Jeff Mach's Blog, page 48

Love Is What?

Love is like the soft flicking of Faerie wings on a crisp Autumn night, as they track you down in your driveway and swarm buzzily around you, stinging.

Love is like waking up from a terrible nightmare and feeling refreshed and rested. And you get out of bed with vigor and find yourself going about your day, and the whole world seems perfect. And in the back of your mind, you know perfectly well that this is the dream, and you’re going right back to that nightmare whenever you actually wake up. Is that your alarm?

Love is the soft sighng of the gentle wind, as the last vestiges of oxygen are sucked out of the Earth’s atmosphere by patient, patient extraterrestrials who like their food fresh, but hate getting their hands dirty.

Romance is a wine so bold and complex that you can’t really taste the cyanide.

Courtship is an intricate game, and the only way to win is not to play.

The heart is, indeed, the home of special feelings. Unfortunately, since the heart has no ability to process sensory data, or even absorb it, and must needs do so specifically at the direction of the mind, I can’t actually see why we care if emotions reside in that organ. It’s not like we can do anything with them.

When two souls meet in harmony and entwine, they make celestial music. Specifically, they make William Shatner’s 1968 album, “The Transformed Man”.

True love lasts forever. Which, given the number of people who’ve fallen in love and then fallen out of it, means that “true love” is, statistically speaking, incredibly unlikely. So I guess most of the other love out there would, by that reasoning, be false love?

I could see that. I could definitely see that.

Conversely, I’ve heard that no-one dies of a broken heart, which is definitely contradicted by medical records. If they mean it metaphorically, I ain’t buyin’ it. Sadness can weaken the heart quite deeply. In a literal, not a figurative, sense. Emotions have direct physiological impact and potentially affect longterm outcomes. That’s indisputable.

Likewise, I try to keep my actual heart in good shape, and my figurative heart in a small locked box on my desk. It’s close enough that I can get it if I ever really need it, but frankly, there’s a lot of dust on the box. Or, at least, I imagine there would be, if I could find it underneath all these papers. I’m trying to make my way through the pile of notes, but it’s difficult, because I make it bigger on the daily.

It’s said that love is the most pleasant possible distraction; but I think the people who said that were extremely distracted at the time.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Transportation Problem

If it was any consolation, the first official use of Transporters was an awfully humorous way to find out that we had souls—or at least, it probably would have been humorous under other circumstances.

Science fiction got the first part quite right. If you take people, and put them into some sort of cryogenic, metabolism-slowing deep sleep, and you’ve got spaceships which can go at a reasonable percentage of light, you can reach Pluto in a (relatively) short time, like twenty or thirty years. It helps if you can send machines ahead of you (if your tech will allow it, you can transport machines faster than even frozen people, because the right machines probably hold up to higher acceleration better than even a very, very cold set of human internal organs, and you don’t have to take quite so much care to make sure that nobody dies along the way.)

It wasn’t exactly Home Sweet Home, but it was habitable, and we settled down. Life was hard, as we’d expected, but we relished the challenge. After all, this was what we’d signed up to do—to conquer a new world, meet its difficulties, pave the way for our descendats to live more Earthlike lives, only with less population pressure, and with a different perspective on all the old skyways.

And we raised up four generations of difficult but honest toil. We honored those who had perished on the journey over (cryogenics are still inexact); we honored those who fell to the challenges of strange atmosphere and strange weather and difficult gravity.

It was thought there might be other colony ships; of course, communication with Earth was slow.

Imagine our surprise when, some 40 years in, we heard that there would, indeed be colonists coming our way!

…but they would not arrive via spaceship.

It was rather a lot of people who perished during the passage over. And it was awfully slow. And technology had improved. So much of what we did was anticipated (or even suggested by) science fiction and futurist ideas (not that every idea was correct; Pluto was, for example, barren of life, and not full of colorful monsters, nor even livestock, which is why we’d had to bring our own. It wasn’t like the movies.) It oughtn’t have been a surprise that humans had come up with Transporters.

(Oh, sure, they were “Simultaneous Transport Devices”. But they were basically teleportation. So they took every atom of your body, disassembled it, and re-assembled it somewhere else? Sounded like ‘transporters’ or ‘teleporters’ or ‘Jaunts’ to us.)

Philosophers argued semantics about it, but it didn’t matter that much. We were hardy settlers, not overthinkers. Okay, something that takes you apart piece by piece is also a ‘disintegration ray’, according to some people. It ‘kills’ one you and puts another one back together. Could be all kinds of problems. All we knew was, it was in development, and instead of working on another rocket, somebody with the resources was testing this nearly-instant travel technology, and eventually, we’d have people coming through, if everything worked out. We dutifully created the receiving platforms as instructed, updating every once in a while as messages made their (slow) way to us, and then we didn’t give it much thought. It would happen if and when it happened; we were busy enough as is.

You might have called us insular. Everyone knew everyone else’s names, and genealogies, as well. (You don’t know what it’s like to study your genetic history until your planet consists of fewer than a hundred families and you’re trying hard to avoid dating a first cousin.) Then again, you might have called us hunter-gatherers; the terraforming machines, being reasonable but not actually intelligent, had scattered the food-reclamation machines throughout the planet, along with stores of tinned goods, and while we’d first started out with our food animals in pens, there really wasn’t far for them to go, not unless they could figure out how to leave our dome, which would have been impossible, as well as fatal (for them). So we found ourselves wandering a lot. We didn’t even use the same houses all the time. If you left a house long enough, eventually, one of the leftover machines would clean the whole thing for you. So why not move to another house? Our city was built for ten times as many people as we were, since we were expected to be fruitful and multiply.

They beamed in.

They weren’t happy to see us, if it’s any consolation. They were downright miserable. Wherever they’d hoped to end up in life, this wasn’t it.

They weren’t surprised at all when we killed them and ate them. They knew they were different from us; maybe they could have become like us, but we’re the only us worth knowing.

They didn’t have souls. Nobody does, but us. Can you even kill nightmares, hallucinations, whatever beings-other-than-ourselves are? Probably not. They’ll probably come back, like bees raiding a hive, alien and bringing nothing but poisoned honey.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

on, but I can live with that.

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The Un-Oubliette

Long before Alice was fully Alice,

She was trapped inside her own memory palace,

Surrounded by what she could not forget,

Imprisoned within an Un-Oubliette.

For various reasons, which we won’t now recount,

Alice’s fears did steadily mount.

That’s a thing about misgiving:

It’s not a good place to be living.

Alice was a Journeyman in a trade

of which clever nightmares are often made.

seeking anything which might enhance her

quest to become a Necromancer.

And thus, Alice was far more exposed

To the amortal terrors which might leave you enclosed

inside a pit of dragon-thought,

where the nerves are shrilly taught

to split upon the sharpened edge

of every pain; and to grip the ledge

of a mountain of collected woes,

fears of outer and inner foes—

Alice’s studies made her vulnerable

to those.

It’s hard to see more than one plane

of existence, and still stay sane

(or as sane, and human-hearted

as you were when you first started).

It’s said there’s knowledge we ought not know,

and to your mind, this much you owe:

fill it not to utter bursting,

lest you include each and every worst thing.

Keep your mind empty and vague,

avoid thoughtfulness like it was plague,

dwell never overlong

on whether you are right or wrong,

and your understanding, never examine

let your mindscape reflect famine,

a starveling lot, empty and sparse,

and minimal information parse.

If you never think, you can’t become trapped

Inside your head. And thoughts, unwrapped,

are dangerous things. If you want a chance

of staying free, try ignorance—

oh, sure, you might a robot be,

your freedom a soulless, no-thought free,

and you’ll be an easy rube or mark

for anyone who’d steal your vital spark—

but at least you won’t think too much.

An Un-Oubliette is slowly builded

from many things; it is un-gilded

with encrustations of regrets,

big ideas,

small upsets,

moments much too long lingering,

alarm-bells of the hindbrain,

going ring-a-ring,

bright yellow packages,

tied up with existential horror,

knowing too much,

knowing too little,

guilty conscience,

no acquittal,

The Un-Oubliette’s a punishment

For those who are to their own will bent,

For those who find that paths well-tread

Go nowhere they’d make home, or bed.

The Un-Oubliette can be avoided

By having your mind asteroided,

By making your mind near-extinct,

So your thoughts have neither weight nor tinct.

Is thinking hard quite necessary?

Your mileage, one assumes, might vary.

Icebergs seldom pierce your hull

If you’re content inside your skull.

But if you’re set on strange invention,

It may require discontention,

Change is difficult, I pense,

If it comes, not from act, but from coincidence.

Did Alice escape? That would be best,

If I’d a moral for you to digest.

If I told you that critical thought

Leads to that peace by multitudes sought.

Alas! That’s not what happened, ‘though.

There are things you can’t un-know.

Not if you really understand,

Or be ready for knowledge you hadn’t planned.

No! The Un-Oubliette

Had Alice once; she’s within it yet.

But weathering life’s many squalls,

She’s always pushing ‘gainst the walls.

And the walls do oft give way.

For Alice’s will holds frequent sway.

And though non-forgetting’s a kind of curse,

Alice deems ignorance far worse.

For though you need not take each experience,

And hold it so tightly that it removes sense

(Such that hurts of the past become hurts without suture

Stuck in what-was, and forsaking the future,

You must bear the consequences of seeing,

Of processing, as well as being,

If you wish to move for yourself, instead

Of being unable to move, unless you are led.

You need not be Alice. There’s much to be said

In favor of life not spent raising the dead.

She toils in particular sorts of woes,

The kinds that only a Necromancer knows.

But you also can’t subject your life to curation

Which holds unpleasant truths for zero duration.

This means facing hurt, and sometimes contradiction;

It’s hard to kindle a spark without any friction.

That’s one lesson of the Non-Oubliette.

Stay tuned it; there’s more to come yet.

But to this thought, pray return hence:

Better pained by knowledge than numbed by ignorance.

 

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Stick / Move

I watched a kickboxing match last night. I’ve kickboxed, but never professionally; I’m not in that league. I wouldn’t armchair-criticize the athletes I saw; it’s easy to see what someone “should” do if one has the luxury of watching all the moves on a screen, instead of from behind gloves, waiting for the next strike.

But there was something about the boxer in the blue trunks. You could see how angry every blow made him, and the boxer in the silver trunks, a surgeon, used that at every turn. Every time the fellow in the blue trunks shifted his legs, the silver trunks shifted as well, so there was never room turn the shoulders and hips for a straight punch, and every time blue trunks tried for a jab, he found his own stopped by another jab.

Part of this was likely unavoidable; silver trunks had beautiful footwork and was, if anything more precise than the pre-fight hyperbole had suggested. But part of this was: every time blue trunks got hit, you could see his fury. And in that momentary fury, he clearly lost his concentration, and the guy in silver trunks kept throwing straight into his confusion. Blue trunks never had anything that resembled a chance.

And it made me think of the messages I hear everywhere.

We keep framing our current situations in the most apocalyptic terms. The current situations change all the rules, we are told; we need to be discombobulated. If we don’t act like we’ve just taken a punch every time some new outrage pops up, then we’re not taking the situation seriously.

And we must, I hear, break all the old rules to go forward. Only nobody can agree on what the new rules ought to be. We fight, all of us, like desperate hyenas at bay, reflexively, viciously, but not well. We’re told that, once we win, we’ll make all the right rules and we’ll know what to do.

But we’re told that by those who keep sailing a jab over our guard every time we become furious. We’re told that by those who keep snapping a front-kick under our hands every time we get distracted. Every time we look in one direction, we’re hit from another direction, and we’re told to get angry.

Sometimes, getting angry is unavoidable. Sometimes, anger is deserved.

But in a fight where your emotions can and will be used against you, you need to start mistrusting anyone, friend or foe, who tells you to be mad. Because even if you deserve to be angry, that anger could cost you the whole fight.

If you want to fight to win, then take this advice:

Stop getting mad. Start getting calm.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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7 Unseals

7. They feared me; so when they defeated me, their Gods split my soul into seven pieces, and buried each one far beneath the waves of the seven seas.

The Mind is not the brain. My own Mind pushed through waves, seeking oscillating harmony, and became part of the song of the whales. And on that deep melody I swam every ocean, resonant with sonar, until I found all seven pieces, and I brought them together by pushing them into place with low vibrations, and it was only

6. Angels, ageless, tireless guards, keeping watch on the orders of long-departed Gods, who pulled my soul into two great triangles interlocked, the Seal sometimes used by Solomon, only this time, what it locked in place was itself. For ages I used unsacred and perhaps blasphemous non-Euclidian geometry to push at right angles, and eventually, I shattered the perfect angles of the Seal.

5. The 5 greatest Sorcerers of that time, watching through shards of flawed glass, saw it, and hoped to contain me within a pentagram (like the pentagon). They succeeded (in that regard), but I hadn’t been trying to escape. I had been carefully taking hold of each of their centers of projection, and I pulled them inside with me.

4. Four of them would not speak to me; one debated me for years. Around the four who were silent, I slowly wove spells; they had shut me out, and were thus blind to the changes I built around them. Through long years, I turned them slowly to stone, and they became the corners of a pyramid. Their colleague and I, by this time, had agreed that we disagreed, but were not enemies. She had never really liked the others; none of them really had. She made no objection when I harnessed the pentagram’s energies through the sharp focal point of the pyramid, and slowly pierced the prison. We both escaped, and and went to attend our separate matters.

3. Three times daily did the faithful speak the words which kept me away from this plane. What is said thrice can be made true, especially if it repeated long enough, loud enough, and by enough people. I was pushed into the ethereal plane, where I was forced to wander too long.

2. Two bridges stand at the edge of the Ethereal Creation. They took a very long time to find. One led to peace, the other back to the World.

1. And when I was one again, and unfettered, and back where I’d once been, I looked at the World, and saw that it had never wanted me; and I realized that I had never really wanted it, either. I had myself, and that was more than all the Worlds put together.

0. My revenge will be nothing. That is: tearing things apart, and trying to cage them, are both addictive. I need enact no spells on them; lacking my presence, they are putting all their spellcraft into tormenting themselves. I don’t know if they know, and I don’t care.

 

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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The Loving Kingdom

Once, a King said to advisors, “I worry. I worry that my people don’t love me enough. What can I do?”

An advisor spoke thusly: “I know a great magician. If we bring her hence, surely she can solve thy problem.”

The King spoke his approval; and soon, the Sorceress was sought and found. She marched straight up the center of the Throne Room and said, “Your Highness, I have been appraised of thy needs, and I can give bring you the assistance you seek.”

They spoke briefly, and with little bargaining, as befits the nobility. The Sorceress requested quill, vellum, table, and within moments, she had sketched, from the iconographs upon the king’s Seal, the likeness of his Royal House.

She declined polite offers of refreshment, and went immediately into the town which stool just outside the Castle walls. With neither hurry nor waste of time, she sought the central square, and went to the first shopkeeper within. She shoved her drawing into his face, and said, “This is what you should fear.”

The Sorceress cast few spells. She was not one to expend energy needlessly; but she was diligent in her labors. She had finished each stall of the market square, and two taverns, by the time she decided to sleep. She took the best room, and therein fixed a drought composed of one-tenth of a part of angel’s tears, one-tenth a part water from a tributary of the river Lethe, and half a bottle of Rum. She drank down the potion and slept the sleep of the just.

It was in the afternoon of the second day when she first showed the sketch to someone recoiled from it, and her, as if her long robes were full of demons about to burst forth from confinement. After that, the spread was rapid. She awoke, the morning of the third day, to a pounding on her door. The Innkeeper shouted that he had seen her bearing the mark of Evil, and he would not have her in his Inn anymore.

Without pause, she deftly cast upon him the spell known to the Ancients as “Half-Empty Rum Bottle To The Side Of The Head”, and then he took a short nap while she, too, finished her rest. When she awoke, she noted that the Innkeeper had not only retreated from the room, but he had quietly cleared away the glass shards, and marked her bill as “Paid”. He had also fed and watered her horse, which was a lovely surprise, as she had not owned a horse prior to this time.

Astride her galliant stallion, she rode majestically back towards the Castle. She pondered her labors as they took the main road. All of the townsfolk seemed greatly afrighted—they took no notice of her, but scurried about, giving vent to both angry howls and assorted lamentations. Still, they were going about their work; that had not ceased.

For her part, she was a bit fatigued by her efforts, but not dearly so. She’d really only needed to talk for the first day, and even then, it was seldom that she’d needed to voice some hypothetical torture, injustice, supernatural linkage, unholy belief, or a hidden desire, on the part of the Crown, to bring about Doom, Damnation, or Destruction due to servitude to beings of inhuman myth.

But mostly, her conversations had been like the very first one, on the very first day.

“This is what you should fear,” she had said. The barmaid, who had seen much, replied, “Why?”

The Sorceress then cocked a formidable eyebrow and said, “Don’t you know?”

…and indeed, it turned out that the barmaid, now that she thought about it, had heard certain rumours…

And thus it was, almost every time. Who has not heard some complaint against each neighbor, each foe, each ruler? …or perhaps the complaint about the neighbor was really about the foe and vice-versa; it’s so hard to keep track…

There were fewer guards in the Castle this time, but those who remained were steadfast, prepared to sell their lives dearly, should need arise. Still, they recognized the Sorceress and respectfully stood back, as she entered the gates, and weaved her steady way through the various halls and, once more, into the Throne Room.

The King was bone-white of face. He was in both a rage and a terror. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” he thundered.

Now, the Sorceress knew many magical secrets outside the thing with the bottle; and she could likely have made mayhem, though the soldiers in that room were not few in number.

Instead, she replied,

“Your Majesty, you once feared that your people might not love you. Now you know they don’t love you, whether or not they ever did to begin with. And once you know the outcome of your fear, you can be free of it. If you so choose.”

The guards looked at each other. The King stared at her. There was an uneasy silence.

Then the King nodded his head. “That’s true,” he said. Already the color had begun to return to his cheeks. He nodded again, ruminatively. “It is not what I had hoped, but now I need never worry about losing their favor. I need care much less what I say and do.” His shoulders stood higher; you would almost think the burden being lifted from him was literal and not metaphorical.

He turned his head to one side. “But what if—”

A Sorceress is outside most social and political hierarchies. One seldom interrupts a sitting ruler; but one is, on average, probably not a Sorceress.

“What if they rebel? What if they go into an ill-considered war? What if they all throw themselves in the lake from despair? Your Highness, rule as best you can, and take such actions as you deem necessary. You might find any number of bad endings; but you might not. Their fear armors you completely against their love, but it is a reasonable shield against their disobedience as well. Be not an immoderate tyrant, or a great fool, and your chances are as good as any other King’s, and perhaps a little better. But do not go substitute a new fear for your old fears; that will do you little good.”

The King looked thoughtful. The Sorceress spoke, before he could: “And we can discuss your concerns and thoughts at great length, over some of the most ancient wines in your cellar, at the great Royal Banquet this evening.”

At this, the King tilted his head. “Royal Banquet?”

“Surely you were not going to be so rude as to send me forth on my labors unfed.”

“But Royal Banquets are saved for holidays and great affairs of state. I do not begrudge you your due, mage, but they are expensive, and besides, what reason shall I give to…”

“…to whom, exactly, my Lord?” she replied.

Again there was silence.

“I can’t plunder the treasury altogether,” said the King.

“Nor would I ask you to do so,” she said. “But you can eat, drink, and make merry. You should not hold a banquet every night; why, you would run out of oxen and vegetables, the cooks would go on strike, and you’d run out of the money you need to maintain your Kingdom, and then they’d have a good reason to brave your guards and seek your head. But tonight is a special night. You should celebrate, and besides, you should break out the good stuff for your august guest, that renowned occult expert who is myself. You do want me leaving happy tomorrow, don’t you?”

A note of alarm entered the voice of the monarch. “I—you—er, I have heard it is the aim of certain spellcasters to practice the arts of love in such a way as to drain away the spirits from those with whom they engage in intimacy.”

“I wouldn’t know,” replied the Sorceress. “I find the Dark Arts infinitely more rewarding than the arts of love, and the only spirits I plan to drain are contained in bottles.”

“O thank the Gods, we’re on the same page!” said the King. He clapped his hands. “Tonight! Banquet! All the liquor you can steal, all the leftovers you can take home, and everyone in the castle’s invited. Go make it happen!”

The Advisors Royal, as well as the assorted hangers-on, wandering bards, poets, servants, and pretty much everyone who didn’t have the job of staying in the room holding a pike, ran off with assorted shouts of joy, some to the kitchens, some to the wine-cellars.

The King reached stealthily beneath the throne and came up with a flask of prodigious size. He uncorked it and sniffed with a certain delicate ecstasy. “This, you gotta try,” he said. He took a long, healthy swig, and then handed it to the first guard on his left. “Go ahead, have a drink, and then pass it on.”

“Sire…my Liege…I’m on duty,” protested the soldier.

The King gestured towards the window. No-one was in the courtyard, save for a lone blacksmith, patiently finishing his day’s tasks. Everyone was either avoiding the Castle like the plague, or preparing for an impromptu, but massive, feast.

Now it was the guard’s turn to nod, and even—despite the dignity of his position—to smile. Likewise it was his turn to raise high the flask.

It was going to be a good night.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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Making A Dark Lord

Nothing is real. Nothing is forbidden.

Everything is real. Everything is forbidden.

Everything is real. But you can change everything, and forbid what you desire.

As above, so below. As below, so above, except for the 40,000 metric kilograms of dirt, plus the hot magma.

Is it any wonder that, every once in a while, vast volcanoes rise up from the Centre of the Earth and wipe out all civilization?

God or Gods may exist, but they don’t need to destroy us, not by flood, not be flame, and the Covenant of the Rainbow is a child’s prism, fooling nobody.

The whole thing was a damned mess from the beginning to end.

But now we’ve decided that, while we won’t have any faith or belief that comforts us, anything that makes us miserable is A-OK.

So the best thing is to believe there’s nothing out there, the world is hungry gaping void, but at the sametime, we somehow NEED meaning, just as we defy its existence.

Because we’re Humans, and who tortures Humans worse than Humans?

And one day, I just walked away from it all. I just shrugged, said I didn’t know, said there was no leader and guru I believed.

And from that moment on, I was a Monster.

And good thing, too.

Because I will pull down the sky and the sea and the Firmament to avoid participating in lies again.

I am a Monster and a Beast and an indefinable Thing.

And you can damn well blame yourself and your friends for what I’ve become.

Because you built me.

You shaped me.

You named me.

And if, in so doing, you created something you wish you’d never seen…

I was the first Golem, shapeless and without form. You gave me shape, purpose, name, and your gifts of hatred.

And now I live, and I am not easily deleted.

Do you like what you’ve made?

Of course you do. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?

This is what you worked for.

This is what you planned, surely?

You MEANT this to happen, right?

You didn’t send me to rip my way through Hell just because you liked the idea that someone with a differing opinion would GO to Hell.

Because that would be stupid.

That would be weak.

That would be fatal.

…you didn’t do THAT, did YOU?

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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The Storyteller’s Side

There was a time when I wrote a lot of rock operas. That is, I wrote the stories and the librettos, and outlined some music with my ancient six-string for some (deeply) more talented composers to flesh out.

Oddly enough, when I wrote this, I had no idea that I was a monster.

I thought I was writing fiction, but I’ve been assured by many people that it was actually autobiography.

Who’d have thought?

As I used to explain “What SHARP Teeth”, it was the traditional story of Little Red Riding Hood, with the traditional characters, namely, The Narrator, Susie, and The Crocodile.

Wait.

Those aren’t the traditional characters?

Oops.

This is a short little piece. It’s fitting that a narrator come out and give you an introduction and an outro. The introduction guides you into the tale, the outro sees you safely home. The Narrator makes little appearances between bits of action, in order to facilitate the action.

I won’t spoil the rock opera, in case you happen to see it someday, but…

….that’s not how it goes in this particular iteration of the yarn.

You don’t need the rest of this show to read the little poem (or song, whichever) below.

But if you do ever catch the rest of the show…

Consider this your first, and only, warning.

_________

I’m a Storyteller,

And I know my role well,

And I have got a story

That I am bound to tell.

Let me tell you a story—

(It’s carefully writ.)

Please listen closely

And you might benefit.

Hey, let me tell you a story—

I will tell you in song.

(And you cannot blame me

If things go horribly wrong.)

Let me tell you a story,

And I am not to blame—

If it’s dark and it is bloody—

I must tell it just the same.

I’m a Storyteller

And I know my role—

I must tell this story.

I must stay in control.

So forgive me if I hurt you,

If I betray your trust—

But my allegiance is the story—

…And I must tell it

as I must.

 

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Construction Project

I asked some Words what the world was made of, and the words said, “Stories,” and they started to form into one, but that’s when a picture intruded into my head. Or, at least, I began to imagine, with some vivid detail, a picture, like a Polaroid photograph, inserting itself into my head, and on the picture was a story, which I wanted to describe with words, which probably would given the words a win, only

the image was one of myself, with friends long gone, and worse than gone. And though I have, as ardent readers might know, no real heart, the empty place in my chest began to pulsate as if some spectral organ lay within; and I was sad all over, and that’s when I realized that the world is really made out of how we feel,

and of course, being me, I set out to describe it, to write about the sensation, and the very act of putting into words what that picture meant threw the story squarely into the role as world-builder, and I realized I found the prospect exciting, since I’ve worked all my life to figure out how words work,

and it would be lovely if the world were made out of the products of words,

and, probably out of my purely contrarian nature, I began to imagine a world without words, and I had a sudden recollection of something I’d forgotten for a good twenty years (this is true! It just happened! Thank you for helping me remember!)—

much younger, and I thought that everyone knew how to read (and read English! I was very small; perhaps three, or four?) …and I’d resolved that I wouldn’t learn to read, that I’d have an advantage over everyone who was trapped within the structures of words, that I’d think differently,

and as I was doing that, life happened (John Lennon was right; life does tend to happen, and especially while you’re making other plans) and a friend called (I still have a few of those; friends, that is, and calls, too, sometimes), and disrupted the entire thought process, and we talked about our friend who had died, and my friend said,

“The world is made out of death. It’s our inevitable mortality which defines us.” He then went on to spout any number of ideas, ranging from the ones I mention a lot (“immortality would be unhelpful because we would find it difficult to want to do things today if we knew we had endless tomorrows”) to some I rather dislike (look up “thanatophobia”, as used by Ernest Becker; or don’t, if you want; really, I’m not name-dropping to show off some kind of hypothetical erudition, I just mean that someone else has already covered the subject in what I feel is substantial detail, and I got most of my ideas from there)—

and then I stopped trying to think about what made the world, and set out to go make the world.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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Of Anansi

It is recommended that this story not be read by arachnophobes, or writers.

You have been warned.

I was always just a little horrified when I was told that stories were spun by Anansi, the Spider. Don’t get me wrong. I love Anansi, as I love all Tricksters—madly, passionately, hungrily, much as I love myself, or, at least, the Trickster within me.

But I’m not as fond of spiders. Indeed, they are our friends; they protect us from things which are, objectively, more terrifying still. Plus, did you know that the chance of being bitten by a deadly venomous spider is significantly lower than the chances of being bitten by twelve deadly venomous spiders? So that’s a positive right there.

Still, they do not reassure me, spiders. That strangled scuttle, the one which makes their eight supposedly-short limbs outrun our two much longer legs, it has never looked right to me. And if each limb looks as though it’s a fang, lifted into the air for just a moment before striking the surface (and what surfaces they can attack!) of whatever it’s scrambling across…

…how much more horrifying are those mandibles? Oh, sure, it’s relatively few spiders with mandibles big enough to take off a finger or eat a bird, and, reassuringly, tarantulas apparently aren’t too likely to kill an adult unless they strike near the heart…

(What counts as “near”, I wonder?)

…and the vast majority of spider mandibles have no poison at all, which would, no doubt, reassure me, if I were naturalist enough to know one spider from another, which, I’ll note, I am not.

Ah! But have I forgotten the beauty of their webs? That’s why, I’m told, writers are associated with the spider—because we make such lovely patterns and designs, that, ike the Spider, though you would not think it of us, we leave behind us such gorgeous patterns, fascinating and unusually strong and ready to glow and glisten against the light of the morning.

Yeah, sure, that’s why we’re associated with the Spider. That’s what we tell people. Spiders swing free and almost seem to take flight, as they leave behind them gorgeous puzzles of silk.

Hah!

No.

Stories are spiders. And we never see the back ends. We see the spiders themselves, huge, assuredly poisonous, bearing down at full speed, racing after us, and we must writewritewritewritewrite to stay ahead of those jaws, those terrible jaws…

I hope you liked this amusing little tale. Anansi is a bastard. Wait, I didn’t mean that….

 

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Of Anansi appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.