Tuesday, March 26, 2013


(Translated from Italian through Google Chrome without interjection or correction)


New York source, Bostonian adoption, Amanda Palmer has played from 2000 to 2008 in the Dresden Dolls, before embarking on a solo career. Abruptly interrupted relationship with the record label Roadrunner, he began to experiment with possible forms of communication, promotion and distribution independent on the Internet.

Very active on social networks (Twitter in particular), in the spring of 2012 he opened a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the new album Theatre Is Evil, collecting a record $ 1,192,793 (from 24.883 supporters). At the launch of this informative guide, we asked some advice for "young Italian artists" interested in the system of crowdfunding.


When you launch a crowdfunding project, what is the most important rule to follow and which the error to be avoided?
Key is not to expect that the public "arrives from the Internet." The crowdfunding do not need to win new fans, but to establish a closer relationship - even from the economic point of view - with those you have already accumulated over time. It is a magical tool. A very important aspect is to treat the pitch video, the movie in which you present your project. Should be informative and explain clearly what you intend to do and how to spend the money collected. Many artists make the mistake of pointing to a clever video, something brilliant. The truth is otherwise: the crowdfunding itself is not art, but a place where dialogue with the public and talk about concrete things. You must not show how good you are or who you go into the details: rather, you must explain why you need support. That 's the reason you're there.

You have some experience with this kind of platforms. In 2012 caused a sensation the campaign for the album Theatre Is Evil, but in 2010 and 2011 had presented two projects on Kickstarter, with increasing success. How important is "experience"?
Very much so. For example, with the time and attempts I learned how to split the rewards should, what pleases the public to such levels of spending tends to gravitate more (two bands are very popular ones to $ 25 and $ 100). But I was not the only one: my fans have come to know Kickstarter, have used it, now trust the service. In the end, what is the most important result.

About rewards (products / items / services that the artist offers to the public in exchange for financial support), do you have any particular advice? Better to focus on offers simple or extravagant ideas? And there is some criteria to follow in choosing the target figure?
With regard to the final goal, better to set the lowest figure that realistically allows you to create a work, no matter what. Starting from that, then, can you expect to get more (in the case of the Theatre Is Evil, Amanda Palmer had set a target 100 thousand dollars, less than 10% of the amount actually harvested at the end of the campaign, Ed.) The choice of rewards instead is more related to energy and the will that you (and your team) think you have to keep up with the shipments. The important thing is not to bite off more than you can chew: Do not promise things that you may not be able to deliver then. That would be the end! It does not hurt also offer something a little 'crazy, but for musicians it is often convenient to think of objects replicated to scale. And in the end, what really matters is the spread of music and art. If you fill your campaign rewards that have nothing to do with art, there is a risk that in the end the whole project becomes a bit 'scruffy. What I can say from my own experience as a musician, is that crowdfunding offers a unique opportunity to collaborate with your creative friends: painters, illustrators, sculptors. You can involve them in your life. I did often on Kickstarter and has always been wonderful. Create something cool for your fans and help your artist friends to earn some money: a win for everyone!

When they are active, campaigns should be followed every day? What are the most effective tools to maintain the audience's attention and activate word of mouth?
I am a superfan of Twitter and the way in which circulates information: during the campaign Theatre Is Evil was almost always on Twitter. Whenever one thousand supporters would add to the project, twittavo image with the new number written somewhere on my body. Found of this type are not only useful to keep the focus on the campaign, but pretty damn funny!

Have over 800 thousand followers on Twitter. What advice would you give - always relative to the crowdfunding - young artists GAI they are instead moving their first steps in the creative world and maybe do not have a huge following? What should aim at the launch of a campaign?
The central point is simple: please contact directly to the public. Do not wait for "someone discovered" or that "the government will fund" would be nice, but not always happens. If your art has value and you can get connected with the people, then there is no reason why you should not control the entire process of creating and distributing your work. In the United States, through the crowdfunding we are experiencing a revolution: are shot film that would never be realized, develop art forms that become possible because we have finally found a way to jump the fences that separated us. We can support each other directly, putting the money where we want it to spring forth creative energy. It 's great.

And exiting the crowdfunding speech, you have some more general advice for those artists who - in these times of economic depression (and not only) - are struggling to keep alive the flame of hope and sometimes think of giving up?
These are the times when people desperately need art. The cinema has exploded during the Depression. People get angry, frustrated and suffering are expressions of anger, pain and frustration. And 'the reason why art exists. Artists must answer the call, go ahead, continue their activities, create things, whether these be considered "lawful" or "necessary." Art is necessary. Feeds us, keeps us human, goes beyond being famous, rich or even financed by crowdfunding. Art is an explosion of what you really are, of what you think, not what you think: something that is to paint the canvas of the world. Must break by itself, without waiting for someone to ask her. You never asked.

Friday, March 22, 2013

AMERICA'S WORST COMICS


BY KEVIN J HARDIN

EPISODE THREE///
THE RETURN OF OBAMA


also.
I have condesnsed the epic poem I am writing onto one blog of its own as it not get lost amid my posting.
you can find it here.


Saura

the bad ass chick...


Saura

Saura raced out the door as she attempted to hail Gaius once again. Men are all a bunch of childish morons; she thought to herself, they all want to go out like some kind of cowboy in a big shoot out. They want to leave everyone else withe the grief as they take all the glory. She checked her watch; it would take her ten minutes to get to the hotel in old town. 
"Gaius," she said to herself, "please don't die, you idiot." She ran to the lift and punched in her code for the car port. The large metal doors shut tight and the lift lurched downwards. He said he loved her. He was a fucking idiot. But she loved him too. 
The car port was empty as usual, and she hurried to her Black Toyota Motorseed which sat near the back of the lot. He had to pick today, she thought as she slid into the driver’s seat, that fucking prick. She started her period this morning, waking to a Scarlett bead spread and that awful feeling she always got. Some sort of weird remorse and grief, she didn't want to really think about it. At least I know I'm not pregnant, she thought, remembering his sweat and his heat and his lips. Fucking asshole, she thought, it's a bad idea to fuck around with a girls head. She pumped the gas and the Motorseed took off, screeching down the carport exit. She turned up the radio, but it was all static. 
"Gaius!" she said, but he wasn't responding. He must have disconnected his device. Typical, she thought, when push comes to shove, you really were just another wannabe cowboy. She skidded on to the Yankee Division highway with such velocity that for a moment she thought the vehicle was going to loosen its grip upon the earth, but it steadied, landing with an exquisite thud, followed by a harrowing screech as she lit up the engine. Fuck, she thought lighting a cigarillo and flicking the match out the window, is he really going to be dead this time? 
She pulled up Gaius' GPS on her dash computer, and it still read the same location; the Regent Hotel in Floating City. She checked her watch; it had been approximately four minutes. Gaius, she flicked some ash of the tip of the cigar, you're really going to do this to me? She punched a fist against the steering wheel. He was such a liar. He didn't really love her. If he did, he wouldn't die. 
"Incoming transmission!" She nearly jumped out of her skin. The dash lit up in a blaze of translucent colors. Francis. She had forgotten about that one. She clicked in, and Francis' face appeared on the dash. 
"What happened back there?" He was visibly pissed off, his face flushed and sweating. 
"I should be asking you the same question," she jammed the gears to narrowly avoid a Sun Systems oil tanker, "Gaius got plugged."
"I saw that much," Francis was livid, his voice quivered with rage. Saura wasn't impressed. 
"And so you ran away like a fucking bitch?" She pumped the gas again. 
"What the fuck did you just call me," Francis hollered, "you wanna get a bolt too, you dumb cunt?"
"Fuck off Francis," she flipped off the image of his face with a single gloved finger, "everyone knows you suck cock, so don't try to act tough. I'm going after my team member, so stay out of my way if you're not going to help."
"You better watch that smart mouth," Francis spoke soft and low. He knew something he wasn't telling her. 
"Is this all you called for? To yap at me? Or you got something," she was literally twenty seconds away from the hotel, "if you do make it quick."
"The squids brought a new kind of soldier with them," he said through his teeth, "they're big. And strong. And I hope one gets you and rips out your voice box."
"Nice," she said, the hotel was now in sight, "I'll remember that. Bye Francis." She switched off. She was in the lot. She skidded into a parking space and slid out of the Motorseed. She checked her pistols, hanging from two underarm holsters beneath her breasts, one a Smith and Wesson 12.7 caliber man stopper, the other a 9mm with extended magazine. The door to the lobby loomed large before her. Gaius, she thought, I'm here. Just stay alive. She pushed open the door. 
The hotel felt like a lot like hell, and it wasn't just the gold leaf trimmed edging and blood red velvet carpets that made it resemble something from a bad movie, or the stench of death and jissom and shit and lies that fluttered through each hallway. It was the reputation. There were few places in the world quite like this, an axis point to the other possible worlds in this dimension. Literally a portal to another earth, where magic and steel were twain and twixt and forged into weapons, and blah, blah, blah. Sid would drone on and on about that shit, tri-dimensional daemons, dirt wizards, water dragons, the dark lord Cthulhu, boring shit like that. Saura didn't care about any of that, at least, not where these things came from or why. Sid was old, he didn't get that; Saura just wanted to know how to kill them. 
The hotel was useful in negotiating transfers, which was a hopped up way of saying drug deals. Or in this case computer hardware. The dirt wizards had a fuck of a time decoding magical data when in the vicinity of an axis point, the con joining magical energies were in such a state of flux it provided a sort of cover for their operations. And Gaius had insisted he go alone, in his typical cowboy bullshit mode, stoic and strict, his manner of fact, this is how it is tone. She really wanted to crack him in the jaw. 
Saura wasn't one of the lucky ones either, like Gaius was. He was a "druid" as they were sometimes called, able to mentally withstand the psychosis drain that occurred when casting even low level spells. There was a whole rank and file line to it; Gaius was constantly trying to explain the nuances of magical theory, much to her dismay. He would say something like, "frost magical falls in the tenth bilateral of the fifty fifth movement of the blah blah blah," she would lose interest in about five seconds. But she had to admit, aside from his know it all personality; he was a wonderful spell weaver. 
Saura couldn't do any of that shit, she wasn't born "broad of mind" like the old men said (she called it being "pretentious") and according to the science masters and magic weavers if she tried even reading from a spell book or casting a first grade spell her mind would boil up and then explode. Honestly she didn't really believe it deep down, however, she had shunned magical texts and spell for guns and motor oil, and distrusted anyone who knew of the magical arts. That is except for Gaius, but he was only the exception. It wasn't like she wanted him casting his spells when they were making love. That thought made her stifle. Gaius, she thought, will I ever even see you again. 
The hotel was empty. Not like, oh there were a few people milling around the lobby, I mean empty, empty. Not a good sign. The air hung thick and heavy with blood and smoke, the aftermath of a firefight. She moved down the long hallway, hugging the corner, pistol drawn, until she emerged at an intersection where two corridors came together. There she saw the first evidence, three long and thin marks like some great razor claw, seeping with greenish, purplish energy. Kemling arcana. They made these massive magical claws (usually which dwarfed their own bodies, which were at tallest 3 and a half feet) that could cleave an armored tank in two; another reason why Saura didn't mess around with magic. Giant magical claws and shape shifting dwarves. Fuck that. 
The walls down the left corridor where covered in misfired bolts, obviously Gaius', lodged into the very drywall. She deduced that was the direction the Kemlings had speared from (spearing being a fancy way of saying inter dimensional travel). Further investigation proved this, down the hallway about twenty feet was a crack in the wall, with burnt black edges fuming smoke. It smelled like an abattoir; definitely a portal to the second dimension. That smell never truly left your nasal passages, lingering in the background, under everything, the stench of the dead and decomposing. It was like coming home when she smelled it out here. Familiar. Gaius must have gone the other way, he wouldn't have been that idiotic (or suicidal) to charge headlong into an inter dimensional crack. He's wasn't a coward, but he also wasn't a moron. If only she could have found some sort of evidence, some of Gaius' yellow magic, anything. That's when she felt it; this horrid, slinking feeling of total dread crept over her, like all the hope was being drained out of her. Squid magic. They were still here. She stopped, and strained to listen. She couldn't turn back, Gaius needed her, but Squids were...she didn't even want to go there. If they caught her, the things they would do to her in the name of their twisted sciences, she had heard some terrifying stories. 
It was Twenty Seven years ago, in fact almost to the day, that the Squids came back. There wasn't a sole alive who remembered the last time they showed up, it was approximately two hundred and fifty years ago before the Toyota/Samsung Landross Chemicals War, but the they had done significant damage the earth, especially to the tiny nation of England. For a few harrowing days their bullet shaped capsules had rained down from the heavens and gripped the world in fear. Thousands died, armies were decimated, and humanity waited, huddled in fear, for enslavement. But it never came, for the Squids had weak immune systems and succumbed to the most common strain of virus; the winter cold. But they were intense and fiercely intelligent creatures and they never forgot the defeat in England. After the battleships came down, April 2nd 2112, there wasn't much left to the island. They burned it, massacred the people, and, as the squids put it, reseeded the soil. Now they call themselves "Englishmen," and all the humans who live there "Welsh." There were stories also, from the corners of the human resistance, that the squids consumed the flesh of humans, when they so had the jurisdiction to do so. 
She could feel them, their presence was like that of some grim specter; cold, wet, empty, Devoid of life or love or reasoning. They were on the floors above, hovering amidst their Zhatif guards, calculating the event outcome of the fire fight. But it was good news, because the fact they were still here meant Gaius' chances of being alive had just gone up. They haven't found him yet, or they're torturing him, but if he was dead they would be hanging around. She realized then she was frozen with fear, bent down on her knee, clutching her pistols and praying. I've got to go, she thought, I've have to save to him. She pushed herself to her feet, and breathing a deep sigh, took a few careful steps forward. The room spun, she felt the sensation of drifting into the deep black nothing of dream, tugging her down with a great invisible force. No, she thought, it's the Squids. They fuck with your head, their magic lingers everywhere it is used, and the aftermath is this lost and distant feeling. It's akin to hallucinogens; this sort of leak from between dimensions can cause intense sickness and even death from prolonged exposure. They left it everywhere, in the form of grey and foul smelling mucus. Apparently this was a side effect of their magical hovering, using so much energy and force on such a simple device caused a massive load of waste, and so the energy had to be displaced somehow. It was everywhere, and in her haste to leave the office earlier she had neglected to grab a mask. Shit, she thought, I can't go on like this. She staggered to her feet, backing away from the corridor back from where she came. The room kept spinning, faster and faster, like some demented carnival ride, churning her stomach until she collapsed on her knees and vomited. I'm gonna fucking die here, she thought, covered in vomit and weeping like a little bitch. What the fuck? She wrestled her limbs into a sitting position and wiped the vomit from her face. It even got in my hair, she thought, yup, I look real fucking classy right now. The end was coming, she could feel it, but she felt strangely at peace with it, which was probably an effect of the poisons. The Squids did try too hard to make everyone happy, she thought, they thought logic would win out in the end. They were always fucking wrong.
There was a burst of light that startled her so, she leapt with what strength she had left to her feet and aimed her pistol. 
"Put that shit down," it was a very familiar voice, "before you shoot somebody."
"Is that..." She strained her eyes in the light. It couldn't be. No, not him. Anyone but him. 
"It's been a long time, Saura," said the familiar voice, "I've missed you."
Shit, she thought, it is him. Out of all the mother fucking times she could have ever seen this shithead again, it had to be now; fucked up, dying, covered in vomit, and on her period. 
"No way," was all she could manage, "you gotta be a ghost man." His laugh made her skin crawl and her stomach turn. 
"Yea, I guess I am," he said, "but then again," he was moving closer, "what the fuck are you?" No, no, no, no! She thought, not now, you fucking asshole. It's been ten years and now you show up?
"Stay back," she lifted up the pistol, "don't make me use this," he smiled; she could see it through the lights. 
"Again," he said, "you mean don't make me use this again. You already shot me once, my sweet."
"So you know I mean business then," she pulled herself up, using the wall behind her for support. 
"You're fucked up," he said, with a snort, "you ain't gonna make it."
"Oh yea, is that the case, Yaakov?" She used his real name. 
"Yea, that's the case kid," he was smirking like a schoolboy with a nudie mag, "you're gonna die without some help."
"Fuck you," she said, "I don't want your help. I know what kind if a price it brings. Now tell me," she stood up as straight as she could, "what the fuck are you doing here?"
"Just looking for you, my love," that smirk, she wanted to punch it right through his thick skull, "it was your beauty that led me here."
"No shit," she said, "that's a fucking laugh and a half. Why are you really here?"
"Francis mentioned you were on your way to this," he raised a hand to cover his mouth, "place...and I knew you'd need our help." 
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she said and added, coldly "It's nice to know you care so much."
"Of course I do," he said, motioning to his men, "get her." The next few seconds were harrowing, and as two of Yaakov’s men rushed at her with inhuman speed, and she tried to raise her pistol and fire, but where their movements were swift and deliberate, hers were like she was surrounded by flowing water, fighting her at every turn. Needless to say, she was far too slow, and the roughhewn hands gripped at her wrist like a vise, sending the infecting bullet harmlessly against a dark corner. She was forced to the ground, and though she struggled with all her might, the man was stronger. Yaakov laughed, and knelt down in front of her face, twisting it up toward his with a vicious smile. 
"You're coming with us whore," he said, and a menacing feeling crept over her.
"Cunt," she breathed, "you NEED these fucking cyborgs to take me down? You're a pussy." She barely even felt the but of his rifle smash against her forehead.
"Shut up bitch."





Thursday, March 21, 2013





gonna be bringing back the cassette tape.
you just wait.

its coming...

https://soundcloud.com/hvalross

https://soundcloud.com/themightykevvo

Been doing some of these lately...
really love me some ASOIAF...
but the show...

its a mockery at times.

I mean I love tits as much as the next guy...
or more...
and ass too...
but Game of Thrones is reDICKulous with that shit...
I mean...
I get it...
I know...
Theres like 100 sex scenes in the books...
but GRRM made them feel so real...
so like life...
not campy and awkward and unnerving...
even when it was supposed to be that way...
HBO doesnt quite know when to pull their punches...

and then they start changing shit...
I mean
I know...
GRRM works on the show...
Writes...
Directs...
BUT 
WHY THE FUCK DOES ROZ HAVE HER OWN GODDAMN STORYLINE?!?!?!?!
A character merely mentioned in the books...
Theon: "I'm gonna go fuck Roz"
HBO: "HEY! Lets make her an every episode character! MORE BOOBS EQUALS MORE MORONS WATCHING!"
damn damn damn damn damn
I mean I like the show...
I mean

I'm really trying to like the show...
BUT THATS NOT HOW IT HAPPENED!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!
ITS THE SAME THING THEY DID TO WATCHMEN!
RAPE!
RAPE!
THEY ARE RAPING WATCHMEN!
well no...
that was worse...
much worse...
but it comes back to what I always think when some self absorbed, masochistic director decides they want to do a "book to film"
WHY EVEN MAKE IT IF YOU ONLY WANT TO CHANGE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT?
Why would you read something and think
"WOW"
"THIS IS GREAT"
"EXCEPT I WANT TO CHANGE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT."
"I THINK I'LL MAKE A SHOW."
"AND CHANGE EVERYTHING ABOUT THE BOOK SO ITS ONLY LOOSELY FOLLOWING THE PLOTLINE!"

Thats bullshit.
come on
its not because the "viewing public" may have read the books already and you want to mix things up.
thats fucking stupid.
I read these books years ago.
I am a hipster for ASOIAF
I will not deny it.
and now that HBO has made it sexy
it pisses me off just a little bit.
the books are better.
I know, I know
thats "always" the case.
But this time its true. 

so sosososos

Wednesday, March 20, 2013


Miss Information

I love this city.
This is the place I was born.
The place I learned and grew.
Made my money, my kills.
Shot, starved, and survived my way to the top.
This is where I was born, and reborn again.
In a baptism of blood and jizz.
You have to go through hell.
But when you do.
You may emerge a stronger soul for it.
Dante didn't see shit in Hell.
That was nothing compared to this place.
Not hell.
This place is what hell wishes it could be.
But.
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
This is where I made myself after all.
This is where I stood atop the carcasses of my enemies and shouted triumphantly.
"I am."
I against, I.
The poison is what makes us strong, down in the ghetto.
We found a way to thrive with it.
To contrapt it.
To use it for our own gain.
Now half the city.
No.
More than that, are hooked on it.
The poison is what they need to survive.
The thing that ultimately destroys them.
Good riddance.
The ones who succumb to the poison are meant to die a dishonored death.
I thrive without it.
I live on.

When I was six years old.
That's when the war started.
Five or six.
I had parents back then.
A mother and a father.
And two older brothers.
We lived on a farm, or what used to be a farm, in between Gouger territory.
And the Great Plain, a vast swath of unusable land where a bomb had fallen years ago.
My father was a simple farmer.
We had a humble existence.
We were happy.
Then the days turned darker.
Another gang of marauder moved into the land directly south of our homestead.
They called themselves Rapers.
Rapers and Gougers.
I bet you can "get" what each of them were up to.
Raping.
And Gouging.
Well...as it turned out, they hated each other with a fierce passion.
And anyone who got in between.
Which, if you remember, was us.
That's when I first new real pain.
When the gougers came.
Great beastly men with beards soaked in deep red war paint.
Riding atop mammoths laden with steel weapons.
Jagged and gleaming in the midday sun.
Some wore the skins of Great Bears and Wolves.
Others the skulls of men and dwarves.
All were ferocious and devoid of love or compassion.
But they were at least fair.
That's what father always said.
"The gouger's will be fair, they wont kill you for no good reason. It just so happens that you being in their way is to them a good enough reason."
"But rapers...will rape you until your are dead."
The gouger chief, who was a giant, came forward and demanded we turn over our crop to them.
His men were tired and hungry from long weeks of skirmishing battles.
Many had been lost, many more were badly wounded.
My father was a smart man.
He gave them everything they asked.
And they rode onward.
Leaving us with nothing.
After that, my father began to grow nervous and weary.
My brothers were of age now, and he feared them being taken by one of the gangs.
He fell into a deep depression.
And so did our farm.
So when the rapers came, he had nothing to offer.
Except us.
My mother and father I never saw again, my brothers were killed.
I was taken away by the rapers.
I would love to tell you there is a happy ending to this story.
There isn't.
I spent little over a year with them.
As a plaything.
Soon I was worn out, and I heard talk of them roasting me.
I could never tell if they were joking or not.
They were losing the war.
Running out of supplies.
Getting desperate.
Maybe they would have eaten me.
They wouldn't get the chance anyway.
The gougers saw to that.
When I was "rescued" I was witness to yet another slaughter.
The gougers came in the night.
Dressed all in black.
Their metal scimitars catching moonlight.
I had become accustomed to sleeping with one eye open while with the rapers.
I saw them come.
Slinking out of the dark black soup of night.
Like some shadow of humanity.
The metal blade singing in the sky as is reigned blood from opening gashes in their throats.
Then they were upon us.
And the night was full of screams and blood and shit.
I crawled away from the rubble, hiding behind the corpse of one of the rapers.
But the gougers found me.
They stood me up.
Brushed me off.
Asked me who I was.
I told them I was a "toy" of Simeon the Grey's (my captor.)
A big mountain of a man stepped forward, a bloody, severed head in his hands.
"This Simeon the Grey?" he asked.
They brought me back to their camp, and I was given to their shield wives.
Women brought along to fuck and fight.
They were hard women, but welcoming.
They knew of the horror I had been through.
Many of them had been through the very same.
But I also knew it was no freedom.
I was only being moved from one captor to the other.
And though the Gougers were fair and just.
They were also men.
I was to be groomed to be a shield wife.
But it was better than the alternative.
I lived with them for the next five years.
I grew up.
Matured.
Grew breasts.
Began to have my period.
Then the men began to notice me.
Thokmarr Odenheim called for my hand in marriage.
THE Thokmarr Odenheim.
As did Ramo Thundersonn.
Clovis the Fat.
Manson Voldmiker.
They all wanted me for their own.
But Thokmarr was the strongest, and most feared.
After only a few days, all the other suitors had stepped down.
We were married on the River of Blood five days later.
I was twelve.
Thokmarr was at least forty.
But it was a peaceful marriage.
I found quickly that Thokmarr, though brave and bold and strong.
Was not a one for intercourse.
He believed that a woman's vagina would steal his manly strength.
And he was fucking Loria the stable boy.
Everyone knew that.
But in a strange way I loved him for that.
He protected me
He loved me.
He took care of me.
But he never touched me.
Except for the one time.
When we made our son, Eiirk.
We lived happy, for the most part, for ten years.
Then Thokmarr went out into the wastes to fight a gang of Highlanders who had been driven into our lands.
After months went by, we gave up on them.
I would find out that he died from a gangrenous wound he suffered in battle.
Three men returned out of the thirty that had left.
I was a widow at 22.
They let me leave after Thokmarr's death.
I took our young son, and made my way toward the city.
Hoping beyond hope that I would make it.
Somehow.
We were lucky.
The great wars were over and it was, for the most part, safe to travel on the main roads again.
We walked for days and saw no more than roving traders and other travelers.
The world was coming back to humanity.
Slowly by surely.
New Salem was unlike any place I had ever seen.
Even from miles away, you could see the bright neon lights bursting out into oblivion.
Like a porch-light calling us home.
It had been seven weeks since we left the camp, and Eiirk had gotten sick on the way.
Radiation poisoning? I wasn't sure.
But he got weaker and weaker as we went on.
With New Salem growing before us.
He was fading away from me.
Only days before I would enter the city, he collapsed while walking.
I tired to catch him, but he crumpled to the dirt with violent fever.
I carried him for a mile, as he died.
And when he did, we were all alone.
I buried him as best I could, by the side of the road.
But I knew the night wolves had got to him once I left.
What else could I do.
He had always been slow, as if born under the moon.
But I loved him.
He was my only son.
And I left him on the side of the road like everyone else I loved.
But I had to.
In this world, its keep moving or die.
Sad as it is to say.
New Salem was a new beginning for me.
I was no longer the raper's plaything.
The gouger's shield wife.
The mother.
I was just another lost soul in a town full of fallen angels, turn-cloaks, and traitors.
When I got there, I gave up the person I used to be.
And everything that came with it.
I didn't forget about that life.
I just moved on to a new one.
This city became my city.
I didn't just live here.
I ran this city.
I made this city what it is.
Without me.
There would be no New Salem.
Just a smoking crater where the Alliance of Unified Peoples army would have dropped a ProtoNuke.
But I changed this city.
I gave it a new life.
I became its mother.

Detective

It was cold.
It was winter.
It was four in the morning.
There was a dead man's putrid rotting corpse in the back of an alleyway.
He had been there for at least a week.
Cats and rats and stray dogs had feasted on his eyes.
His face.
Beyond recognition.
The ID tag around his neck was registered to the Particle Enhancement Center for Life.
He was a slave; but that meant he was worth something.
They called it in over the netscape.
No known number.
No match.
Non existent.
A slave that belonged to no one.
That was where all the trouble started.
That was the beginning of the end.

His name was Winston.
Ironic.
Maybe.
He was no hero; they do not exist in this town.
Rather, they do not exist in this world.
Not anymore.
Apparently his name was Winston.
That may also be a lie; a fabrication.
A creation.
This corpse was just one more in a pile of dead that was New Salem.
A molten spew afeared in hell itself.
This was just another drop in an ocean.
Just another dead man, in a dead world, holding on to a dead city.
It made sense that he didnt see it then.
It made total sense now.
But back then.
Back then it was a haze.
He got sloppy.
But were getting ahead.
Back in New Salem, things werent at the boiling point yet.

This city was about be rocked from its foundations.
This city would cry out in pain.
This city would know fear and death and hatred and in its growth of understanding, come to accept the world for just what it is.
This city would turn from the sun and be shunned by the world.
This city would die.
This is New Salem.

Mr. Shades

I took the poison into my veins, drunk deep the savory wine of life.
And looking into the veiled fountain.
I saw my reflection was old and fading.
I saw the poison was taking over.
Down in the streets, it was written on every face.
This was a junk town.
And it was full of walking corpses.
High on the supernatural and feeding off the wan torchlight of a neon sign that reads "Cyborg Head."
High on the death and the life that flowed into his eyes and arms like a lovers embrace.
It was the poison.
Sucking the natural life from the streets like a stampeding virus.
They began to disappear.
The old worn and withered faces.
They began to cry and moan and cough in the night air.
One day they would be poxed.
Red marks all over their arms, face, hands, their whole bodies rotting right in front of us.
Junk town.
I still, I.
I still took the poison into my veins.
It was the opening of locked doors.
The embrace of god.
The happiness you always craved but could never quite reach.
The poison is a liar.
It swept the streets and killed the weak and intoxicated and sick and deficient of mind.
It killed them outright.
No joke.
Their bodies changed.
They lost their hair.
Their skin began to rot, then melt, from their bones.
Within hours they were dead.
From one measly flower.
One little thing.
The poison affected children and elderly most of all.
They died in massive numbers.
Too much to even think about.
Too depressing to speak on.
The poison killed most savagely.
But it also could bestow life.
Which was the most horrible thing of all.

Dr. Takagi

It began as fungus.
Temporal.
Usually akin to forests and swamp lands.
Low level danger.
It grew on trees that were dying, or at least thats what we thought.
At first.
Then it began to mutate.
Which was also normal, to a degree.
And we classified it as a sort of weed.
It grew over other plants and ate them slowly as it gestated its seedlings.
Then it mutated again.
Which was not normal.
Or not as normal.
It began to grow rapidly, with speed unrivaled.
We began testing, but it was too late.
14 researchers, myself included, took samples into the Toshinogori Biological Laboratory in Tokyo.
We tested the fungus on plants at first.
But then moved on to animals.
Rats and mice.
We found the fungus affected them as well.
Though in a different way.
About 10-15% of the animals died within hours of exposure.
Another 5-10% showed no affect at all.
The other 75-80% showed a total change in personality.
They became euphoric and lazy.
They stopped eating and drinking.
Many died.
When they did, a new mutation took hold.
The fungi would grow from WITHIN the host's body.
The corpse acted as an incubator for seedlings.
And when they were born, they burst from the stomach of the dead with violent abandon.
In this controlled environment, they could be contained.
But I knew even then, that it was to be our ultimate doom.
We all wondered what the affects on humans would be.
We didn't have to wait long to find out.
March 25th.
The day when it fell apart.
The first human to come down with infection by the plant.
Adam Allerton.
A socialite.
A billionaire.
Heir to the throne of his father's weapon's firm, Allerton Arms.
"someone who need be saved."
He was working in the Congolese Waste when he came down with it.
Rumor was Allerton wanted to weaponize the plant; before this tragic accident.
Rumor was he got a face full of seedlings and began to turn bright green in hours.
He lived for only another 15 days, by the count of Allerton.
Rumor was he didnt even make it that long.
Adam Allerton's death brought the plant to the forefront.
There was a full on media circus.
Then more cases.
And more.
What started out as an obscure disease, was becoming an epidemic.
Then it was becoming pandemic.
The world began to die.
There was nothing that could be done.
We failed to stop it.
And now we too shall die.

heres a little preview of the next chapter and introduction of Finch, one of our central characters

enjoy or...LIVE!


"Finch, I want you to find him, he's one of our best."
Those words that still rang in his ears, the Boss' evaluation of tall mike, lost in the desert, they stuck to him like a bad hangover.Even if he's savage, I want to know, the Boss had told him as they sat in his dingy office watching the sun rise over Summerton.
"they were my men," he had said, "my property. And if I let every bastard who wears a star walk over me on MY EARTH, then I wouldn’t be much of anything at all. I’m NOT going to be a laughing stock," that's all the boss really cared about, his money, his property, his good name. He couldn't have some lowlands bastard, some vigilante sheriff with a quick trigger, taking his good name and smearing it in the dirt; that was bad for business, and the Boss liked his business to run smooth. Finch didn't care either way, long as he got paid and got home with all his pieces. The brawls of kings have no more affect on a man than the turning of the moon, he chuckled to himself, this is just a job, like any other. He had struck out north along the old war road, The dead mans path. It was a stupid name, but it was the truth of things out in that cursed sand. And what if I don't come back, he thought, am I your property too Boss? That was three days ago now, and the desert was spreading out before him in all ways without an end. It was without an end, he thought, as vast as flowing as the ocean, as gigantic as the whole universe. Or it may as well have been; would this be my grave, like Tall Mike. Only the crows and vultures would know of my passing, and he shuddered at the thought. But Finch was sworn to his duty, Boss had saved him from a life of pick-pocketing for his dinner on the narrow dirty slum street he grew up, gave him cash and women and respect. Finch was his right hand, his second in command, and his duty was to serve.



Also, I've been doing this. A homage to WAKE-MAN's cape...
but seriously...
this was something I came up with years ago.
Wearing capes.
But no
THIS!
This thing right here is a design I thought of when your were still sucking your mothers dick (RIP MCA)
but serious

want a tshirt with this design?
no.
then your are a TRAITOR!

DECAPE HIM WAKE-MAN

so...
Small, Medium, or Large?


also


other things have happened...


 but no one really cared about that stuff


anyway



did you know fun facts...







I got nothing...
http://ministryoflove1.bandcamp.com/album/woodland-goddess

number three

this is another change of scene

enjoy or die.

Tall Mike


Two riders appeared on the pale horizon at the height of the afternoon sun. They were shabby, haggard men, sweaty and stinking from a hard day of riding, their skin burned red and purple like a beet, cracked and peeling under their heavy coats. They had ridden up the empty road that snaked its way through the desert, the dead mans path as it was known in The Last Stop, a terrible and dangerous road beset with highwaymen and bandit lords and the savage men who were taken by the curse. Men whose eyes had melted from their sockets and whose skin had burned and crackled into stone; whose minds had abandoned them years ago, and now they lived only for blood. It was seldom that any caravan were to come by that road, and riders even rarer, for the savage men ate man and horse alike, but there they were, plain as day. Two riders on the edge of the sun.
             They passed under the city gate, an old ruin of times past, brushed with rust and grime and age, and they saw the hanged men. Four of them, two men of middle age, one old, one a mere child, their eyes cold and dead, their tongues bulbous and purple, their entrails picked from their stomachs by the hungry crows. The old man’s entrails had been pulled from his body wrapped around his head in a crude sort of crown. King Thief was etched into his forehead, with a knife from the looks of it. The stench that rose from their corpses was nearly unbearable, and one of the riders had to cover his mouth and stifle his vomit. They witnessed the warning, and moved on.            
            They rode up the main drag, and the small people of The Last Stop descended into their holes and hovels. A rider was bad luck in town, two, double bad luck. They knew it, and paid them no mind. They tied their horses up in front of a rundown watering hole, cleverly called The Sink Hole, and the taller one went inside while the other stayed with the horses. Eyes were on them, the short man could feel it, cold, calculating eyes that watched his every move with careful derision. He clutched at his coat as the wind whipped the sand up around him. This was no place to be, this was a dark place with an evil heart. They had come up the dead mans path from Summerton, one hundred and fifty miles through the desert riding hard with the savage men at their back. They had only slept maybe a hour or two a day, even less when the heat went up. And while the days were hot and dry with sand whipping in their faces like tiny swirling knives, the nights were frozen cold to the point where they would wake with frost on their boots. The short man looked around at the shanty town they had come too, and for what he thought, certainly not the sink hole, and certainly not the women. They all had missing teeth and sunken eyes. This whole place was a sink hole, and the last one on earth, or so they said.
            They had left Summerton on a mission, but the short man found it had to believe they would find anything of value in The Last Stop. Only death, and possibly cholera or something worse lay in wait for them here. His companion would hear nothing of it. They pressed on, through the savage lands, their mission paramount. Boss had told them to go, he told them get to Last Stop and find Darius, whoever he was, and only his companion knew that. The short man was only his backup, the other man was the commander. The only thing he knew was Darius was of some great importance, else Boss wouldn’t have given them six horses for their journey. Only the two had made it, and the others had served as fare when they ran low on stock. The thought still turned his stomach, horse meat was thick and filled his belly, but it was tough and tasteless as well. He wondered what Boss would think of that, his horses eaten, he’d probably laugh and say, “I have many horses,” and that would be that.
            The tall man emerged from the sink hole after a short time, and the look on his face and furrowed brow said it all. He was deep in thought, brooding, it was not a good sign.
            “what of it then?” the short man asked.
            “that old man, on the gate…” the tall man began.
            “darius?”
            “his father, the old crow,” the tall man went on, “Darius is gone, fled from the town.”
            “to where?” the short man asked,
            “there.” He pointed all around him in a great circle.
            “so…who knows?”
            “gone into the desert, to the savage men, wherever. Hes gone.” The tall man began to bridle his mount, but the short man reached out and grabbed his arm.
            “so that’s it? We just go back? After all that, where just leave empty handed?” he was shaking with rage.
            “and what is your idea? Ride out into the wasteland? Find him? And how do you suppose we do that?” the short man scoffed.
            “we wont make it back anyway, the horses cant survive it.”
            “they’ll have to,” the tall man got up in his saddle, “come on Frank, get on your horse.”
            “fuck you,” said short Frank, “I’m not going anywhere.”
            “then you’ll stay here? In the sink hole? They want none of us,” the tall man searched the street, “they’ll put you up there with Darius’ father.”
            “better than to die of thirst and starvation in the desert,” short Frank tossed his hat violently on the dirt, “I’ve had enough of you, go back to Boss with your tail between your balls Mike!”
            “you know I cant do that,” short Frank heard the scraping of metal on leather, and the cock of a hammer, “Boss gave me orders.” Short Frank paused, his hand horvering above his own pistol still in its holster.
            “fuck you and your orders,” he said as he spun around, but tall Mike gave him no chance. The bullet pierced his right breast and short Frank fell in the dirt. Tall Mike turned his horse and spat.
            “coward,” came a voice, a deep heavy voice, “your old Boss teach you to shoot a man like that?” a small thin man emerged from the porch behind tall mike. He was an older man, with whispy graying hair and dry, patched skin. His teeth were black and crusted, many gone from his mouth, and when he smiled, Tall Mike could see his blood red gums. He wore a simple black coat and pants, and carried a weapon on his hip, and most hideous of all, his left eye had been removed from its socket and he wore his eyepatch on his forehead to show off the decaying wound to the world. Then Tall Mike saw the star on his chest, that was most hideous of all. This craven was sheriff.
            “he broke his word, his contract,” said Tall Mike, “this is of no concern to you.” The old man laughed.
            “this is my town boy,” he said, “fucking right it’s a concern of mine, its murder.” Men were coming out to the street now, men with guns. “only one person gets away with murder in this town,” he spat out a brown wad of tobacco, “and that’s me.” Tall Mike fingered at his pistol.
            “what do you want? Money? Booze? I got nothing,” Tall Mike said, “let me be on my way.” That was apparently quite the joke as it sent the sheriff into a fit of laughter.
            “well now, you’re gonna give me orders now boy?” he spat again, “I told you this is my town. I make the rules here, not you and not your boss. And if you’re after Darius, then you’re no friend of mine, so tell me then, why the fuck I shouldn’t put a rope around your neck and drag you behind my wagons to show the good folk of Last Stop what I do to murders.” Tall Mike shook his head.
            “this man was a traitor, a turncoat, and a pervert if you must know,” Tall Mike produced his weapon, “and he was my brother in the desert for the wretched weeks it took to make it to this hell hole. But we all have our orders, and no man walks away from the service of my employer. So I did as I was bid; I shot him.”
            “that’s not much of an explanation there outrider,” the sheriff motioned to one of his more monstrous looking men, some giant of lowbirth, taller than Tall Mike by a foot, and burned and grotesque with rotten teeth and sullen eyes, in his hand he carried some sort of crude metal axe, “I’ll have your hand for that.” Tall Mike exploded from the saddle guns blazing and it was enough to catch the monster off his guard. There was an immediate chaos that set in over the motley crowd that had by now surrounded him; he got the drop and that was all that mattered.
            He remembered little of what happened next, such was the way with battle. The moments flashed in his eyes, but their order, their explanation, even their intensity was lost in the fog of smoke and dust and blood. He saw a few men dropping, his aim true, first the monster with the axe, then the one with the repeating rifle, and the one with two revolvers, and then his memory became very unclear. The dirt and smoke fuzzed his vision, but the air was rank with death and gunpowder. Seconds felt like hours as the host dropped around him, twelve shots, twelve men down, how many dead or wounded he couldn’t tell and with that he made for the horse. He heard shouting as he rode, pressing his courser hard as shots flew all around him. One nearly took off his ear, biting hard on a tiny flap of skin and sending a splash of warm red down his cheek. Come on girl, he thought, I know you're tired, I know you want to stop, but we have to run now. He pushed his spurs in hard and felt the animal buck. Come on now, just a little farther. He felt a shot pierce his right arm, clean through, and he yelped with pain. Almost there girl, they don have any horses, they won't be able to catch us once we hit the open road, just a little more and we're safe. He felt the horses knee buckle, and heard her whelp, and then he was falling. No, he thought, don't fall girl, you have to keep going. The ground was hard against his shoulder, the right one, and he bit down hard on his lip as his body crashed to the earth with such force it sent his ears ringing. He spun and tumbled, and somehow kicked himself clear of the animal, but the horse was down and out. He pulled himself gingerly up behind her, and felt a splinter of pain shoot through his legs. Its broken, he though, I'm done for. When he put his fingers down and felt the back of his knee, it was blood and broken bone. No, he thought, not now, not in this fucking awful place. He knew if they found him, they’d hang him up on the gate with the others. A death not worthy of note.
             They were catching up to him, the sheriff’s motley horde of desert monsters wooed and yelped as they ran towards him, and he tried to get bullets into the chambers as fast as he could, but he was too slow. The first bandit leapt over his horses’ dying carcass and Tall Mike caught him in the chin with his long knife, piercing through his mouth and left poking through his teeth. The bandits’ corpse fell upon him, slumping to the side and landing square on his broken leg. Tall mike tried to kick him off, but the pain was so unbearable that he gave up. The others were fast approaching, and he fired his pistol, missing the first, but tagging the second with a shot to the head. The man fell like a stone. He emptied his chamber at the others, and they fell before him. A rider was bearing down on him now, his only chance.
            Somehow, he pushed the dead bandit’s heavy frame off his leg and moved into a very uncomfortable kneeling position, firing wildly at the oncoming rider. You have to calm down, he thought as his shots rang around the man with no effect, you have to be calm, you don’t have much time left, you don’t have many more shots, make them count. He crouched as the rider slowed to return fire, as far as he could tell this was the only man other then the sheriff left with a firearm, and checked the chamber of his revolver. Two shots, use them well, he thought.
            The first shot went wild, but the second hit the riders chest with a flourish, and the man went ass over head off the back end of his horse, landing facefirst on his neck with a deafening crack. Tall Mike grabbed at the courser as it ran past and felt the reigns slip through his outstretched fingers. He held fast, and the leather straps ripped through his dry, cracked palms pulling the skin clean off in a rain of blood and skin that splashed across his eyes and blinded him. But he held, and his luck was good, the horse slowed, then stopped. He, with a deep wince of pain, pulled himself into the saddle, and turned toward the road. Have to move, have to get over into the hills, he thought, then I can bandage this up and take the last of the morphine. I can make it, he thought, I just need to keep going.
            He finally slowed the horse when Last Stop was just a speck on the horizon and the sheriff had seemed to give up chase. He scanned the northern sightline with his blurred eyes and saw no shadows moving. Have to keep on, he reminded himself, have to fix my leg, it’ll be night soon, and the cold is unforgiving in the desert when the sun has gone. This night will be the hardest of my life, he knew that he probably wouldn’t even make it. And when the morning came, what then. It was still over a hundred miles back to Summerton, and he had no food, little water, and only enough ammunition to fill one cylinder in his revolver. I’m done for, he thought, if the wolves don’t get me, the savage men will. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, he thought, at least it was the said the savage men lived forever, albeit in their damaged state. I could ride straight to them, he thought, take away their thrill of hunting his bloody hulk as he traipsed across the sea of sand with no direction in particular. Short Frank was the lucky one, he died with his pistol in hand, like a man should. Tall Mike would die a broken man, with a lame leg and full of holes, would they even take him back in Summerton? Would the Boss just strike off his head to make an example to the men, this is what happens when you fail me. Tall Mike spit, and his mouth was full of blood. A bad death, he thought, a very bad, cowardly death, under the baking sun or the frozen moon, it was no longer creeping in the back of his mind. He knew it now, as he may have well known for many a day now, he was going to die upon this road they called the dead mans path. A fitting name for a vile stretch of road that had driven men to madness for many a year, a road that was the stuff of nightmare, and led you straight into the heart of nowhere.
            Yes he knew now; he was destined to become a savage man, there was no going around it now. His blood would boil, his eyes would melt, his mind would leave him, and he would be accepted into their brood. It was the only way he could see, the path of the undying. In the distance he could hear them wail, their cries breaking the still of the falling sun, empty of humanity and full of ravenous hunger. They called it the Song of the Savage, but music it was not. He rode toward the screams, his ears bane to hear them, his heart full of fear, but his mind made up. Perhaps this is the beginning, of going mad that is, he thought. The acceptance of my madness, Etan would have called it. He wondered what Etan would think about him now, crippled and broken, riding to meet his eternal nightmare. Would he call it honorable, or would he think it folly? It did not matter anymore, this was the only path set before him and he had to ride it. The wails were getting closer, he saw their shapes moving up ahead, he would be among them soon. He closed his eyes, it is time, he thought.
            The last thing Tall Mike could remember was falling from the saddle, but not hard to the ground like before, this time there were hands upon him. Hands that were cold and built like stone, pulling at him, ripping his clothes from off his body, their clawed fingers slicing through flesh and bone, and their teeth, black and dead in their wailing open mouths, bit into him and pulled off chunks ripe with sinew and rich with his dripping blood. It didn’t even hurt after a few agonizing moments, he could feel the man inside him begin to disappear, and the animal, the savage beast that was his essence, emerge. Tall Mike ceased to exist, and a new creature was born. The wailing began to fade, and in the last light of the day, the desert was stained red in the dying sun. The savage men clambered back to their cliff side caverns one stronger, their wails receding into the cold silence of the dark night.
            The One Eyed Sheriff turned from the gate, and tossed his telescope to the nearest lackey. He let out a low coughing laugh, and spat on the ground. He pulled the patch back over his dead eye.
            “He’s decided to join the savage men, the stupid bastard,” the sheriff mounted his warg, a great black wolf-like creature, and began to trot back into town, “better to hang on the gate then to go with them, but he made his choice,” his men followed, “we’ll put the short one up there though, wouldn’t want to let him spoil right there in front of the tavern.” 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

here is the second chapter of my ongoing Sci Fi story

enjoy or die.


Gaius

When Gaius spit, it was red with warm blood. He but down on a medical capsule, too early, and the submerging after effect was like a solid weight pulling him to the ground. He was leaning over the edge of time and space itself, overlooking a deep void of nothingness, and headlong plunging in. The med capsule tasted bitter and he found it hard to stomach, but there was sweet relief coming, and it rushed over him like a storm; a wave of disregard to the pain. They’ll be coming back for me, he thought, sending their tamed beasts. That thought wasn’t much comfort, but the hired guns and mutated monstrosities didn’t faze him; all in the work, I guess you could say. It was the bolt in his belly that worried him most. 
"Fucking squids..." he muttered amidst a mouthful of blood, "it was always the fucking squids." He threw his head back and swallowed two more medical capsules, enough to keep him alive a little bit longer. Just until he reached "The Dagger," just long enough to make it. 
"Fucking squids," he said again. They had come out of nowhere, like they always did, and at the worst possible moment. Gaius had handed his contact, a black man with pale white eyes named Francis, 40k in Federals for an external memory unit containing the blueprint for a powerful computer virus. But he never got the unit, so he was out 40k, which by the way didn't even belong to him in the first place. 
"Fuck this," he laughed, "this has got to be the worst fucking day ever."
"Gaius."
It was her again. She wouldn’t give it up. 
"What do you want Saura?" he gritted his teeth, "I thought I told you I didn't want to hear it." Her voice cackled from his ear piece, soft but stern. 
"I'm not going to give up on you," she said. 
"Fuck you."
"Gaius," she was pleading and trying not to show it, "you're going to die!" He bit into another medical capsule, and paused to catch his breath. 
"I'll be fine," he said, coughing, then spitting out some more blood, "just get over it..."
"I'm coming for you," Saura's voice was like a tasty poison to him. Sweet but ultimately defeating. 
"Don’t," he said. 
"You can't stop me," she said. 
"Fuck you," he said; "if I see you..." she interrupted. 
"You can't stop me."
"If I see you coming after me," he said, "I'll shoot you."
"No," she said, "I don't think you have it in you."
"Fuck that, and fuck you," he bit his lip and groaned. The pain was more that he could bear much longer. 
"You bitch," he was fighting the tears, "you fucking bitch, why did it have to be you?"
"Gaius," Saura was calling out up him, "Gaius, listen to me," but he was letting go. He was barely there anymore. The life was soaking out into the carpet of the hotel basement. 
"Fucking squids," he said again. 
"Squids!" Saura came over the ear piece again, "what the fuck! How did they know?"
"There’s a rat Saura," god, how could she not know by now? It was so obvious. He needed her. 
"A rat?" she was firm, resilient, the kind of woman he always dreamed of, "there can't be a rat!"
"Are you fucking stupid?" he wanted to tell her, he had always wanted to tell her, "there's a goddamn rat and we got fucked Saura!"
"I'm coming for you," she said. 
"Don’t," he said, "just don't. Stay away." He should have told her a long, long time ago. 
"I have to," Saura said, "you're too important to me! I can't just leave you out there." he should have told her. 
"I love you Saura," he said, "but if you come after me, I'll kill you." He unplugged the ear piece. He was feeling better now; his life was almost at its end, and Death? Death would be so much easier. The bolt in his stomach would see to that. 
"Saura," he said, "I wish it wasn’t...but...it's only..." he was feeling faint. He wanted to sleep. He knew he couldn't. That would be it. 
"Fucking eh," he laughed, "god, you're a real asshole, you know that. If I had a chance, I'd fucking bust your jaw." He tried to sit, but fell into a heap on the ground. He was sleepy. Very sleepy. The blood was pouring from his mouth. 
"Fuck...this..."
He imagined her body, soft and supple and beautiful. Her pink nipples, her ivory white skin, her fiery green eyes. He imagined them lying naked in bed, making love, bold and righteous in the most primal of heats, her face flushed, her body laid bare before him. Why? In these final moments, why did he think only of her? Why did she torment him so?
"Fuck," he breathed "this shit...fucking sucks."
He raised his pistol. Voices up ahead. Wizards, he thought, he could hear their guttural Kemling voices. 
"Good timing," he whispered to himself, "you little fucking trolls." Kemlings were one of many races of alien slaves the Squids had gathered in their vast special purges. The octopi had the Tronians, who were only a little bit nicer. Kemlings were easily frightened and weak when alone, but were deadly in large groups. Gaius only saw three, but undoubtedly there were more. And their magic’s would sense him soon. He had little time to formulate a plan. 
"Fuck," he took the last few capsules he had and bit into each. The adrenaline flowed through him with violent electricity. He was on fire. For the last time. He acted without thinking. 
The first Kemling looked up, feeling a breach of the magical barrier, and caught Gaius' bolt in the forehead. His tiny body took flight, crashing against a far wall in a shower of blood and bone and glass. The second was turning when the bolt cut his legs out from under, sending him tumbling face forward into the ground, his breathing unit severed and he rolled around the ground grasping at his neck while Gaius fired at the third Kemling, who had dove behind a table for cover. Gaius unloaded at the table, to no avail. He heard the gut wrenching Kemling words, and threw himself back as the spell came flooding out from the caster’s hiding spot.. 
He was a second away from instant death, screaming green with all the seeming of unholy dragon’s fire, and though his acrobatics ripped open the wet bolt wound, he would live to tell about it. At least for now. He stared into the abyss the wizard had cast and saw the space within its magical field collapse. There was a silence then a thunderclap that deafened him for a moment. He froze. The words were coming again. The spell, red and green and black like deamonfire, came at him, but luck was on his side. His shield, an amulet of souls, raced out with a bluish purple ice that met the wizard's death curse head on, and deflected it back toward him. The Kemling dove from out behind the table, and it exploded into splintering pieces from the combined energies rushed through it. Gaius fired at him, but the little bastard rolled out of the way and returned fire with his peashooter. The blunderbuss blasts ripped three foot holes in the walls around Gaius. He ran toward the exit behind him, debris and rubble falling all around him like snow. 
He was dying now, he knew it. Without medical attention, he would bleed out in the next few hours. Exhaustion would take over first; pretty soon he would simply collapse. His sight was already going; the wall in front of him was fading into an obscurity of clouded imagery. I am dying he thought, and this is how it feels. Ecstatic. Orgasmic. Natural. It feels good. He tried to recall her face one last time. Saura. His love. His only love. He smiled. The end was coming now. He lay his head down on the carpet. He heard the footsteps of the Kemlings, and the heavy boots of a couple of overweight Tor stomping around about him. He wanted only to sleep. 


Ed

To my Dearest Friend and Confidant Marcel DeGuitan 

My brother, it has only been a day’s travel from the estate of our grand benefactor, through the narrow lanes and tall trees of the Welsh country and in, ever deeper, into the unmanaged sprawl that is the capital as we know it. London is an absolute cesspool, my brother, he streets urchin littered and filthy, her buildings crumbling and left to disrepair, her waters dodgy and full of soot and dirt and tuberculosis, green and white and black they float past. Upon this mildly milky sheet ride skiffs and schooners, waylaid by the economic downtime, broken cracked sails lying limply upon the decks, shot full of holes and patched back to take them up river. I saw one this morning that was so wet with waters she would scarce return to safe harbor, and as she effectively sunk her way past me, I noticed the crew rapidly casting water from the ships fore and aft with great big wooden buckets. Their supposed first mate, a beast of a man, bald with broad shoulders and a face wrapping mustache that connected up to some very heavy looking side burns, shouted encouragement to his crew, all green boys and first time sailors from the looks of it. His voice carried over the edge of the Themes, and lolled into the fracas that was the bustle of Lansdowne St, like an orchestra warming up before launching into some great human opera, and a small crowd had gathered by the water, so I stopped myself and joined them in a gander at the strange little ship. 
I must say now that I have become great friends with much of the crew of the "Desiree" as well as her captain, Sir Alan Mainwater (knighted after that last bit of nonsense with the Spanish) and that bald fellow, the first mate Sam Guffy, in the days I have stayed. This ship, named apparently after Captain Mainwater's long dead lover, was a small skiffer of only maybe thirty feet stem to stern and could carry a crew of fifteen to twenty five easily and comfortably, however she was at my fist sight sinking into the Themes. That is no matter now, as the ship, with me following from a safe distance, reluctantly reached its resting place, a tiny alcove where the slate was level enough, and the waters low, so they could hoist the front over and beach the vessel for repairs. Alas, my brother, they sailed, and I followed, straight into the heart of the slums, where thrive thieves and ganglanders and highwaymen who wait in the realm of the shadow to waylay poor rich men, like yours truly, and take their well-earned ducats. Well, you had better believe I wasn't about to let that happen, and lucky for me, old chap, I always keep a pistol and saber on my person when walking these streets, for they are dangerous beyond measure and even the soldiers and policemen are thieves and murderers. My cloak was also quite dirty from the ship into London, being sequestered in the hold with the rats for a few hours while a naval ship boarded us and searched the cabins for French loyalists. I had my papers ready, and they barely looked at them at all before moving on, but it was a moment which afforded me more fear than I would like. So, dirty with rat shit and soot, stinking of the spray of the ocean, not to mention well-armed, I marched myself straight into the very heart of it brother, prepared to unleash every bit of my training upon whomever tried to stand in my way. 
Luck was once again, and hopefully not for last, on my side as they say, for I made it through the slum market (if it can even be called a market, what with them selling grilled rats and snakes and radishes) and what appeared to be where most of them sleep, to an overlook, quite nicely looking over the very ledge where "Desiree" had been run aground. Sam Guffy, in all his strange glory, was below, barking orders up at the top of his lungs as the crew unloaded the cargo onto the dock, where more crew members, more teenagers from the looks of it, were placing it into donkey carts and bringing it up toward the market. They winded up the hill and right past his overlook, bringing in spices and food, clothing and dyes and salts and metal and stone and wood and everything you could imagine, packed tightly on the animals with precision and care not accustomed to the younger generation. I called out to one of them, asking him what news from the island, and he turned and laughed. 
“It’s war and poverty and death," he said in a lilting Irish accent, "and whatever else the crown sees fit to levy."
"War though?" I said, and he nodded. 
"Aye, least that's what's on every tongue in every dark corner of every pub Cork up to Belfast. It's war or nothing."
What a bother, I thought, war can be a real to boom to some businesses, but mostly our profession is very much delighted to see two world powers engage in fierce combat, there is a profit to be made on England and France and Holland and Spain and Russia and Sweden and so on, full, untapped coffers of billions and billions of coins and bills and gold and jewels. But these revolutions. These men standing up to the authority, fighting the good fight against a superior rival, they do not make us a red cent brother. They cannot afford our services, and though they loose most valiantly under the heavy fire of their oppressors, supplied of course with the special prowess of ours, we do not starve, yet only break even. And to hear the war has come to the shores of my homeland, it saddens my heart. So I took liberty, and seeing the captain counting wares and checking off his stock list, made for him most casually. He wore a rather humble black tail coat, heavy and lined with furs, with another sash slung around his shoulders of deep burgundy red, and a wide brimmed, three cornered hat. He is tall yet unassuming, with a fierce and animal like face, sparse red beard and hair, but so cleverly ordinary in general appearance one is scarce to think him anything more than a roving trader or government clerk. I approached him, and waiting for him to finish his count, thrust out a merry hand and introduced myself. He looked at me with cold, calculating eyes, but smiled warmly as he puffed at his tobacco. 
"And what do you want with me?" He asked, amused apparently. 
"Introductions are of course in order," I said, "I am Edwain Stevenson from the Allerton Arms Company," producing my card, which he snatched from my hand. He studied it a moment, and then looked back at me, with that same smile. After a moment he held out a ragged, bandaged hand. 
"Alan Mainwater," he said, with a grin, "Sir Alan Mainwater, future king of England." With that there was a brief and uncomfortable silence, only broken by the howling laughter of the crew, led of course by the man mountain Sam Guffy, who somehow had snuck up right alongside me while I spoke with the captain. 
"Come with me, Ed you said right?" He showed me toward the ship, past more cargo and crew and onto the deck, which I could now see had been thoroughly shelled. 
"Have some trouble Captain?" I asked, sidestepping a gaping hole. He turned with a bit of flourish. 
"Fucking river pirates," he said, turning once more and leading on, "they hit us about ten seconds after we left port in Cornwall," he stopped suddenly in the midst of the deck and got very close. 
"Ne'er trust the fucking Welshman," he said then led on once more as quickly as he had stopped. I followed him if only because I had become intoxicated with his bullish and brash personality, weaving my way across the deck behind him and into his tiny cabin, where he pulled a bottle of brandy from the low cupboard and motioned for me to sit and share a smoke. He gave the impression of a casual interrogation, so I decided to play along with his little game. As I've told you when we were in Marseille, these, shall I say, independent contracts are the wave of the future, and I intend to line every ship in the North Sea with Allerton hardware. 
"Who did you say you work for?" He asked after a few snuffs of his brandy. 
"Allerton Arms, captain," I said handing him our bulletin, "I work in the sales division, as well as R and D."
"Right," the more I spoke the more I realized he was a man of small mind, "and what's that then?"
"Cannons my good man," I said, noting a flicker pass through his eyes, "muskets, pistols, cutlass, halberd, axe, swivel guns, grape shot, whatever you need, we can supply!"
"Dynamite!" He shouted. 
"Of course my good sir," I said. 
"Axes?" 
"Yes. Hatchets, knives, clubs, rifles, whatever your heart desires," I said, and produced for him the current spring season catalogue, which he began to ogle most vehemently. 
"And the prices?" He flipped through the book, excitement building, "current."
"If you order today I can give you a special 2% discount on ammunition." Bagged. My brother, you should have seen his face, the deal was done before his ink could hit the contract (which I also enclosed, do file that for me old chap). Sam Guffy, the first man, captain sent him with me, we're taking six men and four carts back to the midlands to pick up those cannons and rifles. We'll be taking the overland route, as there are no ships sailing out North for the next two weeks, due to high seas, which is about a four day ride. We'll go up into the hill country, with its winding turns, ill kept roadways, and keen eyed bandits, and this letter should reach you before my arrival, so do keep a lookout for me over the next few weeks. 
Yours
Ed. 

Ps. the "future king" and I also spoke at length about that...other thing you and I have been working on. Do prepare Rodney for an apt demonstration, would you? I won't speak of it in this letter should it fall into the wrong hands, which of course would be disastrous for Allerton, especially for our part in it. But, as you have said before, it is the way of progress and the future shan't wait for someone else to invent such technology. We must be the forebears of this new grand era. I will speak with you soon.