Worst of /lit/ Writers: Volume I (2/5)

Part 1: http://pastebin.com/4kDQe3pj

Worst of /lit/ Writers: Volume I (Part 2 of 5)


Why can’t we see
How beautiful life can be
If only we understood
It’s not you, I or me
What are thought of as strangers
They aren’t all that far
Please realize for once who we all are
Brothers and sisters
Siblings of man
What burns one another,
Also burns the other hand
Mothers and fathers,
Please teach our children,
We are all as one
And our passage through time,
Has only just begun

********************************************************************

The moon sits in the sky which is filled with the specks of light that has traveled millions upon millions of miles to reach here. On the ground there stood a
man, who just stood simply doing nothing, but looking to the sky's moon. A full moon has, for generations been shown to bring the worse of the night's wrath out. Once
people stand outside under a full moon's light though, Few people could stand under it and feel like something bad could happen to them. The moon's gleam blankets the
Earth in its warm grasp, calming the air and the life that it covers. The trees and grass reflected its brilliance in a way that just made them seem more alive than
when the sun comes back to reveal its radiant form to the world once again.

The man stood by a fire, which created its smoke to float into the trees. The fumes then sailed pass the trees and into the illuminated sky to be devoured by
the light of a thousand stars. To the naked eye he appeared to be just staring, but his mind is aflame with ideas. The ideas are empty, glazing over many important
details of what he should of thought about, but to him, they were all great and just need a little more evolving to be the solution to his problem.

Soon though, he thought about it. All of the ideas are meaningless. None of them coudl help him, he's just hoping blindly a simple solution can clear
everything. Waves of gloom set over him, knowing that for all the thinking he does, nothing can fix what he has done. A life that has been wasted away is what his is,
he thought. The man stopped gazing at the moon and instead opts to look at the fire. Fire. The reason for almost all civilizations across the world. Without fire many
races of people wouldn't exist and all humans would be stuck in Africa, left to fend off against the burning sun, not being able to leave to colder climates. Without
fire, jobs, marriage, and governments wouldn't exist. Suddenly though the man tore his eyes away from the reason for most people's suffering today and focused back on
the moon. The light just seemed so pure and carefree.

A thought came into the man's head though. Why should his past be who he is? What was keeping him from being a different person than before? There is always
a second chance to make yourself happy. Peering into the moon that was bursting with light, he decided this. Changes is what has made everything. Without there being
change nothing could exist. Whether small or large, there is an effect. It's time for a change that can bring joy to me and make this life a good one.

With that thought, he broke off a small branch, seperated the wood, and watched the fire slowly die out, with the embers still burning with all the intesity
of when the fire still shone its light upon the trees. He watched the moon slowly descend into the shadows of the trees, taking away the clear glow, and replacing it
with the radiance of the sun. Before the sun fully rose above the trees though, the man decided to head back and begin anew, just like the day.

********************************************************************

 A bloated figure works its laborious way through the night streets of Düsseldorf, keeping away from the lights, seeking a refuge in dimness, pliable flesh and bottles of darkness – it’s Pierre Périte, from Liège originally, and he’s entering a basement containing a small, deeply degenerated Satansbrut of deadbeats, too disgusting for the taverns and beerhalls: drug addicts, prostitutes and boozehounds spread across the floor, twisted into swastikas, a woman offering her bottom to a man too drunk to count his own fingers, yet somehow still standing, pants around his ankles. The stink of liquor, piss and God knows what else is so pervasive, it’s coming out of the floorboards, mixing with various mind-fogging smokes and the smells of unhealthily-prepared foods into a demonic fart of an atmosphere that gets into the hair of Périte’s globoid belly, where it mixes with his bodily sweats and greases into a veritable sheen. This fat man has a fat wad of marks with him, and he’s ready to pay handsomely for some discreet entertainment, quality food and fine beverages. But don’t go thinking he’s some kind of mindless hedonist, here – his mighty appetites are matched by a mighty brain, and a noble heart besides. Under his arm, he has a copy of La Guerre du feu, which he has nearly read all the way through – he has read nearly every story published to date in French, and what little he could find in German, dealing with other times, alien life forms, spectacular technologies, fantastical human progress. Somehow, sometime, there would be an event which would cut the catapult’s rope, and the world would be sent hurtling toward utopia, a spontaneous scientific revolution that would, through means that our base, modern minds cannot even fathom, ensure profound and lasting satisfaction for the entire species, the biological secrets of human happiness unlocked. The thought of this epiphany takes up a great deal of his mental space, and sometimes he even carries the conceit that it would occur to him specifically. To him, Germany, with its deeply biological politics, seems the place this would happen. If at first biology was to be the queen of the sciences in society, it was only a matter of time before physics, chemistry and mathematics rose as well, each with an equal crown, forming a hydraic monarch in the mind of every citizen, who would all begin to see the world objectively, without the troublesome rumblings of the less sophisticated cranial meats which, alas and alack, he knows too well.

********************************************************************


Russian roulette I played today.
Loaded three bullets in a six shot gun.
I won the game, needless to say.
Never have I ever had so much fun.

When God deems to judge,
According to his will,
He may pick a revolver,
With three lives and three kills.

So soon on that day,
I can hold my head high.
Many men may be damned,
But saved, am I.

********************************************************************


Celestial Nigh
Chapter One: Animalistic Hatred

A lonely, abandoned forest entrapping all who enter with shadows of foreboding intentions as the whistling howl of wind hurriedly rushes throughout the forest’s bowls. Animals lie silent as if terrified too cause any audible sounds to give away their locations as the babbling streams go about un-phased by the eerie tension charged air. Leaves crackle hesitantly over mist covered ruins of stone as small hints of metallic shimmers can be picked out between the shadows of leaves above the overbearing trees embrace. From the depths of the rubble the mist subsides revealing a dark, saddened figure beginning to stir to life. An insisting breeze causes the hood over the figures face to flap lightly until flipping it back over the persons head as if insisting to reveal its owners face. Long brown hair erupts from beneath lying atop the once placed hood swaying gently in the breeze. Bright gold eyes pierce out through the shaded, mist induced wood with an unfaltering glare like that of a prowling animal. The ridge of the person’s nose bared a large scar placed horizontal underneath the owner’s eyes. A light beard wrapped itself around the figures jaw line forming a slight goatee leading up to the pair of lips above it. Pointed sharp canine teeth stealthily hide behind the slightly parted lips belonging to the hunched over person as his black clothes rustled ever so seldom in the forest’s enclosure. Fuzzy canine-like ears twitched toward every little sound atop the person’s head in full attention to any disturbance in the area.

Just as the figure was about to stand up a sound could be heard rushing towards his direction as the cracking of underbrush and dead leaves rang out to his canine ears. Rising up quickly at the ready a voice could be heard out through the maze-like trees softly at first but quickly growing loader as it grew closer. “Mordecai… Mordecai… Mordecai!!!...” The voice cried out drawing the figures full attention now as he started to move towards the direction of the voice. It was a soft, sweet sounding voice that Mordecai knew well but it sounded as though the owner belonging to it sounded very distressed. “AHHHH!!! HELP ME MORDECAI!!!” The voice screamed very close now as Mordecai crouched down to began running on all fours as his dog-like tail now trailed behind him maintaining his balance as he darted between trees and shrubs. “Just give up Nymira! It’s no point in running our boss paid good money for you to give you a good life and this is how you repay him!?” Another voice rang out aside from Nymira’s own distressed screaming closing in on her at a pretty fast pace.

“N-no please! I don’t wanna go back! P-please!” Nymira cried out now with a weak plea as the stamina she had was quickly leaving her until her legs gave way causing her to collapse to the ground. Mordecai finally closed in on her cutting past a tree to see Nymira’s body lie breathing heavily on the forest floor trying to catch her breath. Nymira was a small, young girl of a harpy-like race known as the Avinas one of the former ruling races until the Bihews arrived. She noticed Mordecai approach giving him a half-hearted smile too tired to make one in earnest. She had a gentle loving face with kind honest eyes of bright amber in color. Smooth plush lips of the softest pink as her long feathery plume of amber hair ran down her back as two separate bundles ran over her shoulders. She had wings but as Mordecai looked closely they seemed to be broken an unable to be used for flight as she attempted too flap them painfully causing her to cringe in pain. Her body was somewhat small but she had a nice figure as her race was known to be of light builds due to their avian ancestry.

She wore a shoulder-less top clasped in the middle and from the neck down to her thighs was a spandex material body suit as a knee length loincloth covered her lower half. She had tail feathers like that of a bird with two elongated fathers which turned from amber to bright gold as her forearms had light scales up into more feathers all the way up to half her bicep. Talons adored her feet and hands but were well maintained. “M-Mordecai…? I didn’t think you heard me calling out to you… eheheh…” Nymira muttered weakly as Mordecai rushed over to her side placing his hands on her wings gently feeling the places where the bones have been broken making her clench away from his touch slightly. Mordecai let go as he reached over to pick her small body up until her limp body rested in his arms as she looked him wearily in the face with a weak smile. “Just lie still and I’ll…” As Mordecai began to speak an energized bullet rushed past his face hitting the tree behind him as Mordecai jumped to the side Nymira still in his arms. “I advise you to drop the boss’s property and back away unless you wish to die early!” The voice from before shouted coming out from behind the forested cover of shadows gun taking the lead as the Nymira’s pursuer emerged through the woods. It was a somewhat rough looking man around six feet in height, bald, with an unkempt beard and dirty grass and soil stained clothes. Judging by the dirtiness of his attire he seemed to be bounty hunter which was common in these parts do to slave trade enterprise. “I said drop her!” The man shouted once again keeping his distance close enough to fire his gun accurately but far enough away to avoid retaliation.

“I won’t warn you again…!?” The man slowed in his speech at he looked Mordecai in the face then the man’s gaze wondered off as realization overtook him. “T-those ears… and that tail… that unfaltering glare of gold…!?” The man’s face grew pale as he realized what he had gotten himself into fear now welling up from within him. “Y-y-you’re the beast of the forest!” The man’s grip on his gun wavered in terror as Mordecai stared him down the unmistakable fear screaming behind the man’s eyes. “If you know who I am then I suggest you drop the gun and leave before I become angered more then I already am…” Mordecai warned in a threateningly low tone as slight snarls could be heard between words as he spoke.

“But, if I don’t bring her back with me the boss will…!” The man’s confidence clearly dropping as he tried to reason with himself more than towards the angry beast holding the young Avinas girl in his arms across from him. “I don’t like your kind as is and I’m offering you to leave with your life, that’s more than most get… so I suggest that you shut the fuck up and leave before I decide to kill you anyways!” Mordecai snarled in anger as his blood began to boil at the sight of the man who quickly holstered his gun backing away slowly until he turned to run in a full sprint back the way he came. “Heheh… what a coward!” Nymira said giggling to herself still in Mordecai’s arms as she looked up with an innocent smile to meet his gaze back at her. “So what exactly happened to you anyways Nymira? And why was that guy chasing you?” Mordecai inquired turning around to carry her back with him too his ruined village that he resided in. “W-well… my guardians I lived with since I was little hit a hard spot because of the economic state of supply trading lately and well…” Nymira trailed off her former bright amber eyes growing dim and saddened as she recalled the event in her mind.

“We were about to lose our house… we didn’t even have much food at the time, and then Samael the international C.E.O of our planets trading bureau paid our family a visit… He said if they would allow him to take custody of me he would pay them a handsome sum in credits because of my races rarity…” Nymira stopped as tears began to form into her gentle pained eyes as she continued her story with forced interest. “To my surprise my parents agreed to the ordeal without me even having any say-so in it at all… I was told to pack some clothes while Samael and my parents finalized the payment but I refused… I tried to plea to my mother and father but they just knocked me to the ground saying do as I was told… I never felt so alone and worthless throughout my whole time on this world… I always thought I was a good daughter… I did all I could to please them and yet they… they… ugh ugh…” Nymira began to cry shivering every so often as she bit her lip tightly trying to hold her composure as best she could. Mordecai looked at her lost for words as he pulled her closer to him placing his forehead against hers to look her in the eyes as the gesture took her by surprise.

“No more tears… it’s not your fault, don’t blame yourself for their shortcomings…” Mordecai spoke slowly as Nymira’s tears soon subsided as if his words wiped away the tears as well as the pain and replaced it with pride and confidence. Nymira’s smile quickly returned as he pulled his face away from hers as she reached out placing her arms around his neck in a firm joyful hug. “Everyone in town is afraid of you Mordecai… but I think you’re a very caring person just… misunderstood is all…” Nymira stated releasing Mordecai from her hug as she managed to get a hidden smile from Mordecai’s lips. “Ya think so huh…? I don’t dislike anyone but those worthless Bihews that plague the galaxy like un-killable roaches…!” Mordecai clarified as the mist of the forest eased apart and the structural ruins of Mordecai’s home eased into view. “But enough about this… first, we have to get you fixed up before anything…” Mordecai explained as Nymira painfully tried to flap her broken wings unintentionally making her seize up once again.

********************************************************************

The names of key crew and cast members are written in the books. Hands flip through the books, with a new book for each name. Then, on the last one, in a continuous shot:
INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
LAURA sits at her desk. TEACHER stands at front of classroom, which is filled with disinterested students. CASSIE, and SCOTT are also present.
TEACHER
-of germy animals. One germy animal is the house cat, who’s claws are filled with so many germs that a single scratch can put you in the hospital. Urgh, just thinking about it makes me want to...
He retches, and runs out of the room. CASSIE tears the limbs off gummy bears. LAURA bends over to see. CASSIE ignores her.
LAURA
What are you-
CASSIE
SHHH! Let me savor the moment.
She knocks one off the table, and doesn’t notice.
LAURA
You, uh, dropped one.
CASSIE sighs and squashes the gummy bear with her foot.
CASSIE
Yeah, that one turned out to be much more trouble than he’s worth. A real problem. He got what was coming to him.
LAURA opens her mouth to speak but is interrupted.
SCOTT
(to no one in particular)
Hey, if any of you are interested, there’s a free seat on the council. After the... barbecue incident... we need some new people.
CASSIE
What, you guys are still running that? When was the last time you did anything worthwhile?
SCOTT
(smug)
Well-
CUT TO:
SERIES OF PLACES
Scott stands in front of a noticeboard.
SCOTT
We put this up.
In front of the taps.
SCOTT (CONT’D)
You like water? Yeah, I bet you do. You need it to live! Well, we got plenty of that.
In a toilet cubicle.
SCOTT (CONT’D)
You a fan of toilet paper? Cause I know I am, and without us there wouldn’t be aaaany of this.
CUT BACK:
SCOTT (CONT’D)
-so basically, this school would fall apart if it wasn’t for us.
CASSIE
Do you have any idea how boring you are?
He opens his mouth to retort, but TEACHER re-enters.
TEACHER
Okay, okay, I’m good now. Right, next up on the germy animals list is-
TEACHER screams as a picture of a rat appears on the screen and quickly goes to the next slide, a picture of an owl swooping, causing TEACHER to scream even louder. He slams the computer shut.
TEACHER (CONT’D)
Okay, I think that’s enough for today. I need to have a lie down.

TEACHER leaves while holding his hands up to block the empty whiteboard while breathing heavily.
CASSIE
Why does he teach biology if this happens every lesson?
LAURA
Hey Cass, I reckon it might be a really good opportunity-
CASSIE
(interrupting)
Are you talking about the squashed gummy bear? Because I don’t think that’s a good opportunity, Laura. The floor is really sticky and gross, and I stepped on it. Ugh.
LAURA
No, I mean about the council.
CASSIE
Nope, absolutely not. No way. I’m not spending any more time with Scott than I have to. He’s gross and he smells like beans.
LAURA
Come on, Cass! Extra credit, time off school, it doesn’t seem so bad.
CASSIE
I said no-
CASSIE sweeps her hand in a gesture, but knocks the rest of her gummy bears off the table by accident in the process.
CASSIE (CONT’D)
Well that’s today’s plans gone.
LAURA
C’mooooon. It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do.
CASSIE
Look, I’ll have a look. Happy?
LAURA
Very!
They finish packing up and begin to leave.
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM
JACK and HAYLEY are sitting around the table. JACK chews gum and HAYLEY sleeps on the keyboard of her laptop. LAURA and CASSIE enter, out of their element.
LAURA
(clears throat) Um, hello!
JACK gets startled and swallows his gum.
JACK
Yeah?
LAURA begins to speak but is pulled aside by CASSIE before she can.
LAURA
(Jack) Just hang on a second! (Cassie) What is it?
CASSIE
Laura, I don’t think this is such a good idea after all.
LAURA
Why? Everything seems fine to me.
CASSIE
These people mean business.
LAURA
What are you talking about?
CASSIE
Didn’t you see that guy? He just swallowed a piece of gum, right in front of us!
LAURA
Yeah, so what?
CASSIE
That can destroy your digestive system, I saw it on Today Tonight. This is the kind of man who doesn’t care about life and death.
LAURA
Look, stop being a shit, okay? We’re here now, so we may as well do it.
LAURA and CASSIE turn back towards JACK.
LAURA (CONT’D)
We’re here to sign up to the cou-

LAURA is interrupted by KENNETH, DONNIE and SCOTT entering the room. SCOTT is holding a stained paper bag in his hand.
SCOTT
Alright guys, we’re back. Is everything set up? You would not believe how hard it is these days to find a fresh-
SCOTT notices the presence of LAURA and CASSIE and stops abruptly, putting the bag on the table.
SCOTT (CONT’D)
Uh, Jack? What are these people doing here? You know the rules about... outsiders.
LAURA
(concerned)
We’re here to apply for the coun-
DONNIE motions to the empty jar on the table
DONNIE
Jack, what happened to the bees? You were supposed to be looking after them!
JACK looks at the empty jar.
JACK
Oh, I see the problem. Lid’s not on.
JACK points to the lid lying next to the empty jar.
DONNIE
(long sigh, aside)
All those bee stings, for nothing. Didn’t you learn bees have wings, in primary school?
SCOTT
Someone wake up Hayley.
Jack shakes her, she awakes with a start.
HAYLEY
I ALREADY TOLD YOU, I DON’T KNOW WHERE THE DIAMONDS ARE- oh, it’s you guys.
SCOTT
Yeah, and the council’s in session, so get those fingers typing.
HAYLEY
Ugh.
She starts typing.
LAURA
Um, Scott, your bag is leaking...
SCOTT looks down in surprise at a dark stain below the bag.
SCOTT
Oh! Well, that’s nothing...
LAURA
It smells pretty weird too... What’s in there?
DONNIE
Nothing!
DONNIE quickly grabs the bag and throws it in the bin.
DONNIE (CONT’D)
Ken, take out the rubbish would you?
KENNETH
I thought we we’d take turns with the rubbish.
DONNIE
I said take out the rubbish, Kenneth. Do you want the health inspectors to find that? No, you don’t. So get rid of it.
KENNETH hesitates for a moment and then moves to take out the rubbish.
DONNIE (CONT’D)
(to Laura and Cass)
That’s nothing to worry about, really. Also, if anyone asks, you didn’t see anything.
SCOTT
So, you guys are here to join the council, yeah?
LAURA
If you’ve got space, yeah.
SCOTT
Sure we do! We recently... lost several of our dearest members.
JACK
Terrible business.
SCOTT
Yes, but we learned a valuable lesson: don’t bring an open flame close to a barbecue.
LAURA and CASS both look concerned.
SCOTT (CONT’D)
Okay, I’m the president. Hayley’s the stenographer, Donnie here is Master of Ceremonies, Jack’s the minister of defence-
KENNETH re-enters.
SCOTT (CONT’D)
-and that’s Kenneth. We let him stay because his mum’s the vice-principal.
DONNIE
(”if you get my drift”)
So, what makes you think you’re a good fit for the council? I mean, we might need some convincing...
CASSIE
I can bring gummy bears in once a week but any more than that and dad’s gonna notice they’re missing. I can cook the numbers but that wont fool him forever. Thus, I suggest that-
LAURA
I feel like we can be a great help to the council. We’re determined, hard working and enthusiastic about helping to improve the school that has done so much for us. I already have a few ideas ready to go!
SCOTT
Hang on a minute.
Everyone except LAURA and CASSIE huddle together
JACK
Do you think she meant a gummy bear each or a few to share?
SCOTT
I’m not sure. Do you think we should ask, or would that be rude?
HAYLEY
Well it’s certainly greedy. Do you really think you need the calories?
SCOTT
...Y’know-
DONNIE
Look, sharing or not, a gummy bear’s a gummy bear. I reckon we just take them.
SCOTT
Then I guess we’re decided.
He turns around.
SCOTT (CONT’D)
Welcome aboard!
CUT TO:
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
THE COUNCIL are all sitting together at the table. Hayley taps away at her computer. They eat donuts on the table.
LAURA
OK, so I have a few ideas I would like to present to you all
SCOTT
Go ahead.
LAURA pulls a folder out from under the table.
LAURA
OK, to begin with, the drinking taps don’t work, and when they do the waters pretty brown, we might need to get a handyman. Secondly-
SCOTT
Let me stop you right there. What are you doing?
LAURA
Well, isn’t that what we do? Fix the school’s problems?
SCOTT
So when you talked about all those ideas you had, you meant these?
LAURA
Well, yeah. What did you think I meant?
SCOTT
I don’t know! Pinatas if I’m being honest with you, I thought pinatas would be involved. Drinking taps are way less fun than pinatas. We could make one that looks like Ken.
JACK
(pointedly)
Yeah, and then smash it to pieces.
KENNETH looks concerned.
LAURA
Okay, look, let’s start with something simple. How about this room. I think its in some desperate need of redecoration. Kenneth, do you have anything you might like to add to this room?
KENNETH looks up in surprise.
KENNETH
Um, actually, I've been working on a sculpture in art. Maybe we could put that up somewhere.
LAURA
That sounds great Kenneth, could we see this Sculpture?
KENNETH
Um, sure, L-Laura.
KENNETH pulls his sculpture out from under the desk. It is ugly and poorly constructed.
LAURA
(not to hurt his feelings)
Oh, that’s lovely, Kenneth. Why don’t you put it over there... How about the rest of you?
DONNIE
I have been pursuing something of a photography project recently. This is one I’m particularly proud of.
DONNIE hands LAURA an unfocused, blurry photo of a chair.
LAURA
Th-thank you, Donnie. Put that up where you’d like.
SCOTT
Whoah, uh, hold on there Laura, you haven’t asked Hayley, Jack or myself if we have any art to share with you. I’ve been working on a sketch recently that I really think will bring this room together. It’s not finished, but what do you think of this.
SCOTT hands LAURA an awful drawing of a cat.
SCOTT (CONT’D)
Pretty good, huh?
LAURA
Yes, it’s uh, lovely. We should probably move on-
She checks her watch.
LAURA (CONT’D)
Actually, Cass and I have class now. I reckon you guys should maybe make some paper cranes to hang up, that would really brighten up the place. This was a really productive session, see you all later.
Chorus of goodbyes, they leave. The others move toward the cabinet.
DONNY
What are you doing?
SCOTT
What does it look like? We’re gonna get the paper, man, we just-
DONNY
What? Are you blind to what she’s doing? She, an outsider to our ways, waltzing in here, giving orders. Making us decorate with these stupid [throws sculpture to the ground], childish [tears down SCOTT’s drawing], idiotic [sees his photo, does nothing]. She’s tearing us apart! She knows nothing of our ways.
SCOTT
Well, she has been making us do a lot more work.
HAYLEY
Which I hate.
JACK
Yeah, and she’s been making me anxious with all those ideas. And when I’m anxious, I like, have trouble breathing and-
DONNY
See, she isn’t just threatening our freedom, she is threatening our very health. Our wellbeing!
KENNETH
I thought she was alright.
DONNY [SMUGLY]
Oh, Kenneth. Kenneth, Kenneth, Kenneth. You always were the weakest willed of us.
HAYLEY
Kenneth, if you think about it, in a way, it’s her fault your sculpture got smashed. If she didn’t make you put it up there, then-
DONNY
Exactly, Kenneth! Would you go along with someone who has shown such disregard for your property?
SCOTT
Yeah Kenneth, what the hell?
DONNY
You know what we have to do right? We have to... ‘get rid’ of her.
JACK
What, kick her out? That sounds a little harsh.
DONNY
No, you don’t understand, she has to kick the bucket, cash in her receipt, buy the farm.
JACK
So sh-she buys that-that, buys the farm and so she’s too busy to be-be in the council and then-
DONNY
Take a long walk off a short pier! Get what I mean?
HAYLEY
Well, we could just kill her.
DONNIE
Hey, I was building up to that. Thanks for ruining my vibe.
JACK
Hayley, you can’t be serious here, right? I mean-
DONNY
No! This is our only option, it’s us or her.
SCOTT
What about her friend, gummy bear girl?
DONNY
Well, you know what they say, in for a penny in for a pound.
KENNETH
You guys can’t seriously be considering killing her!
HAYLEY
Whoa, don’t say it out loud! If the Feds were listening in, it’d be wham, blam, straight to jail! Do you really want to be an accomplice to murder, Kenneth?
DONNIE
(threateningly)
You know what Ken, I’m starting to wonder who’s side you’re on. You better shut up if you know what’s good for you. Got it?
Kenneth nods.
SCOTT
How are we gonna do it?
JACK
What if we dangle two knives next to each other from the ceiling and when they’re walking past, we just cut it at the right time so it gets like, square in their heads?
HAYLEY
I’m not sure that would work. What if there’s a breeze or like, a giant magnet that changes which way they go?
KENNETH
I still cant believe you guys are going to go through with this? I mean, what if it gets traced back to us?
HAYLEY
Shut up, Kenneth.
DONNIE
No! I think he might actually have a point.
KENNETH
What, we’re not going to kill them?
DONNIE
No no no, the other thing you said. We need something untraceable yeah? Something that doesn't leave prints or any traceable wounds like a bullet hole or a stab wound or shrapnel from an artillery shell.
JACK
Hang on, I think I know! Death by beast! Think about it. We get some kind of wild animal like a wolf or a wombat or something and sik it on them! Then it can’t be traced back to us!
Jack imitates some policemen.
JACK (CONT’D)
What do you make of this, officer Jack? Well, if you ask me this is a simple case of man yet again bested by the cruel forces of nature.
DONNIE
You might actually be on to something there.
JACK
It’s the perfect crime! We get away with the murders and all the blame is placed on a couple of dumb animals! And what do you think happens when they draw a trial? Animals cant name names and give us away. No, it will be straight to the slammer with those losers. Humans win yet again.
DONNIE
The only issue now is getting our hands on an animal. Hayley, you got any pets?
HAYLEY
Well, there’s a couple of birds that sometimes eat from our feeder out the front but they’re not really pets because they don’t have names and live in trees.
SCOTT
What kind of birds?
HAYLEY
The ones that pirates wear.
SCOTT
Parrots?
HAYLEY
Yeah, parrots.
SCOTT
What kind of parrot?
HAYLEY
There are different kinds of parrot?
SCOTT
I don’t know, maybe. Look, forget about it. What about you Jack, you got any wild untamed creatures living with you?
JACK
Only my sister. Am I right?!
No one laughs.
JACK (CONT’D)
I, uh, have a small thing covered in fur about the size of a melon, but like a slice of melon, like not a whole one. With a big nose.
SCOTT
What, like a rat?
DONNIE
That could work. Does he have any deadly diseases like the plague or athletes foot?
JACK
Well, he only has three legs. Is that a disease?
HAYLEY
What, we’re gonna kill two people with a crippled rat? How do you plan on doing that?
DONNIE
Ok ok I get it, bad idea. Kenneth, anything?
KENNETH
My uncle has a really big German shepherd that started acting all crazy after he got in a fight with a rabid possum, so-
DONNIE
Jesus Christ Kenneth I asked if you had any animals, not for your entire goddamn family tree. So that’s it? No one here has anything we can use?
HAYLEY
I guess we could always buy one. Like a tiger, from a zoo!
SCOTT
That’s a great idea! Then it just looks like a freak accident, like it managed to sneak out of the zoo.
DONNIE
Yeah, and where would we get the money for that, genius?
HAYLEY
Hey Kenneth, your mum keeps all the schools funds in her office, right?
KENNETH
I think so, I- oh, no. You guys can’t be serious.
DONNIE
What, you’re fine with murder but not with burglary? Jeez Ken, get your priorities straight.
KENNETH
I’m not fine with either of them!
DONNIE
Well, deal with it, cause it’s happening, and you don’t really have a whole lot of say in the matter. Okay, we need to do this as quick as possible. I’ll, uh, hold down the fort here and you guys grab the cash.
SCOTT
How exactly?
DONNIE
Oh, you’ll figure something out. Pretend to be pizza deliverymen, I dunno.
JACK
What if she calls us out, that she didn’t order any?
DONNIE
We’ll cross that river if we come to it. Now go, you’ve wasted enough time as it is.
Everyone minus Donnie leaves the room. Donnie pours himself a pina colada and sits down with his feet on the table.
CUT TO:
EXT. QUADRANGLE - DAY
CASS and LAURA study at a picnic table.
LAURA
I reckon that went pretty well.
CASSIE
Yeah, they were really welcoming. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. Even though I have to deal with Scott.
LAURA
What’s your deal with that guy, anyway? He seems fine to me.
CASSIE
I used to keep this locker filled with gummy bears, and they went missing one day, and the empty locker smelled like beans. I mean, I have no proof it was him, but it totally was. Disgusting bean-smelling Neanderthal.
LAURA
...Right.
CUT TO:
INT. ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
HAYLEY, SCOTT, KENNETH and JACK attempt to look inconspicuous, while standing outside the VP’s office.
SCOTT
I’ll be honest, I’m not so sure this is such a good idea after all.
JACK
Relax, there isn’t even anyone here.
SCOTT
Yeah, where is everyone?
KENNETH
Oh, they’re at the swing dancing class. My mum was telling me about it. Apparently everyone in admin is really into swing dancing.
JACK
Then I guess the coast is clear. Which one of these offices is your mum’s, Ken?
KENNETH
(points)
That one. Look, can we not do this? Seriously?
HAYLEY
Okay, Kenneth, I’m not trying to be mean or anything, but you’ve been a whiny bitch all day and you’re really shitting on our fun.
KENNETH
What fun?! You’re trying to break into my mum’s office to steal school funds to buy a fucking tiger to try and murder some girl you barely know?
HAYLEY
What do you mean “what fun”? You just described it.
JACK
Okay, here’s the plan. Kenneth goes in, checks all the drawers, grabs the cash, comes out. In and out in thirty seconds.
KENNETH
Sounds like you guys are getting me to do all of the work.
SCOTT
Well it is your mum’s office.
HAYLEY
Yeah Kenneth, stop being a pussy.
KENNETH reluctantly enters the office. He runs behind the desk and tries to open some of the drawers. Locked.
KENNETH (O.S.)
Guys! I need some help in here.
The others all enter.
SCOTT
Oh great, looks like Kenneth the big mongoloid has gotten himself into a jam and we, like always, have to help him out of it.
KENNETH
I’m literally right here.
SCOTT
I know.
JACK
What’s the problem?
KENNETH
It’s the drawers, they’re locked.
HAYLEY
Why are the drawers locked but the door isn’t?
JACK
Probably cause there’s like a million dollars in them, idiot.
SCOTT
Nah, not a million. Probably more like... ten thousand? I guess?
HAYLEY
Ten thousand? We can’t buy a tiger with ten thousand dollars!
JACK
Maybe we can rent one. After it’s done the deed and served its lengthy jail sentence, we can just return it to the zoo.
KENNETH
Guys. The drawers?
JACK
Oh, right. I can help with that.
JACK pulls a strip of plastic explosive out of his pocket. A long silence as they stare at it.
SCOTT
Well, I’ve got a couple of questions-
KENNETH
Yeah, like “what the fuck”?
JACK
I got this from my buddy Mohammed.
SCOTT
That’s racist.
JACK
No it isn’t, he’s from Bosnia.
HAYLEY
So are you, like, a member of Al Qaeda or something? Cause I dunno how I feel about that, half of me’s sorta “nah” but the other half is sorta “eh”, know what I mean?
KENNETH
...No?
HAYLEY
Shut up, no one asked you.
SCOTT
You did actually, two seconds ago.
HAYLEY
You shut up too. So you’ve just been carrying around that C4 in your pocket this entire time, for no reason?
JACK
Well, yeah. Where else would I put it? Besides, I thought it might come in useful, and here we are. And I don’t hear any “thank yous”, may I add.
SCOTT
Won’t that blow up the money?
JACK
Nah, Mo’ said that it was only a little bit. Oughta just blow the locks.
KENNETH
I’m not letting you guys blow up my mum’s office! Stop, or I’ll tell her everything.
HAYLEY
Keep your snitch mouth shut, or I’ll set your hair on fire again.
KENNETH
Jesus Christ...
JACK
Okay, we just put it heeeere...
He sets the plastic explosive.
JACK (CONT’D)
You guys better go outside, safety first!
The others hurriedly leave.
CUT TO:
EXT. QUADRANGLE - DAY
LAURA and CASS still at the table. They’re bored.
LAURA
Nice weather we’ve been having lately.
CASSIE
Yep.
CUT TO:
EXT. ADMINISTRATION BUILDING - DAY
KENNETH, HAYLEY and SCOTT stand outside. JACK runs out quickly, hands over his ears.
JACK
It’s gonna blow and second now!
They look up. NEW ANGLE: facing the characters. There is an ear-shattering explosion from behind the camera, and debris falls at their feet. Smoke fills the air.
KENNETH
Oh my god, what the fuck?
SCOTT
Jesus Christ Jack, what happened to “it’ll only blow the locks”?
JACK
Whoa, that was a lot stronger than I thought it would be.
KENNETH
Is that all you have to say?! You just blew up my mum’s office?! The vice principal’s office?!
HAYLEY
As well as half the admin building. (lightbulb) You knew, didn’t you?
JACK
They never gave me my tax returns from the enrollment fees. This is payback for the $61 they owe me.
Money starts to flutter down towards them.
SCOTT
Well, maybe this won’t be such a waste of time after all.
They start to gather up the bills.
HAYLEY
We should probably get outta here before the cops show up.
JACK
Do they have police in Mongolia? Which is where we are right now?
SCOTT
Yeah, but they have to ride goats to get here.
HAYLEY
May as well get a head start. If we’re lucky, this (brandishing money) will satisfy Donnie.
CUT TO:
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY
A knocked over pina colada is on the table. JACK, KENNETH, SCOTT and HAYLEY triumphantly enter, carrying the money. DONNIE leaps out from under the table.
DONNIE
Did you guys hear the explosion? Are we under attack? Is it the Russians? The Chinese? Talk to me! What’s going on?!
SCOTT
Oh, don’t worry, we did that.
DONNIE
What.
HAYLEY
We had to use C4 to bust some locks and it turned out to be more strong than we thought it would be.
DONNIE is the human embodiment of rage incarnate.
DONNIE
You did what.
KENNETH
It was Jack’s fault.
JACK
Hey! Snitches get stitches, Kenneth.
DONNIE
Ken, no one likes a snitch.
SCOTT
Yeah, Kenneth. You loser.
DONNIE
Whatever happened to untraceable? What are you gonna do when the cops show up?
HAYLEY
Relax, this is Mongolia, which is the country we are in. They’ll take ages to get here.
DONNIE
Did you at least get the money?
SCOTT
Well, we got some money.
They dump the bills onto the table. DONNIE inspects the bills, and holds his glass to KENNETH without looking at him.
DONNIE
Pina colada. Go easy on the coconut.
KENNETH wordlessly takes the glass and makes the cocktail.
DONNIE (CONT’D)
Three hundred, four hundred... $408?! We can’t buy a tiger with that!
HAYLEY
Well, we were thinking we could only rent it-
DONNIE
Yeah, rent a single leg, maybe! Look, we have to find some other way to get rid of- Laura!
LAURA and CASSIE enter.
DONNIE (CONT’D)
We were just talking about you!
LAURA
Did you guys hear the explosion? Why haven’t you make the paper cranes? What’s with all the money? And... are you drinking alcohol at school?
JACK sneaks up behind them with a garbage bag.
LAURA (CONT’D)
Seriously, what’s going on?
DONNIE
Bag them!
SCOTT pulls the bag over the two of them. They try to struggle but can’t.
DONNIE (CONT’D)
Take them to the break room.
SCOTT and HAYLEY take them away. DONNIE slumps onto the table and dejectedly sips his pina colada.
CUT TO:
INT. BAG - DAY
LAURA
What the hell is going on?!
CASSIE
Oh my god, do you think we’re dead? Everything’s black, and sort of... in flux...
LAURA
Don’t be stupid, we’re in a garbage bag, not the afterlife. We’ve gotta get out of here.
CASSIE
I expected death to smell less like toothpaste.
LAURA
It smells more like fish to me.
CASSIE
Ugh, gross. This bag is full of some kind of egg and now my hair’s full of them.
LAURA
That’s probably just sand, Cass.
CASSIE
Sand?
LAURA
Yeah, little crushed bits of rock that hang out on the beach? Sand? Look, I think we’re gonna run out of oxygen unless-
INT. BREAK ROOM - DAY
The bags are pulled off. They’re in the break room. SCOTT and HAYLEY loom over them.
HAYLEY
Sorry about the bag, we were using it for the worm eggs.
CASSIE AND LAURA
WORM EGGS?!
SCOTT
Yeah, Jack found this incredible deal down at KFC- ten cents an egg!
CASSIE
Is that what’s in my hair? Little tiny wormy eggs that will hatch and turn my hair into a nest of filth?
LAURA
(interrupting)
What the hell is going on?

********************************************************************


Lauahi: A Modern Folktale concept (Version 3)

Plot Summary

During the influx of Japanese immigration to Hawaii  in late 19th century, a human meets a yako (kitsune) and both fall in "love."  However, the love wasn't true, for it was only infatuation and lust. Despite this,  the kitsune birthed what the gods of both archipelagos believed to be a bastard child, a complete abomination. Hybrids usually turn out to be monsters. As punishment, one god (either cultures, maybe  god of greed?) cursed the child with a terrible hunger to manifest the problems  caused by her parents' lust.

Neither of them wanted the responsibility of raising  the child nor did they want anymore punishment, so they used the lava from a  volcano to imprison the baby, forming an egg-shaped stone by a river. Over time, as Hawaii gets modernized, the spirits fade, and the humans go extinct. The gods head up to the clouds over the volcano from which the lava was taken (which  one?) to "retire". Twenty something years before the story, the stone gets eroded  enough to reveal the baby to passerby, two of which raise her as their own.

At the time of the story, the child (named Lauahi) is a postman who's near constant  eating brought her parents trouble with all kinds of people, including the CEO under which they work. The yako discovers her and immediately knows that the baby has been released.  Should Lauahi reach the top of the volcano, the gods would see her and realize  that they (the parents) did not owe up to their mistake. The yako goes up to the child and tells her that should she go on top of volcano X, the latter would  become a ghost like she.

The child stays away, but when the corrupt CEO steals  her parents, the child goes looking for a rare fruit with which to pay off their debt. If she fails to find any in the next 2 weeks, her parents will get the axe and the CEO will get away with it because he's a CEO. At first, she wanders populated areas in her mail truck, but after getting chased by the CEO's weasel henchman, she bails and goes deeper into the island. After finding out about where Lauahi's going, the yako is alarmed. Her attempts to steer the child away increase in intensity, effort, and frequency (Some of these attempts actually help Lauahi. In one scene where her hunger symptoms nearly set the jungle ablaze, the yako manages to calm her down.) Along with this, the child struggles with her hunger, immaturity, and insecurity associated with being a bastard child. (Note: To avoid getting sidetracked, Lauahi put food in some crates in the back of her mail truck. When she finally gets out, she brings only one crate, which is eventually used to carry the fruit.)

Still, she learns about her abilities and gradually develops into a  more disciplined and mature person. Along the way, she runs into her dad, a ghost, and his army. Eventually, though, her hunger and exhaustion catch up to her and pressure her. When the child finds the fruit, she refrains from eating it despite her hunger to save her parents. She runs into a human named Mana, who's been kept alive by the fruit. Mana confirms that the fruit is something special, and wants Lauahi's so she can keep on living. She offers her charms and even a spell that could stop her hunger for good at the price of all the fruit. Even when conflicted and slipping towards eating the damn things, Lauahi rejects the offers and runs off, enraging Mana. But soon after that, Lauahi snaps and eats one of them, only to find that just one helped her. She rests and reflects before getting back to work. Eventually, she finds the volcano and was about to climb when the yako panics and tells her that she is the child's real mother. Thinking that she has to find her parents, she continues, and the yako, the dad, and Mana go after her. The witch uses charms that turn the Dad into his original, solid form. Despite the illusions, charms, and the dad's strength, Lauahi escapes. Frightened, the yako performs her last trick: she creates an enormous monster for the child to fight. However, the child saw through it, and makes her way to the top, where her parents truly are. The woman ragequits, and the child offers the fruit and collapses, exhausted. Her parents are released.
 Suddenly, one of the gods arrive, just as the kitsune expected. The CEO  goes "Fuck this" and leaves. Both birth parents break down, with the yako telling the child that she shouldn't have been born and that she truly was a bastard child. The god fades, revealing that the child has learned to create illusions. (How should Lauahi respond?) The real god was behind the kitsune all along, a spirit much like herself. As punishment, the kitsune shall be sealed in a stone for 200+ years  (better punishment?), much like she sealed the child. Lauahi goes home with her parents as a true adult, but is unsure what to do with her life.

Characters

Lauahi Momotarō: Human/Kitsune hybrid. About 19 years old biologically. Although she is friendly and somewhat kind, she's rather childish, has low-self esteem, and is easily frustrated. Her low self-esteem and frustration tolerance stems from many things; from her inability to control her eating and emotions, to the fact that she has no idea what she is or what she can actually do besides breathe fire and eat, to her awareness of her place and life and how she's responsible for her parents' financial problems and disappointment. She cares about her parents and knows that she's giving them a terrible name, but tends to get in fights with people and would throw tantrums when she feels deprived. This impulsiveness also gives her the impression of being a dumb savage, despite her average intelligence. She can breathe fire and is unusually athetic, but her body is very dependent on food. After going without food for too long, she starts glowing from yellow to orange to red, getting more aggravated with each stage. Her kitsune essence enables her to create illusions, but her lack of discipline results in them being temporary, fuzzy clouds.

Leo Momotarō: Red fox. 45 -50 years old. Quick-witted, dignified, and assertive, he values self-reliance and self-respect heavily. He's also very confident in himself and his finances. He's not afraid of anybody, not even a hippo-sized welfare recipient or a crazed gunman. He works as the sales manager at one of the CEO's stores.Leo is much more involved with Lauahi than Mom is. He refuses to sell Lauahi out (to the media) to cure their debt and still has faith in her.

Mary Momotarō:`I'iwi bird. 43-45 years old. Very lethargic and quiet, Mary used to be gentle and tender. Now she lies on the family couch whenever she can, as she's tired of life. She talks only when it's necessary, and when she does, she's short, curt, and to-the-point. Despite this, she still loves her husband and sticks around only for him. She's the human resource (labor resource?) manager at the same store Leo works. Once, she hoped that her compassion will let Lauahi grow as a person. But as Lauahi showed less progress than she wanted and caused problems for both her and her husband, Mom grew to resent her and hopes for the day that Lauahi either becomes an adult or leaves them alone for good.

Sasaki? *nother Nippon name*: Kitsune. 220+ years old. She looks more like traditional kitsunes, paws included. She even has all nine tails, but they're all wispy because she's a fucking ghost. Because her race dwindled and the Japanese stopped believing in spirits (spirits, gods included, are powered by the belief of mortals), gradually lost her magic and became a ghost. For the longest time, she wandered the world, looking for a way to restore her body and her powers. Sasaki has so little magic that she can only be visible to one person at a time, and there's only enough people that believe in her existence to keep her alive. Calm and refined, she can be calculating. She puts on a wise sage act to "guide" Lauahi and lead her away from the volcano, with mixed results. While bored with life as an observer, she still fears the gods and prefers a calm existence to a dire one.

Human Night marcher (Chief ghost, alii (ruler) spirit): 230+ years old. Very large and imposing, complete with glowing tattoos (Tats were a very important art form in ancient Hawaii. They can mark religious devotion, bravery in war, status, etc.) Leads an army of night crawlers. As a "true" ghost, if he touches fire, he evaporates and dies. However, Mana's charm turns him into a human before that happens. As a human, he's crazy strong and durable. Usually silent, he can only speak Hawaiian, forgetting what little Japanese and English he learned before he passed on. However, he still remembers the gods and knows what it means if Lauahi reaches the volcano. Unlike Sasaki, however, his motivation is to stay with his army and wait with them to go peacefully.

Lex Luthor-like rat CEO, crazy, MNC Sniper like weasel henchman.

********************************************************************


The past is yet to be made complete.
Unfinished phrases still left
to wade through,
said but not heard, thought but not said.

Turn inward and fall into it,
feel drowned by sounds and words and scents
to be discovered, to be created.

Washing over, retrenching ever further and farther into now--
waves beat against the shore. Sands break down
that spell out years gone by.

Let your story be that levee
from which we can watch the beat waves.
Let your wounded feet feel the salty breath
that pulses--How it stings!

Walk into life, present
not as a line bisecting your past
and any future, but as a point from which
all is set-forth silently
and into which
everything retreats thunderously.

********************************************************************

 A stream of smoke streaked in front of me microseconds before a bomb from who-know's-where annihilated the forty-tow floor bank building (it was a Chase Bank) down a block up Park, hurling a plume of dust and debris at an alarming rate towards Loraine, Mitch, and me. Considering we didn't care for lacerated skin, or, well, death, we sought sanctuary just around the corner, sprinting for our measly lives. A cacophony of scream and sprinting feet enveloped the environment, begging us to run as fast as possible back to the car in the Aquarium parking lot. A quarter-ton man tumbled to my left, an old woman trampled to my right, my nerves were singing like I was hooked up to a car battery. Before the flood of suffocating sediment reached us, we came to my '82, white Discovery and peeled off towards my house to regroup and meet my family. Some static from radio turns into: "~missiles coming into the downtown Dallas from an unknown source. Reports saying New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and several other major cities are under attack. We'll keep you updated. Stay safe people, and may God have mercy on us all." A silence rung throughout the car, and we plunged through neighborhoods to avoid the traffic. Home awaited.

********************************************************************


Ten men, paired into two's with their spears, swords and shields, patrol the lightly green forest. Autumn is coming and leaves are slowly flowing down and softly laying on the ground. The dried crispy leaves crackle as the soldiers walk on the ground. The men have patrol for hours through these woods scouring for any troop movements of their enemy. And soon, a soldier name Mako spots their enemy among the trees. Just what they have been waiting for. They were expecting a large army, but can only see about hundred men on top of short hill about a hundred yards away from them toward the horizon. Fortunately, the patrol believes they have not been spotted by the enemy. Their officer, Novo, still believes there's an army is nearby, but this seemed to him that it was just a scout group. Novo has two decisions, either avoid confrontation with the enemy or send a message to their camp and wait for reinforcements. He makes the decision to send for reinforcements and tells Mako to return to camp and send men to their location. Mako nods his head with approval and scurries off quietly through the forest toward their camp.. Novo also decides to keep the enemy in his sight until his reinforcements arrive. Novo thinks it would boost the men's morale if the enemy is destroyed by a swift victory.
Surprisingly, the enemy archers emerge from behind several trees. The archers have their bows drawn back and fire at the Novo's patrol. Novo hearing the swishing noise of the arrows gliding through the air, yells for his patrol toretreat.
Enemy archers continuously fire their arrows at the patrol. Arrows swish through the air one after one in the veracity at the patrol. One by one, the patrol men begin to fall from the arrows piercing their fur armor as some arrows hit tree trunks, branches, and on the ground.
Less than two minutes, the patrol lies on the ground, all dead and blood seeping from their bodies, staining the leaves in red colored. Mako, after orders from Novo to return to camp managed to avoid the slaughter as he begins to run frantically back towards their camp. Then the enemy archers spot Mako running away through the woods. They raise their bows and carefully calculate the distance in an attempt to hit their targed and then the bowman fire at Mako. Arrows wisp by Mako's body as he runs as fast he can. The archers decide not to pursue Mako, and shortly, they were out of range. Mako manages to barely escape with his life. Mako isrunning through the trees, small branches hitting his body and face, and he looks behind to see his comrades fallen onto the grass with several arrows protruding from their bodies.
After running for miles, Mako reaches back to the camp and is panting from being out of breath. A camp officer named Bonvi immediately intercepts Mako and approaches him to ask him "what has happened"? Mako gasping for air said abruptly "enemy patrol..to the south..west..ambushed..by archers..". Bonvi has terribly distraught and had a look on his face, as he feared the worst as to just what had happened. Mako disheartened, by the fact of reliving the memory of his friends being killed, says "No one made it. Everyone died, but me.. The archers just shot their arrows at us, with no warning". Bonvi orders another soldier nearby to tend to any of Mako's needs. Mako decides to take a seat on the ground as he continues to catch his breath. Mako just waives away the attention, of soldier tending him.
Bonvi walks towards Nao's, the camp leader, and enters his tent to inform him of the recent tragedy. Bonvi tells him that "ten patrolmen have been slain to southwest of their camp". Nao's is astonished and gives attention immediately in focusing on Bonvi report. He eagerly responds "Is it them? Have they finally come"? Bonvi concerned responds "it appears so, but nothing is confirmed". Nao orders Bonvi to take him to Mako. Nao and Bonvi walk towards Mako, where he is still sitting, when he arrived at camp. Nao walks up to him, who was concerned over the situation, and says "Was it them"?
Mako just tiredly nods his head in approval.
Nao: How many were there?
Bonvi: I don't know.
Nao presisted that he needed to know how many there were. He tells him that as part of the patrol, patrols are to alert the camp for enemies. Now you saw our enemies. Now, tell how many there were?
Bonvi processing the tragic memory of what Mako said and replied that he thought there were about a hundred and half
Nao turns to Bonvi and orders him "gather three hundred soldiers".
Bonvi scours the camp and orders men to gather weapons. He picks up Mako off the ground, who is now laying on the ground and tells him that they are getting revenge. Mako agrees with Bonvi's dispatch from Nao. Nao, Bonvi, Mako, and three hundred men meet in front of the camp, near the entrance. The men have no expression on their faces, as they all concentrate on Nao for orders. Nao addresses the unit "a patrol was killed, we are going intercept them and avenge our friends. We avenge our friends. Nothing else needs to be said, except defeat will be delivered to them with haste. Mako lead the way. Lets move out" said Bonvi. Mako leads the unit southwest towards the enemy, last known location.
After marching for a hour, Mako informs Bonvi "the location is up ahead". The unit stays behind a long tall hill. Bonvi orders one of the men to scout the area ahead. The soldier moves quietly as possible through the forest. The leaves cackle every step that he takes. Every step he takes is unpleasant, for he fears the enemy can hear every step and it shall be his last. After walking a short distance from the unit, he spots their fallen comrades in the forest with arrows out their bodies. The scout was alarmed over the sight. His heart begins to pound faster because of fear of the unseen archers. He quickly surveys the remaining area. He looks left and then right. Then he spots a company of men on top of a short hill. The scout slowly walks backwards toward his unit. After a few steps, he believers he is out of sight and, then swiftly turns around and quietly as possible. As he rushes back towards his unt, he. frantically walks up to Nao, to inform him of what he saw.
Nao with a determined look, asked "What did you see?' The responding soldier with an alertful face, said, "Our men are on the ground."
Nao questions the soldier: What of the enemy?
Soldier informs Nao: They have taken the hill.
Nao, requesting more information, "How many do they have?"
The soldier responds, "Probably hundred and a half."
Then a loud man's voice echoes through the forest. The man's brash voice calls to the unit behind the hill "I am completely aware of you position. Just come out". Nao nods his head. The men emerge from over the hill. The company still hold the top of the hill. Officer Luna steps in front phalanx.
Well, are you going to come down or what?

Luna shouts: You came here to avenge your men, so avenge.
Nao shouts: I am not going to attack up hill. I killed enough of you to know that.
Luna shouts: I believe that. But why should I sacrifice the high ground? Why should I come down? I can stay up here, all day.
Nao shouts: Actually, you don't have all day.
Luna shouts: Why is that?
Nao shouts: Over time, my allies will come looking for me and then we will attack your high ground, with a bigger force.
Luna chuckles, "Who are you?"
Nao shouts, " Who is asking?"
Luna shouts: My name is Officer Luna. Now, you?
Nao replies: "Nao"
Luna shouts again, "Oh, you are the man that I heard about across these lands. Thank the Gods. They have sent me a gift. Well Nao, I am dispatching a messenger back to my camp. Where an army is on its way to kill you and end this war. So it seems you don't have all day."
Nao shouts: I can always just disengage and kill you another day. So it seems the day is mine.
Luna then states, "If you disengage, then your cowardness would be known throughout these lands. The outcome from you disengaging, will be losing the support and sympathy for your cause. We all know that is not beneficial. Now Nao, the day is mine."
Then Nao shouts,"You maybe right, but I rather take that risk than be slaughtered. Once again Luna, you don't have all day."
A Roman Soldier utters to Luna. "Sir, if we kill her this war is basically over."
Luna responds, "They outnumber us."
"And we are the best company in the land. Lets kill her and go home," said the Roman soldier.
Luna responds, "As I said, he outnumbers us and we would sacrifice the higher ground for even level combat".
Soldier quickly says, "Think about the next time we battle her, thousands of us will die just to kill her. Such a small sacrifice to end a war. This opportunity never happens, ever. Think about it, if you kill her here, you will be a hero for ending this war in such haste."
Luna re-engages communication with Nao,"I do admire you courage to engage such a small company, Nao. Generals never bother themselves with such petty battles. So, I am some.. much honor by this."
Luna is not honor by this encounter with Nao, but in attempt to compel Nao to fight against him. Luna's arrogance forces his company off the high ground and marches towards Nao's unit.

********************************************************************


Under the sodium lanterns that project from the walls on wrought iron curls, and in the amber glow of the frosted glass windows, the snow dances. At the edge of the school yard, I stand alone and run my gloved fingers along the school's log wall. The wood is beautiful, dark, and wet. The way the moonlight glances off its cracks and grain is somehow mesmerising. I'm lost in it.
This is why people think I'm weird.
I don't stop. I've always felt somehow disconnected from the world, but lately I can fall into a trance caught by the mountains and plains on the surface of a pebble, or the ribs and ridges of a blade of grass.
Across the other side of the yard a bunch of my classmates tumble after a hard leather ball, kicking up plumes of snow.
On the murmuring wind comes the distant voice a flute, its notes as phantasmal as the wisp of cloud that slides across the surface of the full moon.
Next.
Hooded figures stand in the shadowed cloisters. They are as solemn and as elegant as the ancient spires that, far above them, reach for the iron sky with sharp fingers, haloed by rooks. Beyond the complex, the cathedral city's skyline is a forest of steeples and belltowers. The thick robe rustles around my feet when I walk.
Next.
Every wall is a patchwork of iron sheets. Some are smooth, some are corrugated, and how they are assembled together to create a structure capable of supporting its own weight is anyone's guess. Inside, sunlight slips through the gaps in the metal. I clamber up the rickety staircase to the membrane of balsa wood stretched over a skeleton of girders that serves as the first floor of the building. I pick my way to a window-sized hole in the far wall and find a perch on the thick wooden plank nailed there as a makeshift windowledge. Outside there is only red; red rocks and red sand under a red sky, in the unforgiving stare of a blood-red sun.
I raise my oil-stained fingers to the point where my cheekbone meets my ear and feel for the button embedded under the skin and click it.
Next.
The sounds of birds and bugs. The school is an Inca temple now, and I am sitting on the edge of an engraved arch. Beyond, the canopy of a misty rainforest. Click.
Next.
There is finally glass in the windowframe. Stars smoothly spin outside. The entire school is rolling in space. I feel sick. Click.
Next.
Everything is covered in rainbows. Click.
Off.
The pixels on my eyeballs fade to transparent. I'm left with only the bare minimum, the digital clock in the bottom left of my vision, and icons in the bottom right that say no one wants to talk to me by email, text, or Facebook. The time is 12:26.
I know I shouldn't be using Skins in school. Technically you aren't allowed to install any unlicensed software on State issued Lenses, but everyone does it. No one other than you can see what's on your screens, and no one knows the technology better than the generation that grew up wearing it. But Skins are different. Skins are not only against school rules, due to health and safety reasons they're borderline illegal. Too many people have walked out into a road after losing track of where they were, and you can see how it happens: Skins run a combination satellite data and info from the cameras embedded in your contact lenses through a program installed on the phone embedded in your head to dynamically overlay an entirely new, entirely realistic, world over your entire field of vision, complete with a 3D soundscape from the speakers embedded in your ears.
There is no jungle here. I'm sitting on the white plastic windowsill of a grubby glass window in the first floor history corridor of my perfectly normal northern English school. There is no red desert outside. It is not snowing. The school building is not a cathedral, nor a log cabin, nor an Inca temple, it's a blocky squat sprawling thing, built in the 1990s out of ugly red bricks, pure utilitarianism. It's 12:37 and in 8 minutes I'll have to get to Maths. I'll spend those 8 minutes alone, reading celebrity news from an ancient leather bound book that has no weight and is invisible to everyone other than me.

********************************************************************


“This shall be a fine battle.”
Valens Sigrun had seen enough action in his thirty-three years to know that this was going to be a massacre, not a battle. Julian was ten winters his junior. His optimism that some sort of actual challenge could be hewn from the scattered clutches of armed rabble arrayed before them was embarrassing. Valens watched the young page eagerly twist the reins of his horse about his fingers, waiting for the command from his general to charge; that sort of eagerness only came from the ignorance of a fresh campaigner. None of his other commanders indulged in it.
There was no doubt in Valens’ mind that they would carry the field easily once the assorted farmers and day laborers had their first taste of steel. The real expenditure of manpower would come from rooting the stragglers out of the nearby ruins of Icia. The city had been one of the many hastily-built holdfasts during the Season of Swelling. Its glory days were through. Traders had moved south with the majority of the population, tightening the noose on these frontier settlements. The grand cities in the Lakelands were now the center of the Kabatan Empire. These people were simply what were left of the last holdouts. They couldn't accept that things had changed. That the Empire had changed. That it would change no matter how many armories they raided or what kinds of demands they made.
Deciding that Julian could be left to his naïve notions, Valens simply motioned to his second to begin the languid march toward the city. This called for a show of force, not tactical prowess. The Empire needed something to remind others of what not changing with the times could bring. Valens Sigrun would make this bonfire and light it. Let Icia be a beacon to warn others of the dangerous rocks.

********************************************************************


On the street is where I'll be, Lord help me keep time, it slips away inexorably
And still how slow It goes through my perceptions. In the dark, give me one star to make a path

Sounds of a distant highway, families traveling. Visiting families, hot dinner
And I, with only myself, no one else I'll find.

A glimmer of light, don't let this be a dream, Oh that comfort gleam
Hope is found in darkness I hear, those who say that haven't been here. The light is sadness, and darkness despair

Judge me

********************************************************************


A piercing cold winds blows over a tundra. The rays of the setting sun are opaqued by the heavy clouds. In this valley, cylindrical towers pierce upwards from the ground, reaching towards the sky. In a dark chamber, somewhere inside one of these towers, two young men stand locked in conflict, each one determined to win. The dark stone walls of the circular room surround this battle, the cold winds entering through the windows piercing their skin like daggers.
“That all you got?!”
“I'm just gettin' started!”
Metal clashes, momentarily illuminating the chamber with a flash of sparks. One after another, the two young men block and parry each others attacks, like they were attacking a mirror. Suddenly, one missteps and breaks his guard. Spotting the window of opportunity, the adversary exploits it with a horizontal kick. Without time to react, the defender takes the full blow to his left torso. He loses footing, and flies back many meters from the force of impact.
“Hey, hey, hey, what's the matter?! The fuck happened to all the spunk you had back there, huh?!”

A tall figure with blazing red hair stands in one side of the chamber, with three blades bound to his right hand in a fashion similar to the claws of a tiger. Seeing his adversary still in the ground, only barely managing to pull himself up, he continues to goad him on.
“Come on! At least fucking pretend you're a Fighter!”
After a bit, the injured man doesn't reply. With trouble, he manages to regain a steady, if haphazard stance. Bored of waiting, the red haired young man quickly goes into a sprint, charging the injured adversary. With the full momentum of his run, he performs a horizontal slash with his blades, aiming straight for the head of the enemy; he sees it coming, however. Quickly ducking, the second man avoids the attack completely, the blades simply cutting empty air, and with a hop, the red-haired man's enemy gets on the inside of his defense. For a split second, he peers into the eyes of his adversary: his brown eyes are filled with a defiant look. A fist follows the face of the adversary, impacting the lower jaw of the red-haired man in full force.
A brown-haired man stands inside a stone chamber, injured, but having just managed to knock his opponent off his feet. On his person, he has an array of tools and weapons, but with his last attack he had no time to draw any. With his opponent still in the air, he draws an odd-looking knife: it has no edge, but instead it has a pick-like point. He throws it towards the ceiling, brushing past the red-haired man's face, and it embeds itself on the stone ceiling.
The man flicks his wrist, and as if he was being pulled by an invisible rope, he darts upwards towards the ceiling. The red-haired man sees his opponent dart past, and a uppercut quickly follows. Boosting his enemy into the air again, both are now a good 6 meters in the air. He brings up his right leg into the air, and quickly it comes crashing down into the face of the red-haired man with a brutal overhead kick.
The force of impact sends ripples through the air, and like a missile the adversary crashes into the floor, kicking up a cloud of rubble and dust. Still in the air, the brown-haired warrior extends his right hand. The tips of his index and middle finger light up with a supernatural white light, and with them he paints an arcane circle into thin air. Countless missiles of a shining white energy fire from the circle, and onto the cloud of dust where his opponent is. After a barrage that lasts a few seconds, the dust begins dissipating: inside stands a barrier of red crimson energy. Protected by it is the red-hair, who looks battered but little worse-for-wear, a smirk still firmly planted on his face. The red-hair shouts with a war cry, the surface of his barrier violently ripples and soon after explodes in a hail of crimson red shards of energy. The brown-hair puts up a shield of energy of his own, albeit small and unfocused, and only barely manages to avoid getting injured by the attack. Energy shards collide with his shield and shatter, others are deflected, and a couple manage to just barely brush by, albeit leaving cut marks on his clothes.
After weathering the attack, the brown-haired young man lands safely onto the paved stone floor. He and his adversary exchange glares: the goading, cocky glare of the red-hair and the stoic, determined glare of the brown-hair. In unison, the two of them kick hard at the floor and charge into each other, weapons drawn, their eyes shining with the flame of determination.
In this world, there exists an omnipresent natural force that humans refer to as 'arcana'. People with talent learn to channel this force with their mental will, and are capable of extraordinary feats of power and magic. However, arcana is not the only supernatural force at play: every human is born under an 'animus', a special innate power that some refer to as their personal arcana. No two people are born with the same animus, and similarly not all animus are equal in strength. Most people are born with mundane animus, such as 'breeze animus', or '4 color vision animus'. These two supernatural factors have shaped the history of the world since the earliest ages of man, deciding the hierarchies of power and the tides of war. In this era of peace, however, the balance of the world has shifted to different ends: those who still hold mastery of arcana, their animus and their raw physical ability take place in public sparring matches for the enjoyment of the masses. Clad in sponsors and with very healthy gambling scenes, coupled with the fantastic fights that arcana allows have made this sport quickly turn into the most popular activity of the world. And those who risk it all for fame and glory? Those foolhardy people are called Fighters.

********************************************************************

I have found that existing is one of the most excrusciating experiences I have ever been the displeasure of being engaged in. In fact, existing is the penultimate experience, as all other stimuli, external to the inner conscioussness and one's own thoughts or nor, necesarilly follow it. Being alive, having consciousness, existing, requires that living mind to deal with the very fact that it is indeed alive and consciouss. Not only that, but it must also deal with the fact that it has at some point not existed, and will at a later point cease to exist. Anyone who further analyzes the fact that they exist is faced with the sheer oddity that is life. At times I indulge in the thought of ending my stream of conscioussness. Not because I am unhappy, displeased, or stressed. But because the very fact that I exist, when stimuli is at a minimum, becomes excructiatingly obvious. That I am alive and consciouss. That I think. That I am. Being is the most difficult experience. It is like being trapped inside a cage, feeling onset of the claustrophobic panic, but simulatenously realizing that escaping the cage would mean death. As such I choose to remain in the cage. To only grow wings and escape it alive with the use of substances. Even so it is not my true consciouss mind I take on that flight. I very much leave that behind, to experience freedom from being alive without giving up the consciousness I so desperately cling to. Alas I must always return back to my regular frame of mind. Paradoxically it could seem, I am absolutely terrified of my consciouss self ending, by death or otherwise. Even the concept of sleep troubles me. Even so I'd rather live forever in pain that any finite amount of time in immense pleasure. Pleasure is what distracts us, or at least me, from the normal pain of existing. Luckily pleasure exists for most if not all part of the day, and the realization of my own mortality, the inescapable horror of being conscious, and my inability to escape any of them as the work together to form a hellish prison, is very rare. Not only is consciousness horrific, it is also strange. The more I think about it, the more perplexed I am by the current state that I am in. The state I have always been in and will be in until the day I die. Conscious. The idea of the cage comes rushing back to me.

********************************************************************

 A pensive Jeff Schiller sat over a thick manuscript titled "nothing nothing." "Beep boop, beebity boop boop. Is this new? Is this post-postmodernism? Is there anything left to do? We just keep eating cheeseburgers. Boof boof boof." Jeff lifted himself to his feet and brought his manuscript with him. It was weighty with potential and with shame. The number of manuscripts typed and titled "nothing nothing" that year alone had to have been in the thousands. "nothing nothing" is an intriguing title for a lengthy tale, one cannot but admit! It has an edge to it; a tinge of self-loathing, an overt and intentional passivity, and an elegent simpliciy. It is a terribly clever title for a book with real literary merit, is it not? It is true; this novel contained real literary merit! It was cleverly crafted and articulated, the characters were as or more palpable than real life human beings, and it dug nimbly and intelligently into all aspects of human life worth discussing. And yet perhaps 9 of every 10 novels titled "nothing nothing" could have these things sprawled across the back cover in exciting font. Jeff Schiller could not help but feel disgusted. "I should not have written anything at all," he said to himself, "but now that my heart is in ink, there is no turning back." Jeff Schiller's "nothing nothing" was in its third draft, and no one had yet read it. In agony over whether or not his heart was worth anything, he brought a copy of the manuscript to his father, who had good experience with classic literature and could perhaps tell him whether or not his work was decent. His father was a relatively busy man, and it took him 3 days to get back to Jeff about his story. Jeff spend these three days in hunger, for an inability to put into his mouth; he simply did not feel up to eating. Jeff's father's critique was something to the effect of "this is really great, Jeff. You ought to submit it for publication." Of course his father would say such a thing! No good father would tell his son that his work is trash, would he? No, absolutely not. Jeff was fully expected a negative response, which would allow him the freedom of having nothing to do with his novel ever again. He was dissatisfied with the moderately positive feedback he'd received. Jeff Schiller took his manuscript to his favorite humanities professor, or more specifically, his world literature professor. He handed over his manuscript, and was once more left in agony, only not for an entire week, and in addiction to being unable to eat, he was unable as well to resist smashing his forehead into walls. But when his professor emailed him, the email read as follows: "I think that this novel is superb; I demand that you submit it for publication."

********************************************************************


The Vomifarts


The Vomifart family was a lot like the Partridge family, except for farting. There was Bill, Katherine, little Samantha, and little Joey Krueger. Joey Krueger Vomifart.
One night, when little Samantha was sleeping in her crib, father Bill came in to see her.
“Samantha... Samaaaanthaaaaa...” he whispered. Samantha was fast asleep.
“Samantha... are you there?” he asked as he hovered over her sleeping body. “Are you awake, sweetie-pateetie?” He stared at her and smiled with a grimace.
“Hey,” he said as he poked her in the abdomen with his finger. “Hey!” he shouted and poked her harder. Samantha, who had been sleeping on her side, rolled over and slowly opened her eyes. She stared at Bill, who stared back at her with an inhuman smile.
“WAAAHHH!” she screamed, “WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!”
“Now now,” said father Bill, “that'll be one vomi-fart.”
“WAAAAHHH!!” the daughter continued to wail.
“That will be one vomi-fart!” he yelled ecstatically. He gave her a wink and turned around and slowly, methodically, and enthusiastically pulled down his pants.
“You know what they always said about vomi-farts,” he said. The daughter continued to cry as he hoisted his naked butt over the crib. He accidentally slipped and his butt slammed directly into Samantha's face. She began to scream and cry even harder.
“My my,” he said, collecting himself, “that was quite the vomifart!” He pulled himself back up so that now his butthole was hovering roughly two or three inches above Samantha's crying face. “Now now,” he said, “Shhhh... go to sleep little baby, go to sleep.” But she would not. Immediately Bill began to clench his entire body as hard as possible. His neck veins began to bulge out of his head and his face began to turn purple. His anus began to prolapse and the prolapsed rectum began to touch Samantha's face.
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”
Finally, in a moment of tranquil rage, his stomach began to make various gurgling noises, and some moist fart mist and gas began to be expelled out of his ass. Then one or two nuggets of poop fell out, and then, suddenty, and quite without warning, roughly 2 pounds of unhealthy-looking diarrhea exploded out of his prolapsed anus all over Samantha and her crib, inundating her with poop.
“MY MY!” he screamed, his eyes practically bulging out of his head in excitement, snot and tears running down his face. “THAT WAS QUITE THE VOMI-FART!”
Samantha wiggled around, gasping for breath, truly incapable of processing what had just happened. Bill hopped down on the ground, but in the process, his prolapsed anus caught a rusty nail on the crib, tearing open his internal organ.
“OH MY FUCKING GOD!” he screamed in horror. “OH MY FUCK! HOLY CRAP I'M GOING TO DIE!!! HOLY FUUUUUUUCKKKK!!!!” He ran out of the room in horror, leaving Samantha, and a giant pile of mysterious diarrhea, alone in the darkness.

********************************************************************


I've always preferred to be alone. That being said I've always hated the crippling loneliness that was constantly being brought to my attention by the condescending herds of students which most would call my peers. Though with all of our differences I might as well be from a different species. They make others laugh. I make them scowl. They think playing video games on the weekend makes you a nerd. I spend my free time writing poetry or short stories. They watched the same movie every year to write their annual book report. I read six books this week alone. They cry for help when they get depressed. My family thinks I feed off sad thoughts. They have a significant other every other day. I've only ever dreamed of dating. The only similarity between us is our acknowledgment to the fact that we're so different.

You might say that I'm just a typical, cynical, jaded shut-in who's lost all hope in humanity; but in all reality I get out quite frequently. I have people that enjoy my company, and I don't particularly hate theirs (though I have always preferred solitude). I have hobbies, I've had girls that “liked” me, (even if only for my unusual “mysteriousness” that wet their imagination only to leave them in a funk of disappointment) I even pretend to laugh when other people make jokes. It's just that even with all that I've been “blessed” with, there isn't a single person I've met that makes me feel like I'm not the only “me” on the planet.

It's really quite funny, most people go out of their way to be unique but all I've ever really wanted is someone who makes me feel a sense of sameness. I bet by now you're probably wondering why I spent the past five minutes listing off the many quirks that make up my uninteresting personality. Well it all started with a hot summer day in the last month of my junior year of high school. I remember it well because I sat alone on the planter as I always did while the other students ran around the campus like buzzing bees in the hive. The sun beat down on my back, making the fabric stick to my gradually dampening skin and warmed the brick stones that made up the planter just enough to be impossible to sit on comfortably. It was here that a girl no older than 14 came up to me and asked me what I was reading.

“Harry Potter.” I said with a dismissive wave. It was my go-to title when people asked me, and since I only read hard cover books without their sleeves, most couldn't make out the title without putting in some effort.

She looked at me with an eyebrow raised and bent down to get a closer look at the spine, “I don't remember any of the Harry Potter's being that large.”

I ignored her, hoping that she would take the hint.

“The side says Merlin.” she stated in a lighthearted questioning tone.

I closed the book abruptly to assert my annoyance at her pestering and proceeded to store it in my backpack, “That must be why harry's name hasn't been mentioned once in the 520 pages I've read! Thanks sherlock.”

She scrunched up her face and gave me a displeased look, “I just wanted to connect with you.”

“And I just wanted to read in peace, I suppose now we're both at a loss.”, I retorted.

“Are you this mean to everyone who tries to be friendly to you?”

“Only the annoying ones.” I had lost nearly all of my patience. “Go to your friends if you want friendly, I'm not a plaything for your amusement.”

“Well why can't you and I be friends?” she turned her back to me in a playful twirling motion then fell with a thud next to me in a sitting position.

“Why would I want to be friends with you?” I asked with a slightly arrogant tone.

She looked around us in a circle, “Well you aren't exactly Mr. Popular, everyone should at least have one friend right?”

There was that reminder again, only this time I was being forced to remember by someone offering an escape. What an odd way to do a kindness, I thought to myself. “I have friends.”

“Where are they?” she interrogated.

“Busy.” I lied.



“Fine then! Later loner!” She hopped up and skipped away from me into the sea of students. It was only when I was sure she had left for good that I leaned my weight against my hands planted in the dirt behind me and looked up at the sky in relief. I hated these occasional encounters and was glad this one was over. I spent the rest of the lunch period watching the children play on their playground wondering what it would have been like if I had actually accepted her invitation to be friends. As the bell rang to send the students to their next class I dismissed the thoughts from my head and let myself forget about the encounter with the curious girl. If only it was like the many other encounters in my past.

********************************************************************


-- lost his job on Tuesday. Leaving the manager's office where he got the news, he couldn't help but think back to his first real day on the job. Paul, his supervisor, showed him around where he'd be working and explained how things were done, gave his some advice -- and mentioned in passing that it had been thirty years since he himself had started working there. --- tried to understand "thirty years:" thirty years of driving that same road to get to work, stopping at that same convenience store for coffee; walking through the same doors and seeing the same things, the same people. His own nineteen years were insufficient for the task and he quickly tried to forget about it. But walking out of that office, seven years later, he struggled again to think of doing anything else.

It couldn't have come as a surprise, and it hadn't. For over a year there had been talks about mass lay-offs, even rumors that the whole plant would close. The month before, --- had seen the few people who'd been hired within the last three years lose their jobs, after having their hours cut over the prior several months. ---- was lucky enough to be insulated from that: he was one of the last employees signed to an older contract, before yet another employment tier was added beneath him company-wide, just a year after he'd started.

He'd still be working until the end of the week. He tried to play it off with his sympathetic coworkers: he'd find another job in no time, especially with these seven years of experience; it's not like he had a family to take care of; a little vacation between jobs wouldn't be so bad, would it? Pettily emboldened, he slacked more than usual, took an extra long break and lunch talking to some of the guys he was friendly with, and the day passed pleasantly fast. The reality sunk in a little more as he walked through the door to his apartment, but only vaguely now, and only in the back of his head. The future still stretched out with something like but not quite possibility. He drank a beer and watched TV; not much else, and went to sleep.

********************************************************************


The Mansion

January 26, 4891. ~ This morning, at about 3 pm., there was an earthquake at Passer-Don Road in Trearyville, Metropolis Acres. On the richter scale it scored a level of 8.3 - the largest earthquake in decades. Locals and authorities claim that none were injured and that only a few isles of groceries were turned-about and items were knocked off. Scientists, engineers, and mathematicians are puzzled by the earthquake, and are studying the origins of the event, given that it was unexpected and alien to the typical geo-techtonic course of the area and surrounding areas. More news and follow-up to this story at eleven. ~ Local XKCZU, Channel 4 TV News Report.

A minty wind ebbs and fades among the streets I cross. Trees with branches of abundant green leaves stemming near the ground line the sidewalks. The atmosphere is shadowy, quiet, and lively. Foliage flutters as air flows. Flowers, blue, white, purple, and pink are in bloom. Gates, garden-adorned and silver colored, block entry to the unknown. I carry an old axe and a bicycle in the stash compartment of my automobile, my quest, a journey. West of the location, dozens of miles west, is the palace I am looking for. I’m traveling by a Mazda 9 car, old-type. I’m playing “Roll Over Beethoven” by The Sonics on my iPhone which is connected to the stereo of the car by a blue-cable.

The carriage continue at a heavy trot, brushing up dust, smoke, and rocks as it travels. Horses Timothy and Janet, the horses at the front of the chariot, are tired and the affliction of exhaustion is noticeable by their breathing and the patterned steps they make. I open the window to the carriage, we must be going at fifty miles per hour, and my wide brown hat almost falls off. Rocks, stones, and pebbles are kicked off the pathway as the horse-cart arrangement continues west-ward. The land being crossed is vast, quiet, dry, and near-empty - void of civilization. “Ten more miles west and then we stop at a watering hole Mr. Portier!” yells the aged drive-man.“Certainly.”

I get back onto the by-way, and drive fast, fast, fast away from the town. Patrols are absent from this road and the road is nearly empty. I try to remember the words, the last words, that my grandfather uttered seconds before his death at the family home in Niernelyn City, four years ago. Perhaps he said: When you hit it with the rusted axe, cut his eyeballs into pieces, to throw into a fire, a fire that cracks. He stressed the importance of the fire, a burning fire. To throw into a fire, a fire that cracks. My grandfather, Armyll Portier, had been a Physicist who was educated at Brown University, where he earned his A.B. in the year 4831 and then earned a Ph.D at Harvard University.

My room at the inn at Duixberry Inn, two buildings over from the horse watering-drink station, is wooden and seemingly fragile. I picked up a small wooden cannon at the desk in my room and it nearly broke in half. I go outside the building for a smoke in the darkness the has crept onto the sky and atmosphere of this vast land. “G’night,” I say to the clerk at the inn’s entry reception desk. “G’night,” responds the young clerk, no older than twenty-eight - a year younger than my own age. I take out my dark, purple painted pipe and load tobacco onto it. I light it with self-ignited matches I bought for a hefty sum at the beginning of the trip. Among the night, the beast the creeps furtively is superior, in niche, stealthy to kill and eat prey.

Blue, and starry, the night’s sky covers the city, its people, and our lives. I’ve stopped at a fuel station to fill my Mazda with fuel because its electricity system has been depleted of the energy it collected during yesterday’s sunny midday. I go in; hungry too, so I buy a hot-dog and

a Coca-Cola soda. I pay with my credit card a perfect ten dollars. I eat the hot-dog, down it with the soft drink then use the bathroom. The youth at the counter gives me a key to it. At the rest-room I splash my face with cold water, attempting to refresh and prevent myself from becoming sluggish this night. I plan to drive all the way to a Hotel outside of the acres before I complete my journey. The axe in mind, I open the trunk of the car to observe it.

After falling asleep last night, I woke up today refreshed and agile. Me and the drive-man, Richard Werst, pay the inn-keeper gold coins, and leave on our way west-ward. I walk out of the wooden building, and as I let the doors close, a fiery hot sun in the middle of nowhere begins to bake me and Mr. Werst. The hot-dog I had churns in my stomach and for a couple seconds, I almost feel like I’m going to throw it up but I don’t and I continue the trip from the fuelstationinn. The Mazdacarriageisupathefront. I switch the stereo to the golden-oldies radio station. The Beatles’ pop hit “She Loves You” plays loudly on the stereo. I sing along: “She loves you! Yeah, yeah, yeah! She loves you! Yeah, yeah, yeah! She loves you! Yeah, yeah, yeah!

“You think you’ve lost your love” I sing. A warmth springs forth on my heart so I call my girlfriend Claire. “Hey hunn, how are you?” I hear Claire ask on my iPhone. I’m thinking of my beloved Claire. I am hundreds of miles away from her, and certainly have no adequate means by which to communicate with her, the post, I consider, takes too long. Four weeks nearly, and, then unreliable a post. The carriage enters a stony pathway through the mountains, the chariot is nearly out of the desert. The drive-man, Mr. Werst, informs me that we are two days away from our final destination and, therefore, from our return. Grasslands begin to appear and I wonder if the foliage-rich are we a traveling through has been examined by scientists.

There is a part of the road at which my Mazda car can longer drive through and by which I can only travel a think pathway with the bicycle. I am near Trearyville Acres and have been afflicted with anxiety of the experiences to occur at the Mansion. I park the car at a rest-stop near the pathway. I take out the bicycle, a springy new mountain bike. I also take out a backpack and I place in it the axe and a bottle of water. I begin my trek across the pathway. We’ve reached a swampy area and we travel on foot, taking only two horses, one for each of us two, for item-loads. Mr. Werst and I converse for a few hours into our trip. “Where are you from Mr. Werst?” I ask the drive-man.

I reach a small town outside of Metropolis acres. We’ve reached a small un-named town outside of the Building I seek. ~ ~ As I walk along a dusty road, Mr. Werst left behind at an Inn, an old woman affected by leprosy begs for goldcoindollars though I have to decline because all I have are an axe and a canteen with water. “Please sir, I haven’t any family and I am thirsty.” I give her my canteen. ~ ~ I remember the road, it goes on for a couple miles and then onto the path to the mansion of Sr. Rotliiennman. I have been here before and I expect as much trouble as the last time I was here. The last time I was here, myself and a group of scientists came to explore and document the building which was reported as a center of paranormal activity.

Present at the Mansion of the quarter-century deceased Sr. Rotliiennman, I crack open the front gate with the axe, the gate haven been done together with a rope. I take out my iPhone I take out my wooden compass, a compass that I bought from a merchant at the east coast on one of my trips to the Boston University to hear a lecture. I set the device to north and head to the door set at the direction. The mansion is very, very big. It is six floors tall, white, though now a dusty, cracking white, and if I recall correctly, lined inside with paintings on walls and tall marbled halls. I enter. It is very quiet. I see rats as they scurry along the edge of the marbled, dusty halls and they enter holes in the wall and I imagine that there are gray, black, and white

Vermin rats who have established a whole system inside the workings of the mansion. Past the entry-way, I make my way toward an elevator that takes me to the sixth floor. I have to travel to the sixth floor because it is the only way by which to access an abyss that is on the other end of the mansion, a hole that reaches many depths below the mansion depths that are at the level of a chamber at which a disgusting, monstrous thing lives. A repulsive, nasty, odorous, cannibalistic thing that I NEED TO KILL. “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you!” sing The Beatles, their All My Loving song playing on the loudspeakers of my iPhone, making a roaring ruckus in the quiet solitude of this rat and cock-roach infested fortress. I make sure it doesn’t go off again.

As the elevator ascends, I cough because there are layers of dust and dirt being fluttered about by the upward rush of the elevator. Ding, clangs the alert sound of the elevator. I’m here. I’m at the upmost level of the mansion, the sixth floor. There are paintings on the wall of the family and relatives, ancestors, and associates of Sr. Rotliiennman. They dust and many have been eaten away by termites. There is also a numerous set of old furniture, chairs, and tables. I am not really taken away by the valuables left at the rotten building because myself and the group I had come here with last time had photographed and documented in written notes the majority of the phenomena here.

Radioactivity, an old a new phenomena was counted here at the mansion with a meter the last time I was here with the journalist scientists. The report showed that radioactive event at the mansion was very high and may explain the abundance of deformed and alien rats. I make my way across the level, opening and closing doors behind me, walking across halls with doors with missing handles everywhere. The mansion, hardly touched by others has been here for a very long time, set to rot, because many are afraid and have heard of the thing that stalks extremely fast through the halls at night and lives at the depths of the mansion during the day. As I continue to my intended destination I suddenly am hit by a repulsive, foul, foreign emanating stench.

I trip. A bunch in the red and yellow rug I tread on. A creak is made. A door has closed. I hear its lock sound. What is it? “Hello, who is that?!” I ask. “I am Dr. Portier, I am here to kill the ugly beast that creeps in this building.” Nothing. I continue walking, alert and ready to defend. Nothing. I suppose it was a rat that snug its way through a door. I finally make it to a big doorway that above reads, “Downstairs. Cellar.” in dark red color. The whole time here, only faint light has gotten to seep in, and I have walked in darkness, going on my muscle memory of the groups’ extensive exploration of the giant home. I meet a staircase that descends downward many flights.

The mansion is of six floors and below the first floor is said to be at least two or three “floors,” known as “The Chambers” by legend. This is where the monstrous thing dwells during the day. I walk down the staircase. Step after step, thousands of steps, hundreds of rats. The more I descend the more rats I see. Finally I get to a point at which a stench hits me in the face. I throw up. I can’t see the vomit but it’s probably a yellow-ish brown from the hot-dog I had it’s probably yellow-ish brown from the cornmeal and pigmeat I had cooked for me at the inn the hot-dog I bought at the fuel station. I wipe my face with my handkerchief and continue descending down the stairs.

“Hit it with the axe, throw his eyeballs into a fire that cracks. He dies after ten hacks. Plenty and plenty food awaits on our brown cooking racks.” My grandfather’s last words resonate with me, an attempt to make a poetic light of the somber situation. I reach a cellar door. I’ve reached the first chamber. The doors are big, significantly taller than me, wooden, and painted what seems a blue. I am lighting my way with my iPhone I am lighting my way with the self-igniting matches and a torch I purchased for a hefty sum on the east coast. I open the door.

Dozens of little insects and cockroaches creep out. I continue walking. There are wine-bottles on the walls. Quiet and dark - the room, I take a bottle and read its label:

“To drink ten years hence from 3018. Strawberry.”

The second chamber is empty. The third chamber. A corpse is on the ground. A man died here, he has dusted and rats have eaten away at his flesh. It stinks very badly. I can only imagine the screams, shouts, and cries of pain and agony the man experienced down here probably a beggar or a poor man hoping to acquire some gold coins hoping to make some money by selling items he stole from here. Poor man, he died with his hands in the air. The arms are extended up. The fourth chamber. I hear a rumble, an echo of a scream, and a streaking noise as if dragging a huge sponge across the concrete ground. I open the door, THERE IT IS. Huge, perhaps nine feet tall, slimy and legless, a slimey thing, faceless, with two slits behind which I think are eyes.

It’s skin is a fishy translucent surface that changes colors. It reproduces by itself and feeds on it, a brave scientist soul yelled back from here before the rest of the group had entered the room - - the thing consumed the young scientist, wary of this we headed back leaving the pitiful soul to die in the acids of the creature. It sluggishly creeps around, like a huge slug without a shell, and it vomits and eats the vomit - mixed with cockroach and rat flesh. The foul odor makes me throw up. It hears me. Then it sees me. Quick, I run ahead, jump on it, its acid slime burning my arm as I hack it ten times with the red axe I’ve taken out of my bag. “Ah!” I yell, the acid corroding at the skin on my arms a bit. I pluck its eyes out, underneath from the slits, and put them in my bag. It is dead, no longer alive to consume endlessly for eternity among this dreadful palace.

There are explosives that the science and engineer group set here to explode on the second trip. Alone, I ignite the devices with my lighter I ignite the devices with my self-igniting matches before I leave. There is enough ignition wire for twenty minutes before detonation of the building, so I have enough time to leave the mansion. I make my way back up the stairs, ascending and ascending, staircase after staircase. Rats, cockroahes, stenches, dust, the corpse, dust, and dirt.

I make my way across the sixth floor, opening door after door. Then make my way back to the northbound entry to the mansion. I leave the gate, never to return again - my work done, and what is left is left for the timid engineers who did not courageously join me in my quest. I return on the pedaller I return on the bicycle through the swamp to the rest-stop I return on the pedaller to the little town outside here. I hear the mansion explode into pieces as I pedal away on the mountain bike. The theme from when you beat a boss in Megaman X for Super Nintendo plays. The crimson axe is tucked away into my backpack.

I make it to the town. I meet up with Mr. Wrest. “Hello Mr. Wrest”

“Hello Dr. Portier. Is the order complete?” “Certainly,” I tell Mr. Wrest

“The thing, did you photograph it”

“Afraid not, Mr. Wrest. There is no lighting in the underground chambers, and I could not simultaneously kill the beast, hold a match hold my lighter.”

“Please ready the carriage. We are to leave at once.”

“But Dr. Portier, you have not rested, surely you are tired.”

“Yes Mr. Wrest, however, I must make way to a fire I cannot make at this town here. This is of utmost importance and we should certainly leave now if we are to do this as soon as possible.”

“Very well, I will ready the horses and the chariot.”

We make away from the town I begin to drive away from the rest-stop on my Mazda. Once at the middle of nowhere, in the desert again, I take a bunch of wood from the back of the automobile I take out a bundle of wood from the car I ask Mr. Wrest to stop and take out a bundle of wood to light. In the fire I burn the eyes of the thing I have slain and do not put the fire out until I have heard the eyes crack in the fire here in the middle of the desert at night. I think of my beloved Claire and remember that she is pregnant.

Hours pass, I have driven a lot of miles and I rest. I get a phone-call on my iphone. I think of my belove Claire and am saddened that I am not at my first child’s birth. I have no way of contacting her. Sobbing, Claire answers. “Why are you crying hun?” I ask Claire. “Oh God, Daniel, oh God oh God oh God Daniel.” “What, what, is it the baby,” I ask

“YES!!!” she yells.

“He was born with five fingers on each hand, and with a completely healthy body,” she says. “But..” I ask: “but what?”

After the travel of ten days, I back at home with wife. I parted ways with Mr. Wrest, we shook hands and when I got home, my wife, who I have not seen in two months, brings out our baby. “My love, I have not seen you in many days,” I say. Crying she walks towards me but not next to me. She hesitates. She has in her hands in a warm bundle our first child.

She begins to sob loudly. “What is it, my love” I ask.

She hands me the baby. I pull away his veil, and HIS EYES ARE SLITS LIKE THE SLITS ON THE VILE, MONSTROUS THING I SLEW AT THE MANSION.


********************************************************************


Nobody cares if you burn, like I do.
Yea, can't say that's their concern, about you.
What I mean to say, "You're worth more to me than they'll ever know."
"You'll soon see. We'll be free."
"And whiter than the snow."

********************************************************************


Collect your shrapnel and glue,
pile it upon the mountain's pew,
for the snow has melted bare
through ravines to town's square.
We fetch a bucket to glean some drops,
and palm the sky till the season pops.
Lacquer cradles encrust our home,
where diminutive creatures live and rome.
Complications fall and again arise,
I hope you'll gather libations at my demise.
For yesterday we must wait eternal time,
yet soon we'll bathe gilded in lux of lime.
So, I banish a beast's roar from my throat,
praying for a dear and dulcet final note.

********************************************************************

The tall white building made Joe look a minuscule figurine as he entered the tall gaping glass archway giving way to the BPC HQ lobby and the several elevators that took each worker to the one of the hundred stories that made up the national broadcast service. A rush of suited workers busied after Joe, these workers then swallowed by a further swell of young men, all talking amongst themselves or drawn to their devices, reading e-mail, the day’s news or checking shares. He broadened his stride hoping to distance himself from the tidal stream. He stepped first into the spacious elevator, wincing from the crowd noise and a slight headache, and braced himself. They poured in like a rush of ants, wearing bagged, puffy eyes with grey, close-to-transparent skin and pink, voluptuously bloody cheeks. Holding their arms close the workmen uniformly shuffled in and turned around, positioned themselves in lines and directed their now void distant glares towards the elevator doors. The differences in the sea of gaunt complexions came only in weight and structure. One of the men, who looked to be in his 50’s, held a bulbous nose and wobbling jowls, whereas another looked no older than 25 and had prominent cheekbones. This man had a sharply figured, and, though trustable as he seemed, held a rat like doggedness to his handsomeness. When his and Joe’s eye line met he had looked suddenly down; a man withholding a secret he wished not to give away maybe, Joe thought, a man thinking thoughts he mustn’t, or, simply, a man caught out in his own dream like observation of other humans. The hum of the elevator met on an agreeable frequency as everybody in the lift suddenly quietened down, allowing one to become focused on it; to refuse intrusive, idle thoughts that might distract one from being part of a team, or cause intense loneliness, if one were to stand idle on those thoughts for too long. To allow the mind to become clear of it' was the desired effect from the hum of the elevator, Joe contemplated, feeling suddenly as if waves of neurons had collided synchronously across his brain. He drew a large breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled very slowly. All became eerily quiet within the room. The elevator came stationary every 40 seconds. Feeling quite renewed he stepped onto the corridor and turned right, following the same steps towards the same office he’d been taking for now 15 years. The corridor opened into a lobby resembling a doctor’s waiting room (Withheld were the clinical tools and condescending health posters saying everything you enjoy is destroying you). He stepped through the entrance past the reception desk, from which behind came a familiar husk of a voice.

********************************************************************


Hello, I am Ben. I am a 13 year old boy that lives in the Pojol village. I had a normal life on the farm, until the "Big Change" happened. What is the "Big Change" you may ask? Well, that's only part of my story. I'm writing this so in the future, people know that it was hard. But, who reads anymore when you have virtual worlds and stuff? I just hope, that one day, my story will be great and people will read it. If there is a future...

It is currently about 2500 as I am writing this. No one knows the real date anymore, but no one needs to know. Every day is the same, horrible. Well, for most people it is. People have the fear of getting killed each day. Even the children know about the horrible things that go on. Our world is pretty screwed up, I guess you could say. But me, I am a savior. I make it so people have hope, so they know that there is someone who is brave.

Now, I will start my story soon, but there is more information you need to know. So, let's get into some brief science. There are currently 12,000 planets in our galaxy right now, ever since the "Big Change" happened. But only one of them has life. Earth. But only one of them has water and food, and it's not Earth. Hopefully when you read this you will have water and food on your planet. But right now, we have to eat machine made food and drink machine made water. It's pretty horrible. Scientists say living off that stuff will only last you until your 45. Then you're sure to die. But I won't die. I will live forever. And it's not good to live forever. Enough of this, you probably know enough.

I have constantly been referencing to myself. And you're probably wanting to know more about me. Well, as I said my basic facts, I didn't say where I came from. I came from Russia, but my parents abandoned me on the streets when I was five. I didn't know what to do, so I put myself in the mail box. That was a big mistake. The mail truck I was in crashed and landed in a lake somehow, don't question how. I climbed out, I can't really remember how. But when I came up, I saw a nice lady. She took me inside her house, and claimed me as her child. I then farmed on her farm for a while and it was great. But on my 12th birthday, everything changed.

This is where I leave you, until later. You know enough about me. In the next chapter, I will tell you all about the "Big Change", I know you're just dying to know.

---

CHAPTER 1: The Big Change
I was out on the farm, it was a perfectly normal day. Well, not excactly normal I suppose. It was my 12th birthday, or so said my keeper. I didn't know her name so I just called her Mom. She gave me a new hoe for my birthday, and I guess it was a good present. My old one was kinda falling apart. So, anyways, I was on the farm. Then, out of nowhere, there was a red flash, then a silence.

The silence hung in the air for what is seemed like forever. I couldn't move, though. It felt very strange. I couldn't do anything. I was frozen, and so was everything else. Then, the Sky disappeared. As crazy as it sounds, it did. There was no color in the sky, not black nor white. It looked so unreal. It's probably difficult for you to imagine, since you have never seen it. Then out of no where my mind shut down. I couldn't think. It was so bizarre! Then everything moved again, the sky came back, and I could think. It was like someone pushed the play button on a movie. But then again, who watches movies anymore?

So I was in shock. I ran to ask my keeper, Mom, if she saw it. But when I came into the kitchen, I saw her on the ground. Blood was squirting out of her like you would not believe. I tried not to panic. I examined her body, even though it was gross. When I turned her over I saw something on her back. It looked like a leech, no a slug of some sort. It was green. It was sucking on her, it didn't make much sense, but I didn't care. I sprinted to the bathroom and got a plunger. Then I took the plunger and whacked the creature with it, but then, I saw something. It came in my mind, it was in everyone's mind. It said these exact words.

"Hello, people of all ages. My name is IT. You may have noticed that someone in your area has been attacked by a small green creature. I call this a slug. Slugs are my little buddies, and the more you try to kill them, the stronger they get. Then when your back is turned, they multiply. A few. Tens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. Billions. These slugs will take over Earth with me. Your silly god, Giflo, cannot stop me. You know why? I won't tell. Also, I have mad thousands of new planets to confuse you little scientists and to keep you busy while the slugs take over. Watch, as slugs begin to appear everywhere. And watch as new slugs appear everywhere. And watch as I take over."

My heart skipped a beat when I came back to reality. I saw seven slugs lying on my floor. I quickly ran out of the house. I saw a wishing well. I don't know what I was thinking, but I jumped in the wishing well. Little did I know that I made a huge mistake. This wishing well led to hell. That's right. H e double hockey sticks.

I got up and saw hell. I wanted to get out as soon as I saw it. But then a spirit appeared in front of me. She said, "Hello young one. This is the underworld, once you come in, you will not get out. The ruler of the underworld? Well, we'll leave that as a mystery for now. TEE-HEE!"

Poof, the spirit was gone. What a great 12th birthday! But then, I found out that IT had taken over hell too. I saw people getting sucked by slugs everywhere. I then saw one guy that caught my eye. He was wearing normal clothes like me. Everyone else was... naked. So I walked up to him and asked, "How you doing?"

"Fine, how about yourself?" he asked.
"Meh, I'm doing okay."
"Well, you don't sound excited. Then again no one is down here. But now these weird slugs are taking over and it's just chaos."
"Welcome to the club. Well hey, my name's Ben. What yours?"
"Gregory, but you can call me Greg if you want! Lucky for me, I know how to stop these slugs."
"Wait- what did you just say?"
"I can stop the slugs. I have special powers."

Then, Gregory disappeared into the floor. I must have just seen it since all this crazy stuff was happening. Then I saw a sight that horrified me. Not only did it horrify me, but it got be angry...

********************************************************************



Scene 1

    (The bar in a dance club.)​


    MIKE​

    Still angry?

    JULIA​
    ​
    (Faces away, sips drink)

    MIKE​

    Jess has syphilis.


    JULIA

    (Remains quiet)​

    MIKE​

    Always knew she was a whore; Brian's such an idiot.


    (Stares at her)​

    MIKE​


    Why are you always such a bitch about these things, fuck.


    (Looks at his phone, then begins typing)​


    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Yo, bro, what the fuck is taking so long?

    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Sec, man. Bouncer's being a dick.

    MIKE​

    Denis is here, when you're ready to stop being a fucking cunt, let me know.
    ​
    (MIKE leaves)

    (End Scene.)​


    Scene 2

    (Dance floor. Music becomes more dissonant.)​


    DENIS​

    Dude, this party sucks, there's no K.

    (MIKE reads text)​

    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Get over here, ass

    MIKE

    (Stands still, staring into distance)
    ​
    Dude, is that Julia dancing with that guy?


    DENIS​

    I don't see shit. Where?

    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Jays in the hospital, dude.

    MIKE​

    (Checks his phone)​

    Jay's in the hospital?


    DENIS​

    Yeah, you just got that?

    (DENIS leaves)​


    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Whatever Julia sry but you were being kindve a bitch

    (MIKE reads text)​

    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Yo, I'm in

    MIKE​


    (Begins typing on his phone)​

    TEXT MESSAGE​

    kk

    (MIKE leaves)​

    (End Scene.)​


    Scene 3

    (Club bathroom. The stalls are prison cells. MAN is in a cell)​


    NICHOLAS​

    You still haven't paid up, motherfucker

    MAN​

    I don't know what you're talking about. I told you this already, I don't mine bitcoins anymore.

    TEXT MESSAGE
    ​
    Hey, someone with the initials KC likes you: www. bit.ly/HookupsMeet

    NICHOLAS​

    Sarah got hacked.

    (Laughs, then snorts a line of coke.)

    MIKE​

    What a stupid bitch she is. Hey, that reminds me. Julia's being a total twat, has Tiff said anything about why?

    MIKE

    (Pause)​

    I think it was 'cause I forgot to text her about the party yesterday

    (Laughs and looks at MAN)

    NICHOLAS​

    Don't know why you're still with her dude.

    (Begins castrating MAN)​

    She's always been giving you the cold shoulder like this.

    (Consumes MAN's genitals)​

    MIKE​

    I don't know, she's a good fuck, I guess.

    (Lights a cigarette)

    (NICHOLAS removes a defibrillator from under the sink)

    MIKE​

    Don't go too heavy on that, bro.

    NICHOLAS​

    nah.

    (Stuns himself in the temples. He falls to the ground and begins seizing)

    MIKE​

    I don't know, maybe there is something more to it.

    (NICHOLAS continues seizing)

    (MIKE reads text)​

    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Dude, the next set's on get in here

    MIKE​

    She'll get over it, whatever.


    TEXT MESSAGE​

    Jessica's not here, I'm leaving.

    (MIKE leaves)

    (NICHOLAS dies)

    (End Scene.)​

    Scene 4

    (Club dance floor. There is no music playing. There is no one there but MIKE, who is sitting in the middle of the stage, naked, covered in feces.)​


    TEXT MESSAGE

    (simultaneously with MIKE)​

    LMFAO can you believe him? Fuck off, cunt lol omg jk Fuck shit cunt bitch ttyl cya Did you hear about her? You're sooo drunk hahaha LMFAO can you believe him? Fuck off, cunt lol omg jk Fuck shit cunt bitch Did you hear about her? You're sooo drunk hahaha wow did u see the pic? Waaaaattt?? you're joking, right?

    MIKE​

    Bit streams fleeting, packets lost, routers unreachable – perishing hope. Digitally revive me from the discordant panic which roars in this soulless carcass. 01101100011010010110011001100101011011000 1101101100011001010111001101110011001000000110110101101001011011100110010001101100011001010111001101110011001000000110000101110101011101000110111101101101011000010111010001100001

    (Cuts out his eyes and eats them.)

    (JULIA enters)​

    MIKE​

    Who's there?

    (JULIA stares at him)​

    (MIKE begins crying)​

    Stop, who's there?

    (A beat)

    (JULIA leaves)​

    (A beat)

    MIKE​

    0100100101101101001000000111001101101111011100100111001001111001

    (Peels open his chest, removes his heart and eats it)

    (MIKE dies)

    (Blackout.)​


********************************************************************


Silence dominated the region, and everything within it was engulfed in an expanse of emptiness. Here, nothing existed and nothing was present. Nothing… except for an endless panorama of white that stretched out as far as the eye could see. In this place, there was nothing to see, nor was there anything to smell, touch, taste, or hear. No wind blew, no rain fell, no current flowed and nothing existing for me to even lie down on.

I drifted alone within an endless space with no forces preying on my body. I had no idea where I was or how I ended up in a place like this. The only thing I knew was that I wanted an escape, for this place was lonely, bare, and quiet. Nothing ever happened, and time seemed to be motionless. I didn’t know what was going on, and I wanted to leave badly, so I attempted to run away to make my escape. But, as I tried to move, my mind refused to function, leaving my body dead and unresponsive.

I was stuck here in a paralytic state with nothing to see and nothing to do. All that I could hope was that something would happen, for I was trapped inside a realm that seemed to be separate from the normal living world. I desperately waited, and waited, and waited…until things slowly began to change.

While waiting, I felt a chilled breeze pass over my skin rather than the constant numb feeling of nothingness. After that, I picked up small hints of smells and heard muted sounds outside the white world into which I had been cast.

As time continued to pass, one by one my senses became aware of my true surroundings, and my body became active.

First, I smelled the scent of wet grass as if it had just finished raining. I heard the sound of many crickets in the distance. The sound of the insects grew louder, and I felt a rock-solid surface harden beneath me. The more my body picked up on things, the more my body became responsive.

As my ability to feel slowly returned, an itch irritated my skin. The itch felt like bugs crawled on my skin, so my body twitched as my reflexes began to respond. As I shuddered because of the pests, my conscience mind awakened. It was then, when my mind began functioning… that I took notice of what was happening and when I finally realized that I had been in a deep sleep.

That silent, white world that I had been thrown into was my subconscious domain. I couldn’t move because I was unconscious, and that world was not physical. So as my mind awakened from its slumber, I opened my eyes to the conscience state that I had left.

I had been unconscious for an unknown amount of time, and I did not know whether an hour or a week had passed. The only thing I knew was that I had no clue where I was…

********************************************************************

Don’t miss out on this chance to meet Rosemary and join her and her motley crew as they journey across Gratia in search of her son. Watch the vainglorious prince Courtney Delouise deGratia as he swoons over Rosemary, only to find himself in the dreaded “friend zone” (which he doesn’t seem to have a problem with. At least, if he even realizes. He’s pretty oblivious to anything not about him). Marvel at the celibate incubus Leviticus, who uses his demonic powers for the good of all he meets in his travels. Meet Lavender, the ex-Angel of Death who was too compassionate even for Heaven. Observe the Faith, whose armies protect the Kingdom of Gratia from threats demonic and heretical. Wonder at Rosemary, whose strength of body and mind carries her across the lands against all odds in a never-ending search for the only family she has left. And meet the much sought after son, whose childish machinations may be the undoing of existence as they know it.

This book is about a woman who is strong, yes, but still hasn't come into her own. After all, how could we have a Hero's Journey if she already had? Yeah, she's been called demonspawn, but that doesn't mean she is, right? Her son, the one she's scouring the country for? He's the child of Lucifer himself, and takes after his father too. Discontent with hell and how things are, he figures the truest equality is the equality of nothing. So he's out to unmake existence in a most literal sense. Something his mother knows nothing about because he was stolen from her at birth. That's the crux of the story here. How does she deal with the fact that the child she's blindly loved and sought all this time is on a mission to collapse heaven and hell to earth which will end everything. She's been a fighter all her life, but can she fight her own son once she finds him and learns his true intentions? What lengths will she go to to convince the is overpowered child of satan that mommy loves him and he's been a little shitstain? Not that it really matters, because he wants nothing to do with her. And how does she take that? Does she become the very thing she denies up and down that she is? Does she become a demon for her son?

Prologue The Razing of Warrenton

Jonathan ran down the road to Beryl's home, thoughts of his daughter's safety fueling his fevered sprint. As the door bobbed in his vision, he formed a plan: burst inside, grab Emily, and tell Beryl and Heath to run. There was no time to explain, not if they were to escape before the fires reached them. Shoulder down, Jonathan charged the door. The booming impact jarred his entire body, but it continued to deny him entrance. Rubbing his smarting joint, Jonathan stepped back for a second attempt, but just before the moment of impact, the door swung inward and he barreled over a startled Beryl. After they disentangled themselves and got back to their feet, Beryl pulled Jonathan by his arm so that her mouth was at his ear. "What the hell do you think you're doing back here?" she hissed. "Couldn't find your phantom?" Jonathan shook free and pushed past his wife's sister. "Not now," he said, panting. "We have to get out. Where's my daughter?" "She's with Heath, by the fire. But never mind that, where'd you find the stones to burst into my home, demanding-?" By the fire. Jonathan turned Beryl out and hurried to the back of the house. There he found Emily, sitting in Heath's lap next to a crackling fire. Before Heath could react, Jonathan snatched his daughter from her uncle's lap and turned to flee. He would have escaped, but blocking his path was an angry Beryl, a rolling pin in hand. And at his back, both taller and broader than himself, stood Heath, who placed a hand on Jonathan's shoulder. "Look, please, you don't understand," pleaded Jonathan, clutching Emily closer to his chest as he twisted out of Heath's grasp. His eyes fitted from the fire, to Heath, to Beryl blocking his escape. "We have to leave now!" "Don't raise your voice to my wife, Jonathan wife-beater. Tell us what's the matter, and I'll think about not tossing you on the street where you belong." But Emily's uncle didn't have a chance to act on his words, because the fire in the hearth at his back exploded, immolating him in an instant. Jonathan's face blanched as a mass of charred bone and ash crumpled to the floor. The hellfire had reached them, gushing from the hearth as though it were water. "Beryl! We have to leave, now!" he yelled over the roar of the blaze. But she refused to listen and threw herself against Jonathan to see the remains of her husband. All the while, the flames spread faster than any earthy flame should, continuing to spill out of the hearth, threatening to consume them both in their struggle. "Beryl!" Jonathan gasped. "We have to get out!" Smoke filled his lungs with his next breath, and he dropped to a knee, coughing. In his arms, Emily coughed as well, and it was at that sound that Beryl ceased struggling against Jonathan. "You see?" whezed Jonathan, tearing a sleeve from his shirt to drape over Emily's face. "We can't do anything for him. We have to get out while we can." Beryl, her lips pressed thin and hair disheveled, looked down at Emily's covered face and nodded. It was a quick, shallow gesture. Lurching back to his feet, Jonathan grabbed Beryl's arm and ran for the front door, but their path had been cut off. Burning timbers had fallen in the hall leading outside. They were trapped with no way out, and the smoke was getting thicker by the second. Jonathan clutched the swaddled Emily closer to his chest as he frantically looked about. There was fire on all sides. There was no escape. He had failed his daughter. "Jonathan, get down," Beryl said suddenly. "What?" The smoke was thinner closer to the floor, yes, but laying low wasn't going to improve their situation in the least. The flames crept ever closer. They had no hope. "Take Emily and get down!" Meryl shouted, urgency cracking her smoke-thickened voice. "I'm going to move the timbers." "You can't-!" Jonathan started, but one look from Beryl silenced him. Jonathan could see it in the way she looked not at him, but to the child he held; now that Heath was gone, her priority was Emily. "I'm going to move the timbers," Beryl whispered hoarsely, "But you won't have much time to get through. Don't waste it." The smoke and heat had chapped his throat to the point that speech was impossible, so Jonathan nodded his thanks. He didn't deserve this, not the wife-beater Jonathan. She didn't have to do this for him. But it wasn't for him, and he knew that. It was for Emily. Emily was all that mattered now. Beryl nodded, and then threw herself at the flaming blockade. Her effort granted them passage in the form of a man-sized hole. Jonathan leapt through the gap in the flames with Emily. As he exited the structure, he pretended not to haer the shrieks trailing after him. "So, you managed to rescue her after all," said the silver-haired boy stepping int othe edge of Jonathan's vision. "I wasn't expecting this." Jonathan tried to yell, but his throat seized up and he coughed, careful to turn his head from the child in his arms, until he could speak again. "Shut your trap! I'll kill you, I'll-!" "Before you attempt to threaten my life once more," said theboy, his blood-red eyes fixed on a spot above Jonathan's head, "you may want to look up." Jonathan spared no more words for the boy, and looked up. He managed to dodge the first falling timber, but a second struck him in the back, the impact flinging Emily from his arms. The rest of the flaming building came crashing down behind him, crushing and burning everything below his waist, leaving only his upper body exposed. Color exploded behind his eyes and he was rendered blind, deaf, and mute until his body could makes ense of the amount of damage he had suffered. "My, that was quite unfortunate," musted the boy as he walked over to where Emily sat, brushing at her knees with deliberate, slow strokes. From what Jonathan could see through his blurred vision, she appeared to be mostly unharmed save for a few scratches from her fal. "Stay... you stay away from her you... demon," Jonathan wheezed. He clawed at the ground toward his daughter until shifting rubble piled further up his back. Eyes wide and mouth agape in a voiceless scream, he reached for Emily until the sheer amoutn of pain he was suffering made him still and silent save for a low moan. "That isn't very nice of you, Jonathan," Mikhail said, tut-tutting as he offered Emily his hand. "I was only helping her to her feet so she can watch her father's final moments. After all, I'm sure you have some parting words for her, yes, Jonathan Ravenshaw?"

********************************************************************


The Red Spirit

Part 1

I live in an average town, an average house with my average day to day life. I've lived here with my parents for fourteen of my fifteen years of life. For a short time when I was nine, I remember my parents and I spent some time in the countryside with my grandfather at his house. I made friends and went to school there for quite a while. That was not too long ago, but it feels like an eternity ago.

Part 2

(I just can’t get my hair to sit the way I want it to.) I keep sitting in front of the mirror fixing my hair. My brown messy hair, pale skin and dark blue eyes look weird to me, but a few of my friends’ say they make me stand out.(Whatever, I’ll fix it in the car.)

I head down stairs and into the front room. My father with his messy brown hair and dark blue eyes was fixing the tie on his neck. He was dressed in all black as was my mother. Her blonde hair and her pale skin were done up very fancy like. They both looked very sad, my father looked very concerned.

“Ezekiel, fix your hair.” My mother calls out to me.

“Don’t worry mom, I still have to get my jacket on anyway.” I grab my jacket and swing it over my shoulder. This black jacket…for some reason it feels heavy.

“Honey, come here.” My mom brings my father in close and starts fixing his hair. She licks her hand and starts running it through his hair. I know that means she’ll do it to me too so I rush out the door before she can. “Ezekiel!”

I pretended not to hear her. “Man…a funeral in late August, geez.”

Part 3

Riding in a car through countryside is a little strange. Most of the people who live in the countryside are farmers and agriculturalists so they didn't use luxury cars like the one we drove.

Green fields and cows as far the eye could see. Ezekiel looked out the window of the car as they sped down this little worn road to his grandfather’s house. His grandfather had died of a heart attack and his father being the oldest was alerted first and told to tell the others. The strange operations of this town out in the countryside were only known well to those who lived in the town.

I don’t really know much about my cousins or my aunt and uncle. I only met them once when I was six, and after that I believe that they became estranged because of a dispute that happened with my father marrying my mother and moving out of the village. (I never really got how things in the village worked. Just seems like a lot of old men sitting around unable to change with the times. I really hate that.)

Mom’s maiden name was Magnolia Gregory. She was a normal girl who came to the village around twenty years ago on business with the government and then fell in love with the oldest son of the " Taidhg family, Bran " Taidhg.

The car stopped and everyone exited. The village was for the most part nothing but a bunch of old houses and a few barns and children running about. Horses and dogs were lying on the ground looking as natural as possible. A city boy like Ezekiel wasn't used to seeing horses, so his eyes lit up a bit.

“Horses…” He blurted out. I didn't mean to spaz out like that, but I really like animals.

“Ezekiel, we don’t have time. We’ll park at the grandfather’s house and then head for the church.” Dad was far more serious than he was usually. I guess that’s to be expected since he’s going to his father’s funereal.

I’ll get back in the car since I just wanted to stretch my legs.

Part 4

We arrived at grandfather’s place after driving for a bit more. My dad pulled out a key he had and unlocked the door. We entered…it was a disturbing feeling. This is the house of a man who just died no less then a week ago. A slight dust was on the wooden floor. It wasn't a small house either. I realize now that grandfather was all alone in this big house since grandmother had died years beforehand. Was he afraid, was he sad, was he upset, was he angry, those were the thoughts that kept bouncing around my head. If I were in his situation, no family, no friends, no pets, what would I've done, if I were all alone?

“What are you doing we’re going to be late.” My dad called out to me. I dropped my bag that I’d brought with me in the house and locked the door behind me.

We walked through the town and straight up a long path to the church. The stairs up to this old church felt so long. My mind started to wonder again. (I don’t really know that much about my family when I think about it. I don’t know why grandfather was so upset when Dad married Mom. It didn't make any sense to me when I heard about, and Dad doesn't talk about the village aside from the fact that, you’re not aloud to marry outside of the village.)

We reached the church. I have a lump in my throat. The cars lined up outside suggest that a ton of people are here and that bugs me. All of these people either didn't know us or hated my Mom and Dad for running away for love.

Once inside everyone was silent. No one so much as said anything to us except the priest telling us to move up to the front. There were way more people in the church than I thought there'd be. Most of the villagers came. Was this community that tightly knit or was grandfather just that important?

Part 5

The service ended and we all asked to come and say our final goodbye to grandfather. It's my turn.

Ezekiel got up and walked up to the casket. In there lay an old man, eyes closed, hands on his chest. To the others he looked peaceful, not Ezekiel.

(Grandfather, are you lonely? I didn't think about it since I never got a chance to see you, but you were probably very lonely. I don't want to die alone.) His thin, old and wrinkled hands looked like touching would only invite death onto me next. I'm afraid of death, but then again isn't everyone? No, maybe it would right to say I'm afraid of what comes with death. Loneliness, separation from your loved ones, the unknown, it all terrified me to no end.

I said goodbye to grandfather as did the many people of the village and as did Dad and Mom. We lifted the casket and buried him out behind the church along side many others who died before him. The service ended and everyone started talking amongst themselves.

“Bran, can I talk to you for a second?” My Dad’s brother, my uncle came to talk with my father. He looked just like a younger version of my grandfather. My Dad and Mom left me and went with my uncle.

I decided to go outside and to take a break from all the weird looks and awkward stares. Someone is still looking at me, I can tell. I was on the stairs that over looked the town. I picked this place because everyone was still inside, but apparently others picked this area too.

“Um...”

“Before you ask, no. I'm not about to jump.” I probably didn't need to answer so smugly to this person. I think it's a girl, the voice sounded light and I haven't turned around to face them yet, so I couldn't be sure.

“You’re Sir " Taidhg’s grandson, right?”  Sir, huh? That’s a surprise. I guess that my grandfather must have been more important then I thought.

“Yes, that’s me. Can I help you?” I turned to face the person. It was a girl around my age, with short dark hair and dressed in black. Her skin was ever so slightly tanned. She had round expressive brown eyes.

“So then, you are Ezekiel?”

“Yes, what of it?”

“It’s been so long, hasn't it?” She smiled so warmly.

“Have we met before?”

“I guess I shouldn't be surprised it’s been about seven years.”

“...Seven years...” It suddenly hit me. Margaret McNamara, a friend I’d made during my short time in this town. “Margaret, it’s been a while.” An unintentional smile came across my face.

Part 6

We sat down on the stairs outside of the church. We just kept looking out over the town. The sun began to set and everyone started to leave and head home.

“I’m really sorry about your grandfather.” It was the first thing either of us had said since we’d been sitting here. It was a bit awkward after all, not seeing each other for so many years.

“I didn't really know him all that well, despite living in his house for a year. My grandfather...he kept to himself a lot. He wasn't one for jumping in conversations or getting involved in something personal. But when I see how everyone in this village thought about and respected him, it’s a surprise. I didn't know much about him, or even this village. I feel ignorant.” I opened up to her. I didn't really plan to go into that level of detail, but I guess it was easier since she was a friend.

“I see...having not lived in this village growing up like the rest of us " any person who’d come here would think its weird. Your grandfather was a great man. He made our lives in this village so much easier. Everyone admired him, and respected him for all of his hard work. He made it so that our crops would grow and that our people stayed in good health. Seeing him pass away has brought us a great sadness.”

Her face looked genuinely sad. Everyone else seemed worried at the church, not just about the death of an elder, but they seemed worried about something else.

“Hey, can you tell me"”

“Ezekiel!” My father called out from behind me. When I turned to face him there were a few people with him I didn't know. Among them were my uncle and his wife. My mother and father both looked serious.

“What is it?”

“From today on we’ll be living here in the village in your grandfather’s home.”

“What!?” I hadn't been told anything like this before. “Hang on a minute, why are we doing this all of a sudden, we can’t just stay here! We don’t even have any of our things!”

“We’ll have a moving crew move our important things to the village, but from this point on this is our new home.” He was speaking in such a stern voice. It was strange after all this for him to just decide to stay here. I’m so confused.

Part 7

The people of the village came by the house dropping off food and clothes for us for a while. They spoke with my father for a few hours and then went home. My mom started dusting around the house, so I took it upon myself to ask him.

“Dad, what’s going on? Why are just going to start staying here all of a sudden?” I had a right to know.

His face looked serious as he looked down at the dinning room table. He rubbed his hand across the dust and brushed it off the table. “Ezekiel, I've never told you about this village, have I?”

“Nothing aside from the fact that you didn't like it here and that you left to marry mom.”

“Exactly. That’s the reason I left. This village doesn't allow people to take up residence here if they weren’t been born here.”

“Why?”

“Recently they bent the rules and allowed you and your mother to live here.”

“Okay, but what does this have to do with my question?”

“You’re right. Your grandfather had a very important job in this village. A job that only he, or someone of our blood line could do.”

“What job?”

“The crops in this village are the main food source and export of the people. Also they are able to fend off illnesses though an unknown method.”

“Unknown?”

“Do you know what agricultural spirits are? Probably not, right?”

“No, I don’t. Also we’re talking about spirits now? Dad, cut to the point I don’t get any of this!” All those words buzzing around in my head, I’m so very lost.

“Your grandfather used to be a spiritual medium.”

I was stunned. Not by this revelation, but by the fact that this joke is meant to be taken seriously.

“Dad...what are you saying?”

“I know it sounds unbelievable, but that’s the reason that people aren't allowed to move into the village. People who aren't born here wouldn't understand the customs and rituals of the people of the village.”

I could tell by looking into his glasses that I had a face that screamed unbelievable on it. Could anyone blame me, it was just so out there!

“He’s telling the truth Ezekiel.” My mother spoke up from behind me.

“Okay, well let’s just say that this is all true. So let me put this in order again, it needs to be someone of our blood line, the spirit helps with both crops and diseases that affect people in the village and the village needs a medium, right?”

They both nodded.

“Then why us? Couldn't uncle handle this?”

“The job fell upon me before. When I left the village the job was already mine, but I left the job up to your grandfather selfishly in order to marry your mother. He was left with the burden of continuing his duty until the day he died, so now I shall take up his job.”

“We’re going to be living in this po-dunk village from now on, talking to spirits? Dad, you can’t be serious! This is crazy!”

“You’ll adjust soon enough. The village sent a rush order on packing up our things. This house is far bigger then our old one so you’ll have enough room for you things. Try and make the best of it.” He walked to the door and left.

“Are you kidding me, I can’t believe this!” I shouted. My mother left me alone in the dinning room and continued dusting. A knock came from the front door. I didn't care who it was, but if I didn't answer it no one would.

Opening the door I was greeted by Margaret with a smile. “So, you’re really going to be staying in this village from now on?” She seemed to have cheered up from before.

I was still in a bad mood, but I didn't want to take it out on her. “Yeah, it looks like my Dad’s going to be the new medium.”

“I’m happy; your father will make a great medium.” She was so happy, but I was still so angry.

My whole life from this moment forward was going to be uprooted and thrown in this huge strange village. This people were different from the people I used to know in my old town and this business with spirits and such I had no Idea how any of this was going to work, but from this moment on, I have no choice.

End of chapter 1

********************************************************************


Barnes & Noble
Sometimes a thought or a feeling will strike me that doesn't make sense until I analyze it. They require me to dwell and think, sometimes for hours, about what they mean until I either work out a solution that makes me content or I get tired of doing it. Normally these thoughts remain very private to me because I don't prefer to torture people with my long and arbitrary train of thought, but this scenario is one I hope will be worth your time.
One morning a few weeks back I found myself on the internet while eating breakfast. I was bored and was looking for something entertaining. While looking I found an interesting section of an internet forum--people were posting pictures of their bookshelf so any user could discuss their aesthetics and content. It was mildly interesting and so I clicked around for a bit and looked at some of them. One trend caught my attention and disgust: a large portion of these bookshelves had books from the same publisher series, one I did not recognize. After a little induction and research, I figured out that this series is the Barnes and Noble leather-bound series.
I was instantly repulsed by the appearance of this series. I hated them. Each book in the set is, obviously, bound with real leather. They are colorful and feature a broad rainbow of bold hues, which are selected to obviously match the tone and plot elements of each book--for instance, Dune is bound in a burnt orange and Edgar Allen Poe's complete works is bound in black with red highlighting. Many of the series were made with fake, shiny gold leafing on the pages and in the artwork that adorns the spines, and often make the author's name and title of the book pop out to make it obvious to any onlookers just what sort of intellectual the owner is. They are adorned with gaudy artwork or symbols, such as flashy reflective stars on the spine of the H.G. Wells collection, or the shiny gold pipe on the cover of the Sherlock Holmes collection. The books are aesthetically offensive, ostentatious and tacky: they clearly reflect on the owner's desire to show anybody who may glance at his bookshelf that he is, in fact, a well-read person. This analysis, as apt as it seems, did not satisfy me. I do not want to be critical of people so lightly, it's unnecessary and often wrong. So I spent more time thinking about these books: why did I hate them so much?
I began to look deeper and think a little longer. Another thing I soon noticed was that each book's spine was crafted differently--each one's text was oriented different and were printed in different fonts. The backing ridges that originally gave leather-bounds more durability were there, but were not uniform over the series--they were placed for aesthetics. They were placed to make each book look different. I had a revelation. The visual choices the artists made when creating these books weren't done out of some grand vision that people want high-quality leather-bound books--not at all. They were made with a purposeful eclecticism--they were designed specifically to appear like a collection that had been gathered from separate publishers over a period, to give off the appearance that the person who owned those books was a long-time collector and reader; in short, to make the owner appear to have a history of refinement that they may not possess otherwise. Yet, simultaneously, I noticed the books do share a strong sense of uniformity: they were cut to the same height, they had a similar sheen, and they all tried to attract attention. This conflicting sense of eclecticism and uniformity--uniformity, I might add, that Barnes and Noble is proud to say is making them rich--is what upset me so much. Only one word occurred to me in this moment: hyperreality.

Hyperreality is an idea of postmodern philosophy that deals with a confounding trend in the aesthetics of our modern world. It's the idea that the artificial traits of a "hyperrealistic" world can be hard to distinguish from genuine reality. Consider, for instance, a building built in the year 2000 that is designed to look like an Italian or Spanish winery, complete with plaster cracking to expose bricks and rusted farm equipment. None of these visual elements are necessary--they are artificial. They are obfuscated fakeness; they are like white lies that strive to distract people from reality--the reality that is bleak, boring, and precludes romanticizing whatever "good ol' days" the mimesis strives to recall.
I focused back to the books with this revelation in mind. I reviewed each picture carefully, and soon another observation came to me--none of these books had been read, or if they had, they had been very lightly handled. I realized it must be the case that the owners of these books valued the appearance of these books more than they valued the ability to read them, because if the spines were to get creased, or the leather to get torn, the primary function of the book would be lost. We, as humans, buy expensive clothing not because the clothing is higher quality or will last longer, but because we use the clothes to express our status. In the same way, buying overly high-quality books is a shallow flaunting: you don't go play in the park and ruin your dress-up clothes, nor do you scuff up your high-quality books like you do other books. In this sense the elements that once made leather-bounds preferable, their quality, is reduced and now makes them limiting! The function is all but lost, and hollow narcissism remains.

Now is the part where I feel compelled to make a clichéd jab at consumer culture. Should I blame the baby boomers for creating this corporate-controlled monstrosity, where Barnes and Noble plays perfectly on people's emotions to sell expensive, slave-made crap to insecure middle-class Americans? Barnes and Noble hires smart marketers; I'm pretty sure they know of the ghetto-rich mentality of buying Coach bags and Starbucks that plagues middle-class America, and they know that these books exploit the feelings of insecurity they foster to continue profits. Should I insult "my generation" for their lack of self awareness and for trying to affect a sense of intelligence through mimicry? Corporations know that if they make a product that has the affect of quality, then people will buy it. After they buy it, they then show off their new product and coerce others socially into complimenting this product (and the person too!)--this is how corporations prey on the insecure. But neither of these criticisms is new or interesting; and I hate being dull. So what is there left to conclude? What greater life lesson can I learn?
In times of confusion like these, I find that reevaluating my emotions and flowing with them will take me to another conclusion. So I hated this, I hate the books, I hate the corporate influence, I hate my generation for not being able to fight it, and so the emotion I feel for just about everything is hate. Where does this hate go? What is its purpose? To solve this I look to psychology, which has a tendency to hammer a sense of humility into me. It didn't take me long to realize that I was doing was projecting: I saw other people trying to impress others with objects, and I do it too. I feel insecure too. I live a life of trying to affect superiority too. I look to corporate products to fill the negativity and confusion I feel. I'm a part of the disgusting mess; I'm a cog in the horrible machine. In the end, I have to crush my own ego with the daunting realization that I am not special, I am a fallible, ego-centered consumerist; I am an approval-seeking, confused person with no clear idea of how to be happy. I can't even look at other people without seeing my ugliness. Like a leather-bound Barnes and Nobles classic, I live a life of fear, one where I am too afraid to scruff myself. I have become so obsessed with the image I want to project that I forgot it's only an image. The image is straw, it's see-through, it bends under gentle wind and fools nobody; yet there's me under that image and I am upset at myself for failing to be happy.

I wish I could say something useful, interesting or profound right now. I wish I had some perfect combination of words that gives everything meaning, that makes sense of all these thoughts. I wish I could promise to change, to fix myself and humanity. I wish I could just reprogram myself and fix the bug, and make it so I'll never have to contend with it again, but I will. After it all, there really wasn't any meaning or solution. There was only me--alone, sitting on my computer, staring into darkness and crying out into the abyss for answers, only to hear my echo in return.