Wicker Gnome Throne

Illustration: Arthur Rackham

Mr. Graybar's Orphans

Smoking coal out of a pipe of petrified dragon's bone Mr. Graybar leads the orphan children home. The straight and narrow path cleared as peddlers dive and carts veer To avoid the headmaster and his charge. The thirteen ashen orphans jeer the townsfolk, shirking in equal shame and fear at the sight of the Gnome who owned the orphanage for troubled boys and a girl that bites.

Looking for fights, Tugging on their vests, Baring their teeth, Puffing their chests.

Behold the urchin Charles he spins a pocket watch I heard he snatched From the mayor at the last Festival of Root Vegetables.

Scraps is that one's name I'm told With the eye-patch, half his head is bald They claim he ate a bag of glass To win a bet with the owner of the mill And now he'll take a quarter salary 'Cross this whole fiscal year.

Don't look the girl in the eye There's a guy by the battery With one of his missing He now wears a hat to be So low on his face you Can hardly tell that he Once got too close to the Girl that walks with The Graybar's Orphan Boys. And bites.

Illustration -- Arthur Rackham

The giant pumpkin rotted in the town square. Two weeks of summer days had reduced it to an viscus mound of pulp, cupped in a wide basin of ragged skin. On the side shaded by the wall of the Cooper’s workshop, virulent white toadstools flourished in patches like elven slums rimming a valley of bright hot decay. Sure, it had looked lovely with the princess-to-be in it, up on wax polished wagon wheels and set with a velvet-upholstered driver’s bench. But then so would have a giant parsnip.

No one was quite sure why the driver had abandoned the carriage there after the Royal Ball. Speculation that the driver was in-fact a goose transmogrified by the same warlock that made the pumpkin gargantuan was quieted when his body was found tangled in the Miller’s wheel. He had been stripped cleanly of his uniform, just as the pumpkin had been stripped it’s carriage. The popular theory that followed was that he had gotten drunk after dropping the heiress off at her modest estate and pulled in for a rest; the Baker’s wife had found a empty bottle of champagne under a tangle of pulp, back when townsfolk were still harvesting the meat for pies and stews. She put it on her shop counter with a daisy in it.

The last leg of Carra’s wash collection ran along the cathedral’s south wall, a narrow street pinched from daylight and haunted by the hollow whistle of the winds as they funneled down along the high banked wall and between the buildings like the combs of a broken harmonica. She was bowed by the weight of her bag, peering out from under it with a side-long glance made meaner by hitch she wove in her step to keep her bag from taking her over. The south wall was the last one standing around the toppled cathedral -- constructed in her grandmother’s grandmother’s lifetime to seal the cathedral from South Woe, at the time a cut-throat’s carnival on it’s best days, it had no gates, no portals. Now it provided a rare row of dead-ends, and a quiet (well, relatively) haven for those kinds of businesses that prefer solitude. And just happen to have a lot of good laundry; a laboratory, a student’s quarters, a fresco studio working by the block over huge white drop-cloths... Carra had a second bag as big as the first tied like a sash across her chest, and today she hoped she could fill it.

Trekopps figured it was time for a new set of roof furniture. The paint was beginning to wear milky circles in the top of his card table, and the edge of the chair where Councilman Rae usually sat looked rat-bitten where his nervous fingernails had picked chips out of the blackwood. He would keep the chair he sat in though, aesthetics be damned, because it was just too comfortable. Sure his next set would be in banyan, and the strong lines and flat slate tone of that blackwood rocking chair would clash horribly. But tipped recklessly back, his feet on the edge of the building and the half-full decanter of wine balanced on his belly,Trekopps could not imagine a better way to enjoy his view of Woe. He would recreate this scene a hundred times over, until the world ends or this vintage is gone from my and every cellar. The shattered tooth of the cathedral’s last standing tower held the moon like driftwood holds a crystal ball, and rubble piled beneath it swarmed with shadows cut into the stone by the fires of destitute families settling in for the night. Moon, do deign to gaze at me from your roof? Trekopps sipped his wine and rocked even further back in his chair. I would, were I you.  

illustration by Nicola Rowsell -- http://nicolarowsell.com/

The ballroom was lit by standing candelabra, great wheels of brass crowded with fresh candles that washed the guests in gold tones and velvet shadows. In spite of himself Brako stood for a moment in awe -- not at the elaborate pilings of silks at the maiden’s shoulders or at the tall-feathered hats that mocked the exaggerated nods of gentlemen in conversation. Not even at the whale calf, filleted raw at the longtable with globes of blubber over-flowing to the floor like grapes from a cornucopia. No, Brako was amazed at how much more beautiful good lighting made beautiful people, and how horribly it highlighted the stew stains on his kitchen apron. He tipped his nose up to clear his head It was a tic that rang a little silly to him here, far from the the noxious fumes of his stew pot, but he was immediately  grateful for it. Black-clad guild assassins shifted among the shadow steeped rafters, hanging like sailors on rigging for a clearer view at the party. He counted twelve of them, as some unwelcome math played out in his head. One of these beautiful people has an enormously deep purse and keen idea they are going to be assassinated tonight. Good. A welcome distraction.

Billy Cole realized too late that he hadn’t brought any water to drink. And he was already thirsty; the walk to the graveyard was a mile and a half of steep hills and mismatched pavement stones that veined from downtown out to the neglected corners of Clifton. He had gone too far to go back to his room and grab his bottle. He would just have to deal.

He paused for a moment to peer through the milky window of Anne’s Nifty Thrifty thrift store and considered the face of an antique doll. It peered out through the steel-link shutters at something over his shoulder, a half-wink to it’s eye that made it look drunk.Christ, if I didn’t know this place was alarmed I would play a little smash-and-grab at Anne’s Nifty Thrifty. If only to get at that doll and break it’s little face in. Billy Cole grabbed the links of the the shutters and tugged at it. He wouldn’t even care to steal anything, besides there’d be nothing much in the register. Maybe fifty in ones and fives, some quarter rolls. Post-retirement hobbies like this one are never worth rolling.  

Whenever Billy Cole had real money in his pocket, which was rare, he felt it his duty to remember what his father told him every time a customer tried to cut him a check. “Real money is real money. Everything else is an IOU.” Summers breaks and school-night evenings, Billy would listen to the transactions from the passenger seat of the tow-truck cab. There was something musical about the the high city whine of the stranded driver, with his Volkswagen already hitched to the back of the tow fighting with this father’s voice, like a rock falling down a hill, quietly and deliberately cramming the cost of the tow down the driver’s throat.  Real money is real money. Real money is value. Not like what he was hunting tonight, which was roundabout money. Roundabout money was just fine, and Billy prided himself on never letting a bit of roundabout money pass him by. But a lot of pieces had to click for roundabout money to become the real money. A lot of pieces had to click tonight.

He swung his shovel back up against his shoulder and moved along, but not before glancing over his shoulder at that goddamn doll. It would bother him tonight, and he resolved to come back down another road. Even though he had only cased this one for cameras and traffic, it was worth it  to avoid that smug dead look.

He should've brought some water to drink, but that was for sure the only thing that slipped under his radar. This roundabout was tight, and when the night was over he’ll have pocketed a haul that was some multiples of any job he had ever rolled. Sun-up looked sweet, and he was confident it would be the last sun-up he would have to see in Clifton. At the edge of the cemetery now, he glared down at the town below him; the long hill that the cemetery peaked tipped the whole town down, the streets winding drunken paths around hills and the sudden drops of sheer stone that gave the town it’s name. Ranamaw Creek gurgled some thirty feet to his side, hidden behind the fire-blackened bowles of the trash strewn woods that circled the cemetery. He followed its path down the town to where it ran under the Main Street bridge and by the town’s only bus stop. There, clumps of branches and plastic bags dammed it to a turgid swirl. If all went according to plan, Billy would at that stop for the first bus after midnight. Sun-up in the next town is always a hell of a lot sweeter.

But Christ, he was thirsty. And worse, he realized, he’d have nothing to wash his hands clean before he ate his sandwich. Billy Cole didn’t worry too hard: nobody got rich without being willing to eat a little dirt. And Billy has eaten his share of dirt.

I have a short story in the upcoming issue of Lovers & Other Strangers, a literary and art magazine that pairs writers with found photographs. It's chock full of spirited photos and great writers, including playwright and friend Robert Martinez (who previewed his story here).

Below is a preview of my story : )

CASE #3: THE RYEBROOK LIBRARY

Strunk quietly slipped out of the reference room -- Aniston and The Benefactor had filled the table with building schematics of every floor of the Library, and were arguing in hurried whispers over what he assumed was the way to proceed. He passed the reference librarian on the his way out, braced on the door frame looking pale as a sheet.

“We looked everywhere he could get. I looked everywhere. I haven’t left since Monday.”

“Miss, I’m sure that you did. But he’s here. If that weren’t the case we wouldn’t be here.”

“Aren’t you even going to ask me about it? Where I looked, what he looks like?”

“The police asked you all that?”

“Yes.”

“And they asked you why you were entertaining a kid in the library after-hours?” A scared look crossed her for a moment, her face flushed red.

“I was babysitting.”

“The parents...”

“Cuba. Family vacation. I sent a wire. No response.”

“What, he’s not family?”

“Half. Half theirs...”

“Half yours?”

She looked away, clutched herself, mashed her eyes closed. When they reopened, Strunk realized that he had misjudged her age by maybe a decade -- she was barely out of her twenties. Christ, she looks like she hasn’t slept since monday.

“Best leave them to their work. Come sit down with me?” She shook her head in response, and returned to watch the scene in the room beyond.

She said as if to no-one: “We were just playing hide and seek. That’s what kids do.”

“Not just kids.” Strunk thumbed toward the the two men behind the glass -- Aniston danced anxious Kabuki around the table, while The Benefactor hovered with his nose mere inches above the topography of water-warped schematics. “They may look funny. But you did the best thing giving us a call.”

  Strunk sat down in an under-sized arm chair beside a tower of children’s picture books.  He unstrung his notebook, balanced it on his knees, and reviewed his notes so far. This was his third excursion with the Swedes, and by now he knew to leave no detail on the table.

Of course he knew that missing boy was a bastard son, child of the town’s resident prosecuting attorney and an anonymous young mistress. Anonymous no more. The town was small, so information was cheap -- it had only cost him a few rounds last night at the local VFW to learn as much. But the fact that the librarian had revealed herself to him as the mother of the boy so easily meant that she had done the same for the police. Which might explain the lack of out-of-town reporters on the scene. And why the police only combed the place for a few hours.

Strunk wondered at the boy’s father: when towns like this have weak mayors, a well-connected attorney can be king. A quick wire of “Let’s not make this thing too messy.” might go a long way to keep things at a whisper. It wouldn’t surprise him -- he’s met enough bastards to know most of them have rotten fathers.

The heavy doors of the library’s emergency exit opened, and Strunk caught sight of Morrison weaving through the stacks, struggling with Aniston’s bronze and blackwood trunk.  Well, sorry folks. Things are about to get messy.

  “Look-out miss, one case of pagan bullshit coming through.” The librarian cleared the door, as Morrison struggled to fit the case through. Strunk followed behind him, and she hung cautiously in the doorway.

“Please respect the tools of our craft.” Aniston said in his lilting English. Morrison hefted the trunk onto the table, letting it drop roughly. It’s glass and wood contents chattered. “And please do not throw the tools of our craft.” He cast a severe look at the librarian, “Miss. Please leave.” She froze, caught in a start.

“You locked all the entrances, right?” Strunk said to her.

The librarian nodded. “I want to watch. I’m paying aren’t?”

Aniston rolled up his shirt sleeves and began to unlock the trunk’s many locks and fasteners, working his way through a ring of worn keys. “Miss, your money barely covered gas for our automobile from the city of Akron, Ohio. Our fee merely ensures that you are not wasting our time.”

The Benefactor spoke a few works in Swedish, and gave her a gentlemanly nod. Aniston frowned, then gave her a venomous smile. “You may watch if you like. They are your nightmares, not mine.”

Strunk watched the set up, as entranced and horrified as he was the first time he witnessed Aniston's artistry. The spider-like movements, and meticulous flourishes still read to Strunk as theatrical, even comically so. But after his first job on the team Morrison had convinced him otherwise: “All that shit he does with his hands, and that sing-songy stuff under his breath? That’s the thing. See, just about everything in that case I got at the store. Or at a junkyard. Or the graveyard. It’s mundane. Aniston’s what does it. He’s the magic. Or whatever it is.”    

Part three of a serialized fantasy novella about a squirrel. 

Part #1 is here.

Part #2 is here.

http://elliecurtis.com/ // via Ellie Curtis

Junker was laid flat out, his left eyeball cooled to numb by the thick black mud beneath him. His right eye struggled to focus, racking between the rippled landscape of moonlit mud and the tall riverbank grasses beyond. He took as deep a breath as he could, and felt river water percolate in his chest. He rocked himself to his back to draw deep enough to cough — more water was expelled than he thought his lungs could hold, and when his breath was finally cleared to a fine wheeze he felt emptied as like water bladder. None of his ribs felt broken, though, and in a few moments he was drawing something like full breaths.

His left arm was locked out above him, as if caught picking for berries, and totally unresponsive. He knew without looking that he had lost two toes on the claw his left leg. He managed to catch a glimpse at the wounds, sheared clean as if by a knife with no fracture in the bones of his foot. It must have been caught on some saw-tooth slate in the rapids upstream, the force enough to take the toes in an instant.

He tried to rotate the frozen shoulder, and it responded with searing but familiar pain — it was surely dislocated at the joint, and possibly fractured somewhere along the arm. He wouldn't know until it was back in place, and the pain could flow past the gate that the dislocation had formed.

That shoulder was already stiff, from three prior dislocations gathered on otherwise mundane repairs. The movement had become more limited each time, and Junker knew he could afford another dislocation. He would have to seek therapy from Hedgehog. That is, if he was able to pop it back in with out crying out, alerting every predator in the area and sealing his fate.

He craned his neck to examine his surroundings.

The river had narrowed, drastically, and the surge had become lazy. Sharp turns upstream and downstream narrowed his view, and indicated a meandering path that was outside of Junker’s understanding of the river he had fallen into, and beyond the maps available to his forest. At least the maps the council allows me to see. How far south have I come? How long did I sail ship-less without drowning? Some spirit watches over me, surely.

The darkness shifted, groaned. A thick smell of wet rock and matted fur rode the breeze, A wave of disorientation came over him, his flight instinct screaming for him to seek high ground and assess the unfamiliar forest. But only his legs responded, twitching at the knees and carving ruts in the mud.

The movement, the scent was gone. Something is close. He calmed himself, half-ironically evoking the spirit of the Leafless Tree with a short child’s-prayer for silence, and slowly twisted in the mud, probing the position of his arm. He visualized the shape of the joint; he had seen enough shoulder bones outside of flesh to know that he would need to find a narrow correct angle before forcing the ball into the cup.

But it was all wrong. His hand was palm-up, the fingers of his claw dug into the mud, but his dominant nail was facing away from him. His arm was twisted full around.

He strained to reach the arm, and rotated it a quarter turn — torn muscle flared and darkened Junker’s vision. Another quarter turn and his body responded with a shudder, some of the tension in his shoulder slacking. There it is. Now. How do I pop the devil back in?

He found that now he could move his fingers, and groped around above him — there was nothing for leverage. He clenched his fist, and wormed it as far into the mud as he could, then gripped his bicep and braced his heels. With a sudden and sickening explosion of effort, he kicked and pulled, driving his shoulder up into his arm while pulling it down into his socket.

Nothing clicked, only grinded. He tried again, edging toward his threshold of pain, ignoring the black spots swelling in his vision. And again the ball would not go in the socket. He continued trying, rotating his arm a bit each time like a lock-pick, trying to find a path of less resistance. But each time, he found the limits of his strength and could not finish.

He fell back into the mud, stared back up at the moon. Waxing… where it was full just this night. Or not this night. How long have I been laying here?

The moon disappeared, as a massive form leaned over Junker and bared a perilous grin of pale white teeth. It chuckled lightly, blasting him with hot breath that overwhelmed his nose with the inexplicable combination of peppermint, anise, and horseradish root.

“Squirrel I could watch you struggle all night, for inspiration and entertainment. That is, if I were a badger with all his natural sadistic proclivities intact.” The figure said.

Junker craned his neck to see a the face of a badger; his snout and head, scored with a pattern of long scars, narrowed none when it hit his shoulders — his neck was as thick as a young tree trunk, and his stance was wide enough to block the forest behind him entirely. A single broken and mis-set tooth stuck out beneath his nose, the lip cleft from a lifetime of tearing. It gave his speech a slurring affectation that would have read as comical if coming from a smaller creature, but coming from this hulking mass, with it’s of fur-bare scars and jagged teeth, it seemed hauntingly disarming.

Junker tried once more to throw his arm back into it’s socket, kicking so hard that he drove himself through the mud and away from the badger.

“Stop. Please. Know when to give up.” The badger said. With a single hand he plucked junker up out of the mud by his dead arm, lifting him into the air like a doll. Junker cried out as his arm pulled cleanly out of it’s position half within the socket, and his body dangled free by the skin and muscle.

“If it doesn't go in the right way, it won’t heal the right way. What’s a squirrel that can’t climb?” In a swift smooth motion, the badger cradled Junker in one massive hand and with the other effortlessly slotted his arm back into his socket. Junker lurched with nausea, and he coughed up another lung-full of water onto himself. “A snack. That’s what he is.”

Junker sprung out of his hand, landing ungracefully in the mud, and scrambled up the steep bank and into the tall grass. The long blades of saw-grass covered him with small cuts as he plunged toward the nearest tree. He made it to the first branch and collapsed, at the end of his adrenalin and still wracked with pain.

The badger stared at him from the bank, with an impossibly bemused grin on his gnarled face.

Junker struggled to process his size. He was a badger surely, with an unmistakable banded white and black mask that began at his snout and terminated at the gnarled stumps where his ears should be. But most badgers Junker had met, including the Badger-scar, messenger to the Barrow Council, were no larger than Mountain Lion.

The badger drew up on his hind legs as if to give Junker a full view: it looked as if a dusky tree trunk rose out of the sand, to terminate in a short of bleached white branches. As the scale dawned on Junker, he managed to scramble up a branch further. The Badger laughed, not unkindly.

Junker had never seen a creature as large.

Many seasons ago, at the far western fringe of the forest where the furthest radio gets the weakest signal, Junker had encountered a mother bear. She was lost, malnourished, with mange patched midnight fur. Still, she was an overwhelming vision. Her low wide skull hung from a thick neck that bobbed between two hulking shoulders as she walked, and swept her crazed stare along the forest floor. Driven near madness not finding whatever it was she had come so far from her homeland to look for.

The next morning, Junker had tracked the bear’s path toward the inner forest -- and found the patriarch of the Western rabbit family eviscerated in her wake, uneaten but entirely dismantled.

A quarter-day’s travel further inward he found the the bear, fallen dead mid-step in the center of the path. The Council did not believe him, and so sent him back with a scout team to witness. It was his first excursion with Badger-scar, and he made sure it was his last.

When they arrived and Badger-scar began stripping the flesh from the skull, Junker refused to help -- he would not have lead them there if he had know it was a prize-taking party. Junker abandoned the group, and took a day away from his duties before deciding to report to the Barrow Council. They were angry, but not nearly as much as Badger-Scar: it had taken him and the rest of his party a full day’s work to carry the skull back to the Council’s burrow, where it became main entrance's lintel.

The skull of the badger below Junker was bigger than that bear’s skull by a half at least. He grinned, bearing yellowed molars ground smooth to stubs and that single snagged fang. Junker scurried up one more story. This tree is as a step-ladder to this giant. Though maybe his weight will keep him from climbing higher.

“I’m not going to eat you squirrel. I would have done so yesterday. Though I won’t say I’m not famished. Nothing makes a badger hungry like a good rough and tumble.” The badger laughed at some private joke, dipping and shaking his head - in the moonlight junker saw the glint of wounds, raw flesh in ridges flecked with dried blood. Something had torn at the badgers face, something fierce. His bulk was shrouded in darkness, but Junker was able to pick out gouges in his arms, too ragged to be scars.

“Three against one. In my younger days I would have felt quite guilty about the odds. But now… serves them right jumping an old man standing watch over a wee waterlogged squirrel. Though it begs the question, what’s so important about this wee waterlogged squirrel?”

He lumbered forward a few steps, to cock his head at Junker and grin once more. Junker coiled to jump.

“Yesterday, you say. Badger. How long was I left to dry on the river’s eastern bank?” Junker said. He inched away from the trunk of the tree, to speak directly.

“Eastern riverbank? Ah, you are far from home little one. This “river” as you say, has not had an eastern bank for long while. A day’s journey on foot, at least. Not since it curved around the boulders at Dagg’s Keep to become this refreshing little stream you see here.”

True, the stream was far tamer than it had been at the pass, lapping neatly at the mud of the shallow bank. “Come, there are answers to be had in my cavern of wonders.” The badger set off toward the tree-line. “And many more questions.”

Junker followed the badger through the treetops, keeping pace with the long strides that carried him swiftly over the forest floor below. With his banded face and broad silvery back, he looked to Junker like a massive fish, wading through the trees. A thick stripe of inexplicably green fur that ran from his shoulders to his hips mimicked the algae'd back of a mottled river carp.

Junker took a moment to wonder at the fact that he had not died.

Where before he had felt the clawing of the venom as it moved through him, now he felt merely stiff. His head was clear, his vision sharp; a ghost of the throbbing pain in his head was his only memory of the day that had passed since he plunged into the river.

His body had abandoned him on the bank of the stream, and left his mind to wander, while it hosted the battle between the rattlesnake’s poison and Hedgehog’s herbal remedy. It was which party had won.

He was wrong to doubt the Hedgehog’s proficiency, and would take his warnings about side effects seriously if he ever needed treatment again. But hopefully he would not -- one life-debt is enough. One that Junker was sure he could never repay; it was by the grace of the spirit of the Budded Herb that Hedgehog doesn't share the barrow’s council vampiric lust for interest on debts unpaid. So I join the ranks of the many who owe our medicine-hand, who live in the shadow of his generosity, humbled by knowledge. How long before the council deems his generosity too costly, in lost opportunity? How long before he too disappears like those others old and wise in the old ways?

The forest darkened before him as the canopy crowded low over a boulder strewn hillside. The branches became twisted and tangled, making Junker’s path through difficult. He nearly slipped on the bole of an unknown tree, the three toes left on his rear claw failing to grip the dew-slicked bark.

He finally dropped down to the loamy forest floor, weaving through the rocks up the hill to keep up, yet keeping beyond striking distance of the badger just in case he to switch-back and strike. Though Junker wondered if he could really know how fast such a creature could cover the distance, it’s stride challenging the fabled Horse, with it’s bird-shaming flight across distant plains in other worlds.

A cavern emerged, a wide eye of darkness set high in the hill, hooded by a long seamless shelf of moss-coated rock that sat slanted like the roof of a lean-to. The badger lowered himself, squeezing under and taking most of the moss with him on his back. That is not fast growing moss, for him to have so much to scrape… this creature does not leave his den more than a few times a season. Maybe far less.

Junker considered turning around and bolting to the river, following it’s path to the inner forest for what may be a night. Or may be days.

He rolled his shoulder, winced at the ragged muscle that grated around the joint. Would the badger have set his arm if he was planning on eating him? No. But creatures are capable of inflicting far worse fates than eating one another. In these times there is rot among the minds of predators and prey alike, and I've seen it’s face. Deep in the rattlesnake’s swamp...

Junker shook off the memory as it welled, fresh and visceral, heaving in his empty stomach.

A “Cave of Wonders” he said. One man’s wonder is another man’s horror. But I’m beginning to lose site of the difference. What’s one more horror this moon? 

Junker paused to smell the air before entering, and recoiled at the pungent mixture of herbs that radiated from the shadows.

Part two of a serialized fantasy novella about a squirrel.  

Illustration -- Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin 

  Junker then decided against the trees, taking a path to his shack through the forest floor. His senses were swimming, and he had lost his trust in his climbing instincts. There were many leaps of faith on the tree-path back, any one of them bridging a drop that could twist his skull from his neck. He stuck near the bank of the river, where the starlight from the moonless sky was strongest, reflected on the river’s swiftly moving surface to give the banks a sickly glow. The forest was quiet -- creatures like Ma Possum hunkering down for a moonless night of spectral walkers and blood-sniffers. Yet the predators were far from his mind, a distant alarm.

He knew he would have to climb to cross the river before it doubled back, and passed a few branch-gap crossings that he would have not hesitated jumping in daylight, in full health. He would find more sure crossing a little further upstream, at the the slow and bloated crook of the river.

Junker absently scratched his ear, and brought back a claw-full of dried blood. I am leaking. This is worse than I thought. A quick check of his reflection in a still pool of leaf-dammed water told him his nose was not bleeding. That was good, but his left eye was shot through with burst veins. He splashed his face, shocking his awareness back. Can’t die. Too busy to die. His nose flared, and filled with the wet decay of the river bank. Nothing around to eat me. Not yet at least. His mind raced as if being chased:

Tomorrow the Barrow Council would expect an explanation for his unsanctioned contact with the rattlesnakes -- the last time he had traveled to the swamp without a directive they had threatened his water rights, and with them his entire secondary workshop; powered by the slow mill-wheel that turned on a thin strand of stream, his satellite shack was where he did all of his machining. Without it, all the forest’s repairs would have to rely on salvage parts. Repair-times would suffer. Though not as much as my side projects... When the evening comes and I have not paid them a visit, the Barrow Council will send a cronie to collect me. Probably Badger-scar, who would sooner break down my door then knock on it. There is of course the chance that he could find me dead. Maybe a grand final joke on him to have to lug my body all the way back to the Council’s den. Setup’s not worth the laugh, in truth.

What would he tell them? Surely not the truth. The Council will know some day, but Junker was far from possessing the leverage he needed in the outer communities of the Valley to begin the systematic dismantling of the Council that he had so long plotted. The forest still resented him, a sentiment immediately apparent in his travels and in interactions with the strong fanged creatures of the outer woods, Ma Possum included. The salvaged technologies were distributed unfairly, it was obvious -- and not even essential repairs happened without some sort of favor bought in the council. The the inner forest was well practiced and well stocked in the kinds of goods and services the Council rewarded. The outer forest struggled to buy favor. The Junker’s influence in the allocation process had dried up generations ago, when Junker’s great-grandfather butted heads with Elder Tortoise, the council’s first chair and father of the current chair, Younger Tortoise. The feud was old.  

Rumors that Junker’s shack was stocked to the brim with un-installed technology further sealed his reputation as a pawn of the Council -- most creatures believed that Junker’s loyalty was bought with allocation privilege, that his skills were paid for in devices would otherwise benefit the broader forest. It was true that Junker was stockpiling junk in secret, but not for himself. His reserve was saved for the rare instance when he found an opportunity to perform an installation without the Council’s knowledge -- usually for an unpopular family or a backwater settlement, usually where it was truly needed. Many in the outer forest had never even seen junk, or called it witchcraft. Isn’t it though? Are not all Junkers fell shamans of trash, no more?

His hidden supply of devices was running low, and he had installed his last spotlight. It would likely be a moon or more before he could slip away to the Junkyard to find another. He hoped that Ma Possum and her children could hold out that long. She was a key ally in his fight for influence in the outer forest.

  Junkers mind drifted, his thoughts wove in and out, trickling over the growing mass of dull pain that was swelling in the back of his head. For a moment, Junker was convinced he had missed the crossing, and gone so far past that he was now lost. A crass note from a bluejay’s song, rough and languid in the night, told him that he had not. Only a solitary bluejay will sound at night, and the only solitary bluejay he knows lives in the very tree that hosts his most stable crossing.

He pinpointed the tree, it’s wide bole of rough bark fire-hardened by the summer’s cleansing fire. Long dead, it’s top was an open maw, a hollow jagged point where once the storm had halved the tree. For a whole generation the decapitated top of that tree served to bridge the river, a rare luxury that saw it’s end during his grandfather’s lifetime, when a season of heavy rain swelled the river enough to carry the log downstream to the Southlands. Now the tree’s longest branch provided the crossing, reaching out toward another unnaturally long branch across the water, as if ancient lovers forever frozen in a moment of teasing embrace. From where Junker stood at the base of the tree, the gap between the branches looked longer than it ever had before.

He climbed slowly, carefully, picking his way up around the smallest branches, stopping to rest his body against a larger one when he began to feel dizzy. He wasn’t half way up before a familiar voice echoed from the darkness of the tree trunk.

“Are you drunk Junker? Odd night for revealing.”  Lone Bluejay cut a hulking silhouette against the sky above him, as she peered down from the edge of the tree’s crown.

“Lone Bluejay, I drink my fill as you do yours. What night is this but any other?” The shadow heaved as she cackled; an inelegant crow-sound that righted itself to a few notes of birdsong. “And you, pulling rotted worms from the tree? Sweet liquor of the night?”

“Squirrel of the Junk, you are right about one thing. But the moon is full, this is not just any Night. I have wings. You should fear. Will you sit there in my tree like a babe height-frightened until Silent Bobcat plucks you from your perch?”

“If only to deliver Silent Bobcat a mouthful of rattlesnake venom.” Junker waited for a jibe, but instead Lone Bluejay fluttered inelegantly down to his branch. Junker saw her in full view --  she had begun putting on winter weight in earnest, and would not abandon her tree for migration and risk losing it to a Lone owl or a raven. When she spoke the jest had fallen from her tone.

“One does not need the light of the full moon to see, Squirrel, that you are dying. How did you come by these rattlesnakes?”

“A long tale. Longer than I have life left for. Wish me luck that I might bridge the gap and visit you some day to tell it. Or wish me rocks so that I might hit them when I fall. Rather than drown.”

“Your eyes have unfocused Squirrel. Your foot twitches and you do not know it. You will drown. And you will ruin my evening. Which otherwise was shaping up to be.. revealing.” Juker focused, found his foot was in fact twitching. He tried and couldn’t stop it, instead locking eyes with Lone Bluejay’s canted head.

“You watch the night-stalkers hunt? Grim humors, bird. The chain of food is not a spectator sport. You will wind up in it one day.”

“Not the hunters Junker, there are strange comings and goings of late.” Lone Bluejay hopped along the branch to poke her beak a mere paw-width from Junker’s nose, and her voice fell to a coo. “Shadowy figures. Larger than Mountain Lion, and even more silent. I would see them in the light of the full moon, and know what has come to our forest.”

“Have you told the barrow council of these sightings?” Lone Bluejay shook his head, and hopped back.

“They are too busy skimming the forest for all it’s bounty to care. They are slow to motion. I would tell you Junker. Knowing you would take me seriously.”

“Ah, but I a too busy dying to care.” Junker staggered to his feet and began to climb again. “I will return in a few nights to investigate with you. But for now, unless you feel you can carry me across the river--” Junker lost footing, skidding down the bark a body-length before catching himself with one claw. “Please leave me alone to embarrass myself in peace.”

“Sleep off the venom in my tree. And tomorrow night you may see the spectres.” Junker chuckled as he reached Lone Bluejay’s branch, the branch that bridged the river.

“And what would you do when Bobcat hones in on a sleeping squirrel? Drop a pinecone on his head? Remember your strengths, bird. Stalkers don’t appreciate your wit like I do.” It dawned on Junker that Lone Bluejay’s offer wasn’t given lightly -- all of his kind are extremely territorial, and Lone Bluejay has defended his domain over the tree bridge for twelve seasons, maybe more. True she has never demanded a toll, which made him a popular bridgekeeper, but the soil beneath her perch gave home to the bones of more than a few birds that nonetheless tried to unseat her.

Junker wondered if he shouldn’t take Lone Bluejay up on her offer. She might be able to keep Junker from being eaten, but it wasn’t a favor Junker would look forward to repaying.

Junker sized up the gap -- from where he stood now, the distance seemed short. Of course I can make it -- it’s a deep part of my brain that handles jumping. The poison has seeded paranoia and doubt in the bed of my intellect, no more. Surely Bluejay has spoken all her doubts in humor. A bit of dizziness is nothing to a squirrel.  

“You are going to jump.” Bluejay left the branch to clear his path, returning to the rim of the trunk. “I hope they are training a new Junker then.”

Junker shook out his hands and feet. “In fact they are. Thank you for your humor, Lone Bluejay.”

“Notice I speak without humor, squirrel. ”

“For the first time, then.” Junker coiled himself for a full sprint, felt the pulse of the branch below him as it’s end bobbed in the wind. He internalized the rhythm, preparing to account for the give at the end of the branch. The tree across was sharp in the moonlight, it’s breeze-tossed leaves drawing a shimmering curtain of pale ochre across the canopy ahead.

He released -- punching forward along the length of the branch, his legs working in unison to kick him forward, his arms angling his shoulders ever toward the end of the branch. The gap came in a heartbeat, unfolding in front of him and revealing the folly of his skewed perspective at the base of the branch -- faster than he could even slow down Junker realized he had grossly misjudged the distance. He took a bound further than his instinct allowed, in an attempt to to leverage the bounce of the thin end of the branch -- a tactic he had used to great effect rare moments of showboating. But never over a river.

Episode #2 - Love

Moments ago, I ate a sandwich dear listener. The corpse of a fatted turkey shaved by the butchers hand over his blood stained block, buried under an avalanche of bleu cheese veined through with a virulent strain of fungus, suffocated between two pillows of rye marbled with a pumpernickel darker than a Norwegian winter. To say it was exceptional would be a disservice, more pedestrian modes of praise and turns of phrase rendered mere platitudes at the foot of it’s monolithic flavor profile.

It shamed the Ancient Gods with it’s divinity. It was aspected with beauty from another realm, broken free in a fit of chaos, divergent from our timeline of culinary method and barreling in tangents that leave even the most inspired of our Master Chefs kneeling in awe and futility. I would exhaust my store of oils, chalk, and watercolor painting this sandwich, and still I would not be done. I would never be done.

But it did not love that sandwich. Not a whisper of love escaped my lips as the flour-dusted crust passed between them. Murmurs of lust, rapture, and murderous envy rode the beating of my heart as I ate. But not love. Because tomorrow I will hike to the deli and have that very same sandwich. And the next day. And that sandwich will only ever be as precious as it’s ingredients. Bread. Meat. Cheese. Staples whose origins know no bounds. Like the best divine things, it could be resurrected.

But, you ask, is not this sandwich precious? Assembled with care by the coarse hands of the deli man, tucked into parchment by the stub of his half-thumb, the knuckle lost long ago on a Detroit factory floor. True it is precious the moment that it is made, and for the whole of the parabolic sweep of it’s life cycle that rises meteorically with it’s birth and falls just as violently into my stomach’s hell-fire of acids for it’s demise.

But it is not an object of love dear listener. Because the climax of our relationship, this turkey sandwich and I, the rapturous realization and most rapacious conclusion, is the destruction of the sandwich. It’s consumption, by me.

Where as love... Love is the other way around. Love consumes. Love destroys. Love masticates, swallows, and drowns in corrosion. Loves loses you in it’s gut, tosses you in darkness seeming eternal, expels you stripped of all that you were. Love is not love, dear listener, until it returns us to the soil.

In todays episode I do some grave robbing. Both literally, and figuratively -- hauling up from the worm-rotted depths a memory of my first love, a memory long buried.  

Returning from the deli with my sandwich late this morning, I brought it to the basement, along with my mason jar of sun-brewed Lipton tea. I sought the perfect complimentary relish for the sandwich among my vast collection of pickled goods. Arrayed alphabetically on shelves mounted to the shadow-shrouded wall far behind me, the jars glit dully in the light, their briney occupants suspended behind liquid, some clouded with decades of curing. A through Z and beyond represented -- tubers, gourds, berries and choice cuts of questionably edible creatures each meticulously labeled with genus, origin, date of preservation... Once, many years ago, I painted my pickle collection in it’s infancy. But I could not find a home for the painting, a brooding study in verdigris, black, and amber. It was far too macabre for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, though once the curator of Aleister Crowley’s private collection showed some interest. It now leans against the wall below it’s subject, a portraiture of pickled goods preserved as well.

Reaching high for the jar marked “sweet breads,” I lost my footing, and stumbled into a low chest-of-drawers that was all but forgotten under a shroud of haphazardly unraveled papyrus scrolls. I brought it down on top of me, it’s contents scattering across the floor.

And there it was, rolling down the slope to the floor drain, shedding it’s newspaper wrapping. A baseball. Shining like polished ivory, even after all these years...

I met Susan Parker in Antwerp, during the 1920 Olympic games. A sturdy young woman from Flagstaff, she swam with a ferocity like I had never seen. Where the favored Dutch swimmers, lith and long limbed, raced with strokes of elegance born in the crystalline mountain streams and picturesque lakes, Susan attacked the water as if it was in her enemy. If the other Olympians were dolphins Susan was a bull-shark, and she walked with silver in the closing ceremony.

Her event was the first day of the games, and so for the remainder she rented out her flat in the olympic villa to an Austrian railroader who was posing as an American Javelin thrower, and we moved into a guesthouse on a dairy farm in Ranst. I don’t remember how we met, I only remember making love. We pawned her medal to eat like kings and tumble like paupers. Then I gambled the medal back in a marathon bout of mahjong, the legend of which spawned a yearly tournament in Ranst that persists to this day.

We ate many cheeses. It was heaven in Belgium. It was the first time I put bleu cheese on a turkey sandwich.

We planned to meet up in Flagstaff, just as soon as I finished painting the ancient ruins left by the last trolls in the hills south of Ranst. I then made the rookie mistake of removing a ceremonial bone club from the ruins, and was tied up for months suppressing the angry spirits of the elder trolls that descended upon Ranst in retaliation. Sending many letters and drawings in my stead, I received no reply. If unrequited love has a god, it’s aspect is an unanswered letter. My heart was deconstructed slowly, splintering, smouldering. To say it broke is to say an atom merely splits at the heart of an atomic bomb. I was lost for love of Susan Parker.

It would take me one long year to make it back to the good old U. S. of A. -- my reputation as a excisor of troll spirits spread up into Scandinavia and I found myself unable to turn down the invitations to room, board, and heirloom jewelry in exchange for chasing out the long-entrenched trolls of the larger estates. I was fearless in my methods, quickly honing in on a sacrificial rite involving goats and a certain monastic chant that worked like a charm. Though my troll hunting earned me my first fortune, it was a foolish thing to do. I took Susan’s silence as rejection, and sheltered my grudge until it grew into a conflagration of jealousy propped up by wild fantasies of the brilliant romances I was sure she was riding like a Coney Island rollercoaster. What was once love grew ugly, recalcitrant, utterly troll-like. I lost the will to see Susan again, and would not find myself in Flagstaff for another decade.

  If the story of my love for Susan Parker ended here, dear listener, there would still be a lesson to learn.  Do not wait. Do not send letters when the warmth of your body is needed. Do not accept silence as mode of communication, lest your love become an echo of shadow theater in your own mind. Love it touch. Love is consumption. You must eat the sandwich to enjoy the sandwich. That lesson was Susan’s first gift to me. But not her last.

  I was in Flagstaff on the dollar of a Jean Paul Getty, who had taken a keen interest in preserving the history of demon-summoning in the West during the time of the gold rush, and an even keener interest in acquiring some of the relics that were used in the act. It was short stay, and a simple job -- a short hike from my termite-bit motel sat the tumulus of a particularly prolific summoner, favored by the most aggressive prospectors. Getty was convinced that the demon-caller had been buried with his tools, and he offered me a fortune in Roman gold-glass medallians to recover them. It is common knowlege that the best time to disturb a fell grave is on a night of full-moon, where the powers of dark are at their weakest. And so I had arrived on the eve of one -- it was a get in and get out sort of affair.

I did not plan on going in search of Susan. And I did not anticipate Susan coming in search of me -- but word travels fast on foot in the desert, and the rumor in town that a stranger hefting a roll of canvases and a scabbard was sleeping at the motel. It was too much for her to ignore. She knocked on my door as I was blessing my sword with holy water. Suffice to say I did not finish the prayer.

The reunion was wordless rapture. In fact, I’m sure we gave the few drifters staying at the motel quite a fright. We talked through the night, exchanging stories from our decade apart. I learned why she never answered my letters -- she never got them. After the Antwerp olympics she abandoned swimming to lead a women’s baseball team at a surgical instruments factory in Philadelphia. The woman who was to forward her mail died in an electrical fire, a fire that likely consumed the letters. Susan only returned to town for the week to collect her father’s effects after he had disappeared into the desert. It was a cosmic coincidence, and she was convinced that it was meant for us to meet, so she could accompany me to the tomb.

Unfortunately dawn came too soon, and the full moon had passed. We resolved to go together the next night, and excavate the tomb in the light of the waxing gibbous. And if it’s occupant proved anything less than dead, she would bring her bat and I my sabre. It was a foolish decision, we could have not been more unprepared for what we found there.

The burial stones of the summoner’s grave were heaped low -- a sign that the grave-men were either spiteful or underpaid. I figured surely his body had been picked to bone by the smaller lizards, and hoped that the caving of the rocks had not destroyed the relics. Susan refused to let me excavate the grave alone -- it became sport for her to remove the larger rocks before I could get to them. She was still my superior in strength, and endurance. I had to implore her to take a break, and share the sandwich I had brought. That awoke more memories of Antwerp, and we laughed and talked as we removed the last stones from the pit of the grave.

I should have known. Step lightly when graverobbing. But take nothing of the act lightly. When the summoner burst forth from his tomb, Susan and I were both caught on our bad foot. He went to her first, his bulging flesh preserved as if he were buried in peat, his hunger half a century old and rotted through to inarticulation as he bellowed in a ghastly moan and lunged for her throat. I struck him down with my sabre, severing his hand at the wrist, then threw my shoulder into him, our weight carrying us tumbling down the rocks and into the sand.

It seemed like an eternity before I could work him into a half-nelson, and Susan could dash his brains out with her baseball bat. My arms were shredded by undead creature’s petrified nails, my shoulders and back lacerated. But only Susan had suffered a bite. Small, shallow, she shrugged it off, said she would treat it with cosmetic. But already I could see the cursed saliva spreading.

Susan would not live to see the next night. She died seized with a demonic hunger for human flesh. She died by my hand. Not the first casualty of my art career, not the last. But truly the one I bury deepest. The one I regret the most.

Susan had no family for me to give Getty’s payment. He had provided far more than he had originally agreed -- the summoner’s tomb held a thigh bone of some secretly-Satanic saint, or some such nonsense. I couldn’t bring myself to care. I sold the medallions to some pinhead at Sotheby’s in New York City and drank the sum away. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t paint. I could barely live, and probably wouldn’t have if not for the persistence of those who pulled me out of the gutter, principal of which was Zora Neale Hurston of Harlem, who I will forever owe a new couch and carpet.

The first thing I painted after Susan’s death was simple. A zookeeper, duncelike and pathetic, casually eating a turkey sandwich and reading the paper while behind him leers the hulking form of a tiger. Caged, kidnapped from his throne where he once reigned King of the Jungle and forced to play grinder-monkey, the lion lusts to devour the zookeeper. Not for sustenance, but for vengeance. But the zookeeper continues to eat his sandwich. Living his hollow life in confidence of the cage he has built around himself.

And so like the lion both love and the memory of Susan Parker ever lurks in my periphery, ready to consume me whole. But I continue to eat my sandwich, and read my paper, and play the doofus. The dingus. The zookeeper. After Susan Parker, I have never loved another person. Only my paintings. As I love this painting, for how perfectly it bares my true cowardly nature. Never cage love, dear listener. Even if it stands to eat you alive.

Next week I’ll give my opinion of this “Rock-and-Roll” nonsense all the kids are talking about, and offer a quick story of the time I found myself in a jazz band. A jazz band of vampires.  

Until then...

Serialized homage to the anthropormophized fantasy of Brian Jacques. 

Sin Eater -- http://sineater.bigcartel.com/

Junker primed the engine, pumping the rubber bladder above the mesh-guarded exhaust fan three times, counting one Mississippi between each press. It was his tenth try, and the action had taken on a hypnotic quality -- two full cycles of sun and moon had passed without rest. Junker teetered on his feet, steadied himself against the generator, and primed again. The gurgling gasoline in the transparent dome mocked his thirst, and the the stubborn sound the generator made when he pulled the ripcord had transcended frustration, becoming a fevered melody riding the rhythms of his shallow breath.

He needed sleep, and soon;  without it the venom would overcome him. Even with the best antidote in the valley now coursing through his blood, the spirit of his body would be needed to throw it’s full weight against the poison, strike the head off the rattlesnake spirit that twisted inside him. If he did not sleep he would die, and even now his night-vision flickered dim in the last minutes of twilight.

He pulled the ripcord and the generator sputtered, and the acrid blue smoke of burnt oil scoured his sinuses. The day had been hot -- hot as any summer day and made even more so by the disappearance by the cool autumn breeze he had become accustomed to. Rattlesnake Summer... those blistering days that double back when least expected, that dry the forest’s new floor of fallen leaves into kindling. He chuckled at the turn of phrase, and it’s irony -- Junker had danced around rattlesnake bites his whole life, of course today was the day that he stumbled.

I will dance another day. Once the possums had their spotlight, he would take the trees to his shack and sleep through the eminent tremors. He hoped that when he awoke he would remember none of the visions of prescience that the Badger Shaman claimed would accompany the antidote’s struggle. Visions of the future, his or the valley’s, he could do without.

It was the night of the full moon and never would the possums’ den, and it’s deft jumble of twigs and leaves, seem more conspicuous to lurking predators. The blinding flood lamp, mounted with fire-bent brackets onto a low-bent branch above, would startle and blind those that would investigate.

With a wretched cough the engine turned and began it’s rattle. Above the light hummed like an angry cicada, burning bright, and immediately Junker’s vision was washed out. He hooded his eyes with his paw and searched in the dark, picking through the vague outlines of the surrounding forest for the entrance to the possum burrow. Impossible. It was a circle of artificial daylight, as cold and disturbing as any light a junk put out. The Mountain Lion would not tolerate it for more than a moment... the thought rang strikingly false in Junker’s ear.

“Light is set, fired-up. Come on out if you want to see,” Junker called. The darkness behind him answered with a dry rustling.

“Curse this heat, drying our fallen leaves to parchment. You couldn’t soft-step around here if you were made out of air.” Two eyes, round and bright like washers, gleamed at him from the edge of the night.

“One step forward, two steps back Ma’am. The light will blind the Mountain Lion, that’s a sure thing. But he’s been around long enough to know that where a light shines there’s something worth digging for. I do what I can, but you’re weighing his patience against his hunger.” Junker didn’t know why he was goading her -- she was aware of the limits of his solution, she knew the risks. He regretted as he spoke; the events of the last few days had worn his faith in his craft thin.

Twin fangs shone through the dark, a thin hiss escaping to raise Junker’s hackles. Ma Possum lumbered forward, then rested her bulk luxuriantly in the light. “And you would know, Junker, having so recently spoken with our Mountain Lion.”

“Spoken is the wrong term. I listened while she toyed with the idea of eating me. Don’t mistake friendly for patronizing.” Junker coiled the cable that ran up to the light, tucking it under the corner of the generator.

“An interesting conversation surely, the outcome unexpected. Junker, friend to Mountain Lions, hanger of lights in the sky. Junker... squirrel. Honorary predator.” She rolled onto her side, exposing her pale stomach, mocking him with the gesture. “What did the Mountain Lion have to say about your ‘Flood Light’? I’m interested in the answer, as it has immediate consequence to both my children and you the forest’s confidence in your efficacy.”

Junker scowled then but quickly fixed his face to flash his stock toothy grin, flicking his tail mischievously. He would not have Ma know when she stung him, though Ma missed nothing. “I did ask. Because we met under one of those same spotlights, at the door to my shack.”

“And her response?” Her tone betrayed her true concern, cracking through her mask of mocking and cold detachment. All creatures are buried under the needs of their young, Junker recalled a phrase of his father’s. His gut twinged at the mother’s desperation, but he shook it off. I have no time for moments of kin-fear. Moments to be glad I have no kin.

Junker, the pity souring into a rare moment of spite, turned the claw. “‘The Mountain Lion said; ‘The forests are full of soft creatures to eat in the darkness, easy enough to smell.’ He had no interest in digging around in flood lights.” Ma grunted, turned herself over onto her feet, and disappeared to the invisible entrance to her burrow. She spoke her goodbye from the darkness:

“Good then. May she eat her fill, and leave me and mine for the next full moon.” Junker dipped his ear and nodded to no one.

via Buzzfeed.com: 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bryamkorn/6-things-that-only-elders-gods-present-at-the-birt-lkov

Remember back when our eternal forms were totally unbounded by the laws of physics? You could have as many tentacles as you wanted.posted on March 30, 2014 at 5:15pm EDT

  Levethagoth, Swallower of Worlds

BUZZFEED USER

  1. TENTACLES

shopwarpaintpress.com / Via Godmachine

Oh man, the tentacles. Remember back when our eternal forms were totally unbounded by the laws of physics? You could have as many tentacles as you wanted. A thousand. A million. Tentacles for days, an ALL-YOU-CAN-HAVE-TENTACLE BUFFET. But then all the sudden we had to propel ourselves through space and support the weight of our planet-devouring teeth and claw open interdimensional rifts in the suffocating boundaries of space/time. Suddenly a million tentacles, while totes cool, were nowhere near as practical as say fifteen or twenty. I mean, by a show of hands, how many of us elders have abandoned tentacles all together? Shame on you. Nothing says “Elder God” like a butt full of teeth and a mouth full of tentacles.

2. APOCALYPTIC VISIONS

badnewsbrown.blogspot.com / Via Alexander Brown

Remember when every other aeon-long dream you had was of the violent death of the cosmos? The same dream over and over — it was like everyone had only one channel and it just looped that parking-garage episode of Seinfeld over and over. Awful. I mean, I guess it was pretty cool to see how the fabric of reality will melt as the gaping maw of Father Oblivion tears open the center of the Cursed Galaxy and begin to chow down on the dimensions like a stack of Pringles. But it was a total bummer to know from the beginning that this time around “intelligent life” would never attain Elder ascension before consuming themselves into extinction. It was like skipping to the end of a movie where everybody dies. Lame.

3. FREAKING STAR DUST

nickkellerart.com / Via Nick Keller

Sure, us Elder Gods are master architects of the material world — manipulating mortal “civilizations” into raising sky-scraping skull-towers in our honor, whittling cold planets into totems of pestilence and despair — but it wasn’t always that way. Remember when matter was basically a metric crap-ton of dust? It was like you put a Pixie stick in your pocket and it broke open and that shit got everywhere. It’s pretty hard to be a destroyer-of-all when there’s nothing to destroy. You think you know boring? Your phone’s dead on the half hour bus-ride to Costco? Try floating aimlessly for billions of years in the miasmic vortex of the dawn of the universe. Luckily that cosmic dust started to gather into little clouds, and sniffing that junk got you high. Nothing takes the harsh off buzz-killing apocalyptic prescience like some sweet sweet nebula.

4. GIANT SPACE SLOTHS

thingsilikeinspace.tumblr.com / Via Things I Like in Space

Cute. Covered in space-moss. DUMB AS BRICKS. Without fail, the first sentient mortals of any new universe are always the space sloths. Drifting through space, latching onto planets like a toddler to a beach-ball, space sloths will suck a sea of primordial goo down in an instant. Whatever. NBD. But if you drift within their telepathing range… be prepared to be entrapped in the most boring conversation you have ever had. Talking to a giant space sloth is like playing ping pong with someone via the postal service. The US Postal Service. The last one I ran into had written a billion-word mystery novel about space-moss. By the time I had traveled the twelve light-years to reach him, he had nearly finished reciting the whole freaking thing. How did it end? With me biting of his head and drinking his blood. Giant space sloths — the first and only species to be hunted to extinction because they wouldn’t shut up. Sorry not sorry.

5. THE BINDING RITUAL

mikelawrenceillustration.com / Via Mike Lawrence

Somebody’s always got to be an asshole. It’s why people can’t put good candy out in those unattended bowls on Halloween. Remember when Tygameron the All-Consumer thought he could get away with arranging the stars into constellations of the ancient Skar-Runes to summon Father Oblivion and kick off the Apocalypse early? Typical Tygameron. Some Elder Gods never learn, am I right? Good thing I still remembered the tri-tones of the Binding Chant from the last time we all gathered to exile Tygameron to the cramped-dimension-of-chains-and-rusty-nails. Catchy stuff — even if you aren’t an Elder God present at the birth of the universe, you can still hear echoes of the Binding Chant in the “music” of those silly art-creating worlds. Better luck next time, Ty-guy.

6. THE GRAND FEAST

mikelawrenceillustration.com / Via Mike Lawrence

I mean how many life-bearing planets can an Elder God consume in one go? Turns out like a million and a half. When the order to cull the universe emanated from the thousand-eyed wurm coiled around the collapsed star that serves as Oblivion’s window into the corporeal, I didn’t feel super hungry. I had just had a Milky Way, and was snacking on an asteroid field. But once I got going, oh man were those green worlds good. And the crunchy-sound a trillion souls make as they are torn from their bodies and fed through to the gauntlet of ego-killing that is an Elder’s spirit-pancreas to then emerge as an eternally drifting space ghost? Oh yeah. That’s the good stuff.

Illustration from Nick Keller - http://www.nickkellerart.com/

The Daemon Born from the First Noble-Dead's Manor

Black magic poured from the spire of the manor into pale early morning sky like ink from the tip of a broken pen. Where the blast of lightning had scattered the cedar shingles, inflamed red flesh showed through betraying the building’s true construction, the solid skinless muscle glistening like a beacon mirror set in the rain blackened roof.

With the day’s first light, ravens and turkey buzzards gathered on the rim of the wound, the strange company jostling to pull strips of meat away, trapping the pieces like bait fish between their feet, feeding on the house in a frenzy that seemed unnatural even for carrion beasts accustomed to harsh feast and harsher famine. The crows only watched, amassing in numbers to fill all three beams of the snow fence below. When the ravens and buzzards began dropping from the roof, striking the grass of the yard and convulsing with mouths foaming, the ravens voiced the triumph of their trickster wisdom, bobbing their heads and cackling in chorus. Hungry surely, but smarter than the larger birds and gleeful to be more alive than full.

The heat of the day arrived in an instant, rolling over the plain like a dust storm and baking the eastern stones of the house into a fit of penumbral radiation. The air blurred around the tower, shimmered in anger. Even as the roof began to coagulate and clot, knitting a quilt of dried suppuration from it’s blackened edges, the thick bleed of black magic from the tip of the tower did not cease. Instead, it seemed to flow even thicker, feeding the heavy black cloud that had begun to form low in the sky above the house, pinned to the hazy clear blue like the dead skin of a cicada.

If the two neighboring manors saw the spectral mar up above, they did not come to investigate. After the smarter of the scavengers abandoned the roof there were no more visitors, and the manor belonged to the crows who watched the preceding events lethargically, with a crow’s instinctually cynical expectations.  

In the early afternoon, as the sun angled down to beat the last of it’s fury on the lee side of the house, nodes of glimmering obsidian began to dot the scab in rigid lines. Suddenly, as if in synchronization, they split and bloomed into rough burls of wood, primitive shingles. As they swelled and smoothed to cover the wound, they completed the perfect grid of of the roof and erased even the faintest black mark. It was as if the lightning strike never happened. Only after seeing this did the gallery of crows break their silence, cackling with delighted confusion.

When dusk threatened the cloud seemed done, the ink bleed from the tip of the tower finally stemmed. Filled to a solid mass, dull as graphite and scored like a fingertip with whorls of ancient script, the cloud was a fell idol to the thunderheads that amassed westward, crowding the setting sun and smelting like iron in it’s brilliant ochre light.

The storm rolled in with the dark, the crows taking flight with the first crack of thunder. The heavy rain descended like a curtain over the house and all was truly still, pinned under a swirling maelstrom that had found in the low hanging object it’s eye, it’s magnetic center. When the lightning finally struck it struck hard, viciously, veined from the gut of the storm and converging on the object with such intensity and frequency that for a time the whole sky seemed on fire. The object was a black sacred heart above the crown of the tower, a cursed pupil fed with  the blood of another world. It took each strike unflinching, the searing energies as nothing to it’s celestial density, it’s impossible gravity.

When the lightning was done, all was still. The sky of rippled chaos spun slowly around the axle of the house, violet-charged from it’s thousand bursts. And just as quickly as the storm came a gelid wind swept down from the northwest, scattering the clouds to nothing but a dull haze lingering on the eastern horizon.

There hung that etched opal, that rune-cateracted cyclopean eye in the night sky. It hummed. In a sound like a wave-tossed ship coming apart at it’s seams, voluminous in voices, in layers beyond measure crying out a single languid tone of protest, the object announced it’s hatching.

Shell cracked, fell away to glance off the roof and land where it crumbled to black ash and coated the rain slicked grass. The leathery membrane underneath, ivory white, was stubborn as knobby limbs pushed great bulges, sending still more shell into the air. Finally the being inside found it’s tooth -- or claw -- and tore a rent in the skin. A snout streamed smoke, leather wings unfurled, gaunt spidery limbs strung with sinewy muscle reached town to paw at the open air. When the sac gave way it the creature fell ungracefully, rolling down the newly healed side of the roof and landing with a bone jarring thud on the yard.

When finally it drew itself up, craned it’s neck and fill it’s throat with a savage howl at the half moon, the winged audience had returned. Crows had come one by one after the storm abated, their numbers dwarfing it seemed the stars in the sky, bizarre constellations morphing into black masses. Soon, a wide ring formed around the house, the fields a sea of black velvet, undulating as it shifted impatiently from one foot to the next. The crows answered the hatchling’s howl in kind, burying the night in their unified cries. The daemon then took flight, swiping the air with it’s arms, webbed with broad white-veined wings, teetering into the air belaying the bold efficacy indicated in it’s arrow-like form, lithe legs, many-jointed arms.

In mass like sand drawn up in a cyclone, the crows lept from the ground, streamed from the fence posts, and trailed the creature in a swirling wake. Chasing the blacker night away from the moon, the daemon disappeared behind the ridge of pines that mapped the border between the high plains of outer Woe and the far eastern Forest-lands where only kin-less trappers tread.

Thus a daemon is born when the First Noble-Dead’s Manor is struck with lightning. Shook loose from the Elder flesh of the ever-beating heart that resents it’s house-shape, eternally plotting escape from the enchantment that so trapped it centuries ago, the daemon faces a thousand years of anger. How many daemon's seed have poured from that spire, how many congregations of crows have witnessed that midnight sacrament? It is not known. But to those that call the plains home, those humans of more mundane manors, thunderstorms are common, even dominate during the summer months...

If the house’s born daemons are truly legion as the bolder historians write, if they are scattered across the eastern forest and hidden from sight, then Woe’s defunding of the Council of Death-Housekeeping Trust a century ago will be marked by history as one of the district’s subtler, yet most misguided measures of austerity. If the daemons succeed one day in freeing the heart from it’s house-shaped prison, the Elder host will come first to Woe and make quick work of it’s long neglected defenses.

The voice you hear now is that of famous American artist Norman Rockwell. Known the world over for his paintings of children, dogs, and coca-cola. Norman Rockwell, whose name is always in the bottom right corner of his paintings. Norman Rockwell, whose yacht was once sold to former president Eisenhower to much fanfare. Norman Rockwell, who in the darkness of his empty home hears the whispers of ghostly visages past painted.

Norman Rockwell, whose name is mine and I am him.

Fortunate you who find this broadcast, for my wealth of knowledge now surpasses the capacity of my frail body and vibrates from the very fibers of my exalted being. It is as if you were given a pass to the great Library of Alexandria, in the days before it’s cataclysm. Drink deep of my life, dear listener, not long will it retain it’s mortal vessel. My ascendancy is nigh, and blessed are you my witness.

Today I offer you a self-portrait, and recall many years ago a chance meeting with the high priest of an ancient and secretive order who imparted upon me advice timely in my early career And timeless to those who would heed it. Youth, dear listener, is the subject of today's episode. And for those who still possess it, change radio frequency at your own peril.

If I may paint for you, dearest receiver of this beatific broadcast, a rare and extraordinary addendum to my extensive body of work. I have before represented myself in painting, capturing before the image of myself in front of the canvas, body contorted by the rapturous spirit of creation, the very spirit that that has sustained my body in in the absence of true food for now four decades. But never have I given a self portrait in radio, this disposable medium of profligate chatter that so often is the realm of the sound mewling cats passing for music and soap commercials passing for drama. So here it is, listener, my self portrait to enrich your minds eye. Close your eyes and drink deep my oratory brushstrokes.You could only be closer to me if you were here in my room.

And with my room we begin, a modest set dressing for this the most humble of stages. I am in the basement of my Stockbridge home. The walls are bare, a rigid grid of structural cinder-blocks rises from the rust-stained concrete floor to the ceiling of damp wooden support beams that run like ribs under my living room floorboards. Bare copper piping, strung with spiders, drips hard well water onto a workbench, where a forgotten collection of Steiff teddy bears collapses with mold.

I am at my writing desk in the center of the room, illuminated by the single bare light bulb that hangs from the ceiling. The sharp shadows that drip from my eyes, my nose, my chin belay my rictus grin, the haunting remembrance of a smile once regarded as welcoming and disarming to lady folk of subtle persuasion. Like a crumbling highway overpass my face and hands are struck through with deep fault lines. My eyes, milky with cataracts and bulging with the sheer pressure of my intellect, regard the gleaming ribbon microphone in the stand on the desk with a hunger like it were it a hock of ham.

My hands gesticulate wildly, beset with great swollen knuckles. And under their frail gossamer skin you may see faint blue channels of blood. 

Beside me is my reel-to-reel tape machine, an Astrovox that was gifted to me by the chair of CBS, after I painted for him a portrait of the son he wished his daughter to be. It makes a faint humming, which were I painting this picture I would evoke in in an almost imperceptible luminant penumbra about the machine. See it in your mind’s eye as it spins, dear listener, turning my failing voice into spools of precious wisdom, as once rumplestiltskin’s fabled spinning wheel transmogrified coarse straw into gold.

I was not always old. Imagine if you will, the clock rolling back and like a reverse werewolf my body transforms from ghastly to sprightly . With a peach-like glow to my cheeks, a gleam to my eye, and shoulders squared as a box of Kellogg's, I am vivacious. In my youth I painted as a journeyman journals -- the world was my studio, and those early works painted on stolen canvases in stolen nights, birthed like diamonds squeezed between the tectonic pressure of adventures so massive that most have never been recounted, for fear of the legend of my explorations overtake the legend of my artwork. Alas, I am and have always been an artist. Though where now I am an artist as an old man, once I was an artist as a traveler.

I had been tasked by the Archbishop of Milan to embed myself into a necromancer’s cult that had taken hold in hills far west of the city. They had the habit of skinning mules and tacking them over the Archbishop’s door frame like a drum. For the inconvenience, he wanted their leader’s head. I did, however, find the Archbishop’s arrogance irritating and the necromancer’s company most agreeable so stayed with the cult for some months.

Finally it had come my time to nail the mule skin to the Archbishop’s door, which as I had learned was the cult’s key fertility rite, binding to my soul the soul a beautiful woman who had aligned herself to be my companion for the afterlife journey along the turgid river Styx . But I had found myself tiring of the Necromancer’s incessant routine of murder and resurrection as a child tires of a birthday clown who knows only one trick. And while the woman who was to be my soul-mate was most agreeable, and possessed with the ability to dislocate at will joints of the human body I had not known existed, she was not great conversation. I did not speak Italian, and would not for some years to come.

So in the dark of a moonless night I entered  Milan’s richer quarter wearing a cloak of bloodied mule skin, and decided to abandon my mission and desert the cult.  I figured I could have some fun and maybe get into a bit of trouble. After pooping in a lunch bag and leaving it burning on the door-step of the Archbishop’s manor, I sold the mule skin to an insomniac tanner for some coin and ducked into the most unsavory tavern I could find.   

A rabble of vagabonds and misfits hung about the dungeon-like club nursing a single barrel of sour wine. I quickly sweet-talked the counter girl into a tall glass of the bourbon she’d hid away for visiting mafioso and sized up the larger men. I found none worth a fist fight.  I had learned some years before not to pick a fight unless I was absolutely certain there was no risk of accidentally killing the man the man with a stray haymaker. I would avoid that if I could.

Then a bestial shadow emerged from a dark corner. Clothed from head to toe in a hooded cloak of burlap, was a man built like a structural pillar; a solid mass with his massive shrouded head scraping the ceiling. I had seen giants before, striding the hills of the Himalaya with a shaggy argali under each arm. And this man was the closest to their height I had found in any city. He beckoned me into the shadows, and I followed him through a low fissure in the wall to a stone staircase that gently spiraled down into the gut of the Milan, through the layers compacted ruins of ancient and forgotten civilizations that most modern cities are built upon.

For hours the fell friar’s path lead me though tapestried hallways, high chambers where tarnished tile mosaics depicted the wars, messianic births, cataclysmic deaths. Deep under the earth, we walked cobble streets lined with ancient storefronts that once saw sunlight, all long ago ransacked for their curiosities. Briefly we walked an an aqueduct, bone dry and blackened with dead algae, it bridged a cavern that would render Carlsbad but a paltry smoking room.  

We long traveled in silence, but when finally my my glass of bourbon had been sipped away, I asked the man: “How long until we get there.” He turned, and in the light of his oil soaked torch I saw his gnarled face, and the smooth scar tissue that had grown over the space that once held his eyes. He regarded me with the to pentagrams tattooed there, and I swear he winked somehow. I smiled back, and to show I was up for the challenge, I shattered my empty glass against the far wall.

The journey ended in a catacomb, the walls bored through at every turn with deep open crypts loaded head first, the walls like a honey-comb of skeletal feet. Sulfur and lime torches lit a far chamber, their acrid smoke mingling with the smell of centuries-old death that recalled my night spent in forbidden tombs under Washington’s monument.

The dead end was was a sepulcher, empty save for a high-backed throne fashioned from the antlers of elk, blackened with fire. The corpse of a king languished there, immortalized in a perfect pose of apathy. He slouched, with his chin rested on his fist, and his elbow on the arm of his chair. The gem-less crown of gold hung at a careless angle from his head of bald leathery skin.

The hooded man, ever silent, produced a short bone knife from the folds of his cloak and drew it across his palm. He reverently tipped back the dead king’s head, and squeezed some drops of blood into it’s mouth. At once, the corpse was shook with with a preternatural fury, it’s loose joints creaking as it’s bones rattled to life. The dead king sat up and assessed me.

“You are coated  in the blood of a goat. You have forsaken a necromancers fertility rite.” Pardon my imitation, I am as poor an actor as brilliant I am a painter.  

If I can recall what I said in reply, I believe it was something to the effect of “Yes, so you dusty old bag of bones.” The glass of bourbon had been tall, and I was feeling particularly quarrelsome.

The corpse cackled in response, and fixed his crown on top of his head. “You humor me mortal. Where is this mock necromancer, who disgraces my black art with his incompetence?” I told him of the cult in the hills, and he made me an offer. If I were to bring him the necromancer, he would grant me a thousand years life. I considered it, at the moment finding the thought of relieving the dark magician’s dead from his body... amusing.

But I had to ask the dead king, would my thousand years be spent in youth, or his present state of decay? The corpse grinned so wide a tooth fell from his mouth. “You are wiser than I in my youth, that you strike while the iron is hot and quit when it’s cold.” He commanded the priest to retrieve a small chest from a hole in the wall. Inside was a pipe and a drawstring pouch of a certain herb, and together we passed the pipe and traded the wild stories of our youth. Before I left, he gave me the pipe as a gift, but the true gift of my encounter with the carcass king was his parting words: “Live your youth as though the spirits of all that have died before you are riding alongside you. Do not disappoint them.”

I thanked him for his wisdom, then punched him in the face and took his crown. I sprinted back through the underground to the surface, the footfalls of the priest thundering behind me, and I heard the mad laughter of the king follow echoing the whole distance.

The next day I hiked to Corsico wearing the crown, and enjoyed an ice cold coke-a-cola. Invigorated by the previous day’s encounter and the soda, I painted a young boy in a straw hat and his mutt enjoying a cola and a sandwich.

When the crown became too hot on my head, I tossed it into the canal. The painting was the greater of the two treasures, and I liked to keep a light pack.

And so, dear listener, take the cursed king’s lesson to heart. If you are young, live. If you are old, get out of the way. And so I will, until next week, when I return with the story behind one of my most cherished works -- "The Shipbuilder."

The Magic Lamp

by Scary McCleary

"I'd like some extra teeth please." The genie looked befuddled. "Another row of pearly whites Right here in my muzzle." "Your wish is my command!" he boomed, Not without some hesitation And higher still the shadows loomed As he began the incantation: "Spirits of the dark rejoice The Warlock's lamp is broken By human hand it was destroyed This child deserves a token..." Shadows writhed in deepening gloom, Voices sibilant circled the tomb: "The lord of plagues, funeral fugues, Barrows of bones, and general doom extends his eternal gratitude. Generous, one wish he will grant Thanking you for freeing his servant." "I'd like some extra teeth please. A whole 'nother row. All molars." Shadows writhed in the deepening gloom, Voices hesitant circled the tomb: "Really?" With consternation the genie boomed: "Beats me." Motes of magic gathered in the aether Spoke the spirits in an ancient meter: "Our command your wish is. Done let it be." So the boy grinned wide for all the world to see A grisly row of molars hid behind his human teeth. His parting words would echo forever in dark lore, This human boy a legend in the halls of the locust lord: "Now I'm going to eat all the cheeseburgers."

A continuation of a world introduced in a previous post...