Death Walks

I awake to darkness, attar suffusing olfactory nerves that barely live. The air that I force to trickle into my lungs is as dry as my parchment skin, dust and the fragments of spider’s silk swimming in its eddies. It is stale and heavy, a permanent resident that I share my resting place with.

The granite cover of my bed slides away with ease in a rumble of stony sound, my emaciated arms full of preternatural strength. I jack-knife to sitting, grey, glassy eyes barely perceiving visible light, while a stray lock of dried, cracked hair falls against what is left of my nose.

I rise then, movements stiff with rigor; muscle, sinew and bone forgetting their old elasticity. I have taken in enough air and let it out, a ghostly moan reverberating from marble walls. Hands raised, I force open the wrought-iron gate of my home, the screech of the rusted hinges announcing that I have risen.

This night is like every other: dark, quiet and sinister. I rise each night and seek those who placed me in my marble and granite home, walking the darkness of my city and destroying those who place themselves above the law.

Death feeds me; loosens my stiff body, returns moisture to my skin. Death gives me life for a night.

Leaving the forest of stones behind, it is only minutes before I find my first prey of the night. He is like so many others, young, brash, loud, demanding. Armed with a knife, he has her pinned to the wall of an alley, her face smashed against the brick. Her skirt is up and he fumbles with his belt as I arrive, breaking first one arm, then the other. Grasping his head in my hands, I take his breath, my chest expanding, color, warmth and life returning to me. Weakened, he sags as I snap his neck.

She has already run screaming, a false assumption that she will be my next victim driving her fear. It is always like this but it never bothers me. My thoughts are for those who wronged me.

Armed with an electric new life, I leap up to the nearest fire escape, playing a vertical leap-frog for six stories. At the top, I crouch on the corner, surveying the city where my quarry is to be found.

A wind buffets my moth gnawed coat, creating a pose worthy of superheroes. I am no hero, despite what they say. Grainy pictures occasionally grace the front page of the morning newspaper, one of a million amateur photojournalists crawling this city with mobile cameras. They call me hero. They call me vigilante.

They call me Scrapper.

This week’s Master Class challenged us with the fourth line of the 77th page of Ted Dekker’s book, “Chosen.” The line is “They call me Scrapper.”

Old Mitchell Street: An Easy Money Transmission

Old Mitchell Street

Reggie leaned back against the door to Gris’ flat and huffed a deep breath. His false bravado had reached a limit and he had to get out of there before he stayed another night and defaulted on the job. She may not know it, or even care, but she had him wrapped so tightly around her finger that he didn’t think he’d ever get free. Tonight’s job though, ah, that would fix it all.

He combed his fingers through his hair and slunk down the five flights of stairs. The lift was broken, had been for some time, and any talk of it being fixed was long gone. So went life in Sector Three. Rotting from the inside out.

The job was in Sector Five on the other side of the city, but Reggie had plenty of time. He had cased the area yesterday and knew where to set up. He considered stopping in at the Zephyr for a quick drink. It was only down the corner, but he waved the thought away. He needed a clear head this evening. This was the biggest job yet; the one that would set him up for the rest of his life.

He stepped over Chu’s legs where the stimboy lay sprawled across the vestibule, sparing a few seconds to be sure he was breathing. Satisfied at the rise and fall of Chu’s chest, Reggie threw open the door and stepped out into the filth of Sector Three.

On the official charter documents, this part of what used to be Groton, Connecticut was labeled Sector Three. Most people called it S3 or the Docks. Reggie could see the hulking masses of the orbiters in the distance to the west across the Thames River, in what was once New London. The shipyard ran day and night, orbiters either being unloaded or prepped for a trip into Earth’s orbit where they would dock with a solar skimmer and transfer their cargo. From there, the skimmers rode solar winds to bring men and supplies to the lunar mining colonies and raw ores back to Earth. At night, the shipyard area of the Docks was ablaze in light and on cloudy nights, that light lit up the sky in an electric grey that could be seen for miles.

S3 was the working slug’s part of Yndi City. It was dirty, beat up and run down, and the average slug seemed to like it that way. It was the backbone of Yndi City’s economy, a hub of import/export and tourism.

Reggie headed north along Old Mitchell Street, or OM as the locals called it, toward the mag-rail station on North. The street was lit in a wash of neon, the sun having just set behind the silhouettes of the orbiters. OM was the main thoroughfare through S3 and catered to locals and tourists alike. Clubs were on every corner, the heavy drone and pulse of the current rave suffusing the ground as he walked past. Food vendors taking up closet-sized holes in store fronts shouted fresh catches and fried goods, most inspired by the snack foods of Japan from the early part of the century. Corporate stim kiosks stood in solitary abandonment, giant phalluses ignored when stim could be had for an eighth of the price in the Underground. Chi-bi girls stood in groups of two or three, the big-eye, small-mouth surgical alterations having turned them into grotesque caricatures of the anime characters they were inspired by. Reggie never understood the BESM fad, but each group of Chi-bi’s attracted a small flock of males, known as Jumpers, after a long defunct manga magazine, most fingering the Chi-bi’s pink or blue hair and flashing credit chits with blinking green lights indicating full accounts. Judging by the large number of Jumpers, the Chi-bi’s stood to make some good money tonight.

OM was a noisy and garish tourist trap, but it was also the top of the Underground. If you needed something, anything, you could find someone who knew somebody who could get you what you wanted if you were willing to step off the main street and into the unlit, trash covered, slimy stink of the back alleys and from there into the darkest part of Yndi City; Sector Five. Always a bad idea to do so without a weapon of some sort.

Reggie walked along, boots thumping, hands thrust into the pockets of the olive drab jacket he always wore. The weight of his Colt hanging at his side was a comfort as he ignored the spectacle of OM and focused on the job he had to do. Leaving the Chi-bi’s, Jumpers, kiosks and fried foods behind, Reggie crossed onto North Street, just one block from where it intersected with the old bridge and the mag-rail.

If OM had an exact opposite, North Street would be it. Here was the collection ground of OM’s leavings: piles of refuse, half occupied buildings and the dregs of humanity. Without looking closely, Reggie thought of the Northers as a hundred variations of Chu scattered along the length of North. As with any city, the lines between the wealthy and poor parts were as clear as a lightning bolt.

A block away, Reggie could make out the grey shapes of perhaps five or six people coming towards him on the opposite side of the street. The large crests on their heads marked them as Tiburons, a nasty collection of thugs who ruled all the streets of S3 except OM. They shaped their hair to resemble the dorsal fin of a shark and most had their teeth replaced with plasteel razors. They weren’t a group Reggie wanted, or needed, to tangle with. Not tonight.

He ducked into a side alley, back to the wall, dark shadows wrapping him in a blanket of obscurity. He clicked on his En-Vee and the world became tinted a digital green. Heat signatures marked the Tibs as they strolled along North, engaged in a violent argument. Yes, it was best he remained hidden.

Automatic targeting reticles popped up on the display hud, marking each Tib with a green halo. With a thought, Reggie could turn those halos red and pop off the required rounds with his Colt, perhaps only missing one target. The NAA army had blessed him with abilities that allowed him to survive and thrive in a city whose Underground ate people daily.

He watched and waited. Five Tibs. Six rounds. He might survive. He could take them out, but, no. He was too close to OM and unwanted attention would be drawn to the sound of gunfire. The YC Protectors didn’t do much in the way of protecting anything, Jefferies and the Rogers did most of that, but the Procs did patrol OM in droves, upholding the appearance of safety and security for the tourists. He didn’t need Proc bullies bothering him tonight. He had work to do.

The Tibs passed him and he lost them in the glare of a streetlight. En-Vee was for near darkness, any light source could make it bright enough to blind him. Reggie waited to a count of one hundred before stepping out of the shadows, a thought turning the En-Vee off.

“I told ya I sees a chump-stick slink into the dark, Hoss,” a voice chortled behind him.

Reggie spun around, hand reaching into his jacket and closing on the grip of his revolver. The five Tibs were arrayed before him, standing in varying degrees of combat readiness. They held metal bars, knives, chains: standard street gang weapons. Behind the Tibs loomed a sixth, and eight-foot-tall monstrosity with an impossible amount of muscle bunched on his tank-like frame. His dorsal hair was so large, it flopped over to the side, drooping under its own weight. A Supersoldier. They must have picked him up on their way back towards the alley.

“Ah-yurp,” nodded one one the Tibs. Hoss.

Another Tib, the smallest of the group, was bouncing on the balls of his feet. “He’s here without say-so,” he squeaked. “He needs say-so to walk our waters.”

“Lemme squash the bug,” the Super rumbled, cracking his knuckles with a sound like gunshots, flexed muscles stretching his skin to near ripping.

The one called Hoss nodded. “No say-so, no go-go.”

Reggie tried to smile. “Hey, guys, c’mon. Just passing through, yeah?”

The Supersoldier leaped forward, roaring.

Things had been much better when he had been hidden.

For this week’s Master Class, we were given the line, “Things had been much better when he had been hidden.” from Douglas Adams’, Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. This is the second time a Hitchhiker’s Guide book has been chosen for Master Class and I count myself lucky to be included in a group of writers who thrive on such geeky books.

True to Master Class offering hard prompts, Professor SAM required her students to use this line somewhere in our story in a position that is a multiple of four. In my story, the prompt line falls in the 24th paragraph.

This entry in the Easy Money online novel follows immediately after The Last One and was a required evil. Full of exposition and descriptive passages, it fit naturally as the next installment. It might be a long and tiring read for some people, but it is our first good look at Yndi City and helps to set the stage for further stories about Reggie, Gris and all the others. I hope you enjoy what I consider a brief look at this world.

The story continues with “The Zephyr.”

Tabby: A Harper’s Grove Tale

Hannah’s Kitchen. Photo Credit: Raina Ng

“I woke up in bed with a man and a cat,” Deborah Ennis said as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. It was a beautiful Sunday morning in July and Deborah’s sister, Hannah Anne, had already opened all the kitchen windows, letting in a gentle breeze.

“And that’s different for you, because…?” Hannah Anne dropped the tea ball into the teapot and gently placed the cover on. “Did you actually know the man this time?”

“Gods, Hannah, you can be such a bitch,” Deborah leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. “Of course I knew him. It’s that guy I met last weekend in that club in Manchester.”

“Jonathan?”

“Yeah,” Deborah smiled. “He’s such a nice guy.”

“I’ll bet,” Hannah mumbled as she reached for a blueberry muffin. Louder, she asked, “So, what’s the point?”

“Huh?”

Hannah sighed and shook her head. “About waking up with him.” She pointed at her sister. “I don’t want details.”

“Oh!” Deborah’s eyes went wide. “It’s the cat.”

Hannah raised an eyebrow as she took a bite of her muffin. Bridget entered the kitchen and bleated loudly, announcing her need to go out. She stood at the door, pointedly looking at Hannah. Hannah sighed, stood and as she approached the door, growled at Bridget, “You know how to let yourself in. You better figure how to let yourself out.” With that, she yanked the door open, narrowly missing Bridget’s nose and held the door for the goat. Bridget snorted and trotted out to the backyard. Hannah snarled and slammed the door shut.

“Geez, Hannah. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s that stupid goat,” she said as she sat back down at the kitchen table. “Always needs me to let her out, but she damn well can get inside even if the door is locked. I’m getting tired of it.”

“You never get this upset with Bridget,” Deborah said as she poured some tea into a coffee mug that was boldly labeled, World’s #1 Witch. “Something else is bothering you.” She pushed the mug over to her sister. “Anything to do with why you shut down the yard sale early?”

Hannah accepted the tea and took a sip. “Yeah, I guess. I have a lot to think about.” She put the cup down, took another bite from her muffin. “Doh, wad abow da cad?”

“What?”

Hannah swallowed. “I said, ‘Now, what about the cat?’”

Deborah chuckled, a deep throaty sound. It was something she did naturally and one that most men thought attractive. “Of all the things Aunt June taught us, you never did get the hang of not talking with your mouth full.”

Hannah scowled and said nothing.

“Yeah, so, this cat,” Deborah took a sip from her own tea and smiled in delight. “Wow, Hannah! What is this?”

“I’m trying a new blend. You like it?”

“Mmm hmm,” Deborah nodded. “It’s good.”

Hannah smiled. “Thank you. I’m thinking of setting up a tea counter in the shop and I’m trying out some new blends.”

“That’s a great idea!”

“Thanks. Now, tell me about the cat.”

Deborah nodded. “When I woke up this morning, Jonathan was still asleep and there was a cat in the bed with us.”

“It was probably his,” Hannah dismissed.

“No, we were at my place. I don’t have a cat.”

“Oh. What did you do with it?”

Deborah pushed her golden hair over her ear. “I shooed it out.”

“Okay, then,” Hannah smiled. “Problem solved.”

“Not quite, Hannah,” Deborah leveled her gaze at her sister. “It came back.”

Bridget bleated loudly at Hannah’s elbow. Hannah and Deborah both jumped, Deborah letting out a little squawk.

“By the Three, Bridget!” Hannah yelled. “Stop that!” She pointed towards the living room. “Go watch Animal Planet.”

Bridget turned, tail up and strutted from the kitchen.

“One of these days,” Hannah muttered, dropping her head into her hands.

“The cat did that,” Deborah said, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Did what?” asked Hannah, voice muffled behind her hands.

“Popped back,” Deborah nodded towards the living room. “Like Bridget does.”

Hannah looked up eyes anxious. “What kind of cat was it? Black?”

Deborah glared at Hannah expecting to be picked on, but when she saw that Hannah was serious she took a deep breath. “No. It was a tabby.”

Hannah let out a breath. “Thank the Mother.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll be fine.”

“Really? Black cat bad, tabby good?”

Hannah grinned. “Something like that.” She took a sip of tea. “Where is it now?”

“Well, I tried three more times to get rid of it, but it always came back,” Deborah shrugged. “I left it on the bed.”

“Okay. It might be a familiar sent by another witch, but I don’t know any other witches closer to us than Manchester.”

Deborah’s eyes opened wide. “Is that bad?”

“Could be. Familiars have been known to act as spies.”

“Spies!” Deborah leaned forward, her voice shaking. “Why would anyone want to spy on me?”

A large tabby cat jumped up onto the table and sat down. Both women froze, tea mugs halfway to their mouths, eyes locked on the cat. The cat calmly looked back and forth between them.

“I thought you said you left it on your bed,” Hannah whispered.

“I did,” Deborah hissed.

The cat looked at Hannah and nodded. “Hello, Hannah,” it said.

Deborah fell to the floor, spilled tea darkening her golden hair.

It’s a brand new Harper’s Grove Tale, starring Hannah, Deborah, Bridget and a cat for this week’s Master Class. I was given the honor of choosing this week’s prompt for the class and after careful consideration, I chose, “I woke up in bed with a man and a cat.” It’s the opening line of Robert Heinlein’s “To Sail Beyond the Sunset.”

This story slots nicely between the yard sale story (which comprises All the Demons and A Gold Medal) and the unfinished evil mist story (currently comprising Paedric’s Incantium and Out of the Frying Pan).

 

The Last One: An Easy Money Transmission

Gris exhaled in the dimness of her apartment from where she lay on the bed. The vidscreen on the far wall gave the only light as it showed the latest news blast from Eurasia. Imperial Chinese troops were parading the Champs Élysées through the Arc de Triomphe in their official conquering of France ceremony.

Gris sat up, letting the sheet slide into her lap, exposing her small breasts.

“I’ll never stop liking those,” murmured Reggie from where he lay sprawled next to her. Gris hissed, all the open gentleness from earlier hidden once again behind her plasteel wall. “What time is it?” he asked into the pillow.

“Time for you to go,” she said, pointedly leaving the sheet in her lap. She fumbled her hand along the small table next to the bed until she found her glasses. She pushed the glasses on and said, “Blinds. Open.”

Bright light assaulted the room as the blinds pulled back. Reggie shot up to sitting, holding an arm across his face. “Dammit, Gris! Little warning, huh? I had my En-Vee on.”

“Sorry, Reg.” She stood, letting the sheet fall to the floor and strode the few steps to the window, her glasses already tinted a dark charcoal. A hazy nimbus surrounded her naked form as she stood silent before the floor to ceiling window. She was small and thin, with only a hint of curve to her hips, molded from whiplash muscles. Her short orange hair blazed in the light.

“Is that Paris?” he asked from the bed behind her.

“Yes, the Chinese took it last night,” she said without turning around.

Reggie grunted. There were sounds of a belt buckle jangling as he pulled on his pants and boots being stomped on. “Huh. Nice to know all our hard work those years were for nothing.” The noises stopped.

“Not our work,” Gris said quietly. “We were just soldiers.” Silence filled the room. She crossed her arms and said to the window, “Stop staring at my ass.”

His voice was right in her ear when he slapped her right cheek and squeezed, “I like your ass.”

Surprised, Gris dropped and turned, delivering a sharp jab to his stomach. He grunted and fell back, clutching his middle, gasping for breath. She left him there and slipped on the shirt and pants she had left on the bed. She swiped her stim inhaler, checked the cart and scoffed in disgust, ejecting the empty round, letting it bounce on the floor. Reggie stood, still gasping and watched as she glided across the room to where her voluminous coat was draped over a chair. She checked the pockets until she found a stim cart.

She grimaced. “Last one,” she breathed as she locked it into place.

“I haven’t got any,” Reggie sat on the bed.

“I know,” Gris twisted the inhaler in her fingers. “I placed an order yesterday.” She took off her glasses and squinted at the white hot sky, vaguely wondering if it was already on it’s way.

Reggie shook his head as he searched the floor. “Corporate rationed drugs.” He looked up, the olive drab jacket dangling from his hands. “You’re just part of the machine now.”

“Piss off,” she ducked behind a screen that hid the toilet. Reggie listened for the hiss of the inhaler, but it never came. “You never told me about the job Stahler gave you,” she said from behind the screen.

Reggie shrugged, even though she couldn’t see. “Shoot and scoot in S5. Has to be done between twenty-two and twenty-three hundred tonight.”

“He gave you a time limit?”

“Yeah, why? It’ll be easy.”

“Seems strange. He’s never done that before.”

“No,” he swung the jacket back and forth. “But, so what? This is Johann Stahler we’re talking about. Who the hell knows why he wants things done certain ways? You just do them.”

“Shit, Reg, don’t do this. Something doesn’t feel right about this one.”

Reggie thrust his arms through the arms of the jacket. “No worries, it’ll be green.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “C’mon, Gris, it’s why we left mainland Cuba. Better jobs and more money. This’ll pay enough for me to get these eyes out before they kill me.” He cocked his head, smirking. “And since when do you care? I thought we weren’t about that.”

“We’re not,” she scoffed, stepping from behind the screen, fingering her stim inhaler. Her blue eyes met his brown. “Call it professional concern. You’re the best gun in the city.”

Reggie chuckled, walking over to the door. “I know, so stop worrying.” Then he was gone, the apartment door quietly sliding shut.

Gris stared at the door for some time, twisting the inhaler around her grasp.

Eyes purple, she lowered the inhaler and whispered to the door, “I do care.”

This week’s Master Class challenged us to use the line, “She took off her glasses and squinted at the white hot sky, vaguely wondering if it was already on it’s way.” from Clive Barker’s “The Great and Secret Show” which was chosen by my good friend, Shannon. We could not use the line in either the first two or last two paragraphs of our story.

This particular story is taken from my Easy Money universe and is the first of many blog-sized treatments of that world. Easy Money was a short story I wrote many years ago that was briefly undergoing a translation into a comic book. These blog stories are based in part on the original short, but are much more heavily influenced by the stories and ideas I wrote for the comic. I love this world and the characters and I would hate to see their stories left untold. I hope you enjoy them.

The story continues with “Old Mitchell Street.”

No Quarter

You have entered the winter of your life. Those words, or something very much like them, buzzed around my brain-pan like hornets a week ago. I became forty-two years old last Wednesday and for some inexplicable reason, it bothered me. Until then, my birthdays were just another day in my life and I never gave them a second thought. This year was different. I am feeling my mortality.

I am feeling my uselessness.

I am feeling my failures.

Many years ago, I remember doing an assignment for school which required you to write a letter to your future self. You were to spill out all of your hopes and dreams, all of your teen angst. I saved that letter for many years, but at some point, it vanished, gone away with so many of my other possessions through countless moves about the country. I don’t remember much about what I wrote in that letter, but I do remember one point. One shining gem from that time has stuck with me. In that letter, I assumed I was writing to a forty-year-old version of myself that had become a famous writer.

It was an accepted fact of the letter. Not, “I hope by the time I’m forty I’ve written a book.” No, the entire letter was constructed as if being a published writer was a given, had already happened.

I could not envision my future self any other way.

I have struggled all my life to translate emotion into the written word. I have struggled with plot, theme, genre, character, setting, syntax, grammar – all of it. I have struggled to be good at writing. I have struggled with ideas.

I have struggled with comparisons.

When I submitted my first short story to a magazine almost fifteen years ago, the publishing industry stood as a giant bulwark that waves of hopeful authors crashed against, never breaching those fortifications. There was a process to follow to make it easier for a publishing house to even look at your proposal. You needed an agent and in order to get an agent, you needed to be published. A neat catch-22, but one that wasn’t impossible to surmount. At the time, the internet was in its infancy, but you could self publish, if you were willing to spend thousands of your own dollars through a vanity press. The system was set up to separate the wheat from the chaff, but the big houses still followed sales trends and if you wrote something that was part of the trend, you had a better chance of being successful.

I don’t think much has changed between then and now as far as the big houses go. It’s still very difficult to get published with them, they still follow trends, you still need and agent, etc. What has changed is that the internet has made self publishing an easy reality. So easy, that it has introduced a whole new wall to breach in order to be successful. While the traditional publishing route is a wall of expertise, the self publishing route is one of numbers. Vast numbers.

The self publishing market is saturated with, for lack of a better word, crap. So many people self publish their books just to say, “Hey look! I published a book!” and have paid virtually no attention to proofing, editing or even story or character development. Many of these books are unreadable they are so bad, but the public has been eating them up.

And so have the big houses.

The traditional publishing houses are beginning to look at the self publishing industry and paying attention to sales trends. In some cases, that’s a poor choice. Many self publishers are fiction bloggers (yes, like me) who have built up a big enough following that when they do self publish, they get sales from an already established fan base and it doesn’t matter whether the book has any quality to it at all. This blogger fan base buys the books to “help out.” I have witnessed first hand a fellow blogger self publishing a poorly written book and receiving tons of support for it.

Having any success at self publishing requires you to stand out from the crowd and that has made the whole process a popularity contest. You don’t need to be a good writer to have success self publishing. You have to be a good self promoter. Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites have become the gateway to self publishing and if you can use those to successfully build a following, you’re going to sell books. (I know the percentages are small, but it is a sales tactic being used.) I follow the blogs of some of these writers because I see potential in them. For the most part, I have enjoyed their stories and their creativity. Many of them are lazy writers though; their posts are glaringly full of errors, obviously not having been proofread or edited. And yet, they have large followings and receive regular positive comments on all of their posts.

So what does this all mean for me? It means I haven’t been published yet. I haven’t been able to break the walls of the big houses and I absolutely refuse to play the social media game of self publishing. My writing is also better then most books that get published (or so I like to believe and it has taken me many years to finally believe it) which may also be a hindrance. Apparently, people will pay for poorly written books and big houses will pick them up (I’m looking at you, 50 Shades).

I have too much integrity and pride in my creativity, in my art, to stoop this low.

I will continue to struggle without compromise.

I will refuse to buy books written by lazy writers. I have often complained on my blog about not having enough time to write. Part of the reason is that I do take the time to make sure that my blog posts are as error free as they possibly can be. If I am writing for someone else’s blog, I triple check everything to make sure that it is perfect. It’s called pride in a job well done, and I refuse to do any less.

Yes, the past week for me has been a roller coaster of emotion centering on my chosen profession. I haven’t written anything in over week as I struggled to figure out my place. Just yesterday, I was going to chuck it all as my mouse cursor hovered over the “delete” button for my blog. I pulled myself from that brink and decided to use this prompt to share what I have been going though even if I piss other writers off. Back near the beginning of this post, I mentioned struggling with comparisons. I’m done with that now. I’m going to stop worrying about why inferior authors are getting published and push on despite that.

I will do this.

I will be successful.

I will do it my way.

I may get angry comments and I may get supportive ones. Bring them both, but do not bring any virtual pats to the back and “Good for you’s.” I stand by my words and will not change them. What is done, is done. The past cannot be cured.

SAM is running the Master Class now. Go check it out.

 

My Battle of Evermore

Clever how the universe can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic. Ofttimes, only hindsight will reveal what has happened and it usually comes like a blow to the head, leaving you dazed for a time, wondering what happened. Wondering, how could I let it happen?

I write this on a day when I will become the answer to life, the universe and everything and it has decayed into a time of reflection, the future temporarily forgotten. The day began as it always does; after responsibilities that can not be ignored are taken care of, music and writing became the focus of the morning.

I always set my music player to shuffle my entire music collection and I let it randomly choose song after song until I find something that feels “right” for the morning’s scribblings. With almost fourteen thousand songs to choose from, the chance that I get repeat songs is quite low. Today, a song played that I haven’t listened to in almost twenty years and I experienced that blow to the head when I realized what it meant.

Led Zeppelin’s fourth album is their most well known and popular, containing some of their most famous songs like “Black Dog” and “Stairway to Heaven.” But I never felt a connection to those songs like I did the third track, “Battle of Evermore.”

When the song played today, a memory flooded me of the first time I heard it. It was a late night, I was still in high school and working on math homework alone in my room. I had bought Zeppelin’s fourth album earlier that day (on cassette) and was listening to it while I worked. After rocking out to “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll,” the next song faded in with mandolin and acoustic guitar. Robert Plant’s singing style was just as powerful as always, but the lyrics were drawn out, almost ethereal. And what else did I hear? A woman’s voice singing counterpart? I found out in later years that the woman was Sandy Denny, which led me to Fairport Convention and their best album, Liege and Leaf.

“Battle of Evermore” sank into my soul, the musical puzzle piece that fit perfectly with the other two pieces: fantasy novels and fantasy role playing games. It fulfilled my personal trinity and in that singular moment, I felt as if the universe was telling me what my life was to be all about. I experienced a sense of peace and belonging that my then teenage self had been yearning for.

We had only been living in that house for a few months. It had just been built and I can still smell the newness of that room, the chemical smell of the carpet, the wood stain and paint. Pictures ripped from Tolkien and Dragonlance calenders covered the walls along with maps of Middle Earth, fantasy paperbacks were everywhere while the size of the role playing rule books marked them in stark contrast, and a replica katana rested on a stand. I sat at my rickety particle board desk, the room lit only by a desk lamp while I listened and viewed the shrine I had created. Plant and Denny sang of dragons and ring-wraiths, plowshares and swords, Queens of Light and Dark Lords. They sang of all that I liked to read about in the books I had and tried to emulate in the games I played. I was surrounded by a visual feast of fantasy and now I had discovered its audio counterpart.

Looking back on that moment twenty five years later, it is easy to see how sadistic the universe was on that night. In that moment, a seed was planted that grew into a drive to create. A drive that still has yet to be fulfilled. A drive that I can not stop.

For twenty five years, I have swum upstream, at times giving in to the drive and others fighting it tooth and nail. I have written hundreds of thousands of words and never finished writing any of those stories. I have played thousands of hours of Dungeons and Dragons. I have spent countless hours learning to play songs by Zeppelin, Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull and others who have written songs like “Battle of Evermore.” I have tried to write my own songs. My fantasy book collection has grown to rival a library and my music collection is a who’s who of electric folk.

Over the past quarter of a century, I have been driven to leave my mark in this fantasy world and it started on that night when I was supposed to be doing math homework. Wyld Hunt is only the latest in a long list of incomplete short stories and novels that I must write.

This drive will never go away. I will continue to struggle, the Universe leaves me no choice. I am a modern Sisyphus, forever pushing my boulder uphill only to have it fall back down everyday. This is my Battle of Evermore.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to fail.

This week, Steph from People Doing Things With Their Lives, chose Julia Glass’ “Three Junes” for the sentence prompt. She was asked to choose the first line of the fifth chapter of the book, which is, “Clever how the universe can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic.” The past few days have been kind of tough for me to deal with and this non-fiction piece seems to be just what the doctor ordered. I think I can get back on track now.

This is the first week of Master Class with its new Professor, SAM. I have passed the torch, but I still expect all students to behave themselves. Let’s make SAM feel welcome. I know she’ll do a great job!

 

Entropic Paradoxism

The beaker exploded in a blinding flash, the room filling with a thick, yellow-green smoke. The stench of rotting eggs burned his nose as he waved his hand trying to clear away the putrid contaminant. Another failed experiment and another mess to clean up.

Angrily, he pulled off his rubber gloves and slapped them on to the lab table, one after another. He flipped the switch for the vent fan and pushed his goggles up to his forehead. The table was a mess of broken glass, toppled framework and a thick brown muck that was slowly approaching the edge, threatening to drip to the floor.

“Dammit,” he grumbled, while he grabbed a roll of paper towels. Tearing off a few sheets, he tried to create a dam with them to stop the progress of the muck. The tip of his index finger brushed the brown sludge and it was cold. Ice cold.

He jerked his hand back and almost stuck his finger in his mouth. Smiling ruefully, he wiped the dollop off and looked at his finger. The cold was painful and there was a small circular mark on his finger tip where the brown sludge had been. It was white, painful and cold. Frostbite.

Throwing his arms up, he jumped and whooped. He felt like a safe cracker who – partly by luck – had sussed out the first digit in a lengthy, arduous combination. This was it! He had broken through the problem and created a substance cold enough to freeze flesh. It wasn’t the elixir he was hoping for, but a small step was still a step.

He placed the probe of a digital thermometer into the sludge while he pulled the roll cart with his laptop over and prepared to take notes. Calling up his database, he noticed that the pain in his finger was spreading. The dot of whiteness had grown and now his entire fingertip was white.

“Oh God,” he scrambled for the thermometer. It read -273 Celsius. He switched the readout to the Kelvin scale. The display flickered and then read 0.15.

“No, no, no,” he mumbled as the number changed to 0.14. He put the thermometer down and turned back to his laptop, brushing his elbow against the paper towel dam. It shattered like glass, tinkling as the shards hit the floor. That was when he saw what the muck was doing.

It was shifting and moving on it’s own, creating elaborate patterns almost fractal in nature. Everywhere it spread to, it turned whatever it touched white.

“Macro-cosmic quantum super-fluidity!” he breathed. The thermometer now read 0.05 Kelvin. Almost Absolute Zero. Would entropy truly stop at that point? Frantically, he began typing.

When his index finger shattered on the first key stroke, he only paused a brief moment in wonder. What was happening was unheard of, not contained or controlled, and he needed to document the event as quickly as possible.

Typing was difficult with a missing finger, but his panic drove him on. When he heard the crunching sound, he stopped, dread filling his soul.

Turning to look at the table, the brown sludge had stopped its patterning and crystallization was spreading outward from it very quickly. The sludge had reached Absolute Zero and entropy had indeed stopped and it was spreading. Atoms and molecules no longer had energy and were just shutting down and the effect was coming toward him across the floor.

He backed away, knocking over a lamp and the roll cart with his laptop. The quantum chaos that powered the Universe was ending and it had started in this lab. When it reached his computer, it shut down, the electrons no longer moving to provide electricity.

His back hit the wall, and he tried to climb it, but the crystallization was too fast for him. When it reached his feet, it climbed him and the wall within seconds. He remained frozen in place, his mouth forever in a silent scream.

When the spread went through the walls, it quickly overtook the sign on the door outside of the lab. MIT Cryogenics Laboratory #2 had become the epicenter for the death of the Universe.

My entry for this week’s Master Class in which we challenged to include, “He felt like a safe cracker who – partly by luck – had sussed out the first digit in a lengthy, arduous combination.” a sentence from Lev Grossman’s book The Magicians.

I’m also participating with Write on Edge this week who challenged us to write about a smell and an elixir. Maybe not exactly what they were looking for, but it was fun to kill the Universe.

The Magicians – Master Class 2013 #6

Hello once again for the Master Class wrap-up and prompt announcement. Last week, Carrie won the class vote and gave us the last line of Judy Blume’s book, “Tiger Eyes,” which was, “Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” We changed it up a bit and asked you to END your story on the prompt line. We had some great stories from you all, but before we get to the A+ student, here are the runners up:

Stacey from Stacey’s Mothering Moments, wrote a wonderful piece about domestic abuse titled, “Just the Way It Is.”

Kirsten wrote about a man who may or may not be in the right place at the right time in “You Should Be Mine.”

The A+ this week goes to a good friend of mine. Shannon did one of the hardest things any writer can do – bared her soul in all its rawness in her story, “You Never Know.” Her bravery and amazingly detailed passages won her a well deserved A+.

Once again, we’re trying something new. Shannon was asked to pick any fiction book, turn to page 77 and give the seventh sentence as the prompt. This week, you will use the sentence somewhere within the body of your story. You can not use it to open or end your story. Please use bold font on the prompt sentence so that it can be found easily. Shannon chose Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” and the prompt is:

He felt like a safe cracker who – partly by luck – had sussed out the first digit in a lengthy, arduous combination.

As always, use Mr Linky to link your story here. The prompt closes Monday, 6pm EST.

In another twist, I’m passing the Master Class baton to fellow fiction writer and bloggy friend SAM who writes some very good horror and fantasy over at My Write Side. Go check out some of her stuff, you’ll like it. SAM will be judging the winner for this week’s prompt and taking over full time as of next week. Behave yourselves with the new Professor!

Martyrs and Stained Glass

Stained Glass, leo.jeje Flickr

“I found a martyr in my bed tonight and she stopped my bones from wondering just who I am,” he prayed.

The cathedral echoed his whispered words in a susurration that floated along the arched ceiling. Candles provided lone illumination at floor level. The vast space was an infinite blackness, filled only by his guilt-ridden words.

The stained glass mosaic behind the altar was back-lit, the Virgin holding the baby Christ for those gathered to see. Saint Joseph, the patron of the cathedral looked up with longing while the Archangel Michael stood quietly to the side, spear in hand, vigilant. He always thought it a strange portrayal of the Birth, but never spent much time looking at it. He was usually on the other side of the altar. Michael seemed to be staring accusation right though him.

“She hurts, she suffers,” he whispered, pleading to the glass angel. “She asked only the touch of another before she enters your Kingdom.”

The angel remained impassive and the baby smiled with innocent joy.

A small cry punched from his throat and tears came unbidden, rolling down his cheeks, wetting his stiff collar, a symbol of his vocation.

“You teach us to succor the sick,” he sobbed, pressing his forehead into his clasped hands. “She is young, so young, and laments the short time she will have to enjoy your creation.” His head rose and he pleaded to the Virgin, “She only wanted one moment of a joy she never had before she would be gone forever.”

He lowered his head again, waited while his echoed voice died among the dark arches.

“And yet you teach us of the cloth abstinence.” The words were sharp, the reverential tone was gone. “I have long questioned in my heart your plans for me. I look at this world and witness suffering and hate, death and war. I see my fellow man sinking farther and farther into the abyss past the point of no return.”

He pounded his hands on the altar rail. “And where are you?” His voice growled in darkness. “How can you let these things happen? How can you say to me that what I did was wrong?” He shook his head. “I gave her what she wanted in her last hours.” He hung his head. “She was happy.” His breath came slow and even, calming. “And so was I.”

He stood, slowly unfolding himself, defiant, clenched hands at his sides, head high. “It doesn’t make sense. Why deny someone who has walked in your light all their life what they want in their last hours? We gave to each other that night and we took from each other.”

He nodded once, a decision made. He grasped the stiff collar encircling his neck and tore the cassock off. He held it loosely before him and studied it with intent.

“This was a symbol of what I thought you wanted from me. A symbol of how I intended to serve your Will.” He turned his hand, letting the cassock fall to the floor before the altar. “No more.”

He turned and walked up the aisle. After a few steps he stopped and whispered over his shoulder, “I will serve you without the restriction of the collar. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

I dove deep into my Catholic upbringing in order to link this to two prompts this week. The first is my own Master Class. This week’s prompt challenged us to end our story with the same ending sentence as Judy Blume’s book “Tiger Eyes” – Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

I’m also linking this to Write on Edge’s weekly writing prompt Write at the Merge. This week, they asked us to be inspired by the song “Some Nights” by FUN and/or the picture of the stained glass window. I chose both.

Tiger Eyes – Master Class 2013 #5

Good Morning, class. Last week’s student voting went off without a hitch. A few people didn’t make the deadline since it was a day and a half early, but time needed to be set aside to allow for voting.

Last week’s winner, with three votes, was Carrie from The Muse Unleashed.  All She Knew, Carrie’s heart-wrenching tale of the survivor of a suicide cult, was worthy of the win.

The runners up, with two votes each were:

Win, Lose or Die, by newcomer to the Master Class, Stacey, who writes at Stacey’s Mothering Moments,

Vultures of Change, by Marie, who writes at My Cyber House Rules,

Only the Good Die Young, by Kirsten, who writes at the Kir Corner. (At the time of this writing, I am receiving a 404 error when attempting to access Kir’s blog. A link will be provided when I can get one.  Link added.)

Congratulations to Carrie, the runners up and all who participated.

In keeping with “changing it up,” when I asked Carrie for a line from a novel, I asked her to give me the last line. That’s right class, this week, you have to END on the prompt, not begin with it. Carrie chose Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes, which ends with:

Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

There will be no student voting this week, but we’re sticking with InLinkz and saying goodbye to Mr Linky for good. You have from now until 6pm EST Monday night to get your submissions in. As always, there is no word limit and please be sure to use the Master Class badge in your post. Have fun, good luck and happy writing!