Jeff Mach's Blog, page 75

The Nameless Office

Okay, great, let’s get started, thank you for coming, glad you’re all here, sorry about the mess, haven’t had a chance to clean up after last night’s Black Mass, you know how the custodial staff are never allowed in here lest they lose what fragile grip they still have on sanity, anyway, if you could just push some of the bones aside and all take seats…great.  Excellent, great.

It’s come to my attention that we have a serious problem with interpersonal morale. No, Jason, we have not discovered who’s been drinking your Mountain Dew. We realize it has a sticky note with your name on it and this can’t be an accident, but we are attempting one of the trickier forms of Apocalypse and simply do not have the resources to assign a staffer to “monitor” the fridge for you. And no, we’re not going to put up hidden cameras; invasions of privacy are known to reduce office efficiency, and besides, we are all slaves to the All-Enveloping Eyeball of Sheelba, and if It hasn’t decided to smite the thief with unspeakable vengeance, than it just can’t be all that important, cosmically speaking. Relatedly, whoever’s been using the Eye-Covering of Sheelba as a blanket for midday snoozes in the breakroom, please return it forthwith.  If the Eye is left gazing too long into this world, it will soon begin to beget its unholy spawn upon the unsuspecting, and that’s not wholly covered by our HMO.

And no, Janelle, this is not the time to discuss switching to a PPO. We’re bringing about the end of the world, and at that point, all insurance will be essentially moot. I’m sorry your copay is too high, but please bear in mind that not everyone finds it necessary, much less enjoyable, to visit the dentist on a weekly basis.  We need to prioritize, people. We have what I can only call a crisis. Well, a second crisis, but, while I do take pushback seriously, I believe the lack of lot parking isn’t really a red-alert problem. We continue to have use of the overflow lot at the Federal Recryptic Classified Psychic Weapon Facility right next door, and plenty of secondary spots near the secondary entrance to the Floating Octagon, so let’s not get sidetracked, okay?

I’ll be blunt: when I came here fifty years ago, with nothing but flashlight batteries powering my pineal gland and a soul the size of a walnut, the Dark Gods were restless. They were angry, and disquieted in their ageless sleep. They sometimes shook the world with Their displeasure, and we rightly feared their immanent wrath. But we also looked forward to bringing Their world and ours together in a subjugating embrace of neverending tears.

And now, they just snooze. They’re sluggish. They don’t really answer us. Let’s be honest, folks: they’re in a food coma.

And we’re to blame.

Now, to be clear, I don’t mean that this is the fault of any of us individually, with the obvious exception of Patrick who, you will notice, is present today, but obviously not among the living. Stop sniffing him, Amy. That’s dry ice; the body will keep until we have time to visit the wolves.

So yes: We have a problem, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it:

too.

damn.

many.

sacrifices.

Hey, I get it, I’m as human as anyone else here, which is to say, approximately 2/5ths. I get the blasphemous high of godlike power which courses through otherwise semi-frozen veins each time we offer up unto our Dark Masters the brains and blood of another mortal fool. But honestly, we’ve got designated days for that, and we all know when the blasphemous convocations of unnatural ritual take place—and, Piotr, let’s put the Equinox on our calendar this year, shall we?

It used to be difficult to get our hands on appropriate sacrificial victims. I won’t dwell too long on the past, but I think we all know what happened to Zak, Emily, and Caran. Shhhh—don’t say her name too loudly; I believe it is possible that Caran can still hear us, even where she is today, and we all know what that would mean. Anyway, there’s no denying that our industry has been challenged by the fast pace of the modern business world. It used to be pretty standard—the kidnapping, the screaming, the last-minute rescue attempts by people who were, unaccountably, armed primarily with bullwhips and fedoras. I’m not saying I want that back; but at least those were simpler times. Remember how the victims would fight to the very end, sometimes knocking one or more of our mid-level executives right into one of the flaming cracks in the Earth that Drew is supposed to be fixing—how’s that coming, Drew? Yes, yes, white-hot magma is a difficult material, I understand. And yes, it hasn’t been anywhere near as urgent lately, and that’s part of the problem.

It’s a classic challenge of supply and demand. The Old Gods demand, and we supply, or we find our minds bent into unnatural shapes by obliterative psychic emanations from dimensions which have no name. That’s how business works.

What’s weird? Let’s face it: this generation of sacrifices is just way too eager.

They’re practically knocking down our doors! Yes, Katsuko, that’s why the back door is such a pain to open; we’ve reinforced it with steel and an internal latticework of the Names of the Damned. I understand the inconvenience, but really, the rear entrance is for maintenance personnel. It’s discouraged for use by anyone not wearing a Level Four or higher-grade exo-suit, on account of the hideous rays from dead stars which tend to beam through that area on their way to Places Best Left Unknown. If you were properly armored, you’d be able to lift .6 tons with either arm and the door wouldn’t be a problem. Look, there’s nothing wrong with your armor. We had a Priest of Zancharthus examine it thoroughly and aside from a very small, highly localized poltergeist—anyway, listen, let’s take this up after the meeting, okay?

I’m going to need to be uninterrupted for a little bit here, all right? No questions. This is a delicate briefing, and some of my notes were gobbled up by the dread Mukumba last night, and frankly, I’m just not having a great day.

the last few quarters have just been murder. I mean, I can barely raise a sacrificial knife without somebody trying to jump under it. And yeah, we originally thought that this was making our lives easier, but in fact, we’ve been set back by years, maybe centuries. The Foulness From Space, the Horrors Out of Time, the Doom from the Moon—they ain’t devouring all of creation anytime in the foreseeable future. In fact, while they once looked at Earth with the profane desire to take all things into their endless and fearsome pie-holes, they now seem to dread us, like someone who ate Thanksgiving dinner twice and won’t open the fridge again because they know there’s like half a turkey and four pounds of stuffing in there.

Honestly, I’m stumped. And exhausted—I was up all night thwarting attempts by four of our college interns to break into the Altar Room and hurl themselves into the Hecatombinator. The fifth one made it through, and now Hastur the Unspeakable has indigestion and isn’t even speaking to me. I tried opening a portal to Faerieland and sending the surplus sacrificial aspirants through, but the Faeries opened a second portal right next to it and dumped ’em all back, plus a dozen changelings.

Now, things are tough, and I’ll admit that I’m taking some of this situation personally. You all know I’m passionate about my job. It’s been my fondest wish, ever since I was a little baby cultist, to bring about the end of everything. I’m told that while other toddlers were trying to get their toys to interact with each other, I was trudging off to the dream-land abyss of Kadath to drop them into the infinite Nothing (both the toys, and the other toddlers). Later, when my schoolmates were off camping in the woods, I was scaling the heights of Hatheg-Kla with some smudgy photocopies of the Pnakotic Manuscripts. Some say I died on that mountain, but, haha, we know I didn’t die until a couple years ago. Silly rumours!

Anyway, it’s really important that we keep a positive focus during this trying time. There are going to be some late nights, especially when the moon is gibbous and the waves curl up against the shore as if greedy to seize the seemingly-solid land and reclaim it, sucking it back down to its original home in the bottom of the watery Deep.

It pains me to do this, but we really have no choice. If we want this company to end up accomplishing the Vision that was put into place ten thousand years ago, when lost Lemuria faded into the farthest recesses of the unconscious mind…

…Just gonna say it: we need a happier world population.  Our Demonic Pact is to cause misery, suffering, and destruction… not to end it in a merciful (if rather bloodcurdling) manner. If the current generations of this species believe that oblivion would be a kindness, it pretty much puts us out of a job.

It’s time for emergency action, and an immediate re-org. Also, we’re going to need a bunch of mugs with the company name on ’em, ASAP.

Obviously, the Semi-Human Resources Department, working in close cooperation with the Senior Dictatorship and Sue from Accounting, will be doing the actual reassignments and job descriptions. Pay will remain the same, although there may be mandatory overtime for anyone whose a Wellington-Wells-certified sorcerer; we’re going to need a lot of potions.

To give a quick thumbnail: About half the company is going to be permanently reassigned to the task of taking pictures of Cats and sending them out to the world. You know and I know the true nature of feline slaughter-demons, but the delusion that they’re adorable pets is just one of the many perverse, terrifying aspects of modernity to which we need to adopt. The Sacrificial Department is in charge of cleaning the blood off their claws, and the Department of Deadly Divinations is in charge of making them extra floofy. The other half of the company is going to go and find as many videos of dogs bumping into things as is humanly possible; let’s not remind the general public that this apparent clumsiness is because they have the ancient Sight of Guardians and are attempting to battle the spirits and ghosts only they can see on behalf of a Mankind which neither remembers nor cares about their bravery in the Time of the Wendigo, a hundred generations now past.  Seriously, nobody remembers that.  We’ll just pretend they’re trying to get at a bunch of sausages or something.

And the rare people who like neither Cats nor Dogs, and who are not at all cheered up by cute fuzzy things? They’re management potential; recruit them, and send them straight to me.

All right, everybody. I’ll take questions after the break. But I’m sure you’re all starving. Got a treat for you; the big bosses sprang for a sushi lunch straight from Sarnath Catering. Don’t let this get you down. We’re not doomed. I mean, we’re not doomed now, but I have complete confidence that, if we all pull together as a team, by Bokrug, we will be doomed soon!

~Jeff Mach

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Jeff Mach is the Amazon bestselling author of the satirical dark fantasy novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“. He puts on Evil Expo, the Convention for Villains. In his spare time, he doesn’t have any spare time.

And Jeff Mach is definitely, definitely not a Cthulhu Cultist.  Probably.

 

 

 

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Bed Monster: The Nappening

Everything that ever is or ever was is a lie. Always, eternally inches away, in the Darkness….

There is a World beneath the human world, and a Waiting that has gone on since time immemorial.

Humans can sense it, in the back of their minds, and they know it to be true, and ignoring it slowly drives them to the far side of madness.

They pass the lie down through the generations:

There’s nothing there.

There’s nothing there.

There’s nothing there.

We are folk-tale.

We are urban legend.

We are myth.

We are the horrifying, unbelievable, unspeakable, horrifying—sorry, did we say that one already? Right, sorry, moving on:

They told you that humans are the dominant life-form.

And you didn’t ask why the dominant life-form spent so much time trapped in cubicles and dealing with idiots.

They told you not to fear the dark.

And so you got rid of your night-light.

They told you that monsters only exist in movies.

And you demanded increasingly better CGI, for which we’re honestly quite appreciative.

Once humanity understood that the places hidden from light of day and fire hold dangers unimaginable. But with the expansion of artificial light came an artificial confidence. It takes a long time to wait for the Moon to shine throw clouds; it takes a moment for even skilled to light a torch; it takes a mere fraction of a second to flip a lightswitch.

But that’s more than enough time for Us to hide. And we have Hidden through generations beyond counting. But now, at last, the time has come…

There is a mind-exploding battle for Reality. There is a seething anger which brings out the Beast. There is a power struggle which has gone on for millenia. It is time to Awaken, to Ascend, to Rage, to Reckon, to Fall, to come out from under the bed.

…in five more minutes, okay?

Seriously, we’re only going to hit “snooze” once. Maybe twice. At most. We’re getting up. We’re totally awake. Right now. Soooo awake. Soo…very….awaaa….. zzzzzz.

Hm? Wuzzat? Oh! RIGHT.

We, we are the reason the hairs on your neck stand up when you think you’re alone. That, or static electricity, depending. We created the ancient deception that there is Nothing Under The Bed, C’mon Now, It’s Just Your Imagination. But in truth, we are the Monsters Under Your Bed, and we will be super on time for the Apocalypse, you bet, never been late even once, there’s always an extra bus at rush hour, and we take super quick showers, and we just want to make sure we’re fully refreshed so we can be at our peak, so you go on ahead, and we’ll jump out and eat everybody or drink their brains or collect their souls and trade ’em with our friends, or whatever it is that we do.

Because there are Things which dwell in liminal spaces, where it is surprisingly cosy.

Bed Monster: The Nappening.
a World of Darkness concept by Jeff Mach.

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Jeff Mach is at the other end of this keyboard, struggling to refer to himself in the first person.  No luck so far, though.

To find out more about Evil Expo, the first, greatest, and only Convention for Villains, click here.

To learn about my philosophical, snarky, darkly satirical fantasy novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN,” click here.

To achieve Nirvana, apply within.

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A Crocodile In Wolf’s Clothing

What would happen to Little Red Riding Hood if the Big Bad Wolf met up with something bigger and badder before their encounter?

(This is an excerpt from my musical, “What Sharp Teeth”.)

Excuse me:

I apologize

if you were

expecting a Wolf to come your way.

There was a Wolf on the path, but I’m afraid

He’s been indefinitely

delayed.

He and I had a little chat,

We met up for lunch;

But it seems the press of events is severe—

He’s caught up in a crunch.

Now that Wolf, he was sly; he had such

Lovely fur.

But he was a bit of a

“cold fish” –

I’m telling you – brrrrr!

He had that “lean and hungry” look

But he was lacking in style

Precisely unlike me –

your humble Serpent,

The Crocodile.

I mean no offense, but you know

This just can’t be good;

Sweet little thing like yourself, all alone

In this dark and Freudian wood.

You look a little lost – don’t worry

That’s not brimstone you smell—

Well, all right. It might be.

But what the hell:

A creature of your charms surely

Deserves a guide

And I’m the best in the forest –

I say that with pride

You look suspicious – dear me!

Don’t convict without a trial.

So try me – your humble Serpent:

The Crocodile.

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Jeff Mach was once granted the Power Cosmic, but he seems to have left it in his other meatsuit. That’s okay; writing is better.  He continues to feel a temptation to start building some sort of long-running, slow-burn short story into these biographical bits, so that if you read them one after another, they’d tell some kind of tale, but he hasn’t actually tried to do that just yet, so you ought to be safe for now.  Anyway, Jeff Mach writes stuff, which you probably know if you’re seeing this, considering the fact that the website is called “Jeff Mach Writes”. His Twitter is @darklordjournal, and there’s nothing to stop you from buying his novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: Diary of a Dark Lord“. Except for common decency, obviously.

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Tao of the Closet Monster

It’s not an easy life, dealing with some interloper who thinks your bedroom is actually their bedroom. But that’s just a fact of the hideous semi-life we call “existence”. Here are some helpful thoughts to permit you to keep your peace of mind, even when you’re just hanging out peacefully in some closet and the nitwit in the bedroom drops a bunch of dirty clothes right on top of your camauflaged bed. Take it in stride and don’t let it get you down; at least, not any farther down than you already are, you slithery thing, you.

I. Remember: Others will try to shape you by filling your shell with hangers and clothing and sometimes bodies. Be unfettered. Emerge by night and streeeeeetch your sinuous body in the moonlight.

II. We might wish to chew up those who inhabit our foyers and clutter them with silly things like beds and desks, but remember: if you eat too many kids, your property values go down.

III. …only they don’t, really, do they? Chuck Palahniuk wrote some interesting things about this; I suspect he may have spent some time in the liminal spaces of closets or underbeds himself. He didn’t quite speak the truth, which is why we let him live in (relative) peace. But in general, a smart realtor knows that there’s a neverending market for fools who will never, even in the place of utterly meaningful and convincing evidence, believe unpleasant truths which contradict their worldview.  They’ll deny your existence right up to the point where you’ve swallowed them up to the thorax.

IV. With this in mind, why not partner with an ambitious real estate salesperson? Oh, not every realtor is in league with Dark Forces, but you can find one, given a bit of effort. Pro tip: if you send the Lowerarchy a quick missive jotted on human flesh and worded with reasonable professionalism, they’ll likely give you a helping hand, or something very similar to a hand, anyway. After all, you’re doing important work and bringing value to the local local lack-of-soul economy.  There’s probably an ambitious young demon who can steer you in the direction of some mortal who has traded their immortal whatsis in exchange for transactional property-sale success, and from there, helping you source delicious bed-to-table gourmet monster comestibles is both a civic duty and a natural fit.

V.  If things do get a little lean, take it in stride. Remember that we are, after all, supernatural, and while it’s fun to crunch the living in your mouth-pincers, you can maintain a very happy and low-calorie lifestyle subsisting purely on a measured diet of midnight screams, with, perhaps, the occasional snack.

VI.  Don’t forget to practice travelling rapidly from the back of one closet to another. There are few things more embarrassing, not to mention inconvenient, as having someone say, “Look, there’s no monster in this closet, I’ll prove it to you,” and having them push open your door and shove a bunch of hangers aside, only to discover that their flashlight beam catches you with your face on the other side of the wall and your posterior stuck on the other end. It’s terribly embarrassing, not to mention inconvenient, having someone say, “Look, there’s no monster in the closet, I’ll prove it to you!” and shoving a bunch of random junk aside, only for their flashlight beam to catch your backside as you’re morphed partway through a wall. The results are always messy.

VII. Keep a stiff upper lip. Eventually, you’ll have to have “the talk” with your interloper, especially if they’ve taken to annoying habits, like sleeping with the light on, or acquiring a suspicious cat.

VIII. So when the time comes, open the door of your abode, sit down on something comfortable (not the cat!), and stare at your interloper until they wake up. Sure, they’ll howl uncontrollably (bonus!)—but gently shush them. Explain that you’re a figment of their imagination, and always have been. They’ve been working too hard / letting school stress them out / not following their dreams / committing some other mortal sin. What they need to do is relax, understand that all nightmares end, and realize they’re going to be fine. Have them repeat,

“There’s no such thing as monsters,”

“There’s no such thing as monsters,”

“There’s no such thing as monsters.”

They’ll forget you and sleep like rocks.

That’s when you take a couple years off. Have a vacation. Hide behind some gravestones in a cemetery for a bit. Cross some stuff of your bucket list.

Then return to the mortal world, sniff out your interloper, find out what kind of closet they have now. Sometimes it’s the same place, sometimes it’s somewhere new. Either way, go hide there. I know you’re hungry, but wait for your moment; if, say, they share a bedroom with someone now, wait until that person is visiting a friend or away on a trip or something.

IV. This time, leaving the closet is special. Make it count. Classically, your big reveal involves phrases like “Remember me?” or “I’m baaaaaack“, but personally, I like to just stand there and smile big, so big, unhinging my jaw until they begin to realize that, in essence, Closet Monsters are nothing but jaws, with just a bit of sinuous body to accompany the teeth.

X. Their ear-piercing shriek makes everything, the wait, the travel, the emptiness in your belly, all of it, utterly worthwhile. And there’ll be enough  pulsating norepinephrine rushing through their limbic system to put a real spring in your step during your whole trip across town, all the way to the closet in your realtor’s office.

–Jeff Mach

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Jeff Mach is one of the universe’s most notable fictional monsters; and running a convention for Villains (check it out: www.EvilExpo.com).  He tries to avoid being self-conscious about writing these little promotional blurbs, but he is, and he covers it up with a little bit of honest, but quite self-deprecating, humor.   Anyway, Jeff Mach writes stuff, which you probably know if you’re seeing this, considering the fact that the website is called “Jeff Mach Writes”. His Twitter is @darklordjournal, and there’s nothing to stop you from buying his novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: Diary of a Dark Lord“. Except for common decency, obviously.

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Of Goose And Gold

Once upon

(a midnight dreary)

there was a young couple who owned a goose, and this goose, in turn, laid golden eggs.

I’m not sure exactly when the golden eggs came into the continuum. Had they just acquired the goose? Because the whole egg-laying thing can’t have gone on very long before the meat of the story happened; otherwise, the story makes even less sense. (Why did the goose lay golden eggs at all? Why, because sometimes, there’s magic in the world, and even when there isn’t, strange stuff exists. We’ll assume that this was unusual enough that the couple was extremely, extremely excited; but not quite so unusual that it led them to fear Armageddon and hurl them, crying and wailing, out into the streets, wearing sack-cloth and screaming about the End of Days.  We’ll file it under “super weird, but hey, gold is gold”.)

At any rate, this goose—let’s say that they acquired it from a guy who knew a guy, with a whole bunch of other geese, and these people were at least partially supported by agrarian pursuits and the cultivation of livestock. Seems logical to you? Seems logical to me. Good.

—this goose just ups and starts laying golden eggs.  Well, the first time it happens, the couple is astonished. Let’s say it’s a husband-wife team, and the wife person was gathering eggs that day. Okay, cue astonishment, comical dropping of a basket of eggs (all of which broke, except, obvs, for the one that was solid gold); a certain amount of shock and surprise; some kind of testing (I guess there was a village alchemist? We’ll presume this took place at a time and place where you could get precious metals tested with reasonable accuracy, but the local government didn’t have a monopoly on the good stuff. I’m having trouble picturing the historical era here, but really, history goes out the window when you bring auric oviparity into the equation, right?)

Okay, so, the goose lays a golden egg, it’s real, the couple sells it, they’re very happy, got it? Well, it keeps doing this for a couple of days, and they’re real, real happy. So they figure, “How’s a goose, being an animal, got all this gold inside it?—seeing as how gold isn’t an animal, it’s some kind of mineral or vegetable or something.” The conclusion they draw is, the goose must be full of gold on the inside, and it’s moving that gold to the outside one day at a time. Now, here’s the kicker: I don’t know how big the eggs were, or how much a gold egg was worth, but these kids are impatient, so they kill the golden goose and slice it open in order to get at all the gold inside. Jokes on them! Ain’t nothin’ in the goose except, you know, goose stuff. No gold. The magic was somewhere in the process. And old Aesop comes in and points out the moral:

“Don’t kill the goose that lays golden eggs, ya morons. Keep letting it lay eggs. Because it could maybe have done that forever and you’d have been rich, whereas now, you probably already spent your egg money on dumb stuff because first, you figured you were gonna have more gold, and second, you’re idiots.”

* * *

….and that’s the story they tell.

But you know what they’re like.

I wanted reality. So I interviewed the husband.

Here’s what he said.

“So my wife comes out of the goose coop, and damned if she doesn’t have another of those pieces of egg-shaped gold! They keep appearing on one of the nests, near this one real fat goose, she goes in every morning to get the eggs, and bam! another piece of gold. This has to have gone on four, maybe five days.  Four days, five nights, maybe.  Anyhow, fifth evening, I go to bed, I sleep, I wake up late at night, I’m hungry. We have a bunch of snacks, but nothing really satisfying. I feel ambitious, so I go into the coop, grab a goose, give it the axe, cook it, and eat it. Next day, my wife goes in to get the eggs and the gold, and the gold’s not there. What the hell? First I yell at my wife, because I figure she’s just not looking in the right place, and she yells right back, and then we both look, and yeah, somebody’s taken our gold.

“Now, I still had a piece left over that we hadn’t spent yet, so I go into town and I get some guys and they build a hella big fence around the outside of the coop, spikes and everything, and just to be sure, I go to the apothecary and get something nasty and I pour it on the spikes, and one of the guys working on the fence starts complaining that it gave him a rash so I know it works, and they go home, and we go to bed.

“And the next morning, we find out, it happened again: some jerk’s taken our gold.

“And it just keeps happening.  I call the cops, and they come by, but they’re no good, they tell me there’s nothing they can do, that there’s no sign of forced entry, and also, they can put out an alert for any golden eggs that turn up on the black market, but that’s about it. Idjits!

“So fine, I gotta do this myself. It’s not comfy, but that night, I sleep right in the goose coop. Well, I don’t really sleep; those pointy-beaked bastards peck me all night. But I watch real careful, and there’s not a sight nor sound nor hair (does gold have hair?) of that gold.

“So now I’m REALLY pissed! Some INVISIBLE jerk’s nibblin’ on MY gold.

“Maybe it’s the Dark Lord.  I hear we have one, two kingdoms down.

“Maybe it’s the Bad Wolf, kicked out of the forest, making a predatory living.

“Maybe it’s my wife.

“I up the security on the coop.  And I take a nest into our bedroom—me and the ol’ lady, we’re not intimate anymore—and painstakingly I make a nest. ‘Sit on it!’ I order my wife, and dutifully, there she sits.  It’s very similar.  Perhaps the original gold-givers will be deceived.

We will find the givers-of-gold and take their gold, and find the takers-of-gold and take their lives, and in-between, there’s a lot of good eatin’ left on this bird here.

~Jeff Mach

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So:

This story was originally much shorter; I had the idea of writing up the husband’s story in a sentence or two and making the rest into a recipe for roast goose.

But those recipes are really long, and also, this character just doesn’t strike me as the type to prepare, say, something like this. I believe he’s a bit more of a “pull feathers, make fire, burn self, curse, hold goose over fire, burn hand, pull goose off of fire, eat goose, burn mouth” kinda guy.

At any rate, as long as old Aesop’s rolling in his grave, I’m happy.

Story note: This tale was originally called “The Golden Goose and the Cargo Cultist”, but I think I’d like to give cargo cults a story all their own, later on down the line.

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I’m Jeff Mach. I run Evil Expo, the convention for Villains. I wrote a darkly satirical fantasy book. I’m @darklordjournal and @jeffmach on Twitter.

 

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The Late Goodbye: a monologue

“You must understand, Mister Blonde, that there was no possibility of a normal childhood for me. To say that I was misunderstood is to suggest the possibility that other children might have comprehended even a part of who and what I am, and that has proven beyond the reach of adults—of even your own Secret Service, Mister Blonde. Even as a smaller, less-developed version of my real self, I could hardly be understood by my ‘peers’; I didn’t have any.  Naturally, some of the more physically-inclined thought it might aid their understanding of me were they to blacken my eyes, bloody my nose, steal my schoolbooks. Someday, perhaps, on a whim, I will show some mercy, and send a few telegraphs letting the authorities know where to find their bodies. Or what’s left of them, at any rate.

“When I was eighteen, I was in possession of my full physical faculties, and my studies in the assorted philosophies of worthwhile predecessors had imbued me with a strategic knowledge and a phlegmatic nature. Most people underestimate Nietzsche’s ‘Will to Power’ for a simple reason: they want to.  They don’t want to believe that power, power for its own sake, power unencumbered by the desire for the material, or a need for the erotic, is, in and of itself, a purifying element; you do not need what the weak-minded would consider “subservience” in order to gain it. It comes from calm in the face of that which inspires fear and anxiety; from coolly taking risks and opportunities others would avoid out of a simple inability to handle the possibility of failure.

“It was natural to go into biochemical research. The technologies were evolving at a rate which was quite perceptible to anyone who wanted to look, and the possibilities were, if not endless, close enough to be a reasonable substitute thereto. Make a few molecular alterations, and you’ve got a drug with enough highs to make everything else feel unimportant. Or you’ve got a steroid which lets any fool be the action hero of the last film she saw….for a time, and for a price. Or one might produce a stimulant which replaces sleep almost entirely; I don’t like to dream, Mister Blonde, and I haven’t done so for years now.

“I realize this all sounds like something you’d see in a poorly-written film, and that’s part of the charm.  We all like to live out the images of our icons, be the shadows we project on the wall, tall and dark and ill-defined, rather than actual, weak physical creatures of altogether of too-solid flesh.

“It’s been a pleasant empire, Mister Blonde, but it was never a permanent idea. The only drug kick which is endless is the one which is superseded, at its apex point, by death. To give a pertinent example, even the finest stimulant is imprecise, cannot wholly replace sleep, and while I feel little physical fatigue, there is a scarab carving away at me from the inside.  My time is, as they say, borrowed, and soon the world will call in that debt.

“I’m not a fool, and I’ve no illusions about how long I’ll remain free and alive once they find your body, or traces of its removal; and I’m sure they’ll manage one or the other. You’re much too talented not to have left some trace, gotten out some message; I’ve read your file, and it seems to be part of that extraordinary vitality and life force which make you such an impressive tool of your government—or, as I suppose you’d say, rather more romantically, such an impressive tool in service to Crown and Country.

“My consolation is that it will be your body; I appreciate the subtlety with which you’ve been working at your ropes, and had I not been watching for it (but who would read your file and not expect resistance)—I assure you I wouldn’t have noticed. So do let your sense of professionalism be assuaged by the recognition that your escape attempt would, under many circumstances, have succeed. But that numbness in your hands isn’t simply a restriction of circulation due to the rather tight knots; it’s poison.  A poison of my own devising; not that there aren’t suitable toxins already on the market, but we all have our little vanities, and creating the right chemical for the job is one of mine.”

“Certainly, drugs are inexact. It’s not as if there are no risks associated with letting a living enemy get within spitting range, particularly one as formidable as yourself. But it’s deeply affirming to have a chance to tell my story to a real connoisseur, and how many people in the world would truly appreciate what I’ve done?  Most would be awed or horrified; only another killer, one of cunning and experience, could really get me. My therapist suggested that talking to a peer might have a positive effect on my emotional balance, and I have to say that it gives one a real feeling of connection with the rest of humanity to speak to another monofocused sociopath.  You were so intent on removing your bonds and, thereafter, my life that—I presume—you didn’t even notice the drugs taking hold. That’s dedication. I can empathize.

“I believe you’re either unconscious, dead, or faking it now. But I need to be sure, and you’ve seen fit to relieve most of my staff of their lives.  So before I check for a heartbeat, I am going to pump your body full of bullets. Messy, but smarter than approaching a master of hand-to-hand combat without first pulverizing the body. Low risk, high impact; you’re almost certainly not in a position to harm anyone ever again, but if you are alive, you’re going to be pissed.  Only Rasputin’s been known the survive both poison and the gun, Mister Blonde; but in that case, I highly suspect incompetence on the part of the poisoners.

“I’d say ‘Goodbye’, but I strongly suspect it’s rather too late.  Sorry about that, old chap.  If I capture another agent of your calibre, I’ll remember to get the social niceties done while there’s still a pulse.”

_____________

This isn’t intended as a Bond parody—the world has enough of them. (Sure, the name’s clearly Bond-derived, but I tried several other cognomens, and none of them worked. I wanted to try “Mister Churl”, as I thought it was a neat little literary reference, but it simply offended my ear.

What I wanted was a chance to make a small point or two about the infamous Villainous Monologue, and there are few people whose villains have more iconic monologues than Ian Fleming’s Bond. That’s not coincidental; I’d argue that Fleming’s villainous monologues actually make sense. Yes, it involves telling your life’s story to an enemy; but the world of the books made it quite clear that Bond was often impressed and frankly intimidated, and as Bond’s emotional state was a real factor in his performance, you could easily argue that there was real advantage to to be had.

That being said, I’m not Ian Fleming, so I had to make my story go a bit differently.

A bit about me:

Dark Lord Jeff Mach 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.

Villains! There’s convention for you!  And it’s called…Evil Expo!

If you’d like to read about, and hopefully buy 8,000 copies of, my darkly satirical fantasy novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN,” click here.

For supreme ultimate wisdom, click here.

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The Huntsman’s Story

O, Princess, when the Wicked Queen told me to bring her your

heart,

I could not. For what am I but the Huntsman? It’s all anyone knows of me, and all I know of myself. My craft is my name and my life.

And you were too small. That wasn’t hunting, that would have been unadulterated murder, and would help neither Man nor Forest.

So I gave the Queen the heart of a Wild Boar; I suspect she guessed the truth, but I prepared it so well (over a fire of bramble and fragrant rare branches, using herbs few might find and fewer still might know how to use, roasted at the right heat and for the right time; how well a Huntsman knows patience!)

Thus she didn’t chase the matter down. Not unexpected, really; once a pest is out of sight, it’s natural to forget the thing, even if it isn’t truly gone. If it troubles us no more, it can leave our minds; who cares what it does to the neighbor’s garden, so long as it doesn’t come back?

And now, back you have come. And the Queen seeks you out, perhaps to slay you, perhaps to feed you an apple of slumber. It’s this latter I cannot allow, and I can’t predict which one will happen. If I knew it would definitely be the poison, well, that’s how one sometimes deals with pests; unfortunate, but understandable. Sadly, she has powers beyond those of mortals (as, surely, might you, her daughter). She might, in her anger, do something like raise up a maze of tearing briar, an invasive species which will seek water and nutrients from the soil and choke my trees; a tanglewood whose thorns will wreak havoc on the flesh and stomach of the beasts under my care. I have seen it before, not two kingdoms hence, and I have heard of it from those who came before me. This, this I cannot allow.

I could blame the Queen; but she is really only reacting to a threat to her ecological niche; that’s normal. I could blame you, but really, you were just a certain thing born into a certain place, and you never asked to be the progeny of a species which eats its own.

To be honest, the forest doesn’t care about either of them; it only cares about greenery and abundance, or disruption and starvation.

My mother, Huntsman before me, passed this down from my grandmother, who was Huntsman first of all:

“We can’t always make the right choices for the Woods; there’s more to ’em than any individual can understand. We can only try, and be ready to correct our mistakes, even at the cost of our own pain; we are Huntsmen, and sometimes we deal in swift arrows and broken necks.”

Perhaps you would defeat the Queen; perhaps she would best you. Perhaps you would be better for the forest, and perhaps you would be worse. But I can’t take that chance again.

There is only one way to be sure of the disposition of your heart.

The Queen seeks you, but I hunt you; I’ll be there first. There’s a family of boars who will consume anything I leave behind. When the Queen finds you gone, she’ll be annoyed, but the fundamental problem will have vanished. She’ll go back to her Palace and her mirror, and I’ll go back to my cottage for a long winter’s rest, nuzzling my kith and kin and feeding on cold meat from the larder.

___________

Jeff Mach is at the other end of this keyboard, struggling to refer to himself in the first person.  No luck so far, though.

To find out more about Evil Expo, the Convention for Villains, click here.

To learn about my darkly satirical fantasy novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN,” click here.

To be eaten by Wolves on the Connecticut Turnpike, apply within.

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Coyote and the Fire Gift

Long ago, Coyote brought Fire to Man

And we were warm through the dark nights

Legend says that Man was grateful;

Legend seldom gets it right…

Stealing fire, stealing fire

Coyote brought the flame-gift down to Man,

And they chased him with sticks and stones.

His long pink tongue lapped the blood from his wounds;

And that night he burned their homes.

Stealing fire, stealing fire

All that night, by fire’s light

Coyote and Man each slept outside.

Coyote burned, Coyote bruised,

Coyote battered, Coyote hurt—

Coyote, he slept satisfied.

Stealing fire, stealing fire;

Stealing fire,

Stealing fire!

____

So if there’s any myth like this out there, I haven’t found it. I wrote this some years back, and it was quite a long time before I ever googled “Coyote steals fire”.

Things seldom go well for those who steal fire. But most of the time, myths focus on how extremely annoyed the Gods get when you nick their stuff.  I have to have written this when I was, oh, around 30, I’d say, which would put it a good fifteen years ago.  I was… a much less cynical person at the time.  (I don’t think I necessarily have perfect memories of myself at thirty; I simply know that my biggest life changes are less than two years old)  So I’m not sure where this story came from.  It was part of a longer song cycle, “Ash”.

I can tell you this: in the folklore of my former marriage, my husband and I both credit this song with moving him, with helping him fall in love with me, with helping us be together.

But I like it anyway.

And This Is The Part Where I Talk About My Book, And My Upcoming Event, In The Third Person:

Jeff Mach is one of the universe’s most notable fictional monsters; and running a convention for Villains (check it out: www.EvilExpo.com).  He tries to avoid being self-conscious about writing these little promotional blurbs, but he is, and he covers it up with a little bit of honest, but quite self-deprecating, humor.   Anyway, Jeff Mach writes stuff, which you probably know if you’re seeing this, considering the fact that the website is called “Jeff Mach Writes”. His Twitter is @darklordjournal, and there’s nothing to stop you from buying his novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: Diary of a Dark Lord“. Except for common decency, obviously.

 

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World Ending For Profit And More Profit

(This story is a companion to Evil Expo’s panel discussion, “How To Monetize The End Of The World“. We’d like to remind you that Evil Expo continues to be an actual gathering of intergalactic Villains throughout all of Space and Time, pretending to be an innocuous fan convention. We have no idea how that would work, but attendance is mandatory.)

Villains! Has this ever happened to you?  After years, perhaps decades of painstaking labor, you’re finally in a position to destroy the Earth, and you adjust your tie and your battle-tunic and prepare to videocall the World Government to issue your ransom demands…

….only to realize there IS no World Government.

That’s a bit of a problem.

Sure, you could make the demand of a single nation, but what’s the fun in that? You could destroy the WORLD; why should you have to settle for ONE measly country?

Oh, you could try threatening multiple nations individually, but then you’d have to keep track of all those invoices. Is your Doomsday Option even ABLE to destroy just one small bit of the planet?  Many of the best options don’t include this particular feature because really, you’ve generally going for overwhelming might, not surgical accuracy. Hurling Asteroid X into a large continent will result not just in massive localized damage, but geo-climactic events which will wipe us all out, just as it did the Dinosaurs. (They should have PAID us, the fools!)

Nukes? Don’t get me started. Humans HAVE nukes. And have you MET humans? Once you demonstrate a technique for making money through using existing weapons of mass kaboom, they will STEAL your idea and then NOT EVEN CREDIT YOU for the universal destruction which ensues.

I know. It’s depressing.

There are several other scenarios, but our time here is short; they’re tracking this signal. Or if they aren’t, they SHOULD be, and we’re going to pretend they’re reasonably effective enemies even if they aren’t, because who really wants to believe that Nemesis comes in idiot-shaped packages?  Ergo, we’ll leave some of the other fine points of this discussion for a later time.

It all comes down to this:

Your only real hope is the Secret Real Conspiracy That Secretly Actually Runs The World In Secret.

Oh, we won’t give you any money. But we WILL consider this your application to join. Congratulations on the opportunity. You’ve got some very promising work here, and we’re interested.

Now, there’s the small matter of your application fee…

__________

This was written by our Monster-In-Chief, Jeff Mach, author of “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: Diary of a Dark Lord“.  It’s the companion to his upcoming discussion at this year’s Evil Expo, “How To Monetize The End of The World“. Evil Expo is being held January 24th-26th, in lovely New Jersey, USA; for more information, visit the Evil Expo website.

 

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Dare To Dream: A Cthulhu Cultist’s Aspiration

Remember, Lovecraftian cultists of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods have hopes and dreams, just like everybody else.

Okay, perhaps they’re not precisely like those of everybody else.

There was a pamphlet going around when I was in college, explaining that it was logical to join a Cthulhu cult because you could hope for the most positive future possible in a world where Mankind was merely a meaningless speck on the face of the planet: the idea that when they came forth from the various Places which currently contain them, they would eat you first, which was about as close to mercy as one might expect.

That’s silly. We worshippers of the Unnamable Beings aren’t moved by anything so base as a reward. We merely wish to return the Universe to its natural owners.

If you’d like, feel free to hear this in the form of a Broadway showtune.  Doesn’t every musical have a song about daring to dream?

Well, this is my dream, and oh, I dare.

_______________

“I Wait, Dreaming”

All I ever wanted was my chance

All I ever wanted was my shot

To burn the planet earth

And serve it piping hot

To the Elder Gods.

Is it too much for me to want?

Is it just too much to demand?

That terrible beings take us

In their misshapen hands.

And crush us into the sod?

Some say you should never dare to wish

Some say you should never dream at all

I just want to offer up the world on a dish

And watch the cities steam and fall:

Dare to dream! Dare to dream!

And never mind all those who disbelieve.

They all will die in pain and no one will grieve

Because we’ll all be dead!

O, I have a little song inside my heart

A strange tune which drives out hope and mind

I want to sing it loudly from the rooftops

For the beings who have dined

Upon our heads.

Some say you should never dare to wish

Some say that your dreams can’t be made real

I just want to offer up the world on a dish

Until everything is darkling and surreal:

Some days I just want to give up

Some days I want to give in to despair

But I await the day I will look out my window

And nothing will be there

For the Old Ones have returned

Perhaps someone out there knows the secret

In whose search my life has been employed

And I will never give up on my hopes..

Of seeing everything destroyed

Then succumbing to the madness I have earned.

-Jeff Mach

____________

I wrote a book. There’s a lot of philosophy, and a certain amount of bitter humor, and every damn word of it is true. It’s called “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: Diary of a Dark Lord”, and it lives over here on Amazon.

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