# PerC Prose Corner



## Xenograft (Jul 1, 2013)

Hey guys! Since the other thread is mostly poetry, I decided to start a prose thread, since I mainly write prose and my poetry skills are dreadful. Feel free to post whatever!

I'll start: (after I get it in the proper format!)




> The Artist:
> 
> “It’s not you, it’s me,” Grenich heaved through a puff of colorful smoke, a cigarette in one hand, eyes batting seductively. This is not to say that Grenich was seductive, in fact, Mr. Davis would surely disagree strongly if someone shared that sentiment with him. Before him she had fitted herself in a chair that was too small for her, her arms squished together, her maroon hair shining in the blaring studio lamps, her eyes caked in shadows, her lips a painfully bright red, all of it seeming to squish itself together into a face. She gazed at him in some sort of scrutiny, constantly sizing him up, questioning his merit. “Like I said, it’s not you, it’s me.” She repeated, reassuring him that their lack of cooperation was due to her own faults, “Well, maybe. I think it’s more like you and I have artistic differences here, it’s not that we don’t get along,”_ they didn’t_, “it’s that I’m too progressive for you,” _she wasn’t_, “I just think I should go and produce with someone else, y’know? I’ve been doing this shit with you for nearly three years, we’re two records in, I think it’s time to stop.”
> 
> ...


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## Xenograft (Jul 1, 2013)

Nobody? 

No takers?

Come on guys, I know you writers are out there!


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## Xenograft (Jul 1, 2013)

All right guys, I guess I'll just post stuff until someone does



> Afternoon’s Haze:
> 
> Guy stumbled out, the gleaming fire in the sky bearing down on him; the heat rose from the concrete and wetted his brow, and his eyes shown in the light. The air was calm, his confused state mingling with a lethargic shudder; his feet quaked beneath his form, his hand struggled to shield his gaze from the glorious sun. It was Tuesday; he didn’t know what time it was, judging by the sheer silence it could be guessed that it must have been two or three in the afternoon. In his hazy climb to full alertness he found himself standing in the middle of the street, baked concrete warming his bare soles. Above him an aeronautical excursion soared across the sky, tearing through the sound barrier and daring to go ever higher. It was summer, his face glistened, perhaps he should go back inside.
> 
> ...


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## Xenograft (Jul 1, 2013)

I'm gonna post another one, but it's really old, like from FRESHMAN year of high school, so no judging!


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## Xenograft (Jul 1, 2013)

_Catarina, Oh My Sweet
_
It was the twenty seventh day of the third month, the icy slush still resting upon the outer layer of dew that set atop the grass; I was here, in my dwelling place, in my grotto, so to speak, as I watched her sleep. So dainty were her slipper clad feet, so soft were her lips, he silk blond hair came flowing down her back, oh how she glowed, oh how she slumbered there. Half my size she stood one foot and one inch, her wings parting like the clouds after a warm spring rain, my eyes resting so pleasantly on hers, all be them closed, I may still watch. My hand outstretched, my palms began to sweat, and the scaly rugged leather of my skin touched the soft, practically translucent skin of hers.She quaked beneath my touch, she shuddered and yawned, and open came her eyes; and from them shown the watery deep, her home and her keep. 

Her mouth became agape, and in her eyes I saw my own, dark green and sharp like my blade, she let out a low cry, and still stared at my horrible form. I knew that I appeared ugly to her, I knew that a scream was in the near future, and I made a hushing sound. She quieted and her hands lifted to grip the bars of her golden cage, I said to her this:

“Fear not, my sweet, I keep you here only for your own good. Those fairies from your home, they would only grow to spite you and most undoubtedly smite you. I have rescued you from their cruel ideas and principles. I look upon you now; you, the most fantastical, the most beautiful creature in the land, and I pray you understand.”

She looked at me, a void stare upon her shining face, and instead of a freaking shriek a look of befuddlement took up her expression, and with it came a small few words from her pale lips; “Who are you? What is the day? What is the time?”

“It is the month of March, the day of twenty seven, and the time is unbeknownst to me. It is okay, go back to sleep my pretty fairy, go back to sleep and dreams those sweet sweet dreams that you most assuredly dream.” I spoke with my raspy drone, my voice nothing in comparison with her quiet whisper, a whisper so comforting that it made even my rock of a heart shudder with warmth.

She looked at me again and blinked twice before speaking again; “Please, might I know who you are, what you are? I know not where I am, all I know is that I was home not too long ago. Pray, take me there. Take me back.”

I wished I could do what she asked, I wished above all else to please her, but I could not do something that I knew would be a crime against what I thought right. I knew what went on in their caves, on the outside the males were well built men with sculpture like faces, men who bounced about on their swift wings. I knew of them gallivanting off into the wilderness in search of exotic women that they could trash about and take control over, I knew of their deeds. Their deeds they called “fun,” burning down trees of others so that they may steal and plunder, the glee of arching arrows at unsuspecting animals, the rush of adrenaline as their blood poured out from wounds they had no way of mending, and how they drank.

I could not bring myself to take her back to that hell, to a place filled of war and fascist, bloodthirsty motives. One would not wonder why they are dubbed the name “karo starteriai,” would they? Their clear, their outstanding lust for blood and sex, the smoke that blew from their camps smelled of sweet berries, but be not misinformed, they are the evilest of the evil. They make us goblins look like innocent ,cuddly creatures like bear cubs deer, we are nothing in sin compared to them.

And so I looked upon my captured love,and so I told her why I could not do what she asked of me, and so she sighed and pouted and sat herself down. In everything she did she was perfect, her hair fluttering about around her, settling upon her pale shoulders, o’ how she shown in the threads of sunlight bursting through the holes of my ceiling. Again I spoke, this time as an inquiry, rather than a statement or a response: “My fairy, what be your name? Be it Mary or Rosie, please tell me your name that I may call you by it.”

Her head turned slowly to stare at mine, and with yet a third sigh she said “Catarina.” Oh how beautiful it was, and as I slept that night, occasionally stealing a glimpse of her golden cage I played her name over and over again in my brain, taking in the full extent of its wonder. My dreams filled of her and I kissing, of us laying about in golden grass of the valleys, of us speaking to each other of things we both found engaging, of her, as I watched her. And the dream became a nightmare, and men came from the forest, their limbs appearing one by one from the soggy fog, their spears glistening with the blood of my friends, their faces set on my blade, on her. I would protect her from those beasts, and in my nightmare I reached out and I took hold of the outcome. I slashed and gnashed and bashed at the fairy men, their blood covering my body, my sword, and she watched in awe. Finally, as their corpses lay, strewn about the moist and forested ground, there I stood, breathing heavily, and she was running towards me, and we embraced.

I awoke to the sound of running water,and saw that she was bathing, I started and averted my eyes, for her purity was not for me to see, I kept her and provided for her, I would never own her like those others. My intent was not to use her like a toy for my own pleasure and fantasies, but for her to use me for her own pleasure and fantasies. What I needed was her smile, washer joy. For my wishes were worth nothing, but hers, hers were worth my life. I had grown tired of watching the other females get ravished by the males, I had grown tired and if I could not save them all I could save one. My one, sweet Catarina.

I bid her a good morning and asked herwhat she was inclined to eat, she told me berries and fish, so Iventured out into the forest to find her exactly this. When I cameback, with the flesh of a rabbit entangled in my jaws, I fixed forher the food she requested, and I sat and watched her eat. Even
this she did without error, withoutcoming off as disgusting, she ate her food in a methodical way, everybite a new venture into the land of taste.

After I had finished devouring my killand she had finished I sat and asked about her life in the caves thatdwelled beneath the ever swelling sea, and she told me of her fatherand mother, she told
me of the wonders of their magic, how they could conjure up any animal they desired, and could control them to complete whatever their task was. She told me of how they played games of the water, how they splashed about in the caves. She told of how the caves gleamed a blue of which she could not explain accurately enough to do it justice, how the fish swam about with them, how even larger animals swam under them, in the dark depths of the water. I sat and listened, mystified, she only becoming more and more glorified in my eyes, and her magnificence only grew brighter and brighter in my mind.

She was passionate, she was innocent, she knew not of the horrible atrocities her male brethren committed in the wee hours of the mornings, she knew not why I had saved her. It was as if she was an infant, and just beginning to grasp the complexities of life. All she knew was that she had been taken by me and that she did not even know of the stories of us goblins spread about the ages. Her knowledge had nothing of our bloody wars and long drawn out grudges of the human race, she knew me only by what she called me, which was “Griežtas Vienas,” which translated into “harsh one.” I could only assume she was referring to my rugged skin.

And we talked for hours, I told her of my infancy, of my parents who now lay dead in some unnamed theatre of war, I knew them dead for they had not made any contact with me for years. I had been alone until now, until they had come to find a new home and I had been entangled in the fight. I had taken her when I found her unconscious against a tree, and I had not told her this. I told her of my experiences in the Goblin Army, I told her of our marches, of our attack on Grey Marsh, and how we did battle with the humans in the misty forest. I told her of my voyage to the Sea of Souls to find my fallen friend, I told her of my life.

She fell asleep that night next to me,and she slumped onto my lap. So I picked her up and set her down as gently as I could manage in her cage, and I went to bed. We continued like this for a good few weeks, and then she began to become more accustomed to my life style. I taught her how to hunt, I taught her to draw. She became intelligent and slowly grew apart from me. And then she grew closer, as her matured mind acquired some sort of attraction to me. It was not a sexual attraction, it was an emotional kind of attraction. One to my mind rather than my body, for that was not lovable by something as fine-looking as herself. We talked more,we understood each other more.

We became like two old partners, and finally, one cool summer night we kissed. It was the most wonderful sensation in my life, I was flying, I was high above the clouds, the euphoria engulfing my body, and I was happy. I was finally happy, it was magical. Despite how scaly my mouth was, hers was soft as a pillow, and we embraced. I have lived with her ever since. My sweet Catarina, although taken from her place of origin she has stayed with me, she has returned a favour I expected no reward for. The colours of life making themselves be known to us, we lived in each others minds. We always talked, we talked so much I believe we might as well not talk at all, there was total understanding, total care. Physical and emotional we were together. And I know, that as I write this, we will be with one another for all time, in death we will follow the path that is drawn out for us.

I know some may call us a mistake of nature, an accident, something that should be either left untouched or destroyed. But we still are in love, we are still sharing this bond, and it will never depart. If I have to give my life for her I shall do so, and she the same. I love her. I must tell you, dear reader, and myself this. I love her and I always will. As I grow old I will shrivel, and my organs will give out, yet she will live for at least thirty years after I; and I know she will not go looking for other company. I know that our love is sacred, and I will know it for all eternity. For you, oh sweet fairy of mine, I write this. For you, I end it. I will see you when I sleep, I will see you when I wake, and I will see you when we are dead. Those three words are not enough, so I shall finish at this. We will be together always, and nothing will set us apart. Nothing.


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## absyrd (Jun 1, 2013)

Each human being is a construct of the universe perceiving itself in an intimate way through its gifted sensory outlets. Think about a person, assigned the value of an identity in "Joel," sitting in the back corner of its math class copying notes for an upcoming math exam. The fragments of mathematical expression it copies from that board are written in the one language capable of describing pure truth. Calculus interprets a whole spectrum of observable experiences enacted in time within their infinite void of presence—space. Joel, a vessel of the cosmos, the constant of energy and resistance of equilibrium, creates a symbolic translation of this pure truth in the form of deductive and inductive variables to denote abstraction. It does so by the will of a self-sustaining impulse that inhabits freedom and self-awareness but reveals boredom and decadence in its demeanor, trapped in the painful banality of its perception. Intro to Calculus does not appeal to Joel this lovely Tuesday morning.
"Did we learn this?" the vessel communicates to its adjacent companion. "I'm still on integrals."
"I expected a teacher who could speak English," Joel's target of communication, Pete, delivers in response, the words indicating the frustration of its unwillingness to learn along with its accompanying failure—apathy buried in the accusation of incompetence. This veil helps contain the vessel's cognitive dissonance, lowering the probability for mental energy expenditure.
"Whatever. We can make a cheat sheet for Thursday. That gives us two days,” says Joel, finding a shortcut through potential stress overload. Its sub-conscience grapples to pinpoint a moral contradiction, controlling the impulse before neurons could gain momentum.
"Two days to plan how the hell I stand a chance in passing this class," Pete concludes, choosing the value of deception as its colleague.
Pete acknowledges its circumstantially justified means for dishonesty. It chooses to progress along the credit-seeking, disillusioned path of mindless youth that is the college experience—it will cheat.
The beings spend the following two days productively engaging a hedonistic desperation that will send them quite swiftly on an ethicality-reform crisis if I follow up on my earlier intentions. 
Joel experiences the moments of his life as inconsequential streams of consciousness. As such, its mental preferences gear towards the pursuit of pleasure, mindlessness of personal schedule, and a relaxed, quiet perception of life’s constant shifting background. Pete lives in a sensory-rich environment; it is aware of most details as enabled by its increased sensitivity to stimuli. It is vocal, emotionally impulsive, and a heroic flag football player. But neither individual stands out of its environment, capably merging their cheating habits to the fusion of background noise as experts in deceit.
Upon roll call and dismissal, the two vessels sit for an additional focused minute, furnishing their respective class-long intrigues. They shared the inductive process to form a whole page of tiny, organized formulas and a blank opposite for the protection of self-interests. They exit the classroom uniformly, each attracted to the other’s method of ego display. They’re comfortable in each other’s shadow, contently discussing a relaxed weekend of beer pong when their schedules align. It would indeed be a shame if these two vessels did not one day experience the depth of true friendship, as their prerequisites seem to underline.
Joel and Pete do not exist merely as scripted. The existing physical vessels interact in waves of mindless communication, each wave less meaningful than the last. In a process I like to call Dwindling Value, these individuals have functioned for at least six months by only the most basic stimuli. This grants me control of their potential energy. I will exhort this control over the beings that cause me discontent. Their slow, reactive, and predictable lessons of skewed morality from poor logic will taste the justice of my realignment—restoration of balance to the spectrum of good and evil, a spectrum that demands an unkempt shade of grey to resist equilibrium.
I keep the illusion constant. With every second that passes another second of human survival is permitted. But it’s only a matter of time before my method of justice fails to change the direction of “balance”—the spectrum of absolute morality, the corruption of my sovereignty, as fueled by human pride, which detaches the value I’d placed upon my vastly layered cosmos.
The two vessels at once begin a mild yet enraging template of absent gratitude to my constant effort. This behavior is so widespread in human nature that even I have lost hope of containing it. Joel and Pete will be returning my gift as I see fit to redeem of them this morning.
The two vessels pace with no hurriedness or vigor through the humid, crowded parking lot. I observe Joel, the lengthier vessel as it approaches my point of reference in its car. I graciously veil the appearance of grandeur I generally employ in cases of Dwindling Value, which results in my metaphorical sigh of resistance.
Joel secures himself in the vehicle, its invaluable companion lagging quietly beside him. Their non-existent self-reproach disturbs me. After a symbiotic thought-scan, I am ready to proceed.
“Attention, vessels of earth.”
The two are startled, as my damned pairs frequently are, and follow the shock by the boring, skeptic, human-impulse to investigate the source of my greeting before it is absorbed by appetizing fear. But a brief smirk forms on Joel’s face before realizing the threat of my cold, condemning voice.
 “I will make myself heard very quickly because I have a lot of menacing vessels to exile. Joel, Pete, you have each failed to maintain a consistent value of external good for long enough and have dwindled your own soul of character. Your selves are not worth keeping alive or in a peaceful afterlife.”
Joel appears at first ready to belch its confusion through tears and denial as it peers broodingly at the ceiling of where my self is perceived by it. Its gaping mouth yields nothing in defense or despair, solely its increased breath and almost deafening silence of thought.
“Nothing to say? I’m glad you at least remained humble. A bit unusual of those pointed for evil, but shock is preferred to the futility of reason.”
Joel lowers its head and peers through the dashboard at the last scene it would ever consciously experience.
Pete watches its friend turn to vapor.
“It’s an illusion. I didn’t actually reduce him to water molecules. I could do that for you, as well, if you prefer a fleeting, painless dismissal.”
“I won’t submit to your threats. You…you are evil, hate, pride, q-qualities of an underworld deceiver. You can’t be god. The real F-Father isn’t such a cold-blooded m-merciless fu…” Pete says.
“A vessel of awareness that I carefully designed finds me revolting? Never heard that one before.”
“You punish us for planning to cheat on a math exam?”
“No, you insult my rationality. I punish you for failing to live more consciously aware of the universal _need_ for good to restore the balance of evil. All you’ve done is add to the downward spiral and maliciously trivial contempt for my creation. What have you done to deserve life?”
“You’re going to punish me for being imperfect? Okay, great! Make me in your image, with a will, and surround me with nothing but the conditions that YOU KNOW I am tempted by. Tell all your children that forgiveness is as simple as a relationship with your son, and then go lynch random people who insult you by ranking their own happiness over your sovereignty. Maybe you could say a couple words to the gay community you’ve made hide under its own skin and restricted millennia of happiness toward. A few words to all of life on earth you chose to murder with a single occurring flood due to YOUR own lack of hindsight? How about a toast to every African child that has starved to death in the short time since I entered this car? YOU are the reason good needs to be restored, because you’re turning us against each other and letting fear, prejudice, murder, all acts of evil exist for ALL of human history. You dedicate your precious time to stalking and psychologically torturing and then killing my community college enrolled ass? Go answer someone’s prayer. What the hell did Joel matter? Go ahead, do what you gotta do. You’re a disgrace and I want you to want me dead.”
The vehicle is silent. Pete dries the waterworks around his cheek and continues to anticipate death in the least, bracing his senses for something worse. An infinite damnation should be reserved to him by any sensibility.
“Pete, I am trying to settle the score here. If the spectrum turns any closer to evil, the world I created and even I cease to exist. Maintaining sin is as simple as responding to the judgment of evil that my balance sends for my recovery. Truth be told, I don’t know any more about the origin of that balance than yourself. But it’s my mission to secure it.”
“Then you aren’t god? What the hell are you?”
“I enact the will of god. You could say I am he, but all my power comes from that balance since I procured it. I was born to keep that damn thing centered, and I’ve been doing it for over two billion years. It was never more than a balance of natural elements when I was first assigned it. So maintaining it was simple. The balance has been spiraling around the central stability it was originally bound to since the day I prepared its dominion to share this void with another being. Many regrets later, what you’ve come to learn as the story of the flood was indeed my lack of hindsight. I was inexperienced. The balance swung dangerously far from its origin of stability and dangerously close to the corruption of sin. I am responsible; I ignored its divinity. The balance warned me. It begged me, its inanimate appearance revealing greater strength than I’d expected. I was filled with unremitting pain that only signaled its own desperation to be delivered from evil. Destroying my millennia of design as I’d watched this remarkable, rare presence of ‘self’ grow from the complex but elementary single-celled bacteria to the outstanding complexity of the human brain. I had to choose between all of creation, save two of each species, and know infinitely in advance that all the things I’d created were going to suffer horribly and die at once. The balance and its divinity are things I’ve since accepted in my value system. It will do me nothing to enrich something I consider wrong when its divinity is pure. I didn’t want to resist its judgment anymore and wreck my experience with constant threats of universal equilibrium. Whatever individual instance of evil the balance chooses to object, I obey. But the spectrum will not resist for very long with the microscopic hole that right now separates stability from the takeover of evil. It is clear to me that human life is the only cause for this morbidly unbalanced spectrum, and it is also clear to me that genocide of all mankind would save the fate of the universe. But I won’t do that. Humans will get their chance to experience life. I will keep the stability of this ancient mysterious balance fueled for its brief remaining time. But if my chosen species must be killed for the unconscious demands of an absolute morality, one that chains even my own sovereignty, I will not be chained. Why accept the divinity of an object that perceives my pure and loving creation to be evil? I am willing to kill vessels—preferably in tiny doses to satisfy its hunger and prevent whatever painful end its wrath will have on me. But I will never betray my children whole. I am not evil. This assignment won’t let me fully embrace you or my people. I am forced to reveal myself in non-defensible fragments, stories, to individuals instead of masses. This balance I rule under hates your collective species to where it judges ‘good’ as spreading doubt to my existence and having the disillusioned few with lapses of judgment exiled without reason except in support of its own balance. Humans have to live without my guidance as their creator, feel betrayed in my absence, and I can’t even reveal I’m a slave myself.”
Suddenly, a sharp pain. All over. My creation. A stabbing gnawing agony. The kind specially created by an anguished spirit. I can no longer see, except for the ravishing swirl of lights and colors crumbling to nothing. For one last round of applause, life sends my way a cluster of geometric shapes, forming complex sequences, graphs, grids, deriving, anti-deriving, re-deriving, spinning and twirling until destroying its limit and approaching infinitely closer to one.


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## absyrd (Jun 1, 2013)

Challenged myself to write a skit in 30 minutes. My given theme was: "a guy lost his job." Written in screenplay format.


INT. LIVING ROOM - MORNING

Camera pans over ANDREW as he lies sprawled on the living
room couch, mindlessly watching TV. STEVEN enters the room.

STEVEN
Andrew.

ANDREW
Sup?

STEVEN
(angrily) Why the fuck aren't
you at work?


ANDREW
I told you I lost my job.

STEVEN
No you didn't.

ANDREW
Yeah, I told you last night.

STEVEN
You did not tell me last night,
otherwise I wouldn't be asking you
right now why you aren't at work.

ANDREW
Well, whatever.

STEVEN
No, get the fuck up and find a job.

ANDREW
I'm scheduled for an interview
today.

STEVEN
Stop lying, you haven't scheduled
anything. Why did you get fired?

ANDREW
I quit.

STEVEN
We're OVERDUE on our rent payment,
you moron.

ANDREW
We'll be fine.

STEVEN
No we won't, you piece of shit.

ANDREW
Dude, you are too revved up.

STEVEN
Because you aren't taking your
responsibilities as a roommate
seriously. Get up and find a job or
this little partnership is over.

ANDREW
I'll get a job. Jesus, I can smell
the coffee in your breath. No
wonder you're so heated.

STEVEN
If you're not employed somewhere
that pays U.S currency by my lunch
break, you're gone.

ANDREW
Alright.

STEVEN
I mean it.

ANDREW
Okay.



STEVEN exits through the front door. ANDREW picks up his
phone and starts dialing numbers.

INT. LIVING ROOM - AFTERNOON

Camera pans over ANDREW, still lying on the couch. STEVEN
enters through the front door and walks quickly into the
living room.

STEVEN
That's it. Get out or I'm calling
the cops.

ANDREW digs inside his pocket and pulls out three folded
$100 bills.

ANDREW
That should cover the rent.

STEVEN
Where did this come from?

ANDREW
Dude, I got the money. That's all
that counts.

STEVEN
Where the hell did you pull 300
doll-... Andrew...

ANDREW
I'm not selling drugs.

STEVEN
Andrew, where the fuck is the TV?

ANDREW
At the pawn shop.

STEVEN drops his briefcase and stares at the counter which
is no longer holding the only TV in the house.

STEVEN
You really fucking went there.

ANDREW
What? You don't watch it anyways.

STEVEN
BECAUSE I'M ALWAYS WORKING!!! YOU
MOTHERFUCKER!

STEVEN lunges at ANDREW. ANDREW evades the attack and easily
pins his frantic roommate to the floor.

ANDREW
We needed the money. You said it
yourself.

STEVEN
That thing was worth WAY more than
300 bucks.

ANDREW
How much was it worth?

STEVEN
Get the fuck off me! I'm calling
the police.

ANDREW
I can't get off you if you're gonna
threaten to do something like that.

STEVEN writhes like a tapeworm under ANDREW's strong pin. He
eventually gives up and relaxes on the floor, breathless and
exhausted.

STEVEN
So what now? You gonna keep me here
forever?

ANDREW
I don't know.

STEVEN pants for a few more moments and begins giggling. The
giggle turns swiftly into laughter.

ANDREW
You're weird, man.

STEVEN
Fuck it.

ANDREW
What?

STEVEN
Just fuck it.

ANDREW
What does that mean?

STEVEN
Fuck it all, just fuck it, who
cares? Who really, honestly gives a
shit?

ANDREW
I don't know.

STEVEN's laughter continues. Scene fades to black.

The end.


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## Kito (Jan 6, 2012)

I have a story in the works, it revolves around the lives of several fictional characters I made up and their struggles to get by in the unforgiving real world. Lots of interpersonal conflict, violence and philosophical musings. The characters are anthro animals; some would say it's a furry story, but label it as you wish. Here's an excerpt.



> Jamie flicked the switch on the black box in the corner of his room, tracing lines in the dust that had settled on it with his front claw. Upon hearing the electricity beginning to whir, he stepped back slightly until he heard those downtuned guitars he loved so much. The sludgy riffs of Black Sabbath leaked from the old amplifier he had found abandoned in a skip on a day he had bunked off school. Headphones were great for when people were around, but when on his own, Jamie loved nothing more than to fill the house with the sound of his own music.
> 
> Only artificial light illuminated the jackal’s bedroom, emitting from his laptop screen and the amplifier, a glowing blue LED indicating it was playing. Calm nights like these where he felt satisfied with the day had become rare, so he felt it extra special to be able to indulge in his personal comforts without irrational anxieties invading his thoughts.
> 
> ...


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## Vaka (Feb 26, 2010)

_--I don't know what you'd call this because I don't write in a specific style, I just write._ _And this was written in 30 minutes
_
I stare at my teacher's bored, unmoving face as she gives the words to define my existence, the words that paint nothing, absolutely nothing, yet are repeated with such intent. I hear nothing, though. I see only her face frozen in a moment and her eyes drawn helplessly to the ring on her left hand finger which she will never be able to leave. 

She is a perfect specimen I wish I could draw, but I don't draw...I only see, I only think, I only perceive. That's all she is to me, a specimen. The little living betrayal to the perfect chaos that she was born from, the antithesis of life which has become my sole obsession, a hand on the deafness of consciousness, an eye to the origin of human absurdity. And in that way, she's a goddess, she's my gold lined keyhole letting me peer into a lightless land where I might just feel at home one day. 

But I'm a godless being, or if anything, I'm my own god who birthed this being and cursed myself to study her and her brothers and sisters for my manifesto that will never be written. I'm helpless in that endeavor...I'm as innocent as they are, as much a child to my own self as they are to the absurdity only I know. 

What is she?

I'll leave her as a testament to the nature of my creation, but now, the bell has rung and it's time for lunch. I'm gonna go get some pizza. Or maybe just some applesauce.


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## Mouse222 (Jun 29, 2011)

Laughter is like cannons in the distance. She sighs, hands in pocket, pulls out a smoke and lights a flaming hazard sign. I would've stopped her, but she was into it, so I just held back for a while watching a great fox die slowly. I used to love her, you know? I really did, honest, but she just wouldn't talk to me. I even tried gossiping and shit, but it was no use. She was all "avant garde" or whatever, to high-brow to talk to some guy like me. I tried though, I really did. I would hang out with all her friends and talk about some hot new band, only to replace it a couple weeks later. It was all Greek to me, but I really did like her breasts.

I walked down Hillerton, just past Lucky Mike's, till I got to the stoplights with paintballs all over 'em. Some kid must've been really been fucking bored to shoot up some old sign like that. I really shouldn't judge though, I did it too, only with more gusto and less of a fucking boner. More graffiti on the walls, the watch never did anything after 3, although they always stand up at those stupid PTA meetings and swear up and down about "safeguarding our children!" Yeah right, you had one kid, and now he's a fucking meth-head in some random part of Chicago, but she'll show up every Wednesday and swear to all heaven that she will save our town.

Two cats ran out past my feet as I turned towards my "home", the door was always unlocked, if people really wanted to steal something they could go for it. I wouldn't stop 'em, they could steal my whole fucking apartment and leave me with nothing but my clothes and body. I rocked my way to the bed, she was probably fucking some guy right now. He'll act all seductive and sensitive, oh god would he act _sensitive _to her, all emotional and "I only have sex with people I love". That killed me, he'd probably start putting it in all slow and shit, then he would get excited about even penetrating the fucking thing. He'd probably fire after like 2 minutes. Then she'd say it was okay and just fucking get off until she came. Next morning, he'd be off to some fucking university and she'd go back to her cousin's and talk about him for fucking _hours_. I laughed myself to sleep that night.

Next morning it was off to work, time to put up with some more bullshit. Smile, "Would you like a bag sir?" "Can I help you, ma'am?". I hated them, every single one of them. They all would smile their best fucking smile and talk about their kids, oh god their fucking kids. All the time, "Well little Johnny just got First Place in swimming", well Little Johnny should just tell me himself! That's something I hate, when adults try to tell you stories about their kids and ruin their kids humility. Then the kid grows up believing they're some fucking hotshot and they're going to "go pro" and become some big name. I hate it when parents tell me about their fucking kids.


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## monemi (Jun 24, 2013)

I'll have to read this thread tomorrow. I'm interested.


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## Vaka (Feb 26, 2010)

What I wrote was very spur of the moment, of course most of what I write is as I believe in the moment


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

19th century-ish:


* *





Over some families there hangs the shadow of a dreadful destiny. One thinks of the house of the Atreides, driven by the call of a higher justice to unnatural retribution, all the horrors of son killing mother and father killing daughter. One thinks of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, who descended through intra-marriage and inter-breeding, the curse of consanguinity, into tyranny, cruelty and madness. One thinks of the Romanovs and of the Hapsburgs, whose tainted blood produced monstrosities until violent death intervened.

Above all, one thinks of the house of Tarn. That ill-fated family ruled over a province in Eastern Europe, somewhere between the mountains and the sea, which shall remain nameless. Even in that age of blood and iron, the savagery of their autocracy and the steadfastness of their cruelty made their name a byword for tyranny, and the family one to be shunned, despised and feared.

Many were the stories told of the desperate measures the family took to control the population – of the heavy brass bell pealing out both the curfew and the tocsin, night after night, until blood ran down the streets; of a ceaseless vigil kept upon the least and lowest of their subjects, nameless spies ever on the watch for the slightest waver in loyalty; of arbitrary arrests, summary executions, and pogroms, all conducted in the middle of the towns so that justice could be seen to be done. As they committed their iniquities, the family maintained its air of godlike detachment from the woes of mortal men, occasionally weeping an ostentatious tear from their noble brows as stern duty drove them to such terrible lengths to protect the right – yet beneath this mask of piety, this masquerade of divinely inspired justice, lurked a horrible pleasure.

As the wheel of time turned, and the years lengthened into centuries, as the weight of the world turned against the divine rule of monarchs, and autocrats were deposed and beheaded across Europe, the family retreated into its ancestral castle, and hid itself away from the light of day. Strange legends grew up around this eccentric seclusion in a crumbling castle on a lonely hill. In small huts, the doors barricaded against the wolves of winter, the howling winds and the fierce bite of frost, men whispered to each other of how the house of Tarn was forever cursed; of how they had carried out a feud against the heavens themselves, and had been brought low in their folly and pride. Old midwives whispered to each other of how their services were never needed by the dwellers in the castle, who had no need of mortal hands to assist them in their unnatural births and still more unnatural deaths. And so the house of Tarn nursed their dark secret, and fuelled the fires of their warm hearths and colder hearts.

Towards evening on a winter day towards the turn of the century, a carriage raced down the old, rutted road, long since fallen into disrepair, that led to the castle. Its single occupant, huddled in his cloak, gazed out through the frost-paned windows. As far as the eye could see, the world was white. The sky was heavy with the silent steel of winter, that sombre grey in which clouds gather like massed armies of giants, waving sabres of ice and firing slingshots of snow and stone. Beeches and oaks laboured under the weight of snow, gaunt black shapes like beggars, lonely and desolate in that wintry wasteland, yearning for a return to spring, while the hardier firs and pine trees dropped their trailing arms to the ground, like penitents bent under the burden of their sins.

In the middle of this waste of muted colours, white and grey, the eye was drawn to a massive blackness, on which no light fell. On the solitary hill, the castle of Tarn erupted out of the snow like an ebony hand rising out of the underworld to hurl defiant imprecations at the heavens.

It seemed part of the landscape, a natural formation like the snow-shrouded rocks and trees, there since time immemorial, yet somehow also alien, a foreign imposition which had nothing of nature in it.

Closer to, the castle resolved itself into a fourteenth-century monstrosity, a half-ruined pile which reared up against the sky like the progeny of a fabulous beast and one of the more depraved mediaeval bishops. To the clouds rose walls festooned with vines that grew in and around the age-weathered stone, caked with ancestral guilt and the grime of epochs, and tore them down from within, crumbling the bricks into dust.

As the carriage passed over the drawbridge, which creaked under the rushing wheels, so that the traveller feared for one giddy moment that they would be flung into the eddying waters, under the portcullis, which fell with a sickening thud inches behind them, and through into the cobbled courtyard, where guards rushed hither and thither, the traveller was unable to suppress a feeling of dread. ‘Childe Roland to the dark tower came,’ ran the insane rhyme through his head, ‘his word was still, Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.’

His unease intensified as he was shown by a guard, his cape of red and black carelessly thrown over the splendour of the shining metal armour a warning like the markings of a poisonous spider, through an impressive pair of wooden doors, the hinges made of metal, into the presence of the master of the castle and seneschal of the surrounding lands.

Despite the size and importance of the throne-room, [that cavern in the centre of the castle which dwarfed the ant-like humans who scurried over its dusty floors and under the cobweb-festooned ceiling,] it was almost bare. The stone walls, dimly lit here and there with the flickering flames of torches set into brackets, were hung with tapestries depicting impossible hunts for fabulous creatures and even more impossible feats of arms in legendary battles. The traveller had no eye for them, however, nor for the minstrel gallery where a group of motley minnesingers were enthusiastically chanting a dirge, nor for the handful of courtiers and hangers-on in tattered ermine and moth-eaten silk. His gaze was fixed on the dais at the back of the hall, in which, on an opulent, offensive throne carved out of gilded wood, sat the master of the castle.

The traveller’s immediate reaction was one of disappointment. Instead of the blood-thirsty tyrant he had feared and hoped to confront, the septuagenarian whose narrow shoulders hardly filled the throne was a pathetic sight. While he must have been a magnificent sight in his youth, his frame was now shrunken and collapsed in upon itself, and the hands that once wielded a sword now bony and shaking with age and ague. Then he raised his head, and the traveller drew in his breath. For all that his face was gaunt and grey, his eyes still held an intense fixity and his long beard, as white as the snow outside, gave him the look of an Old Testament prophet, _Abraham_, convinced of his purpose, and prepared to be ruthless in fulfilling that sacred trust. For all that he was old and, perhaps, senile, there was still ferocity in the old wolf.

‘Who are you, traveller, that comes to these lands? Have you come for weal or for woe?’

The voice was high and thin, like midnight wind rustling through tombs. It was only now that the traveller noticed another figure, standing below and to one side of the throne. Sunken eyes, cold and black, glittered with the horrible malignancy of dead stars, reflecting the world in those orbs and killing it, starved of light and warmth. Its skin was the colour and transparency of parchment, yellow with the mottling and unhealthy blemish of old age or the dirt on unearthed skulls. Scanty hair grew like rust-red lichen on the stones of a forgotten city. 

Like a blaze of glory in that vaulted gloom, like the sun shining through a ***** in a cellar, like a clarion call and a challenge, a rich, melodious baritone echoed to the four corners of the chamber, dispelling shadows by its light.

‘I am Doctor Erasmus.’

In that gallery of gargoyles, as lifeless as the stone monstrosities that clambered over the pillars and gibbered at the courtiers with gaping, idiotic mouths, Dr. Erasmus was the only truly living thing. He towered above every other person in the room, six foot four of irrepressible vitality, and with the physique of a village blacksmith. His eyes were of a startlingly warm blue-green, like the morning sun shining over the waters of the Pacific; and his beard and mane of tight curls burnt like golden fire in the reflected light of the torches.


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

Thriller pastiche

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The Hotel Magnifique, as my readers are no doubt aware, is a hotel of repute, and aptly lives up to its name. It is like stepping into a Byzantine icon. You walk in under the French Renaissance main entrance, with its red awning boasting the name of the hotel in golden letters twelve feet high, and stop dead, overawed by the magnificence of the Empire style reception hall. You look up at the coffered ceiling; at the chandeliers dripping with mermaids and wrought iron clematis; and, still gazing up, bump your shins on the wooden reception desk, large and long enough to serve as the deck of a man o’ war. The bellhops, resplendent in their scarlet uniforms, make such a pretence of not having noticed that you feel acutely embarrassed and rather shabby in your coat and pants. Really, you cry, this is too much!
And yet the Hotel Magnifique has its dark secrets. Its air of oppressive respectability is that of an old bawd, smothering her face thick with white paint, rouge, and _mouches _to disguise the pock-marks. For behind its closed doors, fortunes have been made and lost, the scions of old families have squandered their inheritance and been driven to suicide, and secrets of state have been sold to the highest bidder. It was here that Sylphide, as famous in her day as Cora Pearl, La Païva, or Léonide Leblanc (aptly named Mlle Maximum), shot her lover the Comte F––, in the days when her beauty was fêted by the _jeunesse dorée_, before she lost that beauty in the galleys, and coughed out her lungs in a frowsty room at the rate of 3 sous a week. It was here, on the day that war was declared, that Marshal Dubosc collapsed, foaming at the mouth, a phial clutched in his hand. And it was here that Yuri Stepanoff met his end.
‘Yuri Stepanoff,’ explained the young journalist Charles Travis to Eve Murrain, a female ditto, on an autumn evening in the early twentieth century, ‘is the man of the hour. His name’s on everyone’s lips, the papers speak of nothing else—and nobody knows what he looks like. Some say that he is a swaggering apache, a man of colossal height and enormous vigour, capable of picking up a policeman by the scruff of his coat, and sending him hurtling down the street like a bowling ball. Some say that he is a small, thin man, with a glass eye, and a pronounced limp. Others say (and here he lowered his voice) that _he has no face at all_. He keeps a collection of human faces, neatly arrayed on busts. When he goes out, in much the same way that you or I would put on a hat, he puts on a new face. He is never the same man twice. That is why the police have never caught him, despite searching for him for five years.’
Eve shivered. ‘But what has he done, Mr. Travis? Why should the police chase him?’
‘Why, he’s the modern Robin Hood—if not the modern Fantômas. Don’t you remember how he burgled the diamond merchants in Antwerp, and scattered the jewels amongst the urchins? Don’t you remember that famous duel, in which he went to the house of Epstein disguised as Franger, and how he visited Franger disguised as Epstein, challenged each man in turn, and, when Epstein and Franger had duly shot each other on the field of honour, sent an account of the affair to the head of the police? You don’t? Well, you’ve just come from England, so I shouldn’t hold it against you.’
Eve had been sent over, she had explained, by the _Daily Blare_. This was her first big assignment, and she was determined that it would succeed.
‘The question is: Is he a patriot or a scoundrel? Epstein was selling secrets to the Russians, and Franger to the Germans. The Antwerp merchant was a fence who’d planned half a dozen murders. And yet the police want him. You see, they’re afraid that he has something planned for this conference.’
‘Is that why there’s so much security? I noticed the policeman standing in the foyer.’


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

Another thriller (comedy)

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Breaking into the Protector of Zolnarod’s palace was risky. Getting captured was easy. Getting captured and living to tell the tale, without losing one’s head, was the hard part.

So thought Emmeline Champion as she scaled the castle walls. She was an adventuress, although not, as she was tired of explaining, a seductress or a temptress. People tended to get funny ideas about attractive brunettes who wore figure-hugging black leather cat-suits and flung villainous henchmen around.

Since the more interesting things in life were often outside the law, she had occasionally run foul of it. She had at one point gratified her taste for danger by playing on people’s gullibility, an instrument on whose heart-strings she could play any tune she liked, to however many crown notes she liked. She was, in fact, a mistress of the fiddle. Unfortunately, she had pushed her luck too far. Fate, in the form of Colonel Dubosc, head of police, had caught up with her, and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. And now here she was, committing trespassing, breaking and entering, burglary—and treason and conspiracy to murder.

Of course, going by the side entrance took more effort, but it had the decided advantage of not running into the goons at the front gate. She knew their type. Show them her papers, and they would demand a tabloid with a page three photograph.

No, at this time of night, avoiding a group of testosterone-fuelled oafs was probably a good idea. Like all rambling buildings, there was always a way in, if you knew where. Never try the front door; that always led to problems. There would always be an open window, even if you had to open it yourself. In this case, there had been a wall further along, its base conveniently hidden by a row of poplars. It had been the work of a few minutes, and a carefully thrown grappling-hook, to begin her assault of the walls.

From her vantage point, she could see spread out below the city of Zolnarod, glistening and slimy in the night rain, and lit with an infernal red glow from the factory chimneys, still belching out smoke. If London were the Great Wen, then Zolnarod was the giant mole (burrowing Underground, to escape the tyranny of Vladimir Tugarin). From its centre, sprouted, like a great tuft of hair, the cathedral of St. Drogo, almost unrivalled in its hideousness. Since any description is inadequate, we shall simply leave it to the reader’s imagination. In fact, the less said, the better.

The city of Zolnarod lay at the crossroads of European trade. It would have stood up, but it had been battered into submission by invaders too many times. The wisest thing, its people had discovered, was to lie down. During its long and surprisingly exciting history, it had been invaded many times. Being invaded, one might say, is what it did. In fact, the only people who had not invaded Zolnarod were the Zolnarodians themselves.

The factories didn’t help either. In the last century’s headlong rush to industrialisation, Zolnarod had found itself in a fortunate position. Not only was it favourably placed to reap the benefits of trade (having been invaded by all its neighbours, there was plenty of diplomatic contact, albeit at the end of a sword), but it had extensive natural resources. Before very long, the country’s expansive forests (home to its national mascot, the glutton) had dwindled to a few miserable saplings on a rise, making a defiant last stand against smelt mines, clinker valleys, corroded soot mounds, moraine swamps, and slag heaps. The air resounded night and day to the jolly sound of workmen’s hammers, drills, mining equipment, factory whistles, sirens, vamps, explosions, detonations, and the hacking and spluttering of an asthmatic population.

And then there were the kings. ‘Were’ being the operative term. The last king had died several years ago, under officially non-suspicious circumstances. The manner in which his prime minister had declared a republic, with himself as its Protector, and that the king’s son and heir had bald-headedly fled the country within hours of this declaration were best and most safely ignored, swept under the carpet. For a decade and a half, matters had gone from bad to worse, until a man could hardly call his soul his own. And Emmeline Champion—not, she was proud to proclaim, a man—was sick and tired of it.

How much of the problem was the old king’s responsibility was debatable. Any sensible court would have found him not guilty on grounds of diminished responsibility, and had him committed on humanitarian grounds. He was a clot, his blood so thickened by centuries of in-breeding that he was a knock-kneed idiot with a corkscrew nose and an ironing-board chin, an idiot capable only of standing in a corner and drooling—if he concentrated hard enough. In fact, Hengist had hardly been a healthy advertisement for incest. The Egyptians had, of course, thought it desirable for pharaohnic sorority to be particularly close-knit, but when it came to one’s father being one’s great-uncle, second cousin, half-brother, and (when the mood took him) daughter-in-law, cavilling critics could say that it was possible to have too much of a good thing.

The old king had spent money as though there were no to-morrow. It had been his delight to stand on the balcony and throw handfuls of coins to the populace below, ecstatic in the cascade of gold and silver. Then there had been gambling, enthusiastic plans for lavish theatrical entertainments, processions, new buildings (the half-begun shells of which now littered the city), and, of course, members of the oldest profession in the world. Of course, when the expected grisby was no longer forthcoming, the crowd’s mood turned ugly.

That had been the moment when Tugarin acted. An astute politician with a genius for discovering people’s weaknesses, and whose hobbies included making ’em jump and putting a bit of stick about, he had persuaded many high-ranking officials and public figures that this state of affairs could no longer continue, that what was needed was a new broom and a clean sweep (baths for Victorian child workers!), out with the old and in with the new. Had he not spoken of republicanism and freedom, and of government on behalf of the people? And they had believed him. Tugarin had certainly gotten rid of the king, in the most effective and permanent manner—and, as an encore, driven his son into exile and declared himself Protector of Zolnarod. And in place of spendthrift generosity, spectacle, and babbling idiocy, his reign was the harsh, grasping, small-minded meanness of a petty accountant and a bureaucrat, with the morality of a faith that valued dogma far above deeds.

Had he not declared war on reason, banning rationalism and science? Had he not made any creed other than the most credulous, blasphemy? Did he not carry on the God-fearing tradition of Constantine and Calvin, and punish love with molten lead, loose words with holes bored in the tongue, and filial disobedience with burning at the stake? Did he not proclaim that God rewarded the virtuous with wealth, and punished the peccant with penury? Had he not demonstrated his manifold virtue by seizing rich men’s property on trumped-up charges? Had he not seized control of all printing presses, and graphically demonstrated to writers, humanists and other thinkers that the sword was mightier than the sword? Had he not ordered that all actors be publicly and permanently ‘corpsed’? And yet the occasional story of the tyrant’s dinner parties, or the perverse manner in which he gratified his abominable lusts, scuttled shamefully out of the palace, like an earwig, and burrowed into people’s minds.

Where once they had village fairs, theatres, maypoles, mutton, and plenty of good red wine and beer, Tugarin had given the populace piety and cold turnips. Many, no doubt, had pictures of His late Majesty in their drawers (to keep out the draughts), or handkerchieves dipped in his blood, or a lock of hair. One would have expected the populace to revolt. Certainly, with their habit of throwing up their sweaty night-caps (which they had eaten for dinner), avoiding baths, and enthusiastic zoophily, many of them were revolting.

But, of course, there were the Guards of the Protectorate, and worse. Informers and treason trials flourished. His spies were everywhere—who knew but that golden-haired children were not going to squeal to the Guard of the Protectorate? A man had been executed for lèse-majesté: for going into a public lavatory clutching a coin bearing a likeness of the Protector’s head. Another for washing her clothes near a portrait of the Protector; yet another for receiving honours from his village on the day that honours were awarded to the Protector. And the Protector’s determination to hold the throne had led him to commit more and viler atrocities. 

The thought of the dreadful fate that befell the Mauriac conspirators made Emmeline’s blood run cold. The executioners in the Place des Patriots had been busy for three whole days, until it seemed that not a patriot was left alive. The conspiracy had lost its head, and the basket of the guillotine had been full of them. The gutters ran with blood until the drinking taps gushed forth scarlet, for the tyrant to slake his cannibalistic thirst for the blood of murdered men.

And now, here was Emmeline Champion, entering the palace of the Protector, in the first step of a campaign to destroy him once and for all.

Once inside, she spared little attention for the white marble corridors, the elaborately sculpted ceilings, the Gothic windows, or the art works with which they were lined, but passed as though they were no more than childish scribbles on the walls of a mud hut. Once, of course, the more portable items would have gone into her pocket without a second’s thought. (Second thoughts came later, when in front of the beaks.) She came at last to a pair of white double doors with gold and ivory handles, over which dangled an obnoxiously smug and somewhat dissipated-looking stucco cherub, a martyr to bad taste.

Rather than passing through the ceremonial entrance to the Hall of State, she climbed a long, narrow flight of stairs, which gave onto a rather modest door. Trusting that nobody would see her, she eased the door open, praying that its hinges were oiled, and stepped through.

She found herself alone on one of the galleries overlooking the Hall of State. The throne room was a chamber of highly polished white marble, the ceiling and walls of which were lined with mirrors. From the sanctuary of his throne, in the very centre of the room, the Protector’s reflections stretched out to infinity. In these, the Protector could see anyone who approached him from any direction. Thus he sought to protect himself from assassination.

His fear of the blade in the dark, the poison in his food, the electric eel in his bath, led him to execute anyone whom he even half-suspected of having designs on the throne. His suspicions fell on the highest and the humblest alike. A grocer who had his horoscope cast and was told that his head would bear a crown lost that head and the dream of crown at one blow. A woman who rejected the Protector’s advances was driven to suicide by groups dogging her footsteps and chanting slander. Men who were unlucky enough to distinguish themselves by their handsomeness, their intelligence, or their breeding were killed. And still the tyrant’s vengeance was not satisfied. The victims’ families were the next to fall to his guard—yet the tyrant recked not that the blade of Damocles depended above his head, ready to fall when the thread snapped.

From where Emmeline stood, she could look down on the serried rows of ministers and high officials, that cowed group of courtiers dignified by the name of government—men who determined no policy, who debated nothing, but, like dogs, waited on the nod or nay of their master. (Or, in the case of the noble senator Incitatus, did the neighing themselves. He had horse sense.) Men fit to be slaves!

There, swaddled in crimson, was the obese form of the Archimandrite, six feet tall when he was lying down. When sitting down, he was only four feet tall—which made him technically shorter than Tugarin, albeit by a head. The guillotine, of course, could change all that, but then the Bishop was rather attached to his head. A man of the cloth, he spent a small fortune on furs, silks, gold chains, and other bling, until he looked like one of those rather jolly German Christmas balls.

Further along was the illustrious Judge Mental, famed and feared for his legal acumen. So remarkable were his powers that he could determine the rights and wrongs of a case before he had heard the evidence; in some others, before the case had been brought to him; in even more remarkable instances, before those accused even suspected that there was a case to be answered.

Over there was Colonel Dubosc, head of the police. There was something of the rhinoceros about old Dubosc: the enormous, gleaming bald head, with sagging cheeks under beady, malevolent eyes, and a prominent, thrusting jaw-line, with yellowing teeth that would have better suited the mouth of a horse; the massive frame of an ex-footballer, all muscle and bone; and the air of barely controlled malevolence and stupidity. For all that, he was, by the lights of his profession, an honest man. That is to say, he avoided framing innocent men, and only resorted to the torture chamber when the interrogation stalled—unlike General Vraga, head of the Guard of the Protectorate, who took the phrase ‘grilling a suspect’ literally.

Vraga was perhaps the only woman who occupied a position of power under Tugarin’s régime. Many had wondered about her power over him, but kept their speculations to themselves. She was known to have few loyalties, and fewer scruples. She had been described as a fine figure of a woman, and was certainly a formidable one, with a mass of chestnut hair falling in ringlets, and a magnificent bosom. There was an air of boldness and wickedness about her, like an eighteenth century pirate, an impression enhanced by her waistcoat, culottes, and the large cutlass dangling from her side. While she terrified every man in the palace, many secretly found her attractive. She was aware of this, and used her powerful sexuality to batter men into submission—in more ways than one. She was rumoured to be insatiable, and to run through lovers of either sex at a great rate, taking and discarding them as the pleasure took her.

On a baroque throne, carved in the form of a pair of eagle’s wings in majestic flight, soaring up to the heavens of which he proclaimed he was carrying out the will (and whence he would have no compunction in sending scoffers to see for themselves), sat the Protector himself, his little legs dangling ridiculously over the side.

In contrast to the gilt and marble splendour, Tugarin was an insignificant little twirp. It had been hotly debated whether his resentment and mania for power came from a deeply rooted hatred of all those who were taller than he was (four foot four) or those who were more physically attractive. A thin, wizened spider of a man, with a gaunt, hollow face, thin lips through which his tongue darted like the envenomed fork of a serpent, and the pallor of something nasty that had just crawled out from under a rock. He had the orderly, precise lunacy of a man used to adding up and subtracting columns of figures, and applying the same method to human beings.

‘Why has this state of affairs been allowed to continue, gentlemen?’ His voice was deceptively soft and caressing, yet hysteria and rage lay beneath the honeyed tones. ‘Surely the State is strong enough to crush one man? And yet this upstart poet Khvostov has flouted my authority for nearly a year. 

‘He has infected the people with his fever dreams of anarchy and freedom, of _humanism_. He has printed his scurrilous lies on the government presses, and those lies have spread like a contagion. I have done my best to keep the plague under control. I have isolated those contaminated; I have ministered to minds diseased; I have had hot purges administered to their bodies, and drawn off their blood. And still the plague grows! 

‘Khvostov has blasphemed against the living God! He has fulminated from the very pulpit of the cathedral, and abused the ears of the faithful. This accursed atheist pollutes the very city. Zolnarod shall turn into Sodom and Gomorrah, an abomination unto the Lord. In his wrath, He shall send down penitential fires. And if He doesn’t, then I [bloody well] will.’ His voice rose to a shriek. ‘I will have the city cleansed of this pestilence, if I have to set it on fire!

‘A world swept clean of disease and misery by purifying flames!’ he mused. ‘A world of clean air; a world without corruption or vice… Surely that would be a beautiful thing? The smoke would rise up to heaven, and the sacrifice would be pleasing to the Lord. And in the place of this sink of iniquity, this—’ he spat the word ‘—_Zolnarod_, this city of nasty people, I shall build a new city, a new Jerusalem. And I shall reign over the righteous for ever.’


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

How not to write:
A canorous ectophony, a strepitous tintinnabulation, rose above the habitual fremitus of the city. In cacophonic counterpoint came the bombastically borborygmic retort. Halitotic eructations and hyperemesis from above, while erumpent from the fundament, crepitations, graveolent and mephitic. At last, emunction, to the accompaniment of a plangent mungency, produced a mucilaginous myxoid.

Although the clerisy may consider this acroamatical and altiloquent vocabulary to be superlative logodaedaly, the ephectic reader is apt to consider it epidictic and euphuistic, inenubilable and sphingine synchysis, a mere mantissa that venditates not the writer’s acumen, but his possession of a thesaurus. This literary hamesucken will, if persisted in, either render the reader cacochymical, furibund and frampold, or turn them into a mattoid, sunk in dysphoric coenaeshesis. 

The pavid peruser, in fact, prefers the pauciplicate—and loathes this literary algolagnia. But I, featous, galliard, omnifutuant and ludibund lad, am guilty only of philonoetic hebephrenia.


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## Diphenhydramine (Apr 9, 2010)

Cosmic Hobo said:


> How not to write:


 Excellent. I like this.


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

Here's the glossary:
· Canorous: swellingly melodic
· Ectophony: an external sound
· Strepitous: noisy
· Fremitus: dull roar, murmur, continuous noise
· Borborygmic: having to do with the noise produced by a rumbling stomach or gurgling guts
· Halitotic: having bad breath
· Eruct: to burp, belch
· Hyperemesis: vomiting excessively
· Erumpent: bursting forth, breaking out
· Crepitous: farting
· Graveolent: strongly fetid, heavily odoriferous (graveolent eructations)
· Mephitic: malodorous, stinking
· Emunction: the act of picking/blowing the nose
· Plangent: loud, striking
· Mungency: nose noise
· Mucilaginous: gooey, gluey, viscous, slimy
· Myxoid: snot, mucus
· Clerisy: a group of scholars; a contemptuous term for the intelligentsia
*· * Acroamatical: esoteric, arcane, abstruse
· Altiloquent: superior/lofty in speech
· Logodaedaly: word-skill
· Ephectic: sceptical, unconvinced, dubious
· Epidictic: showing off, ostentatiously displaying
· Euphuistic: speaking/writing in an elevated, affected style
· Inenubilable: incapable of being made clear
· Sphingine: oracular, enigmatic, delphine
· Synchysis: mingling, confusion; jumbling of words in a sentence so as to be incomprehensible
· Mantissa: addition of comparatively small importance, especially to a literary effort or discourse
· Venditate: to advertise flagrantly, to display ostentatiously
· Hamesucken: archaic legal term for an assault on a person in his own house
· Cacochymical: foul-humoured, bad tempered
· Furibund: incensed, enraged
· Frampold: boisterous, rambunctious; peeved, agitated
· Mattoid: partly insane person
· Dysphoric: anxious, vexed
· Coenaesthesis: a general numbness / paralysis
· Pavid: frightened
· Pauciplicate: simple, unsophisticated, uncomplicated
· Algolagnia: masochism, sadism or both
· Featous: handsome, good looking
· Galliard: lively, vivacious; stouthearted; gallivanting
· Omnifutuant: all-fucking
· Ludibund: playful, frolicsome
· Philonoetic: intellectual
· Hebephrenia: a condition of adolescent silliness


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## Xenograft (Jul 1, 2013)

To N-N-N-N-N-N-N-NECROPOST:



> An overcast Wednesday, a half eaten apple, some asphalt, a steel pole, three children, and rage fueled by a desire to maintain. These were the conditions under which Sam found himself managing his surging fury as he observed Timothy pummel a young student on the playground at lunchtime recess. Sam was not an empathetic soul, he found no need to feel for others, instead he acted for others. As a compulsive child, he had no issues coming at a problem, or anything else that suited his fancy for that matter, with full force. With high standards and a vision for how his reality should be, he found himself surrounded by those who would seemingly go out of their way to disrupt his perfect environment, who existed purely for the sake of pushing his buttons.
> 
> What had, not moments ago, been a picture-perfect lunchtime relaxation session for young Sam was quickly turning into yet another ordeal which he would have to rectify. Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. Timothy, a rotund and boisterous young boy, was pushing and shoving some nameless child up against the tetherball pole, which stood as a place to connect students (according to Sam), not push them apart. This altercation had started for reasons unbeknownst to Sam, who had only just caught sight of the heinous felony, but that’s not what mattered. What mattered, he thought, was that he was going to end it. He didn't care who started it, he didn't care who was winning, he was going to end it because, let’s be honest, nothing sorts itself out, one must intervene.
> 
> ...


Children are such violent creatures.


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