Matt Snee's Blog, page 53

a brief examination of my American fathers, chapter 3

John Wayne goes to the grocery store…

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 12

Doc Masterson’s been in the superhero game for most of his life. But his powers are more dependable than his mental health. Today he ventures into the belly of the beast: Apparatus headquarters.

The Traveller

“Your name, sir?” the Receptionist asked me.

“Uh… Doctor John Masterson.”

“Thank you, Mr. Masterson,” said the receptionist. She was in her thirties, probably former special forces sent to business administration classes, you could tell by how tight her hair was pulled back, only women in the military do that. “Have you been here before?”

I was a little confused. I wasn’t here to see the Apparatus dentist. “No, I haven’t,” I answered.

“Since it’s your first time, we have some paperwork for you to fill out.” The receptionist pushed a clipboard at me.

That was enough. “I’m not filling out any fucking paperwork,” I said, glancing at the men with the futuristic machine guns, whose masks were expressionless.

“Mr. Masterson,” smiled the receptionist, as though she were dealing with a child. “We ask for so little.”

I took the clipboard in my hands and sunk my fingers into it, deeper, deeper, until I was pushing through the field of its molecules like a knife through a living membrane. The clipboard started to glow and vibrate, a whistling sound spun around me, the paperwork and clipboard burst into a flash that looked like flame, but wasn’t, and then both ceased to exist entirely.

A fine mist of the clipboard’s undisintegrated matter lingered in the air, reeking of cancer potential. I glared at the men with guns while I spoke to the receptionist. “I have an appointment.”

A woman’s voice: “John!”

I turned – a petite, middle-aged Jewish woman with curly black hanging to her shoulders was coming out of a hidden door off to the side. It was Colleen Weiss, also known as QuantumKat, formerly of the M-Men, a superhero group consisting only of people of color that had been active in the 80s and 90s before most of them were annihilated. Like me, Colleen could dematerialize and pass though objects, but her powers were entirely different than mine – not that I understood how – someone had explained it to me once when I was drunk at a party. Colleen’s electrical field could also interact and disrupt electronic devices, and there were rumors she had other… undisclosed powers.

When Professor M died in 1997 and the M-Men kind of just faded into an unfulfilled dream like most civil rights causes, Colleen was one of the few survivors. She kind of floated for a while, but then I guess she “grew up,” – found a nice Jewish neurosurgeon to marry, had two daughters. A person of Colleen’s skills and qualities wasn’t found on the classified ads on Craig’s List, so eventually the Apparatus came knocking. Like the rest of us, Colleen said yes. But despite how it might have started, I knew Colleen was a believer now.

We shook hands. “How are you Colleen?”

“Good! How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

Colleen looked me up and down. “I see you still refuse to comb your hair or put on clean clothes before you do something serious.”

I was hurt. “This suit is clean,” I protested.

“I was talking about your shirt, John. There are two coffee stains. That I can see.”

I looked down at myself. She was right. “I assure you this shirt was clean before I spilled coffee on it,” I told her.

She chuckled. “Let’s go for a ride, John.”

Colleen led me through a set of thick blast doors down a long hall. “How are you these days, John? I mean, really?”

Colleen Weiss. Eternally “authentic.” The girl next door. She had a way of making everyone feel like she was their best friend. When I was young I had a big crush on her – she was the spunky teen media darling, her trials and tribulations in the fight against evil and in dramas of teen romance Must See TV back in the 80s and 90s. I remember the TV special she did on the Holocaust, to educate “young people.” And now, here she was, an adult, invisible. But I wasn’t fooled. I knew QuantumKat had a dark side.

“I’m okay, I think,” I told her.

“You ever see your dad?”

Only a nihilist who clothed herself in compassion would have asked me that. I knew Colleen, but we had never been close. She probably read an article about me and my dad at some point. I doubt I’d ever talked to her about it. That’s the thing when you’re famous – people assume that anything the media has dug up on you is an appropriate topic of conversation, that because they’re out in the open about it, you are too. Colleen was getting sloppy, going through the motions. She had handed in her girl-next-door act for the modern mother persona, and she had become appropriately blind – everything had become orderly to her, everything was worries and schedules that must be adhered to.

“No,” I told Colleen. “I haven’t talked to him for a long time.”

Through another set of blast doors was “the train,” – a sort of subway pod that was carried on rails from this front entrance to deep Apparatus headquarters under the river. While every communicable disease on Earth could be found on the seats of the MTA, this subway however was immaculately clean, the plastic seats traded for rich, enveloping leather, and the scum-magnet floors exchanged for thick, luxurious carpet that begged you to take off your shoes and dig your does into its fabric. Colleen sat herself on a loveseat and I chose an armchair next to her. There were no windows in the pod. It never traveled on the surface.

“John,” Colleen said as the pod doors closed behind us, and the pod began to power up, “I wanted to talk to you about our visitor and his ship.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“We know a lot more now than we did the day he arrived, but there is still a lot we don’t know. But first of all, you should know the ship is from the future.”

“Time travel?”

“Yes. Our physicists managed to figure out a way to pinpoint its date of origin – 178 years into the future.”

“Seriously?” I asked. I had considered the possibility, but the reality of it was a little more frightening. “Are you sure?”

“Even if the dating is wrong… the technology on that ship is a whole other level. But not alien – it’s technology that we could theoretically develop, but still, for now, is incomprehensible to us. We don’t know how to interact with it. We don’t even know how to identify what does what.”

“But could people in the future really invent time travel?” I asked Colleen.

“It might seem impossible, but the evidence is pretty indisputable. We have come to the conclusion that the level of technology needed to create the illusion that ship is from the future would have to be as advanced as technology really capable of doing it.”

“So that’s that,” I said. “What about the pilot?”

Colleen stroked her wrist. “The pilot is part of that technology. He seems to be in a self-induced, computer-regulated coma, managed by the same kind of technology in the rest of the ship, meaning we don’t understand it.”

“It’s been nearly two weeks since the ship crashed!”

“We can’t say for certain what the purpose of the coma is – perhaps the pilot is injured, or the coma is used to protect him from the effects of time travel, which we can only guess at.”

“What about his DNA?”

“We thought of that too,” Colleen snickered. “But his DNA is locked.”

“What do you mean, locked?”

“The system managing his coma seems to be part of a larger network of artificial intelligence that regulates and protects his body.”

“You can’t take a damn mouth swab?”

“You don’t understand, John. It’s like when a file on a computer is locked and hidden. It’s like it’s not even there. We can’t find it. The technology in his body and his actual body are inseparable.”

I didn’t know what to think about that. When you think of insane technology, you think of death rays, armies of robots. Not password protected cells. “I have a headache,” I told Colleen.

Colleen frowned. I had expected her to laugh. “There are many questions,” she said, her eyes distant. “But there are a few clear facts. The pilot and the ship ARE from the future. They ARE real. But the most important detail is this – signs seem to increasingly point to the pilot travelling to our time period in an act of reckless desperation – a one-way, last-ditch attempt.”

Colleen turned to me and laid her hand on my forearm. She looked into my eyes in utter seriousness and my doubts about the morally complex former M-Man wavered. “Now,” Colleen said,  “why would someone do that?”

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 13

The Festering Wound of Stephen King, Chapter 5

The Quest to Avoid Damnation

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 6

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 11

Doc Masterson’s been in the superhero game for most of his life. But his powers are more dependable than his mental health. Now that he’s back in New York, Masterson has a meeting with the Apparatus..

An Unassuming Building

When I woke up the next morning it was raining. I could hear the steady tapping against the windows and maudlin, gray light grimaced through the cracks in my blinds. I was scheduled that day to meet with some top brass at the Apparatus – apparently dealing only with Paul wasn’t going to work anymore. I was too apathetic to put up a fuss about it. It wasn’t a big deal. I knew these people. Though I wished I didn’t.

I climbed out of bed, clicked on the coffee machine, took a bong hit, ate a weed brownie in preparation for the bullshit I anticipated later that day, and washed it down with the thick coffee that was a bit of a superhero itself. It jumped into the shower, where I almost forgot my plans for the rest of the day for a few glorious minutes, and then into the most wrinkled suit I could find, which was easy because I had never ironed anything in my life. When the bell rang announcing the driver had arrived, I had been ready for five minutes.

Outside it was pouring. I was picked up by the same Nordic driver I had been escorted by before. I still didn’t think to ask him his name. He said very little. I stared at the back of his head and his elaborate trellis of golden blond hair. He didn’t listen to the radio or make small talk. I had to struggle to detect his breath. He was stoic as hell. He had a bruise on his forehead from that punch from Stomper Blukowski though.

I stared out at the rain and the New Yorkers hustling through it in their own personal rat races. This was what we were supposed to be protecting – a life most people hated. You have to remember, there had been super humans in every age of the Earth, but they were commonly remembered as only folk tales or myths. Gilgamesh, Heracles, Joan of Arc. I’m not kidding. Some people put Jesus and Buddha on that list. Super powers have always been ambiguous, sometimes obvious, sometimes not, sometimes obedient, sometimes the opposite. In my own age there had been the Marvelous Four, The Strangers, the ever-independent Violet Russel (who even eschewed a codename), the Dysfunctionalists, America’s Super People, etc. Super humans were either born or made, and sometimes in some gray area in between. And like the rest of humanity, they fell in a wide variety of extremes ranging from those willing to sacrifice their lives to save the lives of others, to the opposite side with people who were hellbent on destroying everything good in the world.

But like any other war in history, most of the casualties were civilians. Sure, superheroes died. But while chaos and order battled it out in the sky and the streets of Manhattan, suffering people were more invisible and unheard than ever. Violet might have been able to lift an M1 Abrams tank in one hand, but that didn’t solve institutional racism, or government corruption, or environmental collapse.

The Apparatus had tried it the other way, letting superheroes be autonomous. It had worked at first – but what if someone who had the power to incinerate the Earth in a flash of thought – like Jenny – suddenly decided she was no longer going to accept the intractable injustices of the world that those in power relied upon? Have no doubt, there was a cabal that controlled Earth, and while its members seldomly agreed on most things, they were unanimous in their view that THEY should remain in control of the world.

And there were more super humans on Earth than anyone could guess. Most kept themselves secret. A few of us were stupid enough to try to become heroes. Almost all were driven by insane compulsions. I guess I fell into that category. I didn’t do what I did for any sort of rational reason. I was just trying to satisfy the hours each day provided me with. Did I like the danger? Yes. But only because the nature of my powers usually keep me OUT of danger.

Jenny loved the danger. Nothing was dangerous enough, not until the day she died. For most of the time I knew her, boredom drove most of her actions. But… in the end… she believed in what she was doing. For the first time, she had clarity. She knew what to do. She had to save the world. That’s the ironic tragedy of Jenny Clifford – she was murdered by the people she was trying to save.

Of course, the aftermath of the near-Apocalypse of Jenny Clifford, Nova Girl, finally gave the Apparatus (disguised as the fed-up governments of the world) the power to put an iron clamp on the super beings of the Earth. Really it was about two things: money and resolve. Now that the Powers That Be realized someone like Jenny could come and destroy everything they’ve been protecting since civilization began at any moment in time, they were suddenly a lot more amiable to consensus.

And me? I worked for them. When people asked, I said “it was very unfortunate,” about Jenny. I gave them a look of grief painted in capitalist realism.

So, when I tell you that in south Midtown there is a certain unassuming Art Deco building, a building which our Nordic chauffeur glided the black SUV to a stop in front of in the torrential rain, I assure you, I am not changing the subject. In fact, this unassuming building, and its history, are very integral to this story.

The Nordic chauffeur double-parked and pushed his door open, slipping into the rain in his black suit. He walked around the car, expanding an umbrella as he opened my door. All this even though I could dematerialize and remain completely dry. Of course, the Nordic chauffeur knew this.

“What is your name?” I asked him.

“I am Thor,” he said.

“It’s nice to meet you, Thor,” I told him. I felt briefly ecstatic in the rain at the ridiculous nobility of our introduction.

Water was dripping down his big, pale nose. “The honor is mine, John Masterson.”

I took the umbrella and maneuvered through the pedestrians on the sidewalk – all of us in our own personal rat race – to the building’s front door. I pulled open the heavy glass – the cold air conditioning inside the beginning whipped out into me, and every drop of moisture on my body shivered in unison. I headed to the front desk.

“I’m here to see Anderson Delorio on the 4th floor,” I told the receptionist.

“Mercury Consulting?” he asked me.

“That’s right.”

“One moment. The elevator is coming up now. First on the left.”

The first on the left. A mysterious elevator, that on certain days only appeared to be in use. Yes, you could press the button to call it, but another elevator would always arrive before it did (and quickly.)

The elevator doors dinged open. I stepped on board. A woman made to follow me, but I raised my hand to stop her. “This one’s going down,” I told her.

“Oh!” she laughed. “My mistake.” She stepped back.

The doors closed behind me. A thick purple laser shot out of the ceiling, accompanied by another on the floor, scanning me at the atomic level for god knows what. I could only imagine what the defense protocol would be if I wasn’t who I said I was.

The elevator glided down for a minute, maybe two. Perhaps three. Gently it slowed its descent, a white light shined briefly at the base of the doors, and the doors slid open, revealing a wide, golden reception area with black leather furniture, an attendant at a desk, and four men in black masks with futuristic machine guns.

I sighed as I stepped out of the elevator. So this was it. The forbidden sanctum. Well, not really – that was a couple miles deeper under the Hudson. But I was at the front door.

The receptionist smiled. “Welcome to the Apparatus,” she said.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 129/16/2021

Hey everybody, I’m sorry there was no blog yesterday. The thing is… I’m not a corporation, or a machine, or an algorithm. I’m a human artist, and a mercurial one at that. I can’t hold to a regimented schedule of posting the same thing every day at the same time. It’s also another reason I jump around to different stories. That’s just how my mind works. 

The Mortal Feelings of W. Somerset Maugham

I posted this on Substack, but I’m putting in on medium with a few changes before I archive it on WordPress.

The Mortal Feelings of W. Somerset Maugham Part 1

The Mortal Feelings of W. Somerset Maugham Part 2

A Great Assembly

I’m taking this short story of two boys in love at summer camp in Pennsylvania in 1957 and turning it into a comic. Really crazy about it so far. 

A Great Assembly, Chapter One

And that’s it. I hope to get a new chapter up of the Stephen King comic. That’s today’s job.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

A Great Assembly, Part One

Short Story / Comic

To Be Continued in PART TWORead AHEAD Here

He-Thing and the Cabal of the Cosmos, Chapter 5

He-Thing and the Great, Winged Robot finally meet in battle!

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 6

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 10

Doc Masterson’s been in the superhero game for most of his life. But his powers are more dependable than his mental health. After returning from upstate, his visits Isabel in the hospital…

Chapter 10 – Pep Talks

I arrived in the city later that night and headed straight to Mary’s Mercy hospital where Isabel had been admitted after her ass-kicking. When I got there she was a fucking mess.  She was not attended by the hospital’s doctors but by the Apparatus’s own physicians.  Isabel’s anatomy was rather unconventional; no one quite knew how her muscles conjured up the strength she wielded.  Then there were her reflexes, which were, in some cases, five times faster than the average human. Though they were little help that day.

When I found her she was laying in bed and listening to her music on earphones.  When she saw me she pulled them out.

“Hey, Doc,” she said, weakly. 

I could tell her supposedly indomitable spirit had been broken. “What are you listening to?” I asked.

“Nine Inch Nails,” she replied.

“Really?  I listened to them when I was your age too.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

She turned away.  “I guess you aren’t that old after all.”

I was surprised myself. “Yeah I guess not.”

She started to cry.  “I fucked up,” she murmured. 

“No you didn’t.”

“I did!  I just wasn’t thinking.  Now look at me!”

The poor girl.  It was bound to happen to her eventually.  It happens to everybody that wants to be a hero out there.  Eventually you are going to get really hurt.  I had to remind myself though that she was only fourteen.  I felt pissed that the Apparatus was using this kid for their ambiguous plans. Sadly, she believed the crap they were selling her and she believed in what she was doing.  It was useless.

“Has Paul been here yet?” I asked.

“No, he has been meeting with the president. He said he would come later.”

Paul would calm her down, one way or another.  Who knew how long he would be, sometimes a president could take forever to submit to the plan.  I decided to take the matter into my own hands. 

“Did you ever hear of Gargantua?”

“No,” Isabel replied. 

“He was a giant.  Twenty feet tall.  Lord knows where he came from or what he was.  He was invincible, practically.  Well one day when some friends and I were rescuing miners in the hills of Pennsylvania, we came across and woke Gargantua up.  He had been sleeping underground for who knows how long.

“We knew we had to stop him before he came to any densely populated areas. We alerted Violet Russell, who was just 200 miles away.  Of course Violet immediately headed for the mine.  It took her all of two minutes to reach us, and when she had, she speared through the giant’s stomach.  Didn’t even slow down. She came out in a giant cloud of green blood.

“Gargantua just laughed.  Violet wheeled around through the air, built up even more speed, and flew right at him again. This time though he caught her in his hands.  Violet is strong.  Very strong.  But she was not stronger than Gargantua. He clenched his fist, crushing her.  I will never forget the sound of Violet’s scream.”

“Did that really happen?” Isabel asked.

“It did.  He didn’t kill her though.  She was in the hospital for six weeks.”

“Really?”

“Really.  So don’t let it get you down, kid.  Everybody runs into somebody stronger than them.  You can’t win all the time.”

Isabel did not respond.  She leaned back and closed her eyes.  “I am very tired.”

“Okay, Isabel,” I said.  “I’ll check up on you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

How many times had I given young superheroes that same speech, only to bury them a couple years later?

After I left Isabel I wondered if Thousand Dragon Fist was still nearby.  I headed up to the roof, and sure enough, he was there, looking down at the city, eating a burrito with his Buddha mask half-lifted. I had known for a long time that the Fist was a black man – it was sort of an open secret. But other than that, no one I knew was aware of his real identity. 

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Your girl in there is pretty stupid,” the Fist said.

“Her heart is in the right place,” I countered. 

The Fist gave me a dubious look. “You mean, in her chest?”

I can’t believe I was defending the Apparatus’s use of Isabel. “She’s super.”

“But she’s not a hero, Masterson.  Can’t you tell?” He drew in a deep breath and stuffed the burrito wrapper into a pocket in his costume. “You’re going to die working for the Apparatus.”

“I’m not working for them,” I said.  “I’m working with them.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m volunteering.”

“So… because you’re working with an evil organization out of the kindness of your heart, your conscience is guilt-free.”

“There’s room on the roster,” I offered.

Thousand Dragon Fist laughed bitterly. “Never,” he said.  “I work alone, and I work here.  I have my little world that I protect and that’s that. Besides,” he chuckled.  “I’m not really super.”

“But you are a hero,” I told him. 

“Maybe,” he mused.  “I do my best, that is all.”

“Why don’t you join us? You would if you knew what we are up against.”

“Do you know what you’re up against?  I have a feeling you don’t. You know, Paul Drake visited me too about a month ago.” The Fist scratched his ear through his mask. “Trying to recruit me.  I heard the whole spiel.  Didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now.”

“We don’t know what could happen.”

“How is that different from any other point in history? Seriously? I can’t deal with your problems out there.  I have problems right here that need dealing with, every day.  The answer is no, Masterson.”

He jumped off the roof and vanished into the shadows of the city.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 119/14/2021

Not much of an update today. But I did post the final chapter of “The Prophecy of Carson McCullers” on Medium, here:

The Prophecy of Carson McCullers, Chapter 3, Conclusion

Thanks for reading.

Matt

VISUAL a brief examination of my American fathers, chapter two

John Wayne considers what to do with the black infant he found.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 9

Doc Masterson’s been in the superhero game for most of his life. But his powers are more dependable than his mental health. While he’s in upstate New York recruiting CRUSH, in Manhattan, Isabel gets her photos taken for an action figure…

Chapter Nine: Humility

Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, Isabel was having her pictures/scans taken for the design of an action figure/doll.  Her face was everywhere now.  Every newspaper and radio station talked about her daily as they pondered and argued the meaning of the intra dimensional ship. The Apparatus controlled all the news – not through any kind of coercion or force, but simply through manufactured, agreed upon reality. There were a set number of narratives citizens of the world could choose from, some varying wildly, but all led to resignment and apathy, and they all were based on the same false assumptions. Forgive the cliché of the expression, but it was the oldest trick – it wasn’t that those in power made a better world seem impossible, it’s that they made it seem undesirable. I knew all of the arguments of the Apparatus. But what was I doing about it? How was I bettering the world? I was working for them. I was just as apathetic and resigned as anybody else, regardless of what barbs and bombs my mouth might cast. 

I know Isabel loved this.  What teenage girl wouldn’t?  She was the most famous person in the world.  Every girl on the planet wanted to be her, and every boy on the planet wanted to be her boyfriend.  She even got a generous percentage of everything.

“This is what I was born to do,” she told interviewers.  “I love it.”

After the photo shoot was done, she found herself hungry and tired, and she was scheduled to be in the recording studio in a few hours to work on her first album with a very fashionable producer. She quickly slipped out the back door of the building into a dark limousine driven by the same guy who drove me and Susan Stein around on the day of the Tokyo crash.  While he navigated through traffic, Isabel was on the phone with her mom, arguing about a boy (who was really a man, and also a billionaire) who had bought her a famous necklace once thought lost to time, and now wanted to fly her to Turks and Caicos for the weekend. 

They were about halfway to their destination (an interview at Fox News) when something huge crashed into the front of the car.  Isabel was thrown back into back of the front seats (she never wore her seatbelt).  At first, she thought they had hit a truck.  

“Get out of the car, quick!”  the driver said.  

“Why?” Isabel yelled back.

Whatever had hit the front of the car hit it again with just as much force as the first time.  The windshield shattered. The roof splintered. 

“Come on!” the driver creaked open his half-ruined door and jumped out of the car, just as it was hit a third time.  

“Okay, okay,” Isabel shrieked, finally waking from her daze (she had smoked a joint with this chick before the photoshoot). 

Once she was outside, Isabel couldn’t believe her eyes, it wasn’t a truck that hit the car, but an eight-foot-tall guy draped from head to toe in white armor that looked like five-thousand year old styrofoam.  He was huge, thick with muscle, carried a big metal hammer, and wore a helmet that obscured his face, except for the slit that showed his orange eyes.

It was Stomper Blukowski, a grade C supervillain who had been paroled the day before.  Apparently, decided to make a name for himself by attacking the most famous girl in the world.  So, now, here he was.  

“What the fuck?” Isabel yelled at him as phone cameras leered. She had her costume on, but she didn’t have her laser gun or any of her other gadgets — including her jet boots.  All she had were her fists.  They will be enough, she thought to herself.  

“Hello little girl,” the Stomper said in his lumbering voice.  “I’ve come here to play with you.”

Stomper swung his hammer, catching Isabel off guard.  The hammer slammed into her left side, breaking her left arm in two places.  The force of it threw her to the ground.

“Isabel!” the limousine driver cried out.  He rushed at Stomper, throwing a wild punch that hit the villain with little effect.  Stomper responded with a punch of his own straight to the driver’s forehead.  The driver collapsed.

Isabel screamed in pain.  She got up to her knees, and then up to her feet. 

“I’m going to kick your ass!” she yelled.  She ran towards him.  He tried to kick her at the last moment but she was too quick.  Isabel punched him with her remaining good arm.  Stomper was knocked backed; he collided with the front glass of a bodega, which shattered in a crash of brittle sound.

“Bitch.” Isabel spat.  

But in a second, Stomper was back on his feet, towering over her, a pure engine of muscle trying to kill her.  He swung his hammer again, this time missing, turning his back to her.  She gave him another right to the small of his back, but it didn’t seem to affect him.

He whirled around, swinging the hammer.  This time he hit her right knee while she was dodging out of the way.  Isabel grunted as her body landed on the hood of a car, whose alarm shrieked upon the impact.

“I’m going to kill you, superhero!” Stomper boasted.  

Isabel tried to get up from her bed of crunched metal. Her arm was an explosion of pain. Her knee felt like something had ripped out its bones. 

“Ha, ha, you little slut!”

The next moment everything changed – 

“HEY!” a strong voice interrupted.  “You armored faggot!  Leave her alone!”

Everyone there – both Isabel and Stomper, all the onlookers, all the people recording video of it with their phones, people streaming it all on the internet – they all turned at the same time towards the speaker.

He wasn’t tall, but he was built and in terrific shape.  He was dressed all in red, except for his golden Buddha mask that glinted in the sun.  A superhero.

It was Thousand Dragon Fist, mostly active in the 1980s, but who still sometimes policed this part of New York known as Hell’s Kitchen.  He supposedly didn’t have superpowers, but he was a notorious difficult to defeat.

“Who are you?” asked Stomper, incredulous. He was too young to remember the Fist’s glory days.

“I’m about to be your lord and master,” said Thousand Dragon Fist. “I’m about to be your daddy and punish you for being a bad boy.  Didn’t anybody teach you not to hit girls?”

“Don’t waste my time!” laughed Stomper.

“Surrender now,” the Fist said, bored.

Stomper replied by running towards Thousand Dragon Fist, raising his great hammer in fury. Thousand Dragon Fist stood unmoving, his arms folded across his chest, until the most perilous moment, when he slipped out of the way of Stomper’s hammer so quickly it was difficult to see or believe. While leaping and twirling through the air, in a movement so graceful and fast it would make a world-renown gymnastic appear clumsily inept, he reached out his right arm and extended two fingers to punch into a tiny spot at the base of Stomper’s neck that his armor didn’t protect. Stomper collapsed like a curtain. 

It was over. 

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 109/13/2021

Jeez, we’re halfway through September and football season has started. Reality is bizarre. 

I’m working to strike a balance between posting my regular stories and my “picture stories”. Regular stories take less time but are harder to concentrate on. Picture stories are tedious and take a lot of time, but I really enjoy losing myself in the experience. 

I would like to usually make picture stories where the text story is available to people who want to read ahead. On that note, I do plan on updated the text of He-Thing soon with the latest chapter (taking place after He-Thing is rescued by Zolantos and Vaila from the outer hells). 

So I’m trying to organize my thoughts here. I also have to clean up the Medium site which is a mess, as well as clean up the WordPress site, which looks like someone started working on it, and then abandoned it (true story.) 

The Prophecy of Carson McCullers

I posted this on Substack, but no one reads that. Here it is on Medium, in less parts. Part three coming tomorrow. 

The Prophecy of Carson McCullers, Part 1

The Prophecy of Carson McCullers, Part 2

The VISUAL He-Thing

Here is chapter four of this. I hit a new level with this one. 

The VISUAL He-Thing, Chapter 4

The VISUAL Festering Wound of Stephen King

Chapter 4. Not my best work, but it was a learning experience. Working exclusively in black and white is hard for me. 

The VISUAL Festering Wound of Stephen King, Chapter 4

And I think that’s it!

Matt

The Festering Wound of Stephen King, Chapter 4

Stephen wakes to find himself tripping on acid.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5