been planning to at all. Besides myself, there's Steven, Elena, One Hundred and Seventy Seven, Douglas, Oushana, Senega, Crichton, Ninety Four and Caroline. They're all sitting in a circle, their eyes closed.

I know they don't want to talk to me. I'm not like them; not one of the chosen, not one of the brotherhood of the mind. Fat lot of good being chosen has ever done anyone, I say. Ask One, or Twelve, or David about it. They'd tell you, if they could tell anyone. They had a lot of big ideals. I have none. Sometimes I pretend to, but it doesn't appeal to me. I just want to get through this.

Their little ring breaks up, and they start talking to each other again. Eventually Senega comes over to me and sits down. After all, they don't hate me. There's pity, condescencion, and a touch of admiration there, because despite my handicap I'm the oldest one left. But not much in the way of hate, not even from Senega, with her perfect features and shiny dark skin...then again, who am I to resent her perfection, when my own body is just as well-formed and artificial? Hell, I'm an ancestor to half these kids, my body's flawless functioning meaning that my DNA was selected for future mods.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"Wow."

She stares blankly at me, trying desperately to read my thoughts even though she knows she can't, because I'm a cripple, a failure for all my perfection, unable to do what they do so easily. I've seen the gifted come and go, while the freak throwback stays in one piece...I prefer me this way, less but alive, thank you very much.

"I don't understand."

"I said wow, because it's amazing how spending all your time sharing your thoughts with the others means that you can't figure out how to start a conversation."

As always, to be continued...

A new experiment

Again, I have no idea where this is going, or where it comes from. But at least it's something.

Imagination is the key. You have to be able to imagine, so that while the needle drives into your head between your eyes, you can imagine that you don't hear or feel the bone giving way like rotten wood, the creaking everywhere at once, your head a drum with the head popping. A needle taking cell samples from your hypothalamus while you're still awake is the kind of shit you need to be able to pretend is not happening.

I've been here for my whole life. I have no memories of anyplace but here that I can admit to.

My name is Four. I was the fourth subject, you see, the fourth one they grew. They didn't bother to name us until the subject pool got so large that they didn't want to have to call us by number anymore. For instance, it's easier to say 'Come here, Mark' than it is to say 'Come here, One Thousand and Seventy Seven' and so they adopted names. But me, I'm Four.

My room is very nice. There are ten cameras hidden in the walls, the floor, and in my toilet. Not actually in the toilet itself, in the wall across from my shower. I don't get to be private here. The imagination comes in handy with that, too, since I shouldn't know anything about privacy.

There's a lot of pretending to do. I know they know I'm the same as the others physically. So I have to keep them thinking I'm different otherwise, or they'll study me the way they did One, and Three, and Seventeen. I don't want to be studied that closely. I don't need an imagination there, since I have enough of an idea of what it would entail from Doctor Uldesch before she retired. I say retired, when I mean died slowly from a neurotoxin she administered to herself because she couldn't take it anymore.

Sometimes I pretend so well I almost forget it is pretense at all.

There are ten of us in the study room. The needle is out of my forehead now, and the hole is already almost closed, a benefit of being designed instead of merely evolved. Hit and miss, though: Two died when her healing got so efficient that it closed up her mouth, nose and windpipe before they could help her, if they had been planning to at all. Besides myself, there's Steven, Elena, One Hundred and Seventy Seven, Douglas, Oushana, Senega, Crichton, Ninety Four and Caroline. They're all sitting in a circle, their eyes closed.

I know they don't want to talk to me. I'm not like them; not one of the chosen, not one of the brotherhood of the mind. Fat lot of good being chosen has ever done anyone, I say. Ask One, or Twelve, or David about it. They'd tell you, if they could tell anyone. They had a lot of big ideals. I have none. Sometimes I pretend to, but it doesn't appeal to me. I just want to get through this.

Their little ring breaks up, and they start talking to each other again. Eventually Senega comes over to me and sits down. After all, they don't hate me. There's pity, condescencion, and a touch of admiration there, because despite my handicap I'm the oldest one left. But not much in the way of hate, not even from Senega, with her perfect features and shiny dark skin...then again, who am I to resent her perfection, when my own body is just as well-formed and artificial? Hell, I'm an ancestor to half these kids, my body's flawless functioning meaning that my DNA was selected for future mods.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"Wow."

She stares blankly at me, trying desperately to read my thoughts even though she knows she can't, because I'm a cripple, a failure for all my perfection, unable to do what they do so easily. I've seen the gifted come and go, while the freak throwback stays in one piece...I prefer me this way, less but alive, thank you very much.

"I don't understand."

"I said wow, because it's amazing how spending all your time sharing your thoughts with the others means that you can't figure out how to start a conversation."

As always, to be continued...

Let's end this experiment, shall we?

Let's do this motherfucker.

The advantage to being a ten legged creature from another reality with an exoskeleton harder than human bone and the ability to see the spirits of human beings as well as a scent of smell a neurotic basset hound would envy is that when you see a young man walking down the street not too far from the Blood Center and the Burger King with a clean purity that would make Torquemada give up on the inquisition, you can drop down and rip into the meat of his back before he can really even react.

I was like a buzzsaw, really. Shreds of his jacket, his shirt, and yes, him went flying everywhere as he fell face down onto the parking lot behind his car. Now, I knew damn well I couldn't corrupt him, so I didn't try...besides, I didn't want his body permanently. Killing him was easier. It didn't take long to shred my way into the chambers of his heart on puree. Then I just let the rider sort of...well, fall apart, really. I'm sure anyone who saw it would have been sickened. To me, it felt great, like I'd just found a rush that would make my days in Opium dens off the coast of Singapore look like a kid's bottle of purple dinosaur aspirin. Death is really an amazing fuel, and life an aphrodisiac.

I stood up fast, feeling the power of my temporary body...kid was in great shape, tall and lean, well muscled...I took a moment to check my reflection, make sure I didn't look especially dead. My back was already closing up, new flesh growing throughout me, but eventually it would break down. I needed to get mine back.

I sniffed at the air. Out of ten million people, I could smell them...their fragrances, their sweat, the one's period leaking molecules of precious blood into the night. There was no escaping me. Still, it wouldn't do to fall prey to my anger again. These were no sheep. They'd seen me coming and prepared for me.

That wasn't going to happen twice.

I slid into his car and popped his keys into the ignition. He'd left the radio on, but I slapped it off and took a couple of seconds to just feel myself, glad to have an ass again. It's very uncomfortable to have a thorax. I don't recommend it. The engine to the machine...I think it was a late sixties Cougar, but to be honest, I don't know shit about cars and don't fucking care.

Setting the car into gear, I took it easy while plundering the dead boy's memory for an idea of how to drive it...wasn't easy, since most of the surface memories were full of pain and fear. It occured to me how lucky I was he hadn't shit or pissed himself. Eventually, however, I managed to find a few memories of how he'd driven the car to the Burger King in the first place, and those combined nicely with muscle memory to get me up to speed, flaring my nostrils towards the open window while sniffing.

It didn't take long...a pass past the hospital, a drive through Rhode Island College's campus, and then looping back on myself...trying to lose any pursuit? Could be they were aware of just how fucking hard I am to kill, although I thought it was more likely they were trying to ditch the cops that might have followed them from the freeway. Either way, didn't matter. Eventually, I found myself pulling up to a large brick building.

One with an enormous blue insect on the top.

I shut the car down a block away and parked it, their smell pungent to me. My friend...whose name I had yet to learn...and Mel, who'd caused me pain. And myself, like a mass of gelatinized petroleum, reeking of my own death. Why that damn body just won't die, when all the other one's won't stay alive, is a source of constant pain for me. I got within twenty feet of the building, smelling them all the way, and found a nice vantage point next to a line of cans in the alley nearby. Then I sat down cross-legged and closed my eyes, and I listened.

The riders are extremely sensitive to vibration. Sound's a vibration. So I can hear really well, if I can take the time to channel my hearing and winnow out all the extraneous sounds...the ticking of the car engine behind me, the sound of bird wings and swaying branches and the slow creak of expanding wood in a nearby door...until I find the sound I'm looking for. In this case, the rich woodwind of Mel's voice.

"...didn't say anything about what to do with the remains. I guess we could burn them."

"What if they don't burn? I mean, we blew him up and the pieces are...growing. Look at his arm! The hand reattached itself. Dad's journal didn't say anything about that."

"Dad didn't know much. Just that he made mom kill herself." A long lull in their talking, just hard breathing...I could imagine those determined nostrils flaring. Now, who did I make kill herself in that time frame? Shit, the number of people I'd made kill themselves who could have daughters grown up enough to try and kill me now was more than I'd ever bothered to remember. Why should I? It's not like I'm keeping score. "The journal helped us with the period thing, though. Dad's research was worth something. Even from the bed that thing sent him too...maybe we should entomb it in cement or something. Dig a pit, fill a coffin full of his chunks and molten lead, then bury it forever."

Molten lead. Well, obviously they weren't playing. That was okay...neither was I. Smiling, I stood up and strode to the side door next to what was probably a loading dock. Then I knocked. Inside, I could smell them approaching, hear their shuffling footsteps as they tried to be silent. The bleeder came up to the door, actually leaned her ear up against it. I could see the warmth of her body through the wood.

So I smashed my borrowed arm through and wrapped it around her neck, yanking her backwards through it and throwing her away into the alley. I didn't even waste the time to see if it hurt, although I was pretty sure it did...even though I'd made sure not to break her neck, the impact could well have broken some bones...instead turning my focus to the huntress. With the hood off and that look of shock on her face, she looked more like her sister than I'd expected, save for a device around her ear that confirmed my suspicion. Hearing aids. She couldn't hear me directly. I wondered if she needed them, or just knew that I had to be directly heard to be obeyed. Either way, this time I wasn't going to bother commanding anyone. Still, I couldn't resist a smile as I walked into the room.

"You know, I'd bet a lot of money that daddy's journal didn't tell you I could do this, huh?"

I stepped in lazily, and she snapped off a series of blows that would have made movie effects teams jealous. If I wasn't who I was, it would have all been a blur, but instead it all reeled off in perfect clarity, a strike to my right knee which should have broken it, a blow to the midsection followed by a magnificent flurry of kicks to the head. When I was sure she was done, I flicked my right hand out, letting the new fingernails I'd grown just for her lightly tear away the skin of her right cheek in four perfect ribbons a touch thicker than I'd sign my name with. As she fell back, staring at me, I grinned and wiped my hand on my leg.

"So, where'd you put me? I smelled me on the way in, but this place reeks of pesticide."

"I'm not telling you anything."

"Huhhh." I exhaled, feeling a bit put out. "All this for revenge. How...wasted. Now you and your sister will die...hell, maybe I'll even let the riders have you as hosts, so you'll die slowly a bit at a time as they eat everything you ever were and replace it with them...and for what? Do you think I care about any of this? Hell, you've succeeded in doing what no one has in decades...you actually made me suffer, just a little bit. I should thank you." I let the face of my current conveyance deform a bit, taking on the extended spines of the mandibles I'd use to inject the fluid into her. Then I hurled myself forward.

She rolled out of the way, so my initial strike only managed to deform a steel girder with the shape of my fingers. I could see, finally, fear in her eyes, but somehow she managed to control the surging adrenaline and used it to keep out of my way, lashing the side of my head with a kick that kept me off of her while she clambered up a set of metal rungs. So I simply leapt straight up, and savored the look of astonishment on her face when I was actually above her.

"You know, you really should have kept the guns handy." Smiling, I kicked the ladder away and watched as it fell the ten feet to the floor with her on it. The sound of bone splintering made me laugh, as did the look of pain on her face...but I was disappointed by her lack of screaming. I'd so hoped she would scream.

I admit it, I'm a showoff. I can't really help it. So I took the opportunity to try and generate a little fear by leaping straight up to the ceiling and clambering over the spot she lay pinned by the ladder, then dropping straight down next to her.

"Ever read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?"

She didn't respond, instead grimly staring at me with that kind of impassive hatred you just don't see much lately. Goddamn me if she hasn't decided to die without begging for her life. What a pair these two are. It's quite something to see, really. The thought of it amused me sadly, that such people should fall into the mill of my orbit while millions of sheep would never know my touch. I crouched down over her, my limbs twisting as I did like a Steve Ditko illustration...that man was very interesting, and quite innured to fear, let me tell you...and contemplated where on her neck to bite.

I was so occupied I didn't notice that swollen fire smell until it was too late.

"And I have known the eyes already, known them all/ The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,/ And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,/ When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,/ Then how should I begin/ To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?/ And how should I presume?" Now, I'm fast. But a shotgun is faster. Especially when I'm all clad in borrowed flesh. I span right into the first discharge, the blast literally tearing my stolen chest open. Then the click of the action, and another blast, this one hitting my shoulder. Another. And another. If you've never found yourself being ripped into little pieces in this fashion, you should be happy. When she finally stopped, I had so little connecting flesh and bone left intact that I literally fell like an animal skin to the floor.

I could feel the body dying...it had taken too much damage too fast, and it wasn't a proper tenement for the rider, it hadn't been prepared...even as she stepped up to stand over me, supporting her sister on her shoulder.

"Molten lead, you think?"

"Yeah, definitely molten lead."

And so that's how I ended up this mass of slurry-like decay, a conjoined rotten pair of corpses all jumbled together and pinned by the weight of solid lead, lead in my rotten chests, lead in the holes of my bodies, lead filling the eyesockets and ear canals and nostrils of my dead flesh. It's rather unpleasant.

But last night, I did manage to move my original right foot a bit. And I noticed the lead is slowly bending to accomodate my leg...which I think might be growing back.

So there's always hope.

Let's end this experiment, shall we?

Let's do this motherfucker.

The advantage to being a ten legged creature from another reality with an exoskeleton harder than human bone and the ability to see the spirits of human beings as well as a scent of smell a neurotic basset hound would envy is that when you see a young man walking down the street not too far from the Blood Center and the Burger King with a clean purity that would make Torquemada give up on the inquisition, you can drop down and rip into the meat of his back before he can really even react.

I was like a buzzsaw, really. Shreds of his jacket, his shirt, and yes, him went flying everywhere as he fell face down onto the parking lot behind his car. Now, I knew damn well I couldn't corrupt him, so I didn't try...besides, I didn't want his body permanently. Killing him was easier. It didn't take long to shred my way into the chambers of his heart on puree. Then I just let the rider sort of...well, fall apart, really. I'm sure anyone who saw it would have been sickened. To me, it felt great, like I'd just found a rush that would make my days in Opium dens off the coast of Singapore look like a kid's bottle of purple dinosaur aspirin. Death is really an amazing fuel, and life an aphrodisiac.

I stood up fast, feeling the power of my temporary body...kid was in great shape, tall and lean, well muscled...I took a moment to check my reflection, make sure I didn't look especially dead. My back was already closing up, new flesh growing throughout me, but eventually it would break down. I needed to get mine back.

I sniffed at the air. Out of ten million people, I could smell them...their fragrances, their sweat, the one's period leaking molecules of precious blood into the night. There was no escaping me. Still, it wouldn't do to fall prey to my anger again. These were no sheep. They'd seen me coming and prepared for me.

That wasn't going to happen twice.

I slid into his car and popped his keys into the ignition. He'd left the radio on, but I slapped it off and took a couple of seconds to just feel myself, glad to have an ass again. It's very uncomfortable to have a thorax. I don't recommend it. The engine to the machine...I think it was a late sixties Cougar, but to be honest, I don't know shit about cars and don't fucking care.

Setting the car into gear, I took it easy while plundering the dead boy's memory for an idea of how to drive it...wasn't easy, since most of the surface memories were full of pain and fear. It occured to me how lucky I was he hadn't shit or pissed himself. Eventually, however, I managed to find a few memories of how he'd driven the car to the Burger King in the first place, and those combined nicely with muscle memory to get me up to speed, flaring my nostrils towards the open window while sniffing.

It didn't take long...a pass past the hospital, a drive through Rhode Island College's campus, and then looping back on myself...trying to lose any pursuit? Could be they were aware of just how fucking hard I am to kill, although I thought it was more likely they were trying to ditch the cops that might have followed them from the freeway. Either way, didn't matter. Eventually, I found myself pulling up to a large brick building.

One with an enormous blue insect on the top.

I shut the car down a block away and parked it, their smell pungent to me. My friend...whose name I had yet to learn...and Mel, who'd caused me pain. And myself, like a mass of gelatinized petroleum, reeking of my own death. Why that damn body just won't die, when all the other one's won't stay alive, is a source of constant pain for me. I got within twenty feet of the building, smelling them all the way, and found a nice vantage point next to a line of cans in the alley nearby. Then I sat down cross-legged and closed my eyes, and I listened.

The riders are extremely sensitive to vibration. Sound's a vibration. So I can hear really well, if I can take the time to channel my hearing and winnow out all the extraneous sounds...the ticking of the car engine behind me, the sound of bird wings and swaying branches and the slow creak of expanding wood in a nearby door...until I find the sound I'm looking for. In this case, the rich woodwind of Mel's voice.

"...didn't say anything about what to do with the remains. I guess we could burn them."

"What if they don't burn? I mean, we blew him up and the pieces are...growing. Look at his arm! The hand reattached itself. Dad's journal didn't say anything about that."

"Dad didn't know much. Just that he made mom kill herself." A long lull in their talking, just hard breathing...I could imagine those determined nostrils flaring. Now, who did I make kill herself in that time frame? Shit, the number of people I'd made kill themselves who could have daughters grown up enough to try and kill me now was more than I'd ever bothered to remember. Why should I? It's not like I'm keeping score. "The journal helped us with the period thing, though. Dad's research was worth something. Even from the bed that thing sent him too...maybe we should entomb it in cement or something. Dig a pit, fill a coffin full of his chunks and molten lead, then bury it forever."

Molten lead. Well, obviously they weren't playing. That was okay...neither was I. Smiling, I stood up and strode to the side door next to what was probably a loading dock. Then I knocked. Inside, I could smell them approaching, hear their shuffling footsteps as they tried to be silent. The bleeder came up to the door, actually leaned her ear up against it. I could see the warmth of her body through the wood.

So I smashed my borrowed arm through and wrapped it around her neck, yanking her backwards through it and throwing her away into the alley. I didn't even waste the time to see if it hurt, although I was pretty sure it did...even though I'd made sure not to break her neck, the impact could well have broken some bones...instead turning my focus to the huntress. With the hood off and that look of shock on her face, she looked more like her sister than I'd expected, save for a device around her ear that confirmed my suspicion. Hearing aids. She couldn't hear me directly. I wondered if she needed them, or just knew that I had to be directly heard to be obeyed. Either way, this time I wasn't going to bother commanding anyone. Still, I couldn't resist a smile as I walked into the room.

"You know, I'd bet a lot of money that daddy's journal didn't tell you I could do this, huh?"

I stepped in lazily, and she snapped off a series of blows that would have made movie effects teams jealous. If I wasn't who I was, it would have all been a blur, but instead it all reeled off in perfect clarity, a strike to my right knee which should have broken it, a blow to the midsection followed by a magnificent flurry of kicks to the head. When I was sure she was done, I flicked my right hand out, letting the new fingernails I'd grown just for her lightly tear away the skin of her right cheek in four perfect ribbons a touch thicker than I'd sign my name with. As she fell back, staring at me, I grinned and wiped my hand on my leg.

"So, where'd you put me? I smelled me on the way in, but this place reeks of pesticide."

"I'm not telling you anything."

"Huhhh." I exhaled, feeling a bit put out. "All this for revenge. How...wasted. Now you and your sister will die...hell, maybe I'll even let the riders have you as hosts, so you'll die slowly a bit at a time as they eat everything you ever were and replace it with them...and for what? Do you think I care about any of this? Hell, you've succeeded in doing what no one has in decades...you actually made me suffer, just a little bit. I should thank you." I let the face of my current conveyance deform a bit, taking on the extended spines of the mandibles I'd use to inject the fluid into her. Then I hurled myself forward.

She rolled out of the way, so my initial strike only managed to deform a steel girder with the shape of my fingers. I could see, finally, fear in her eyes, but somehow she managed to control the surging adrenaline and used it to keep out of my way, lashing the side of my head with a kick that kept me off of her while she clambered up a set of metal rungs. So I simply leapt straight up, and savored the look of astonishment on her face when I was actually above her.

"You know, you really should have kept the guns handy." Smiling, I kicked the ladder away and watched as it fell the ten feet to the floor with her on it. The sound of bone splintering made me laugh, as did the look of pain on her face...but I was disappointed by her lack of screaming. I'd so hoped she would scream.

I admit it, I'm a showoff. I can't really help it. So I took the opportunity to try and generate a little fear by leaping straight up to the ceiling and clambering over the spot she lay pinned by the ladder, then dropping straight down next to her.

"Ever read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?"

She didn't respond, instead grimly staring at me with that kind of impassive hatred you just don't see much lately. Goddamn me if she hasn't decided to die without begging for her life. What a pair these two are. It's quite something to see, really. The thought of it amused me sadly, that such people should fall into the mill of my orbit while millions of sheep would never know my touch. I crouched down over her, my limbs twisting as I did like a Steve Ditko illustration...that man was very interesting, and quite innured to fear, let me tell you...and contemplated where on her neck to bite.

I was so occupied I didn't notice that swollen fire smell until it was too late.

"And I have known the eyes already, known them all/ The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,/ And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,/ When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,/ Then how should I begin/ To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?/ And how should I presume?" Now, I'm fast. But a shotgun is faster. Especially when I'm all clad in borrowed flesh. I span right into the first discharge, the blast literally tearing my stolen chest open. Then the click of the action, and another blast, this one hitting my shoulder. Another. And another. If you've never found yourself being ripped into little pieces in this fashion, you should be happy. When she finally stopped, I had so little connecting flesh and bone left intact that I literally fell like an animal skin to the floor.

I could feel the body dying...it had taken too much damage too fast, and it wasn't a proper tenement for the rider, it hadn't been prepared...even as she stepped up to stand over me, supporting her sister on her shoulder.

"Molten lead, you think?"

"Yeah, definitely molten lead."

And so that's how I ended up this mass of slurry-like decay, a conjoined rotten pair of corpses all jumbled together and pinned by the weight of solid lead, lead in my rotten chests, lead in the holes of my bodies, lead filling the eyesockets and ear canals and nostrils of my dead flesh. It's rather unpleasant.

But last night, I did manage to move my original right foot a bit. And I noticed the lead is slowly bending to accomodate my leg...which I think might be growing back.

So there's always hope.

And today, I shall rest

Not that my life is particularly stressful or anything lately, but to be honest, I don't really feel like posting anything today. I'm kinda tired and I want to figure out an ending to that experiment story, and that seems to require me to think more than I would like. Accursed lack of spontaneous scrivening!

It's cheap and easy to do a best of post, where you go back into your archives and serve up something you wrote a ways back. Cheap and easy, yep.

Thank God I'm cheap and easy. Anyway, I went back into my archives and found a story I kind of like. If you want to read it, click on the link below. If not, well, thanks for stopping by. I promise fresh content in a day or two.

And today, I shall rest

Not that my life is particularly stressful or anything lately, but to be honest, I don't really feel like posting anything today. I'm kinda tired and I want to figure out an ending to that experiment story, and that seems to require me to think more than I would like. Accursed lack of spontaneous scrivening!

It's cheap and easy to do a best of post, where you go back into your archives and serve up something you wrote a ways back. Cheap and easy, yep.

Thank God I'm cheap and easy. Anyway, I went back into my archives and found a story I kind of like. If you want to read it, click on the link below. If not, well, thanks for stopping by. I promise fresh content in a day or two.