Jeff Mach's Blog, page 72
October 31, 2019
A Halloween Monster Mash-Up
(On October 30th, my Twitter account, @darklordjournal, posted unto the world the following boast: https://twitter.com/darklordjournal/status/1189397497439047685:
I’m taking my Halloween poem up to Challenge Level: You name a kind of mythical or legendary monster (anything where I can google some references that are more than 20 years old) – and I’ll put it in the poem. (NO politics or real people, thx.) Hit me.
Here’s the first 13:
Demogorgon
What’s Halloween like with Demogorgon?
More fun than the ghost of J.P. Morgan
His very name’s said to be Heathen Taboo!
He’ll take you to the Mall to get matching tattoos.
The Banshee
Though some are more powerful than the Ban-Sidhe
Non can terrify more than she
For when you hear her monstrous wailing
It’s your candy she’s got! (A horror unfailing!)
The Kraken
The Kraken’s a creature that sanity shuns
Rising from the depths when Doomsday comes
She loves Halloween, so with set of sun
She puts on her costume of Leviathan.
The Ghillie Dhu
At first you think the Ghillie Dhu
Is harmless (and why wouldn’t you?)
But after the thirtieth round of brew,
The floor will crash right into you.
Buckbeak the Hippogriff
Ah, it’s that celebrity, Buckbeak
Been trying to see that guy for a week
He flies where he pleases, and seldom with me
I read about him mostly in TMZ.
The Beast of Bray Road
What IS the Beast of Bray Road?
Everyone wonders; none crack the code
Part Bear, part Wolf, and oddly like Man;
If one part can’t eat you, another part can.
Vampires
They lie in the dark, and how they conspire!
The species that humans call “Vampire”
Their horrible plots and most cunning snares
(Usually involve deciding which outfits to wear.)
The Bogeyperson
They hide behind doors and they lurk under beds
And nibble the nightmares they find in your head
When you turn on the light, they turn into dust
So be kind. Keep the lights out. No, really; you must.
The Hodag
The Hodag’s a mythic beast of Wisconsin
With fangs ’bout the size of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
We’ll never know their agenda or motive
(The last one was eaten by a locomotive.)
The Jötnar.
I’m always excited to see the Jötnar;
They always know where the good blóts are.
The smallest among them could drink a mead river
(So partying with them is tough on the liver.)
The Hydra
The Hydra’s heads regenerate
And Adventurers say, “Well, that’s just great.”
But if you cut off a head, and with flame sear the stump
You will, by TWO OTHER HYDRAS, get jumped.
(Yeah, I get that mythology says burning the stumps prevents the heads from growing back. Who do you think SPREAD those rumors in the first place? Monsters ain’t stupid, y’know.)
The Hippocampus
Secretly, the Hippocampus
Wants to have hooves (so it can stamp us)
They abide in Atlantis, in the watery deep
(And plan their return. And they. never. sleep.)
The Kraken (version II)
A horrible note: every three years
A nuclear submarine just disappears.
Humans believe they rule the waves
But nothing, ever, from the Kraken saves.
Imps
Dear Hominids (thou arrogant chimps) –
I hate to inform you, but you’ve got imps.
You thought you had plans? They’ve another arrangement
They’ll use your whole species for their entertainment.
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October 30, 2019
How To Be Eaten By Werewolves
(This is a self-contained story in its own right, but I will also admit it’s an excerpt from my hypothetical novel, “The Bed Monster Completely Fails To Save The World“)
Of all the things Bed-Monsters really want to do (the vast majority of which are “be comfortably unconscious and snoring in a frequency completely undetectable to other species”)—risking our skins isn’t one of them.
We are the undisputed world champions of hide-and-seek. It’s indisputable, in part because we are so good at it that nobody else knows we are playing. We’re Hiding; they’ve forgotten they’re even Seeking anymore.
Ironically, I suppose, that might make us part of the problem. Humanity’s not wrong in thinking that there are beings which lurk outside of their view, nor are they incorrect, either in folk-tale or modern thought, to believe that many of those creatures are inimical to humanity.
But most sentient beings are, to one extent or another, potentially inimical to each other. There are lots of ways to create winning solutions in the competition for, say, food. Depending on various factors of biology, methodology, and geography, you might eat all the food and leave the others to starve; you might eat all the others; but you might also switch to a different habitat. You might switch to a different food. You might even assist each other. I’m not saying it always works out well; just that it doesn’t have to work out poorly.
Take my own species. The Land of Nod is present in the myths of many nightbreed, even playing what is (to us) a rather surreal role in certain Vampire heresies. Others don’t tend to explore it as a “real” place, which is rather a hoot, considering how weird their ideas of reality are. But we did. We found you could go there, if deep in dream, and find certain nourishments of the spirit which, curiously enough, supplant what might ordinarily be needs of the body. We spend most of our time being quite actively asleep, in dreamland.
And so we learned to conceal ourselves. And so we changed in body and mind. And so we pass through evenings of phantasm (and, to be fair about it, days of phantasm; really, we’re there pretty much all of the time)—and spend not a lot of hours in the waking world.
It’s part of why we inhabit, not faraway places, but those very near to humans: they have such a rich subconscious life, and the brainwaves they emit though slumber are like little trails going to astonishing places, where one finds the best goblin-fruits and assorted slumbering sundries which meet our needs.
Until they started leading us into madness.
We think we know why.
Humans have always thought we exist, because we do. They’ve always thought we meant to harm them, which doesn’t speak well for the public relations of our ancient ancestors.
They have not always thought that we, the nightbreed, were everywhere and planning to kill them all, and we aren’t, and we never have been, but:
I don’t think anything will convince them of that. I think they’re determined to smoke us out by setting fire to everything.
Which is horrible long-term planning.
And very, very human.
* * *
Which brings me to where I am here, now, and today, namely:
not safely under the bed of some relatively sane fellow sentient, but rather, out from under my bed, and trying not to get eaten by werewolves.
The best way to avoid being eaten by werewolves, in my opinion, is to exist on some entirely different planet, where no werewolves have ever been conceptualized. This won’t actually keep you safe in the longterm, but it’s a substantially more effective survival strategy than many of the likely alternatives, such as living on Earth.
If you want to be slain and devoured by Loup-Garou, though, here are some excellent things to try:
For instance, you could do something they’d consider bad for “the environment”. I find the sentiment laudable, but the eagerness with which they rend the flesh of miscreants is troubling to me. Terra’s not the largest planet in the galaxy, but it’s quite a lot older than any of us, and quite a lot larger than anything a reasonable person might try to put into their mouth. So while I think there are plenty of quite actionable offenses—if somebody out there is manipulating comets and wants another Chicxulub crater, I’ll aim a couple of claws in their direction myself—but not everything’s quite so clear-cut.
I feel like their supposed ability to detect when “something’s wrong with Gaia!” is not unlike my own ability to detect that something’s wrong on the Internet: possibly subjective, not necessarily productive. Have a factory that pollutes a river, kill some fish, maybe make some humans ill, and they’re on top of you like hippos collapsing into mud, which makes sense to me.
But eat all the top executives, shut down the factory, throw the humans out of work, reduce the available machine-usable energy in that area, destroy a piece of the manufacturing base, cause longterm poverty leading to a lower quality of life and therepon fewer resources to devote to environmental challenges rather than survival? Oddly enough, they find that less inspirational, particularly if the last place said executives were seen was within the jaws of the aforementioned lupines. For an ancient species, the Garou sure care a lot more about whether you drive a shiny electric car than how much coal had to be mined and burnt to charge the batteries. Either there was am esoteric segment of the Industrial Revolution which involved unscrupulous use of Garou fur, or they’re bad at economics.
Also, no matter how Goth you’re feeling at a given time, try not to say nice things about Vampires in front of Garou. I mean, I get it; as everyone knows, they resent the time they spent being pets of blood-sucking angst-machines. Reasonable. I mean, know who really likes Vampires? Nobody, least of all Vampires. Still, there’s no need to pick an eternal fight with the Kindred. The Kindred are already doing that. I understand holding a grudge, but if you’re really a species of warriors, maybe—from a tactical point of view—it makes sense to choose an enemy that’s not already hell-bent on exterminating itself? I mean, the Technarchy’s likely to create a fairly clean and sterile world, buat replacing flesh with cybernetic magicks doesn’t feel environmentally friendly to me. Why not tackle them?
(My cynical answer, if I were to respond to my own question, is that it’s much easier to bite an individual than to deal with a large and well-organized opponent, even if said opponent is significantly more important than the individual in question. But don’t trust what I say; I’m up way past my bedtime; my alarm was set to go off in 2157.)
And really, really: Don’t ever let on that you take them anything less than 100% seriously at all times. The Garou are an honored and significant element of the Nightbreed, and they are fearsome and…and…
…they look like very big people who are overenthusiastically cosplaying Wookies. I’m sorry, they really do.
Or giant, really ugly teddy bears.
What they ACTUALLY are is teeth and sinew rolled up in a massive all-encompassing blanket of fur and anger management problems. Which is why so many things upset them.
So yes. All these things will make the Garou terribly irascible. All of them stand a good chance of getting you killed. Although, I suppose, if you really, REALLY want to be torn to segments so small that your pathetic remains could, if placed in a salt-shaker, be sprinkled over a catered meal for forty, if you sincerely want to make werewolves howlingly, barkingly, unspeakably beyond unreaged, you could show up uninvited when they’re having a Moot.
That’s where I am now, of course. Because I’m an idiot.
* * *
They haven’t noticed me yet. I’m underneath something. As legends suggest, Garou have preternaturally incredibly senses, even before you bring various types of magical or hunter training into the equation, but nothing hides better than a bed-monster. Bed-monsters aren’t exactly the most glamorous of beasts, but if you ever want something capable of making even your shadow wheel about in sudden panic and shout, “Who’s there?”, call upon us.
(It’ll have to be your shadow. We don’t have shadows. Because even our own shadows can’t find us.)
We hide. You really won’t know we’re here unless we make ourselves known. Hell, there’s one of us behind you right now.
…of course you can’t see it. If you could, it wouldn’t be hiding, would it? If you want jump scares, find a species that likes attention.
Like these murderous walking carpets all around me, for example.
The Moot is a sacred meeting of the varied tribes of the Garou, and is conducted with all the dignity and efficiency you’d expect from a bunch of bad-tempered dogs on Godzilla-grade sorcerous steroids.
I’m no expert in these things, but if I had to guess, I’d say the optimal time to interrupt something like this would be a week after it was over.
From really far away.
By registered mail, if possible.
I know what you’re thinking. If I were dead, I wouldn’t be writing this. To which I respond: what part of ‘supernatural being’ do you not understand? Oh, if I die, it will be intensely bad; the Afterlife of my people is not a good place, and also, it’ll mean I’ll have failed, and also, it’ll probably mean you’re doomed, too.
But I’m pretty sure I’ll be telekinetic enough to type.
If I do die, please be comforted knowing that I will not haunt you.
I won’t even go near you.
Because you’ve already got someone under your bed.
Good luck to me, and sweet dreams to you.
________________
The unspeakable Villainpunk Jeff Mach frequently seeks new, interesting ways to rewrite this part, and then often ends up just shifting a few words around, going back in time to before he wrote this initially, and hitting “Publish”, so that this is technically new. Don’t tell anyone.
Jeff is a writer and creator who has long aspired to be the sort of person who neither needs to promote his other work at the bottom of his short stories, nor need speak of himself in the third person. Sadly, in both regards, he has failed.
To visit the light at the beginning of the tunnel, click here .
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October 27, 2019
Nevers After
(At the risk of recursion, I’ll link back to my earlier short-short “Fairytales For Bad People“, whose own introduction, in turn, links here. I was starting to write a little prologue, all about oral tradition, and the printing press versus the electron, and then I decided: To Hell with all of that jazz. What I wrote instead was the first part of this poem.)
I.
Of fairytales,
of tooths and nails
of Princesses
and epic fails:
of apples sweet
(with poisoned meat)
and foxes fleet
and oven-heat
and Wolves
(and Wolves!),
with fools to eat:
Let me tell you yarns that grate:
Of woodcutters arriving late
Of monsters (who will neatly plate
Those who thought Joy came from from Fate.)
Now: Fairytales!
Now: Epic fails!
Now: Princesses with Goblin nails.
Come follow me for queer derails;
with darkling winds
let’s fill your sails.
II.
I’m not the first (I know I’m not)
To spin you tales of Fairy rot,
To want a world that’s un-forgot
That Fairytales are tangled knots:
If Ever After’s newfound station’s
“Always end in jubilation,”
Then things are broke, in this iteration:
Foreknowledge leads to soul starvation.
See, once, these tales with blood were filled
Heads sometimes lost, breath often stilled
Bones for bread were ground and milled
Ere endings could be sewn, or tilled.
III.
Now, I don’t mean each tale must end
With the death of a love or a dream or a friend
That things, once fixed, must now un-mend;
That journeys prove un-worth the wend.
It’s only this that I aver:
If you’d the heart awake, or stir,
Make thoughts which, ’til now, never were,
Make unexpected things occur:
You can write for fame, you can write for glory
You can write to get out of Purgatory
But if you’d write a decent story
Remember:
complacency’s predatory.
IV.
Let me pause and be (briefly) transparent,
And remind you: I am quite aberrant
If I say “I dare”, instead of “I daren’t!”
It’s because I’m deranged and strange and errant.
So before I offer you camaraderie
Remember that I’m as cracked as pottery
On sanity’s ledge, I’m drunk and tottery
When it comes to weird, I’ve won the lottery.
But I say: come join our cabal
Write like an Orc in an Elf-bar brawl!
Make mythos that no-one could fail to recall
And to the normal, be never in thrall:
S
ome tales should end with happy laughter
And some with hangings from highest rafter
Come join with us! Be a monster-crafter!
Full of unpredictable
Nevers-After.
________________
Jeff Mach, Dark Lord, Villainpunk, and reader of too many dictionaries, feels there are other things in life besides sleeping, exercising, drinking coffee, and making things; he just doesn’t know what they are, and doesn’t really intend to find out.
Jeff is a writer and creator who has long aspired to be the sort of person who neither needs to promote his other work at the bottom of his short stories, nor need speak of himself in the third person. Sadly, in both regards, he has failed.
To boldly go where an uncertain number of beings has gone before, click here .
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October 26, 2019
The Monstrous Meal of Tom Ramsey
You’ve perhaps not heard of Tom Ramsay; he’s not the most famed of Villains, though I can assure you that he is quite a scandalous figure, and that has meaning in his social circle, where ill-repute is considered every bit as damning as, oh, say, human sacrifice. W. Somerset Maugham was kind enough to write about him a bit, and noted, among many other sterling qualities, the excellence of his table.
As is well-known, I was convinced, by certain persons who will not be herein named, to purchase a time-travel mechanism. After countless adventures, all of them quite horrible, I came to the conclusion that whatever Powers exist out there, they really, really hate time travel. The only way to make any use of that particular phenomenon without opening up enough ill-fated Potentiality to make a vengeful Djinn positively hum…is to summon its chrononautical abilities purely for trivialities.
So it is that I decided to travel back to the 19th century, wherein, upon presenting my credentials as a thorough cad with a penchant for playing baccarat and losing big, I was able to procure an invitation to one of Tom’s little soirées. Being, as you know, the generous sort, I snagged the cart du menu for your edification, and I took notes.
You’re welcome.
Dinner at the Lair of Tom Ramsey
Service à la Russe
Aperitif
Crème de cassis de Dijon avec Beaune Greves Vigne de L’Enfant Damien; Bouchard, 1864
(I was pleasantly surprised to note that somehow, Tom had gotten ahold of a Burgogne from, not before, but during the Blight. Impressive!)
Tom proposed what I later learned was his customary preprandial toast:
“Long life to all, and to any who, instead, die sudden and inexplicable deaths, your dessert is mine.”
Soup Course
Potage a la Julienne. This refreshing, almost clear broth was, I am told, stock from the marrow of a fresh-shot Unicorn. I found mine delightful; but the person next to me noticed a hoof in hers. The table roundly congratulated her, saying that it was good luck. This was true; in fact, it was so lucky that, before the bowls could be cleared, she was kidnapped by a Leprechaun. I finished her drink.
Salad Course
Salade Wyndham. Let me tell you, nothing cleanses the palate of the fear of vengeful Wee Folk like the discovery of A BOWLFUL OF FRICKIN’ TRIFFIDS.
Apparently, I passed out at this point. Fortunately, one of the guests was a physician, carrying the tools of his trade, and he applied a healthy tincture of Laudanum, then revived me with some sal volatile. The 19th century is GREAT.
Palate-Cleanser
Assorted Fruits of the Lost World. In honor of his successful conquest of the far-off land of Grover’s Mills, New Jersey, Sir Ramsey served a selection of exotic drupes, including:
Sliced Passionfruit
Diced Crime-of-Passionfruit
Iced Dispassionfruit
Candied Cherries in Brandied Sherry
and
Plums.
(Technically, ‘candied’ anything is going to be too sweet to leave the palate neutral, but I gotta tell ya, whatever you gotta do to make sherry into brandy, we should do it more often. I had a brief lie-down at this point.)
Intermède
Warmed Asparagus Spears. I missed these, being, as I mentioned, briefly non-upright. They didn’t miss the person across from me, and servants quietly carried away the impaled body of our former companion. I began to realize that Tom is serious about his dessert. I was revived by my good, good friend the physician, who injected me with a seven-and-a-half per cent solution. My heartbeat, which had slowed down to a pace more in keeping with geologic timeframes than human ones, now sped up in a manner similar to merry clip-clopping of iron-shod stallions as they charge towards you with an attacking Mongol horde on their backs. Refreshing!)
Fish Course
Angry Lobster. I had thought this a modern invention, but it seems there was a Ramsey family version which long predated the food fads with which I am accustomed. The Ramsey’s tradition is that the seafood course be ‘as invigorating as the sea itself’, to quote Tom. These huge lobsters had been bred over the course of generations for sweet flesh and unbridled aggression. Tom waited until a lull in the conversation and suddenly loosed them upon us. He was kind enough to recommend that we arm ourselves with the medieval weapons which covered the walls; I had thought them to be decorative, but they were (fortunately) quite functional.
The resulting battle was pitched, bloody, and rather like something out of the Divine Comedy, and between the various substances in my veins, I’m not sure I would have believed any of it, if I hadn’t taken a massive claw to the left outer thigh, leaving a scar I bear to this day. We, the survivors, with that fast and lifelong bond sometimes brought about by near-death experiences, feasted with much joy, and then we plundered the bodies of the fallen for treasure, for such be the immutable law of the briny sea!
Accompaniment: Appreciative sips of an excellent Königsbacher Riesling 1827, served chilled in champagne flutes; and Grog, chugged.
Mignardese
Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked In A Pie. Chef Anatole himself came in, and, in a Gallic accent thick enough to form a meringue, stressed in the strongest of terms, that blackbirds were out of season, and that he had, therefore, substituted a murder of crows. After centuries of outwitting the semi-sentient scarecrows which dwell at the dimly-lit edges of the Ramsey estate, these juicy and rapacious bastards are a treat to the diner, and a threat to all life on Earth. This year, they’re in the pie; next year, things might be different.
Suggested Accompaniment: Gin, swigged straight from the bottle.
Dessert
A selection of fromages de campagne, accompanied by wormwood-soaked cigars, because why the hell not, right? At this time, Lord Ramsay congratulated those of us who remained. True to his word, he consumed more cheese than I would have believed possible in man or beast, and seemed none the worse for it; I’m not sure, at this point, that he’s even marginally human, and I have no desire to find out.
Finally, Tom offered us selections from the rest of his justly-famed wine cellar. He had recently acquired a cask of Amontillado from, he said, “someone who has no further use for it,” and we washed that down with bottles and bottles of cold water imported straight from the River Lethe, but it was to no avail; I remember every accursed minute of that meal.
In good news, though, it turns out that Chef Anatole, while unable to pass into the next world due to his sins on Earth, and therefore technically a ghost, is fully able to wield kitchen implements with the same skills he employed while living. I dug up some of his bones (the Ramsay estate is now a shopping mall, and Anatole was living the hellish existence of a French culinary artist trapped in a food court), and he now inhabits my own abode. I’m having a dinner party next week; can you make it?
________
Author, musician, Villainpunk, and terrible chef Jeff Mach makes only one kind of food, if he can help it, and that would be “reservations”.
Jeff is a writer and creator who has long aspired to be the sort of person who neither needs to promote his other work at the bottom of his short stories, nor need speak of himself in the third person. Sadly, in both regards, he has failed.
To visit Plato’s Cave, click here .
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October 25, 2019
A Pilfered Ignorance
(December 12th, 1887)
And now, dear Sir:
You have expressed to me on more than one occasion that you despise the literary device called “allegory”; that you cannot imagine how a well-reasoned thesis could ever be assisted by the introduction of fiction into the realm of the purely rational.
I don’t intend to argue that point, Sir, but I’ve chosen to answer your question with an allegory.
The choice of this device is purely coincidental, I am entirely sure, Sir. As always, I am careful to hold myself to a standard of behavior which is continually beyond any possibility of reproach. I am certain that no impartial observer, if any existed, would disagree. And you, yourself, are in whatever hole in the Earth has swallowed you; you are in no position, if I might say so, to evidence displeasure in any format which has meaning to me. Should you write me a rebuke, I will simply assume that it is you, yourself, making excellent use of the many fine attributes of irony, whose understanding has been infused, by you, into my psyche with what I think we can agree is great success. (On a related note, I would be appreciative if you could arrange for another copy of the satires of Juvenal to fall into my hands; the reading library here is, shall we say, a little sparse in that regard.)
Though I suppose none of that will matter, should this missive reach the hands of authorities ecclesiastical. Should such a thing happen, please know, O learned fathers of the Church, that I am but a foolish girl, play-acting at the art of being an essayist, and I tell but the merest fairytales, of no more spiritual import than any story of enchanted Princesses and speaking beasts of the field. I know not what I do. What female mind could actually conceive something as complex as a discourse on moral philosophy? There is no meaning here; I pray you, do not waste the time of your august personages in reading further. Consider the words beneath to have no meaning at all. Really. Just stop reading now and send me back to the Reformatory. There’s no need for hot irons; I assure you, I have pre-emptively learnt my lesson; and if you damage me, however shall I work the printing press, thus allowing me to be of some small benefit to the society which nourishes my iniquitous self?
(Oh, thank you, Sir, for ensuring that I consider the consequences of each and every action. You’ve assured me that none but you will see what I write; but now I’m thinking about just what would happen if the Church found some of these little notes. In completing even this, the first of your assignments, I note that I am embarking on a course of likey spiritual damnation and distinct physical danger. Have I mentioned how I appreciate your lessons in inductive reasoning? I haven’t? No, nor shall I. Sir.)
And thus, to tonight’s parable.
Once upon a time, the Gods decided to gift Mankind with Free Will.
(As their existence far predated that of Mr. Hume, they didn’t give it that name. They called it, rather, “Choice”, which seems a poor substitute; but linguistics is not our study tonight, especially as you haven’t taught me any, Monsieur la Bête.)
Why would the Gods want us to have “choice”? One theory is that they love us, and want us to be happy. It is my understanding that this theory is particularly popular among idiots, who do not pay much attention to the world around them.
I have my own ideas, but I’ll keep them to myself; there’s no need to compound blasphemy with blasphemy, eh?
All right.
So first to attempt to bring this gift to Man was the God of the Sun. While he did not fashion Humans himself, he was perhaps the first deity to know their worship, and he brought them light for their working days, and life for their agriculture.
He appeared in the center of the gathering-place of the tribe of humans, in the marketplace.
(Much could be said, Sir, about the state of humans before Free Will, and many questions asked. Oh, you didn’t make me cynical; I was there, Sir, long ago. But you taught me that there were certain words for certain kinds of unfaith in Mankind. Besides, this is an allegory, not a tale of natural philosophy. So I’ll attribute to them some of the instincts of the humans we know today; it is my own certainty that you can extrapolate what humans would be like if they had thought, and conversation, but if their belief in individual, unique choice were even less than it is now. I spent three nights considering that very point, and was rescued from profound depression only by the thought of the sorts of consequences I might incur if I was not, as instructed, finished with this assignment in a week. So I’ll leave that metaphysics to you, dear Sir, and continue.)
The God stood proud, high atop a column of flame. All who looked upon him marveled; all would tell their children of this day. And he spoke to them, and said, “From this day forward, all of you are free! You may choose to worship, or not. You may choose to act as you please. Your movements are not predestined, and your fates are your own!”
The humans stood stock-still, motionless, as if afraid even to breathe. The Sun-God spoke again, a touch impatiently, “Go ahead, go and do what you think is best, based on how you see the world around you!”
Silence.
At last, the Sun-God said, “Speak. One of you, speak.”
Tentatively, a man in the back raised up his hand. The Sun-God nodded to him. “O Lord of the Skies, Giver of Day,” he said, “What would you have us do with this gift?”
The Sun-God smiled. “Anything you want. I simply hope you’ll make the right choices.”
The humans exchanged glances. Finally, the original speaker raised his voice. “Thank you, O Shining One,” he said. “Would you kindly let us know which choices are the right ones?”
It takes great patience to keep the Sun on a straight path through the sky, day in and day out, and not let it deviate course except, obviously, to avoid the Star-Wolf. The Sun-God stood in the market for a long time, explaining that the entire idea was that the mortals make their own choices and not his. He was frustrated by their limited intellect (and, perhaps, his own; but what would I know of the limitations of shiny men?)
In addition, it is passing difficult for even our own churchmen to explain that we must simultaneously be obedient, and yet take responsibility for our each and every sin. I would not like to be in the position of an Immortal, faced, through a combination of certain metaphysical realities and a heaping dose of pride, with maintaining the idea that he was superior to those around him, but that, nevertheless, their choices mattered.
One might get certain ideas, Sir. One might, Sir, question one’s own inferiority. And how many superiors, in the depths of their breasts, truly desire to hear that? The shinier the boot, the more the wearer wants to to be sure who does the wearing, and who does the polishing.
Or so I have heard, Sir.
Eventually, with a long head-shake of annoyance, he took off for the firmament.
In the mead-hall of the Gods, the Goddess of Love looked patronizingly at the muscular figure whose chariot draws the Solar orb across the horizon of our little planet. “This calls for education. And…persuasion.” Her friends cheered; the closer companions of his Heliotropic Majesty grimaced, and in a shimmer of the petals of some exotic pink bloom, the Goddess flew from the place of the Gods, to the place where Mortals dwell, eventually alighting in the selfsame marketplace, astride a stallion of notably exceptional…stallionhood. A sort of symbol, you see, Sir. The powerful are awfully fond of such things.
If you’re a mere human, surely it is life-changing to have one God appear before you. The second God is equally awesome, though perhaps just a tad less stunning. Humans adapt to precedent with remarkable ease. Or, as I used to say while sawing industriously at my bars with some laughably inadequate bit of stolen cutlery, “One can get used to near anything, unless you make it hurt.” Complacency, Sir; it sets in.
I can’t speak much to the vagaries of fashion, but what the Goddess wore was red and flowing and timeless. She spread her hands, and the rapidly re-gathered crowd grew silent. They waited an uncomfortably long time; it might occur to one that the Goddess enjoyed being looked at, and might have been a bit distracted away from what one might call priorities, begging your leave, Sir.
Eventually someone…was it the same one who’d spoken to the Sun-God?—asked of her, “What would you have of us, O Lady? What would you have us do?”
Smiling radiantly, the Goddess replied, “I would have you do whatever you, yourselves, desire, O mortals.”
What happened next would not, I believe have surprised anyone who’s spent at least a year at Ms. Schrab’s, or any other house of reformative justice in this great country, Sir, at least in my experience. The fact that it surprised the Goddess of Love suggests to me certain things about Love itself which are rather logical conclusions, if one makes inferences from such novels. (I hasten to report, Sir, that such things are the only literary materials available within this household. Please, Sir, I beg of you: send books.)
The Goddess watched the proceedings vantage point of height sufficient to make sure she was not entangled in the proceedings, and, eventually, she vacated the scene, with a certain urgency.
Her actions were not without longterm benefit for humankind, however. Even now, we remember the calendrical moment, if not precisely the year of this event, and the first day of May is well-known as a day when close interaction with certain of one’s peers, particularly in the fields, is said to be correlated with bountiful effects upon the upcoming harvest.
In the halls of the Gods, there was argument. Perhaps “free will” was not of utility; would it, perhaps, be possible to replace previously thinking beings entirely with amusing automata made of, for example, advanced building materials of the time, such as poorly-made bricks, or, perhaps, other, slightly-more-poorly-made bricks?
The Gods began arguing amongst each other; well, honestly, sir, more like a very angry droning. There was a church ‘cross from Ms. Schraab’s, and one had the opportunity to hear matters liturgical on…a right regular basis. It’s a bit of a personal belief that, were I the recipient of continuous and repetitive chanting, it might become a habitual matter of speech. It is for this reason that I have endeavored to improve my vocabulary under your tutelage; that, and your firm policy of ducking my head in the water barrel any time I said, “I don’t know” more than two times in succession.
At any rate, it was during this clamor that Thief, without word or ceremony, left the Divine halls.
Now, Thief had another name at the time. She might have been the Goddess of some now-forgotten thing, perhaps. But that’s not important. What matters is that, at her own pace, she made her way down to that selfsame marketplace.
She had no brightling shine, nor an enchanting garment. It’s not sure how she marked her own divinity. It is sometimes said that we, her descendants, wear Shadows as if they were cloaks. But Thief, now. She wore Shadows like a crown.
Her divine nature was obvious to the onlookers, as it would have been to anyone. The questioner, having in one day communicated with two gods, was not entirely impressed. He asked, and it might almost have been a challenge,
“And what did you have to tell us?”
Thief smiled, that particular look which has made so many erroneously perceive us as wearing masks—when all we really wear is eyes which do not disclose the private matters of our heads.
“Nothing,” she said.
And thus, for the first time today, a mortal speak pure truth to the Gods.
“You lie!” he shouted. She said nothing, only gave that smile again. With a snarl, he lept towards her, and the rest of the crowd followed. She leapt from her perch and fled…or at least, there was a Chase, and she was in front of it. Could she have lost them sooner? I think so. I suspect it with but a minor application of divine will, she might have dazzled them all into blindness, or disappeared, down to the last of Mr Dalton’s atoms, a single instant.
Instead, she let them corner her, finally, in (for she is a traditionalist) a particularly dark alley.
They demanded, again, that she tell them why she came, what her message was, and she simply shrugged.
And so they tore her to pieces.
This one took her brain, thinking he could capture her thoughts.
That one took her hands, thinking he could deduce her gestures.
Those took her blood, figuring it contained something special. He took her eyes and she got the parts—suffice to say that every bit of her went to a member of the crowd.
And Humankind spent a while in goulish contemplation of all the bits of Thief, thinking that if the could just recreate her, they would have the knowledge of the Gods, with no more evasions. As each little group tried to figure out what each piece might have done, they made a thousand guesses, they experimented, they fought and they argued and they went an uncountable multitude of divergent ways, until, at the end, Thief’s body had been worn away to nothing by the abrasion of so many hands, and Mankind couldn’t remember a time when we didn’t have a legion of buzzing thoughts in our brains. And now, while many stay in their allotted slots and grooves throughout their lives, the world also turns up misfits, willing or otherwise, those who rebel, those who bite, those who question when ordered into silence.
What happened to Thief? Oh, she can steal things that aren’t even there. Unlike Osiris, who needed his wife to piece him together, Thief found every bit of herself, and assembled it in the manner that most pleased her. If she was changed by the experience, she’s the only one who knows.
This is the not-secret thing that Thief understood, and which, as far as I know, she never taught the Gods:
For free will could be no gift. No one can give you that which you ultimately need make completely your own.
I believe, sir, this is a lesson for me. Bear in mind that I should do my very best to be stubborn and not learn it. They say that makes the learning process all the sweeter for the teacher. Is that true?
That, Sir, is my allegory on Free Will.
I could have made it an essay, but, well, Sir:
I didn’t.
____________
(Technically, this story originally had a rather longer beginning. I cut it for the sake of time; 2600 words is fairly long, by the standards of my short stories.
(This tale has a will of its own. It clearly wants to be a book.
(I’m thinking it over.)
To visit the place where they mined the green cheese that made the moon, click here
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October 23, 2019
9 Favorite Villainpunk Toasts
It’s difficult being the Toastmaster for gatherings of Villains. While it is a baseless canard that Villains will attack or kill each other at the slightest provocation (come now; unless we assume that all Villains are foolish or suicidal, why would anyone go to a party which might result in one’s regrettable demise, with one’s work half-complete and one’s henchpersons standing about, unsure whether or not to press that big red button labeled ‘Doomsday’?)—it is true that Villains are, at best, a difficult audience. The Orange Menace recently addressed the Assemblage Of Not Very Nice People, and tried that whole “Champagne for my real friends…” line. They’re still picking shards of Piper-Heidsieck bottles out of her cloak.
Still there are a few surefire lines which will get everyone raising a glass and nobody pointing a disintegrator ray. (Or at least, if they do, your death will probably be swift enough that you won’t even notice, which is the next best thing). For your Villainpunk edification, we’ve presented them here.
10. “So drink deep, dear friends, and worry not; I wouldn’t waste good poison on you. That’s what the alligators are for.”
9. “Someday, the stars themselves will bleed forth the oozing, incomprehensible shapes of Those things which have long been gone and which, through our efforts, shall return. And on that day, may they eat us all quickly, and get it over with!”
8. “Near,
Far,
Wherever you are,
I will never forget you
That’s why I bought this bar.”
7. “May the half-life of our friendship and camaraderie be inversely proportionate to the projected life-spans of the foolish so-called ‘Heroes’ who even now bang on our door, unaware that the only thing on the other side is a tribe of particularly ill-tempered Scottish werewolves.”
6. “In joy we assemble,
In joy do we meet;
In Hell, look me up;
I’ve booked a penthouse suite.”
5. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and that definitely means more whiskey for us!”
4. “I’ve plundered the land, and each of the seven seas,
Met giant spiders, murder sharks, and mad killer bees
Even been attacked by carnivorous trees…
But I’ve never seen faces as ugly as these.
Let’s drink until we forget why we wear masks, comrades!”
3, “May you live a long, happy, productive life while those stupid Heroes are still chasing you through the malaria-infested jungles of Hoboken, and may they finally realize you’re alive only after the governments of the world have given in to your demands and each and every Hero realizes that, when they get home, they’re going to be shot out of a really large cannon aimed at the Moon. Or some moon, somewhere; we’re not really gonna aim that carefully, to be honest.”
2. “To a high wind in your sails, a high tide ‘neath your prow, a high moon above, and High Piracy ahead!”
“To (permanently) absent enemies.”
_________
We’re building a culture of Villainpunk, one bit at a time. Because Villaipunk’s not just a way of life, it’s also a way of death to all who dare oppose our unholy reign of evil. Plus, you get to wear a cloak!
Here’s my book. You could totally buy it.
Here’s Evil Expo. You should go.
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October 22, 2019
Under The Nether Bed
Stoned out of their minds on Hobbit blood,
Snorting Dwarven gold,
Dragons getting the munchies,
Eyes bugged-out and rolled
From side to side in lizard slide
Stark with spark in threatening arc;
Wiggy as wizards and twisted as twine,
Penumbral beasts grown bored of myth
Beyond the barrier line.
What alchemy could burn a blood
That lives to father fire?
What herb or weed could fry a mind
That swallows souls entire?
Heat and steam and Autumn gleam
Stoked and smoked, by blood invoked
Ticklish and tipsy and sordid and strange
Dwelling two inches inside your left ear
Beyond touch of time or change.
–And slapped by reality’s cosmic broom..!
“Shoo! Shoo! You nasty things!”
Alien eyes glow crazed in darkness
Closet walls chafe green-scaled wings
Spaceless room and breathless tomb
Hid by lid and trap and id—
wished away by generations,
confidently thought destroyed,
they’ve found a hole
and they’re
annoyed…
____________
This is my bestselling, satirical Dark Lord novel .
This is my Villainpunk event, Evil Expo.
“Under The Nether Bed” ..1997, I believe. It was before I read Terry Pratchett’s “Guards, Guards!”, which (this is not, I think, a spoiler) also deals with the question of where Dragons really got to.
I could definitely write a book or two of Dragon stories; but I don’t know that it’s what the world needs. Besides, not all Dragon stories are necessarily Villainpunk, and I think I want more Villainpunk in my life.
And I don’t want to reveal too many of the secrets of Dragons.
They don’t tend to like that.
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October 21, 2019
All Genre Writers Are Monsters
Today, it was declared that all authors of genre fiction are monsters.*
The rational goes thusly:
We live in an unjust world.
Science fiction and fantasy allow us to escape, if only temporarily, from that world.
If we spend time escaping from that world, we are not fighting injustice, and therefore, we are complicit in that injustice.
Conclusion: those who help us escape are monsters.
Now, all monsters must be found and destroyed; otherwise, how will creatures of virtue sleep at night? We ought to call for the immediate destruction of all genre fiction and its creators, but—
That would let those villains off much too easy.
No. No. They must repair the damage they have done.
Let people escape, have they? Those fiends. They must atone.
They must build cages.
By decree, from this day forth:
All genre fiction must clip the wings of the imagination!
Every work of genre fiction must needs pause at appropriate moments to remind you that the dishes need doing, the bed won’t make itself, and your day job (or your central planning committee, or the leader of your religious or spiritual organization) has expectations, and you’d best get off your tail and get back to as much drudgery as you can find.
Happy endings should be amended to, “Of course, this was totally unrealistic, and won’t work for you, so don’t think about it, buster,” and sad ones should be emphasized with simple clarity: “See? THIS. THIS IS WHAT YOU GET. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.”
The moral of every story should be “…but all this airy-fairy stuff was totally unrealistic, and basically a bunch of horse-pucky”.
Your spaceships are hereby grounded, and your Pegasi officially have agoraphobia.
All flights of fancy deserve to end in only one place: the Bermuda Triangle of the imagination.
Happy landings.
____
* So:
Ordinarily, I put some more information about myself at the bottom of my stories. I also don’t usually satirize Real Life (whatever that might be) quite so directly.
The actual statement was that all readers and writers of genre fiction are fascists, but I secretly substitute “monsters” for that word on a regular basis. Don’t tell.
As an important note (not that I expect this article to get tremendous traffic, but it’s still something worth mentioning)—I am including the tweet which drew me in, which, in turn, names the original poster. If you know any of my work, you know that I very much do not want anyone to use this as a reason to attack either of these folks. Rather, I firmly believe that we live in an entirely ridiculous age, and one of the things which has made it quite so painfully surreal is that we’ve (at least) two horrible, and complimentary, bad habits: we forget the past, and we see the present without context.
So, for future readers, should you happen upon this piece: Yes, the stuff below happened. And it’s insane; but it’s not one individual‘s insanity. It’s part of a larger madness, one we could likely prevent—if we choose to recognize that demonizing each other doesn’t help us cast out demons; it just makes more of them.
But you oughtn’t listen to me.
After all, I’m a monster.
You'll be shocked to discover that everyone who reads and writes genre fiction, NO EXCEPTIONS, is a fascist.
— Jen (@JenReadsRomance) October 21, 2019
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October 17, 2019
Coyote Is Not Real
One day, Coyote decided to steal pretty much everything he could get his paws on.
He went to a vast lake, and saw the Moon on the surface of the water. “I know what you’re thinking,” said the Moon, “and you cannot do it. For I am but a reflection of the Moon. I appear to be a beautiful pearly circle, so close you could just snatch me up, but if you tried, you would merely swipe right through me, disrupting the very image you love. And if you kept trying, you would eventually overbalance and land right in the water and go home, empty-handed and soaking wet. In a way, it’s a metaphor—”
And it cut off abruptly, as Coyote plucked the Moon out of the lake and popped it in his sack. And on he walked.
Next, Coyote decided to steal the Sun from the sky. Perhaps this was a kindness; after all, the Sun and Moon live together in the house which is the Sky, but they never get to see each other, for each must make appointed rounds at appointed times. The Sun was on the other side of the world at that moment, of course, but Coyote had a trick:
You know how, when you are very tired, sometimes, you close your eyes, and you’re sure it only lasts a moment, but just when your dreams are getting really good, the Sun’s bright rays awaken you? Coyote spent much of his time perfecting the magic of dreams (or, as Grandfather Crow called it, “Loafing around like an aimless galoot”); and so he somnambulated a truly great fantasy (it was about a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich taller than he was). He was still trying to figure out how to get his jaws around it when, sure as meat loves salt, a sunbeam splashed across his face. Coyote can be clumsy, but sometimes he is very quick; before his eyelids even finished opening, he grabbed that sunbeam and yanked in a special way, and bam! the Sun joined the Moon in the sack.
(It took excellent aim to get it straight into the opening of the bag; clearly, the long days he had spent popping morsels of food into his mouth without looking had been valuable practice, and Coyote was, once again, proven extremely wise.)
Then Coyote thought he might steal all the Stars; but the Stars, not having born yesterday, saw what happened to the Sun and the Moon, and they’d already left, going on holiday to faraway Kalgash; but that’s a different tale.
Coyote then wanted to steal the secret of Wine from the Gods, but as he approached the celestial Tavern, he saw that the bouncer was looking at him with recognition. The Bouncer spoke words of power (“You gonna pay your tab?”)—and Coyote fled.
Coyote then stole all the left socks in the world. Why the left ones? Well, why not?
And at last, Coyote decided he would thieve the greatest treasure of all, Knowledge. So he searched out the biggest University he could find, and there sought out a Professor of anthropology. Boldy, Coyote stepped right up to him, thinking of clever and crafty schemes.
Before Coyote could open his mouth, the other spoke. “You don’t exist,” the Professor said.
“I most certainly do!” said Coyote, startled out of his plotting.
“No, you don’t,” the Professor replied. “Lots of peoples all of the world have lots of Gods. The reason for that is, humans are basically primitive and superstitious. They make up stuff to help explain the world because they don’t understand how things really work. So they create, say, a God of Lightning because they don’t understand that the big flash in the sky is just a meteorological phenomenon.”
“I see,” said Coyote. “And how does lightning really work?”
“Electricity,” replied the Professor. “Clouds. Ion particles. Superconductivity. Not my field, really. But anyway, I know there’s a perfectly natural explanation, and that’s better than Gods.”
“Better how?” asked Coyote.
“Well, if somebody knows how electricity works, they can make machines which use it. Whereas if somebody prays, who knows what will happen?”
“Is there some particular reason why a God of Lightning wouldn’t fit electricity into some reasonable framework of the way the world works? It seems like that would make a lot more sense, and be a lot more viable than needing to make a conscious effort in order to permit every spark to ignite. And obviously Gods don’t always answer people. Are you caught up on your email, Professor?”
The Professor shrugged, annoyed. “I happen to be religious, like many anthropologists; but that’s personal. I can believe, for myself, that God or Gods are real; but I’m hardly going to believe that some particular God takes a physical form and knocks on my door in pursuit of some kind of myth-fulfillment. I don’t care if you think you can justify your existence; the point is, if anthropologists went around saying, ‘So-and-so people believe in such-and-such a God because that God is quite real and will be annoyed if they don’t believe’, nobody would take us seriously. We wouldn’t be a science.”
“Wait a minute,” Coyote said slowly. “So you’re telling me that your entire field of scientific endeavor needs to disbelieve in me, or you’ll lose your own credibility?”
“Of course.”
“So…no matter what I do, you’ll disbelieve in me, and you’ll tell everyone else to disbelieve in me, and the more firmly you describe me as a folk-tale, a primitive metaphor, the better off you are?”
“Of course.”
“But I’m standing right here. In front of you. I can tap you on the shoulder. I’m quite real.”
Coyote prepared to begin doing all manner of things to show that he was a material being occupying the same plane as the Professor, but the Professor held up a hand. “Anything you do could be a dream, a hallucination, a false memory, or, if worst comes to worst, something I can’t explain, but which I know cannot possibly be you. Whatever you do, I’ll ignore it, and so will every other right-thinking person. I know you’re not real; my friends and companions know you’re not real; you’re not going to change my mind. I’d have to rethink just about everything if that happened, and I’d be on my own in doing so. I’d be shunned, laughed at, scorned. So get used to it. You are not real.”
The beast stared at the man for a moment. Then, with unusual humility, he walked forward and extended a hand. The Professor took it. “I’m sorry about this, but there’s nothing I can do,” said the Professor. “No, no,” said Coyote, “Thank you.”
Coyote walked carefully out of the University. He pawed into his sack, made sure the Sun and Moon were comfortable and the socks all stored as efficiently as possible. It was a big sack; there was still plenty of room.
Coyote took a long look at the place which was dedicated to proving that he wasn’t there. He smiled a slow, wide, Coyote smile.
Then he stole the World.
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The Anti-Fairy Ring
Once upon a time, there was a kingdom where Fairy Godmothers lived in abject terror.
You know part of this story; you’re aware that in certain magic-positive nation states, beings from the other side of the Thicket might show up to convey blessings upon the firstborn of some particular iteration of the House Royal. It wasn’t a sure thing (there’s no world where you can entirely predict the Fae); but if you invited them, they’d more than likely make an appearance, and bestow upon the sprog a multitude of supernatural-but-wholesome blessings.
Now, if you’ve heard the version of events which hit the press, you know that on one particularly horrible occasion, the Royals failed to invite one of the rather less benign Godmothers, for they feared her power and malice, and thought the best way to avoid her wrath was to have a highly-publicized event to which she was cordially not invited.
If that never sounded stupid to you before, you should have read this story sooner. As should they, for that matter.
That whole mess got sorted out (somewhat), but it left the noblefolk of that realm with a bad case of the collywobbles. They therefore decided that, going forward, they would assume all Fairy Godmothers were rageful murderesses-in-waiting, and should all be shunned and kept at bay by force. That’s clearly irrational and stupid; but (this is a secret, don’t tell)—sometimes humans are irrational and stupid, especially when they’re displacing anxiety-fuelled-aggression onto (what they believe to be) soft, easy targets.
And hey, taking a zero-tolerance policy on potential outside malefactors makes sense. Ward everything with thrice-forged iron, such that no Fae even come near without suffering severe burns, and sure, you might keep out a few good ones, but you’ll make sure you get no bad ones.
And maybe they’re all bad ones. At the very least, they’re certainly weird. Where are they in your social structure? Nowhere; how do you decide how to treat them, then? They’re not artisans, they’re not merchants, they’re not peasants or nobles; they’re not even normal human beings. Who has wings and magical powers? Weirdos and freaks, that’s who.
Do you remember how powerful that one really angry Fairy turned out to be?
Means one of two things:
Either the OTHER Fairy Godmothers are inferior, in which case, we DESERVE better…
….or they’re holding out on us.
And that’s not something we’re going to accept from a bunch of condescending flying things. Know what flies, ain’t a bird, and acts peculiar? Insects, that’s who. And we get RID of those suckers when see see them.
So the Kingdom ringed itself ’round with tall Iron Bars, and but a single gate. And though they could not close the skyways, they fired up as many forges as they could, so that the sky was black with acrid smoke from countless anvil-infused flames. Fairy Godmothers could visit to bestow blessings upon the royal offspring if, and only if, the gifts were good. This led to a few challenges, such as the “What, Precisely, Is The Retail Value Of A Daughter With Excellent Taste In Literature,” and “Why Would You Wish A Rule Of Peace Before All Right Before We Plan To Invade The Neighboring Kingdom And Take Their Stuff” incidents.
So the Godmothers were Not Popular. Nor were they pleased.
And finally, they did a thing.
If you’re of Titania’s blood, then cold iron burns like shoving your skin simultaneously into a thousand torches. You can wrap yourself in gloves or armor or spell, but the iron can be felt. It won’t kill you…just likely scar your immortal body and leave your flesh blackened wherever the Faeriesbane touched it. It took almost a hundred of the Fae folk, but they strained and they pushed and they slammed the gates shut. Hard. Peasblossom sacrificed herself in a burst of glitter and flame to sear and wield the gates shut.
And as the Kingdom watched, a small, frail Fairy Godmother—the more astute remembered her as “The One Who Did That Gift About The Joys Of Learning”—hobbled painfully forward on a long staff which served as both wand and crutch. And she said,
“You’re not locked in there with me, oh, you sons of bitches, because I got out. You’re locked in with something far worse—you. Let’s see how long you survive.”
She ignored their angry protests, and turned the one half-aimed volley of arrows into a folly of sparrows, which turned ‘back round and pecked at the eyes of her attackers. For a few years thereafter, the Fae would return to the little Kingdom/Zoo to watch the inhabitants make horrible faces and beat against the bars, but eventually they stopped. Faeries drink blood, steal memories, cloud minds, wreck fortunes; but they never claim to be anything different. Humans claim many things about what they are, which is what makes it so unnerving when, if things don’t go as planned, they act far worse than than beasts or monsters.
And they all lived humanly ever after: nasty, brutish, and just tall enough to provide leverage for the hangman.
_______________
The unspeakable Villainpunk Jeff Mach has built his house of neither straw nor sticks, but rather, of pure rock-solid sugar. He frequently seeks new, interesting ways to rewrite this part, and then often ends up just shifting a few words around, going back in time to before he wrote this initially, and hitting “Publish”, so that this is technically new. Don’t tell anyone.
Jeff puts on Conventions, writes Books, fights Mobs.
To respawn one level earlier, click here .
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