Rick Wayne's Blog, page 38
August 28, 2019
August 27, 2019
(Fiction) Attack of the Venom Wasps
“Fuck, Vernal, you smell like dish soap.”
Vernal turned to the big man next to him. Then he looked at the well-endowed brunette. Then he turned back to his drink. “And you smell like a whore’s snatch.”
The woman smiled as Dobie grabbed the stunted man and lifted him off his feet. “What?”
Vernal didn’t flinch. “Gonna hit me again?”
The big man noticed people staring and dropped Vernal back on his bar stool. “Not fuckin’ worth it.”
Vernal swallowed the rest of his drink and raised the glass to the mechanical bartender in a silent request for another. “It’s not soap.”
“What?”
“I said it’s not soap. It’s lemon juice.” His grated voice sputtered the words like a two-stroke engine.
“Did you fuckin’ shower in it or something?”
“I hear it’s good for the skin.”
The bartender slid along a track at the base of the bar. He stopped before Vernal and poured another drink. His pseudoflesh had worn away, and he greeted the world with lidless eyes and a constant metal grin.
Vernal shuddered. It was creepy. “Where’d you get the girl?”
“None of your god-damned business.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Fuck, no.”
“Hi.” The woman reached around the hulking man. “I’m Yunique.”
“Yes, you are.” Vernal noticed one of her eyelids drooped which gave her a seductive, sinister appeal.
“I love your voice.” She giggled. “You sound like a grumpy cat.”
“Thank you.” Vernal bent to kiss her hand, but Dobie slapped it away.
“Don’t touch her. Pervert.”
Vernal smiled and bared his chipped teeth at the fighter. “Where the hell is he?”
Dobie looked at an empty chair in a corner of the bar near the window, which was heavy and reinforced with steel cross-bars. “He’ll be here.”
“That’s what you said when we got here. And again twenty minutes ago. Yesterday you said he’s here every day. All the time.”
“He is.”
Vernal looked at the chair, then around the room, then back to the chair. “Well, I don’t see him.”
It was the middle of the day and the bar was mostly empty. The TV in the corner was playing the Westheria-Japanamania game. The Giants were creaming the Imperials 214-73.
Dobie took another drink.
“So?” Vernal pushed.
“So, something musta happened.”
“Something?”
“How the fuck should I know? The guy’s here every fuckin’ day like clockwork. He sits in the corner and reads the paper and no one fuckin’ talks to him. Then he goes home and no one sees him until he comes back the next day. Been that way for months.”
“Where’s home?”
“What?”
“You said he goes home. Where’s home?”
“How the fuck should I know where he lives?” Dobie glanced toward the door.
It was quick, but Vernal saw it. “I’m not waiting any longer.” He threw some money on the bar and stood up.
Dobie put a heavy hand on Vernal’s shoulder. His knuckles were well-scarred. “Just wait a minute.”
Vernal brushed the big man’s hands off him and stepped toward the door without a word. He stopped as two men walked in. He took one step back and ran into the big fighter, who rested both his hands on Vernal’s arms.
“Got you, you fucker.”
Vernal looked for another exit. The bar’s few patrons stood and went for the door as the two men walked toward him.
Dobie pushed Vernal forward. “Here he is, just like I told you.”
The first man was dark skinned with thick, curly hair raised in spikes. His eyes were lean and he stared at Vernal’s bones. His voice was deep like the night. “I can see that.”
The second man was thinner and bald and wore a sneer on the right side of his face that he clearly never dropped. He was dressed in old battle fatigues and held a knife. He pointed it at Vernal. “You must be Vernal Wort. My name is Sciever. This is my associate, Rabid.”
Vernal frowned. “You might wanna have him put down, then.”
Sciever smiled and played with his knife. “Do you know who we work for?”
“Excuse me?”
“Answer the question,” Rabid growled.
“What is this all about?” Vernal asked.
Dobie smacked Vernal hard.
“Ow.” Vernal rubbed his ear.
“Mr. Pimpernel would like to talk to you.”
“Who?”
Rabid nodded and Dobie grabbed Vernal’s arms, holding him still as the two men stepped closer.
“Where’s the key?” Rabid asked.
All three men towered over Vernal. “What key?”
Rabid pointed to the bar. Dobie took Vernal’s left arm and yanked it. The stubby man pulled as hard as he could, but the fighter was a rock, and he flattened Vernal’s hand on the wood.
“Wait, I seem to remem–”
Sciever cut off Vernal’s index finger before the little man could finish his sentence. There was a crack as the knife severed bone. Vernal screamed and collapsed, but Dobie kept his left hand pinned to the bar. The bartender had disappeared. Yunique held her mouth in excitement. She stared at the blood dribbling onto the counter.
“Wa–wait.” Vernal huffed. He could only feel a quarter-stub of his finger.
Rabid grabbed Vernal by the knot of hair on his head. “What the hell is wrong with your voice?” He scowled. “Fuck. You smell like dish soap.”
“It’s the new thing.” Vernal smiled.
Rabid punched him hard in the face. Vernal heard the smack of skin on skin and felt the sting travel up his nose and eyes, which started watering uncontrollably. He could taste blood on his teeth. “Ow.” He raised his free hand to rub his face.
Rabid knocked it away. “Where’s the key?”
“Outside,” Vernal said. “Out back. On the lower road.”
Sciever picked up Vernal’s finger from the floor and wagged it in his face, laughing. “Next it’s your cock, little man.”
Vernal flashed a red smile as Rabid grabbed him by the neck and moved him toward the back stairs.
Dobie followed, but Sciever motioned him back. “Stay here.”
The big man bristled but complied. “When do I get the reward?”
Rabid didn’t look back. “Consider it a down payment on your next fight.”
“Fuck,” Dobie cursed and kicked a stool.
Yunique pulled him close and whispered in his ear.
Sciever stepped from the staircase and looked up and down the lower road. Except for the trio, the basement block was deserted. “What a shit hole.”
Overhead, the upper road blocked out most of the sun. The neon sign over the stairway to The Dive blinked on and off. A poster in the window across the street announced a new adult feature starring Dongo, the thrice-cocked man-ape, who displayed his erect trident while standing in front of an orgasmic mass of skin.
“Well?” Rabid asked. He kept tight hold of Vernal’s neck.
The little man couldn’t turn his head and had trouble walking. Down the street, a tireless husk of a car rusted in silence. Above it, a cartoon whale smiled at them from a faded billboard. He wanted them to try Breen mouth cleanser. All around, junk clustered at the base of the concrete pillars that kept the upper road aloft. Vernal pointed to an alley across from the bar. He clenched his other hand, trying to stop the bleeding, but he could feel the warm blood drip, drip, drip from his open wound.
“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.” Sciever wrinkled his nose as they entered the alley. “Jeez, this smells like a toilet.” He kicked a broken pallet and scared a pair of purple pixies. They fluttered away in squeaks.
Rabid squeezed Vernal’s neck. “Where is it?”
“It’s okay,” Vernal called. “You can come out.”
For a moment nothing happened; then a disheveled man—bearded, dirt-covered, and barely clothed—emerged from behind a dumpster.
“It’s okay,” Vernal repeated. The haggard visitor seemed wary. “These are the men I told you about.”
The homeless man nodded and took a cautious step forward.
“Where is it?” Rabid asked him.
The man, mostly skin, pointed to his distended stomach.
“Fuck,” Sciever cursed.
“Not again.” Rabid rubbed his eyes, then motioned to Sciever. “Cut it out of him.”
“Why do I have to cut it out of him?”
“Because you have the knife, asshole. Hurry the fuck up before he runs away.”
But the man didn’t run away. He lay down on the ground and bore his belly, which bulged near bursting.
Rabid and Sciever looked at each other, then back at the filthy cretin.
“Fuck,” Sciever cursed again. “How many people are gonna swallow this damned key?” He walked over, and, after a moment’s pause, plunged his knife into the man’s stomach.
There was an audible pop as the organ burst like a balloon and thousands of wasps filled the alley.
“Venom wasps!” Sciever screamed and dropped his knife. He swung at the air as the tiny, flesh-hungry insects nipped at him, injecting droplets of poison into wells of bitten flesh. Females, already pregnant, crawled into the conjunctiva of his eyes and began to lay their eggs. He shrieked.
Rabid held Vernal with one hand and backed out of the alley, swatting at the swarm. Vernal cocked his wrist and plunged the stirge stinger into the Murderling’s thigh. Rabid yelped and dropped to the pavement, tearing at his clothes as the wasps covered his body. Then his body seized and his mouth foamed from the poison.
Vernal trotted from the alley unscathed. He walked down the street toward a set of stairs to the upper road, walking briskly and looking back only once. He had stolen a car near the wharf and left it parked two blocks away.
The top deck was populated but not busy. Delivery trucks belched black smoke and the occasional passers-by did little but look at the odd man with the bloody hand.
The parking lot was full of the cars of midday patrons. Vernal walked to the back wall and turned in circles as he fished his keys out of his left pocket with his right hand. He dropped them, picked them up, and stumbled around the car, hands shaking. He had lost enough blood that he was in real danger of passing out. He needed to get away, to get to his closest safe house, and quickly.
Vernal looked up to put the keys in the door and saw Yunique sitting cross-legged on the hood. He turned and saw Dobie walk up behind him, blocking his only exit.
Dobie hit Vernal hard. Right in the jaw. It was a solid blow, one the fighter had practiced many times before.
Vernal dropped like a wet rag.
“I got you, you fucker.”
The last thing Vernal felt before drifting into unconsciousness was Dobie’s boot in his stomach.
Chapter 13 of my ultra-gory pulp thrill-fest, FANTASMAGORIA, which I released under a pseudonym.
August 26, 2019
(Art) The Cinematic Escapes of JaeCheol Park
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JaeCheol Park, AKA Paperblue, is a South Korean digital painter and concept artist with a genuine talent for environments. His detailed works, which rarely feature people except at a distance, easily transport the viewer into completely different world.
August 23, 2019
(Update) Women With Swords
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I don’t have a problem with scantily-clad shield maidens. Conan runs around in a loincloth, baring his bulging muscles. Hardly sensible armor.
The problem is — or has been — the lack of any alternative depictions, so here is a periodic update to my collection of Women With Swords and Sensible Clothing. Another update here.
August 21, 2019
(Fiction) The Phantom Shore
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“Now what?” I asked.
“We wait.”
“Wait?” I hadn’t expected that. It was a risk for either of us to be there. The closer it got to dawn, the greater chance we had of being discovered, which wouldn’t serve either of our causes. What were we waiting for?
He saw the look on my face and returned a curious one of his own.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I just didn’t think someone like you would get surprised. I thought by now someone like you would’ve seen it all.”
“I’m immortal, not eternal.”
“How old are you exactly?”
“Come now,” I mocked. “Surely you know better than to ask a lady her age.”
He smirked, almost in spite of himself. “Can I ask what it’s like, or is that rude, too?”
“Since it seems I’m being kidnapped and returned to my enemies, I’m not sure I’m in a position to refuse, am I?”
His face grew stern. “Have I hurt you?”
“No,” I said, pulling the sheet taut around my body.
He nodded once, as if that settled it.
“What’s what like?” I asked.
He waited to make sure I was serious. “Coming back,” he said.
“The coming back is nothing. I wake up. I suspect it’s the part just before you’re asking about.”
He waited, expressionless.
“I re-experience my life,” I said, somewhat reluctantly. “Or long stretches of it anyway.”
“Like in a dream?”
“Of sorts. While I’m in it, it seems completely, like a dream. But I’m not watching myself like we do in dreams. I am myself. And there are no strange nonsequiturs or surreal landscapes. It’s always the same—even though I don’t realize that until I wake.”
“So you’re made to experience it all over. Every time?”
“Not all of it. It starts at random points and rarely makes it all the way to the end.”
“But your traumas. Your loss. You have to go through it again every time.”
“I suppose so. But not just my traumas. All my joys, too. I get to see loved ones, long gone. I get to laugh with them. I get to lay with my husband for the first time. I get to stay up all night talking to old friends I just met. Sometimes I get to see my father. Very occasionally, I get to be with my mother. I can’t see her face, but I’m enveloped in her warmth. No words can describe it really—the feeling of someone else’s heartbeat surging through you in place of your own. I can feel her love permeating me, completely, into every single cell.”
“She died?”
“Yes. Shortly after I was born.”
“It doesn’t bother you? Having to go through all that again and again?”
“Well . . . no. It’s comforting, in a way.”
“Comforting?”
“Yes. Like how people can fall in love with their own melancholy.”
He didn’t follow.
“I’ve lived my past so many times, it seems more solid, more real than the present. I sit here, talking to you, not knowing who sent you or what horrible things they will do when you deliver me, and it all feels very . . . loose. Unhinged. Leaky, even, like a poorly made boat. Nothing’s quite nailed down. But the past is set. It’s certain. And that makes it seem so much more real. Returning there always feels like stepping ashore after a long voyage at sea. Your body still rocks to phantom waves, but the ground under your feet is firm. Unyielding. And you realize you’d almost forgotten how sure it was. Welcoming, even. Like you’re back where you’re supposed to be. Like you’re home.” I was silent a long moment. “It would be easy to stay there, in the past.”
“That’s funny,” he said under his breath.
“Which part?”
“Well, that’s what everyone says, right? That your life flashes before your eyes. I guess I never really believed it.”
“My ex-husband and I used to joke that someone—or something—wanted to give me the opportunity to review my mistakes before trying again.” I smiled at my own joke, but he didn’t. “Did you lose someone?” I asked. “Someone close?”
The question seemed to make him uncomfortable.
“I see.” I pulled the sheet around me more. “Is it going to be much longer? I’m getting rather cold.”
He looked at his watch. “Soon. Wasn’t sure when you’d rise. Had to bake a buffer into the schedule.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me where we’re going.”
The bank of refrigeration units near the ceiling switched to a high roar then, which made conversation all but impossible. Cold air blasted against my skin and I started to shiver. The metal gurney underneath me felt like ice.
After a minute or two, the machines returned to their prior rumbling chorus.
“Our time is a gift,” I said, staring at the bag of charred bones resting by his feet. I saw a rib caked in oily charcoal. “Our time with loved ones especially. Everyone pretends to know that, of course, yourself included, but everyone also gets up every day and acts as if the world is supposed to have them in it—and the people they care about, which is why they’re shocked when one is ripped away. I think that’s why they keep repeating all those homespun homilies. Deep down, they know they’re not prepared, and they’re trying to convince themselves.”
“Are you including yourself in that?” he asked.
“Oh, definitely. I’m very vain. I can’t imagine the world without me. That’s what makes being stuck here such a clever punishment.”
“Punishment?”
I smiled at my own slip. “For something that happened a very long time ago.”
“So life to you is a prison?”
I paused. “I used to think so.”
“Until?”
I couldn’t answer right away. “Until I was put into a real one.”
We fell silent then. I think we both knew that torture and imprisonment might be my fate again soon, a fact neither of us wanted to acknowledge, although each for our own reasons.
“Can we get on with it, please?” I asked, exasperated.
He stood and checked his watch. “Sure. Why not? We’ll be a little early, but I suppose it’s close enough.”
“Early? For?”
He reached for the duct tape.
Rough cut from the fifth and final mystery of FEAST OF SHADOWS. Part One is available now.
August 20, 2019
Toshi Yoshida
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Toshi Yoshida
August 19, 2019
(Art) The Sc-fi Illustration of Atomcyber
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The climactic finale of THE MINUS FACTION features, among other things, a miniature nuclear explosion, a superhuman battle royale, a kaiju brawl, a tidal wave, and an army of zombie-cyborgs (wherein two members of the team debate the difference between a zombie-cyborg and a cyborg-zombie).
I actually didn’t write it to be campy, just fun. I achieved that — if I did — by starting small, where there is not too much terribly fantastic about Episode One, and then gradually building from there. (If I failed anywhere, it’s that the final battle goes on a bit long, as is often the case in movies of the same genre. Now I know why.)
I also laid the groundwork from the start. The experimental nanotech supposedly capable of regenerating damaged nerves, which is merely mentioned as a possibility in the first episode, is the same tech that, when perverted, creates the zombie-cyborgs in the last episode. The nanites consume the flesh of the recently dead, using it as raw material for internal machine parts that animate them again, sometimes merging multiple bodies into one.
Recently, I came across this image by atomcyber and of course immediately thought of the book. Great stuff.
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More below:
August 18, 2019
(Fiction) The Empire is Full of Dicks
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[Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader, and an unnamed Admiral wait outside the Death Star meeting room.]
You tell him.
wheez I’m not going to tell him.
Don’t look at me. If I tell him, it’s all “harassment” and shit.
Well, you are the boss.
Right. So, Vader, you tell him.
wheez I can’t tell him. wheez
Why the fuck not??
Because! wheez What the hell am I supposed to say?
Just tell him that you noticed he stopped wearing deodorant and ask if that’s, like…
wheez Like WHAT?
You know! Like, is it a permanent thing?
A permanent thing? wheez
Yeah. Maybe he’s just going through a phase.
A phase? wheez What kind of phase is not wearing deodorant? wheez It’s disgusting. I can smell him through my filter.
I banged this chick on Alderaan once. Long time ago. Before either of you were born. She was all prickly and shit. She kinda smelled like him. It wasn’t a phase. She was like that all the time.
Are you sure she wasn’t a wookie?
What?
Yeah, I heard that sometimes the women get laser hair removal.
Really? Is that true or is that an internet thing?
I dunno. It’s just what I heard.
wheez How could you not know if she was a wookie? wheez
Clearly, he was stoned.
Wait. wheez You blew up Alderaan to get back at her. Didn’t you? wheez
Not exactly, but I’ll admit, it was a nice fringe benefit.
That’s not funny.
wheez I thought it was funny. wheez I thought it was very funny. I’m laughing.
How can we tell?
Can we please decide who’s talking to him?
Shit.
What?
He’s looking right at us!
So?
Don’t look! Don’t look!
wheez You’re such an asshole.
Do you think he heard us?
I thought we decided Vader was going to talk to him.
wheez We did not. You said I should. wheez I never agreed.
So why don’t you?
Because I’m sick wheez of his bullshit. It’s always something. He’s always wheez making fun of the Force and saying it’s not a “real” religion. wheez If I have to talk to him, I’m just gonna end up Force-choking him. wheez Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
Dude… we talked about the Force-choking thing.
wheez I have post-traumatic stress disorder. wheez It’s a legitimate medical condition. I was burned alive in a river of lava wheez remember?
No? Were you really? You’ve only told that story about a million times.
Wait, I thought you were in mandatory anger management. Weren’t you seeing that one troop counselor?
He is. He’s nailing her.
No way!!
Yes, way.
What’s she look like under the armor?
wheez I give her a solid eight and a half. wheez
How the fuck did a crippled dickless motherfucker like yo- Oooooooh. I get it. You did the mind thing, didn’t you?
No. wheez
Look at him. He’s fidgeting. He totally did.
No. wheez It was totally legit this time. wheez
You gotta stop doing that, man. It’s not cool.
wheez I didn’t fuckin’ wheez do the mind shit wheez alright?
Alright, alright. Calm down. Jesus. So how did you get her?
What can I say? wheez I guess she just likes a guy with a Big. Black. Helmet. wheez
You’re such a cock.
Guys, this meeting’s supposed to have started already.
Shit. wheez Well, we can’t say anything now. wheez
Why?
Because everyone is here now. wheez They will hear.
So?
So, we don’t want to be mean wheez and say something in front of other people. wheez
Says the man who Force-chokes people every time he’s triggered.
wheez Maybe he’s got wheez a glandular problem.
Glandular? Dafuq you talking about?
Look. We gotta say something. If the Emperor walks by next week and smells that shit, he’s gonna fuckin’ FREAK.
He’ll vaporize him.
wheez I’m so sick wheez of the goddamned paperwork. Every time he—
Fuck the paperwork. We’re still under a hiring freeze. If he dies, we’re gonna have to do his work and I am NOT going back on regulator duty. I told you guys—
Yes. wheez We have heard your idle complaints many times. wheez
What’s that supposed to mean?
Look, I gotta get this meeting started. Here’s what we’re gonna do. At the end of the meeting, I’ll ask him to stay, but then you come tell me we got a lead on the Rebel base, and after everyone’s left, Vader will talk to him.
What? wheez Why the fuck do I have to talk to him? wheez
Because I’m fucking Grand Moff and I said so. That’s why.
Fuck. wheez You’re a Grand Dick is what you are.
Oh, stop being a baby. Just do the breathing thing. That shit freaks everybody out.
Wait… wheez Really? wheez You never told me that.
Now is not the ti—
wheez Is that why everyone stopped inviting me to poker?
No one invites you to poker because you Force-cheat.
wheez I do not!
Vader, sit down! Thank you all for coming. If you’d take your seats, we’ll get this meeting started.
August 17, 2019
art by jason kowalski
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art by jason kowalski
August 16, 2019
(Feature) Not Right
Ne Fas Day
From the Latin ne meaning not, and fas, which is more difficult to translate since there isn’t an English cognate. Roman society, like all classical societies — including those that still exist in southern India and parts of China — was considerably more “superstitious” than we are.
I put that word in quotes for two reasons. First, it’s pejorative in English, and that’s not entirely fair. It’s not like someone came down from heaven and gave the Romans a choice between sorcery and the modern scientific worldview. It was not irrational for any individual raised in that society to believe what everyone believed, just as it was not irrational for a Native American to ask the shaman to treat his illness. What other option was there?
(Yes, yes, quote Lucretius at me all you want. That’s like saying what goes on at university is representative of Western culture as a whole.)
Second, that wording implies we are not superstitious, which is false. Surveys regularly show that the majority of people (in America, anyway) not only believe that angels exist but that they are an active force in their lives, protecting and guiding them. This is not dissimilar to the Roman conception, where the world was packed with animating spirits. As I noted the other day, they had separate “gods” for the door, the lock, and the hinge!
That’s not to say there’s no difference between us and them. Of course there is, just less than is often presumed by those wanting to show how smart we are here in the future.
As is usually the case, the Romans organized their universe as a reflection of their society — or vice versa, depending on what you believe — just as we do, where everything is supposed to be based on a rule that’s the same for all. The job of all these many gods was to preserve “the divine order,” which could be perverted by malign forces, not just sorcerers and evil spirits but also the individual gods themselves, who were temperamental (as we still imagine Nature) and didn’t always stick to the plan.
In context, this makes perfect sense, which is why everyone believed it. These people were not stupid. They understood the world did not unfold at random. Most of the time, it appeared rather orderly, in fact. The heavens seemed to move with exact periodicity, but beyond that, they also perceived other forces still. Some were direct, such as that an acorn not only sprouted but always became an oak tree and never a maple. Others were indirect, such as what today we might call the economy. Of course, economic science having yet to be invented, they lacked the language to describe it. (One could make a very strong case that we still do.)
This general model explains the patent truth we still believe that the world is more or less orderly but sometimes goes off the rails.
If you think about it, the Roman practice of consulting the oracles and mediums before traveling or conducting any significant business is not terribly different than our practice of consulting a financial advisor, who’s job it is to predict the unpredictable — namely, the stock market. He doesn’t know. He just gives us something to think about, another data point, as we make our decision.
Note, I am not saying those acts are the same, just that they are similar. For one, both were available only to those who could afford to pay for such service. Measured on outcomes of course, we have improved the old models, although we still have a long way to go. (Measured on general happiness, however, we don’t seem to be doing any better.)
The Latin word fas refers to this divine order, the normal orderly way things are supposed to unfold. Ne fas then means “not right.” Something has perturbed the divine order. The world is temporarily out of sorts.
Much like the American President and European Prime Ministers serve as national pastors in times of crisis, speaking homilies to comfort us and invoking the name of God to our side in the fight against the enemy or a natural disaster or what-have-you, so too the Roman Consuls, of which there were two at any time, were the civil and religious protectors of the state.
Among their many responsibilities, it was the job of the consuls — with the help of an auger or seer — to read the entrails of a slaughtered animal every morning the Senate was in session. If what they saw was worrisome, they could declare the day ne fas, “not right,” and the Senate would not meet, lest their actions be corrupted by whatever dark forces were temporarily swirling about.
The consuls were given this job, rather than the senators, because they were supposed to be impartial, but given that it gave them the power to, for example, suspend discussion on a topic or delay a critical vote, they were often paid by patrician power brokers to declare ne fas days. Such is politics.
In response, the Senate passed a resolution declaring that any consul could only declare two ne fas days a year (or something like that), effectively putting a cap on how often the gods could take a vacation.
In the modern world, we call them personal days, but it’s more or less the same. We get up, see that things are “not right,” and go back to bed. Of course, given the potential for abuse, our employers have wisely put a cap on our emotions.
[image error]Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904) “Baccante,” 1853
