Matt Snee's Blog, page 55

The Festering Wound of Stephen King (GRAPHIC EDITION)

Part One

Ok, so I’m obsessed.

9.7.2021

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 5

Doc Masterson’s been in the superhero game for most of his life. But his powers are more dependable than his mental health. Lured out of retirement by telepath Paul Drake and the mysterious Apparatus, Masterson’s first mission is to investigate the crash of an extra dimensional ship in Tokyo, Japan…Chapter 5: The Ship

Don’t be fooled – I can’t fly, but I can control my density, and thus, my descent. As a force of habit and training, my mind went blank, and I fall, listening to the wind around me, staring at the ground thousands of feet down.  I could see the long wreckage of the crash below me.  I couldn’t believe that something like this had happened.  

As I fell closer I could see the mess of blue smoke obscuring the ship.  The smoke looked much larger in real life than it did on the TV.  

I couldn’t see Isabel.  I floated into the blue smoke.  Once I had entered it I realized it wasn’t smoke at all, but some sort of airborne dust. It washed over my gas mask.  I could feel it in my bare hands as it battered and blew around. 

I hit what was left of the street.  I couldn’t see anything. “Isabel!”  I cried out.  “Isabel are you here?”

“I’m here!” she yelled out.  I still couldn’t see her.  

“Come towards my voice!”  I yelled back.  

“Okay, Doc,” she said.  

I peered into the blue clouds of dust.  After a moment she came walking through the dust to a place where I could see her.

“Hi, Doc,” she said.  

“Stay near me,” I scolded.  “Now which way is the –“

A white light flashed through the dust like a strobe light.  I could hear electricity gathering all around me.  

“Quick!” I shouted.  “Out of the dust!”

We ran.  Only God knows which way.  We escaped the clouds of dust.  The light flashed faster and faster.  I could hear the deep rumble of electricity rubbing against itself.  

“Keep on going!”  I told Isabel.  

Some alien technology was about to set fire to us.  Isabel tripped over her boots and crashed into the ground.  

“Isabel!” I came to her and grabbed her right arm, dragging her up.

“It’s okay, Doc!”

I looked down at her knees.  They had been torn to shreds by the pavement.  Blood ran down her legs.  I hadn’t realized before that her legs were bare.  She was wearing goddamned short-shorts beneath her coat, which she now pulled off. Beneath it she was wearing a flak jacket, the short-shorts, and some kind of long pistol in a holster on her waist.  “It’s okay, Doc, I have this,” Isabel said.  She pulled the gun out.  

I’d actually seen one before. But not in the field.

“Well,”  I said.  “That’s nifty.”

The explosion hit.  

It knocked us both over. The blue dust cleared, into god knows where.  We could see the ship at the center of the crash site; it was clear as day now.  We were both ready for green aliens to pop out of it and attack us with their mind rays or some shit, but it didn’t happen.  Instead, the ship seemed to just emit a low, creaking noise like metal dying.   

“Now what?” Isabel asked.  

“Now we check it out.”

Somewhere in the din going on I could hear the helicopters above us, the distant cries of the wounded and dying. We were at the center of attention now,  the whole world watched their news channels in fearful disbelief.  

It was okay, right?  We were superheroes there to save the day.

We crept across the rubble.  There was steel, glass, and concrete everywhere; ruined bodies littered the ground. Thousand of life stories torn to shreds.    We found no one alive.  

The ship grew closer and closer as we stepped across the uneven ground, avoiding the piles of sidewalk and street, dodging past shredded steel beams, and crushing glass powder beneath our feet. The ship itself was nearly three stories tall, bulbous, impenetrable, but showing signs of distress from the impact. There were no doors or windows anywhere.  You couldn’t tell what was front or back, top or bottom.

“This is where we part,” I told Isabel.

“What?  You can’t leave me here!”

“I just did.”  I made myself incorporeal and passed through the metal of the ship.  It was easy. Most technology is defenseless against me. 

Inside was surprisingly mundane.  I was in some kind of hall with doors leading to other chambers.  The interior of the ship was covered in holographic read-outs in English – still no aliens, this ship was human. Everything seemed to point in one direction, one focal point, so I followed it.  

The ship was silent except for the buzzing creaking, which was muffled in the interior.  Strange.  I made my way slowly, wondering suddenly what Isabel was doing, what Paul was doing, what the whole damn world was doing while I was in there.  

I passed lots of machinery that looked advanced, but not very exotic.  There were computers with English keyboards. Where had this ship come from?  

An airlock led to the bridge. It was small, and military in its design – form followed function. There was a big viewing screen like Star Trek. But this screen was real and broken. In front of the screen were two command consoles, with chairs, and humanoid pilot in a space suit slumped over one of them. 

If I had a tricorder, I would know if this person was dead or if they had diabetes. There was no one else here, only me. It was a crime scene. The whole world was enrapt over one question: Who had done this?

I laid my hand on the pilot’s shoulder and pulled him back from the console. He was heavy. I looked at his face through the glass – human, African-American, mid-fifties maybe, great looking mustache. 

There was moisture on the inside of the pilot’s helmet. It pulsed. He was alive.

I had seen enough. And I was not really a doctor. All I had to give to the world after this mission was more questions. I walked back to where I had entered, and dematerialized again and passed through the bulkhead.  I did not see Isabel when I reached the outside.  

“Isabel!” I shouted,“Where are you?”

The helicopters still hovered, sirens still screamed, and the world still waited.  

I caught sight of her about 100 yards away from the ship.  She was lifting a huge hunk of concrete.  I ran over to her, but she clearly did not need my help.  This girl had some strength. Under the slab of concrete was a dead woman holding a baby protectively. What was so absurd and sad, was that the baby was crying.

Isabel clung to the baby and was waving for Japanese first responders.

“It’s a miracle, Doc!” Isabel shouted.  “What did you find in the ship?”

I stared at her and the baby. I could not reply.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 69/7/2021

Sorry, busy day, don’t have time for a newsletter until tomorrow, but there are new things to read on the Medium site. 

View at Medium.comhttps://medium.com/literature-unbound

Take care, everyone! I’ll see you tomorrow!

—Matt

The VISUAL He-Thing – An Experiment

Hi Everyone, I’m experimenting with a graphic storytelling here, so bear with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Obviously, this stuff is pretty rudimentary right now, but it’s a lot of fun. Just experimenting with different forms of storytelling in our digital, smartphone reality. 

THE VISUAL He-Thing and the Cabal of the Cosmos

What do you think?

–Matt

8.6.2021 – Monday

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 4

LAST MEAL

Doc Masterson, Isabel, and Paul fly to Tokyo to deal with the crashed extra dimensional ship.

I felt dizzy.  Everything was happening too fast.

Isabel poked my arm gently with her right index finger. “I said, isn’t this exciting?”

Few people who know my reputation have the courage to touch me. I stared into Isabel’s eyes.  They were blue, fearless things, enraptured by power.  I knew that sort of fearlessness and rapture well.  I knew it backwards and forwards.

“Sir?” one of the helicopter pilots had come over.  He handed me an Apparatus phone.  

“I don’t talk on the phone,” I protested. 

“It’s Paul Drake, sir,” said the pilot.

Fuck.  

“Hello?” I said into the phone.  

“John, I need you to get in the helicopter now.”

I glanced at Isabel and the pilots.  “Paul?  What’s happening?”

“I don’t know, John.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening,” I told him.

“I don’t know what’s happening, John.  That’s the problem.  Don’t you understand?”

Suddenly I did.  Crystal clear.  

“Yeah,” I said.  I handed the phone back to the pilot.  “Let’s go,” I said.

We flew South out of the city.  The helicopter was noisy and no one talked.  I stole glances at Isabel when I could.

It took almost half an hour to reach Dover Air Force Base.  We landed.  Paul was waiting for us.

“I want to talk to you, alone,” I said to him.

He nodded, but then asked if we could do so en route, gesturing towards a hypersonic cargo jet parked on the tarmac.  We boarded the jet and took off again, this time headed straight for Tokyo.  The plane would skim the atmosphere until we arrived in Japan in record time. 

Paul escorted me to an office inside the jet where we could talk privately.

“Well?” I asked.

Paul took a deep breath.  “Something’s happening.”

“What?”

“That’s unknown.”

 “Are we under attack?” I asked.

“That’s also unknown; however, if we are under attack, then it’s possible the attack has been going on for some time.  It’s possible that the Apparatus has been sabotaged.”

“You mean, that’s why you didn’t know this was going to happen?”

“No, it’s worse,” Paul said. He rubbed his temples.  “We’ve been having problems with things for awhile.  Don’t you see?  Why else would I come to you?”

Everything was fucked up.

“How did it get past the sensor net?” I asked. 

“We don’t know what’s wrong with them. They didn’t detect anything.”

Paul and I sat around a small round table replaying video of the crash.  In Paul’s hands, the video distorts time, replaying previous moments electrically into the air.  He twisted the camera around, showing dozens of angles of the ship. 

“It’s the size of a city block,” he said. 

“It must have killed thousands,” I whispered to myself.  “Has it done anything else since it crashed?”

“No — well, it’s emitting a noise.  A buzzing sound.  I’ll turn up the audio. “

We were watching live video now.  Paul turned up the volume, and pulled out the video into a wide shot from above the crash site.  It just seemed so impossible; but there it was.  

“It has to be sabotage,”  I said.  “This has to be an attack.  Anything is possible.  We know nothing!”

“We know nothing,” Paul confirmed. Then he turned to practical matters.  “Do you need something to eat, John?  I know you haven’t had breakfast.”

“A last meal? Sure,” I said.  

Paul raised his watch to his mouth and spoke, “Can we get some eggs and coffee, please? And tell Isabel to come up here.”

“Roger that, sir,” an electronic voice replied. 

Five minutes later we were served plates of eggs and two decanters of steaming hot coffee.  We were also joined by Isabel.  All three of us were ravenous.  We ate silently.  Once finished though I was imbued with a strong courage.  I was more relaxed.  Suddenly it hit me–

“Shit,” I said.  “Isabel is coming with me down there, isn’t she?  You are goddamned crazy.  She’s a kid for Christ’s sake.  We could both die.”

 “I’m not afraid to die,” Isabel said, defiantly.

“There’s more to her than it looks like,” Paul said.

“That doesn’t matter,” I said.  “She’s still a kid.”

“We were kids when we did this stuff,” Paul replied.  

“That was different,” I said.  

“Hey,” Isabel said.  “Hey!  Listen: the buzzing is getting louder.”

It was getting louder, and doing so very fast.  The sound became distorted as it raged, was transformed into bits and sent through to TV’s around the world.  

“What is it?”  Isabel asked.

It continued to get louder.  Another sound started:  a low, rumbling bass.

It exploded.  Or at least that’s what it looked like.  The hull cracked, and a thick blue smoke came pouring out into the area.  It wasn’t just blue, it was brighter than any other color in the world.    The whole area was covered with blue smoke in moments.  The ship hid in the smoke; we could not see it any longer.  

“How long until we get there?” I ask Paul.

“T-minus three minutes.”

We  made our way to the back of the plane.  They opened up the cargo hatch and wind besieged the air.  Isabel sat down on the floor, took off her shoes, and then put on what looked like snow boots, except there were lights blinking on them.

“I really wish you wouldn’t send her,” I said to Paul.  “I can’t protect her.”

Paul smiled at me. “She’s going to protect you.”

Isabel finished putting on her boots and stood up. 

“What are those,” I asked.  I pulled a gas mask off the wall and put it on.  

Isabel smiled at me. “These are my jet boots,” she said.  

“Jet boots?” I asked.  

“Jet boots,” Paul said.  

“So what you’re saying is she is going to fly down there.”

“That’s right,” Isabel said.  “I’ve done it before.  I’ve practiced for this.  How are you going to get down there?  With a parachute?”

I think my treating her as a child was starting to annoy her.  I didn’t care how much she had practiced for this shit.  She was too young.  Paul could have been sending a teen girl straight to her death.  I didn’t care if I died.  I hadn’t been afraid of dying for a long time.  But she was just a girl. People like her didn’t know what death was.

“It’s time,” Paul said.  

Isabel and I approached the door.  I looked her in the eyes.  Was she ready for something like this?  We would all know soon enough.  

She smiled at me. She didn’t appear nervous at all. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Okay,” I said.

“You know Violet Russell, right?” 

I hadn’t heard Violet’s name in an age. “Um, yeah, why?” I replied.

“What’s she like in real life?  She’s been my hero my whole life.”

“She’s just Violet,” I said.  “She’s a mom now.  She hasn’t done stuff like this for a long time.”

“She’s the most amazing person in the world,” Isabel said. “Well, I guess this is it.”  She saluted Paul, nodded to me, and then jumped out of the airplane. 

I watched her fall for a moment before her jet boots kicked in.  She started to float down through the air.  The girl was psychotically fearless.  I had seen the same thing in many of the superheroes I had worked with through the years.  

Who was I to complain? I had been called reckless more than once in my career, and it had always been an understatement.

“So long,” I said to Paul.

“Be careful,” he said back.  

“Yeah fucking right,” I replied, jumping out of the airplane.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 59/6/2021

Good morning everyone. It’s a holiday here in America, but I’m ready to get back to work here after a liminal weekend, so here we are. 

After a short break, here is chapter 9 of He-Thing and the Cabal of the Cosmos, featuring the first appearance of the arch-villain Skullatroid. 

He-Thing and the Cabal of the Cosmos, Chapter 9

I’m working on a bunch of He-Thing related things right now. I know this story is an acquired taste, but it’s very enjoyable and freeing for me. And a lot of fun and intellectually stimulating.

There’s also a new chapter of The Black Sorcery of Yelena Bulgakova. 

The Black Sorcery of Yelena Bulgakova, Chapter 4

Down below, Hard Scum is killing it with Midnight Man. 

Midnight Man, Chapter 3, by Hard Scum

Finally, here is a short post I did introducing my thoughts about realism in literature.

Snee’s Thoughts on Realism in Literature

And that’s it! Got a big week planned, so buckle up!

Matt

Midnight Man: Darker Than the Darkness, Chapter 3

The Midnight Man is under guard at a camp of Mordred’s men.

Midnight Man  — Greatest Vigilante in the World — protects civilization from predators both human and cosmic. From deep within his hidden  Midnight Cave , he strikes out against all things evil, and always before they strike first. He is a Shadowy Paladin who instills fear in the hearts of all those who wish to do injustice to others.

More myth than man, the ultimate realization of humankind, he is the only thing that stands between us and the darkness…because, Midnight Man is DARKER than the darkness…

Chapter 3: Escape!

“So,” asked Sir Affelette sipping back his mead, “Who are you?”

The Midnight Man had constructed a story for himself. “I do not know,” he told them. “I have no memory from before this morning.”

“You do not know your own name?” asked Korone.

“I do not.”

“And you found yourself naked and without your past?” asked Affelette.

“Yes,” said the Midnight Man. “I know not where I came from, or where I must be going.”

“Perhaps you were a warrior, injured after a battle?” said Affelette.

“One of Arthur’s warriors?” suggested Korone.

“No,” Midnight Man said. “I was no warrior. I can sense … killing is not in my blood.”

Affelette laughed at this. “Well, perhaps you were a priest.”

“Perhaps,” said the Midnight Man.

“Then that is what we will call you — Priest. We could use a priest here. God favors us, this we know, but we could use a man who could speak directly with Him.” Affelette said, nodding to the heavens.

“I cannot promise as much,” Midnight Man said. “But I can swear peace.”

“Sounds like a priest alright,” said Korone, lowering his guard.

“Yes,” said Affelette. “Perhaps you were cursed by a witch or a devil. I do not know, but your mystery shall entertain us while we wait for sign of Arthur. A good omen, I think, to rescue a priest.”

Korone snorted.

The Midnight Man said nothing.

Night fell. The knights sat around a fire on the beach, sharpening their swords and readying for war. Midnight Man sat in a circle with Affelette and Korone, watching as the orange sky turned blue and gray.

The Midnight Man carefully gambled. “Tell me, do you know the name Merlin?”

Affelette eyed him with suspicion. “If you are without memories, how do you know that name?”

“I cannot say,” The Midnight Man said, innocently. “It hovers in the fog of my thoughts.”

“That wizard is no more,” said Korone. “He was tricked by his lover, Nimue, into a prison he will not escape from. He is gone.”

“Yes,” said Affelette. “No longer will his sorcery choke this island.”

“Perhaps he is the one who did this to me,” Midnight Man suggested, speaking the truth. In fact, Merlin had done this to him.

“If you are an enemy of Merlin, you are a friend to us,” said Affelette.

“Not necessarily,” Korone pointed out.

“He sounds like an enemy,” continued the Midnight Man, hoping to gain their trust.

“Well worry no more,” said Affelette. “For the wizard will not trouble us any longer.”

“And what about this, Nimue?” asked Midnight Man. If Merlin is locked in a prison, how can he get back to his time?

“She is of no matter to us,” said Affelette. “The time of the druids has ended. Christ is our lord now. Christ and Mordred.”

The Midnight Man nodded. He said no more. He was tired, and he could still faintly feel the effects of time travel. His lethargic eyes roved the hillside. Something caught his eye — something silver in the dusk light.

Silver hair. Merlin.

Midnight Man squinted his eyes. Yes, there he was, about fifty yards up —

Young Merlin hid behind a large rock, watching the camp below.

Affelette and Korone retired to their tents while the rest of the men went to sleep, save for two sentries who kept a vigilant watch. The Midnight Man found a place to lie down away from the warriors and settled onto his back to look up at the starless sky. He was bone tired, but he knew sleep was a dangerous luxury he could not afford. He was typically a light sleeper. Using a technique he learned as a young man in Korea, he dosed slightly, always with part of his senses guarding him in the real world. It allowed his body to rest without losing awareness of the dangers around him.

After a few hours of this, he noticed quiet, measured footsteps coming towards him. As this interloper drew close, the Midnight Man sprung awake and knocked the stranger from his feet, casting the man onto the ground, where he climbed atop him and grasped his throat, all without a trace of a sound.

“What is your business?” Midnight Man whispered like an artful scalpel, not wanting to wake anyone else.

“If you want to live, you’ll come with me,” the man croaked. He was in his fifties, gray-haired, with a tyrannically shaven face.

“Why should I believe you?” asked Midnight Man.

“Merlin,” the man breathed.

They looked each other in the eye. Midnight Man let him up. They crept silently through the camp disturbing nothing. Midnight Man wondered if this was a trap. What choice did he have?

They bypassed the sentries and made their way up the beach, where the old man had two horses waiting. They mounted the horses and rode off, just as alarm sounded in the camp.

“Do you think they’ll follow?” Midnight Man’s rescuer joked.

“I think they will,” Midnight Man replied without mirth.

“They’ll suspect murderous treachery,” his companion pointed out.

“Then we better hurry.”

They rode hard, and they rode fast.

“Who are you?” Midnight Man shouted over the thunderous hoofbeats of their horses.

“I am Sir Durant, servant of the King and the Round Table. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You have? Do you know who I am?”

“Of course! You are the Midnight Man. The Shadow Paladin. The knight from beyond the Western Sea to help us.”

Farfetched — yes, but was it as farfetched as a time traveler?

“Yes,” acknowledged Midnight Man. “That is where I have come from. Where is Merlin?”

“Well,” said Durant. “That is a complicated question.”

“Why?”

“Well — now there are two of them. Or one of him, but younger now.”

“He has brought me here,” said Midnight Man.

“We ride to meet him.”

“And what happened to the other?”

“That is not certain. But rumor has it he was betrayed by his lover, Nimue, who stole Merlin’s power, and imprisoned him in a crystal trap he can never escape.”

“I have heard the same,” said Night Shepherd, regrettably. He thought for a moment. “What does the younger Merlin say about it?”

Durant laughed. “I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to make such polite conversation with the young wizard. I will tell you this: this young Merlin’s magic is haphazard, at best.”

“How so?”

“I saw him accidentally light his robe on fire, when he was just writing a letter to the King. And he made a love potion for a friend of mine that turned him into a poetry-reciting swine.”

This was new knowledge to the Midnight Man. Well — the time machine had worked.

“Sir Midnight,” said Durant, sensing the Midnight Man’s qualms, “perhaps you will be killed and won’t have to worry about any of these dilemmas!” He nodded his head behind them. “They’re following!”

“Where are we going?” asked Midnight Man.

“I know of caves further up the shore. I know them well. If we can reach them, we are saved. Merlin waits inside.”

“Won’t they follow?”

“We’ll seal the entrance behind us with burning oil I have secured in the cave for the occasion.”

“Sounds like a dead end.”

“It’s no dead end, as you say,” promised Durant. “There is an entrance … and further in there is an exit — that leads us to the forest to the east. And even once our foes get past the fire, they do not know that cave. Only I do.”

The Midnight Man smiled. Sounded like a plan he himself could have thought of. If he believed in Providence, this would be a perfect time to thank it. “What is our plan?”

“Once we bypass the cave, we’ll head to a village to the northeast, Chronham, which is immortally loyal to the court. There, my men are waiting.”

“Has Mordred seized the castle?”

“He has. There is word he has had his way with the queen.”

“And what are we going to do about that?”

“We are to rescue her of course,” said Durant. “That’s why you’re here, is it not?”

“Yes,” agreed the Midnight Man. “That is why I am here.” He had long ago mastered disguising puzzlement on his face.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4View at Medium.comChapter OneView at Medium.comChapter Two

9.3.2021

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 3

TROUBLE IN TOKYO:

After a night of drunken regrets, Doc Masterson is awoken by a distant but frantic knocking.

The next morning, I was awakened by a distant but frantic knocking, and somewhere underneath it, a woman pleading desperately. I must have made it from my closet to my bed the night before, because that’s where I was, feeling like hell.  At first I considered that the knocking and pleading was for another tenant of the building. This dream was dispelled when the woman’s voice became more clear:

“Dr. Masterson! Dr. Masterson! Please, open up, I know you’re in there! Dr. Masterson!”

Yup. Probably for me. I crawled out of bed and set my feet down on the floor. It felt like someone was shooting ultra-lasers directly into my cerebral cortex. I have faced many supervillains, but this hangover was in a league by itself.

With astonishing effort, my body stood and made its way from my bedroom to the foyer of the apartment, where the knocking and pleading was almost apocalyptic in its desperation. Whoever it was, they had a big problem.

I looked through the peephole.  The woman knocking was thin, angular, pale, with brown freckles and a restrained explosion of tight, curly reddish chestnut hair crowning her pretty head. She wore a coal gray suit and black glasses. “Dr. Masterson! Please!”

 “Go away!” I said through the door.

She stopped knocking.  “Dr. Masterson!  Please, it’s urgent.  My name is Susan Stein.  I’m with the Apparatus.  I work with Paul Drake.  Please Dr. Masterson, it’s urgent, let me in.”

“I told Paul I would think about it.”

 “I know, Dr. Masterson, but there’s been an occurrence!”

 “An occurrence?”

 “It’s an emergency!”

 “What kind of emergency?”

 “Trouble!  In Tokyo!  Some kind of extra dimensional ship has crashed into the middle of the Shibuya District!”

 “Some sort of extra dimensional ship has crashed in the middle of Tokyo,” I repeated.  

 “Just turn on the news!” she shouted.

 “It’s on the news?”

 “Yes!”

 “Okay,” I said.  “Give me a half-hour to take a shower and get dressed.  I’m a little hung-over.”  I moved away from the door.

 “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

 “No.”

What she had said was impossible. But I turned on the TV and she was telling the truth. I’m sure you’ve seen the footage: the billowing, ceaseless smoke, the helicopters buzzing like gnats over the torn city, the shape of the ship, half-submerged in the ground, that COLOR.  I only had to look at it for a second and I knew everything was wrong.  

I jumped in the shower as quick as I could.  Once I was dressed I stood hesitating in my bedroom wondering what I should take.  It was an unanswerable question.  I went back to the door.

 “Okay, before I open up, I want to see your badge,” I said to Stein.

She sighed and dug through her pockets.  She pulled out her badge and held it up to the peephole.  Light stabbed out of it and into my brain like a fork. Apparatus tech – for God’s sake they never knew when to quit.

 “Okay.”  I opened the door.  

She stuck out her hand.  “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

 “Save it,” I said.  “Let’s go.”

Stein whisked me downstairs where a black SUV and a motorcycle escort awaited.  The driver of the SUV (who looked like some sort of gigantic Nordic warrior) opened the back door for me, and Stein got in the front passenger seat.  Then the Nord got into the driver’s seat and we were off.

 “Where are we going?” I asked.

 “Just ten blocks North of here.  It’s the closest helipad we felt comfortable using.”

 “Am I going to Tokyo?”

 “Yes,” she answered.

 “Are you going to Tokyo?”

 “No.

 “When did this happen?”

 “An hour ago.”

 “Did the Apparatus know this was going to happen?”

She hesitated.  “No.”

They hadn’t been expecting it.  It was a total surprise to them.  The Apparatus had failed, and what a failure!  The real question was: What happened next?  

I eyed my guide in the front seat warily.  “So, Ms. Stein.  Are you in this for the money?  Or are you in it to save the world?”

 “I’m not in it for the money, Dr. Masterson.”    

I rapped my fingers against the window restlessly.  

“So you’re not in it for the money.  What are you in it for, then?”

 “I’m just trying to do my part.”

 “In what?”

 “We are at war.”

 “Oh?  Against who?”

 “Chaos. Entropy. Decay.”

“In us too, right?” I asked.  

Stein did not reply.  She stared out the window, angry.  They had probably told her that I could be difficult, and she had probably told them she could handle it.  

“What are you in it for?” she asked, suddenly melancholy.

 “Me?  I guess I’m like you.  Just trying to do my part.  That’s all any of us can do, right?”  I felt sorry for her now. “Look, I don’t mean to come off as harsh, but I am who I am, you know?  Surely the file on me said the same?”

 “Your file is… incomplete.”

 “I certainly hope so.”  Something about her made me curious. I decided to plunge forward.  “When did they recruit you?” I asked her.

 “When I was in college.”

 “How old were you?”

 “20.”  

 “Who approached you?”

 “Mr. Drake.”

Paul himself?  What did that mean?  This answer gave me pause, and I sat silent, calculating its value.  Stein seized the opportunity to take the offensive.

 “Just what exactly are you a doctor of?” she asked.

I smiled.  “The impossible.”

The limo pulled up next to a building I assumed was our destination. 

 “We’re here,” Stein said.  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to continue this conversation later, Dr. Masterson.”

 “You’re not going up with me?”

 “No.  In five minutes you’re going to be on a helicopter.  I did answer all of your questions truthfully, Dr. Masterson.  I hope that helps.”

 “I’m sure it will.  So long, Ms. Stein.”

 “So long.”

Once I was out of the car a team of bodyguards ushered me into the building and up the elevator to the roof.  When the elevator opened we were standing eighty stories in the air.  Wind crashed and swirled around us.  A boldly angled yellow helicopter stood ready before me.  Outside of it stood two pilots and a heavily made up teen girl in a pink trench coat and big hoop earrings.  The girl couldn’t have been older than thirteen.  Her golden hair blew in the wind.

 “Hello, Dr. Masterson,” the girl said.

 “Who are you?” I asked.

 “I’m Isabel,” she replied, smiling.   

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4

NEWSLETTER 9.3.2021

Happy Friday, everyone. As I promised, since it’s Friday again, below are three new audio poems from my audio book version of my 2008 poetry collection, Evil Summer.

SkullDownloadWheel of Fire, Wheel of WaterDownloadThe Tyrant of Miles UnknownDownload

I hope you enjoy these. There are 19 poems in all, so this will take a couple weeks. I love making audio books though, so I’m trying to incorporate this more into my work. I’m in the planning stages of doing this for the He-Thing chapters.

Stories for September 3rd, 2021

First of all, in Chapter 7 of Your Dream of Dark Angels, Luke confides in his favorite teacher, Dr. Hilarion, about this thoughts on Lord Rathway’s murder.

In Chapter 4 of The Black Sorcery of Yelena Bulgakova, we have some back story on Mishka’s past before he met Yelena.

There’s a new, self-contained, one-post story, entitled Machine Hero, that I promise is NOT about Tony Stark and Iron Man.

There are two new writers who have joined Literature Unbound on Medium: Hard Scum, from Arkansas (not his real name – he’s shy); and Leena Karakostas, from Pittsburgh (who is an even bigger recluse.) Be sure to give these magical people your attention:

Hard Scum has posted the first chapter in a story called Midnight Man: Darker Than the Darkness.

And Leena has presented the first chapter in her nostalgic 90s novel (with a healthy dose of a certain 19th century “Great Detective”, The Kalachthon.

And that’s it for today! Have a great weekend!

Matt

View at Medium.com

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 2

The story so far: After agreeing to work with Paul and the mysterious but powerful organization that employs him, Doc Masterson returns home…

I walked home after the meeting.  It took an hour or so.  I don’t remember much of the walk back except for the cloud of anger around me. Why hadn’t I told Paul to go fuck himself? Why was I suddenly excited about the future? 

I was still angry by the time I got home.  I didn’t know what I was angry about, and not knowing made the anger worse.  I decided to drink some beer and smoke some cigarettes.  That didn’t help so I smoked some pot.  The pot helped a little.  I sunk into the couch and flipped channels on the TV.  I couldn’t get the meeting with Paul out of my mind.  I couldn’t get any of it out of my mind.  There’s nothing more frightening than change – it’s like death.  I felt that change was coming; that the ground beneath my feet was lifting and about to spill me into something unknown.  I knew I was angry because I was scared.  I spent the rest of the afternoon in pit of paralysis.

At five o’clock, right on time, my Filipina housekeeper and cook, Emmarita, came barging into the apartment with groceries and her endlessly sunny disposition. 

“Hello hello Docta Masterson!” her voice sang as she walked from the entry hall into the TV room.  She caught me red handed – doing a bong hit while watching the Cartoon Network.

“Hello Emmarita,” I said, coughing smoke.

Emmarita was in her mid-fifties, thin, maybe five feet tall.  Her hair was cut short and she wore too much makeup.  She always had rattling jewelry on, even when she was cleaning the toilet.  Emmarita looked me up and down, saw the mess of beer cans, the bong, the cartoons on the television.  Her eyes scolded me.  Then she seemed to notice something else.

“Why Docta Masterson so sad?” she asked.

I sighed.  “Business,” I said.

“Business.  I thought you retired now?”

“So did I.”

“Hmmm,” Emmarita said.  “Maybe work good for you.  All you do since you retire is mope around the house.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

Emmarita raised her eyebrow, obviously disagreeing.  She moved to the kitchen where I could hear her unloading the grocery bags. 

“What you need is wife,” she said.  “Plenty of women be happy marry nice man like you.”

I snorted sarcastically.

“What you want for dinner?” she asked, changing the subject.  

“I don’t care.”

“I make you cheeseburger.  Cheeseburgers make everybody happy.”

Emmarita mostly talked about her son, her nieces, her sister, her husband, her mother, and of course did not neglect to complain about her mother-in-law.  That’s why I liked her so much – she wasn’t that great a cook, and she was a little lackadaisical about cleaning – but for a couple hours a day she filled my apartment with human life.   She was right: the cheeseburger did make me happier.  I really hadn’t eaten much at my lunch with Paul.

By seven-thirty Emmarita had left and I was alone again in the apartment.

What had Paul been worried about?  Why was the Apparatus so desperate to get me on their payroll?  Wasn’t everything under control now?  Isn’t that what they were there for?  I was never a believer.  I had my own problems, after all.

I turned on the news and drank more beer.  I glanced over a stream or two of information on the internet, trying to find a thread.  Nothing.  I left the files Paul had given me untouched.  If there was something happening of that magnitude, I should have been able to see it.  Whatever it was, it was invisible.  What could be so invisible?  

I got a little drunk and stumbled into my bedroom.  

“Motherfucker,” I muttered sloppily.  Where did the time go?  I had spent it fleeing from the past, but there was no escape.  The past led to the future, after first making its way through the gnashing teeth of the present.

I went into my closet and dug out the shoebox where I kept all the cursed and treasured souvenirs of my past.  Photos.  Love letters.  You know the deal.  I fell to the floor and pawed through them.  There we all were, me and my friends, before we all started dropping dead or losing our souls.  My God.  How long had it been since I had looked at this memorabilia.  Touching these things filled me with such a terrible sense of loss and broken hopes. 

I dug deeper down to the bottom until I found her.  Jenny.

Yes. Jenny Clifford, Nova Girl, the only woman I ever loved – who turned into a supervillain. Then she had died.  Or had supposedly died. You know how it is.  

I had searched everywhere for her, searched for any trace, any whisper, any shred of hope.  People thought I was crazy. “She’s dead, for God’s sake, John,” they told me.

They hadn’t known my Jenny.

So I had given up. I had given up on everything. I had surrendered to nothingness.  That’s where I had been for five years, and that’s where I still was that night after I had lunch with Paul.  

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3

Unbound Newsletter 9.1.21

Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 1John Masterson might have superpowers… but he’s also bipolar, manic-depressive, and a little schizophrenic. Who better to save the world from impending doom?

Chapter 1

In the Spring of 2015, I finally agreed to meet with Paul for an hour to talk. He had been hounding me to meet up since before the new year. Over and over I declined his offer – to “catch up,” in his words – no matter what he and his employers put on the table. I had known Paul for a very long time, and I knew he was nothing but trouble. 

However, by the Spring I was in the mood for trouble. I told him that any meeting between us would have to be in public and it would have to be during the day. 

“You mean, like, lunch?” He asked in an email. 

“Yeah. The most expensive place in town.”

And he found it, a place that didn’t even have a name, in Tribeca, at the end of April. I dressed in the oldest, most worn suit I could find and took the subway. It was a beautiful day, and clouds hung about the blue sky like fairytale teenagers. It had rained that morning, washing away the stink of the city temporarily. 

My mood rose. I thought maybe this would be okay. Maybe Paul had changed, maybe everything had changed. Maybe this time things would be different. 

When I arrived, Paul was already there, waiting for me. I had not seen him for three years. He was neat and fit, dressed in tan slacks and a white polo shirt. He wore black shoes and had a large silver watch on his wrist. His head was shaved, which looked good on him, it looks good on a lot of black men, but last time I saw him, he did have hair. He rose from his seat when he saw me.

“John!” His eyes were bright, filled with hope. “Long time no see, man.”

“It’s good to see you too,” I said, a little emotionally unstable, the reunion was already doing things to me. It was a business meeting, but we were old friends, or once had been. 

“Have a seat,” he said, motioning for the waiter. “Do you want anything to drink?”

 “A beer,” I tell him, though five or six would be more appropriate. I was nervous about being nervous. 

Paul ordered a beer for me. I felt detached and unsafe. I hadn’t left my apartment for weeks, really, and all the commotion suddenly hit me. My defenses had been breached. 

“It’s okay,” said Paul softy, sensing my discomfort. “It’s okay.”

I felt a warmth begin to radiate in my mind. My heartbeat lowered and my breath slowed. Calmness spread across my nervous system. Once I realized what was happening, I glared at Paul, feeling violated.

“That’s why people don’t like telepaths, Paul,” I told him.

I felt him release his touch on me. If it had been anyone else, there would have been trouble. But I have to admit, I welcomed what he imparted. I don’t care what anybody says – Paul did the things he did out of love – love for his friends, love for the world. 

“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject.

“How have you been?”

 “Okay. You?”

“Busy. Insanely busy.”

“So?” I asked, cutting the shit. The waiter brought me my beer, and I threw half of it into my mouth in the blink of an instant. I looked over the menu. “So?” I asked again.

Paul sighed. I knew he wanted to talk about the old days, maybe pretend for a moment we could really have authentic interactions with each other. He reached into a black satchel that was sitting on the floor and pulled out two dark blue folders thick with documents. 

“We need you,” Paul said. “What else can I say? We can’t move forward without you. And there are… signs. Something’s about to happen. Something really soon. They’re prepared to offer you anything, John.”

“I don’t want anything,” I told him.

“I know,” Paul said. “You’re a fucking mess.” He handed me one of the folders. It was unmarked except for a set of rivets at the bottom of its face. I ran my fingers over them. I opened the folder. A lot of scientific graphics, diagrams. Wormholes. Other documents too. To a layman, it would be gibberish. But not to me. I weighed the folder in my hands, then snapped it closed, laid it down, and rubbed my hands into my forehead. 

“John.” There was an anguished plea in Paul’s voice that I hadn’t noticed until now. 

“I’m retired,” I heard myself say. 

“That’s ridiculous,” he muttered. 

I caught a blur of dark movement along the peripheral of my right eye. I turned and looked out the window. There was a woman passing by on the sidewalk, but I hadn’t turned fast enough to see her features – just a black blouse, blue jeans, red hair. 

The waiter returned. “Are you ready to order?”  

I ordered the first entrée I could find on the menu, not intending to eat anything. After the waiter left, Paul handed me the other folder. 

“This is someone we want you to meet. Her name is Isabel.”

“Isabel?” I repeat, but I just lay it on top of the other folder. I could see now that Paul had changed, I just hadn’t noticed it before. His skin wasn’t as healthy as it used to be, and there was a slight sink in his shoulders. I could see behind his legendary confidence a despair, a fatigue. 

I took a deep breath. “And what about you?” I asked. “You still a believer?”

“More than ever,” he replied, but I could detect a note of a wavering commitment. “Look, John,” he said, in his ‘buddy’ voice, “I just want you to think about it, okay? Just look at the files for a couple days and think about it.”

I looked out the window again. Nothing but people and cars, the city, going about its life. 

“Okay,” I said. 

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in the newsletter. I’ve been shifting my plans and trying to figure what to do with this Substack as I move a lot of my presence onto Medium. I’d like to use both services, honestly. I’m going to include a chapter a day in the Unbound Newsletter, which will come out every weekday (no weekends). I will also have a roundup of links to all the various posts I have made on the web the day before. 

Standalone Stories

Linked directly below are three single-post, self-contained short stories of varying length that are complete and on Medium. 

The Lamentations of Neo-Tokyo

This is a short little love story in a speculative world that I’m hoping to explore more. This is not the end for these characters. 

They Thought They Would Find Truth in the Rubble

This is a poetic, high-concept short story about a refugee who has lost the woman he loves. 

Machine Hero

This is a strange on sort of inspired by Marvel’s Iron and Tony Stark. 

And that’s it! See you tomorrow!

How I Came to Embrace Digital Publishing and Sites Like Medium

Like many of the people on Medium, Substack, and WordPress, I have always seen myself as a writer — not because I have published a bestseller (my bank account swears I haven’t), or because I write every day (I don’t), or because I think I’m an unheralded genius whose work will echo down through the ages like a trickling stream carving up canyons of time. No — I am a writer for a single, irreducible reason: I don’t know how NOT to write.

So, like many of you, as I grew from child to adult, my brain filled with all the novels I would write (and their screenplays I would adapt); the awards I would humbly but secretly gloatingly accept; I practiced my enlightening quips and craft philosophies that I would knowingly but sympathetically impart wittily in 1,000-word web interviews and at panels where I would mingle with my peers, and we would all get along swimmingly. I would write entertaining but enlightening novels spiced with short story collections filled with ideas I couldn’t turn into novels, which, unlike story collections, sometimes make money. And on and on…

I had wanted these things, or slight variations of them — exorbitantly — since I was ten or eleven and realized that, yes, I was a writer. Again, I wasn’t a writer because I had written anything longer than a page or two (I hadn’t come close), but because writing — stories — was all I ever thought about.

So, I lived my life. I did not become a writer. But I did write. Still, all I could think about were stories. And I wrote. And I was not a good writer. In fact, I was an awful one. But I did what you were supposed to do at the time: I kept a blog, and I wrote my stories and novels and submitted them to magazines and agents. Like most of you, my stories were met by grossly inadequate form letters. It was a long process — it usually took a month, mostly more, to hear back from a journal. Some journals required no simultaneous submissions. I realized I could increase the odds in my favor if I had more stories to submit. So, I wrote more stories.

Now, this blog is not going to be a rant against the publishing industry. We all know its problems. That isn’t to say there isn’t great stuff being published — there is. In fact, I believe now’s the best time for literature in the history of the world, with more books by more diverse authors on more diverse subjects available to more people than any other time in history. I think it just gets frustrating because, as writers, we can use our imaginations to picture a better publishing industry, but we also are all too aware such visions are probably nebulous utopias.

Long story short, after trying to get into the publishing industry the only way I thought possible, by submitting stories to journals and agents (the MFA wouldn’t work for me, I never graduated high school and never got a graduate degree. I was a real fuckup), I realized I was wasting my time. I needed another way. Making money would be nice, yeah, but what bothered me the most was that people just weren’t reading my stories. My stories wanted to live! They were trapped in my head, in my heart, on USB drives and MacBook’s, inaccessible to anyone but me. I started writing seriously in 2007–2008, so that’s about 13–14 years of work. And I’m a productive writer.

So, inspired by something I no longer remember, in July I started putting my stories on Substack before I realized Medium had a built-in audience of literature lovers and a better system for presenting a lot of multi-part stories (I said ‘better’, not ‘good.’) I’m not copying and pasting from my archive — everything gets rewritten and spruced up, and then reviewed and edited multiple times (and typos still get through). And people are reading my stories. That’s what I wanted. Maybe I’ll make some money. Maybe I won’t. Either way, I made the right decision. I’m in love with it.

I don’t have any prescriptive advice. The future is always inchoate. But there HAS to be a better way for people to create and disseminate literature. I’m not saying Medium, WordPress, or Substack are the answer. But we have to accept that right now, we really don’t have a clear answer.

View at Medium.com

Reprinted from my Medium account.

View at Medium.comView at Medium.com

Thoughts on Your Dream of Dark Angels

I wanted to share my thoughts about Your Dream of Dark Angels, because they’re currently drastically evolving, and I wanted to document them and keep readers involved in how these stories are made to demystify the writing process, which I think is treated with far too much awe. 

First, Your Dream of Dark Angels is not my ONLY “Batman” story. In fact, including Dark Angels, I have 3 unrelated, totally different Batman universes with AT LEAST a novel of material written for each. And, I’ve been conceptualizing a fourth.  Honestly, nobody’s more surprised than me. While I have almost three novels of material written for Dark Angels, a lot of it is terrible, and I’ll soon explain why. But I am sprucing it up and starting to make bigger changes to it as I go along. 

The thing is… when I originally wrote these books, I did them in a very mainstream way with heroic characters and your typical narrative rhythms. But, in this rewrite, the story is getting a lot more subversive. And using the exciting blogging technology of bullet points, I’ll expound below on my invincible opinions. 

(Please be aware that the following will include spoilers up to where I’ve posted on Substack, where Luke and Margo are about to sneak into the museum after hours.)

There’s no murder. I hate to break it to you, mystery fans, but the “Batman,” the great detective, or Luke Watt in this tale, is chasing an illusion, and he knows it, and I think so does Margo. But – and this is the key – all mysteries are never just about WHO did it. But WHY they did it. And that’s the mystery of this book – while there is no murder, there IS a mystery. In the original version the characters could have been popped into an after school special and no one would even blink. In this version, I’m going to explore Luke’s mental health and obvious psychosis, as well as try to understand his sexual nature. Your Dream of Dark Angels will begin to explore the second part of this equation soon. Changing perspective – the complete, last draft of Dark Angels I’m working from is told completely from Luke’s point of view. But I’ve decided to change that: Margo and Frederick are getting their turn too. Honestly, writing stories from multiple perspectives is hard for me… I’m just so out of practice with it that it feels clumsy when I do it. But it’s something I want to work on A LOT MORE. 

Anyway, that’s about it. I’d like to periodically write blogs like this for both my edification and that of others. If you don’t like having the literature you read be demystified, don’t read these blogs. But if you do read them, thank you. And if you have any questions, I am always about.