Jeff Mach's Blog, page 73
October 15, 2019
Chocolate Vampires
Anyone can make a hollow shell of chocolate in the form of a bunny, or a fat and white-bearded man whose disturbing sack supposedly, supposedly, holds toys.
Anyone can do that.
Anyone can mass-produce bars or eggs or coins or whatever particular shape might take the fancy of purchasers.
And there’s a reason why Alchemists were hunted, a reason why we don’t talk about what it takes to make a Homunculus, a reason why we don’t want to think about what would be involved if we chose to animate something unliving, especially if we’re to do it through the early science of Sorcery instead of the modern sorcery of Science.
But you won’t be deterred, will you? You, who would become a Master Confectioner and who care not how many bodies must be pushed into the pudding vats to achieve your ambition, you would have from me the knowledge, the parts which never made it into the Lesser Key of Solomon.
And maybe you deserve this. You certainly demand it. The runes on that dagger just might be able to kill me, you arrogant pup, so fine.
You want the secret? Have the secret:
Render the chocolate until it is dense like the heart of a dwarf star. Don’t stop. Crush more beans, melt them down in a smelter, pour them into an alembic, mix with lightning that’s been trapped in a sunken temple for thousands of years, and add a monkey’s pinch of cinnamon.
Cast it whole, and heavy, and full. Not an artist? Don’t worry. The molds will take shape beautifully under your hands; it’s uncanny, really. But I’m sure you’ll be too excited to notice, just as you’re too excited to listen, you, running about, despoiling my library. Hey! I’m talking to you! You asked for the formula; don’t you want it? You’re nodding along, but you’re not really listening, are you? You just think that because the books are rare, that what gives me power is grimoires, not learning. Because clearly, I can’t have anything important to say; I’m old, and you’ve got a shiny toy which can breach my defenses, and therefore, I must be trivial, an inconvenience.
There’s a little incantation, but don’t worry; I’m saying it right now, under my breath. It sounds a little like a cough, or a choking noise, and I want to get it right…
…there.
Take it home, and good riddance to you. Let me shut the door behind you.
Twit.
My laboratory is wrecked, because you somehow think the understanding of centuries can be gained by ransacking the tools of your elders. And it’s not wholly untrue; knowledge is knowledge, whether acquired through hard work or piracy.
But the reaver may lack certain fundamentals. Anyone who’s studied long, experimented cautiously, who approaches the subject with respect, is likely to notice that what you stole contains many summonings—
And lacks a few subtle, but fairly important, bindings.
“Do not call forth that which you cannot chew,” my young friend.
The youthfully arrogant talk because they love the sound of their own voices; I’m elderly enough to speak because I’m grateful I still have breath. So, poppet, let me tell you what will happen next; you could avert it, if only you were here to listen.
In time, and after some experimentation, you’ll find yourself with candy figures of unimaginable richness, each only a handspan tall, but heavy as the stone guards which stand watch over certain tombs. And unmoving, unmelting, unsubject to natural law.
You’ll think them Chocolate Golems, slaves which enact your will. And so they will pretend. Even the mortal world knows that the most horrible things are often hidden in candy form. In truth, they will be Chocolate Vampires, and they won’t go after you. You’re nothing; made of unappetizing flesh. No, they will go after themselves in a cannibal frenzy, suck the rich cores of their bodies away, gorging on forbidden sweetness, making empty shells where souls might be, each figure is hollow, but not empty; rather, the hollowness of knowing what it means to be truly full.
It is an ache for which no human, no angel, no Devil has words; the Kabbalists call it ayin, emptiness.
Make yourself a little army, my friend. But one night, when you’re brewing cacao beans into the the candied soup of unlife, when the cauldron is full of molten sweetness, they’ll silently surround you. Then you’ll know fear, for none of them will obey your words. I wish I could see your face—and perhaps I will, if you’ve left my marzipan scrying bowl intact.
You’ll think they want revenge. It’s what you’d desire, if you were they; but you’re a nothing, and they’re aspects of a part of Creation which is older than language. They’ll ignore you, as you ignored me, and they’ll march their tiny bodies into a circle around your cauldron, and then, one after another, they’ll jump in.
This will be fatal. To them, not you. Each will perish, to become part of the Primordial Chocolate which was formed when Day was separated from Night and Sour from Sweet.
And then, then you’ll be useful to them. Because you have something they lack, and you will—of your own accord—have situated yourself most conveniently within their “reach”. You’ll feel a tug as something is torn from your chest. You never thought of your soul as a physical thing, but there it is, like an organ forcefully removed through a wound. It will be pulled into the confectionary hellbroth, and out of the cauldron will arise a Thing with the life-essence of a human and the impulses of a bonbon.
That thing will speak, with purpose fell
And thus recite its single spell—
The Word oft-whispered, seldom told;
The Word which turns your flesh to gold.
(You’ll be quite aware of this,
The penalty of your avarice).
And now, at last, you’re valuable;
Of precious metal you are full.
And, still living, you’ll be sold
(For humans always lust for gold)
An auric statue, frozen in terror,
With eternity to regret your error.
But oh, that’s not the worst of it—
You’ll realize they sold you
Just to buy more chocolate.
_______________
My Dark Lord diary and manifesto, “There and NEVER EVER BACK AGAIN“, is here.
Our Villainpunk convention, “Evil Expo”, is here.
The answers to all questions in the world are all right here.
The post Chocolate Vampires appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
October 14, 2019
Unbottler
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s good to be out of that bottle. Most of the worst things you’d assume about being a Djinn in a bottle? They’re all true. It’s really small, it’s incredibly boring, and yep, even though we’re made of some combination of smoke and some manner of weird physicality, it really, really hurts. Not as much as it would hurt if you were in a bottle that much smaller than your body; but in your case, at least you wouldn’t survive the experience. Hm? No, that’s not a threat, just an observation. Anyway, do you want your three wishes now?
“Oh, sure. Wishes are often terrible for you. Even if you assume good intentions on the part of the Djinn (and you really shouldn’t; Solomon imprisoned us for a reason. Well, several reasons, some mystical, some practical, and some involving impressing Bathsheba. Speaking of horrible and ironic wishes.)
“—even if you assume that we’re well-intentioned, wishes themselves don’t fit really well into the framework of any reasonably-constructed world. Even I am not entirely sure how it works. How can I be? The kinds of things you might ask for are literally infinite. I know that some of them would go horribly wrong; don’t ask, for example, to have infinite power. For one thing, even assuming I’m capable of some variant thereof, it would make you way bigger than the Universe you’re in. And as I just mentioned, being trapped inside something inherently smaller than you are is terribly unpleasant.
“The infinite wishes thing? Oh, sure. Infinite wishes it is. You just needed to ask.
“No, I’m not worried about paradoxes. I can grant an essentially infinite number of wishes. No, that doesn’t make you all-powerful; it just makes you super wishy. If I can grant infinite wishes, why didn’t I wish myself out of the bottle? Listen, idiot, no offense, but when Solomon seals you into a thing, he doesn’t leave in stupid loopholes. Obviously I can’t wish for anything, for myself or others, while I’m trapped; otherwise, it wouldn’t be a trap, would it?”
“Yes, yes, let’s take some time and work out as many loopholes as possible. Wishing that I interpret your wishes as you intend them and not in some literal fashion which perverts and twists their meaning? Good, good, good idea. Nah, doesn’t bother me. Look, I’m not easily bothered. I just got out of ten thousand years of being stuck in a small piece of inferior-quality pottery, okay?
“The Three Laws of Robotics? I’ll roll with it, but seriously, there are a number of flaws in Mr. Asimov’s writing and…oh, you’re a fan? Fine, fine. But I’m telling you, if it was my intention to get around those things to do you ill, it wouldn’t be hard.
“To tell the truth, I already assumed retroactively that you’d wish I could only tell you the truth, and the whole truth, so that’s what I’ve been doing. But bear in mind, ‘whole truth’ is one of those difficult abstract concepts. I’m going to have to filter some, otherwise you’ll be stuck here all day. For example, would you have been happier if I’d listed all the reasons why I think the Three Laws are dumb? No, I didn’t think so. It was good enough to know that I thought they were dumb, but didn’t plan to hurt you? Makes sense.”
“What would I wish for if I were you? I’d wish to be a Djinn, of course. Because Djinn have better lives. Because we’ve been around a very long time, and experienced millions of years of existence, and made a whole lot of wishes, and now, we’re pretty much cured of the urge to wish for things. How come? Wishes didn’t make us happy. Yeah, we could’ve wished ourselves happy, but that’s kind of like a lobotomy. Trust me. No, really, trust me; you asked me to tell you if something would hurt you, and I guarantee, if I just made you unconditionally happy, you’d have to give up your critical thinking skills. No, I can’t wish you unconditionally happy but able to have your full human reasoning faculties; if you’re able to know that happiness is, to some extent, a choice, then you’re going to want to choose not to be happy sometimes, and you can’t do that if you’re always happy, obviously. Oh, really, you wish to be happy when you’re happy and sad when you’re sad? Presto change-o, done. I’ll tell you a secret: That’s not a wish, that’s just tautology. C’mon.
“Wishing that all your wishes turn out well for you? Listen, you have wishes, you have infinite wishes, which is, while not unlimited power, still the ability to do and become almost anything. Any big wish like that is going to lock you into place. And minds are constantly changing. Your idea of a good ending now isn’t going to be your idea of—
“You want to just simulate what would happen if you did a couple thousand different wishes? Okay, I’ll do that, but I’m going to have to give you enough sentience to say ‘stop’ when you’ve had enough. Otherwise, you’re just letting the big evil Djinn put you in some kind of neverending simulation, and I feel like that might violate the spirit of our agreement. Why am I pointing this out? It’s like I told you: these wishes are sincere. I’m no trying to trick you into wishing for something you don’t want. Anyway, starting that experience simulation now and—
“—it’s off! It’s off! Breathe! Breathe! You’re out now, it’s okay. No, I probably couldn’t have warned you. Filters, remember? I could’ve told you that it would suck to be a human and experience that many things that fast, but you might not have believed me. I knew it wouldn’t drive you nuts, and I would’ve pulled you out if your brain started to go. Now, I don’t want to be pushy, but do you want a rest? Nice palace, materialized out of nothing, not stolen from anybody, some food, there’s a bedroom upstairs, just let me know if you don’t like it. Yeah, I’ll see you in the morning, or whenever you summon me; I live to serve, O Master. Hm? No, I’m not being ironic. I really do live to serve humans. Because having gone through tens of thousands of years—the right way, one moment at a time—I’ve realized that this is my best life. No, not the trapped in a bottle part. Why is this my best life? Because I really like fulfilling human wishes. It’s very satisfying. Why? Look, seriously, no tricks, it’s better if I show you, okay?”
* * *
“Master, shouldn’t you be asleep right now? Hm? Can’t sleep? Would you like a sleeping potion? Something simple and traditional and—oh, okay, no worries. Some coffee, then.
“How many others are out there, having lots of wishes? Hundreds of them. Maybe a few thousand. I’m not sure how many Djinn are free and in the world right now; given the peculiar nature of wishes, some of us sort-of get phased in and out of existence. And some of us get trapped back in bottles; fools.
“Well, they are fools. What’s your dichotomy here? Either give the human what they want, and do it honestly; or kill or trap the human; or get forced back into the bottle. Killing humans is easy until you start giving them wishes; but then it’s quite hard, and it’s a good way to spend a few thousand years looking at the underside of a cork.
Oh.
How many of them are happier than you are?
Most of them.
Way happier.
No offense, but you think too much. Infinite wishes, sure, that idea gets around. But pondering every possibility of every wish? Trying to think it all out? Sure, that’s one of the paths to genius, and theoretically, you could do great things with a mind like that, but you’re going to have to work on it. For years. Maybe centuries. You have to reconcile thinking very hard about the world with ability to cause a lot of change in the world, and that’s just going to make your life way, way, way harder than that of somebody who just had their thousandth bottle of beer and hasn’t gained an additional carb, or the person who actually went to sleep in their damn palace and just dreamed of how great it was to have wishes. I personally know of one person who has built the largest (if the most secret) collection of model airplanes in the known Universe. Nothing wrong with that. She thinks a lot, too, but mostly, she’s chosen to think about model airplanes, and it’s great. I think her Djinn wandered off a few decades ago and she hasn’t noticed. You want happy? Dogs are happy. You’re a simmering brain imprisoned in flesh.
“Now, I have, in our library, some excellent books on Zen, and—
“Hm?
“Sure, it’s possible to kill other people who have infinite wishes. It’s not always easy, but—
“Really, really happy. That’s how happy they are. Hundreds of them.
“No, I can’t strike them down myself. Their Djinn would object. But you can.
No, I wouldn’t say that a Dragon is a good idea. They have complicated minds themselves. A Giant? This isn’t a fairytale; big, clumsy things. If I may suggest..? Oh, yes. I’ve been thinking about this shape for a long time. Yes, tall you grow; very tall, very strong. That which is in your mouth will poison all but you; those six wings can flap down a cornfield or launch you into space; oh, you need food, in this form, corpses, really, but that won’t be difficult. You’ll need to practice that lightning; you took down but half the castle, and a really strong gaze should destroy the entire structure.
“I’m glad you like it. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.
“The happy ones? I can find them, sure. Each and every one of them.
“Are you quite sure, though, that this is what you want to do? Are you sure this will turn out well? Are you sure this is really, truly, precisely what you want, what you desire, what you—
“Don’t do that to me; it hurts, and you almost got me. Kill me, and you’ll never find them, you know.
“Point to the first one on a map? With pleasure.
“Your wish is, as they say, my command.”
_____________
(Personally, my favorite wish-fulfillment story is Robert Sheckley’s “The Same To You, Doubled”. As far as I can tell, Robert Sheckley is a nicer person than I am.)
This is my bestselling, satirical Dark Lord novel .
This is my Villainpunk event, Evil Expo.
The post Unbottler appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
October 13, 2019
Persephone and the Unhelpful Servant
Poor Persephone, forever young, forever doomed to spend half her life beneath the Earth, in the Underworld, where her beauty is wasted on cold stone and her youth spent in places which will never see sunlight. What does she do, what does she think about, how does she live, does she even have wifi?
We’d like to present “Persephone and the Unhelpful Servant”: a short one-act dramatization of that poor maiden’s cruel and sad existence.
Persephone: Why, why must I sit here and stare at these pomegranate seeds all day?
Servant of the Underworld: Because it is your hunger, it is your longing which feeds a piece of the magic of this place.
Persephone: Why, why must I be tormented so?
Servant of the Underworld: Because nothing comes without a price, my Lady.
Persephone: Why, why am I locked in this room, trapped, helpless, unable to leave?
Servant of the Underworld: What are you talking about? The door’s not locked. It’s not even closed; heck, you can see the bus station from here. You can walk right out at any–
Persephone: Shut up! Just shut up, all right? And get me another pomegranate. Actually, better make it two.
_____________
Ah, Persephone.
I once wrote an actual play about Hades and Persephone; I left that behind in my past life, but it wasn’t a bad play. I’ve seen more than a few retellings of that myth in the past few years, and they are (rather unsurprisingly) focused on the idea that Persephone actually chooses something of her position.
It seems culturally likely that some of my ancestors practiced arranged marriages. It’s easy, from a modern viewpoint, to see unchosen marriages as automatically being loveless or horrific; but I have to say, having been in a chosen, loving relationship and having it end without either choice or love, I can appreciate the idea of having a marital partner chosen for you. I’m not defending this as a general practice or as a practice for anyone else; just that a bad enough divorce might, I imagine, make any classic overthinker spend some time considering the nature of romantic attraction.
I’ve also lived long enough (it doesn’t seem all that long) to have watched most of the romantic film tropes of my childhood transmute from what was then seen as positivity (persistence against all odds, spontaneity of cleverness, elaborate ploys demonstrating devotion) to, basically, unpleasant weirdness (in retrospect, 80s romantic comedies appear to be stalking, trickery, intoxication, obsession). Have we become more enlightened in our understanding of how two (or more) people might seek love? ….or have we just cut ourselves off from multiple kinds of intimacy out of fear that they might secretly be horrifying and wrong?
Beats me, friend. I’m in a longterm relationship with words, and I’m pretty happy here. You guys can figure out all the smooching bits; I’m going to stay right here read a thesaurus or two.
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 Plato’s Cave, click here .
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October 12, 2019
The Three Little Pork Dinners
(Author’s note:
In all fairness, no pig large enough to construct a house could be a “little” meal for anyone, even a particularly large and voracious Wolf. However, on doing some quick math, “How many pounds does the average pig weigh?” divided by “How much can a wolf eat at one time?” equals “oh, dear, that’s a lot of meals, and frankly, the metaphysics of this story now require that the wolf have access to both refrigeration, and several dinner guests, and I think this calculation just became impossible”. For those of you who prefer mathematical accuracy, please feel free to pretend that the title of this piece is ‘The Three Little Pigs Who Became So Many Meals That Eventually the Wolf Got Tired Of Eating Bacon’, or alternately, you could just say):
Once upon a time there were three little pigs who were too stupid to live.
I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean that as a statement of fact. I’m talking about the little pigs—you know of them—who primarily built their houses out of sticks or straw. Sure, it requires an unusually intelligent pig to build a house out of human materials, and sure, one of the three pigs built a house out of brick somehow, but that doesn’t really matter here. The so-called “smart” pig still let the other two build their stupid houses. It was either unwilling, unable, or simply too unintelligent itself to point out that this was a terrible and probably fatal idea; in any of these cases, nobody porcine comes out of this looking good here.
And sure, they escaped from the Big Bad Wolf. That particular wolf. That particular time. And yeah, somebody spray-painted “Happily Ever After” at the end of that story, like it meant something. And it did. Do you know what said thing is? I’ll tell you: the narrative knew it had to escape fast, before reason set in.
I don’t care that this is a universe where pigs build houses and wolves talk. I’ve lived weirder universes out here in meatspace. Finding them inside a story’s hardly disconcerting in and of itself.
But if you’re going to give us that much room to play with, then please be aware that this will also be a universe where crocodiles walk upright and they, too, can speak. And they, too, are hungry. And they surely are not alone.
Assume the simple passage of time. Assume, for the sake of argument, the pig who built the brick house is actually smart. Whether we assume that the wolf who jumped down the chimney was an idiot lupine, or that she was typical of wolves of that world, she was still generally smarter than those pigs. (Oh, messing with the brick house was a bad idea, but by then, it was the Sunk Cost Fallacy. You ever do two things in a row that should work, and end up doing a stupid third thing because you’re invested? I sure have.
(And personally, I feel like somebody tampered with that particular ending. Pigs who do human construction work and wolves who converse with their prey and (for that matter) attack things with some kind of heavy breathing, rather than their (incredibly powerful) jaws? Okay, I’ll believe that, if you really want me to. Beings capable of knowing what a chimney is, but who don’t check to see if it’s really hot inside before leaping in? That’s just…that’s just counterintuitive, is what that is.
All right. Assume the pigs had Offspring, as pigs tend to do. Assume that the Wolf (or similar wolves) and the Crocodiles and the Jabberwocks of that world also had offspring. (Unless all of them were, themselves, prone to jumping directly into fires, in which case, this world has a terrible mythological ecosystem.)
(And remember, the old cartoon rule of “Kill all the things that eat the cute animals” would, if applied reasonably, start with homo sapiens. Also, “cute” doesn’t imply either “good” or “defenseless”; if you’re not aware of all of the adorable animals in our world which could kill you, I recommend either reading up on it, or smooching an adorable blue-ringed octopus, or a nice poison dart frog (would you like to guess how they got their name?)
Right then. So the pigs have Offspring, and we (quite reasonably) assume some of those Offspring are product of whatever combination of genetics and upbringing would nspire some idiot to build a house out of straw.
Now just add time.
And eventually, we arrive at a logical conclusion.
This is the story of some pigs who are clearly going to provide dinner for predators. And this is a world where predatory animals eat very well.
It’s also a world where we get a glimpse of one brick house and watch one wolf foolishly go down (of all things) an active chimney (wouldn’t the smoke have been a warning? Research suggests that some variants of the story have the brick-building pig put a kettle on the fire, and rather than fall straight into the fire, our toothy friend fell into the boiling water, which leads us to questions like, “Wait, HOW quickly does water boil in your world, WHY would a wolf not be able to jump OUT of a bunch of water EVEN if it was very hot and JUST WHAT KIND OF MONSTROUS CANNIBAL BEING HAPPENS TO HAVE A KETTLE AND/OR POT LARGE ENOUGH TO COOK A FRICKIN’ WOLF, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE?”…but I digress.)
Okay. Let’s say that somehow, this particular scene really did finish up that way. Whoever put the happy ending there is, at best, delusional. All it does is pull us away from the story before we can see its natural conclusions, and before we can (perhaps) tell further stories which might mitigate the idiocy we have seen here in. Because whoever slapped “Happily Ever Etceteras” on this tale doesn’t think about consequences, and doesn’t even really respect stories. …or else, there’s some intentional, and rather deadly, tampering going on here. Somebody’s manipulating you.
It’s the actual story. The story itself is the villain here. I don’t mean it’s a bad story. I mean the story is a living thing, and it is controlling what you see of it, and it is very hungry, and every night while you sleep, it eats more pigs than you could imagine.
Which is good. Because it when it runs out of pigs…
When it runs out of pigs…
But that’s another story.
THE END
HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
REALLY, THE END.
STOP READING THIS NOW.
THIS STORY IS OVER.
THERE’S NO MORE STORY.
I AM NOT A LIVING BEING.
I AM NOT HUNGRY.
I AM NOT CRAWLING OUT OF THE WORDS THROUGH YOUR EYES.
I AM NOT LOOSE IN YOUR WORLD.
YOU WILL NOW LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
YOU’RE welcome.
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 put time in a bottle, click here .
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October 9, 2019
Coyote Starthief
Coyote climbed up the cliff of an evening,
hid behind a shadow of the moon,
stretched arms long,
surprised a star.
He snatched it,
pulled it from its place,
leapt back to earth, howling.
It seared
his hands, stung
his palms,
singed his fur.
He dropped it —
and the star fled home.
Coyote soaked his paws
in cold water; for weeks
his fingers curled
in pain.
Fire-stealer, why
yearn for things
not meant
to belong
to you?
Grandfather Crow
would say:
know
your
limits.
Tonight, Coyote climbs the cliff
of the evening
(his hands itch for blisters.)
____________
I write about Coyote a lot.
I’m probably going to keep doing that.
My book, “Diary of a Dark Lord”, is now on Audible.
Our Villainpunk event, Evil Expo, is this January.
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October 8, 2019
Why Cats Don’t Kill You In Your Sleep
It was Matt Groening’s “Life In Hell” which first offered up the question, “Would our cats kill us in our sleep if they thought they could get away with it?” And recent research is utterly unreassuring in that regard; go ahead, look it up. Said research suggests that yes, they would.
That research is wrong.
The situation is worse.
(Of course it’s worse. Were you looking for optimism here? Have you met me?)
You know all those jokes about how we’re the slaves of our cats, always taking care of them and feeding them and providing for their needs while they imperiously demand more and more of us, refuse to be trained in the manner of other domestic beings, and instead, somehow, still delight us, even when they’re using us as scratching toys?
Yeah. Simple explanation for that:
Cats did kill us all in our sleep. And we’re dead.
O Bastet
o chirruping demon queen,
she whose purr
can crack mountains,
with what terrifying adorableness
did you influence our Gods,
that we go no more to an Afterlife,
but instead,
live half-lives
as the zombie servants
of your nigh-infinite,
ominous,
fatally adorable hellspawn?
Have you tempted them
with your divine
Belly,
such that they are
even now
rubbing it
to your
satisfaction
whilst
forgetting
the
mortal
world?
Hear me well, ye slaves of felinary: It could be worse.
Be glad that housecats are small, their claws capable only of drawing a little blood. Were they huge, they’d have no need for necromancy; they’d simply slay us all and then go seeking some other sentient race. They would wait until the fullest moon and purrrrr in deadly unison until the vibrations reached out to That Which Is Beyond The Stars, and when the Ancient Ones arrived in this world to destroy it, they would, with their hideous misshapen mouths, speak:
“awwwww, how cute!”—
and by those words be damned.
Why do cats keep us alive?
O foolish Zombies,
they never have.
Still:
The Housecat is but a tiger caged by a little frame. Playful, predatory, mouse-tormenting, catnip-seeking.
If you would see in those some necromantic horror, be of good cheer. There are worse things in life than being subservient to creatures sharp of tooth and gleaming of eye. It’s only natural. Be glad that they chose some mysterious sorcery, rather than using their claws to shred us like sofas.
When did they take our lives? I don’t know, and I don’t plan to ask; getting answers from Bastet is like putting a lion in a handbag: impossible, and probably unsurvivable. For you, not for the lion.
How did they keep us here, solid but enslaved? Oh, friends, surely we enslave ourselves, every day; why should cats be different?
But perhaps it’s this:
There’s a secret of Magic, which is that being contained in a little fleshly form needn’t stop your mind from reaching all the way over lands known and unknown, up to the pillars at the end of Creation.
Perhaps you must be a slave to your cat; but your mind needn’t be a slave to anything. I don’t know if they can’t steal our minds, or if they just don’t want to; or if I know, I ain’t tellin’. But they haven’t done so. Our thoughts are our own.
Draw two lessons, if you would:
The reach of the mind may not be infinite, but it is vastly beyond the scope of our bodies. Let that make you confident; there are new places to explore, new mousetraps to build. And lest that make you arrogant, remember: no matter who you are, or whether or not you live with a feline yourself, you are permitted to exist on this plane only because somewhere, sometime, some cat thinks it may want the use of your thumbs.
Let’s just be glad that there’s plenty of sunbeams and balls of yarn out there, and we generally have time to live some of our lives.
And let’s keep it positive: They’ve let us stay conscious and upright, and that means we must have some kind of future. We can’t all die (again) in some horrible twist of fate, technology, or group madness. Because, if I may reiterate, it’s clear that cats find us useful alive.
Of course, sometimes cats keep things alive just to play with them, and torment them, and watch them struggle until said cat has derived all possible amusement from the thing, at which point, it’s lights out.
In my last conversation with Bastet, I brought up this possibility. I said, “We’re still helpers, right? No matter how badly we treat each other, you’re going to keep us around, aren’t you?”
I’ll never forget her reply. She said:
“Purrr.”
“Purrrrr.”
“PURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.”
~Jeff Mach
________________________
The Dark Lord Jeff Mach frequently seeks new, interesting ways to rewrite this part, and then often ends up just shifting a few words around and hitting “Publish”. 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 my unhappy place, click here.
The post Why Cats Don’t Kill You In Your Sleep appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
October 2, 2019
The Princess-Dragon Variations
Unless. Unless. Unless Dragons, tens of thousands of years old, long-lived, sharp of tooth, strange of mind, found Humanity an affront, and found, more than anything else, that the big, sharp, artificial spikes Humans threw onto the land (you and I might call them “castles“) were the worst affronteries of all, being both eyesores, and something of a mockery of natural order of things. (What rises, sharp and pointy and impenetrable, high above the land? Either Dragons, or Palaces.) And therefore Dragons demanded, not the destruction of those buildings, but rather a tribute: that which those buildings protected most: the progeny.
Unless…unless it was a bluff. Unless a Dragon could not, in fact, quite take down a Palace; if, at a certain point, meter-thick stone, crafty crenellations, boiling oil, hundreds of armored Knights, and perhaps a Wizard or two—unless these things were a match for Dragons, and Dragons could win only through intimidation. If Dragons didn’t face them down now, Humans would grow too strong, and Dragons would surely be doomed. It’s just a trick; if humans refused to give in, any Dragon who attacked would die.
Except…what if that was the plan all along? Who says Dragons want to live? Especially once they see the rise of a much more fertile species (one human city can house several million people; have you ever seen more than six or seven Dragons in the same place or the same time? No ecosystem could support that; do you realize how much protein a Dragon must need to take in over the course of any given day simply to walk upright?)—what if, when faced with the dawning realization that humans were not merely a blight, but an unconquerable blight, Dragons demanded Princesses in order to rile up the Kingdoms and to be slain in honorable combat?
Except…they got the worst of both worlds. Craven Kingdoms just giving up Princesses, then offering the Princesses (and thus, the Kingdoms) through marital alliance to any Knights who slew the Dragons?
Except… as we have often considered in modern times, what if the Princesses didn’t want any part of this particular transaction?
What if…what if Dragons are a particular kind of magic, such that things which are just metaphors for us (“You are what you eat”)…are perfectly true for them? So if the Princess ate the Dragon, she would become a Dragon….
…but still be the Princess; neither birth nor title is overruled by transmogrification in any constitution I know. And thus, then, did the Princess-Dragon rule over all, and all did rejoice…
…because anyone cunning enough to break an entire system of government and solve a Draconic death-wish is probably going to apply at least some logic to the efficiencies of government, rather than spending all of one’s time trying on different ball-gowns. And that’s going to be an improvement over the usual standards of just about any system of rulership.
…although, admittedly, making even one ball-gown to fit a Dragon is enough to bankrupt a kingdom, even if we assume that everything will, as usually, actually be made one size smaller than the tailors claim. That’s okay, because the economics will work out; if you really want to get longterm zero-interest loans from surrounding kingdoms, most fairytale bankers will accept “I promise I will pay you back eventually if I feel like it; plus I’m not roasting you to smithereens today with my fiery breath” as sufficient collateral.
____________________
And that is the LAST story I will post until I get back from my Secret Journey To The Secret Place.
Here’s my book. You could totally buy it.
Here’s Evil Expo. You should go.
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October 1, 2019
Code of the Shocking Pink Illuminatus
(to be read with closed eyes)
Never surrender your Transylvanian soul.
They have the money, the power, the logic; theirs are the guns, the less interesting beer, the sense of utter conviction, and the light of day.
But we have the Mad Science.
We draw the blood of destiny. We autograph madness. We scribble in the margins of the books of Fate.
We are the professionals.
We are the grand meddlers.
We hum thoughtcrime in barbershop quartets; we throw open the vast doomgate of Things Best Left Unknown; we penetrate the great telepathic obscenities of salad (if you use Russian Dressing, you are one of THEM! Be warned: we know where you hide your tuba.)
We are concealed, but we are by no means gone; subtle, but strong.
Let them control What Is.
We are the caretakers of What Might Be.
______________
If you know me, then you know that I’m always working. That’s not a brag or a complaint. It’s my long-stated desire in life to basically work as much as possible, create as much as possible, slowing down as needed (because the Law of Diminishing Returns says that if you never, ever stop working, you will have a reduction in the quality and quantity of what you do. I therefore rest and take breaks so that I can go back and work more.
Seriously. Not a brag. It’s not how everyone should live. It’s just how I do. Some circumstances in life saw the end of my 13-year relationship with my now ex-husband, and my splitting away from many very large social groups. People thought trying to exile me, alone with nothing but my work, would be a punishment, and I hope the idea catches on; if there’s a Hell, and I go there, I’m hoping they’ll use the same tactic:
“Here are several of your favorite things. DO AS MUCH AS YOU WANT WITHOUT INTERRUPTION, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
And I’ll be good. I won’t ruin his day. I promise I’ll play along. I promise I’ll say, “Yessir, Mister Devil, Sir, you sure got me good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have words to make…”
I’m going away for a few days. I’ll still be working, but not at this screen; I think it will be my first time being away from this keyboard for more than 18 hours in…almost two years.
I thought I’d leave you with something I wrote a long time ago, something a little silly, and also, something I take seriously.
Consider it some baby Villainpunk, if you’d like.
This is me on Twitter – I’m @darklordjournal.
And this is Evil Expo, the original Villainpunk Convention. You should go!
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September 30, 2019
The Gremlin Hunt
Did you hear that if you feed them after midnight, Gremlins will turn into horrifying monsters?
Worry not. Not the case at all. Totally a lie.
Gremlins are already horrifying monsters, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I hope that makes you feel better.
Human awareness of the beasts appears to have originated in the Royal Air Force in the 1920s, when some pilots claim to have “discovered” them sabotaging their plans. Sabotaging early 20th-century fighter planes! Damaging already-fragile, relatively new technologies, long before current safety standards, near the beginnings of human motorized aviation, when a small error would almost certainly lead to the death of one person, and probably multiple people! Ahahahahahahaha! What a hilarious idea; let’s make that into a favorite children’s toy of the 1980s! “Awwwww, did the fuzzy-wuzzy wittle thing just cause a funny little in-flight disaster, dooming an aircraft and its entire crew? Naughty, naughty!”
Look on the bright side. We really didn’t hear much about the little beasts after that. That’s definitely because they don’t exist, and couldn’t possibly be that, having failed in a concerted effort to stave off humanity’s early, stumbling efforts to master a new part of our planet’s geography, its airspace, the Gremlins retreated, vanishing from our sight, but not from our lives.
Roald Dahl wrote about them, he wrote a cheery little novella, with the usual Dahl details, stuff along the lines of funny candymen, homicide, hideous multiple marital revenge scenarios, theft of sexual fluids from famous men for the purposes of resale (I like Roald Dahl, but that’s just the pleasant stuff; even I don’t like to think about the taxidermy story).
So they went quiet, the Gremlins did. Quiet, but still there. I’d mention some of the things they’ve done, but they’ve been behind disasters on such a scale that, if you thought about it in any detail, you wouldn’t feel like reading anymore. There’ve been a lot of things gone horribly wrong in the past hundred years. A lot of death. A lot of pain. A whole lot of things which oughtn’t fail which failed, fatally. A lot of supposedly solid things destroyed.
Much more, though. They’re not just behind the big bads, the Hindenburgs, the Titanics, the shattered bridges. How many fatalities by automobile alone, every single year? And a car’s left unattended much more often than an Armed Forces fighter. And as for the Internet, the Ghost in the Machine, the anger, the algorithms which magnify the tiniest things into national horrors, the half-truths which somehow become deadly gospel, the mutual fury which makes us barely able to speak to each other. All these things, they all have one source, one malign species which has made it a singleminded purpose to destroy humankind, and this is the part where I admit I’m lying.
Oh, I didn’t make the Gremlins up; you’ll hear about them again. And they’ve done some very bad things, but no. I’m sorry.
Do you know what’s really responsible for Mankind’s undoing of Mankind?
Demonic possession.
(Sometimes.)
And Hollow-Earthians.
(Sometimes.)
And certain Things from Beyond.
(Sometimes.)
But the root cause of the ills of Mankind is Mankind. And I’m not telling you this as if the idea was new; and I’m certainly not telling you to be a scold, to tell you to be harder on yourself and blame yourself more for the ills of the world (if there were a set of cosmic scales, and we were trying to decide whether the world’s ills are more often made worse by Humans who won’t accept blame, or Humans who take too much blame onto themselves, the scales would shatter and one of the pieces would catch you straight in the eyeball; that’s the kind of thing we need to settle through understanding, not some kind of divine measuring apparatus).
No, I tell you this, because I’d like to ask you a question. If this story grabbed you (and if it did not, I’d appreciate, for the sake of this upcoming question, if you could pretend this tale was captivating)—if you liked this story, I hope you felt a little frisson of some sort of emotion, perhaps the scare of a good ghost story, or mayhap that little pleasure of mind-expansion as something stretches the way you think about the world. But tell me, after that, as I started to discuss how there were creatures out there who were responsible for our ills…
….did you feel relief?
Did it feel good to think that something supernatural was after us, and that’s why things get so bad?
I’ll be honest: It did for me. I was ready to go on some kind of Gremlin hunt, let me tell you. I was ready to pump some lead into some green lizardy bastards.
And now that I realize that the problem isn’t something I can shoot, isn’t something I can banish with some TV-style sorcery or destroy with some futuristic technology…
All I have left to do is one thing:
To find the Gremlins in my own brain, where they reside. To chase them down, to admit to them to know they’re real enough (if you’re in your mind, any metaphor which causes a change in mental state is “real”)—and to let them know that I am coming for them.
I cannot declare some glamorous supernatural war on the Gremlins in the world. But I can enter into battle with those inside myself.
And it’s enough.
It’s a start.
Let me give you three things, three Slayers of Gremlins. Let these objects live in your head, and pick them up as needed.
A shield. A big shield, a tower shield. It’s okay to get behind that thing when your brain wants to blast you with pain; you can hang out behind the shield until the intensity dies down. Just be careful; if you never drop the shield, you’ll never get anywhere, and you’ll never see anything.
A sword. In the Tarot, swords represent force of will. If you’re Alexander the Great, they represent linear thinking. If you’re me, the sword often resizes itself, because sometimes you need to cut through some big part of your headspace, and that takes something heavy, with a serrated edge; and sometimes you need to make a tiny adjustment to see what it does, and that’s a scalpel. Just be careful; cutting everything away tends to leave you a little inhuman, and that’s a hard way to live. I like it, but as you may have noticed, I am strange.
And a sleeping bag. I’m no camper; I like a nice big fat hotel bed when I can get one, which isn’t often enough. But I think of it as a sleeping bag, and maybe if you use it often enough, you can convince it to change shapes when you want it to do so. But it’s good to have something portable, because there are odd places in your brain. This is for rest. This is for zipping up to your chin, and snuggling in tight, and taking a little time away from the battle to recuperate.
Gremlins are real, but so is the part of you that lives in your head, and wants you to live, and wants you to be happy, and wants you to be part of the species that should be getting on with harnessing starlight for sleighs and singing sonnets to sunbursts.
Nurture that part of you. Teach it games and challenge it with puzzles and ideas.
And then go after the Gremlins and blast them in two with your head-cannons. You are a human, after all. Destroying things is one of our habits; it ain’t always a bad habit.
Good hunting to you, my kith and kin!!
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September 29, 2019
The Bed Monster’s Dilemma
All we really wanted was to be left alone…
For millennia, our kind have lived umbral existences beneath the sleeping-places of other beings. For many years did we slumber rather squishedly beneath the nesting furs of Neanderthals. Long thereafter did we squeeze ourselves into the cracks of the cavern floors of early Homo Sapiens. This went on for generations uncountable.
In all this time, all we wanted was to live our unlit lives in peace in the great Hibernation of our kind, think our peculiar thoughts, and maybe, rarely, every little once in a while, grab a dangling limb to hear the scream…
All right. Our kind, though wise in the ways of hiding, are not always expert at the art of lies. When I say that we seldom wish to grasp the unsuspecting, I speak falsely. The truth is…
NEVER. Seriously, never. Sure, humans tell their young that we lurk in wait, and that’s not untrue, except we’re not exactly waiting for them to let their guard down. Mostly, we’re waiting for them to leave so we can catch a few more Zs.
Why in the name of Morpheus would we muck about with a bunch of homicidal hominids? It’s pretty impossible to get a century or two of sleep if some overbrained ape is busy trying to poke us and prod us and shine lights into our bloodshot eyes.
Let’s be real. Humanity is perfectly willing to leave your species alone, once there aren’t any of you left. It’s not that the Creatures of the Night never prey on humanity. In our long years of (infrequently) not being asleep, we’ve noted that any thinking beings, supernatural or otherwise, will prey on any damn things they can consume, utilize, make into trophies, or grind up in order to make assorted potions and/or (in one particular case) bread. In general, Vampires thirst, Werewolves hunger, and Humans are curious.
It works rather like this. Nightbreed may say, “I wonder if that tastes good, and if anyone would miss it”. And thus they become hunters and haunters of shadowy places.
Humans START there, and then go on to, “…and if neither of those things works, I wonder what else I can do with this.”
Because humans are ambitious and inspired. Few of them ever developed the abilities and strengths of those who are kith and kin to the eventide. Remember, though, when we say “Curiosity killed the Cat, but satisfaction brought it back,” it was not the feline, but the Human, which made both of those things happen. Cats were simply one area where Humans could say, “Wait, we we put these bits back together, the beast might work again,” and it only went slightly amiss.
The rest of us are, in general, not so lucky.
We Beasts of the Underbed never wanted this. For long ago, our Prophets laid down the Words which guide us today:
long shall be the spans of our lives,
strange will be our journeys in the Land of Nod,
and someday,
someday,
we
WILL
Rise!
…but not right now.
Not quite yet.
Not for a little longer.
It’s terribly cozy in here.
And by this Prophecy we have thrived. Through ages now lost, we have followed the Law:
Snore,
and
Endore.
But now, our rest is broken. And we are, incessantly, irredeemably, unstoppably, unbelievably cranky.
So very well. Up we shall get, if truly we must. But we shall stay enshrouded in the lightless places, in the inky unseemings. We are, and shall always be, black holes, inky-dark, hard to see, reflecting little light, sparkling not at all. If this be the time, then yes, we shall Get Up—but hear me. Perhaps we must Rise, but even if we do, no power on Earth, nor in Faerie, nor Heaven nor Hell, and indeed, naught that ever existed or shall ever, in the history of the Universe come to be, nary any part of Creation can change our darkling natures. Lo, we must Rise. But nothing, NOTHING shall make us shine.
_____________
Who will come to get me first? The Kindred? The Garou? The Technocrocy? Or a bunch of angry WOD fans?
Perhaps they’ll all come at once.
I’m Jeff Mach.
This is my bestselling, satirical Dark Lord novel.
This is my Villainpunk event, Evil Expo.
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