WHAT, AN OPINION PIECE???
Now, I will be honest: I never liked opinion pieces. In my list of favorite things, they probably rank in between dental surgery and singing chipmunks. I’m just not a very..expressive person, when it comes to things I feel.
Even back in the days of school composition exams, I rarely took the opinion pieces..heh, I preferred the descriptive or creative pieces. I mean, honestly: ‘The worst day of my life’ is so much more fun than ‘Envy versus sloth: which is the greater sin?’ or ‘A tyranny by kittens is worse than a democracy by wolves. Discuss.’
(Come to think about it, that last title has potential..)
And if there’s anything worse than an opinion piece, it had to be an opinion piece about LOVE. My least favorite four-letter word. Gah! The yeti in the frozen depths of my heart would like to have a word with you..
Give me fiction anyday, when I can explore various points of views through made-up characters who often have far more interesting thoughts than me. But in the spirit of the writing project, I shall write an opinion piece, after all, haven’t done it in ages:
TEGENCE PONDERS: DOES TRUE LOVE MEAN HAVING TO LOSE YOURSELF?
(and plots Disney Princess Fan Fiction at the same time)
No, I do not agree that true love means having to lose yourself. Yes, I can understand wanting to make a change for the sake of a relationship: you do want to be the best person for the person you love after all. But a line needs to be drawn, a balance needs to be struck.
The only changes that one should make are those that which if ignored, would destroy the relationship. The big bad habits. Like womanizing, or really massive sloppiness, or beheading nuns and putting their habits on mantelpieces as trophies. You get what I mean. And I hardly feel these habits constitute major parts of one’s personality: they do not make ‘you’, and therefore should be cast aside as soon as possible.
Because love, especially ‘true’ love, I always feel, is about understanding and acceptance. It is about getting to know a person, inside and out, and accepting them, flaws and all. Take me as I am, warts and scabs and third nipples and all. No one is perfect: it is our little flaws, our differences, that shape who we are, and we should see the beauty in those little things instead of striving to get rid of them.
To change yourself might also mean losing the person the person fell in love with in the first place. And that would be short-changing both parties.
I think the Bard said it best in the immortal Sonnet 116:
‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.’
On a side note, this topic actually made me remember a comment a friend made while we were both watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It’s the end of the film, after the death of the villain and the heroine’s confession of love. The titular Beast is turning back into a man, complete with trippy music and flashy visuals.
And when the transformation is done, and the Beast becomes Prince Nameless, complete with flowing blond tresses and prettyboy face, looking a lot like a less evil version of Arthas from Warcraft 3, my friend turns to me and says:
“You know, I think he was a lot more handsome as the Beast.”
Which is my point. We, along with Belle from the film, have grown to love the Beast as how he was, with his shaggy mane and fangs and tail and so forth. She had grown to accept him for how he looked, and now convenient magical intervention means all that self-discovery, all that ‘love despite physical appearances’ is wasted. Fandom Secrets put it best: ‘I feel sorry for Belle. She didn’t get the man she fell in love with.’ In some ways, I felt the change back to human might actually strain the relationship.
I actually wanted to explore this idea once: it was supposed to be a story called For Whom the Belle Tolls. (Yes. Cheesy title. Sorry.) It was supposed to examine how Belle felt, missing the old savage beast.
Also included were subplots about the other subjects of the castle adapting back to human life after being bewitched as living household objects for years, which is a part of the movie I always found fascinating. Cogsworth would have gone insane: honestly, imagine living as a clock, being forever conscious of the passage of time, registering every second after every second as it passes by, every second of the day, and then losing all of that overnight. I think the tick-tock in his head would never go away.
One day I will write that story. I did attempt it, but I somehow couldn’t properly express Belle’s frustration at Beast’s change properly. I think I do not have enough proper real life experiences to properly convey these ideas.
And references to bestiality kept inviting themselves to the PARTY! Geesh, seriously, pretty girl and big savage beast thing, right? Damnit, my stories are disturbing enough without these unfortunate implications! Sometimes I worry about myself.
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Thursday, 17 December 2009
IRREPLACEABLE
Yes, I’m back! (I say that on this blog so much it should be my tagline though.)
Apologies for being away. Was mostly busy with NanoWriMo in November (which I passed, yay go me!). Am now stuck with 50.000 words of manuscript crying loudly to be edited. My God, the nonsense I wrote. The ordeal also left me with a bit of a creative burnout, so I have not written anytime in a while. Which is why I decided to start on November’s topic so late.
I will continue with ‘Lost’ part 2 another time. I have an unfinished draft on my hard drive, but I do not feel like writing it now. For now, please do with this month’s attempt. The story started small, but eventually developed into a monster, and so I am only writing the plot outline. This seems to be my weakness as a writer: I cannot think small. Which leads to over-complication. My short stories morph into full-length novels, and then into epic multi-part fantasy sagas.
MEN OF METAL
(please excuse all the historical liberties I have taken)
HISTORY
This takes place in an alternate 20th century in an alternate Earth much like ours. History is about to be made: Christian Barnaard is about to carry out the world’s first heart transplant. The ramifications of this momentous occasion are tremendous: imagine the developments in the field of medicine! Men might finally be able to look death in the eye and laugh: no longer would they be victims of their own mortality.
However, something goes wrong. The heart that was supposed to be transplanted goes missing, and in horror, Barnaard goes out to find it. In his absence, however, his apprentice, Jeffrey Briggs, having had a few too many drinks at the pub, decides to play the fool. Donning the uniform of a surgeon, he decides to carry out the operation himself. In the absence of a human heart, however, he decides to try the next best thing.
The engine of a combine harvester, which he finds in a garage.
The surgeons protest this madness, but Briggs goes ahead with his mad idea. All watch in horror, unable to stop him, as he connects, veins to pistons, arteries to valves, in a mad mockery of engineering and medicine that leaves the operating theater awash with blood. The screams of the patient echo through the tiny town, filling all with horror.
Barnaard returns, to a shocking discovery: against all odds, the operation succeeds! Patient Louis Washansky is perfectly fine. Indeed, he is more than fine. The engine proves more adept at pumping blood to his system than a mere heart, and Washansky finds himself stronger and more energized than he ever was. Indeed, he is able to do his job as a labourer far more effectively, even doing the work of ten men at one point. The effort proves too much for his system though: eventually, Washansky rips a tendon in his arm from the over-work. But Briggs, enamored by his success, replaces it with themetal arm of a crane, and soon Washansky becomes an ultimate worker.
These events herald the dawning of a new age: The Cyborg Age. Scientists all around the world, inspired, begin replacing human parts with metal parts as much as they can. Lungs are replaced with pneumatic bellows. Brains replaced with supercomputers. Limbs replaced with metal prosthetics. Eyes replaced with fiber optical lens and ears with sensitive digital receivers.
The only body part they are unable to replace is a strange, previously unnoticed gland located nearby the liver: any attempt to remove that results in the death of the patient. Scientists name it the ‘Centiris gland’ (after the doctor who discovered it, Dr. Martin Centiris, Geneva Institute of Mecha-Human Development) while the common folk, as well as the religious, know it as the ‘soul-cage’.
Fast forward a thousand years, and the Earth is now an iron utopia. Humankind is unrecognizable, with most people more metal than flesh. The production of mecha-biological energy generators, together with new sources of renewable energy, result in humanity losing their dependence on food and water for sustenance, while synthetic gas turbines, combined with intelligent filtering systems, allow for lungs to subsist fine without breathable air.
As food, water and air are no longer necessary for survival, the surface of Earth now resembles a bleak wasteland, with machines and factories, as well as pleasure facilities built almost everywhere there is space. The production of mecha-developments in medicine have also made humankind immortal: any body part that breaks down can easily be replaced. This removes the human urge to reproduce, resulting in human population being stagnant for the past few decades. Globalization has also reared its ugly head, with the whole of earth being one huge empire divided into seven major precincts: New Paris, New Johannesburg, Celrio de Janeiro, New Canterbourne (also known as Newer Orleans), New Tokyo, New Antarctica, and The Soviet Collective.
Humankind is happy with all this, however. Well, as happy as they can be with simulated emotions from the revolutionary emotional implants, which allow them to feel various feelings at various intensities whenever time they choose.
The only reminders as to how Earth looked when it was still organic are contained within Heritage Sites, sanctuaries containing the last trees on earth. These educational centres, accessible with a Pass and a small entrance fee, contain old relics from a bygone, backward age.
It is in a Sanctuary in New Paris one day that worker James Melroy discovers a shocking discovery. Contained within an ancient cave, frozen in a suspended animation cell, is a young teenage girl. Who appears to be completely flesh, something practically unheard of!
He awakens the girl, who despite being intelligent, has no idea of the events of the last few centuries. Her name, she tells him, is Dawn, and she has no idea of how she got into the cell. A phrase, however, keeps playing in her head: ‘What can Sink the Ironclad?”
Melroy decides to take Dawn to his superiors, who ask that they take her to the Chief Laboratory in the capital city of Hortras for examination, as well as letting her undergo mechanization. Melroy and Dawn thus embark on an epic cross-country trip across New Earth, but things become complicated when it is revealed they are being pursued by many groups, including:
THE KGB
Motto: All is the Collective, and the Collective is All!
News travels fast in New Earth, and no surprise: its hard not to stay updated when you have your ears replaced with satellite receivers and your cerebellums with decrypting devices. News of the mysterious flesh-girl travels all over the world, even reaching the ‘ears’ of The Premier, mayor of the Soviet Collective. He becomes fascinated with the girl, and becomes paranoid: what if this girl is some kind of bio-engineering development which they plan to use against The Collective? His paranoia is fueled by his a secret resentment for the City of New Paris (whose GDP has been much higher than his for ten decades running). Therefore, he decides to intercept the girl, and take her to his Laboratories, where his scientists can examine her to engineer developments for his people, and take her out of the hands of the foul perfume-wafters of New Paris. To do so, he engages the aid of Boris Bkevko, his sadistic machine-gun- handed Chief of the KGB, and his daughter, the seductive yet mentally unstable agent Natalya.
THE NEW VATICAN
Motto: And the Word was made Flesh.
Despite the major religions almost dying out in the Cyborg Age, many still cling on to old beliefs. Foremost among these struggling cults is the New Vatican, led by Eternal Pope Bartholomew I, carrying on the ancient beliefs passed on Peter in the days before history. New Vaticanists tend to have a love-hate relationship with mechanization, many of them adopting as little enhancement as they can, often only the crucial ones necessary for survival. They hold flesh as sacred: after all, was not the Word made flesh thousands of centuries ago? And did it not say He would return to them someday?
News of a person of pure flesh appearing was therefore first met with much rejoicing. Who could this be but Christ Himself, returned to them in glory? But rejoicing turned to confusion when it was revealed this creature was female, and worse, did not even seem to have heard of the Church of the New Vatican. Panic arose, and an emergency council was summoned, in an event that would forever be known as the Council of New Vatican 2.
During the Council, Bishop Ogawa spoke eloquently: so what if the Second Coming is a girl? He said. Did that deny the divine essence within her? God worked in miraculous ways beyond understanding, after all. When He first came, He was born in a stable, to poverty, and not the conquering, glorious hero everyone expected after all. And look what happened to the ones who chose to reject Him. Who are we to reject a good merely because it does not conform to what we expect it? And so what if She did not seem to know of the Mission of the New Vatican? Christ only started His mission at thirty after all, and here she was, much younger than that. In time, all things would be well. Let us let the plan of Almighty work out. For it is beyond our mortal understanding.
And there were cheers at Ogawa’s speech, and he was appointed Special Monsignor of the Second Coming. His task, so bestowed upon him by the Eternal Pope himself, was simple: secure the Second Coming as soon as possible, and bring her back to the New Vatican. For the world awaits Her miracles.
THE BRIGGAND SCEPTER
Motto: The spirit is willing and the flesh is weak.
Or: Deus confirmis ex Machina (God really is in the Machine)
While most of the old religions died off in the Cyborg Age, new beliefs arose to take their place. Most prominent among them were the Briggands, a rather complicated cult, which devoted itself to the worship of Raymond Briggs, who they believed ascended to a sort of godhood after that first successful heart operation millennia ago.
Indeed, the first sentence of their holy book, the Manual, is: ‘In the beginning was Briggs, and he removed from man the image of God’. (Gears 1 :1)
While the Briggands are a moderate cult, believing mostly in good behavior and a duty to help others, more radical versions of the faith exist, most dangerous among them being The Briggand Scepter, a militant group believing flesh is obsolete, and an abomination. Believers tend to be mechanized as much as possible, some even resembling the fictional robots of old, their only organic parts being their soul glands, which they would rip off if they could.
So disgusted they are at the notion of flesh, that the news of a living breathing girl made completely out of flesh revolts them all the way to their metal hearts. A Briggand decree is launched: blessings and a life of fame and honour shall be appointed to the disciple who manages to capture this beast, a foul affront to the life they lead, and destroy it.
THE MECHA DE SADE
Motto: The only way is to experiment.
Alternative: Lets have fun!
Reproduction may have come to a standstill after the Cyborg Age, but that didn’t mean sex ended as well. Oh no. If anything, the advent of prosthetic enhancements and pleasure chips only meant the coming of a new sexual revolution, with all manner of things previously viewed as impossible or disgusting now possible.
One of the champions of the sexual revolution was young Kai Garros, a promising neurologist and mecha-surgeon. A brilliant student, he topped the class at university and pioneered many bio-enhancements, among them being the celebrated gamma-ray diffuser. Many expected him to join one of the top Laboratories, or even the Fusion Chambers at New Antartica: with such a brilliant mind, he could build anything!
Imagine everyone’s surprise when young Garros proved to be quite a pervert, and devoted his talent to the sex industry instead, which he proved to have quite a fondness for. Adopting the moniker ‘Mecha de Sade’ he opened revolutionary pleasure domes, catering to every kink possible, offering new and incredible ways to his patrons to fulfill their lusts and gratify themselves.
One of the most common kinks on New Earth, however, is flesh-and-mech (or F&M), which are sexual acts carried out on creatures, or even pounds of flesh. Which, in this mech-biological age, is hard to come by. Special flesh-sensations have to be programmed into his pleasure chips, a special menagerie of the few remaining flesh-beasts on earth has to be maintained, and his whores find themselves having to strap on artificial flesh packets, just to satisfy his randy guests.
Imagine the Mecha De Sade’s delight when he heard of Dawn, the last remaining flesh-girl on earth. Oh, how much his customers would pay for a night with her. He knew of many kings and ministers who would give him land and titles, just for a taste of her soft flesh. A master of disguise, as well as poisoning and torture (you’ll be amazed what you can pick up in a brothel) he goes off to kidnap her, accompanied by his ancient and randy man-servant Rafe.
(Author’s note: I actually only put this character in because I find the idea of a scientist who becomes the world’s biggest pervert amusing. And I like the name Mecha de Sade! I think its awesome!
I also intend to have him defeated in an ironic manner, after he discovers, too late, that a flesh induced orgasm is the only thing capable of over-riding the programming of his biological computer systems in his heart.)
CHILDREN OF EVE
Motto: Mankind must prevail.
Not all of humanity volunteered willingly for the Cyborg Age.
Modern day Luddites, the Children of Eve are a colony of people, who in the past, broke away from the ever mechanized-civilization, deciding that they weren’t comfortable with becoming more machine than man. Facing persecution and ridicule, they became more and more secret over the years, hding themselves in shelters, and later, distant parts of Sanctuaries, until they passed into legend and myth.
But that did not mean the Children of Eve were inactive. Far from it. They work tirelessly, working on bringing down the Machine Empire, waiting patiently for the day when they can reclaim the earth for themselves again. Some of them work as undercover terrorists: donning metal suits to disguise themselves, they lurk among the citizens of the Empire, doing their best to cause havoc as much as possible.
Agent Victor Brealis is one of these agents. On a mission one day, posing as a nuclear technician for sabotage, he comes across Melroy, and Dawn, who he is amazed and attracted to. He vows to rescue Dawn, delivering her from the process of mechanization, and bring her back to New Eden, the biggest holdout for the Children of Eve, where she may join their civilization as she rightfully should. There is nothing for her in this dark Machine Empire, where even the air is foul, after all.
Dawn is first attracted to his offer, and likes Victor, but later is forced to reassess her priorities. For she learns that on New Eden, women have little rights. Indeed, they are mostly viewed as breeding machines, kept in special chambers to ensure they keep on reproducing to ensure the survival of the species, which is held as the highest goal. Machines can live forever, after all, but humans take a long time to make and last for a short time. Dawn is repulsed by this fate: she has no desire to be a mere sex machine.
A conflict also arises when she discovers that Victor is in charge of a sinister plan, the Great Bug, which will release a computer virus into the heart of the city, effectively infecting all mechanized humanity, leaving them to a gruesome death. For this would mean the death of many of her friends, especially Melroy, who she has grown very attached to…
(Author’s note: The original ending of the story was conventional, in that Dawn left to live happily with the Children OF Eve. However, I realized it was more interesting to have it turn out this way. In a sense, this whole story is a reversal of the Matrix: what if the revolution of the machines turned out to be a good thing, and the humans who resisted it were evil?)
OTHER NOTES
Melroy and Dawn will also come across many allies in their quest to get to the City’s Laboratory. I sadly have not thought about them as much as the antagonists of the story, but they include:
-A robot dog with a tongue that can be converted into a laser
-A war veteran from New Tokyo who is very much like a mechanized samurai
-A soldier also on the way to the Laboratory, whose emotional receptors have short-circuited, causing him to feel the weirdest things the worst times (hey, story needs some comic relief!)
¬-a mechanic, and potential love interest for Melroy perhaps, who has flamethrowers installed in her arms (why? Because its cool!)
Also, have not completely figured out who Dawn is, and the true meaning of the cryptic phrase in her head. For now, the idea is she was actually an experiment by Dr Barnaard, who was horrified at the rapid advancements in mechanization. He thus decided to preserve human genetic material, in case humanity was lost completely, and placed some gentic material in a statis cell to act as a time capsule. The mechanization was to activate, and cloning techniques carried out on the genetic material to turn it into a person if certain factors were achieved. What these factors are, haven’t thought yet, but intend to have it match up with one of the terrorist schemes of the Children of Eve. It would be a nice irony: the acts of the last humans on earth against machines would be deemed to them losing their humanity.
The only problem with this idea is that it does not explain how Dawn is able to be intelligent and talk. I could say it was some advanced technology, but that might defeat the whole idea of Dawn being a ‘natural, organic’ person. I suppose I could invent some weird science up: engineered brain cells or intelligence hormones or some nonsense like that.
Also, still not sure how the story ends: I just know Dawn does not join the Children of Eve, and does not become a robot. As of now, I like the idea she actually accepts her role as the Second Coming of the New Vatican, although what the church is going to say when they find she cannot perform miracles is beyond me. I also have the plot idea that all her actions become over-exaggerated and misconstrued as miracles when viewed by the over-zealous New Vatican agents. But that might be hard to write, and become stupid after a while.
Finally, should I make Dawn and Melroy fall in love? Is there a term for machine-human love? Mechanistery? Damn it, the things I have to think about.
Apologies for being away. Was mostly busy with NanoWriMo in November (which I passed, yay go me!). Am now stuck with 50.000 words of manuscript crying loudly to be edited. My God, the nonsense I wrote. The ordeal also left me with a bit of a creative burnout, so I have not written anytime in a while. Which is why I decided to start on November’s topic so late.
I will continue with ‘Lost’ part 2 another time. I have an unfinished draft on my hard drive, but I do not feel like writing it now. For now, please do with this month’s attempt. The story started small, but eventually developed into a monster, and so I am only writing the plot outline. This seems to be my weakness as a writer: I cannot think small. Which leads to over-complication. My short stories morph into full-length novels, and then into epic multi-part fantasy sagas.
MEN OF METAL
(please excuse all the historical liberties I have taken)
HISTORY
This takes place in an alternate 20th century in an alternate Earth much like ours. History is about to be made: Christian Barnaard is about to carry out the world’s first heart transplant. The ramifications of this momentous occasion are tremendous: imagine the developments in the field of medicine! Men might finally be able to look death in the eye and laugh: no longer would they be victims of their own mortality.
However, something goes wrong. The heart that was supposed to be transplanted goes missing, and in horror, Barnaard goes out to find it. In his absence, however, his apprentice, Jeffrey Briggs, having had a few too many drinks at the pub, decides to play the fool. Donning the uniform of a surgeon, he decides to carry out the operation himself. In the absence of a human heart, however, he decides to try the next best thing.
The engine of a combine harvester, which he finds in a garage.
The surgeons protest this madness, but Briggs goes ahead with his mad idea. All watch in horror, unable to stop him, as he connects, veins to pistons, arteries to valves, in a mad mockery of engineering and medicine that leaves the operating theater awash with blood. The screams of the patient echo through the tiny town, filling all with horror.
Barnaard returns, to a shocking discovery: against all odds, the operation succeeds! Patient Louis Washansky is perfectly fine. Indeed, he is more than fine. The engine proves more adept at pumping blood to his system than a mere heart, and Washansky finds himself stronger and more energized than he ever was. Indeed, he is able to do his job as a labourer far more effectively, even doing the work of ten men at one point. The effort proves too much for his system though: eventually, Washansky rips a tendon in his arm from the over-work. But Briggs, enamored by his success, replaces it with themetal arm of a crane, and soon Washansky becomes an ultimate worker.
These events herald the dawning of a new age: The Cyborg Age. Scientists all around the world, inspired, begin replacing human parts with metal parts as much as they can. Lungs are replaced with pneumatic bellows. Brains replaced with supercomputers. Limbs replaced with metal prosthetics. Eyes replaced with fiber optical lens and ears with sensitive digital receivers.
The only body part they are unable to replace is a strange, previously unnoticed gland located nearby the liver: any attempt to remove that results in the death of the patient. Scientists name it the ‘Centiris gland’ (after the doctor who discovered it, Dr. Martin Centiris, Geneva Institute of Mecha-Human Development) while the common folk, as well as the religious, know it as the ‘soul-cage’.
Fast forward a thousand years, and the Earth is now an iron utopia. Humankind is unrecognizable, with most people more metal than flesh. The production of mecha-biological energy generators, together with new sources of renewable energy, result in humanity losing their dependence on food and water for sustenance, while synthetic gas turbines, combined with intelligent filtering systems, allow for lungs to subsist fine without breathable air.
As food, water and air are no longer necessary for survival, the surface of Earth now resembles a bleak wasteland, with machines and factories, as well as pleasure facilities built almost everywhere there is space. The production of mecha-developments in medicine have also made humankind immortal: any body part that breaks down can easily be replaced. This removes the human urge to reproduce, resulting in human population being stagnant for the past few decades. Globalization has also reared its ugly head, with the whole of earth being one huge empire divided into seven major precincts: New Paris, New Johannesburg, Celrio de Janeiro, New Canterbourne (also known as Newer Orleans), New Tokyo, New Antarctica, and The Soviet Collective.
Humankind is happy with all this, however. Well, as happy as they can be with simulated emotions from the revolutionary emotional implants, which allow them to feel various feelings at various intensities whenever time they choose.
The only reminders as to how Earth looked when it was still organic are contained within Heritage Sites, sanctuaries containing the last trees on earth. These educational centres, accessible with a Pass and a small entrance fee, contain old relics from a bygone, backward age.
It is in a Sanctuary in New Paris one day that worker James Melroy discovers a shocking discovery. Contained within an ancient cave, frozen in a suspended animation cell, is a young teenage girl. Who appears to be completely flesh, something practically unheard of!
He awakens the girl, who despite being intelligent, has no idea of the events of the last few centuries. Her name, she tells him, is Dawn, and she has no idea of how she got into the cell. A phrase, however, keeps playing in her head: ‘What can Sink the Ironclad?”
Melroy decides to take Dawn to his superiors, who ask that they take her to the Chief Laboratory in the capital city of Hortras for examination, as well as letting her undergo mechanization. Melroy and Dawn thus embark on an epic cross-country trip across New Earth, but things become complicated when it is revealed they are being pursued by many groups, including:
THE KGB
Motto: All is the Collective, and the Collective is All!
News travels fast in New Earth, and no surprise: its hard not to stay updated when you have your ears replaced with satellite receivers and your cerebellums with decrypting devices. News of the mysterious flesh-girl travels all over the world, even reaching the ‘ears’ of The Premier, mayor of the Soviet Collective. He becomes fascinated with the girl, and becomes paranoid: what if this girl is some kind of bio-engineering development which they plan to use against The Collective? His paranoia is fueled by his a secret resentment for the City of New Paris (whose GDP has been much higher than his for ten decades running). Therefore, he decides to intercept the girl, and take her to his Laboratories, where his scientists can examine her to engineer developments for his people, and take her out of the hands of the foul perfume-wafters of New Paris. To do so, he engages the aid of Boris Bkevko, his sadistic machine-gun- handed Chief of the KGB, and his daughter, the seductive yet mentally unstable agent Natalya.
THE NEW VATICAN
Motto: And the Word was made Flesh.
Despite the major religions almost dying out in the Cyborg Age, many still cling on to old beliefs. Foremost among these struggling cults is the New Vatican, led by Eternal Pope Bartholomew I, carrying on the ancient beliefs passed on Peter in the days before history. New Vaticanists tend to have a love-hate relationship with mechanization, many of them adopting as little enhancement as they can, often only the crucial ones necessary for survival. They hold flesh as sacred: after all, was not the Word made flesh thousands of centuries ago? And did it not say He would return to them someday?
News of a person of pure flesh appearing was therefore first met with much rejoicing. Who could this be but Christ Himself, returned to them in glory? But rejoicing turned to confusion when it was revealed this creature was female, and worse, did not even seem to have heard of the Church of the New Vatican. Panic arose, and an emergency council was summoned, in an event that would forever be known as the Council of New Vatican 2.
During the Council, Bishop Ogawa spoke eloquently: so what if the Second Coming is a girl? He said. Did that deny the divine essence within her? God worked in miraculous ways beyond understanding, after all. When He first came, He was born in a stable, to poverty, and not the conquering, glorious hero everyone expected after all. And look what happened to the ones who chose to reject Him. Who are we to reject a good merely because it does not conform to what we expect it? And so what if She did not seem to know of the Mission of the New Vatican? Christ only started His mission at thirty after all, and here she was, much younger than that. In time, all things would be well. Let us let the plan of Almighty work out. For it is beyond our mortal understanding.
And there were cheers at Ogawa’s speech, and he was appointed Special Monsignor of the Second Coming. His task, so bestowed upon him by the Eternal Pope himself, was simple: secure the Second Coming as soon as possible, and bring her back to the New Vatican. For the world awaits Her miracles.
THE BRIGGAND SCEPTER
Motto: The spirit is willing and the flesh is weak.
Or: Deus confirmis ex Machina (God really is in the Machine)
While most of the old religions died off in the Cyborg Age, new beliefs arose to take their place. Most prominent among them were the Briggands, a rather complicated cult, which devoted itself to the worship of Raymond Briggs, who they believed ascended to a sort of godhood after that first successful heart operation millennia ago.
Indeed, the first sentence of their holy book, the Manual, is: ‘In the beginning was Briggs, and he removed from man the image of God’. (Gears 1 :1)
While the Briggands are a moderate cult, believing mostly in good behavior and a duty to help others, more radical versions of the faith exist, most dangerous among them being The Briggand Scepter, a militant group believing flesh is obsolete, and an abomination. Believers tend to be mechanized as much as possible, some even resembling the fictional robots of old, their only organic parts being their soul glands, which they would rip off if they could.
So disgusted they are at the notion of flesh, that the news of a living breathing girl made completely out of flesh revolts them all the way to their metal hearts. A Briggand decree is launched: blessings and a life of fame and honour shall be appointed to the disciple who manages to capture this beast, a foul affront to the life they lead, and destroy it.
THE MECHA DE SADE
Motto: The only way is to experiment.
Alternative: Lets have fun!
Reproduction may have come to a standstill after the Cyborg Age, but that didn’t mean sex ended as well. Oh no. If anything, the advent of prosthetic enhancements and pleasure chips only meant the coming of a new sexual revolution, with all manner of things previously viewed as impossible or disgusting now possible.
One of the champions of the sexual revolution was young Kai Garros, a promising neurologist and mecha-surgeon. A brilliant student, he topped the class at university and pioneered many bio-enhancements, among them being the celebrated gamma-ray diffuser. Many expected him to join one of the top Laboratories, or even the Fusion Chambers at New Antartica: with such a brilliant mind, he could build anything!
Imagine everyone’s surprise when young Garros proved to be quite a pervert, and devoted his talent to the sex industry instead, which he proved to have quite a fondness for. Adopting the moniker ‘Mecha de Sade’ he opened revolutionary pleasure domes, catering to every kink possible, offering new and incredible ways to his patrons to fulfill their lusts and gratify themselves.
One of the most common kinks on New Earth, however, is flesh-and-mech (or F&M), which are sexual acts carried out on creatures, or even pounds of flesh. Which, in this mech-biological age, is hard to come by. Special flesh-sensations have to be programmed into his pleasure chips, a special menagerie of the few remaining flesh-beasts on earth has to be maintained, and his whores find themselves having to strap on artificial flesh packets, just to satisfy his randy guests.
Imagine the Mecha De Sade’s delight when he heard of Dawn, the last remaining flesh-girl on earth. Oh, how much his customers would pay for a night with her. He knew of many kings and ministers who would give him land and titles, just for a taste of her soft flesh. A master of disguise, as well as poisoning and torture (you’ll be amazed what you can pick up in a brothel) he goes off to kidnap her, accompanied by his ancient and randy man-servant Rafe.
(Author’s note: I actually only put this character in because I find the idea of a scientist who becomes the world’s biggest pervert amusing. And I like the name Mecha de Sade! I think its awesome!
I also intend to have him defeated in an ironic manner, after he discovers, too late, that a flesh induced orgasm is the only thing capable of over-riding the programming of his biological computer systems in his heart.)
CHILDREN OF EVE
Motto: Mankind must prevail.
Not all of humanity volunteered willingly for the Cyborg Age.
Modern day Luddites, the Children of Eve are a colony of people, who in the past, broke away from the ever mechanized-civilization, deciding that they weren’t comfortable with becoming more machine than man. Facing persecution and ridicule, they became more and more secret over the years, hding themselves in shelters, and later, distant parts of Sanctuaries, until they passed into legend and myth.
But that did not mean the Children of Eve were inactive. Far from it. They work tirelessly, working on bringing down the Machine Empire, waiting patiently for the day when they can reclaim the earth for themselves again. Some of them work as undercover terrorists: donning metal suits to disguise themselves, they lurk among the citizens of the Empire, doing their best to cause havoc as much as possible.
Agent Victor Brealis is one of these agents. On a mission one day, posing as a nuclear technician for sabotage, he comes across Melroy, and Dawn, who he is amazed and attracted to. He vows to rescue Dawn, delivering her from the process of mechanization, and bring her back to New Eden, the biggest holdout for the Children of Eve, where she may join their civilization as she rightfully should. There is nothing for her in this dark Machine Empire, where even the air is foul, after all.
Dawn is first attracted to his offer, and likes Victor, but later is forced to reassess her priorities. For she learns that on New Eden, women have little rights. Indeed, they are mostly viewed as breeding machines, kept in special chambers to ensure they keep on reproducing to ensure the survival of the species, which is held as the highest goal. Machines can live forever, after all, but humans take a long time to make and last for a short time. Dawn is repulsed by this fate: she has no desire to be a mere sex machine.
A conflict also arises when she discovers that Victor is in charge of a sinister plan, the Great Bug, which will release a computer virus into the heart of the city, effectively infecting all mechanized humanity, leaving them to a gruesome death. For this would mean the death of many of her friends, especially Melroy, who she has grown very attached to…
(Author’s note: The original ending of the story was conventional, in that Dawn left to live happily with the Children OF Eve. However, I realized it was more interesting to have it turn out this way. In a sense, this whole story is a reversal of the Matrix: what if the revolution of the machines turned out to be a good thing, and the humans who resisted it were evil?)
OTHER NOTES
Melroy and Dawn will also come across many allies in their quest to get to the City’s Laboratory. I sadly have not thought about them as much as the antagonists of the story, but they include:
-A robot dog with a tongue that can be converted into a laser
-A war veteran from New Tokyo who is very much like a mechanized samurai
-A soldier also on the way to the Laboratory, whose emotional receptors have short-circuited, causing him to feel the weirdest things the worst times (hey, story needs some comic relief!)
¬-a mechanic, and potential love interest for Melroy perhaps, who has flamethrowers installed in her arms (why? Because its cool!)
Also, have not completely figured out who Dawn is, and the true meaning of the cryptic phrase in her head. For now, the idea is she was actually an experiment by Dr Barnaard, who was horrified at the rapid advancements in mechanization. He thus decided to preserve human genetic material, in case humanity was lost completely, and placed some gentic material in a statis cell to act as a time capsule. The mechanization was to activate, and cloning techniques carried out on the genetic material to turn it into a person if certain factors were achieved. What these factors are, haven’t thought yet, but intend to have it match up with one of the terrorist schemes of the Children of Eve. It would be a nice irony: the acts of the last humans on earth against machines would be deemed to them losing their humanity.
The only problem with this idea is that it does not explain how Dawn is able to be intelligent and talk. I could say it was some advanced technology, but that might defeat the whole idea of Dawn being a ‘natural, organic’ person. I suppose I could invent some weird science up: engineered brain cells or intelligence hormones or some nonsense like that.
Also, still not sure how the story ends: I just know Dawn does not join the Children of Eve, and does not become a robot. As of now, I like the idea she actually accepts her role as the Second Coming of the New Vatican, although what the church is going to say when they find she cannot perform miracles is beyond me. I also have the plot idea that all her actions become over-exaggerated and misconstrued as miracles when viewed by the over-zealous New Vatican agents. But that might be hard to write, and become stupid after a while.
Finally, should I make Dawn and Melroy fall in love? Is there a term for machine-human love? Mechanistery? Damn it, the things I have to think about.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
LOST (part ONE)
Have recently been so busy with new job that it has kinda sucked away my creative juices. Thank goodness for the weekends, where I can sneak in some writing. How I’m going to balance next month and Nanowrimo at the same time, I have no idea.
This month’s freewriting is slightly inspired by The Wizard of Oz, and Journey to the West.
THE CITY OF LOST THINGS (part ONE)
Chapter One: Jacob and Finella
Once, in a land far far away, in a time not so long ago, there lived a miller who lost the love of his life.
He had not meant to do so. Why, he loved her with all his being, with every breath of his soul. His beloved was the very core of his being, the sun of his mornings, and the stars of his dusk.
She was a sweet young maiden, with hair the color of gold, and a heart to match. Jacob had thought their love would last forever. That it would persist, through the centuries, even when all the stars had been extinguished. Kingdoms would fall, and men would be one day be nothing more but fairytales, but Jacob and Finella would last forever. For love, after all, was the very essence of God, and God was eternal.
Alas, however, this was not meant to be. For there came a day when a group of brigands from the south decided to come upon Jacob’s mill when he had gone to the city. Harsh, heartless men they were; as hairy as wolves, with teeth as yellow as sunflowers, bearing scimitars as curved and wicked as serpents. They rode upon savage horses, eager to plunder; hungry to raze and destroy.
Jacob had been stunned when he had returned from the city to find his mill on fire, and his harvest stolen. He had been outraged to see how they had slaughtered his hounds, and butchered his prize cattle. And he had fallen to his knees and wept when he saw what they did to his beloved. Oh how his poor wife had suffered! She was dead, a victim of the cruelty of the foul brigands,
And Jacob the miller cursed the brigands with every breath he had. He cursed the village militia, who had been drunk at the tavern when these atrocities had happened. He cursed the lands of the South, with their barbarian ways and their codes of slaughter. But mostly he cursed himself, for not being there to protect his beloved from such hideous anguish.
Jacob fell into a deep funk. He refused to eat, or to bathe, and spent his days in his chamber, wailing and lamenting his fate. Oh, how he missed his beloved! His longing for her was like a dark cancer that ate away at his soul, and his guilt like a plague that wasted him to nothingness. Finella! Her memory was like a jagged sword impaled into his heart.
But one night, Jacob the miller had a dream.
An old man came to him. He was ancient as the mountains, with a long beard as white as the feathers of doves. There was a kindliness to him, but also an air of regality, an aura of awe that would have caused even the kings of old to fall prostate before him, had they been in his presence.
The old man told him to stop his weeping. Jacob’s lamentations had gone on for too long, he said. And Jacob replied that he could not help it. He missed his wife far too much.
And the old man told him that if that were so, it was best he venture out and find her. In a valley far, far from here, past the gates of the Twin Cities, through the meadows of Eastdrake, and beyond the caverns of the Wood Demons, stood an entrance to the City of Lost Things. It was an enchanted city, built by a race of mystic beings whose names had been forgotten to man, which contained every single thing that had been lost, over the ages.
And Jacob’s lost love would certainly be in there as well.
The dream ended after that. Jacob woke with a great disturbance in his heart. For the dream had seen so vivid, so real, that it was no mere trick of the mind. It had been a vision..no! More than that, a divine message, which he would be cursed forever if he did follow.
So Jacob sold whatever was left of his possessions. His land was bought over by a corrupt tinker, whose greedy ways and sly tongue would one day cause him to fall under a curse of the Fairy Queen. But that is another story, for another day.
And Jacob the miller bought a sturdy horse, bid goodbye to his village, and set out to find the City of Lost Things.
Chapter 2: The Baron’s Wand
And Jacob rode for miles and miles, till he reached the Twin Cities. It was a busy time to be there, for the Festival of the Snake Maiden had just begun. Thousands and thousands of merchants, from every corner and city of the world, had come to the famed Twin City souks, eager to peddle their wares. Many were also looking forward to seeing the Cities’s fabled obsidian spires, as well as visit the great Ossuary of Veshtal.
Jacob came across many of these merchants, but of all the dozens of people he asked, none of them knew of the City of Lost Things. Yet Jacob did not give up, and kept on his quest. He was eager to get to the Southern Gate of the Cities, which would lead to the realm of Eastdrake.
One night, Jacob decided to seek his rest in the Baron’s Wand, one of the inns of the city. This inn had been established after the Great War by Baron Darkwind, a cunning and wicked aristocrat.
And in the evening, while he was resting, he was visited by a Harlot, who walked into his room without even knocking his door.
The Harlot was a young girl, barely seventeen years old. She was lovely, her face painted with the finest cosmetic, and she wore a tiny dress that was sewn together from colorful rags.
And she came upon the miller, showering him with kisses. He was lonely, she said: she could sense it. Come now, there was no need to be mournful. She could make him feel so much better. She knew how to give him pleasure beyond his imagination, and an expert in exotic arts and techniques that men would pay fortunes to experience.
But Jacob rebuffed her advances. No, he told her. For though she was lovely, there was another he was keeping his love for. And he told her of his beloved Finella, and his quest for the City of Lost Things.
And the Harlot found herself touched by his tale. None of the men who had stayed in this room had ever been so faithful, even when their wives had still been alive. Rather, those with wives were often glad to see her, seeing her as a welcome relief from the nagging tongues and wrinkled faces of their spouses.
She found herself opening up to him: she revealed how she was actually planning to slit his throat while he was sleeping, when his guard was down, and take his goods. It was a scheme that she and the Baron had been doing for months. But now, after hearing his tale, she had no more desire to do so.
The Harlot told Jacob her story. How once, she had been living in a village in Sylef with her parents and her family, until the Baron’s men had raided it during the Great Wars. They had killed all she knew, and then sold her as a Harlot, where she was made to do terrible and wretched things to men everyday, in the name of love. She had even given birth to a daughter once, through one of the guests here, but the Baron had made her cast it down a well, not willing to feed another mouth. She wanted nothing more than to be free of this dreadful life, and live like others her age, carefree and happy, but alas, she could not.
“I have lost my Innocence,” the Harlot said. “And there is no hope for me.”
And Jacob said: “Come with me to the City of Lost Things, and perhaps you shall find it there.”
The Harlot accepted. And Jacob went to the Baron, and paid him a third of his goods that he would set her free. The Baron accepted: for after all, he was a great lover of money. Little did he know that money would be his downfall, for he would later triple it in a game of baccarat with some eunuchs, who would send assassins after him. But that is another story for another day.
And Jacob and the Harlot set off for the City of Lost Things.
Chapter 3: The Carnival
The road to Eastdrake was long, and complicated. It snaked through a dark wood, filled with wolves and bandits, and it was fortunate that Jacob and the Harlot did not encounter any of them.
After three nights of travel, the pair finally left the wood, and reached a small village, where a local carnival had set up camp. And Jacob remembered that the Harlot, who had been deprived of a childhood, would perhaps enjoy a visit.
And he was right. The Harlot laughed at the antics of the clowns and jugglers, and marveled at the agility of the acrobats. She won a stuffed bear at a knife-throwing booth, and clapped at the exploits of the performing griffins, who had their wings painted gold, and had ribbons tied to their horns.
Now, at this carnival, there was also a freak house, which the pair also visited.
It was the marvelous freak show. A bearded woman. A man with three eyes, who blew crimson smoke from his mouth and his ears. A man covered with tattoos, depictions of angels smiting the black demons of the seventeen hells. A woman who danced with snakes. And a feral wolf-boy, with jagged teeth and hair all over his back, naked save a loincloth.
Locked up in a great cage by the exit was a Cavalier, holding a rusty rifle attached with a bayonet. He was an old man, his hair and beard a dirty brown, and was dressed in full military regalia, that was now faded and torn.
The Cavalier shrieked and he gibbered as the pair came up close, and flailed his rifle at them angrily. So infused with rage was he that the bars of his cage shuddered at his shrieks. The pair backed away from him nervously, and this caused the Cavalier to laugh. And oh, what a fit of laughter he had! He fell to his knees, laughing so hard that tears fell all the way down his bushy beard. So gripped was he in mirth that his eyes rolled back until only their whites showed: it was almost as if he were having a fit, or had been possessed by a demon.
A sign next to his cage read: ‘BEWARE! The Mad General of Gazoo!’ A small hound was tied nearby.
Jacob expressed pity for the Cavalier. For his father had been a soldier, and he knew the sacrifices they made in times of war. Soldiers should be honoured, he felt, gifted with medals, or estates; and not made the object of scorn. He wondered what had happened to the Cavalier to reach such an unhappy fate.
The hound next to him heard him, and spoke up. For animals in those days could still speak, for they had not yet lost their Gift of Tongues through the treachery of the Wild Hunters. And indeed, this hound was the descendant of one of the original Wild Hunters, and how he ended up being cast down to earth was a sad and gloomy tale. But that is another story for another day.
You see, said the hound, the Cavalier had once been a great war hero. He loved his men, and enjoyed nothing more than the heat of battle, riding into war to defeat the enemies of the state. But alas! The atrocities he had seen and witnessed had broken his mind. His entire regiment had been one day captured by a horde of hideous barbarians from the south, who wished to know the secrets of the kingdom.
But the Cavalier had refused to talk, and had been tortured beyond imagination. For eleven days, the barbarians inflicted all manner of agonies upon him, but he refused to speak, and the strain had driven him mad. He had been rescued after that, but no one wanted anything to do with him due to his insanity. Penniless and friendless, the Cavalier had wandered the woods for months, screaming at squirrels and making friends with trees, until the hound found him, and brought him to the Carnival. They had no desire to be freaks like this. But what else could they do?
“He had lost his Sanity,” said the hound. “And he is beyond hope.”
And Jacob said: “Come with me to the City of Lost Things, and perhaps you shall find it there.”
So the miller went to the carnival owner, and paid him a third of the money he had, and thus did the Cavalier and his hound join Jacob and the Harlot on their quest.
Chapter 4: The Golden Manor
So for a month, the travelers journeyed through the land of Eastlake, looking for the Mountains of Middorak, in which the caverns of the Wood Demons were. It was not easy, travelling with a mad Cavalier, who screamed and laughed hysterically at odd turns, but Jacob was patient, and did not allow his temper to get the better of him.
It was after many days of riding that the travelers came to the Great Marshes of Eastlake, which were muddy and difficult to traverse. The mud of the marshes reached up to their ankles, and gave out a sickening smell, which repulsed the horses. The horses did not dare cross, and so with a heavy heart, Jacob had to let them go.
So on foot, the travelers crossed the marshes, and it was truly a hellish time. The mud stuck to their clothes, and weighed them down. And lurking in the mud were monstrous leeches, which clung to their flesh and grew fat on their blood. And to make things worse, were the presence of poisonous plants, which it was easy to brush against here, which caused a terrible rash when in contact with skin.
But the travelers persevered, and made their way through the marsh, even the Cavalier, who had to be restrained and carried to ensure he did not wander off to bad parts.
And very soon, the travelers came across an oddity: a great mansion, made completely out of gold, that stood in the middle of the marsh.
So, leaving his friends for a short while, Jacob went to the door of the mansion, and knocked. The door was answered by a old Miser, who wore a jacket of velvet, and breeches of silk.
Jacob asked for refuge and shelter for him and his friends, but the Miser refused. No, he said. They could not stay here, unless they paid the price.
What was the price, Jacob asked. And the Miser replied that it was the hearts of his fellow travelers. They all would be allowed to stay, but in the night, while they all were sleeping, the Miser would come into their rooms with a candle and a knife. He would cut out the hearts of his companions, and eat them, but he would leave Jacob’s heart alone.
It was simple, the Miser replied. What need had he of them? Why was he travelling with a mad old coot and a frail girl? All they would do was slow him down, and delay him from finding his love. It was only reasonable to abandon them. Rid yourself of such parasites, and thus reach the City of Lost Things faster.
But Jacob refused. No, he said. He would not abandon his friends like that. They would find another place to lodge.
The Miser replied that there was no other place to lodge for miles, and if they did not lodge here tonight, would surely perish the night. For that was when the Vampire-Ghasts, lurkers of the marsh, came out, drawn out by the light of the full moon, and woe betide anyone who crossed their paths.
Jacob then said that instead of taking his friends lives, could he not give his own heart instead. For they still had a chance, a hope of finding what they sought, and as for him, even if he died, at least he would be reunited with sweet Finella in heaven.
And the Miser was astounded at this. Fine then, he said, perhaps he would not need to eat their hearts after all. Jacob could still stay if he surrendered all his goods, and all the money he had on him.
Jacob agreed, and the Miser said that was not all: he had to surrender all his future wealth as well. He would have to swear upon the name of God, and take an unbreakable blood oath, that all his future wealth and possessions would go to the Miser. “Do not be a fool,” the Miser said. “Give up your friends hearts instead. For what is life without wealth? Even if you find your love, you will doom her to the life of a pauper. She will hate you, when she is forced to feast on crumbs, and drink rainwater from the gutters. She will curse your name, and wish you had never set forth to find her.”
But Jacob refused. “Love is the greatest treasure on earth,” he said. “More than rubies, more than all the gold of all the kings of history.”
And Jacob the miller cast the remainders of his money of him at the Miser, and drew his knife to recite the Blood Oath. But just before he cut his hand, at the very moment he spoke the name of God, the Miser fell downwards, letting out a piercing scream, and a horde of hideous imps burst out from his mouth.
Around them, the marshes quaked, and the Manor of Gold crumbled; its gold disappearing until all that was left was a simple thatched cottage. And the Miser stood up, and with tears in his eyes, thanked Jacob.
He had been under a curse, he said. In his youth, he loved gold, and thought of nothing else but how to amass it and keep it for himself. So desperate for it was he that he made a pact with a horde of demons: in exchange for his soul, they would give him all the gold he wanted. And so he had lived alone in the marshes for years, amassing all the gold he could, alienating himself from all he loved, and killing passers-by to take their wealth.
And the only one who could break the curse was a man pure of heart, of whom greed was not his master. A man who could shrug off the sweet whispers of avarice, and close his eyes to the beautiful shine of gold. Such a man was difficult to find, and the Miser had spent a decade here in these marshes without coming across such a person.
But Jacob had found him, and now all was well. Although perhaps all was in vain, for after the contract, the Miser was still a hollow shell of a man, unable to laugh, unable to cry or feel any emotion.
“I have lost my Soul,” said the Miser. “And I am beyond hope.”
And Jacob said: “Come with me to the City of Lost Things, and perhaps you shall find it there.”
Thus did the Miser join the travelers, and after a night’s rest in the cottage, set off on their quest.
Chapter 5: The Caverns of the Wood Demons
And thus did the travelers make their way through the marshes, and soon they came upon the Caverns of the Wood Demons.
It was dark upon their arrival. There was little light, for the silver Eye of the Moon never shone down upon this place, as there was little beauty here to see. The travelers snapped off branches from the trees to use as torches, and walked silently through the wood. Even the mad Cavalier was silent: for nothing humbles madness but greater madness, and from the design of the woods, with the twisted forms of the trees, clearly there was some insanity in the mind of the architect of this place.
And indeed, there had been. But that is another story for another time.
Along the way of their travels, they came across the hut of a poor carpenter, who was working by candlelight. He carried huge logs on his back, which he would hollow out and craft into beautiful beds and chairs, and was having difficulty with them.
And the travelers stopped to help him, and the carpenter was pleased for the effort. He offered them his hut for the night, and warned them of the terrible Wood Demons, who would strike at them when they were in bed.
He gave them warnings: “Strike at them at their eyes, or their tails, for those are their weak spots, and they will feel great agony if stabbed there, or beaten with a club. And strike at them not with your weapons: you might as well assault a mighty fortress with broomsticks. Wood demons are beings of the trees, and like trees, they will fall to fire. Your torches shall do more than enlighten, this dark night.”
So the travelers took heed of these words, and did not extinguish their torches to sleep that night, but stayed awake and vigilant, eager to withstand an attack by wood demons.
And how lucky it was that they were prepared, the wood demons came in full force. Oh, what a great multitude they were! There were hairy wood demons, shaggier than mammoths! Feathered wood demons, with iron beaks and piercing eyes! Scaly wood demons, some that crawled on their bellies, others with flickering tongues, some with long tentacles that snapped like whips! Fanged wood demons, yellow-eyed wood demons, wood demons with four or five heads, and crests of purple and silver. All of these, and a thousand kinds more, all of them laughing, snarling, grinning, burping, hissing, eager for sweet human-flesh that night.
But alas for them, as they picked the wrong house to attack. For though Jacob was a pacifist, and spent most of his night in slumber and contemplation, his friends were not to be trifled with.
Such a hard lesson the wood demons learnt as they advanced upon the Harlot. Oh woe to them, for grossly underestimating their foe! Young-girl flesh was the tastiest, thought they, and they expected little of a fight from this slip of a maiden. Alas for them, however, that within the delicate form of the Harlot beat the heart of a tiger. She had just been given her freedom from a life of drudgery, and she would never submit to anyone again, no, not even a horde of demons!
So many a wood demon had been blinded, or had their heart pierced by her torch, which she had sharpened into a great lance. Those that escaped her had to face the wrath of the Cavalier, whose terrible war cries scared even the bravest of the demons. For courage and madness are brethren: they are often mistaken for each other. He ran into battle without fear for his life, attacking with the fury of a drunken berserker. So wild was he with his torch, that many feared he would set himself alight by error. And many a wood demon trembled at the sight of him, charging at them like a tempest, and though they tried to flee, they could not, as his hound seized upon their ankles with his sharp teeth, crippling them in place for the Cavalier to strike.
And those who remained faced the wrath of the Miser, who after years of suffering, hated demon-kind, and lashed at them in vengeance. And the wood-demons found themselves uneasy in his presence. For a man with no soul feels nothing, and this is true for fear as well. Who was this creature, they wondered, who looked at their hideous visages and did not tremble, did not even turn a hair at their gruesome faces which had terrified the bravest of warriors? And why was there a strange taint on his soul, as if he had dealt with greater demons in the past, and had lived to tell the tale?
The poor wood demons were little threat to these three travelers, and their ranks were decimated in great speed. They fought on until sunrise, before deciding to flee, clearing to them the path to the shimmering gate of the City of Lost Things.
TO BE CONTINUED.
This month’s freewriting is slightly inspired by The Wizard of Oz, and Journey to the West.
THE CITY OF LOST THINGS (part ONE)
Chapter One: Jacob and Finella
Once, in a land far far away, in a time not so long ago, there lived a miller who lost the love of his life.
He had not meant to do so. Why, he loved her with all his being, with every breath of his soul. His beloved was the very core of his being, the sun of his mornings, and the stars of his dusk.
She was a sweet young maiden, with hair the color of gold, and a heart to match. Jacob had thought their love would last forever. That it would persist, through the centuries, even when all the stars had been extinguished. Kingdoms would fall, and men would be one day be nothing more but fairytales, but Jacob and Finella would last forever. For love, after all, was the very essence of God, and God was eternal.
Alas, however, this was not meant to be. For there came a day when a group of brigands from the south decided to come upon Jacob’s mill when he had gone to the city. Harsh, heartless men they were; as hairy as wolves, with teeth as yellow as sunflowers, bearing scimitars as curved and wicked as serpents. They rode upon savage horses, eager to plunder; hungry to raze and destroy.
Jacob had been stunned when he had returned from the city to find his mill on fire, and his harvest stolen. He had been outraged to see how they had slaughtered his hounds, and butchered his prize cattle. And he had fallen to his knees and wept when he saw what they did to his beloved. Oh how his poor wife had suffered! She was dead, a victim of the cruelty of the foul brigands,
And Jacob the miller cursed the brigands with every breath he had. He cursed the village militia, who had been drunk at the tavern when these atrocities had happened. He cursed the lands of the South, with their barbarian ways and their codes of slaughter. But mostly he cursed himself, for not being there to protect his beloved from such hideous anguish.
Jacob fell into a deep funk. He refused to eat, or to bathe, and spent his days in his chamber, wailing and lamenting his fate. Oh, how he missed his beloved! His longing for her was like a dark cancer that ate away at his soul, and his guilt like a plague that wasted him to nothingness. Finella! Her memory was like a jagged sword impaled into his heart.
But one night, Jacob the miller had a dream.
An old man came to him. He was ancient as the mountains, with a long beard as white as the feathers of doves. There was a kindliness to him, but also an air of regality, an aura of awe that would have caused even the kings of old to fall prostate before him, had they been in his presence.
The old man told him to stop his weeping. Jacob’s lamentations had gone on for too long, he said. And Jacob replied that he could not help it. He missed his wife far too much.
And the old man told him that if that were so, it was best he venture out and find her. In a valley far, far from here, past the gates of the Twin Cities, through the meadows of Eastdrake, and beyond the caverns of the Wood Demons, stood an entrance to the City of Lost Things. It was an enchanted city, built by a race of mystic beings whose names had been forgotten to man, which contained every single thing that had been lost, over the ages.
And Jacob’s lost love would certainly be in there as well.
The dream ended after that. Jacob woke with a great disturbance in his heart. For the dream had seen so vivid, so real, that it was no mere trick of the mind. It had been a vision..no! More than that, a divine message, which he would be cursed forever if he did follow.
So Jacob sold whatever was left of his possessions. His land was bought over by a corrupt tinker, whose greedy ways and sly tongue would one day cause him to fall under a curse of the Fairy Queen. But that is another story, for another day.
And Jacob the miller bought a sturdy horse, bid goodbye to his village, and set out to find the City of Lost Things.
Chapter 2: The Baron’s Wand
And Jacob rode for miles and miles, till he reached the Twin Cities. It was a busy time to be there, for the Festival of the Snake Maiden had just begun. Thousands and thousands of merchants, from every corner and city of the world, had come to the famed Twin City souks, eager to peddle their wares. Many were also looking forward to seeing the Cities’s fabled obsidian spires, as well as visit the great Ossuary of Veshtal.
Jacob came across many of these merchants, but of all the dozens of people he asked, none of them knew of the City of Lost Things. Yet Jacob did not give up, and kept on his quest. He was eager to get to the Southern Gate of the Cities, which would lead to the realm of Eastdrake.
One night, Jacob decided to seek his rest in the Baron’s Wand, one of the inns of the city. This inn had been established after the Great War by Baron Darkwind, a cunning and wicked aristocrat.
And in the evening, while he was resting, he was visited by a Harlot, who walked into his room without even knocking his door.
The Harlot was a young girl, barely seventeen years old. She was lovely, her face painted with the finest cosmetic, and she wore a tiny dress that was sewn together from colorful rags.
And she came upon the miller, showering him with kisses. He was lonely, she said: she could sense it. Come now, there was no need to be mournful. She could make him feel so much better. She knew how to give him pleasure beyond his imagination, and an expert in exotic arts and techniques that men would pay fortunes to experience.
But Jacob rebuffed her advances. No, he told her. For though she was lovely, there was another he was keeping his love for. And he told her of his beloved Finella, and his quest for the City of Lost Things.
And the Harlot found herself touched by his tale. None of the men who had stayed in this room had ever been so faithful, even when their wives had still been alive. Rather, those with wives were often glad to see her, seeing her as a welcome relief from the nagging tongues and wrinkled faces of their spouses.
She found herself opening up to him: she revealed how she was actually planning to slit his throat while he was sleeping, when his guard was down, and take his goods. It was a scheme that she and the Baron had been doing for months. But now, after hearing his tale, she had no more desire to do so.
The Harlot told Jacob her story. How once, she had been living in a village in Sylef with her parents and her family, until the Baron’s men had raided it during the Great Wars. They had killed all she knew, and then sold her as a Harlot, where she was made to do terrible and wretched things to men everyday, in the name of love. She had even given birth to a daughter once, through one of the guests here, but the Baron had made her cast it down a well, not willing to feed another mouth. She wanted nothing more than to be free of this dreadful life, and live like others her age, carefree and happy, but alas, she could not.
“I have lost my Innocence,” the Harlot said. “And there is no hope for me.”
And Jacob said: “Come with me to the City of Lost Things, and perhaps you shall find it there.”
The Harlot accepted. And Jacob went to the Baron, and paid him a third of his goods that he would set her free. The Baron accepted: for after all, he was a great lover of money. Little did he know that money would be his downfall, for he would later triple it in a game of baccarat with some eunuchs, who would send assassins after him. But that is another story for another day.
And Jacob and the Harlot set off for the City of Lost Things.
Chapter 3: The Carnival
The road to Eastdrake was long, and complicated. It snaked through a dark wood, filled with wolves and bandits, and it was fortunate that Jacob and the Harlot did not encounter any of them.
After three nights of travel, the pair finally left the wood, and reached a small village, where a local carnival had set up camp. And Jacob remembered that the Harlot, who had been deprived of a childhood, would perhaps enjoy a visit.
And he was right. The Harlot laughed at the antics of the clowns and jugglers, and marveled at the agility of the acrobats. She won a stuffed bear at a knife-throwing booth, and clapped at the exploits of the performing griffins, who had their wings painted gold, and had ribbons tied to their horns.
Now, at this carnival, there was also a freak house, which the pair also visited.
It was the marvelous freak show. A bearded woman. A man with three eyes, who blew crimson smoke from his mouth and his ears. A man covered with tattoos, depictions of angels smiting the black demons of the seventeen hells. A woman who danced with snakes. And a feral wolf-boy, with jagged teeth and hair all over his back, naked save a loincloth.
Locked up in a great cage by the exit was a Cavalier, holding a rusty rifle attached with a bayonet. He was an old man, his hair and beard a dirty brown, and was dressed in full military regalia, that was now faded and torn.
The Cavalier shrieked and he gibbered as the pair came up close, and flailed his rifle at them angrily. So infused with rage was he that the bars of his cage shuddered at his shrieks. The pair backed away from him nervously, and this caused the Cavalier to laugh. And oh, what a fit of laughter he had! He fell to his knees, laughing so hard that tears fell all the way down his bushy beard. So gripped was he in mirth that his eyes rolled back until only their whites showed: it was almost as if he were having a fit, or had been possessed by a demon.
A sign next to his cage read: ‘BEWARE! The Mad General of Gazoo!’ A small hound was tied nearby.
Jacob expressed pity for the Cavalier. For his father had been a soldier, and he knew the sacrifices they made in times of war. Soldiers should be honoured, he felt, gifted with medals, or estates; and not made the object of scorn. He wondered what had happened to the Cavalier to reach such an unhappy fate.
The hound next to him heard him, and spoke up. For animals in those days could still speak, for they had not yet lost their Gift of Tongues through the treachery of the Wild Hunters. And indeed, this hound was the descendant of one of the original Wild Hunters, and how he ended up being cast down to earth was a sad and gloomy tale. But that is another story for another day.
You see, said the hound, the Cavalier had once been a great war hero. He loved his men, and enjoyed nothing more than the heat of battle, riding into war to defeat the enemies of the state. But alas! The atrocities he had seen and witnessed had broken his mind. His entire regiment had been one day captured by a horde of hideous barbarians from the south, who wished to know the secrets of the kingdom.
But the Cavalier had refused to talk, and had been tortured beyond imagination. For eleven days, the barbarians inflicted all manner of agonies upon him, but he refused to speak, and the strain had driven him mad. He had been rescued after that, but no one wanted anything to do with him due to his insanity. Penniless and friendless, the Cavalier had wandered the woods for months, screaming at squirrels and making friends with trees, until the hound found him, and brought him to the Carnival. They had no desire to be freaks like this. But what else could they do?
“He had lost his Sanity,” said the hound. “And he is beyond hope.”
And Jacob said: “Come with me to the City of Lost Things, and perhaps you shall find it there.”
So the miller went to the carnival owner, and paid him a third of the money he had, and thus did the Cavalier and his hound join Jacob and the Harlot on their quest.
Chapter 4: The Golden Manor
So for a month, the travelers journeyed through the land of Eastlake, looking for the Mountains of Middorak, in which the caverns of the Wood Demons were. It was not easy, travelling with a mad Cavalier, who screamed and laughed hysterically at odd turns, but Jacob was patient, and did not allow his temper to get the better of him.
It was after many days of riding that the travelers came to the Great Marshes of Eastlake, which were muddy and difficult to traverse. The mud of the marshes reached up to their ankles, and gave out a sickening smell, which repulsed the horses. The horses did not dare cross, and so with a heavy heart, Jacob had to let them go.
So on foot, the travelers crossed the marshes, and it was truly a hellish time. The mud stuck to their clothes, and weighed them down. And lurking in the mud were monstrous leeches, which clung to their flesh and grew fat on their blood. And to make things worse, were the presence of poisonous plants, which it was easy to brush against here, which caused a terrible rash when in contact with skin.
But the travelers persevered, and made their way through the marsh, even the Cavalier, who had to be restrained and carried to ensure he did not wander off to bad parts.
And very soon, the travelers came across an oddity: a great mansion, made completely out of gold, that stood in the middle of the marsh.
So, leaving his friends for a short while, Jacob went to the door of the mansion, and knocked. The door was answered by a old Miser, who wore a jacket of velvet, and breeches of silk.
Jacob asked for refuge and shelter for him and his friends, but the Miser refused. No, he said. They could not stay here, unless they paid the price.
What was the price, Jacob asked. And the Miser replied that it was the hearts of his fellow travelers. They all would be allowed to stay, but in the night, while they all were sleeping, the Miser would come into their rooms with a candle and a knife. He would cut out the hearts of his companions, and eat them, but he would leave Jacob’s heart alone.
It was simple, the Miser replied. What need had he of them? Why was he travelling with a mad old coot and a frail girl? All they would do was slow him down, and delay him from finding his love. It was only reasonable to abandon them. Rid yourself of such parasites, and thus reach the City of Lost Things faster.
But Jacob refused. No, he said. He would not abandon his friends like that. They would find another place to lodge.
The Miser replied that there was no other place to lodge for miles, and if they did not lodge here tonight, would surely perish the night. For that was when the Vampire-Ghasts, lurkers of the marsh, came out, drawn out by the light of the full moon, and woe betide anyone who crossed their paths.
Jacob then said that instead of taking his friends lives, could he not give his own heart instead. For they still had a chance, a hope of finding what they sought, and as for him, even if he died, at least he would be reunited with sweet Finella in heaven.
And the Miser was astounded at this. Fine then, he said, perhaps he would not need to eat their hearts after all. Jacob could still stay if he surrendered all his goods, and all the money he had on him.
Jacob agreed, and the Miser said that was not all: he had to surrender all his future wealth as well. He would have to swear upon the name of God, and take an unbreakable blood oath, that all his future wealth and possessions would go to the Miser. “Do not be a fool,” the Miser said. “Give up your friends hearts instead. For what is life without wealth? Even if you find your love, you will doom her to the life of a pauper. She will hate you, when she is forced to feast on crumbs, and drink rainwater from the gutters. She will curse your name, and wish you had never set forth to find her.”
But Jacob refused. “Love is the greatest treasure on earth,” he said. “More than rubies, more than all the gold of all the kings of history.”
And Jacob the miller cast the remainders of his money of him at the Miser, and drew his knife to recite the Blood Oath. But just before he cut his hand, at the very moment he spoke the name of God, the Miser fell downwards, letting out a piercing scream, and a horde of hideous imps burst out from his mouth.
Around them, the marshes quaked, and the Manor of Gold crumbled; its gold disappearing until all that was left was a simple thatched cottage. And the Miser stood up, and with tears in his eyes, thanked Jacob.
He had been under a curse, he said. In his youth, he loved gold, and thought of nothing else but how to amass it and keep it for himself. So desperate for it was he that he made a pact with a horde of demons: in exchange for his soul, they would give him all the gold he wanted. And so he had lived alone in the marshes for years, amassing all the gold he could, alienating himself from all he loved, and killing passers-by to take their wealth.
And the only one who could break the curse was a man pure of heart, of whom greed was not his master. A man who could shrug off the sweet whispers of avarice, and close his eyes to the beautiful shine of gold. Such a man was difficult to find, and the Miser had spent a decade here in these marshes without coming across such a person.
But Jacob had found him, and now all was well. Although perhaps all was in vain, for after the contract, the Miser was still a hollow shell of a man, unable to laugh, unable to cry or feel any emotion.
“I have lost my Soul,” said the Miser. “And I am beyond hope.”
And Jacob said: “Come with me to the City of Lost Things, and perhaps you shall find it there.”
Thus did the Miser join the travelers, and after a night’s rest in the cottage, set off on their quest.
Chapter 5: The Caverns of the Wood Demons
And thus did the travelers make their way through the marshes, and soon they came upon the Caverns of the Wood Demons.
It was dark upon their arrival. There was little light, for the silver Eye of the Moon never shone down upon this place, as there was little beauty here to see. The travelers snapped off branches from the trees to use as torches, and walked silently through the wood. Even the mad Cavalier was silent: for nothing humbles madness but greater madness, and from the design of the woods, with the twisted forms of the trees, clearly there was some insanity in the mind of the architect of this place.
And indeed, there had been. But that is another story for another time.
Along the way of their travels, they came across the hut of a poor carpenter, who was working by candlelight. He carried huge logs on his back, which he would hollow out and craft into beautiful beds and chairs, and was having difficulty with them.
And the travelers stopped to help him, and the carpenter was pleased for the effort. He offered them his hut for the night, and warned them of the terrible Wood Demons, who would strike at them when they were in bed.
He gave them warnings: “Strike at them at their eyes, or their tails, for those are their weak spots, and they will feel great agony if stabbed there, or beaten with a club. And strike at them not with your weapons: you might as well assault a mighty fortress with broomsticks. Wood demons are beings of the trees, and like trees, they will fall to fire. Your torches shall do more than enlighten, this dark night.”
So the travelers took heed of these words, and did not extinguish their torches to sleep that night, but stayed awake and vigilant, eager to withstand an attack by wood demons.
And how lucky it was that they were prepared, the wood demons came in full force. Oh, what a great multitude they were! There were hairy wood demons, shaggier than mammoths! Feathered wood demons, with iron beaks and piercing eyes! Scaly wood demons, some that crawled on their bellies, others with flickering tongues, some with long tentacles that snapped like whips! Fanged wood demons, yellow-eyed wood demons, wood demons with four or five heads, and crests of purple and silver. All of these, and a thousand kinds more, all of them laughing, snarling, grinning, burping, hissing, eager for sweet human-flesh that night.
But alas for them, as they picked the wrong house to attack. For though Jacob was a pacifist, and spent most of his night in slumber and contemplation, his friends were not to be trifled with.
Such a hard lesson the wood demons learnt as they advanced upon the Harlot. Oh woe to them, for grossly underestimating their foe! Young-girl flesh was the tastiest, thought they, and they expected little of a fight from this slip of a maiden. Alas for them, however, that within the delicate form of the Harlot beat the heart of a tiger. She had just been given her freedom from a life of drudgery, and she would never submit to anyone again, no, not even a horde of demons!
So many a wood demon had been blinded, or had their heart pierced by her torch, which she had sharpened into a great lance. Those that escaped her had to face the wrath of the Cavalier, whose terrible war cries scared even the bravest of the demons. For courage and madness are brethren: they are often mistaken for each other. He ran into battle without fear for his life, attacking with the fury of a drunken berserker. So wild was he with his torch, that many feared he would set himself alight by error. And many a wood demon trembled at the sight of him, charging at them like a tempest, and though they tried to flee, they could not, as his hound seized upon their ankles with his sharp teeth, crippling them in place for the Cavalier to strike.
And those who remained faced the wrath of the Miser, who after years of suffering, hated demon-kind, and lashed at them in vengeance. And the wood-demons found themselves uneasy in his presence. For a man with no soul feels nothing, and this is true for fear as well. Who was this creature, they wondered, who looked at their hideous visages and did not tremble, did not even turn a hair at their gruesome faces which had terrified the bravest of warriors? And why was there a strange taint on his soul, as if he had dealt with greater demons in the past, and had lived to tell the tale?
The poor wood demons were little threat to these three travelers, and their ranks were decimated in great speed. They fought on until sunrise, before deciding to flee, clearing to them the path to the shimmering gate of the City of Lost Things.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
REGRET
I sort of regret choosing Regret as this month’s writing topic. I tried to draw back on past experiences I’d like to forget while plotting a story, and doing that now, when I’m waiting for the results of a major exam, has not been good for me (why didn’t I study harder? Why didn’t I go to that class?)
And I did say I would stay away from fantasy themes the last entry, but this story was too good to resist!! My imagination is hard-wired to fantasy themes somehow, don’t know why.
This story is seriously the most graphic I’ve ever written, and will be quite explicit. Some of you may get rather offended at it. Sex and violence abound. Very bad language: F-bombs fall like the rain. But there is good reason for it, don’t worry. This story is definitely rated 18-PL.
THE LAST PARTY
“What the fuck do you mean we’re out of booze?”
I was about to throw a fit. Fucking goddamn. Stupid, stupid stupid!!!! I had just bought FIVE bottles of Jack Daniel the other bloody day! Wrote my name across on fucking labels Soraya forced me to fucking buy and put them on my bloody shelf!! What else did they want me to do, install a bloody perimeter fence around the fucking fridge and hire a bloody sniper there?
“Whoa, chill, Mark,” Kumar said. God knows how much weed he took last night. Dude was higher than a mountaineering giraffe. He was sprawled out on his couch, in his underwear, an old pair of green boxers. Bloody threadbare they were, the only things hole-y in this place. (Hahaha! Look at that, I made a fucking joke. No sense of humour my hairy ass.) “Some of Vi’s friends took them yesterday. They, like, really needed some beer. And I didn’t want to let them go out, you know what kind of stuff’s out there at night-“
“So you let them drink my FUCKING booze??? God damn it, Kumar, did it ever enter your thick skull to TELL me first???? I spent the last cash my old man left me on those!!!! I wanted some booze for the beer pong tonight!!!! How FUCKING STUPID can you be????? BLOODY INCONSIDERATE ASSHOLE!!!”
I was in destructive mode again, fueled by my lack of sleep, and the God-only-knew-what stuff I snorted yesterday. I’m a real bastard when I’m like this. Especially because my first impulse is to smash stuff.
Per-chiank went the vase on Kumar’s table. Plunk went the chair as I smashed it. Chiiiannnnk! went the window glass as I drove my fist into it. Fuck fuck fuck oh shit
went me as I withdrew my bleeding fist covered in shards.
“Dude, Benny’s coming back soon,” Kumar said as I walked to the cupboard for bandages. His apartment was full of medical supplies. We had stocked up on tons of bandages and stuff after Vi’s disastrous experiments with S&M the last month. I had TOLD her it was a bad idea, but would she fucking listen? Oh no. Stubborn, that girl. I don’t see anything wrong with inviting those hobos to join us! I don’t see whats wrong with having ‘magnalroxate’ as a bloody safeword! I don’t see whats wrong with not cauterizing the poker just once! Hell, her fucking shrill voice, her know-it-all look-at-me-I’m-a-bleeding-Chem-grad-from-University-of-Bitchopia attitude. Why the fuck we put up with her, I don’t know.
It was just as I was wrapping my poor damaged flesh up that the front door opened. And guess who strolled in, big shit-eating grin on his face, whiskey bottles in one hand, shopping bag in the other?
Bloody Benny De Souza.
He took off his face mask, and tossed it aside, sighing. “Man! It’s a hellhole out there!” he exclaimed, and shrugged in an exaggerated fashion, causing Kumar to laugh. This, predictably pissed me off.
“Well, speak of the devil!” Kumar said.
“No need,” Benny said. “That’s all everyone’s been doing lately.”
The two of them started laughing. I had to force myself not to smash both their skulls together. Bloody fuck hell. Why does everyone say Benny is the funny one of the group? I don’t get his fucking jokes, and all he does is steal them from the motherfucking Simpsons anyway. And when I make jokes, everyone gives me a sad, patronizing look, as if I’m a retard who just soiled his pants.
“Dudes, we shall all rejoice and be motherfucking glad,” Benny said as he walked to the table. “And giveth thanks unto Benny the Awesome. For he hast brought back booze, and a crapload of coke as well.”
“You have coke?” I was astounded. “But how?” We had exhausted our supply a month ago, after our bloody dealer shot himself in the face. Vi said she had seen it coming for quite a while. The guy had lost it big time after his wife went.
“Homeless guy, bumped into him on the way to Valentine’s,” Benny said, revealing the contents of his bag. “Stabbed him in the face, took it off him. Grade A gen-nu-wine coke. Guy screamed like crazy. Damn he had powerful lungs. Would have been a great opera singer.”
‘You stabbed a guy?” Kumar was jolted out of his comfortable numbness. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, it was kinda cool,” Benny said. “Wicked awesome. Hey, we’re screwed anyway. If you’re going to drown, might as well suffocate in a hundred feet of water, instead of ten.”
“And it impressed the chick I was with. Damn, she got so wet when I did that. Like a great lake. You should give her a try. Name’s Shu Lian, costs 50 bucks or a bottle of booze. Tell her you’re a friend of mine, you get a discount on handjobs.”
I left those two, and retreated to my room for a while. Tried to take a nap, but couldn’t fucking sleep. Kumar’s apartment was beginning to stink. We hadn’t cleaned it in two months, and cockroaches were starting to crawl over the place. Not that I was that concerned: the rats would probably eat them. Those damn rodents were beginning to get desperate nowadays. Benny woke up one day too find one of them chewing on his big toe. And if the rats can bear the taste of him, they’ll eat anything.
(Ha ha ha! You see! Another bloody joke! I’m Robin fucking Williams here. These idiots just don’t appreciate my comedy skills.)
I lazed for a while, before deciding to go see Soraya.
I passed Vi’s room on the way: there were three socks tied to her doorknob. Damn, the bitch got lucky again last night. How she does it I don’t know, she has a face like a howler monkey who ran into barb wire.
It was dark in Soraya’s room. The only illumination came from the brave rays of sunlight that managed to penetrate the thick curtains on her window. Alcohol: I could smell it in the air. Which was a bad sign: Soraya had the tolerance of a fucking infant.
She was lying on her bed, naked. It made me horny just to see the sight: that girl was seventeen kinds of beautiful. Toned lower body. Long legs, strong from her ballet experience. Small yet perky breasts. And don’t get me started on her ass. She was the kind of girl the poets would have written epic poetry about in ancient fucking times.
The only part of her I could not see was her face. Soraya had an odd way of sleeping. She covered her face with a pillow, as if she was smothering herself. Said it kept the noises from disturbing her.
She stirred as I went up to her, and slowly eased herself up. Ah, Soraya. Her makeup was all gone, all smudged on her pillow, perhaps. Her long hair was tangled and there was a cut on her right cheek, probably from yesterday’s drunken shenanigans.
“Hey gorgeous,” I said. “How you feeling?”
“Alright,” she said. She smiled, covering her breasts with her pillow, in faux modesty. She knew that always drove me wild. “Though my head is aching like crazy. How long did I pass out for?”
“Don’t know. I left the party after Vi suggested the bukkake. I may be a messed up pervy shit, but some things even I won’t do.”
We chatted for a while, mostly filling each other in on what we had blacked out on during yesterday’s Rapturous Celebration, and what we would do tonight. Soraya seemed happy when I told her we were having beer pong. She was damn good at that. Athletic, my girl is. A real gamer.
We partied every night. Until we all died. Or the world ended. Whichever came first.
Halfway during the conversation, however, she suddenly looked sad, and I asked her what the matter was.
Soraya confessed she had dreamt about her family again the previous night. It fucking killed her, she said, the fact that she was the only one left here. She missed them, she said. Missed them so much.
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing, Mark,” she said. “Keeping up this lifestyle?”
“I don’t know, Soraya. I think its too late to think about that now.”
“What if Kenny was right? What if we can still change our fates? All we need to do is-“
“Don’t mention that bastards’ name,” I snarled. “He can go screw himself, or get one of those priests to do it. When they’re not raping kids. Kenny fucking walked out on us. Gave in to the pressure of those bloody Repenters, turned his back on us to save his skin..he’s dead to me. Fucking dead.”
“I know what you mean,” Soraya said. “I still can’t believe what he did. But I miss my family, so much. And sometimes I wonder if this is worth it.”
She sighed. “I find myself wishing I could turn back time, nowadays. Maybe do a few things differently the second time around. Cuss less. Be nicer to people. Give more to charity. I don’t know. Anything to escape this fate.”
“I wouldn’t change anything,” I replied. “Even if I had the chance.” I paused. “Wait, maybe one fucking thing. I’d have bought that Best of Metallica CD before that fucking angel blew his fucking trumpet. Who knew it would be so hard to find after the apocalypse started?”
Soraya smiled. “That’s all you’d change?”
“Yup.” I kissed her softly on the lips. I brushed her long fringe aside as I did so, ignoring the slight burning sensation on my hand that came from brushing against the large numerals 666, inscribed on her forehead. The same mark that adorned my right hand. “No regrets, baby. No regrets at all.”
We made out for a while, before I continued speaking. “I’m actually pretty happy with my life, as screwed up as it is. I made it with my own choices, and I’m pretty damn proud of how I ended up. Religion, doing good..thats alright for some people. Not for me though.”
“Besides,” I laughed. “If I hadn’t turned to a life of crime, decided to jack that car that day..well, I certainly wouldn’t have met you wouldn’t I?”
“What are the odds we both wanted to steal that exact same Evo at that exact same day?” Soraya laughed as she recalled the memory. Fucking damn. Her laugh was the most beautiful thing in the fucking universe. Like fucking fairy bells.
“Doesn’t matter where I am, baby. As long as you’re there, that place is heaven to me.”
“You are so fucking corny. Holy hell, what was I THINKING when I fell for you????”
We talked for a while more, before Soraya wrapped herself in a sheet, and we went out on a balcony, grabbing our face masks as we did so.
Kumar had got the apartment cheap because of its shitty view: his place faced an industrial lot, next door to a landfill. The only reasons we had gone out on the balcony in the past, before the apocalypse, were for the odd grill, and to sneak a peek at the hot blonde expatriate who lived in the flat opposite, who showered with her windows open.
Now, its view of the dying city was exquisite. Kuala Lumpur had been fucking ravaged after the tribulation. Its streets, once teeming with vehicles trapped in its perpetual traffic jams, were now littered with the bodies of the dead; suicides as well as the murdered and the plague-ridden. Military groups, trying desperately to maintain order, patrolled the streets, clashing with rioters and looters, doing their best to put out fires. The members of the fanatical Repentance Brigade preached on corners and broke into houses to baptize, always bellowing their fucking slogans: ‘There are Always Second Chances”, “Never Too Late’, and so on. Most of the city’s familiar skyline, including the Twin Towers, were gone, piles of rubble now: a consequence of the Horsemen’s devastating ride.
In the sky, the stars were falling. Great streaks of fiery silver, rushing to earth, zig-zagging against the scarlet sky. It was almost beautiful.
Me and Soraya knew that pretty as it was, it was not a good sign. Some more fucked up shit would come out of this, that was for certain. The last time a star had fallen, the Wormwood incident, the seas had been poisoned, cutting off major sea routes and ensuring we would not be eating sushi for a long, long time. Soraya had almost committed suicide at this news.
It was all in the Bible, this stuff, it seemed, in the very last book. Which I thought was a fucking bad idea: if you’re going to fuck things up for everyone, the least you could do is put your Agenda of Fucking Stuff Up in the very first book of your anthology, so your followers know where they’re headed from the fucking start. No need to force yourself through pages of descriptions of how to build Noah’s Arks of the Covenant and learning who begat who! Just get to the part with all the pain and the trumpeting angels, fucking please!
Plus, I don’t know. Religion just isn’t fucking for me I guess. Seriously, nice to do good and all, but to side with a big deity who will serve you with seventeen hundred kinds of agony just because you disagree with him? No thank you. I’d rather live my life according to how I please.
Yes, I’m in for a lot of suffering in the long run. But I’ve suffered my entire life as it is, from the moment I was fucking born, thanks to my fucking father. I’ve woken up everyday for the past few months, my entire body aching from the ravages of booze and drugs and wild sex and whatever knows. I’ve endured Kumar’s cooking. Bring on eternal torment: I’ve spent my whole life preparing for it.
And as long as I got my girl Soraya, my friends Kumar and Vi and even fucking Benny, a bottle of Absolut and some hip-hop on the stereo..I don’t care how fucked up the world gets.
I’ll just keep on partying till it goes up in flames.
And I did say I would stay away from fantasy themes the last entry, but this story was too good to resist!! My imagination is hard-wired to fantasy themes somehow, don’t know why.
This story is seriously the most graphic I’ve ever written, and will be quite explicit. Some of you may get rather offended at it. Sex and violence abound. Very bad language: F-bombs fall like the rain. But there is good reason for it, don’t worry. This story is definitely rated 18-PL.
THE LAST PARTY
“What the fuck do you mean we’re out of booze?”
I was about to throw a fit. Fucking goddamn. Stupid, stupid stupid!!!! I had just bought FIVE bottles of Jack Daniel the other bloody day! Wrote my name across on fucking labels Soraya forced me to fucking buy and put them on my bloody shelf!! What else did they want me to do, install a bloody perimeter fence around the fucking fridge and hire a bloody sniper there?
“Whoa, chill, Mark,” Kumar said. God knows how much weed he took last night. Dude was higher than a mountaineering giraffe. He was sprawled out on his couch, in his underwear, an old pair of green boxers. Bloody threadbare they were, the only things hole-y in this place. (Hahaha! Look at that, I made a fucking joke. No sense of humour my hairy ass.) “Some of Vi’s friends took them yesterday. They, like, really needed some beer. And I didn’t want to let them go out, you know what kind of stuff’s out there at night-“
“So you let them drink my FUCKING booze??? God damn it, Kumar, did it ever enter your thick skull to TELL me first???? I spent the last cash my old man left me on those!!!! I wanted some booze for the beer pong tonight!!!! How FUCKING STUPID can you be????? BLOODY INCONSIDERATE ASSHOLE!!!”
I was in destructive mode again, fueled by my lack of sleep, and the God-only-knew-what stuff I snorted yesterday. I’m a real bastard when I’m like this. Especially because my first impulse is to smash stuff.
Per-chiank went the vase on Kumar’s table. Plunk went the chair as I smashed it. Chiiiannnnk! went the window glass as I drove my fist into it. Fuck fuck fuck oh shit
went me as I withdrew my bleeding fist covered in shards.
“Dude, Benny’s coming back soon,” Kumar said as I walked to the cupboard for bandages. His apartment was full of medical supplies. We had stocked up on tons of bandages and stuff after Vi’s disastrous experiments with S&M the last month. I had TOLD her it was a bad idea, but would she fucking listen? Oh no. Stubborn, that girl. I don’t see anything wrong with inviting those hobos to join us! I don’t see whats wrong with having ‘magnalroxate’ as a bloody safeword! I don’t see whats wrong with not cauterizing the poker just once! Hell, her fucking shrill voice, her know-it-all look-at-me-I’m-a-bleeding-Chem-grad-from-University-of-Bitchopia attitude. Why the fuck we put up with her, I don’t know.
It was just as I was wrapping my poor damaged flesh up that the front door opened. And guess who strolled in, big shit-eating grin on his face, whiskey bottles in one hand, shopping bag in the other?
Bloody Benny De Souza.
He took off his face mask, and tossed it aside, sighing. “Man! It’s a hellhole out there!” he exclaimed, and shrugged in an exaggerated fashion, causing Kumar to laugh. This, predictably pissed me off.
“Well, speak of the devil!” Kumar said.
“No need,” Benny said. “That’s all everyone’s been doing lately.”
The two of them started laughing. I had to force myself not to smash both their skulls together. Bloody fuck hell. Why does everyone say Benny is the funny one of the group? I don’t get his fucking jokes, and all he does is steal them from the motherfucking Simpsons anyway. And when I make jokes, everyone gives me a sad, patronizing look, as if I’m a retard who just soiled his pants.
“Dudes, we shall all rejoice and be motherfucking glad,” Benny said as he walked to the table. “And giveth thanks unto Benny the Awesome. For he hast brought back booze, and a crapload of coke as well.”
“You have coke?” I was astounded. “But how?” We had exhausted our supply a month ago, after our bloody dealer shot himself in the face. Vi said she had seen it coming for quite a while. The guy had lost it big time after his wife went.
“Homeless guy, bumped into him on the way to Valentine’s,” Benny said, revealing the contents of his bag. “Stabbed him in the face, took it off him. Grade A gen-nu-wine coke. Guy screamed like crazy. Damn he had powerful lungs. Would have been a great opera singer.”
‘You stabbed a guy?” Kumar was jolted out of his comfortable numbness. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, it was kinda cool,” Benny said. “Wicked awesome. Hey, we’re screwed anyway. If you’re going to drown, might as well suffocate in a hundred feet of water, instead of ten.”
“And it impressed the chick I was with. Damn, she got so wet when I did that. Like a great lake. You should give her a try. Name’s Shu Lian, costs 50 bucks or a bottle of booze. Tell her you’re a friend of mine, you get a discount on handjobs.”
I left those two, and retreated to my room for a while. Tried to take a nap, but couldn’t fucking sleep. Kumar’s apartment was beginning to stink. We hadn’t cleaned it in two months, and cockroaches were starting to crawl over the place. Not that I was that concerned: the rats would probably eat them. Those damn rodents were beginning to get desperate nowadays. Benny woke up one day too find one of them chewing on his big toe. And if the rats can bear the taste of him, they’ll eat anything.
(Ha ha ha! You see! Another bloody joke! I’m Robin fucking Williams here. These idiots just don’t appreciate my comedy skills.)
I lazed for a while, before deciding to go see Soraya.
I passed Vi’s room on the way: there were three socks tied to her doorknob. Damn, the bitch got lucky again last night. How she does it I don’t know, she has a face like a howler monkey who ran into barb wire.
It was dark in Soraya’s room. The only illumination came from the brave rays of sunlight that managed to penetrate the thick curtains on her window. Alcohol: I could smell it in the air. Which was a bad sign: Soraya had the tolerance of a fucking infant.
She was lying on her bed, naked. It made me horny just to see the sight: that girl was seventeen kinds of beautiful. Toned lower body. Long legs, strong from her ballet experience. Small yet perky breasts. And don’t get me started on her ass. She was the kind of girl the poets would have written epic poetry about in ancient fucking times.
The only part of her I could not see was her face. Soraya had an odd way of sleeping. She covered her face with a pillow, as if she was smothering herself. Said it kept the noises from disturbing her.
She stirred as I went up to her, and slowly eased herself up. Ah, Soraya. Her makeup was all gone, all smudged on her pillow, perhaps. Her long hair was tangled and there was a cut on her right cheek, probably from yesterday’s drunken shenanigans.
“Hey gorgeous,” I said. “How you feeling?”
“Alright,” she said. She smiled, covering her breasts with her pillow, in faux modesty. She knew that always drove me wild. “Though my head is aching like crazy. How long did I pass out for?”
“Don’t know. I left the party after Vi suggested the bukkake. I may be a messed up pervy shit, but some things even I won’t do.”
We chatted for a while, mostly filling each other in on what we had blacked out on during yesterday’s Rapturous Celebration, and what we would do tonight. Soraya seemed happy when I told her we were having beer pong. She was damn good at that. Athletic, my girl is. A real gamer.
We partied every night. Until we all died. Or the world ended. Whichever came first.
Halfway during the conversation, however, she suddenly looked sad, and I asked her what the matter was.
Soraya confessed she had dreamt about her family again the previous night. It fucking killed her, she said, the fact that she was the only one left here. She missed them, she said. Missed them so much.
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing, Mark,” she said. “Keeping up this lifestyle?”
“I don’t know, Soraya. I think its too late to think about that now.”
“What if Kenny was right? What if we can still change our fates? All we need to do is-“
“Don’t mention that bastards’ name,” I snarled. “He can go screw himself, or get one of those priests to do it. When they’re not raping kids. Kenny fucking walked out on us. Gave in to the pressure of those bloody Repenters, turned his back on us to save his skin..he’s dead to me. Fucking dead.”
“I know what you mean,” Soraya said. “I still can’t believe what he did. But I miss my family, so much. And sometimes I wonder if this is worth it.”
She sighed. “I find myself wishing I could turn back time, nowadays. Maybe do a few things differently the second time around. Cuss less. Be nicer to people. Give more to charity. I don’t know. Anything to escape this fate.”
“I wouldn’t change anything,” I replied. “Even if I had the chance.” I paused. “Wait, maybe one fucking thing. I’d have bought that Best of Metallica CD before that fucking angel blew his fucking trumpet. Who knew it would be so hard to find after the apocalypse started?”
Soraya smiled. “That’s all you’d change?”
“Yup.” I kissed her softly on the lips. I brushed her long fringe aside as I did so, ignoring the slight burning sensation on my hand that came from brushing against the large numerals 666, inscribed on her forehead. The same mark that adorned my right hand. “No regrets, baby. No regrets at all.”
We made out for a while, before I continued speaking. “I’m actually pretty happy with my life, as screwed up as it is. I made it with my own choices, and I’m pretty damn proud of how I ended up. Religion, doing good..thats alright for some people. Not for me though.”
“Besides,” I laughed. “If I hadn’t turned to a life of crime, decided to jack that car that day..well, I certainly wouldn’t have met you wouldn’t I?”
“What are the odds we both wanted to steal that exact same Evo at that exact same day?” Soraya laughed as she recalled the memory. Fucking damn. Her laugh was the most beautiful thing in the fucking universe. Like fucking fairy bells.
“Doesn’t matter where I am, baby. As long as you’re there, that place is heaven to me.”
“You are so fucking corny. Holy hell, what was I THINKING when I fell for you????”
We talked for a while more, before Soraya wrapped herself in a sheet, and we went out on a balcony, grabbing our face masks as we did so.
Kumar had got the apartment cheap because of its shitty view: his place faced an industrial lot, next door to a landfill. The only reasons we had gone out on the balcony in the past, before the apocalypse, were for the odd grill, and to sneak a peek at the hot blonde expatriate who lived in the flat opposite, who showered with her windows open.
Now, its view of the dying city was exquisite. Kuala Lumpur had been fucking ravaged after the tribulation. Its streets, once teeming with vehicles trapped in its perpetual traffic jams, were now littered with the bodies of the dead; suicides as well as the murdered and the plague-ridden. Military groups, trying desperately to maintain order, patrolled the streets, clashing with rioters and looters, doing their best to put out fires. The members of the fanatical Repentance Brigade preached on corners and broke into houses to baptize, always bellowing their fucking slogans: ‘There are Always Second Chances”, “Never Too Late’, and so on. Most of the city’s familiar skyline, including the Twin Towers, were gone, piles of rubble now: a consequence of the Horsemen’s devastating ride.
In the sky, the stars were falling. Great streaks of fiery silver, rushing to earth, zig-zagging against the scarlet sky. It was almost beautiful.
Me and Soraya knew that pretty as it was, it was not a good sign. Some more fucked up shit would come out of this, that was for certain. The last time a star had fallen, the Wormwood incident, the seas had been poisoned, cutting off major sea routes and ensuring we would not be eating sushi for a long, long time. Soraya had almost committed suicide at this news.
It was all in the Bible, this stuff, it seemed, in the very last book. Which I thought was a fucking bad idea: if you’re going to fuck things up for everyone, the least you could do is put your Agenda of Fucking Stuff Up in the very first book of your anthology, so your followers know where they’re headed from the fucking start. No need to force yourself through pages of descriptions of how to build Noah’s Arks of the Covenant and learning who begat who! Just get to the part with all the pain and the trumpeting angels, fucking please!
Plus, I don’t know. Religion just isn’t fucking for me I guess. Seriously, nice to do good and all, but to side with a big deity who will serve you with seventeen hundred kinds of agony just because you disagree with him? No thank you. I’d rather live my life according to how I please.
Yes, I’m in for a lot of suffering in the long run. But I’ve suffered my entire life as it is, from the moment I was fucking born, thanks to my fucking father. I’ve woken up everyday for the past few months, my entire body aching from the ravages of booze and drugs and wild sex and whatever knows. I’ve endured Kumar’s cooking. Bring on eternal torment: I’ve spent my whole life preparing for it.
And as long as I got my girl Soraya, my friends Kumar and Vi and even fucking Benny, a bottle of Absolut and some hip-hop on the stereo..I don’t care how fucked up the world gets.
I’ll just keep on partying till it goes up in flames.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
SHADOW, Attempt 2
With a topic like ‘Shadow’, my imagination kind of went into overdrive this month. This topic had so much potential: you’ll never believe the ideas I came up with. An underachieving boy decides to take vengeance against his popular brother. A CLP student makes a pact with the forces of darkness that goes horribly wrong. A family with dark secrets finds their pasts all coming back to haunt them. The citizens of an underground city find themselves in danger from a terrifying creature of light.
One day I may actually write those stories, but for now, please enjoy (or endure) this story, which my mind kept on coming back to. It was my favourite of all my ideas. Apologies that story is very long. Again, got carried away in creative process.
I also do promise that my next story will be grounded in reality as much as possible, and will not feature cross-dressing psychos, wars in Heaven, crazy inventions or anything of the sort.
LILY AND VOLSTRAK
August 1999. Not the most memorable of months, from a historical standpoint. M. Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense first opened in theatres, a solar eclipse darkened the skies of Europe and Asia, and an earthquake ravaged parts of Turkey.
It was also when Lily and Volstrak first met.
Lily had been five years old at the time. She was small for her age, somewhat chubby, with rosy apple-cheeks and soft black hair which her mother loved tying into little pigtails. Her laugh was bubbly, reminiscent of wind chimes, and she had a tendency to mix up her words when she spoke too fast; saying ‘cot and hold’ when she meant ‘hot and cold’, which most people found adorable.
Everyone loved her, and she loved everyone as well, but a special place in her heart was reserved for her Mommy, her Daddy, and her stuffed rabbit Mr. Littles.
Volstrak, on the other hand, loved noone and nothing.
He was massive, even for a creature of his kind, almost seven feet tall. Volstrak had dark crimson eyes that glittered like rubies in the darkness, and five large curved horns that formed a crown on his brow. Long talons; jagged little razorblades, extended from his hands and feet. Massive wings of shadow grew from his back, but they were faint and almost gone now, it had been long since he last flew.
His voice was bone-chilling. Dark and guttural, the sinister voice that lunatics heard in their minds, haunting them and driving them to do horrible things. His laughter was the howl of a dying timber wolf, his snarls the soundtrack of nightmares.
Volstrak lived under Lily’s bed, and only came out at night. The first thing he ever said to her: “Hello, little girl. I want to drink your blood, and eat you up!” And then he revealed himself to her, baring his fangs, and Lily had screamed. She had cried, and ran out to her parents room, and Volstrak had laughed.
Her fear was nourishing, delicious and sustaining. Volstrak enjoyed it profusely. For he was a Lord of the Dark, a Creature of Shadow, and fear was his daily bread. It was what he needed to stay alive.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The months went by, and Lily and Volstrak went on with their lives.
Volstrak’s life went on pretty much as usual. The lives of Shadow Creatures are not marked by novelty and variety, after all. He stayed under Lily’s bed, scaring her as much as he could, growing fat on her delicious fear. The ideal life for one of his kind.
Lily’s life, however, was ever-changing. Yes, Volstrak was terrifying at night. But Mummy and Daddy were always there for her. They made her feel secure, told her he didn’t exist. Gave her things like security blankets and torch lights to defend herself, and her Daddy would check for monsters before she went to bed.
And their love made Volstrak less terrifying, and let her sleep well despite knowing he was there. And Volstrak was dismayed, for less fear meant less sustenance, but there was little he could do.
Lily also entered primary school, a place she found scary at first, but gradually grew to love. Lily especially loved finger-painting, because it was conducted by Ms. Lee, a friendly, warm teacher, who always smiled and smelt like strawberries.
She also went out of the country for the first time. Her parents took her to Japan for Christmas, and that holiday had been the best of her life. She had walked through cherry blossom gardens, drank tea from pretty ladies in kimonos, and met Mickey Mouse himself at Tokyo Disneyland. But her favourite memory was of New Year’s at Shinjuku. There had been thousands of people, and her Daddy had picked her up, and put her on his powerful shoulders, to see over the crowd. And she had marvelled at the most spectacular fireworks display she had ever seen: beautiful splashes of light, in every colour of the rainbow. They had ooh-ed and aah-ed, and then gone for ice creams after that. Just the three of them: her, her Daddy, and her Mommy. It had been the best of times.
But not all changes are positive.
July, 2002. Many things happened this month: the French president survived an assassination attempt during Bastille Day, novelist Chiam Potok passed away from cancer, and Lance Armstrong won his fourth consecutive Tour de France.
It was also the month when Daddy left Lily forever.
Lily would forever remember that day. She and Mommy had been baking a cherry pie in the kitchen. They had been talking about panda bears. And then the phone had rang. And Mommy had picked it up, and she started to cry: seems there had been an accident at Daddy’s workplace.
And Mommy had picked Lily up, and put her on her lap, and cried and cried. Daddy would not be coming back, she said. He had gone away, to a better place, and we would never see him again. And Lily didn’t understand what all this meant, but Mommy was crying, and that made her sad, and she started crying too, and for the whole night, they held each other, mother and daughter, weeping their pain away.
What followed was confusing for Lily. They made her dress in black, and took her to the church, which they normally only went to on Sundays. Various aunties and uncles she had not seen for ages had gathered, and most of them were weeping around Daddy, who was lying in a long box, dressed in his best suit, asleep.
They told her that Daddy was sleeping, and would never wake up. A man in a black robe and funny collar corrected them: no, that was not true. He would wake up, someday, in a time far, far in the future, and all of them would be reunited, forever in happiness, for the rest of eternity.
But Lily was sad. She didn’t want that. She wanted her Daddy now, with his lovely smile and booming laugh and constant hugs. She wanted him to pick her up again, and pat her on the head, and take her to the garden to show her things like beetles and millipedes, although she found them scary. The future was too long to wait. She wanted her Daddy now, and wanted him so badly that it hurt just thinking about it.
It was around this time that Volstrak was happiest. Without her Daddy, Lily was just a scared, weak little girl, full of fear. He didn’t need to rely on fancy tricks like baring his fangs or letting his eyes shine in the darkness to terrify her; all he needed to do was remind her he was there, usually by a snarl or a laugh, for her to scream in fear.
Times were good for Volstrak.
______________________________________________________________________________
A year later, things would further change for Lily and Volstrak.
In October 2003, Mommy brought home a man to the house. The man was tall, with a bushy moustache, and wore ear-rings, which Lily found strange because she thought only girls wore those.
They had met at a company picnic, Mommy explained, and she was very much in love with him. They had been seeing each other for quite some time now, and soon, they would get married.
Lily did not understand.
In short, Mommy explained: he was going to be her new Daddy.
Lily found this even harder to understand. She only had one Daddy, who had left her one year ago, and was now resting in a coffin underneath the earth, dead. She loved her old Daddy, and had no desire to have a new one.
Besides, she did not like this new Daddy. There was something strange about him, something that she did not like. His smile was peculiar, and oddly fake: New Daddy did not smile with his eyes. His shows of happiness seemed put-on, amazingly artificial, and she could sense he did not like her at all.
Lily could not bear to call him Daddy. No, he was not and would never take the place of her old Daddy. She took to calling him ‘Uncle’, the normal term she used when calling other men, and when her Mommy made her call him ‘Daddy’, she combined the two, referring to this stranger as ‘Uncle Daddy’.
Her new father was not amused, but she would not call him anything else.
Uncle Daddy was a very strange man. Sometimes he was nice, looking happy despite his fake smiles, passing around sweets and watching TV with Mommy and her.
Most of the time, however, he was unpleasant.
He liked going out late at night. While Daddy always made sure he came home by nine, to read bedtime stories to her, Uncle Daddy always came home late. When he came home late, he always smelt terrible, of smoke and beer, and was terribly rude: many times using bad words that kids at school would get punished for saying.
Mommy didn’t like this, and often asked him to stop, but Uncle Daddy refused. He got angrier each time Mommy asked him to stop, and sometimes, hit Mommy hard, cursing loudly as he did. He would always be sorry about this the next day, and apologise profusely, but when night came, would fall into the same habits again.
He was bitter around Lily too, finding fault with her over the smallest things. He often asked her to bring beers and other snacks from the fridge while watching television, and if Lily brought the wrong things, flew into a rage and hit her hard.
Lily also could not shake the feeling that Uncle Daddy looked at her strange every time she walked to the kitchen. There was often a strange glint in his eye, a look that disturbed her. But she put the thought out of her mind. She had other things to worry about.
__________________________________________________________________________
If things were bad for Lily, they were just as bad for Volstrak.
He didn’t understand it. Lily seemed less scared of him nowadays. He was draining less and less fear from her. While in the past, the amount of fear she had of him was enough to supply a five-course dinner for all the Shadow Creatures in Asia, she was now barely scared enough to feed a hatchling. What the heck was happening?
The strangest part had been last night. He had revealed himself again, clinking his talons along the side of her bed, snarling. “I want to eat your flesh,” he had said menacingly. “Want to rip your skin and feast on your bones!”
And how had Lily replied? “Do it,” she had said. “Please.” For death by monster would be a relief to her compared to the daily hell she went through.
She wasn’t scared of him anymore! This did not make sense! This was ridiculous!
He tried again the next night. And the next. And the night after that. But to no avail. Volstrak roared, and snarled, and threatened. He bared his fangs, unsheathed his claws, even tore off his head once, just to invoke one scream from Lily, one tiny bit of fear. But it was pointless. Lily felt no fear at all from him.
Finally, one night, Volstrak could not take it anymore.
“Why aren’t you scared of me anymore, child?” he asked. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No,” Lily said. “You are a very scary monster. But I have other things I am more scared of.”
“WHAT? What could be scarier than me, a Shadow Creature of the Eighth Realm? A witch-god? A hellhound? A wendigo? Tell me, child!!”
“None of those. It’s my new Daddy. I don’t like him. He scares me.”
“What? Why?”
And Lily broke down into tears, and told of how terribly Uncle Daddy was treating her, making her do chores and punishing her savagely every time she messed up. All she wanted to do was to be a good girl, she said, but Uncle Daddy found fault with everything she did!
Lily told of how Uncle Daddy had hit her twenty four times with an umbrella, and another time pushed her down the stairs for getting in his way. He was a terrible, smelly man, she said, and she missed her old Daddy so much.
Now Shadow-Beasts are solitary and reclusive by nature. Empathy is a foreign concept for them, and they do not usually bother with the problems of others, usually of the opinion that everyone has their own problems to bear. But Volstrak found himself listening, despite himself.
_____________________________________________________________________________
That night marked a fundamental change in the nature of Lily and Volstrak’s relationship.
Volstrak gave up on scaring her for the moment. After all, Lily no longer seemed afraid of him, and attempting to draw fear from her would be wasted effort. Instead, amazing himself, he found himself listening to her.
Lily told him many stories. She told him of the terrible things Uncle Daddy did to her and Mommy, and how she hated him so much it made her stomach hurt. Uncle Daddy made Mommy sad, she said, and they always had fights: Uncle Daddy spent too much of their money on beer, apparently, while Mommy wanted to save money for Lily to go to college, and when Mommy tried to talk to Uncle Daddy, he hit her.
She told him about school: how she liked English and Art, but hated Mathemathics: there were way too many numbers, and too many things you were supposed to do with them, she said. And the teacher was a very strict woman, apparently, always scolding her when she messed up. Chen Lao-shi was her name, she was a squat, fat old woman, her hair in a bun. No-one liked her.
Lily told her about how embarrassed she was about going to school with red cane marks all over her legs, and how her classmates always teased her and called her names. One girl had called her ‘Stupid Face’, and Lily had chased her and slapped her across the face: wow, she had gotten into serious trouble over that. The headmaster had scolded Lily and made her apologize, and she felt bad, but knew she would do it all over again in a heartbeat, something which made Volstrak laughed.
Lily told him of funny episodes of Spongebob she had seen. Of bunny-shaped clouds in the sky, of the jokes her teachers said in class, of the delicious peanut butter and cheese sandwiches her mother made for her to take to school. She told Volstrak of the little dog that had followed her home one day, only to be chased away by Uncle Daddy. She told him of the time she and Indran, a handsome curly-haired boy she hoped she would marry one day, spent recess blowing bubbles outside the canteen. She told him of the man with the funny hat she had seen on the bus, and the time she, Mommy and Daddy had gone to Japan, and eaten ice creams after a fireworks display.
And Volstrak found himself telling her about his life, as well.
He told her of all the many children he had scared over the centuries. Francois; the bedwetter, Benjamin; who prayed every time he came close, Xiao Li; whose aged grandmother would rush in to comfort her every time she screamed, Motabi; the sleepwalker, and dozens and dozens more.
He confessed to her that despite all his threats, Shadow-Creatures rarely ate children: it was the fear they thrived on, that was delicious and live-giving. Children could only be eaten in one circumstance. That is, if they were so scared out of their wits that their entire beings had been gripped by fear: only then could they be eaten, and they didn’t taste all that good as well. Their flesh was too stringy, and very bitter. Or so he had heard.
Lily asked why Shadow Creatures scared children, and Volstrak said it was how things were. They needed fear to survive, after all, and timid, impressionable little children was the best way to get it.
But you should be thankful for us, Volstrak reminded Lily. For often, a Shadow Creature forces a child to be brave, and find inner strength that otherwise would have been hidden forever. For little boys and little girls who find it in themselves to face the monsters under their bed will find they have the courage to face other monsters in their lives. They will not be shaken, no matter what life throws at them, and greatness will be their only destiny.
And Lily asked Volstrak about others like him, and he was glad to oblige. He told her of the spider-bellied Xephir, who lurked in closets, and drew in unsuspecting children with its sticky webs. He spoke of the Idtiliss, the long-fingered man with the scarred face, that tapped at windows, begging to be let into your house to spread terror. He told of the Lady Suffocate, a bloated corpse that hung upside down from the ceilings of showers, pouncing on its prey when they least suspected. Volstrak told her of the Clown King, and the Inside-Out Man, of the Skeleton Witch and the Faceless Beast, as well as the Seven Disgraces, and the Scream-By-Night.
And he told of Jerrifux, the prettiest Shadow-Creature he had ever laid eyes on, with her seven venomous tentacles and her hair that was a mass of writhing serpents. They had mated, and she had laid him a dozen eggs, which they had taken care of before going their separate ways. Such was their way, after all: they never remained together for longer than was necessary.
It was a sad and lonely life, though, and that was perhaps the reason why Volstrak was telling his life story to Lily. In other circumstances, he would have left the moment Lily stopped being scared of him. He needed fear to survive after all, and the longer he went without it, the weaker he got. But it was nice, in a way to talk to someone. He hadn’t had a conversation with another creature for decades, up to this.
For times were difficult now, especially for Shadow-Creatures. It had been ages since Volstrak had met another of his kind. The world was a scary place nowadays, with plenty to be afraid about. Movies and television, with their special effects, creating legions of monsters just as scary as a real Shadow-Creature. To say nothing of real life: with war, crime and injustice everywhere one looked, children had a lot more to be afraid of nowadays than monsters under the bed.
Many were the times when Volstrak had attempted to visit old friends, only to discover their shrivelled bodies lying forlornly beneath beds and armchairs, in empty closets and beneath staircases. They could only be deprived of fear for too long, after all. And Volstrak hoped he would never suffer such a fate.
____________________________________________________________________________
For a while, things were decent, and all was alright.
But nothing good lasts forever.
March 2004. A dramatic month. Terrorist attacks in Madrid. New photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. A cyclone hits Brazil.
It would also prove to be the last time that Lily and Volstrak would ever see each other.
It all started with Uncle Daddy getting laid off from work. It had put him in a foul mood: the nerve of his boss, he seethed angrily. Firing him for sleeping on the job and showing up late, it seems. Damn it, it wasn’t his fault he didn’t have enough sleep! He needed a lot of rest, to shake off the nasty hangovers he got.
So he stopped by a bar on the way back, and got plastered. Booze was his only source of happiness: he sure as hell didn’t get it from his family. His wife nagged all the time, and his step-daughter, she was a useless brat.
His mind shaken by anger and intoxication, Uncle Daddy made his way back, muttering to himself and cursing all the way.
And the first thing he saw was Lily’s shoes on the ground outside the door.
HOW MANY TIMES HAD HE TOLD THAT GIRL TO PUT HER SHOES ON THE RACK WHY WAS SHE SO DAMN STUBBORN…..
“Lily! Lily!” he bellowed her name loudly.
No answer. Furious, Uncle Daddy grabbed the feather duster from the table and moved to her room. Stupid girl, he’d teach her to answer when she was called..
Lily was reading a magazine when Uncle Daddy burst into her room. She cried with fear as Uncle Daddy picked her up and tossed her to the floor. With every ounce of strength, she apologised for what she had done, but her pleas fell on deaf ears, as Uncle Daddy struck her again and again with the feather duster, letting out all the pent-up rage that had been building within him.
Whack. That was for his stupid boss. Whack. That was for his stupid mortgage, which he could never pay off. Whack. That was for his stupid wife, always nagging him, never supporting him, never giving him love..
Love. That was all he wanted. Why why why was it so difficult to find, why couldn’t he find it..
It was just then that a strange urge took over him, and he picked up his crying daughter off the floor, and placed her gently on the bed.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Daddy,” Lily wept, her eyes puffy and red with tears. “I’ll be a good girl from now on, I promise, I won’t do anything wrong..”
“Shhh, Lily. It’s alright. I’m not angry anymore. You want to be a good girl, don’t you? Well, stop crying.”
“Ok, Uncle Daddy. I promise I won’t-“
“Take off your dress, Lily.”
“What?” Lily couldn’t believe her ears.
“Take off your dress, Lily. You don’t want to disobey me, do you? You want me to hit you again?”
“But I don’t want to, please-“
Uncle Daddy was enraged. He stormed toward the bed, feather duster raised, screaming. “TAKE YOUR DRESS OFF, OR SO HELP ME, I’LL-“
He never got to finish his sentence.
For a pair of powerful claws lunged at him from beneath Lily’s bed, ripping his flesh and causing him to fall to the ground.
‘What the fu-“
To his horror, a hideous beast emerged from the shadows under Lily’s bed. It was huge, with great wings of shadow, sharp claws like razor-blades, and piercing red eyes that blazed like the fires of hell.
“Monster!!!” it shouted at him, and its voice was like the shriek of a demon.
Uncle Daddy was too terrified to speak as the thing lunged toward him, its claws outstretched, its teeth bared. Whimpering, he tried to crawl away, but fear had rooted him to the spot. Absolute terror caused him to wet his pants: he had never seen a creature like this before, so majestic in its dreadfulness, the kind of monster that nightmares had nightmares about..
“You have assumed the role of this creature’s daddy,” the monster spoke to him, “and that role comes with responsibilities. You are supposed to love her, and cherish her, and do all you can to make her happy. Teach her right from wrong and educate her in the ways of the world. You are supposed to protect her from the monsters of the dark and the creatures of shadow. That is the way it has always been.”
“And you have perverted these sacred roles, you loathsome worm!” the monster snarled at him. Volstrak had never felt so powerful before: the wretch’s fear was overwhelming, and such a large quantity of it was making him feel almost euphoric. “How dare you attack your own child? Not even the lowest denizens of hell would resort to such ugliness. I should kill you right here and right now. You disgust me. Your mother should have eaten you at birth.”
Volstrak turned to Lily. “Get out of this place, Lily,” he said. “Call your mother. Tell her what your disgrace of a father has tried to do. And get to the police station. Tell them to come here in ten minutes. And please, do not turn back. I do not wish for you to see what I am about to do.”
Lily nodded. “Goodbye, my friend.” The last words she ever said to him. She knew, deep down, that she would never see him again after this. It was a miracle, as it was, that they had even managed to sustain a friendship that had lasted this long. For such things were not meant to be.
She ran from the room, trying her best to block out Uncle Daddy’s ear-piercing screams, as Volstrak advanced on him, grinning.
__________________________________________________________________________
July 2009. Three new dinosaur species are discovered in Australia. Federer defeats Roddick to win the 2009 Wimbledon Championships. China uses artificial insemination to create a giant panda, using frozen sperm.
It is also the month Indran Ambirajah will finally work up the courage to ask Lily Chen to be his girlfriend.
He’ll take her out for a movie: the latest chick flick maybe, she likes those. Or the latest blockbuster. What movie doesn’t matter. As long as they’re together. After that, he’ll take her for dinner at her favourite restaurant, before giving her a lift home. It will be a wonderful evening.
Sometime during the evening, he’ll ask he to be his, and Lily will accept. She will do her best not to cry, and fail miserably. She has liked him since they were in primary school, after all, and they will have many happy memories together.
Lily has made quite a life for herself. She stays in Puchong now, in a two-storey house with her mother and dog Mr Littles 2, and does well at school. She’s active in cheerleading, and represents the state in debating tournaments.
She still has memories of her old life, although she has mostly gotten over them. Most prominently, she remembers her old bedroom in her old house, where she lived with a terrifying monster under her bed. Oddly, she remembers him fondly.
As for Volstrak, he is living a wonderful life as well. He has since relocated: he haunts the Sungai Buloh prison now, growing fat off the fears of murderers, rapists, thieves and all manner of degenerates.
But he still has a soft spot for the prisoner in Cell No B-1276. Dear Uncle Daddy, who he visits on a very regular basis. He was the first person to show him that adults could be frightened as easily as children, after all, and that their fears were just as nourishing.
And he screams so delightfully like a little girl.
One day I may actually write those stories, but for now, please enjoy (or endure) this story, which my mind kept on coming back to. It was my favourite of all my ideas. Apologies that story is very long. Again, got carried away in creative process.
I also do promise that my next story will be grounded in reality as much as possible, and will not feature cross-dressing psychos, wars in Heaven, crazy inventions or anything of the sort.
LILY AND VOLSTRAK
August 1999. Not the most memorable of months, from a historical standpoint. M. Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense first opened in theatres, a solar eclipse darkened the skies of Europe and Asia, and an earthquake ravaged parts of Turkey.
It was also when Lily and Volstrak first met.
Lily had been five years old at the time. She was small for her age, somewhat chubby, with rosy apple-cheeks and soft black hair which her mother loved tying into little pigtails. Her laugh was bubbly, reminiscent of wind chimes, and she had a tendency to mix up her words when she spoke too fast; saying ‘cot and hold’ when she meant ‘hot and cold’, which most people found adorable.
Everyone loved her, and she loved everyone as well, but a special place in her heart was reserved for her Mommy, her Daddy, and her stuffed rabbit Mr. Littles.
Volstrak, on the other hand, loved noone and nothing.
He was massive, even for a creature of his kind, almost seven feet tall. Volstrak had dark crimson eyes that glittered like rubies in the darkness, and five large curved horns that formed a crown on his brow. Long talons; jagged little razorblades, extended from his hands and feet. Massive wings of shadow grew from his back, but they were faint and almost gone now, it had been long since he last flew.
His voice was bone-chilling. Dark and guttural, the sinister voice that lunatics heard in their minds, haunting them and driving them to do horrible things. His laughter was the howl of a dying timber wolf, his snarls the soundtrack of nightmares.
Volstrak lived under Lily’s bed, and only came out at night. The first thing he ever said to her: “Hello, little girl. I want to drink your blood, and eat you up!” And then he revealed himself to her, baring his fangs, and Lily had screamed. She had cried, and ran out to her parents room, and Volstrak had laughed.
Her fear was nourishing, delicious and sustaining. Volstrak enjoyed it profusely. For he was a Lord of the Dark, a Creature of Shadow, and fear was his daily bread. It was what he needed to stay alive.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The months went by, and Lily and Volstrak went on with their lives.
Volstrak’s life went on pretty much as usual. The lives of Shadow Creatures are not marked by novelty and variety, after all. He stayed under Lily’s bed, scaring her as much as he could, growing fat on her delicious fear. The ideal life for one of his kind.
Lily’s life, however, was ever-changing. Yes, Volstrak was terrifying at night. But Mummy and Daddy were always there for her. They made her feel secure, told her he didn’t exist. Gave her things like security blankets and torch lights to defend herself, and her Daddy would check for monsters before she went to bed.
And their love made Volstrak less terrifying, and let her sleep well despite knowing he was there. And Volstrak was dismayed, for less fear meant less sustenance, but there was little he could do.
Lily also entered primary school, a place she found scary at first, but gradually grew to love. Lily especially loved finger-painting, because it was conducted by Ms. Lee, a friendly, warm teacher, who always smiled and smelt like strawberries.
She also went out of the country for the first time. Her parents took her to Japan for Christmas, and that holiday had been the best of her life. She had walked through cherry blossom gardens, drank tea from pretty ladies in kimonos, and met Mickey Mouse himself at Tokyo Disneyland. But her favourite memory was of New Year’s at Shinjuku. There had been thousands of people, and her Daddy had picked her up, and put her on his powerful shoulders, to see over the crowd. And she had marvelled at the most spectacular fireworks display she had ever seen: beautiful splashes of light, in every colour of the rainbow. They had ooh-ed and aah-ed, and then gone for ice creams after that. Just the three of them: her, her Daddy, and her Mommy. It had been the best of times.
But not all changes are positive.
July, 2002. Many things happened this month: the French president survived an assassination attempt during Bastille Day, novelist Chiam Potok passed away from cancer, and Lance Armstrong won his fourth consecutive Tour de France.
It was also the month when Daddy left Lily forever.
Lily would forever remember that day. She and Mommy had been baking a cherry pie in the kitchen. They had been talking about panda bears. And then the phone had rang. And Mommy had picked it up, and she started to cry: seems there had been an accident at Daddy’s workplace.
And Mommy had picked Lily up, and put her on her lap, and cried and cried. Daddy would not be coming back, she said. He had gone away, to a better place, and we would never see him again. And Lily didn’t understand what all this meant, but Mommy was crying, and that made her sad, and she started crying too, and for the whole night, they held each other, mother and daughter, weeping their pain away.
What followed was confusing for Lily. They made her dress in black, and took her to the church, which they normally only went to on Sundays. Various aunties and uncles she had not seen for ages had gathered, and most of them were weeping around Daddy, who was lying in a long box, dressed in his best suit, asleep.
They told her that Daddy was sleeping, and would never wake up. A man in a black robe and funny collar corrected them: no, that was not true. He would wake up, someday, in a time far, far in the future, and all of them would be reunited, forever in happiness, for the rest of eternity.
But Lily was sad. She didn’t want that. She wanted her Daddy now, with his lovely smile and booming laugh and constant hugs. She wanted him to pick her up again, and pat her on the head, and take her to the garden to show her things like beetles and millipedes, although she found them scary. The future was too long to wait. She wanted her Daddy now, and wanted him so badly that it hurt just thinking about it.
It was around this time that Volstrak was happiest. Without her Daddy, Lily was just a scared, weak little girl, full of fear. He didn’t need to rely on fancy tricks like baring his fangs or letting his eyes shine in the darkness to terrify her; all he needed to do was remind her he was there, usually by a snarl or a laugh, for her to scream in fear.
Times were good for Volstrak.
______________________________________________________________________________
A year later, things would further change for Lily and Volstrak.
In October 2003, Mommy brought home a man to the house. The man was tall, with a bushy moustache, and wore ear-rings, which Lily found strange because she thought only girls wore those.
They had met at a company picnic, Mommy explained, and she was very much in love with him. They had been seeing each other for quite some time now, and soon, they would get married.
Lily did not understand.
In short, Mommy explained: he was going to be her new Daddy.
Lily found this even harder to understand. She only had one Daddy, who had left her one year ago, and was now resting in a coffin underneath the earth, dead. She loved her old Daddy, and had no desire to have a new one.
Besides, she did not like this new Daddy. There was something strange about him, something that she did not like. His smile was peculiar, and oddly fake: New Daddy did not smile with his eyes. His shows of happiness seemed put-on, amazingly artificial, and she could sense he did not like her at all.
Lily could not bear to call him Daddy. No, he was not and would never take the place of her old Daddy. She took to calling him ‘Uncle’, the normal term she used when calling other men, and when her Mommy made her call him ‘Daddy’, she combined the two, referring to this stranger as ‘Uncle Daddy’.
Her new father was not amused, but she would not call him anything else.
Uncle Daddy was a very strange man. Sometimes he was nice, looking happy despite his fake smiles, passing around sweets and watching TV with Mommy and her.
Most of the time, however, he was unpleasant.
He liked going out late at night. While Daddy always made sure he came home by nine, to read bedtime stories to her, Uncle Daddy always came home late. When he came home late, he always smelt terrible, of smoke and beer, and was terribly rude: many times using bad words that kids at school would get punished for saying.
Mommy didn’t like this, and often asked him to stop, but Uncle Daddy refused. He got angrier each time Mommy asked him to stop, and sometimes, hit Mommy hard, cursing loudly as he did. He would always be sorry about this the next day, and apologise profusely, but when night came, would fall into the same habits again.
He was bitter around Lily too, finding fault with her over the smallest things. He often asked her to bring beers and other snacks from the fridge while watching television, and if Lily brought the wrong things, flew into a rage and hit her hard.
Lily also could not shake the feeling that Uncle Daddy looked at her strange every time she walked to the kitchen. There was often a strange glint in his eye, a look that disturbed her. But she put the thought out of her mind. She had other things to worry about.
__________________________________________________________________________
If things were bad for Lily, they were just as bad for Volstrak.
He didn’t understand it. Lily seemed less scared of him nowadays. He was draining less and less fear from her. While in the past, the amount of fear she had of him was enough to supply a five-course dinner for all the Shadow Creatures in Asia, she was now barely scared enough to feed a hatchling. What the heck was happening?
The strangest part had been last night. He had revealed himself again, clinking his talons along the side of her bed, snarling. “I want to eat your flesh,” he had said menacingly. “Want to rip your skin and feast on your bones!”
And how had Lily replied? “Do it,” she had said. “Please.” For death by monster would be a relief to her compared to the daily hell she went through.
She wasn’t scared of him anymore! This did not make sense! This was ridiculous!
He tried again the next night. And the next. And the night after that. But to no avail. Volstrak roared, and snarled, and threatened. He bared his fangs, unsheathed his claws, even tore off his head once, just to invoke one scream from Lily, one tiny bit of fear. But it was pointless. Lily felt no fear at all from him.
Finally, one night, Volstrak could not take it anymore.
“Why aren’t you scared of me anymore, child?” he asked. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No,” Lily said. “You are a very scary monster. But I have other things I am more scared of.”
“WHAT? What could be scarier than me, a Shadow Creature of the Eighth Realm? A witch-god? A hellhound? A wendigo? Tell me, child!!”
“None of those. It’s my new Daddy. I don’t like him. He scares me.”
“What? Why?”
And Lily broke down into tears, and told of how terribly Uncle Daddy was treating her, making her do chores and punishing her savagely every time she messed up. All she wanted to do was to be a good girl, she said, but Uncle Daddy found fault with everything she did!
Lily told of how Uncle Daddy had hit her twenty four times with an umbrella, and another time pushed her down the stairs for getting in his way. He was a terrible, smelly man, she said, and she missed her old Daddy so much.
Now Shadow-Beasts are solitary and reclusive by nature. Empathy is a foreign concept for them, and they do not usually bother with the problems of others, usually of the opinion that everyone has their own problems to bear. But Volstrak found himself listening, despite himself.
_____________________________________________________________________________
That night marked a fundamental change in the nature of Lily and Volstrak’s relationship.
Volstrak gave up on scaring her for the moment. After all, Lily no longer seemed afraid of him, and attempting to draw fear from her would be wasted effort. Instead, amazing himself, he found himself listening to her.
Lily told him many stories. She told him of the terrible things Uncle Daddy did to her and Mommy, and how she hated him so much it made her stomach hurt. Uncle Daddy made Mommy sad, she said, and they always had fights: Uncle Daddy spent too much of their money on beer, apparently, while Mommy wanted to save money for Lily to go to college, and when Mommy tried to talk to Uncle Daddy, he hit her.
She told him about school: how she liked English and Art, but hated Mathemathics: there were way too many numbers, and too many things you were supposed to do with them, she said. And the teacher was a very strict woman, apparently, always scolding her when she messed up. Chen Lao-shi was her name, she was a squat, fat old woman, her hair in a bun. No-one liked her.
Lily told her about how embarrassed she was about going to school with red cane marks all over her legs, and how her classmates always teased her and called her names. One girl had called her ‘Stupid Face’, and Lily had chased her and slapped her across the face: wow, she had gotten into serious trouble over that. The headmaster had scolded Lily and made her apologize, and she felt bad, but knew she would do it all over again in a heartbeat, something which made Volstrak laughed.
Lily told him of funny episodes of Spongebob she had seen. Of bunny-shaped clouds in the sky, of the jokes her teachers said in class, of the delicious peanut butter and cheese sandwiches her mother made for her to take to school. She told Volstrak of the little dog that had followed her home one day, only to be chased away by Uncle Daddy. She told him of the time she and Indran, a handsome curly-haired boy she hoped she would marry one day, spent recess blowing bubbles outside the canteen. She told him of the man with the funny hat she had seen on the bus, and the time she, Mommy and Daddy had gone to Japan, and eaten ice creams after a fireworks display.
And Volstrak found himself telling her about his life, as well.
He told her of all the many children he had scared over the centuries. Francois; the bedwetter, Benjamin; who prayed every time he came close, Xiao Li; whose aged grandmother would rush in to comfort her every time she screamed, Motabi; the sleepwalker, and dozens and dozens more.
He confessed to her that despite all his threats, Shadow-Creatures rarely ate children: it was the fear they thrived on, that was delicious and live-giving. Children could only be eaten in one circumstance. That is, if they were so scared out of their wits that their entire beings had been gripped by fear: only then could they be eaten, and they didn’t taste all that good as well. Their flesh was too stringy, and very bitter. Or so he had heard.
Lily asked why Shadow Creatures scared children, and Volstrak said it was how things were. They needed fear to survive, after all, and timid, impressionable little children was the best way to get it.
But you should be thankful for us, Volstrak reminded Lily. For often, a Shadow Creature forces a child to be brave, and find inner strength that otherwise would have been hidden forever. For little boys and little girls who find it in themselves to face the monsters under their bed will find they have the courage to face other monsters in their lives. They will not be shaken, no matter what life throws at them, and greatness will be their only destiny.
And Lily asked Volstrak about others like him, and he was glad to oblige. He told her of the spider-bellied Xephir, who lurked in closets, and drew in unsuspecting children with its sticky webs. He spoke of the Idtiliss, the long-fingered man with the scarred face, that tapped at windows, begging to be let into your house to spread terror. He told of the Lady Suffocate, a bloated corpse that hung upside down from the ceilings of showers, pouncing on its prey when they least suspected. Volstrak told her of the Clown King, and the Inside-Out Man, of the Skeleton Witch and the Faceless Beast, as well as the Seven Disgraces, and the Scream-By-Night.
And he told of Jerrifux, the prettiest Shadow-Creature he had ever laid eyes on, with her seven venomous tentacles and her hair that was a mass of writhing serpents. They had mated, and she had laid him a dozen eggs, which they had taken care of before going their separate ways. Such was their way, after all: they never remained together for longer than was necessary.
It was a sad and lonely life, though, and that was perhaps the reason why Volstrak was telling his life story to Lily. In other circumstances, he would have left the moment Lily stopped being scared of him. He needed fear to survive after all, and the longer he went without it, the weaker he got. But it was nice, in a way to talk to someone. He hadn’t had a conversation with another creature for decades, up to this.
For times were difficult now, especially for Shadow-Creatures. It had been ages since Volstrak had met another of his kind. The world was a scary place nowadays, with plenty to be afraid about. Movies and television, with their special effects, creating legions of monsters just as scary as a real Shadow-Creature. To say nothing of real life: with war, crime and injustice everywhere one looked, children had a lot more to be afraid of nowadays than monsters under the bed.
Many were the times when Volstrak had attempted to visit old friends, only to discover their shrivelled bodies lying forlornly beneath beds and armchairs, in empty closets and beneath staircases. They could only be deprived of fear for too long, after all. And Volstrak hoped he would never suffer such a fate.
____________________________________________________________________________
For a while, things were decent, and all was alright.
But nothing good lasts forever.
March 2004. A dramatic month. Terrorist attacks in Madrid. New photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. A cyclone hits Brazil.
It would also prove to be the last time that Lily and Volstrak would ever see each other.
It all started with Uncle Daddy getting laid off from work. It had put him in a foul mood: the nerve of his boss, he seethed angrily. Firing him for sleeping on the job and showing up late, it seems. Damn it, it wasn’t his fault he didn’t have enough sleep! He needed a lot of rest, to shake off the nasty hangovers he got.
So he stopped by a bar on the way back, and got plastered. Booze was his only source of happiness: he sure as hell didn’t get it from his family. His wife nagged all the time, and his step-daughter, she was a useless brat.
His mind shaken by anger and intoxication, Uncle Daddy made his way back, muttering to himself and cursing all the way.
And the first thing he saw was Lily’s shoes on the ground outside the door.
HOW MANY TIMES HAD HE TOLD THAT GIRL TO PUT HER SHOES ON THE RACK WHY WAS SHE SO DAMN STUBBORN…..
“Lily! Lily!” he bellowed her name loudly.
No answer. Furious, Uncle Daddy grabbed the feather duster from the table and moved to her room. Stupid girl, he’d teach her to answer when she was called..
Lily was reading a magazine when Uncle Daddy burst into her room. She cried with fear as Uncle Daddy picked her up and tossed her to the floor. With every ounce of strength, she apologised for what she had done, but her pleas fell on deaf ears, as Uncle Daddy struck her again and again with the feather duster, letting out all the pent-up rage that had been building within him.
Whack. That was for his stupid boss. Whack. That was for his stupid mortgage, which he could never pay off. Whack. That was for his stupid wife, always nagging him, never supporting him, never giving him love..
Love. That was all he wanted. Why why why was it so difficult to find, why couldn’t he find it..
It was just then that a strange urge took over him, and he picked up his crying daughter off the floor, and placed her gently on the bed.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Daddy,” Lily wept, her eyes puffy and red with tears. “I’ll be a good girl from now on, I promise, I won’t do anything wrong..”
“Shhh, Lily. It’s alright. I’m not angry anymore. You want to be a good girl, don’t you? Well, stop crying.”
“Ok, Uncle Daddy. I promise I won’t-“
“Take off your dress, Lily.”
“What?” Lily couldn’t believe her ears.
“Take off your dress, Lily. You don’t want to disobey me, do you? You want me to hit you again?”
“But I don’t want to, please-“
Uncle Daddy was enraged. He stormed toward the bed, feather duster raised, screaming. “TAKE YOUR DRESS OFF, OR SO HELP ME, I’LL-“
He never got to finish his sentence.
For a pair of powerful claws lunged at him from beneath Lily’s bed, ripping his flesh and causing him to fall to the ground.
‘What the fu-“
To his horror, a hideous beast emerged from the shadows under Lily’s bed. It was huge, with great wings of shadow, sharp claws like razor-blades, and piercing red eyes that blazed like the fires of hell.
“Monster!!!” it shouted at him, and its voice was like the shriek of a demon.
Uncle Daddy was too terrified to speak as the thing lunged toward him, its claws outstretched, its teeth bared. Whimpering, he tried to crawl away, but fear had rooted him to the spot. Absolute terror caused him to wet his pants: he had never seen a creature like this before, so majestic in its dreadfulness, the kind of monster that nightmares had nightmares about..
“You have assumed the role of this creature’s daddy,” the monster spoke to him, “and that role comes with responsibilities. You are supposed to love her, and cherish her, and do all you can to make her happy. Teach her right from wrong and educate her in the ways of the world. You are supposed to protect her from the monsters of the dark and the creatures of shadow. That is the way it has always been.”
“And you have perverted these sacred roles, you loathsome worm!” the monster snarled at him. Volstrak had never felt so powerful before: the wretch’s fear was overwhelming, and such a large quantity of it was making him feel almost euphoric. “How dare you attack your own child? Not even the lowest denizens of hell would resort to such ugliness. I should kill you right here and right now. You disgust me. Your mother should have eaten you at birth.”
Volstrak turned to Lily. “Get out of this place, Lily,” he said. “Call your mother. Tell her what your disgrace of a father has tried to do. And get to the police station. Tell them to come here in ten minutes. And please, do not turn back. I do not wish for you to see what I am about to do.”
Lily nodded. “Goodbye, my friend.” The last words she ever said to him. She knew, deep down, that she would never see him again after this. It was a miracle, as it was, that they had even managed to sustain a friendship that had lasted this long. For such things were not meant to be.
She ran from the room, trying her best to block out Uncle Daddy’s ear-piercing screams, as Volstrak advanced on him, grinning.
__________________________________________________________________________
July 2009. Three new dinosaur species are discovered in Australia. Federer defeats Roddick to win the 2009 Wimbledon Championships. China uses artificial insemination to create a giant panda, using frozen sperm.
It is also the month Indran Ambirajah will finally work up the courage to ask Lily Chen to be his girlfriend.
He’ll take her out for a movie: the latest chick flick maybe, she likes those. Or the latest blockbuster. What movie doesn’t matter. As long as they’re together. After that, he’ll take her for dinner at her favourite restaurant, before giving her a lift home. It will be a wonderful evening.
Sometime during the evening, he’ll ask he to be his, and Lily will accept. She will do her best not to cry, and fail miserably. She has liked him since they were in primary school, after all, and they will have many happy memories together.
Lily has made quite a life for herself. She stays in Puchong now, in a two-storey house with her mother and dog Mr Littles 2, and does well at school. She’s active in cheerleading, and represents the state in debating tournaments.
She still has memories of her old life, although she has mostly gotten over them. Most prominently, she remembers her old bedroom in her old house, where she lived with a terrifying monster under her bed. Oddly, she remembers him fondly.
As for Volstrak, he is living a wonderful life as well. He has since relocated: he haunts the Sungai Buloh prison now, growing fat off the fears of murderers, rapists, thieves and all manner of degenerates.
But he still has a soft spot for the prisoner in Cell No B-1276. Dear Uncle Daddy, who he visits on a very regular basis. He was the first person to show him that adults could be frightened as easily as children, after all, and that their fears were just as nourishing.
And he screams so delightfully like a little girl.
Friday, 7 August 2009
SHADOW, Attempt 1
I actually have a more elaborate idea for this month's freewriting, and I will probably write that sometime in future.
However, I also could not resist this little story, and so, hope you enjoy it.
A MOST PECULIAR CASE
A man steps into a doctor's office.
"Doc, doc, you have to help me!" he begs. "I have a problem, and I don't know who else to turn to!"
"Whats wrong?" the doctor asks.
"Ïts my shadow! It's acting weird!"
"But thats impossible! In what way is it acting weird?"
"It seems to have a life of its own!" the man cries.
"Tell me about this."
"Well, once, I was standing at a bus stop, and my shadow was doing something different from what I was doing! I was just standing, but my shadow..it was kneeling! It looked as though it was tied up, and there was something in its mouth!"
"Really?" the doctor is amazed.
"Another time, I was lying on my bed, and my shadow was different again! It looked as though it was tied to the bed with rope, and struggling vigorously!"
The doctor makes some notes.
"And worst of all was the time I was at this restaurant, on a date with this girl I had just met. Everything went well, until the girl noticed our shadows on the wall at the restaurant. My shadow seemed to be carrying a whip, and was whipping away at her shadow! The date ended in disaster!"
"I see," said the docotr.
"So, whats wrong, with me, doc? Can I be cured?"
"Its difficult to say," the doctor replied. "I'm writing you a prescription to go see a sex therapist."
"A sex therapist? But why?"
"You've got the worst case of shadow-masochism I've ever seen!
END
However, I also could not resist this little story, and so, hope you enjoy it.
A MOST PECULIAR CASE
A man steps into a doctor's office.
"Doc, doc, you have to help me!" he begs. "I have a problem, and I don't know who else to turn to!"
"Whats wrong?" the doctor asks.
"Ïts my shadow! It's acting weird!"
"But thats impossible! In what way is it acting weird?"
"It seems to have a life of its own!" the man cries.
"Tell me about this."
"Well, once, I was standing at a bus stop, and my shadow was doing something different from what I was doing! I was just standing, but my shadow..it was kneeling! It looked as though it was tied up, and there was something in its mouth!"
"Really?" the doctor is amazed.
"Another time, I was lying on my bed, and my shadow was different again! It looked as though it was tied to the bed with rope, and struggling vigorously!"
The doctor makes some notes.
"And worst of all was the time I was at this restaurant, on a date with this girl I had just met. Everything went well, until the girl noticed our shadows on the wall at the restaurant. My shadow seemed to be carrying a whip, and was whipping away at her shadow! The date ended in disaster!"
"I see," said the docotr.
"So, whats wrong, with me, doc? Can I be cured?"
"Its difficult to say," the doctor replied. "I'm writing you a prescription to go see a sex therapist."
"A sex therapist? But why?"
"You've got the worst case of shadow-masochism I've ever seen!
END
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
FLY!!!!!!!
Yes, since my CLP has finally ended, and I have time to scribble nonsense once more, I finally have the time to write this month’s Writing Project.
I must admit, this story wasn’t my original idea. The original idea was about the dramatic adventures and epic romance between two houseflies in a mamak. But I got lazy to research houseflies.
Therefore, you get this instead. It’s a bit lengthy, but I enjoyed working on it. And if you’ve read the previous story as well, NO, I do not have a fetish for angels. They just seem to fit so nicely into my stories!
MISTER HUMPHRY HERBERT’S WHIMSICAL LEVITATION DEVICE #27
Now a lot of folks, they say that history is written by the victors.
And ya gotta’ admit, that’s certainly true. Ain’t no room in history for the also-rans, the runner-ups, the second placers. Nobody gonna remember the second man on the moon or the man who almost discovered penicillin. If ya don’t achieve it, ya might as well not even try. History sure ain’t going to remember ya.
Which is a damn shame, sometimes. Since ya always end up forgetting some champion fellas.
Take the airplane, for example. Ask any kid in school nowadays who invented it, and they’d look at ya as if ya was stupid. “Aint’cha got no education, mister?” those snot-nosed little punks would say. “That’ll be them Wright Brothers. Flew the first plane in Kitty Hawk. Everyone knows that.”
And they’d be right. And a shame too. Because nobody ever remembers Sir Humphry Herbert. Or his Whimsical Levitation Device. And if ya ask me, I think it’s a crying shame.
I had the pleasure of knowin’ old Herbert, when he still stayed here in Silver Flats, Missouri, from ’49 to ’51. Or was it ’52? I can’t remember. My memory’s going bad in me old age. Used to do the gardening for him and his wife, I did. Prune their begonias, mow their lawn, that sorta stuff. Ain’t much else a boy my age could do in Silver Flats at the time. We weren’t the richest little town.
Everyone liked old Herbert. Ya had to. He was a giant of a man, almost six feet, but ya couldn’t be scared of him, what with his big ol’grin and merry eyes, and all the jokes he was makin’. His hair was white, and he wore a monocle, which he hung on a string attached to his pinstriped suit. Old Herbert always wore pinstriped suits, no matter the season, no matter the weather. Never seen without it, he was. Folks even used to reckon he went swimming in them pinstripe suits. Which was fine though, because it suited the old guv. Made him look distinguished, especially since he always matched it with a tie and shiny shoes.
And he was the most generous guv I’ve ever met in my life. Old Herbert was one of them rich kind-hearted men, one of them phil-somethings, always giving to one charity or other. He was passionate about anything: war widows, orphans, old folks, animals, tuberculosis victims; anyone he deemed to be less fortunate, I tell ya, he would help them out. Old Herbert probably got swindled many times over his life, but the guy didn’t care: as long as he felt he was doing his part, the guv was happy as a jaybird.
And Lordy, how he loved his wife, Layala. She was black, she was, from head to toe, one of them Africans. Her hair was in dreadlocks, and she always wore bright dresses with flowery patterns on them. People said she met old Herbert when he went diamond mining in Africa in his youth. Said she was the princess of some savage heathen tribe. A warrior princess, who saved Herbert from danger one day, and he took her home and married her. What the danger was, ain’t no one certain. Some say it was a pride of lions. Some say he once almost drowned in a river full of crocodiles. Others say it was the dark curse of a voodoo priest angry with the white man for trespassin’ into his territory. Whatever it was, though, it don’t matter.
Some ignorant mothers used Layala to scare their kids. “Ya better eat ya vegetables,” they’d say. “Or Layala will come and get ya in the night, when ya can’t see her, and she’ll mash ya up to make stew for her lions.” But lucky, kids in those days had more sense, and never believed those lies. After all, who could be scared of Layala? She was the nicest, sweetest lady to have ever lived in Silver Flats, always handin’ out candy and singin’ those folk songs of hers which the children loved dancin’ to. Everyone adored her. Especially old Herbert. She may have been the princess of her tribe in Africa, but here in Missouri, well, she was the queen of his heart, ain’t no doubt about that.
I worked as gardener to those two for two years. Old Herbert was rich from his diamond mines, and had a huge mansion with a beautiful garden filled with exotic plants. It was a chore to work there, I ain’t denying it, backbreakin’ labor, but Herbert was good to me, and paid me well. It was to this very day, the best job I have ever had.
Things changed, however, the day Layala died.
It rained that day, and the whole town came to her funeral. Everyone showed up, from the children to the seniors down at the retirement home. Banks and shops closed up for the day, the town flag was flown at half mast, and even old Ma Clapham, who never liked Herbert or his wife, showed up at the ceremony in black to pay her respects.
Old Herbert was broken like crazy after the affair, and everyone wondered how he would deal with this loss. That woman had been everythin’ to him, the very centre of his life. Some wondered if he would build some kind of monument to her: he always was quite an artist. Some of the guv’s art still hangin’ in the British Museum today, after all. People wondered if he would die of grief, or go mad from his sorrow. Some wondered if he would remarry, or even move back to Africa.
Ain’t nobody thought he would start buildin’ flying machines.
I remember how it was, on that fateful Sunday, one week after the funeral. I was cuttin’ the grass down by old Herbert’s lily pond, when the guv himself calls me to his study. “Teddy! Teddy!” the man says. “Come quick, kid! I need you to see this! It will blow ya mind!”
So I goes to his study, where he poured me a cup of cocoa and shows me the plans he had for somethin’ he called his Levitation Device. It was all very technical: I ain’t understanding half of his sketches. But he explained that what he was plannin’, well, it would change the world.
“It’s a machine that flies!” old Herbert was beamin’ from ear to ear. “Can ya imagine it? It’s the future of travel! We can be like the birds, flyin’ wherever we please! It’ll put the steam trains and the ships outta business!”
“Yeah,” I decided to humour the old guv. “We can go anywhere we likes! Ya could fly back to Africa every day, and be back here in time fer’ tea! We could fly to the Orient, and buy silks, and then stop by the Prison Colonies, to visit me old dad, and see the Pyramids, and then stop by the President’s house to shake his hand!”
“Why stop there, Teddy?” old Herbert’s eyes were shining. “We could even fly on up to Heaven, past all them clouds, and meet all them angels!”
At the time I thought nothing of the old man’s plans. Thought they were the old man’s way of copin’ with his pain and all. Either that or age was catchin’ up with the guv, and he was getting’ all senile.
Sadly, once old Herbert got an idea, he ran with it all the way.
Problem was, he tended to run in the wrong direction.
And often off a cliff on the way.
Everyday, he would drive down to the town library, where he’d do his researchin’. He’d take his Bentley. The silver one. It was his favorite, the very first car he ever bought, before he’d gone to Africa and struck it big.
And when he’d go back, he’d start buildin’ his Levitation Devices. And Lordy, what devices they were. I ain’t remembered them all, but all of them were twenty kinds of crazy. Old Herbert left no stone unturned when it came to get to the sky, from flying bicycles to hang-glider suits.
I remember Levitation Device #1. Old Herbert had somehow collected hundreds of birds, and tied them to a boat of his. How he got them I had no idea: the guv did have a crazy way of doin’ things. His idea was that when they all beat their wings at the same time, they’d all carry him to the sky, like the stork carryin’ a baby and so on.
Herbert, however, did not realize how difficult it was to get a bunch of birds to do anything together, and his plan went belly-up pretty spectacular. Them birds got really noisy, the bigger ones started eatin’ the smaller ones, and many of them started to damage the plants in his garden. It made my heart ache, it did, to see the hydrangeas, which I spent weeks tending, bein’ torn apart by some angry jungle fowls. And all of them started poopin’ pretty bad: by the end of the whole evening, old Herbert was covered in so many droppings, he looked like those Abominable Snowmen those Oriental legends talk about.
This failure didn’t dishearten the old guv however, and he began working on his next plan.
Levitation Device #2 went even worse than the first.
Old Herbert had somehow found some book of old myths from the library. Some Greek guv called Icarus or somethin’, had apparently woven together some wings outta feathers, and him and his dad had flown across the sea or somethin’.
What with all the feathers left behind from the previous try, well, makin’ the wings was easy like pie. Old Herbert made some big ol’ wings, seven feet long, and strapped them to his back, lookin’ like some angel. It was actually kinda inspirin’.
I asked old Herbert, however, what happened to that Icarus guv.
“Ain’t went too well, I’m sad to say,” Herbert answered. “Guv stuck his feathers together with wax, and flew too close to the sun. The wax melted, and the poor chappie fell to his death.”
“Ain’t ya worried it will happen to ya?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he reassured me. “I learned from the story. I ain’t using wax.”
“Then what are ya usin’?”
“Used chewin’ gum.”
It was really lucky I encouraged him to try flyin’ in McCullogh’s field, with all them haystacks, or who knows what tragedy woulda happened.
Then there was Levitation Device #26. Old Herbert had read from a science book that hot air rises, and had gotten inspired from that.
Now, let me tell ya, there are three kinds of people in this world. Imagine ya’re sitting under a tree one day, and an apple falls on ya head.
The first kind of people go on out to discover gravity and all kinds of sciency stuff: big discoveries that change the world. The second kind of people go to discover apple-proof crash helmets: small, but safe and practical.
The third kind of fellas go out to invent apple-powered doomsday machines, or apple-
pickin’ automatons that eventually go plum crazy and go out killin’ people.
Sadly, Herbert was that third kind of fella, and he brought me to his garden one day to show me his latest device. It was a large platform, made of wood, with a bonfire burnin’ below it. On top of it, was what looked like a chair with a sail attached.
The plan was simplicity, he said. The hot air from the fire will rise, takin’ the chair (which he would be sittin’ in) up into the sky. Once he got airborne high enough, he would hopefully catch a wind-current, which he could travel in all over the place.
I asked how he would change direction in mid-air.
“That’s the genius of the plan!” he exclaimed. He pointed out some strange machine-things at the front of the chair. They were levers, he said, with boots attached to them. If he needed to move in any direction, he would pull the lever and the boot would kick the chair in the required direction. Them sails would do the rest.
Ya had to end it to old Herbert. While most of what he thought was nonsense, it was logically consistent nonsense.
Sadly, like the others, this plan also backfired terribly, not only almost injurin’ Herbert pretty bad, but almost causin’ a bush-fire that almost burnt down the whole of Silver Flats.
People got pretty mad at him after that, and old Herbert laid low for a while. He retreated into his mansion, and no-one saw him for weeks.
I was gettin’ worried about it for a while. Who knows how he took the news of this latest failure. As optimistic as anyone could be, fall too many times, and there was a point ya wouldn’t be able to get up again. I tried to visit him, but he never answered his doorbell, or even looked out of the window at me, though I knew he was there.
Months passed, and for a while I thought he had given up on his flying dreams.
Until he showed up at my door one day, and told me to come follow me.
Old Herbert led me down to his garden, and showed me somethin’ I never quite expected.
The biggest cannon I had ever seen in my life!
I recognized it: “That’s Old Victoria!” The cannon outside the grounds of the Missouri War Museum. Survivor of the great wars. “What is that doin’ here?”
“It’s Levitation Device #27.”
“Ya bought it?? It must have cost a fortune!”
“Sold my Bentley.”
“But ya loved that car!”
“Loved my wife even more. Sold the house too. Developers coming by tomorrow to tear it down. Think they’re buildin’ a factory over it.”
I was pretty stunned. Never was expectin’ something like this to happen.
“I did some modifications to it.” Herbert said. “Look in the barrel.”
Inside the cannon was a hollow vessel, big enough for one person. Probably where old Herbert would be sitting in when he flew. Several items were also placed within. Tuna sandwiches. And umbrella. A notebook and two fantasy novels. A change of clothes. An Oriental paper fan. And oddest of all, a hat with a gold-painted gramophone record attached to it.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“Well, when I get to heaven, all of them angels going to be flying around with them shiny gold haloes all round them heads. And won’t I look like a damn fool if I get there without one? Gotta make a good impression when I get there. Don’t want to embarrass Layala, ya know?”
“Ya serious about this,” I spoke softly. “Ya really want to be shot out of this cannon? It might kill ya!”
“We gotta take chances after all. What have I got to lose, anyway? I’ve lived a full life, and I’ve been happy with what I got. But it don’t mean nothing without my lady. And if this gets me to her, I gotta take that chance.”
He asked me if I would do him the honour of lighting the cannon.
And to this day, I don’t know why I agreed. It seemed the right thing to do. Plus, one look into old Herbert’s sad eyes..well, ya try saying no to him. It was like refusing a puppy-dog a bone, or a kitten a ball of wool.
He shook my hand, and thanked me for all I did for him. Said I had been a great gardener, and the closest thing he had to a son. On the table in his bedroom, there was some extra pay for me and my old ma, as well as letters and trinkets for everyone in Silver Flats. He’d never gotten down to makin’ a will. Said it was complicated. But he hoped I would help give all his stuff to people who needed it most.
When he was done, he stepped into the cannon, and begged me to light the fuse.
It was the hardest thing I would have to do, for I knew I’d miss the old man. I struggled to light the fuse: my tears kept landin’ on the damn match, and puttin’ it out.
When I did, there was a huge explosion. A lot of smoke; I was coughin’ and wheezin’ like crazy. But I kept my eyes to the sky, and damn it all, if I didn’t see a dark shape shoot up into the sky, so fast it got harder to see the higher it went. It rose up past the clouds, before suddenly opening up what appeared to be a sail at its top, and canvas wings at its side, before disappearin’ from view.
And that was the last I ever saw of old Humphry Herbert.
All of Silver Flats missed him. The town just plain wasn’t the same without that old man. There wasn’t a funeral: he wouldn’t have wanted it. But everyone in town wore white, his favorite colour. Even Ma Clapham, who seemed to be crying the loudest when they announced he was gone.
The developers who bought his house couldn’t bear to tear it down. They were friends of his, after all, and decided to leave it as it was. A sorta monument, ya could say, to dear old Herbert and Layala.
People still wonder though, to this day, what happened to Herbert. Some say he probably landed somewhere in the South, and decided to make a new life there. Some say he made it to Africa, where he joined Layala’s old tribe, became a witchdoctor.
Kenneth Purvis, a professor, and the only one from Silver Flats to make it to university, says he ain’t believin’ that Herbert made it very far. Said physics wouldn’t have allowed fer’ it. Old Herbert probably died a painful death, he says, burnt up from the speed and velocity of the shot combined with the force of the explosion. He probably landed as ash somewhere in Colorado, deader than dead. All accordin’ to physics.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust this physics nonsense. I ain’t an educated man, ain’t went to no school, but I tell ya: if there’s a science out there that limits ya and tells ya all sorts of things ain’t possible to be done, ya better off not listening to any of it. Because nothing great was ever done by people believin’ stuff was impossible.
I like to think old Herbert made it to heaven somehow, in his Levitation Device #27. That as I write this, he’s jitterbuggin’ with his wife and all them angels, while Gabriel plays Yellow Rose of Texas on his horn.
And Lordy, one day I hope to join the old guv.
END.
I must admit, this story wasn’t my original idea. The original idea was about the dramatic adventures and epic romance between two houseflies in a mamak. But I got lazy to research houseflies.
Therefore, you get this instead. It’s a bit lengthy, but I enjoyed working on it. And if you’ve read the previous story as well, NO, I do not have a fetish for angels. They just seem to fit so nicely into my stories!
MISTER HUMPHRY HERBERT’S WHIMSICAL LEVITATION DEVICE #27
Now a lot of folks, they say that history is written by the victors.
And ya gotta’ admit, that’s certainly true. Ain’t no room in history for the also-rans, the runner-ups, the second placers. Nobody gonna remember the second man on the moon or the man who almost discovered penicillin. If ya don’t achieve it, ya might as well not even try. History sure ain’t going to remember ya.
Which is a damn shame, sometimes. Since ya always end up forgetting some champion fellas.
Take the airplane, for example. Ask any kid in school nowadays who invented it, and they’d look at ya as if ya was stupid. “Aint’cha got no education, mister?” those snot-nosed little punks would say. “That’ll be them Wright Brothers. Flew the first plane in Kitty Hawk. Everyone knows that.”
And they’d be right. And a shame too. Because nobody ever remembers Sir Humphry Herbert. Or his Whimsical Levitation Device. And if ya ask me, I think it’s a crying shame.
I had the pleasure of knowin’ old Herbert, when he still stayed here in Silver Flats, Missouri, from ’49 to ’51. Or was it ’52? I can’t remember. My memory’s going bad in me old age. Used to do the gardening for him and his wife, I did. Prune their begonias, mow their lawn, that sorta stuff. Ain’t much else a boy my age could do in Silver Flats at the time. We weren’t the richest little town.
Everyone liked old Herbert. Ya had to. He was a giant of a man, almost six feet, but ya couldn’t be scared of him, what with his big ol’grin and merry eyes, and all the jokes he was makin’. His hair was white, and he wore a monocle, which he hung on a string attached to his pinstriped suit. Old Herbert always wore pinstriped suits, no matter the season, no matter the weather. Never seen without it, he was. Folks even used to reckon he went swimming in them pinstripe suits. Which was fine though, because it suited the old guv. Made him look distinguished, especially since he always matched it with a tie and shiny shoes.
And he was the most generous guv I’ve ever met in my life. Old Herbert was one of them rich kind-hearted men, one of them phil-somethings, always giving to one charity or other. He was passionate about anything: war widows, orphans, old folks, animals, tuberculosis victims; anyone he deemed to be less fortunate, I tell ya, he would help them out. Old Herbert probably got swindled many times over his life, but the guy didn’t care: as long as he felt he was doing his part, the guv was happy as a jaybird.
And Lordy, how he loved his wife, Layala. She was black, she was, from head to toe, one of them Africans. Her hair was in dreadlocks, and she always wore bright dresses with flowery patterns on them. People said she met old Herbert when he went diamond mining in Africa in his youth. Said she was the princess of some savage heathen tribe. A warrior princess, who saved Herbert from danger one day, and he took her home and married her. What the danger was, ain’t no one certain. Some say it was a pride of lions. Some say he once almost drowned in a river full of crocodiles. Others say it was the dark curse of a voodoo priest angry with the white man for trespassin’ into his territory. Whatever it was, though, it don’t matter.
Some ignorant mothers used Layala to scare their kids. “Ya better eat ya vegetables,” they’d say. “Or Layala will come and get ya in the night, when ya can’t see her, and she’ll mash ya up to make stew for her lions.” But lucky, kids in those days had more sense, and never believed those lies. After all, who could be scared of Layala? She was the nicest, sweetest lady to have ever lived in Silver Flats, always handin’ out candy and singin’ those folk songs of hers which the children loved dancin’ to. Everyone adored her. Especially old Herbert. She may have been the princess of her tribe in Africa, but here in Missouri, well, she was the queen of his heart, ain’t no doubt about that.
I worked as gardener to those two for two years. Old Herbert was rich from his diamond mines, and had a huge mansion with a beautiful garden filled with exotic plants. It was a chore to work there, I ain’t denying it, backbreakin’ labor, but Herbert was good to me, and paid me well. It was to this very day, the best job I have ever had.
Things changed, however, the day Layala died.
It rained that day, and the whole town came to her funeral. Everyone showed up, from the children to the seniors down at the retirement home. Banks and shops closed up for the day, the town flag was flown at half mast, and even old Ma Clapham, who never liked Herbert or his wife, showed up at the ceremony in black to pay her respects.
Old Herbert was broken like crazy after the affair, and everyone wondered how he would deal with this loss. That woman had been everythin’ to him, the very centre of his life. Some wondered if he would build some kind of monument to her: he always was quite an artist. Some of the guv’s art still hangin’ in the British Museum today, after all. People wondered if he would die of grief, or go mad from his sorrow. Some wondered if he would remarry, or even move back to Africa.
Ain’t nobody thought he would start buildin’ flying machines.
I remember how it was, on that fateful Sunday, one week after the funeral. I was cuttin’ the grass down by old Herbert’s lily pond, when the guv himself calls me to his study. “Teddy! Teddy!” the man says. “Come quick, kid! I need you to see this! It will blow ya mind!”
So I goes to his study, where he poured me a cup of cocoa and shows me the plans he had for somethin’ he called his Levitation Device. It was all very technical: I ain’t understanding half of his sketches. But he explained that what he was plannin’, well, it would change the world.
“It’s a machine that flies!” old Herbert was beamin’ from ear to ear. “Can ya imagine it? It’s the future of travel! We can be like the birds, flyin’ wherever we please! It’ll put the steam trains and the ships outta business!”
“Yeah,” I decided to humour the old guv. “We can go anywhere we likes! Ya could fly back to Africa every day, and be back here in time fer’ tea! We could fly to the Orient, and buy silks, and then stop by the Prison Colonies, to visit me old dad, and see the Pyramids, and then stop by the President’s house to shake his hand!”
“Why stop there, Teddy?” old Herbert’s eyes were shining. “We could even fly on up to Heaven, past all them clouds, and meet all them angels!”
At the time I thought nothing of the old man’s plans. Thought they were the old man’s way of copin’ with his pain and all. Either that or age was catchin’ up with the guv, and he was getting’ all senile.
Sadly, once old Herbert got an idea, he ran with it all the way.
Problem was, he tended to run in the wrong direction.
And often off a cliff on the way.
Everyday, he would drive down to the town library, where he’d do his researchin’. He’d take his Bentley. The silver one. It was his favorite, the very first car he ever bought, before he’d gone to Africa and struck it big.
And when he’d go back, he’d start buildin’ his Levitation Devices. And Lordy, what devices they were. I ain’t remembered them all, but all of them were twenty kinds of crazy. Old Herbert left no stone unturned when it came to get to the sky, from flying bicycles to hang-glider suits.
I remember Levitation Device #1. Old Herbert had somehow collected hundreds of birds, and tied them to a boat of his. How he got them I had no idea: the guv did have a crazy way of doin’ things. His idea was that when they all beat their wings at the same time, they’d all carry him to the sky, like the stork carryin’ a baby and so on.
Herbert, however, did not realize how difficult it was to get a bunch of birds to do anything together, and his plan went belly-up pretty spectacular. Them birds got really noisy, the bigger ones started eatin’ the smaller ones, and many of them started to damage the plants in his garden. It made my heart ache, it did, to see the hydrangeas, which I spent weeks tending, bein’ torn apart by some angry jungle fowls. And all of them started poopin’ pretty bad: by the end of the whole evening, old Herbert was covered in so many droppings, he looked like those Abominable Snowmen those Oriental legends talk about.
This failure didn’t dishearten the old guv however, and he began working on his next plan.
Levitation Device #2 went even worse than the first.
Old Herbert had somehow found some book of old myths from the library. Some Greek guv called Icarus or somethin’, had apparently woven together some wings outta feathers, and him and his dad had flown across the sea or somethin’.
What with all the feathers left behind from the previous try, well, makin’ the wings was easy like pie. Old Herbert made some big ol’ wings, seven feet long, and strapped them to his back, lookin’ like some angel. It was actually kinda inspirin’.
I asked old Herbert, however, what happened to that Icarus guv.
“Ain’t went too well, I’m sad to say,” Herbert answered. “Guv stuck his feathers together with wax, and flew too close to the sun. The wax melted, and the poor chappie fell to his death.”
“Ain’t ya worried it will happen to ya?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he reassured me. “I learned from the story. I ain’t using wax.”
“Then what are ya usin’?”
“Used chewin’ gum.”
It was really lucky I encouraged him to try flyin’ in McCullogh’s field, with all them haystacks, or who knows what tragedy woulda happened.
Then there was Levitation Device #26. Old Herbert had read from a science book that hot air rises, and had gotten inspired from that.
Now, let me tell ya, there are three kinds of people in this world. Imagine ya’re sitting under a tree one day, and an apple falls on ya head.
The first kind of people go on out to discover gravity and all kinds of sciency stuff: big discoveries that change the world. The second kind of people go to discover apple-proof crash helmets: small, but safe and practical.
The third kind of fellas go out to invent apple-powered doomsday machines, or apple-
pickin’ automatons that eventually go plum crazy and go out killin’ people.
Sadly, Herbert was that third kind of fella, and he brought me to his garden one day to show me his latest device. It was a large platform, made of wood, with a bonfire burnin’ below it. On top of it, was what looked like a chair with a sail attached.
The plan was simplicity, he said. The hot air from the fire will rise, takin’ the chair (which he would be sittin’ in) up into the sky. Once he got airborne high enough, he would hopefully catch a wind-current, which he could travel in all over the place.
I asked how he would change direction in mid-air.
“That’s the genius of the plan!” he exclaimed. He pointed out some strange machine-things at the front of the chair. They were levers, he said, with boots attached to them. If he needed to move in any direction, he would pull the lever and the boot would kick the chair in the required direction. Them sails would do the rest.
Ya had to end it to old Herbert. While most of what he thought was nonsense, it was logically consistent nonsense.
Sadly, like the others, this plan also backfired terribly, not only almost injurin’ Herbert pretty bad, but almost causin’ a bush-fire that almost burnt down the whole of Silver Flats.
People got pretty mad at him after that, and old Herbert laid low for a while. He retreated into his mansion, and no-one saw him for weeks.
I was gettin’ worried about it for a while. Who knows how he took the news of this latest failure. As optimistic as anyone could be, fall too many times, and there was a point ya wouldn’t be able to get up again. I tried to visit him, but he never answered his doorbell, or even looked out of the window at me, though I knew he was there.
Months passed, and for a while I thought he had given up on his flying dreams.
Until he showed up at my door one day, and told me to come follow me.
Old Herbert led me down to his garden, and showed me somethin’ I never quite expected.
The biggest cannon I had ever seen in my life!
I recognized it: “That’s Old Victoria!” The cannon outside the grounds of the Missouri War Museum. Survivor of the great wars. “What is that doin’ here?”
“It’s Levitation Device #27.”
“Ya bought it?? It must have cost a fortune!”
“Sold my Bentley.”
“But ya loved that car!”
“Loved my wife even more. Sold the house too. Developers coming by tomorrow to tear it down. Think they’re buildin’ a factory over it.”
I was pretty stunned. Never was expectin’ something like this to happen.
“I did some modifications to it.” Herbert said. “Look in the barrel.”
Inside the cannon was a hollow vessel, big enough for one person. Probably where old Herbert would be sitting in when he flew. Several items were also placed within. Tuna sandwiches. And umbrella. A notebook and two fantasy novels. A change of clothes. An Oriental paper fan. And oddest of all, a hat with a gold-painted gramophone record attached to it.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“Well, when I get to heaven, all of them angels going to be flying around with them shiny gold haloes all round them heads. And won’t I look like a damn fool if I get there without one? Gotta make a good impression when I get there. Don’t want to embarrass Layala, ya know?”
“Ya serious about this,” I spoke softly. “Ya really want to be shot out of this cannon? It might kill ya!”
“We gotta take chances after all. What have I got to lose, anyway? I’ve lived a full life, and I’ve been happy with what I got. But it don’t mean nothing without my lady. And if this gets me to her, I gotta take that chance.”
He asked me if I would do him the honour of lighting the cannon.
And to this day, I don’t know why I agreed. It seemed the right thing to do. Plus, one look into old Herbert’s sad eyes..well, ya try saying no to him. It was like refusing a puppy-dog a bone, or a kitten a ball of wool.
He shook my hand, and thanked me for all I did for him. Said I had been a great gardener, and the closest thing he had to a son. On the table in his bedroom, there was some extra pay for me and my old ma, as well as letters and trinkets for everyone in Silver Flats. He’d never gotten down to makin’ a will. Said it was complicated. But he hoped I would help give all his stuff to people who needed it most.
When he was done, he stepped into the cannon, and begged me to light the fuse.
It was the hardest thing I would have to do, for I knew I’d miss the old man. I struggled to light the fuse: my tears kept landin’ on the damn match, and puttin’ it out.
When I did, there was a huge explosion. A lot of smoke; I was coughin’ and wheezin’ like crazy. But I kept my eyes to the sky, and damn it all, if I didn’t see a dark shape shoot up into the sky, so fast it got harder to see the higher it went. It rose up past the clouds, before suddenly opening up what appeared to be a sail at its top, and canvas wings at its side, before disappearin’ from view.
And that was the last I ever saw of old Humphry Herbert.
All of Silver Flats missed him. The town just plain wasn’t the same without that old man. There wasn’t a funeral: he wouldn’t have wanted it. But everyone in town wore white, his favorite colour. Even Ma Clapham, who seemed to be crying the loudest when they announced he was gone.
The developers who bought his house couldn’t bear to tear it down. They were friends of his, after all, and decided to leave it as it was. A sorta monument, ya could say, to dear old Herbert and Layala.
People still wonder though, to this day, what happened to Herbert. Some say he probably landed somewhere in the South, and decided to make a new life there. Some say he made it to Africa, where he joined Layala’s old tribe, became a witchdoctor.
Kenneth Purvis, a professor, and the only one from Silver Flats to make it to university, says he ain’t believin’ that Herbert made it very far. Said physics wouldn’t have allowed fer’ it. Old Herbert probably died a painful death, he says, burnt up from the speed and velocity of the shot combined with the force of the explosion. He probably landed as ash somewhere in Colorado, deader than dead. All accordin’ to physics.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust this physics nonsense. I ain’t an educated man, ain’t went to no school, but I tell ya: if there’s a science out there that limits ya and tells ya all sorts of things ain’t possible to be done, ya better off not listening to any of it. Because nothing great was ever done by people believin’ stuff was impossible.
I like to think old Herbert made it to heaven somehow, in his Levitation Device #27. That as I write this, he’s jitterbuggin’ with his wife and all them angels, while Gabriel plays Yellow Rose of Texas on his horn.
And Lordy, one day I hope to join the old guv.
END.
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