So nano is happening, I think. I am not really sure anymore. I don't really like my novel. I liked my first one but that is something that I've been keeping bottled up in me ever since high school. Link is a charecter who has litterally grown up with me and while I haven't commited his stories to paper they were always there. Link was the polar opposite of me, moody, depressed, overtly suicidal, strong, violent, and when I started expoloring him I started to become more like him at an alarming rate. It was scary. His stories used to take place in Highschool, he saved Sara from a school shooter that planned on starting a rampage with her. Then he ended up in collage some how, and now he is dead. He doesn't have to stay dead but I read to many comic books and I should just create someone new not hump someone dead. I reserve the right to change my mind.
The book I am writting this year I don't like nearly as much. The charecters don't click and none of them feel very alive to me. I am also having much less fun with it this year than I did last year and it is becoming far more like a chore than something that I should be celebrating. And yet I did spend half of the day deciding what will happen next so I guess I will finish it. That means I absolutely need to write every day for the rest of the month with at least one marathon writting session, but I am more than likely going to need two. Fortunatly I still have two days off, and I have two scenes I am directly interested in writting so I guess it is going to happen. Though I think if I reach 50k and it is still not done it is going to stay that way.
Watch though two years down the line I am going to come back and finish it or rewrite it. I actually want to do a short story in the same vein except I want to use mythological charecters instead of these actual people, so it would be the trumpeter, the anti christ, the 4 hoursemen, the indian god that dances the world to death, and some other people and they would be doing something or other.
That is the thing though, writting has indeed become part of my routine and it is a lot of fun. So I am going to start doing more of it. Not blog writting like this but actual fiction writting. Going back over some of my old notebooks I used to be really bad. Then I got better, and eventually I was really good. Then I stopped. Well now I am going to start again, and get good again. This of course means sacrifices. Naturally I think I should dump some more of my social life in the toilet but that would mean giving up on Tuesdaynight malifuax and I JUST STARTED THAT, and anime club, and my eventual return to gming. So lets not do that. Guess that means city of heroes. Of course coh is one of those games that can be played on a righteously casual basis which is how that is going to happen from now on.
However, the other day at work I realized something. Where I to rank my prefered activies in the order of brain power it takes to be able to do them it would be:
From lowest to highest:
1) Hanging out with and just generally conversing with people
2) Soloing in an mmo
3) grouping in coh
4) Reading most comics, computer strategy games
5) Reading most books and harder to read comics
6) Reading hard books, retaining new information from ttc lectures, most action oriented video games, competative board games et cetera
7) Touhou
It goes on from there. The point is that playing mmos is on the low end of the spectrum of brain thought for me. It is a good thing to do if I am tired or worn out from work but it shouldn't be an every day thing, it definitly shouldn't be something I do for multiple hours every day. And so it is going to fall a little bit by the wayside. I'll still do it, but I definitley want to spend more time writting and creating things, or playing games with friends than playing videos games period.
Also, and this is critical less time just arbitrarly fucking around on the internet. This is the absolute worse waste of time I do and that above all things needs to end. I think it will though. I fell into a pretty powerful deep blue funk this past month. While there I learned a few things that I will prolly write about at a later time. For now though, I am much better and I aim to keep it that way motherfuckers! YEAH!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
le novel the second part 2 (complete)
The walk back went by quicker than the walk in. With Winson’s spell disapated the area starts back on its path of being a filthy drug den that any truly civilized nation would feel well and truly ashamed of. They walk quickly and quietly stepping over the bodies of those unfortunate enough to live there, they exchange no words between them until finally they reach the car. As Winston is about to get in John stops him, “Do you want to go get waffles?”. Winson nods in reply understanding that the request is more than a request. It is a command given by someone who doesn’t make commands because people know better than to not fulfill his requests. John neither asked nor cared how Winston had gotten there. He found his own way there and he could find his own way back again to where ever the hell it is he left his car. It was certainly no where near the rat maze and wandering around in the dark looking for Winson’s car is simply not appealing. It is especially not appealing when the alternatives are waffles and bed.
It is the wrong area of the country for a Waffle House. They don’t usually spread this far north. In some parts of the country their multitudes puts Starbucks to shame, but up here? This is the only one for 100 miles. However, nothing hit’s the spot after finding your friend biting off the heads of snakes, and drawing in the dirt with their blood, naked, like a waffle. Waffles are one of the reasons to keep the earth spinning and should the chain ever go under the resulting cosmic backlash would probably result in all the lights of the universe being switched off so that we could try it again, with less Waffle fail this time. Waffle House also has another strange property. As long as the second f and the s are burnt out on the sign then the whole property acts as a cosmic nullifyer. John never tested the extent of how well it works himself but he has spent many a late night, eating waffles, pouring over texts that would drive people mad just to look at him, while some blank faced waitress refills his coffee. He can discuss freely the names of dark outer gods, evil plans, sinister dealings, and this nights events all without anyone around being bothered by it or asking questions. Some of them used to joke that when the dark gods came the only thing that would be left would be him, the god, and a handful of waffle houses with their appropriately broken signs.
The drive passes in scilence, each one trying to figure out what to say to the other. Trying to decide which course of action, if any is best,. And most importantly which toppings they wanted on their hash browns. The after taste of snake blood and poison coated the insides of Winston’s mouth and while he, and he alone would suffer no ill effects from either the venom or the amount of blood he swallowed, it still is nice to have some real food in your stomach afterwards. Moments like these he misses the jungle, the smells, the friuts, the women, the snakes. His rumpled suit didn’t fit right, and he could never quite get used to wearing clothing again, or being fat. That’s something new, something he wished to god he could solve in some way, any other way, than lowering himself to going to a gym where he would have to run next to Ken and Barbie and his desires to kill them both with a hammer and feed their bodies to a constrictor. Inside the smell of grease, eggs, and regret wafts through the air. The waitress who looks as if she has seen one to many late nights, and heard one to many forbidden secrets clops over and then words pass in the form of both of them making their orders before the icy scilence resumes. Winston can feel it. He needs to go first. He needs to be the one who breaks the ice, who begins talking, who admits that things could of gone just ever so slightly better. After a minut of fiddling with things around the table he finly draws himself together and decides that it is high time to get this whole thing over with, “So, tonight could of gone better don’t you think”
John raising his eyebrows replies, “Oh I don’t know these things happen, I mean in terms of cockups this could have been a whole lot worse like the time Mary disappeared for a weekend and managed to found, brainwash, and finnish off an entire suicide cult. My my that girl can get things done when she chooses to.”
Winston smiles a little bit. It is a sick wan little smile, the runt of all other smiles, and like all runts it died quickly and quietly leaving his face blank and ever so slightly sad, “You know I wasn’t planning on killing those two girls. I don’t even know where they came from. No one should have been able to enter the building, and I am postive they weren’t inside before hand. I mean sure we are all big on the human sacrifice thing but not those girls. I mean even if I wanted to their bodies were to damaged, they might of injured the snake. It much prefers new mothers…”
John cuts him off with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I don’t think it really matters either way. Those girls aren’t particularly a main issue, and in two to three years they won’t be an issue at all, they will instead be an abstraction. I can only hope that their transition to death is pleasant one. What I want to know is, what is it you were doing down there in the first place?”
Winston stopped and fumbled around a bit for words before stopping, taking a deep breath and trying again. This happens a few more times before he gives up entirely, “I have no idea. I mean part of me, the good parts, they are still beholden to the snake god, and he still wants out, you know? I am still his high priest, and so sometimes instinct takes over”
Mild celebrations along with mellow fanfare, the waitress has brought the coffee, John sips it quietly as Winston absently stirrs his Hi-C. Terrible coffee and yet there is something about it that never fails to bring John home. Setting the cup down he resumes, “Yeah but you’ve fought it off before, I mean I don’t really understand why it is you’ve regressed now. Is there something I missed, some sign I should have been aware of, something I could of done…”
Shaking his head Winston smiles, “Sorry there buddy boy. Not even you can be everywhere at the same time. I know I’ve watched you try and it always ends up with you here, beating yourself up, sometimes with a dead body in your trunk, sometimes a live one, but it is never a good time. Now look I don’t understand everything I do, and I don’t understand everything I am. I guess it is one of those things like black out drinking that alcholics go through from time to time. It is just that these things happen”
John looked skeptical, “I don’t think how that works, I am pretty sure yo- oh hey thank you very much” Their food had arrived, and along with it a truce. The topic dropped for now, as it always is because there are some things you just don’t discuss over food, especially Waffle house food and so the conversation veered off. They talked about work, their homes, vacation plans, and for awhile they became normal, or as normal as two people like them can be. When they had finished, and their all star specials had been cleared away that John returned to the topic, “You know in a lot of ways I guess what you did tonight shook me so much because it reminds me of when I first found you”.
Winston nods, “Yeah I had a complete breakdown, there are still parts of my life that I have not been able to put back together and parts of me are thankful for that. I’ll talk about it at group tomorrow. For now though I am beat. I am not like some of you, I still need to sleep”.
Checks were paid and hollow requests of being asked to return were endured as the two of them stepped back out into the cool night air. John nodded over to his car indicating that John wasn’t letting Winston out of his sight until he was back at his house. It isn’t that Winston couldn’t get a cab, or that John isn’t above letting his friend find his own way home. It is just that over the years John has realized that Winston is a cagy little bastard who knows far more than he says. His cards are always played close to his chest and he never gives out more information that he has to. He has a feeling that tonights insident was truly unplanned. He also had a feeling that Winston is one of the few people on the planet who, if he put his mind to it, could hide something like that from John. Power does funny things to people and there isn’t anyone on the planet that embodies that trueism quite like Winston does. As he saw Winston off to his deceptively normal looking suburban household John drove off into the night, his place of residence being quite a ways away. While stopped at a red light he looks around seeing the world abandond to sleep or business that needs to be atended to else where, he does all the silly little things necessary to keep the car from rolling off by itself and pops the trunk. Walking quickly twords the back of the car he grabs the girl, not exactly roughly but certainly not gentaly and shoves her into the back seat. He then quickly rechecks her bindings and gets back into the car, puts it in gear only to see that the light is still red, “Jesus Christ” he says to his new traveling companion, “This light always this long?” She doesn’t even bother with the muffled screams through the gag anymore. He nods to himself as he drives off.
***
It isn’t long before they are out of the city, John smiles quietly to himself. It has been a long evening, not exactly an unproductive one, but a long evening none the less. The girl in the back seat looks particularly dejected which is to bad really, because it is a very nice night. After a minute he looks at her in the rear view mirror, “Sorry about all of this. I had planned to be done with you long ago, but Winston, Winston turned my evening into a series of small complications, complications that you yourself have become a part of. You don’t really know him but Winson isn’t what he looks like now. He once was a down on his luck insurance claims investigator. Who lived with a woman who he onced loved very much but ended up not liking him very much. She cheated on him, he knew it, but he decided not to prance about it. He knew that she could never be pleased by he, he also knew that she was barren as a pile of rocks floating in space, and after awhile of dealing with he bitterness and resentness he just wanted to be left alone by her and allowing her to continue on with her stupid little affair seemed to be the best way. Just out of high school life once seemed so full of possiblilites. He landed a good job, a beautiful wife, and he didn’t even need to mess with college. Now at 25 he is locked in a marriage where he occationally gets to have sex with someone who resents him. His salary that seemed so great right out of high school wasn’t looking so hot 6 years later, and more and more life began to press down upon him like a great weight from above.
Now my dear this is where things start to change. To put it succinctly his rise to power started with some very unassuming beginnings and became nearly catastrophic in terms of results. How he ended up in the jungle isn’t clear to anyone and believe me most things are clear to me. Like how your upbringing imbued you with a lack of confidence and that is why you dropped out of Grad School. You should go back once you get over tonight’s events you will feel better about yourself. Anyway, as best as I can piece it together Winston stumbled upon some old texts and part of an idol, and then somehow, from these scraps, he managed to extrapolate the location of a lost nameless civilzation that practices a particularly brutal form of magic. Once he found out where they were he went down there, apparently he accidently fulfilled several prophesies all at the same time, and they took him in just as he was looking to go native. They taught him the dark arts, which he mastered at a record pace, and at one point he came so close to ending the world that he could taste the skin of the great serpent god’s hide as his slithered against the arcane barriers that Winston and he cult were looking to bring down. It made Jamestown look like a pickic from what Winston described it as. These people didn’t just do simple blood sacrifices. Their rituals went on for hours, sometimes days as they would carve away pieces of the victems bodies to sacrifice to the snakes in the area, poisosn has to be consumed along with hallucingins that haven’t even been discovered by the western world. Oh no no, don’t worry I am not going to do all that to you. For one I don’t have the time, and two it wouldn’t serve any real purpose. No no your role in all of this is going to be very different. But man I mean these people? They put Grammora to shame, and yet at the end of it all, something happened. Me? Well I was a man, who was dealing with his own demons at the time. I found him wandering those back alleyways, not to far away from where I grabbed you. Winston refuses to say how he made it back to America, heck he refuses to say where exactly in South America his cult is based out of. TO everyone else Winston looked like your average run of the mill hobo, with his dirty suit, wild eyes, and incomprehensible muttering. However, not every hobo mutters in an ancient language, undiscovered by academia that is used almost exclusively for magic. That sort of thing tends to single you out if you have the right kind of ears.
Now my first attempt at trying to reel in Winston didn’t go so well. He screeched like and animal and ran off, and in my hurry to persue him I almost didn’t notice the traps he had left behind. Like I said he really is a cagey bastard. He doesn’t talk about it much but I am pretty sure he and a few other members of his cult used to hunt people for sport. I can’t verify this but they would capture people, and train them up for months, sometimes years in the art of survival, hand to hand combat, some weapons then they would let them loose. It wasn’t so much of a hunt but more of a ritual battle that takes place over a series of days. Anyway the bastard is hard to catch lets just leave it at that. Now I may make the odd mistake but never twice. So the second attempt went better with me ambushing Winston in his lair I was able to subdue him, break the spell that had his rational mind locked away and then I brought Winston back from the brink. At what cost though? I mean when I first dug him out he looked around uncomprehending , then slowly over the course of that day his actions caught up with him. It was there that Isaw it. I saw it in his own eyes when he looked in the mirror, I saw it when he looked into his eyes, I saw the loss. There was no guilt, no remorse, no crushing realizations of the crimes he has commited against humanity. No beating of the chest crying out to god for forgivness for sin which could never be forgiven, no tears of remorse, no desire for absolution, sympathy, and above all no regrets, no regrets save one. He had lost most of his power. The power, that caused people to slit their own throats at his very command, the power that made women fall at his feet, the kind that scattered children before him, it is what allowed Winston to dine on baby flesh and drink the blood collected from the virgins he has most recently defloured. It is the power that let him talk to a god, to hold the fate of the world in his hand, and while some one feverishly suckled upon his errection he could look into the eyes of all that is unholy and decide that it really is time to let it all burn. All he needed to do is pave the way. He didn’t blink when he looked into the abyss he didn’t make a deal, instead he ran to give it a helping hand. To let it in. To welcome it home, and if that meant turning the universe to ash then so be it. That is the look I saw in Winston’s eyes, and on that day 4 years ago he decided to form the group. It was a look of a man who had failed to end everything and is left with the crushing responsibility of having to keep on living for the rest of his life. There are others like him, like Winston I mean. People who were going to shake the world and for whatever reason they didn’t. Now life goes on, they are still alive, living with a loss far more profound than anyone else could ever understand. I like to call them the world shakers and for better or for worse they are all in this together. You are a part of all of this too even though you don’t know it yet”
John looks back at her to make sure she is alright, and that she hadn’t somehow broken her bonds but she has long since passed into that phase of captivity where they become docile. He probably could take out her gag now and have it be alright but as of late he’d become prone to migraines and there is nothing like overly histerical screaming to set one of those things off. So he left it in. She didn’t really look like a vomiter, it is always so sad when they choke to death like that. Besides they were here. John pulls to a stop at an undescript part of the road and gets out of the car. Fondling the ring in his pocket he becomes flooded with dark thoughts and wicked possiblities. There is so much he can do with someone like her, so much power he could gather, energies he could unleash. He didn’t have to give her back and the others would never know what he did. He’d managed to mask her from Winston and that is no easy feat. Something he was exposed to in the jungle made his senses incredibly keen, and why not? He looks at her and he can feel the old urges rising, the ancient instincts kicking in. He’d have to act soon, this is the sort of person he would spend months at a time looking for. Working quickly he moves aside some brush he had placed over a grave he’d dug earlier that week for this very purpose. For a moment he looked at it with pride. You don’t get perfect corrners like that without practice. That is something that all the magic, all the skills, all the god like power in the universe can’t give you. The sort of satisfaction of a job well done. Already tired of dealing with her for the evening John doesn’t bother being gental and with one quick motion he grabs her out of the car and tosses her into the open grave. Now the panic is starting, causing him to grimmace as her frantic scrabbling ruins his handy work. “People just don’t appreciate the little things in life” he mutters to himself. Sliding on the ring, he removes the knife and makes another incision on his forearm. Not deep just enough to get a drop or two of blood out before it clots over. Waiting for a second he can feel what had taken up residence in the girl release its hold and slither away and she immediately passes out. Sighing, he grabs her out of the grave and tosses her bodily into the car. He’d drive her back into the city tomarrow, for tonight, tonight is now officially over and there is literally nothing that will stop him from getting into his bed and passing out.
Back on the road he’s begun to wonder if it is all worth it. He isn’t sure how the girl ended up with a transdimentional pericite but it was almost as happy to leave her body as she will be to be rid of it. It needs to be in grave dirt so it did everything possible to put her there. Of course it couldn’t just make rocks fall on her head so that she’ll die, but instead she started doing significantly more than light exparamentation with drugs, she had fallen into the wrong crowd, and all the sudden her life started veering out of control. Almost any one in the group could of done this to her, more than likely though she did it to herself. Being spiritually void leaves you open to things you wouldn’t believe. Most people get off lucky. Fortunatly, she won’t remember any of this and she will wake up on the couch feeling worse for ware, most certainly but otherwise okay. Hopefully she will use this to turn her life around but unlike the world who has some pretty impressive defense mechanisms people tend to prefer habits to improvement. So very sad.
***
The night was long and the day was so wearingly trivial that the idea of going to the meeting has about as much appeal to John as letting some extra dimensional tentacle beast have its way with him, again. Still he couldn’t just not go, not this week certainly. The others would take it poorly if he skipped out after saving Winston from himself. So at the appointed time he went to the appointed community center, unlocked, the room, put on the coffee, and set up the chairs. There weren’t many of them and while their meetings are never posted the managers still kindly keep a room free for them. He was told that they were running a meeting for alchoholics anonymous where anonymity is especially important. The sweet old guy didn’t ask any more questions after that he also kept a room for them, in a back corrner of the building where they were least likely to be disturbed. Never the less after putting on the coffee John began the cleansing rites, words have a way of sticking to surfaces and the things they talk about shouldn’t even be let alone kept around. It is a nice place and John aims to keep it that way. Soon they begin showing up, Jared is first. He smiles, proudly holding up 2 packages of doughnuts that he absconded from his job before setting them down on the table next to the coffee pots which were well underway. Jerimia came in soon after him. You would think that with Jared’s specialty being computers, and Jermia’s being what can only be called “mad science” that the two would get along. Instead the temperature of the room fell 10 degrees and they sat on opposite sides of the room trying hard not to glare at each other. Peter and Solomon come into together, talking excitedly about different sacrificial rights the two of them have used over the years. Oddly enough the two of them were ideologically at odds with each other and yet they had become such good friends. Carla the lone female strode in soon afterwards, haughty, quiet, she some how made you feel inferior to her even though she is wearing a sweat suit, sneakers, and two day old makup. She sits next to a window and lights the first of many many cigaretts. Stopping her from chain smoking isn’t even remotely possible. Still they can do something to midigate the smell. Steve just appears out of thin air. It took them years to get him to stop using fancy explosions or bizarre light effects. It isn’t so much that they drew atension but more that they were annoying. He looks around cheerfully, clearly in a good mood before snagging a seat, and lastly Winston wanders in. His cloths are clean and yet they look exactly like the same thing he wore yesterday save the tie.
As Winston settled in John stood before him. Sharp angular features, black hair slicked back, and a black suit that ran all the way down and simply cried out expensive, he looked more like he is ready to attend a dinner party with the president and not head up a meeting for the people the world has forgotten. He looks around the room and smiles, “Hello everyone, thank you for coming. Before we begin does anyone have any good news they’d like to share?” Carla blows smoke rings, and the rest do their best to not meet his eyes, John sighs inwardly. No one ever anwers that question, “Well then I guess we will get started lets bow our heads” John is always the first to bow so he doesn’t have to see who follows suit. He’d be surprised by the results though. Peter for example always, without fail bows his head and while he never makes it through more than half of the prayer before bursting into flames he always follows along. It is just understood that whomever he sits next to, usually Solomon that they are on fire duty. No one could understands why didn’t Peter just leave the room when the prayer starts. It is as easy as getting up and walking out, and yet he never does, and through blackened lips he always chokes out an amen. Once the prayer is over the others wait respectfully while Peter grows back his skin and changes his cloths. It may seem like a strange thing to do every session, but hey the alchoholics do it so what is the worst that can happen other than dealing with the smell of burning hair.
Today is like no other. All the meetings start more or less exactly the same. If there is one thing John loaths it is routine for routine’s sake. Once everyone is seated John takes up the lead, “Alright then time to reinstate our purpose. The year was 2000. For whatever reason we all were engaged in activities that would of ended the world on that day. We all did calcultions, saw signs, read prophesy and we all prepared. For whatever reason the end didn’t come. We failed even though everyone who followed us believed us to be infallible. Now the world keeps going despite our best efforts to the contrary, and we all need to keep living. We all have our problems getting on with life but I believe that by using the same dedication we all felt towards ending the world, we stand a chance at saving outselves.” John winced inwardly. That was pretty cheesy even for him, but it is hard leading a group of people twords something that they didn’t even believe was possible. “Alright, well before we begin with today’s lession does anyone want to talk about anything that happened this week? Without raising his hand (Winston always raises his hand) Winston starts, “Unless anyone has anything pressing to say, I I’d like to go first, if that’s alright”. They all turned and look at him as Winston fidgets impotently then after letting out a heavy sigh, “I-I I I don’t know. I guess you could say that I might of sorta had an incident last night.” Winston looks around the room judging reactions before hastily adding, “John managed to dig me out before things got to out of control but I had managed to summon several snakes and I was about to turn two girls into vessles through with the snake god would be able to use to reach into our world and excert his influence. T-they weren’t anyone important though, no mayor’s daughter or the mother of some diplomat. It wasn’t like the o-old days where everything was bad. They weren’t going to make the best vessels believe me, but still it nearly happned. I, I used”. He hangs his head looking not so much ashamed but more tired than anything else.
Jared looks over concerned, “Why Winston, I mean what set you off do you know, I mean there was that incident a couple of years ago where I just blanked, and it was Steve who found me with a ram chip up my ass, did something like that happen to you?” Jared and Winston are remarkably similar. Niether one of them is groomed for power, both of them just stumbed into it almost by acident. Both of them had their share of growing pains and while Winston was very eager to turn off the lights, Jared has a slightly different view of how the end of the world needs to work.
Winston thought about it for a moment. He seemed to be turning over the words in his head, trying each and everyone out before moving onto the next one. Then he stood up and started pacing around the room. At first his steps were slow heavy, leaden, a man beaten down by everything that came his way. Then they start to become faster and a light appears in his eyes, he stands up straight and turns to adress the room, “You know who I don’t miss? My wife.” Winston’s eyes become shaper, clearer, and while nothing noticeable changes about his stature, a subtle shifting occurs where he goes from a beaten down sad old man to someone who can sit with anyone in the world and feel completely at ease, “You know, I mean, I just don’t get it. I loved her, I mean I really really did. I, I would of done anything for her, I opened doors, we shared a place to live, and why, why couldn’t she just fucking be happy? You know I never used to swear before I was married? I always thought if was beneath me but then I met my fucking wife and somehow somewhere she decided that it was going to be so much better to be a compleate fucking bitch instead you, well you know, loving me back. It is no wonder that I went away, fell from grace, and let this absolutely terrible mindfuckingly scary death snake god into my soul, a place where I should be cherishing my wife and family. No instead I am feasting on hallucingins out of severed heads while sitting on a throne made out of rotting bodies decoding prophesy so that when everything was right we could bring down the great caticysme upon the entire fucking world and everyone in it.” He stops for a minute and glares around the room daring anyone to meet his gaze, but everyone is doing there best to not to meet his gaze, even John finds himself suddenly very interested with some dandruff that has accumulated on his shoulders. Squareing up Winston continues, “There was this point, this one point while I was striding around the village doing whatever the hell it was l felt like. It was close to the end then, and we were busy preparing for the snake gods arrival. All around I could hear the moans of my followers as they were trying to make it so that we would have as many babies as possible for the pit that would serve as its point of entry so that upon bursting into our world he would receive a nice dose of baby flash. That wasn’t even in the prophesy anywhere I just thought it would be a nice thing to have happen. Anyway, I came across a shine that someone had set up in my honor, and inside of it was the picture I had in my wallet of me and my wife. At that point I hadn’t seen her for years and at that point l had been given up for dead, I don’t really care it isn’t important. When I saw that picture of me and her together, I remembered how happy we were, and how happy we could have been, and how happy I wanted to be. I loved my life, my house, not so much my job but it let me do other things, then out of no where she turns into this, this bitter, resentful bitch, and for what? For not forcing things on her, for letting her stay at home? No. It was that day. That day that I saw that picture of us, that I realized why I am doing this. :People, the normals, they don’t want to be happy. Oh sure they say they do, they say a lot of things mostly because they don’t fucking know what they are talking about. Instead they do their best to ruin their lives, to cry about things that don’t matter and to turn a blind eye to everyone who truly really needs help. All the poor, diseased, the starving, none of that fucking matters because your husband is a fucking looser and did everything he could to make your life easiy and happy so that gives you the right to be a stupid fucking cunt. It was on that day, THAT day that I became rededicated to wiping our silly stupid race off of the face of the planet. Well fuck, fuck me for not succeeding and fuck all of you for failing. The world sure as hell isn’t any better off having been able to go on, and those two girls sure as hell aren’t living happier lives. At least I would of given them a purpose in life before using their souls to fertilize the snake god’s eggs, why the hell are we doing this?”
Carla raises an eyebrow, blows a smoke ring as snidely says, “Bravo”. He glares at her balefully, “No really Winston”
“Wilson”
“”Whatever” with a dismissive flick of her hand she continues, “You, you had your self a specialized cult, well more like an army really. On your whim they would surge forth and do your bidding and lets face it you secretly terrorized that entire continent until it all went tits up on you. Me I had to build that dedication out of people. Scraping it together from the ground up from the broken, shattered, egos of little men who had little dreams just like you did. Silly, sad little dreams. Once they found out that their dreams were impossible they look for new dreams. I’ve always felt you would have been better off as one of mine, lining the foundation of my mansion. I see now that you really do deserve to be who you became. So bravo.” She then puts her cigarett back in her mouth and continues to be utterly disinterested in the group meeting that is happening around her, almost as if she has always been in this room, sitting in that chair and this meeting is some horrible interuption of both her space and time. Absently, staring out the window she thinks a bit about Winston’s words. The others give out advice or ask silly questions but one of them really get it. He is the sort of guy that comes in last except in the only place that counts, and that’s the sack. It makes sense that his methodology for ending the world involves him becoming a servant to something else be it a wife that doesn’t love him or a god that more than likely plans on devouring him immediately upon entry into our world. That day is the- you know he never did answer that question.
When she looks back on the group John is staring at the creepy mad scientist guy who is shrugging his shoulders, he then does that thing where he somehow reassumes command of the room with just by shifting his posture and says, “Thank you for that. I am sure no one will take it into due consideration. Now then back to the original question which was never answered, “What exactly is it that set you off?”
Winston, who is distracted by a a conversation with Jared is caught off guard, like a sorority girl who suddenly realizes she helped the wrong broken armed man at the beach, “Honestly John, I don’t know. I’d like it to be something simple. Something easy like, it was our anniversary, or I saw her in the grocery store, or I got possessed by a wandering spirit, or that a hallucinigine fuled flashback sent me over the edge. However, none of that happened to me. The stars aren’t even in any sort of useful alignment to get anything done so anything I would of accomplished there that evening would be cursory at best. I guess it mostly just boils down to the face that I really just felt like taking it all out for spin. I-I mean what can I still do? I mean am I the only one who used recently?”
Jared rolls his eyes, “Well no I did swoop into the unternet last week updated some spells, and I used it to kill my downstairs nieghbors dog with my upstairs neighbor’s to loud sterio system. Canine spirit forms are weird and I almost killed half of the block by mistake. Then I turned its soul into an intelegent virus that stikes at the screens of portable apple products. Mostly because those people piss me off”
Carla smiled, “Oh well I guess I’ll play along too, since this already has been the most I’ve participated in years. Just the other day there was this darling little man who was singing in the car next to me. So I followed him home murdered his wife in front of him and turned him into an empty shell, his voice however, well it isn’t very good but oh I don’t know I need to keep my youthful looks some how and he’ll be good enough for at least a couple of years, much like our friend Winston he was a man of potential locked into a world that denies him everything.”
John leans forwards, “Carla what did you do with the body?”
Peter speaks up, “Oh they just pinned it on the husband since he just liquidated his accounts and vanished the next day no one really thinks anything of it. You know how people are, once they got a job to do they will just find the most obvious way possible to aproche it and call it a day. Its sad really, but hey that’s what makes the bosses job so easy”.
John never looks tired, he never looks confused, he is always in control and he always knows what to do, except at these meetings. These meetings can be one of the most confounding things in the universe to him, “And I suppose you have been off doing things we all meet here and agree not to do?”
Peter shrugs, “Well I just regrew all my skin, oh and I had to beat up an angel, then I had to beat up a demon, but you know. If I don’t use I die so it isn’t quite as easy for me”
Solomon laughed, “Oh oh I got a funny one. So l have all these tomes right? Like stuff full of dark, evil, mystical energy that can flay the mind right out of your skull. Heck there are some of them that you have to feed first before they will let you open them. Those books are intense, they aren’t even proper words on page but actual-”
“Solomon! Some of us have places to be”
“Oh sorry Jerimia. Anyway so I am moving all this stuff around, packing it away, securing it, trying to make sure that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands because even though it is going to be a LONG time before the stars become right again, they still can do a lot of damage. Anyway, so I drop this one book, and I end up knocking over a couple of jars of stuff, you know I can’t even remember what is in half of these things its been so long and this big nasty wet thing from a place between places ends up getting summoned. So I got to unpack all my crap, find my gun, get some protective sigils out, and I spend the next two nights trudging through the god damned sewers looking for this thing. I tell you what I’ve seen some stuff in my day but this thing? Jesus. It wasn’t that mean but I can still feel its eyes inside of me burrowing around looking for weakness, but I had to use a crap ton this week otherwise it would have been bad. Not now, it would of gone dormant for 10 years but then it would start to capture and feed off of people, definitely not a good thing”
“Is it really that easy to summon something”
Solomon shakes his head back and forth while trying to find the right words to explain, “Well Peter these things don’t have a conventional form you know? They just kinda are, summoning them is easy if you have the right stuff that they can slid into. Now controlling them? That is the tricky part. Kinda like how making a deal with the devil is easy but dealing with the consiquences is not”
Peter nods, “Its strange how after all this time I never knew that, why is that?”
A cloud comes over Solomon, he kind of just shuffles his feet and looks down for a bit, “Well you know it is hard sometimes to talk about it. These things aren’t like angels and demons they…fuck I don’t know. I forgot how to tie my shoes for a year because of this but god help me I can’t even put it all away without something happening”
Peter cringes, “Sorry, hey look I can do some pretty fancy things with magic and whatnot, maybe I can help out a bit, you know if you want to.”
Solomon smiles wanly but John steps in before anything else can happen, “Well I would say this has been a productive session, I am seeing some real progress happening with everyone. Before we go for the night there is something I want to say. See we, all of us, we are the people who would of shaken the world and in a lot of ways we did. No one knows exactly what we’ve done but if it wasn’t for us this world would be a different place one way or another. I know it is hard just trying to learn how to live life again but damnit it is our world too. And just because we don’t waste our lives with tv, or cocain, or cocain while watching tv doesn’t mean we all have to be miserable it… it just means we should live inside some certain rules. Rules we gave up when we became who we are but rules we should respect now that we are back within the world again, like no more killing, Carla. Mostly though help each other, that’s what we are going to try for this year, helping each other like, like Peter and Solomon. In the spirt of following the rules our time is up so lets clear out.
It is the wrong area of the country for a Waffle House. They don’t usually spread this far north. In some parts of the country their multitudes puts Starbucks to shame, but up here? This is the only one for 100 miles. However, nothing hit’s the spot after finding your friend biting off the heads of snakes, and drawing in the dirt with their blood, naked, like a waffle. Waffles are one of the reasons to keep the earth spinning and should the chain ever go under the resulting cosmic backlash would probably result in all the lights of the universe being switched off so that we could try it again, with less Waffle fail this time. Waffle House also has another strange property. As long as the second f and the s are burnt out on the sign then the whole property acts as a cosmic nullifyer. John never tested the extent of how well it works himself but he has spent many a late night, eating waffles, pouring over texts that would drive people mad just to look at him, while some blank faced waitress refills his coffee. He can discuss freely the names of dark outer gods, evil plans, sinister dealings, and this nights events all without anyone around being bothered by it or asking questions. Some of them used to joke that when the dark gods came the only thing that would be left would be him, the god, and a handful of waffle houses with their appropriately broken signs.
The drive passes in scilence, each one trying to figure out what to say to the other. Trying to decide which course of action, if any is best,. And most importantly which toppings they wanted on their hash browns. The after taste of snake blood and poison coated the insides of Winston’s mouth and while he, and he alone would suffer no ill effects from either the venom or the amount of blood he swallowed, it still is nice to have some real food in your stomach afterwards. Moments like these he misses the jungle, the smells, the friuts, the women, the snakes. His rumpled suit didn’t fit right, and he could never quite get used to wearing clothing again, or being fat. That’s something new, something he wished to god he could solve in some way, any other way, than lowering himself to going to a gym where he would have to run next to Ken and Barbie and his desires to kill them both with a hammer and feed their bodies to a constrictor. Inside the smell of grease, eggs, and regret wafts through the air. The waitress who looks as if she has seen one to many late nights, and heard one to many forbidden secrets clops over and then words pass in the form of both of them making their orders before the icy scilence resumes. Winston can feel it. He needs to go first. He needs to be the one who breaks the ice, who begins talking, who admits that things could of gone just ever so slightly better. After a minut of fiddling with things around the table he finly draws himself together and decides that it is high time to get this whole thing over with, “So, tonight could of gone better don’t you think”
John raising his eyebrows replies, “Oh I don’t know these things happen, I mean in terms of cockups this could have been a whole lot worse like the time Mary disappeared for a weekend and managed to found, brainwash, and finnish off an entire suicide cult. My my that girl can get things done when she chooses to.”
Winston smiles a little bit. It is a sick wan little smile, the runt of all other smiles, and like all runts it died quickly and quietly leaving his face blank and ever so slightly sad, “You know I wasn’t planning on killing those two girls. I don’t even know where they came from. No one should have been able to enter the building, and I am postive they weren’t inside before hand. I mean sure we are all big on the human sacrifice thing but not those girls. I mean even if I wanted to their bodies were to damaged, they might of injured the snake. It much prefers new mothers…”
John cuts him off with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I don’t think it really matters either way. Those girls aren’t particularly a main issue, and in two to three years they won’t be an issue at all, they will instead be an abstraction. I can only hope that their transition to death is pleasant one. What I want to know is, what is it you were doing down there in the first place?”
Winston stopped and fumbled around a bit for words before stopping, taking a deep breath and trying again. This happens a few more times before he gives up entirely, “I have no idea. I mean part of me, the good parts, they are still beholden to the snake god, and he still wants out, you know? I am still his high priest, and so sometimes instinct takes over”
Mild celebrations along with mellow fanfare, the waitress has brought the coffee, John sips it quietly as Winston absently stirrs his Hi-C. Terrible coffee and yet there is something about it that never fails to bring John home. Setting the cup down he resumes, “Yeah but you’ve fought it off before, I mean I don’t really understand why it is you’ve regressed now. Is there something I missed, some sign I should have been aware of, something I could of done…”
Shaking his head Winston smiles, “Sorry there buddy boy. Not even you can be everywhere at the same time. I know I’ve watched you try and it always ends up with you here, beating yourself up, sometimes with a dead body in your trunk, sometimes a live one, but it is never a good time. Now look I don’t understand everything I do, and I don’t understand everything I am. I guess it is one of those things like black out drinking that alcholics go through from time to time. It is just that these things happen”
John looked skeptical, “I don’t think how that works, I am pretty sure yo- oh hey thank you very much” Their food had arrived, and along with it a truce. The topic dropped for now, as it always is because there are some things you just don’t discuss over food, especially Waffle house food and so the conversation veered off. They talked about work, their homes, vacation plans, and for awhile they became normal, or as normal as two people like them can be. When they had finished, and their all star specials had been cleared away that John returned to the topic, “You know in a lot of ways I guess what you did tonight shook me so much because it reminds me of when I first found you”.
Winston nods, “Yeah I had a complete breakdown, there are still parts of my life that I have not been able to put back together and parts of me are thankful for that. I’ll talk about it at group tomorrow. For now though I am beat. I am not like some of you, I still need to sleep”.
Checks were paid and hollow requests of being asked to return were endured as the two of them stepped back out into the cool night air. John nodded over to his car indicating that John wasn’t letting Winston out of his sight until he was back at his house. It isn’t that Winston couldn’t get a cab, or that John isn’t above letting his friend find his own way home. It is just that over the years John has realized that Winston is a cagy little bastard who knows far more than he says. His cards are always played close to his chest and he never gives out more information that he has to. He has a feeling that tonights insident was truly unplanned. He also had a feeling that Winston is one of the few people on the planet who, if he put his mind to it, could hide something like that from John. Power does funny things to people and there isn’t anyone on the planet that embodies that trueism quite like Winston does. As he saw Winston off to his deceptively normal looking suburban household John drove off into the night, his place of residence being quite a ways away. While stopped at a red light he looks around seeing the world abandond to sleep or business that needs to be atended to else where, he does all the silly little things necessary to keep the car from rolling off by itself and pops the trunk. Walking quickly twords the back of the car he grabs the girl, not exactly roughly but certainly not gentaly and shoves her into the back seat. He then quickly rechecks her bindings and gets back into the car, puts it in gear only to see that the light is still red, “Jesus Christ” he says to his new traveling companion, “This light always this long?” She doesn’t even bother with the muffled screams through the gag anymore. He nods to himself as he drives off.
***
It isn’t long before they are out of the city, John smiles quietly to himself. It has been a long evening, not exactly an unproductive one, but a long evening none the less. The girl in the back seat looks particularly dejected which is to bad really, because it is a very nice night. After a minute he looks at her in the rear view mirror, “Sorry about all of this. I had planned to be done with you long ago, but Winston, Winston turned my evening into a series of small complications, complications that you yourself have become a part of. You don’t really know him but Winson isn’t what he looks like now. He once was a down on his luck insurance claims investigator. Who lived with a woman who he onced loved very much but ended up not liking him very much. She cheated on him, he knew it, but he decided not to prance about it. He knew that she could never be pleased by he, he also knew that she was barren as a pile of rocks floating in space, and after awhile of dealing with he bitterness and resentness he just wanted to be left alone by her and allowing her to continue on with her stupid little affair seemed to be the best way. Just out of high school life once seemed so full of possiblilites. He landed a good job, a beautiful wife, and he didn’t even need to mess with college. Now at 25 he is locked in a marriage where he occationally gets to have sex with someone who resents him. His salary that seemed so great right out of high school wasn’t looking so hot 6 years later, and more and more life began to press down upon him like a great weight from above.
Now my dear this is where things start to change. To put it succinctly his rise to power started with some very unassuming beginnings and became nearly catastrophic in terms of results. How he ended up in the jungle isn’t clear to anyone and believe me most things are clear to me. Like how your upbringing imbued you with a lack of confidence and that is why you dropped out of Grad School. You should go back once you get over tonight’s events you will feel better about yourself. Anyway, as best as I can piece it together Winston stumbled upon some old texts and part of an idol, and then somehow, from these scraps, he managed to extrapolate the location of a lost nameless civilzation that practices a particularly brutal form of magic. Once he found out where they were he went down there, apparently he accidently fulfilled several prophesies all at the same time, and they took him in just as he was looking to go native. They taught him the dark arts, which he mastered at a record pace, and at one point he came so close to ending the world that he could taste the skin of the great serpent god’s hide as his slithered against the arcane barriers that Winston and he cult were looking to bring down. It made Jamestown look like a pickic from what Winston described it as. These people didn’t just do simple blood sacrifices. Their rituals went on for hours, sometimes days as they would carve away pieces of the victems bodies to sacrifice to the snakes in the area, poisosn has to be consumed along with hallucingins that haven’t even been discovered by the western world. Oh no no, don’t worry I am not going to do all that to you. For one I don’t have the time, and two it wouldn’t serve any real purpose. No no your role in all of this is going to be very different. But man I mean these people? They put Grammora to shame, and yet at the end of it all, something happened. Me? Well I was a man, who was dealing with his own demons at the time. I found him wandering those back alleyways, not to far away from where I grabbed you. Winston refuses to say how he made it back to America, heck he refuses to say where exactly in South America his cult is based out of. TO everyone else Winston looked like your average run of the mill hobo, with his dirty suit, wild eyes, and incomprehensible muttering. However, not every hobo mutters in an ancient language, undiscovered by academia that is used almost exclusively for magic. That sort of thing tends to single you out if you have the right kind of ears.
Now my first attempt at trying to reel in Winston didn’t go so well. He screeched like and animal and ran off, and in my hurry to persue him I almost didn’t notice the traps he had left behind. Like I said he really is a cagey bastard. He doesn’t talk about it much but I am pretty sure he and a few other members of his cult used to hunt people for sport. I can’t verify this but they would capture people, and train them up for months, sometimes years in the art of survival, hand to hand combat, some weapons then they would let them loose. It wasn’t so much of a hunt but more of a ritual battle that takes place over a series of days. Anyway the bastard is hard to catch lets just leave it at that. Now I may make the odd mistake but never twice. So the second attempt went better with me ambushing Winston in his lair I was able to subdue him, break the spell that had his rational mind locked away and then I brought Winston back from the brink. At what cost though? I mean when I first dug him out he looked around uncomprehending , then slowly over the course of that day his actions caught up with him. It was there that Isaw it. I saw it in his own eyes when he looked in the mirror, I saw it when he looked into his eyes, I saw the loss. There was no guilt, no remorse, no crushing realizations of the crimes he has commited against humanity. No beating of the chest crying out to god for forgivness for sin which could never be forgiven, no tears of remorse, no desire for absolution, sympathy, and above all no regrets, no regrets save one. He had lost most of his power. The power, that caused people to slit their own throats at his very command, the power that made women fall at his feet, the kind that scattered children before him, it is what allowed Winston to dine on baby flesh and drink the blood collected from the virgins he has most recently defloured. It is the power that let him talk to a god, to hold the fate of the world in his hand, and while some one feverishly suckled upon his errection he could look into the eyes of all that is unholy and decide that it really is time to let it all burn. All he needed to do is pave the way. He didn’t blink when he looked into the abyss he didn’t make a deal, instead he ran to give it a helping hand. To let it in. To welcome it home, and if that meant turning the universe to ash then so be it. That is the look I saw in Winston’s eyes, and on that day 4 years ago he decided to form the group. It was a look of a man who had failed to end everything and is left with the crushing responsibility of having to keep on living for the rest of his life. There are others like him, like Winston I mean. People who were going to shake the world and for whatever reason they didn’t. Now life goes on, they are still alive, living with a loss far more profound than anyone else could ever understand. I like to call them the world shakers and for better or for worse they are all in this together. You are a part of all of this too even though you don’t know it yet”
John looks back at her to make sure she is alright, and that she hadn’t somehow broken her bonds but she has long since passed into that phase of captivity where they become docile. He probably could take out her gag now and have it be alright but as of late he’d become prone to migraines and there is nothing like overly histerical screaming to set one of those things off. So he left it in. She didn’t really look like a vomiter, it is always so sad when they choke to death like that. Besides they were here. John pulls to a stop at an undescript part of the road and gets out of the car. Fondling the ring in his pocket he becomes flooded with dark thoughts and wicked possiblities. There is so much he can do with someone like her, so much power he could gather, energies he could unleash. He didn’t have to give her back and the others would never know what he did. He’d managed to mask her from Winston and that is no easy feat. Something he was exposed to in the jungle made his senses incredibly keen, and why not? He looks at her and he can feel the old urges rising, the ancient instincts kicking in. He’d have to act soon, this is the sort of person he would spend months at a time looking for. Working quickly he moves aside some brush he had placed over a grave he’d dug earlier that week for this very purpose. For a moment he looked at it with pride. You don’t get perfect corrners like that without practice. That is something that all the magic, all the skills, all the god like power in the universe can’t give you. The sort of satisfaction of a job well done. Already tired of dealing with her for the evening John doesn’t bother being gental and with one quick motion he grabs her out of the car and tosses her into the open grave. Now the panic is starting, causing him to grimmace as her frantic scrabbling ruins his handy work. “People just don’t appreciate the little things in life” he mutters to himself. Sliding on the ring, he removes the knife and makes another incision on his forearm. Not deep just enough to get a drop or two of blood out before it clots over. Waiting for a second he can feel what had taken up residence in the girl release its hold and slither away and she immediately passes out. Sighing, he grabs her out of the grave and tosses her bodily into the car. He’d drive her back into the city tomarrow, for tonight, tonight is now officially over and there is literally nothing that will stop him from getting into his bed and passing out.
Back on the road he’s begun to wonder if it is all worth it. He isn’t sure how the girl ended up with a transdimentional pericite but it was almost as happy to leave her body as she will be to be rid of it. It needs to be in grave dirt so it did everything possible to put her there. Of course it couldn’t just make rocks fall on her head so that she’ll die, but instead she started doing significantly more than light exparamentation with drugs, she had fallen into the wrong crowd, and all the sudden her life started veering out of control. Almost any one in the group could of done this to her, more than likely though she did it to herself. Being spiritually void leaves you open to things you wouldn’t believe. Most people get off lucky. Fortunatly, she won’t remember any of this and she will wake up on the couch feeling worse for ware, most certainly but otherwise okay. Hopefully she will use this to turn her life around but unlike the world who has some pretty impressive defense mechanisms people tend to prefer habits to improvement. So very sad.
***
The night was long and the day was so wearingly trivial that the idea of going to the meeting has about as much appeal to John as letting some extra dimensional tentacle beast have its way with him, again. Still he couldn’t just not go, not this week certainly. The others would take it poorly if he skipped out after saving Winston from himself. So at the appointed time he went to the appointed community center, unlocked, the room, put on the coffee, and set up the chairs. There weren’t many of them and while their meetings are never posted the managers still kindly keep a room free for them. He was told that they were running a meeting for alchoholics anonymous where anonymity is especially important. The sweet old guy didn’t ask any more questions after that he also kept a room for them, in a back corrner of the building where they were least likely to be disturbed. Never the less after putting on the coffee John began the cleansing rites, words have a way of sticking to surfaces and the things they talk about shouldn’t even be let alone kept around. It is a nice place and John aims to keep it that way. Soon they begin showing up, Jared is first. He smiles, proudly holding up 2 packages of doughnuts that he absconded from his job before setting them down on the table next to the coffee pots which were well underway. Jerimia came in soon after him. You would think that with Jared’s specialty being computers, and Jermia’s being what can only be called “mad science” that the two would get along. Instead the temperature of the room fell 10 degrees and they sat on opposite sides of the room trying hard not to glare at each other. Peter and Solomon come into together, talking excitedly about different sacrificial rights the two of them have used over the years. Oddly enough the two of them were ideologically at odds with each other and yet they had become such good friends. Carla the lone female strode in soon afterwards, haughty, quiet, she some how made you feel inferior to her even though she is wearing a sweat suit, sneakers, and two day old makup. She sits next to a window and lights the first of many many cigaretts. Stopping her from chain smoking isn’t even remotely possible. Still they can do something to midigate the smell. Steve just appears out of thin air. It took them years to get him to stop using fancy explosions or bizarre light effects. It isn’t so much that they drew atension but more that they were annoying. He looks around cheerfully, clearly in a good mood before snagging a seat, and lastly Winston wanders in. His cloths are clean and yet they look exactly like the same thing he wore yesterday save the tie.
As Winston settled in John stood before him. Sharp angular features, black hair slicked back, and a black suit that ran all the way down and simply cried out expensive, he looked more like he is ready to attend a dinner party with the president and not head up a meeting for the people the world has forgotten. He looks around the room and smiles, “Hello everyone, thank you for coming. Before we begin does anyone have any good news they’d like to share?” Carla blows smoke rings, and the rest do their best to not meet his eyes, John sighs inwardly. No one ever anwers that question, “Well then I guess we will get started lets bow our heads” John is always the first to bow so he doesn’t have to see who follows suit. He’d be surprised by the results though. Peter for example always, without fail bows his head and while he never makes it through more than half of the prayer before bursting into flames he always follows along. It is just understood that whomever he sits next to, usually Solomon that they are on fire duty. No one could understands why didn’t Peter just leave the room when the prayer starts. It is as easy as getting up and walking out, and yet he never does, and through blackened lips he always chokes out an amen. Once the prayer is over the others wait respectfully while Peter grows back his skin and changes his cloths. It may seem like a strange thing to do every session, but hey the alchoholics do it so what is the worst that can happen other than dealing with the smell of burning hair.
Today is like no other. All the meetings start more or less exactly the same. If there is one thing John loaths it is routine for routine’s sake. Once everyone is seated John takes up the lead, “Alright then time to reinstate our purpose. The year was 2000. For whatever reason we all were engaged in activities that would of ended the world on that day. We all did calcultions, saw signs, read prophesy and we all prepared. For whatever reason the end didn’t come. We failed even though everyone who followed us believed us to be infallible. Now the world keeps going despite our best efforts to the contrary, and we all need to keep living. We all have our problems getting on with life but I believe that by using the same dedication we all felt towards ending the world, we stand a chance at saving outselves.” John winced inwardly. That was pretty cheesy even for him, but it is hard leading a group of people twords something that they didn’t even believe was possible. “Alright, well before we begin with today’s lession does anyone want to talk about anything that happened this week? Without raising his hand (Winston always raises his hand) Winston starts, “Unless anyone has anything pressing to say, I I’d like to go first, if that’s alright”. They all turned and look at him as Winston fidgets impotently then after letting out a heavy sigh, “I-I I I don’t know. I guess you could say that I might of sorta had an incident last night.” Winston looks around the room judging reactions before hastily adding, “John managed to dig me out before things got to out of control but I had managed to summon several snakes and I was about to turn two girls into vessles through with the snake god would be able to use to reach into our world and excert his influence. T-they weren’t anyone important though, no mayor’s daughter or the mother of some diplomat. It wasn’t like the o-old days where everything was bad. They weren’t going to make the best vessels believe me, but still it nearly happned. I, I used”. He hangs his head looking not so much ashamed but more tired than anything else.
Jared looks over concerned, “Why Winston, I mean what set you off do you know, I mean there was that incident a couple of years ago where I just blanked, and it was Steve who found me with a ram chip up my ass, did something like that happen to you?” Jared and Winston are remarkably similar. Niether one of them is groomed for power, both of them just stumbed into it almost by acident. Both of them had their share of growing pains and while Winston was very eager to turn off the lights, Jared has a slightly different view of how the end of the world needs to work.
Winston thought about it for a moment. He seemed to be turning over the words in his head, trying each and everyone out before moving onto the next one. Then he stood up and started pacing around the room. At first his steps were slow heavy, leaden, a man beaten down by everything that came his way. Then they start to become faster and a light appears in his eyes, he stands up straight and turns to adress the room, “You know who I don’t miss? My wife.” Winston’s eyes become shaper, clearer, and while nothing noticeable changes about his stature, a subtle shifting occurs where he goes from a beaten down sad old man to someone who can sit with anyone in the world and feel completely at ease, “You know, I mean, I just don’t get it. I loved her, I mean I really really did. I, I would of done anything for her, I opened doors, we shared a place to live, and why, why couldn’t she just fucking be happy? You know I never used to swear before I was married? I always thought if was beneath me but then I met my fucking wife and somehow somewhere she decided that it was going to be so much better to be a compleate fucking bitch instead you, well you know, loving me back. It is no wonder that I went away, fell from grace, and let this absolutely terrible mindfuckingly scary death snake god into my soul, a place where I should be cherishing my wife and family. No instead I am feasting on hallucingins out of severed heads while sitting on a throne made out of rotting bodies decoding prophesy so that when everything was right we could bring down the great caticysme upon the entire fucking world and everyone in it.” He stops for a minute and glares around the room daring anyone to meet his gaze, but everyone is doing there best to not to meet his gaze, even John finds himself suddenly very interested with some dandruff that has accumulated on his shoulders. Squareing up Winston continues, “There was this point, this one point while I was striding around the village doing whatever the hell it was l felt like. It was close to the end then, and we were busy preparing for the snake gods arrival. All around I could hear the moans of my followers as they were trying to make it so that we would have as many babies as possible for the pit that would serve as its point of entry so that upon bursting into our world he would receive a nice dose of baby flash. That wasn’t even in the prophesy anywhere I just thought it would be a nice thing to have happen. Anyway, I came across a shine that someone had set up in my honor, and inside of it was the picture I had in my wallet of me and my wife. At that point I hadn’t seen her for years and at that point l had been given up for dead, I don’t really care it isn’t important. When I saw that picture of me and her together, I remembered how happy we were, and how happy we could have been, and how happy I wanted to be. I loved my life, my house, not so much my job but it let me do other things, then out of no where she turns into this, this bitter, resentful bitch, and for what? For not forcing things on her, for letting her stay at home? No. It was that day. That day that I saw that picture of us, that I realized why I am doing this. :People, the normals, they don’t want to be happy. Oh sure they say they do, they say a lot of things mostly because they don’t fucking know what they are talking about. Instead they do their best to ruin their lives, to cry about things that don’t matter and to turn a blind eye to everyone who truly really needs help. All the poor, diseased, the starving, none of that fucking matters because your husband is a fucking looser and did everything he could to make your life easiy and happy so that gives you the right to be a stupid fucking cunt. It was on that day, THAT day that I became rededicated to wiping our silly stupid race off of the face of the planet. Well fuck, fuck me for not succeeding and fuck all of you for failing. The world sure as hell isn’t any better off having been able to go on, and those two girls sure as hell aren’t living happier lives. At least I would of given them a purpose in life before using their souls to fertilize the snake god’s eggs, why the hell are we doing this?”
Carla raises an eyebrow, blows a smoke ring as snidely says, “Bravo”. He glares at her balefully, “No really Winston”
“Wilson”
“”Whatever” with a dismissive flick of her hand she continues, “You, you had your self a specialized cult, well more like an army really. On your whim they would surge forth and do your bidding and lets face it you secretly terrorized that entire continent until it all went tits up on you. Me I had to build that dedication out of people. Scraping it together from the ground up from the broken, shattered, egos of little men who had little dreams just like you did. Silly, sad little dreams. Once they found out that their dreams were impossible they look for new dreams. I’ve always felt you would have been better off as one of mine, lining the foundation of my mansion. I see now that you really do deserve to be who you became. So bravo.” She then puts her cigarett back in her mouth and continues to be utterly disinterested in the group meeting that is happening around her, almost as if she has always been in this room, sitting in that chair and this meeting is some horrible interuption of both her space and time. Absently, staring out the window she thinks a bit about Winston’s words. The others give out advice or ask silly questions but one of them really get it. He is the sort of guy that comes in last except in the only place that counts, and that’s the sack. It makes sense that his methodology for ending the world involves him becoming a servant to something else be it a wife that doesn’t love him or a god that more than likely plans on devouring him immediately upon entry into our world. That day is the- you know he never did answer that question.
When she looks back on the group John is staring at the creepy mad scientist guy who is shrugging his shoulders, he then does that thing where he somehow reassumes command of the room with just by shifting his posture and says, “Thank you for that. I am sure no one will take it into due consideration. Now then back to the original question which was never answered, “What exactly is it that set you off?”
Winston, who is distracted by a a conversation with Jared is caught off guard, like a sorority girl who suddenly realizes she helped the wrong broken armed man at the beach, “Honestly John, I don’t know. I’d like it to be something simple. Something easy like, it was our anniversary, or I saw her in the grocery store, or I got possessed by a wandering spirit, or that a hallucinigine fuled flashback sent me over the edge. However, none of that happened to me. The stars aren’t even in any sort of useful alignment to get anything done so anything I would of accomplished there that evening would be cursory at best. I guess it mostly just boils down to the face that I really just felt like taking it all out for spin. I-I mean what can I still do? I mean am I the only one who used recently?”
Jared rolls his eyes, “Well no I did swoop into the unternet last week updated some spells, and I used it to kill my downstairs nieghbors dog with my upstairs neighbor’s to loud sterio system. Canine spirit forms are weird and I almost killed half of the block by mistake. Then I turned its soul into an intelegent virus that stikes at the screens of portable apple products. Mostly because those people piss me off”
Carla smiled, “Oh well I guess I’ll play along too, since this already has been the most I’ve participated in years. Just the other day there was this darling little man who was singing in the car next to me. So I followed him home murdered his wife in front of him and turned him into an empty shell, his voice however, well it isn’t very good but oh I don’t know I need to keep my youthful looks some how and he’ll be good enough for at least a couple of years, much like our friend Winston he was a man of potential locked into a world that denies him everything.”
John leans forwards, “Carla what did you do with the body?”
Peter speaks up, “Oh they just pinned it on the husband since he just liquidated his accounts and vanished the next day no one really thinks anything of it. You know how people are, once they got a job to do they will just find the most obvious way possible to aproche it and call it a day. Its sad really, but hey that’s what makes the bosses job so easy”.
John never looks tired, he never looks confused, he is always in control and he always knows what to do, except at these meetings. These meetings can be one of the most confounding things in the universe to him, “And I suppose you have been off doing things we all meet here and agree not to do?”
Peter shrugs, “Well I just regrew all my skin, oh and I had to beat up an angel, then I had to beat up a demon, but you know. If I don’t use I die so it isn’t quite as easy for me”
Solomon laughed, “Oh oh I got a funny one. So l have all these tomes right? Like stuff full of dark, evil, mystical energy that can flay the mind right out of your skull. Heck there are some of them that you have to feed first before they will let you open them. Those books are intense, they aren’t even proper words on page but actual-”
“Solomon! Some of us have places to be”
“Oh sorry Jerimia. Anyway so I am moving all this stuff around, packing it away, securing it, trying to make sure that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands because even though it is going to be a LONG time before the stars become right again, they still can do a lot of damage. Anyway, so I drop this one book, and I end up knocking over a couple of jars of stuff, you know I can’t even remember what is in half of these things its been so long and this big nasty wet thing from a place between places ends up getting summoned. So I got to unpack all my crap, find my gun, get some protective sigils out, and I spend the next two nights trudging through the god damned sewers looking for this thing. I tell you what I’ve seen some stuff in my day but this thing? Jesus. It wasn’t that mean but I can still feel its eyes inside of me burrowing around looking for weakness, but I had to use a crap ton this week otherwise it would have been bad. Not now, it would of gone dormant for 10 years but then it would start to capture and feed off of people, definitely not a good thing”
“Is it really that easy to summon something”
Solomon shakes his head back and forth while trying to find the right words to explain, “Well Peter these things don’t have a conventional form you know? They just kinda are, summoning them is easy if you have the right stuff that they can slid into. Now controlling them? That is the tricky part. Kinda like how making a deal with the devil is easy but dealing with the consiquences is not”
Peter nods, “Its strange how after all this time I never knew that, why is that?”
A cloud comes over Solomon, he kind of just shuffles his feet and looks down for a bit, “Well you know it is hard sometimes to talk about it. These things aren’t like angels and demons they…fuck I don’t know. I forgot how to tie my shoes for a year because of this but god help me I can’t even put it all away without something happening”
Peter cringes, “Sorry, hey look I can do some pretty fancy things with magic and whatnot, maybe I can help out a bit, you know if you want to.”
Solomon smiles wanly but John steps in before anything else can happen, “Well I would say this has been a productive session, I am seeing some real progress happening with everyone. Before we go for the night there is something I want to say. See we, all of us, we are the people who would of shaken the world and in a lot of ways we did. No one knows exactly what we’ve done but if it wasn’t for us this world would be a different place one way or another. I know it is hard just trying to learn how to live life again but damnit it is our world too. And just because we don’t waste our lives with tv, or cocain, or cocain while watching tv doesn’t mean we all have to be miserable it… it just means we should live inside some certain rules. Rules we gave up when we became who we are but rules we should respect now that we are back within the world again, like no more killing, Carla. Mostly though help each other, that’s what we are going to try for this year, helping each other like, like Peter and Solomon. In the spirt of following the rules our time is up so lets clear out.
And So It Goes
Oh before I end my lunch I need to remind myself to upload the second part of my novel to the interwebs. Last year I did daily or near daily updates and I kept track of my word count that way. This yeah it isn't working like that mostly because I've been spending a lot more time going back and editing.
Also before I forget the future:
Magic guy and outer god guy go and try to dispose of some of the books, virginity is revielded unternet guy is called in, hilarity ensues.
Wilson, Carla, scientist, clean Carla's house for a bit then they end up going and hunting down the gay bashers.
I am not sure who goes to china prolly magic and outer god guy and scientist gets called in. Okay.
Also if this novel were better organized I would have the events of the magic people and Wilson and Carla happening simultaneously instead of them being utterly seperate, you know through the *** method. I might eventually go back and do that once it is all written but I doubt it. I mean I haven't even spellchecked the damn thing yet :P. On the whole it is going alright though. For whatever reason my social life had a brief flurry of activity but that's over now thankfully and I'll be able to focus. The new city of heroes issue comes out on either the 16th or the 30th. I personally am hoping for the 30th so I can just focus on my novel without getting stupid uber excited about all the snazzy new stuff I wanna do.
Other than that, much like last year, this year's novel is turning into an utter crucible and much like last year's novel this year I have fallen into dispair, threatened to just end the whole thing, and then when night came around I sat down and did my writting like I was supposed to. So YAY! Much like last year this is more of a trimumph over the demons of self than a celabration of creation but whatever, I am still having fun in my own way.
Currently I am suffering from a bout of depression. This sucks. Still I've been able to write, and it has actually made sleeping a little easier so that's nice. This whole thing illustrates though that when I write fiction I write very slowly. I've also realized that my optimum daily fiction writing range is 1500-2000 words a day. It is always that last 500 words that is a killer for me, I don't know why. I've been exparamenting more with taking breaks and the only thing that has really resulted is that I end up staying up later. No bother really.
Alright well I guess I better get things posted then.
Also before I forget the future:
Magic guy and outer god guy go and try to dispose of some of the books, virginity is revielded unternet guy is called in, hilarity ensues.
Wilson, Carla, scientist, clean Carla's house for a bit then they end up going and hunting down the gay bashers.
I am not sure who goes to china prolly magic and outer god guy and scientist gets called in. Okay.
Also if this novel were better organized I would have the events of the magic people and Wilson and Carla happening simultaneously instead of them being utterly seperate, you know through the *** method. I might eventually go back and do that once it is all written but I doubt it. I mean I haven't even spellchecked the damn thing yet :P. On the whole it is going alright though. For whatever reason my social life had a brief flurry of activity but that's over now thankfully and I'll be able to focus. The new city of heroes issue comes out on either the 16th or the 30th. I personally am hoping for the 30th so I can just focus on my novel without getting stupid uber excited about all the snazzy new stuff I wanna do.
Other than that, much like last year, this year's novel is turning into an utter crucible and much like last year's novel this year I have fallen into dispair, threatened to just end the whole thing, and then when night came around I sat down and did my writting like I was supposed to. So YAY! Much like last year this is more of a trimumph over the demons of self than a celabration of creation but whatever, I am still having fun in my own way.
Currently I am suffering from a bout of depression. This sucks. Still I've been able to write, and it has actually made sleeping a little easier so that's nice. This whole thing illustrates though that when I write fiction I write very slowly. I've also realized that my optimum daily fiction writing range is 1500-2000 words a day. It is always that last 500 words that is a killer for me, I don't know why. I've been exparamenting more with taking breaks and the only thing that has really resulted is that I end up staying up later. No bother really.
Alright well I guess I better get things posted then.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
lenovel2part2
The walk back went by quicker than the walk in. With Winson’s spell disapated the area starts back on its path of being a filthy drug den that any truly civilized nation would feel well and truly ashamed of. They walk quickly and quietly stepping over the bodies of those unfortunate enough to live there, they exchange no words between them until finally they reach the car. As Winston is about to get in John stops him, “Do you want to go get waffles?”. Winson nods in reply understanding that the request is more than a request. It is a command given by someone who doesn’t make commands because people know better than to not fulfill his requests. John neither asked nor cared how Winston had gotten there. He found his own way there and he could find his own way back again to where ever the hell it is he left his car. It was certainly no where near the rat maze and wandering around in the dark looking for Winson’s car is simply not appealing. It is especially not appealing when the alternatives are waffles and bed.
It is the wrong area of the country for a Waffle House. They don’t usually spread this far north. In some parts of the country their multitudes puts Starbucks to shame, but up here? This is the only one for 100 miles. However, nothing hit’s the spot after finding your friend biting off the heads of snakes, and drawing in the dirt with their blood, naked, like a waffle. Waffles are one of the reasons to keep the earth spinning and should the chain ever go under the resulting cosmic backlash would probably result in all the lights of the universe being switched off so that we could try it again, with less Waffle fail this time. Waffle House also has another strange property. As long as the second f and the s are burnt out on the sign then the whole property acts as a cosmic nullifyer. John never tested the extent of how well it works himself but he has spent many a late night, eating waffles, pouring over texts that would drive people mad just to look at him, while some blank faced waitress refills his coffee. He can discuss freely the names of dark outer gods, evil plans, sinister dealings, and this nights events all without anyone around being bothered by it or asking questions. Some of them used to joke that when the dark gods came the only thing that would be left would be him, the god, and a handful of waffle houses with their appropriately broken signs.
The drive passes in scilence, each one trying to figure out what to say to the other. Trying to decide which course of action, if any is best,. And most importantly which toppings they wanted on their hash browns. The after taste of snake blood and poison coated the insides of Winston’s mouth and while he, and he alone would suffer no ill effects from either the venom or the amount of blood he swallowed, it still is nice to have some real food in your stomach afterwards. Moments like these he misses the jungle, the smells, the friuts, the women, the snakes. His rumpled suit didn’t fit right, and he could never quite get used to wearing clothing again, or being fat. That’s something new, something he wished to god he could solve in some way, any other way, than lowering himself to going to a gym where he would have to run next to Ken and Barbie and his desires to kill them both with a hammer and feed their bodies to a constrictor. Inside the smell of grease, eggs, and regret wafts through the air. The waitress who looks as if she has seen one to many late nights, and heard one to many forbidden secrets clops over and then words pass in the form of both of them making their orders before the icy scilence resumes. Winston can feel it. He needs to go first. He needs to be the one who breaks the ice, who begins talking, who admits that things could of gone just ever so slightly better. After a minut of fiddling with things around the table he finly draws himself together and decides that it is high time to get this whole thing over with, “So, tonight could of gone better don’t you think”
John raising his eyebrows replies, “Oh I don’t know these things happen, I mean in terms of cockups this could have been a whole lot worse like the time Mary disappeared for a weekend and managed to found, brainwash, and finnish off an entire suicide cult. My my that girl can get things done when she chooses to.”
Winston smiles a little bit. It is a sick wan little smile, the runt of all other smiles, and like all runts it died quickly and quietly leaving his face blank and ever so slightly sad, “You know I wasn’t planning on killing those two girls. I don’t even know where they came from. No one should have been able to enter the building, and I am postive they weren’t inside before hand. I mean sure we are all big on the human sacrifice thing but not those girls. I mean even if I wanted to their bodies were to damaged, they might of injured the snake. It much prefers new mothers…”
John cuts him off with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I don’t think it really matters either way. Those girls aren’t particularly a main issue, and in two to three years they won’t be an issue at all, they will instead be an abstraction. I can only hope that their transition to death is pleasant one. What I want to know is, what is it you were doing down there in the first place?”
Winston stopped and fumbled around a bit for words before stopping, taking a deep breath and trying again. This happens a few more times before he gives up entirely, “I have no idea. I mean part of me, the good parts, they are still beholden to the snake god, and he still wants out, you know? I am still his high priest, and so sometimes instinct takes over”
Mild celebrations along with mellow fanfare, the waitress has brought the coffee, John sips it quietly as Winston absently stirrs his Hi-C. Terrible coffee and yet there is something about it that never fails to bring John home. Setting the cup down he resumes, “Yeah but you’ve fought it off before, I mean I don’t really understand why it is you’ve regressed now. Is there something I missed, some sign I should have been aware of, something I could of done…”
Shaking his head Winston smiles, “Sorry there buddy boy. Not even you can be everywhere at the same time. I know I’ve watched you try and it always ends up with you here, beating yourself up, sometimes with a dead body in your trunk, sometimes a live one, but it is never a good time. Now look I don’t understand everything I do, and I don’t understand everything I am. I guess it is one of those things like black out drinking that alcholics go through from time to time. It is just that these things happen”
John looked skeptical, “I don’t think how that works, I am pretty sure yo- oh hey thank you very much” Their food had arrived, and along with it a truce. The topic dropped for now, as it always is because there are some things you just don’t discuss over food, especially Waffle house food and so the conversation veered off. They talked about work, their homes, vacation plans, and for awhile they became normal, or as normal as two people like them can be. When they had finished, and their all star specials had been cleared away that John returned to the topic, “You know in a lot of ways I guess what you did tonight shook me so much because it reminds me of when I first found you”.
Winston nods, “Yeah I had a complete breakdown, there are still parts of my life that I have not been able to put back together and parts of me are thankful for that. I’ll talk about it at group tomorrow. For now though I am beat. I am not like some of you, I still need to sleep”.
Checks were paid and hollow requests of being asked to return were endured as the two of them stepped back out into the cool night air. John nodded over to his car indicating that John wasn’t letting Winston out of his sight until he was back at his house. It isn’t that Winston couldn’t get a cab, or that John isn’t above letting his friend find his own way home. It is just that over the years John has realized that Winston is a cagy little bastard who knows far more than he says. His cards are always played close to his chest and he never gives out more information that he has to. He has a feeling that tonights insident was truly unplanned. He also had a feeling that Winston is one of the few people on the planet who, if he put his mind to it, could hide something like that from John. Power does funny things to people and there isn’t anyone on the planet that embodies that trueism quite like Winston does.
***
Winson was what he looks like now. He was a down on his luck insurance claims investigator. Who lived with a woman who he onced loved very much but ended up not liking him very much. She cheated on him, he knew it, but he decided not to prance about it. He knew that she could never be pleased by he, he also knew that she was barren as a pile of rocks floating in space, and after awhile of dealing with he bitterness and resentness he just wanted to be left alone by her and allowing her to continue on with her stupid little affair seemed to be the best way. Just out of high school life once seemed so full of possiblilites. He landed a good job, a beautiful wife, and he didn’t even need to mess with college. Now at 25 he is locked in a marriage where he occationally gets to have sex with someone who resents him. His salary that seemed so great right out of high school wasn’t looking so hot 6 years later, and more and more life began to press down upon him like a great weight from above.
To put it succinctly his rise to power started with some very unassuming beginnings and became nearly catastrophic in terms of results. How he ended up in the jungle isn’t clear to anyone. As best as John can piece it together Winston stumbled upon some old texts and part of an idol, and then somehow, from these scraps, he managed to extrapolate the location of a lost nameless civilzation that practices a particularly brutal form of magic. Once he found out where they were he went down there, apparently he accidently fulfilled several prophesies all at the same time, and they took him in just as he was looking to go native. They taught him the dark arts, which he mastered at a record pace, and at one point he came so close to ending the world that he could taste the skin of the great serpent god’s hide as his slithered against the arcane barriers that Winston and he cult were looking to bring down. It made Jamestown look like a pickic from what Winston described it as. These people didn’t just do simple blood sacrifices. Their rituals went on for hours, sometimes days as they would carve away pieces of the victems bodies to sacrifice to the snakes in the area, poisosn has to be consumed along with hallucingins that haven’t even been discovered by the western world. They put Grammora to shame, and yet at the end of it all, something happened. John, who was dealing with his own demons at the time found him wandering those back alleyways. Winston refuses to say how he made it back to America, heck he refuses to say where exactly in South America his cult is based out of. TO everyone else Winston looked like your average run of the mill hobo, with his dirty suit, wild eyes, and incomprehensible muttering. However, not every hobo mutters in an ancient language, undiscovered by academia that is used almost exclusively for magic. That sort of thing tends to single you out if you have the right kind of ears.
John’s first attempt at trying to reel in Winston didn’t go so well. He screeched like and animal and ran off, and in John’s hurry to persue him he almost didn’t notice the traps Winston had left behind. The second attempt went better John ambushing Winston in his layer was able to subdue him, break the spell that had his rational mind locked away and he brought Winston back from the brink. At what cost though? Winston looked around uncomprehending that day, then slowly his actions caught up with him. It was there that John saw it. He saw it in his own eyes when he looked in the mirror, he saw it when he looked into her eyes, he saw the loss. There was no guilt, no remorse, no crushing realizations of the crimes he has commited against humanity. No beating of the chest crying out to god for forgivness for sin which could never be forgiven, no tears of remorse, no desire for absolution, sympathy, and above all no regrets, no regrets save one. He had lost most of his power. The power, that caused people to slit their own throats at his very command, the power that made women fall at his feet, the kind that scattered children before him, it is what allowed Winston to dine on baby flesh and drink the blood collected from the virgins he has most recently defloured. It is the power that let him talk to a god, to hold the fate of the world in his hand, and while some one feverishly suckled upon his errection he could look into the eyes of all that is unholy and decide that it really is time to let it all burn. All he needed to do is pave the way. He didn’t blink when he looked into the abyss he didn’t make a deal, instead he ran to give it a helping hand. To let it in. To welcome it home, and if that meant turning the universe to ash then so be it. That is the look he saw in Winston’s eyes, and on that day 4 years ago he decided to form the group. There were others like him, like Winston. People who were going to shake the world and for whatever reason they didn’t. Now life goes on, they are still alive, living with a loss far more profound than anyone else could ever understand. John calls them the world shakers and for better or for worse they are all in this together.
As he leaves Winston behind he pulls off memory lane and merges back into the prescent. Winston. Oh well at least group will be interesting tomarrow.
It is the wrong area of the country for a Waffle House. They don’t usually spread this far north. In some parts of the country their multitudes puts Starbucks to shame, but up here? This is the only one for 100 miles. However, nothing hit’s the spot after finding your friend biting off the heads of snakes, and drawing in the dirt with their blood, naked, like a waffle. Waffles are one of the reasons to keep the earth spinning and should the chain ever go under the resulting cosmic backlash would probably result in all the lights of the universe being switched off so that we could try it again, with less Waffle fail this time. Waffle House also has another strange property. As long as the second f and the s are burnt out on the sign then the whole property acts as a cosmic nullifyer. John never tested the extent of how well it works himself but he has spent many a late night, eating waffles, pouring over texts that would drive people mad just to look at him, while some blank faced waitress refills his coffee. He can discuss freely the names of dark outer gods, evil plans, sinister dealings, and this nights events all without anyone around being bothered by it or asking questions. Some of them used to joke that when the dark gods came the only thing that would be left would be him, the god, and a handful of waffle houses with their appropriately broken signs.
The drive passes in scilence, each one trying to figure out what to say to the other. Trying to decide which course of action, if any is best,. And most importantly which toppings they wanted on their hash browns. The after taste of snake blood and poison coated the insides of Winston’s mouth and while he, and he alone would suffer no ill effects from either the venom or the amount of blood he swallowed, it still is nice to have some real food in your stomach afterwards. Moments like these he misses the jungle, the smells, the friuts, the women, the snakes. His rumpled suit didn’t fit right, and he could never quite get used to wearing clothing again, or being fat. That’s something new, something he wished to god he could solve in some way, any other way, than lowering himself to going to a gym where he would have to run next to Ken and Barbie and his desires to kill them both with a hammer and feed their bodies to a constrictor. Inside the smell of grease, eggs, and regret wafts through the air. The waitress who looks as if she has seen one to many late nights, and heard one to many forbidden secrets clops over and then words pass in the form of both of them making their orders before the icy scilence resumes. Winston can feel it. He needs to go first. He needs to be the one who breaks the ice, who begins talking, who admits that things could of gone just ever so slightly better. After a minut of fiddling with things around the table he finly draws himself together and decides that it is high time to get this whole thing over with, “So, tonight could of gone better don’t you think”
John raising his eyebrows replies, “Oh I don’t know these things happen, I mean in terms of cockups this could have been a whole lot worse like the time Mary disappeared for a weekend and managed to found, brainwash, and finnish off an entire suicide cult. My my that girl can get things done when she chooses to.”
Winston smiles a little bit. It is a sick wan little smile, the runt of all other smiles, and like all runts it died quickly and quietly leaving his face blank and ever so slightly sad, “You know I wasn’t planning on killing those two girls. I don’t even know where they came from. No one should have been able to enter the building, and I am postive they weren’t inside before hand. I mean sure we are all big on the human sacrifice thing but not those girls. I mean even if I wanted to their bodies were to damaged, they might of injured the snake. It much prefers new mothers…”
John cuts him off with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I don’t think it really matters either way. Those girls aren’t particularly a main issue, and in two to three years they won’t be an issue at all, they will instead be an abstraction. I can only hope that their transition to death is pleasant one. What I want to know is, what is it you were doing down there in the first place?”
Winston stopped and fumbled around a bit for words before stopping, taking a deep breath and trying again. This happens a few more times before he gives up entirely, “I have no idea. I mean part of me, the good parts, they are still beholden to the snake god, and he still wants out, you know? I am still his high priest, and so sometimes instinct takes over”
Mild celebrations along with mellow fanfare, the waitress has brought the coffee, John sips it quietly as Winston absently stirrs his Hi-C. Terrible coffee and yet there is something about it that never fails to bring John home. Setting the cup down he resumes, “Yeah but you’ve fought it off before, I mean I don’t really understand why it is you’ve regressed now. Is there something I missed, some sign I should have been aware of, something I could of done…”
Shaking his head Winston smiles, “Sorry there buddy boy. Not even you can be everywhere at the same time. I know I’ve watched you try and it always ends up with you here, beating yourself up, sometimes with a dead body in your trunk, sometimes a live one, but it is never a good time. Now look I don’t understand everything I do, and I don’t understand everything I am. I guess it is one of those things like black out drinking that alcholics go through from time to time. It is just that these things happen”
John looked skeptical, “I don’t think how that works, I am pretty sure yo- oh hey thank you very much” Their food had arrived, and along with it a truce. The topic dropped for now, as it always is because there are some things you just don’t discuss over food, especially Waffle house food and so the conversation veered off. They talked about work, their homes, vacation plans, and for awhile they became normal, or as normal as two people like them can be. When they had finished, and their all star specials had been cleared away that John returned to the topic, “You know in a lot of ways I guess what you did tonight shook me so much because it reminds me of when I first found you”.
Winston nods, “Yeah I had a complete breakdown, there are still parts of my life that I have not been able to put back together and parts of me are thankful for that. I’ll talk about it at group tomorrow. For now though I am beat. I am not like some of you, I still need to sleep”.
Checks were paid and hollow requests of being asked to return were endured as the two of them stepped back out into the cool night air. John nodded over to his car indicating that John wasn’t letting Winston out of his sight until he was back at his house. It isn’t that Winston couldn’t get a cab, or that John isn’t above letting his friend find his own way home. It is just that over the years John has realized that Winston is a cagy little bastard who knows far more than he says. His cards are always played close to his chest and he never gives out more information that he has to. He has a feeling that tonights insident was truly unplanned. He also had a feeling that Winston is one of the few people on the planet who, if he put his mind to it, could hide something like that from John. Power does funny things to people and there isn’t anyone on the planet that embodies that trueism quite like Winston does.
***
Winson was what he looks like now. He was a down on his luck insurance claims investigator. Who lived with a woman who he onced loved very much but ended up not liking him very much. She cheated on him, he knew it, but he decided not to prance about it. He knew that she could never be pleased by he, he also knew that she was barren as a pile of rocks floating in space, and after awhile of dealing with he bitterness and resentness he just wanted to be left alone by her and allowing her to continue on with her stupid little affair seemed to be the best way. Just out of high school life once seemed so full of possiblilites. He landed a good job, a beautiful wife, and he didn’t even need to mess with college. Now at 25 he is locked in a marriage where he occationally gets to have sex with someone who resents him. His salary that seemed so great right out of high school wasn’t looking so hot 6 years later, and more and more life began to press down upon him like a great weight from above.
To put it succinctly his rise to power started with some very unassuming beginnings and became nearly catastrophic in terms of results. How he ended up in the jungle isn’t clear to anyone. As best as John can piece it together Winston stumbled upon some old texts and part of an idol, and then somehow, from these scraps, he managed to extrapolate the location of a lost nameless civilzation that practices a particularly brutal form of magic. Once he found out where they were he went down there, apparently he accidently fulfilled several prophesies all at the same time, and they took him in just as he was looking to go native. They taught him the dark arts, which he mastered at a record pace, and at one point he came so close to ending the world that he could taste the skin of the great serpent god’s hide as his slithered against the arcane barriers that Winston and he cult were looking to bring down. It made Jamestown look like a pickic from what Winston described it as. These people didn’t just do simple blood sacrifices. Their rituals went on for hours, sometimes days as they would carve away pieces of the victems bodies to sacrifice to the snakes in the area, poisosn has to be consumed along with hallucingins that haven’t even been discovered by the western world. They put Grammora to shame, and yet at the end of it all, something happened. John, who was dealing with his own demons at the time found him wandering those back alleyways. Winston refuses to say how he made it back to America, heck he refuses to say where exactly in South America his cult is based out of. TO everyone else Winston looked like your average run of the mill hobo, with his dirty suit, wild eyes, and incomprehensible muttering. However, not every hobo mutters in an ancient language, undiscovered by academia that is used almost exclusively for magic. That sort of thing tends to single you out if you have the right kind of ears.
John’s first attempt at trying to reel in Winston didn’t go so well. He screeched like and animal and ran off, and in John’s hurry to persue him he almost didn’t notice the traps Winston had left behind. The second attempt went better John ambushing Winston in his layer was able to subdue him, break the spell that had his rational mind locked away and he brought Winston back from the brink. At what cost though? Winston looked around uncomprehending that day, then slowly his actions caught up with him. It was there that John saw it. He saw it in his own eyes when he looked in the mirror, he saw it when he looked into her eyes, he saw the loss. There was no guilt, no remorse, no crushing realizations of the crimes he has commited against humanity. No beating of the chest crying out to god for forgivness for sin which could never be forgiven, no tears of remorse, no desire for absolution, sympathy, and above all no regrets, no regrets save one. He had lost most of his power. The power, that caused people to slit their own throats at his very command, the power that made women fall at his feet, the kind that scattered children before him, it is what allowed Winston to dine on baby flesh and drink the blood collected from the virgins he has most recently defloured. It is the power that let him talk to a god, to hold the fate of the world in his hand, and while some one feverishly suckled upon his errection he could look into the eyes of all that is unholy and decide that it really is time to let it all burn. All he needed to do is pave the way. He didn’t blink when he looked into the abyss he didn’t make a deal, instead he ran to give it a helping hand. To let it in. To welcome it home, and if that meant turning the universe to ash then so be it. That is the look he saw in Winston’s eyes, and on that day 4 years ago he decided to form the group. There were others like him, like Winston. People who were going to shake the world and for whatever reason they didn’t. Now life goes on, they are still alive, living with a loss far more profound than anyone else could ever understand. John calls them the world shakers and for better or for worse they are all in this together.
As he leaves Winston behind he pulls off memory lane and merges back into the prescent. Winston. Oh well at least group will be interesting tomarrow.
Monday, November 1, 2010
thesecondnovelpart1
John could feel it, well before he got to his destination. It pulsed like a becon that causes hair to stand on end and balls to retreat to wherever the hell it is they go when they retract into your body like strange little turtles. The air itself seemed to be rich with the smell of blood, sweat, tears, and lamentations of those who survived the battle but still needed to be cut down by the death squads who hadn’t finished sweeping the area. It is the smell of power, stronger than any narcotic, and better than any 257 orgasams which have been crystallized, pulverized, then snorted off of the ass of some hooker who is well on your way to giving you orgasm 258. The senses blots out the moon, dims the street lamps and gives the alleyway which is normally filled with the smell of urine, the blood in the urine, cheap beer and vomit an almost holy feeling. This land of pain and suffering has become transfixed into a place of power, a place where very soon pain will become king, a place where John is needed.
The roads in this part of the city are horrible, and while he can clearly feel where he needs to go, he soon realizes there is no clear path and that he will have to travel on foot if he is going to make it. Stepping out of his impeccable black Mercedes he leaves it behind unlocked, confident in the fact that no one would dare touch it, that his car, much like the ritual being preformed near by is a sacred thing that couldn’t possibly be understood without going a little mad first. Striding off into the alley he moves quickly, but never at a run. People like John don’t run, they never run. Running is what other people do for you, running is what happens when you don’t plan properly, running is only necessary when it has all fallen apart and it is your last resort, and while things at the moment are unusually bad, there is no reason to run. Not yet.
The area itself is bad. When people talk about “the wrong side of town” this is not the place they are talking about. The place they are talking about is a few blocks over. If those people knew this place excisted they would probably die. The buldings were mostly abandoned, now however, the have been converted into crack dens or worse. This is the place where people go when they have no where else to live, and options left. Human bodies line the streets, some by choice, others are those who just collapsed there under the weight of whatever chemical loadstones they have burdened their bodies with. None of the drains in the area seem to work right as a result there is at least a half inch of “water” sloshing over John combat boots. While he is fully aware that the chemical composition currently seeping into his socks is far more diverse than a combination of two parts hydrogen to one oxygen he chooses to believe that it is only water. The know the truth is go a little mad. Three piece suit and combat boots, the combination may look odd, but it will save him from having to burn the suit, hopefully, then as he looked over at the slime covered walls he acquiesced himself to the fact that his cloths are a lost cause.
Trudging down one alleyway, and through another he briefly relects on the fact that areas of power didn’t excist in this city before they showed up. Now that they all are here there are all sorts of hidden nooks and crannies where they can squeeze through and excercize control over the world around them. While striding through the muck he sees a man in front of him stumbling around, without thinking John shoves him out of the way, no bothering to slow his pace. He had somewhere to be after all. Continueing on he could hear the man stumble and fall, he could hear the splash, and he knew deep down within the depths of his heart that the water was deeper than half an inch. Turning quickly, he saw his fears realized. The man so out of it had landed face down and hadn’t moved. Sighning angerly John went back and flipped the man over. Moving on he couldn’t decide if he was doing him a favor or not but he pushed that thought out of his head. Thoughts like that were trouble. If you doubt why you should save one, then why should you save any of them. The nieghbors with their little cunt kids could use a trip to the bottom of this alley, and that asshole who always honks his horn instead of getting out of the car and just walking up to the door, or the UPS guy who refuses to leave the fucking package at the god damned door. NO, it is better to just press on ahead. There is a ritual to break up and if he doesn’t get there soon things will become unsually ugly. That isn’t much of a concern though John is close by.
Off down a side alley he can see where his quarry pushed through the ruined remains of a chain link fence to get to his chosen spot, a building that looks completely like every other building in the god damned area. As John stepped inside he saw him. Crawling around on the floor slick with flith, muttering to himself prayers to a thrice damned god, he frantically draws an elaborate series of runes and sigiles using the body of a snake who’s head has been removed, most likely bitten off in a fit of religious ecstasy. In the far corner of the room two women, no girls really, huddled in the corrner terrified, their uncomprehending eyes glazed overing in fear, urine freely flowing from between their legs. John couldn’t tell if they were to be part of the ritual or they just happened on him in the middle of, but he could see that whatever was left of their minds was breaking from the strain. He didn’t blame them, there are certain things people are just no meant to see and hear. Things that are better off lost from time, things that should of never of been recovered or brought back to this city. None of this is supposed to be happening. John isn’t supposed to be here. He is supposed to be at home, in a comfortable sweater, reading a book, and sipping on hot cocoa with little marshmellow in it. This isn’t supposed to be real and for just one moment he wished he could have the old days back again. This short of shit wouldn’t fly in the old days, no sir. This would be “Unacceptable”. Still it is 2010, the year the future starts and the year that everyone is allowed to get on with their lives, and most definatly the year where John’s friends stop coming to one of the worst slums in the nation to bite the heads of snakes so he can cast the spell that will bring forth the great and powerful snake god who will crush the universe in its coils and swallow everything whole. In a weird sort of way John can’t help but to find himself impressed. Nothing he’s ever done involved the universe, destruction or otherwise. He also doesn’t look like someone who would do this. His comb over has fallen to one side, leaving his bald head, glistening with sweat, to shine onto the moonlight like a beacon that his better angels choose to ignore in lieu of watching another rerun of Friends. He paunch, which rides the line between being pleasantly plump, and fat, hangs down from him as he contines to draw frantically. He looks like the sort of man you see when you go to visit acounting because you forgot to list all of your travel expenses, or maybe a professor of Buisness Management. He doesn’t look like the sort of man who can shake the world, and yet there he is crawling around on the floor naked driving two women insane with just his words, and possibly the cellulite on his ass. The haunted realization that this strange little man actually takes the time to shave his genitalia is what snaps John back into the moment. That realization will come up at the worst moments he just knows it, and this little farce has gone on long enough.
Thoughts snapping back into crystal clarity he realizes he underestimated the snake man’s strength and first with the mental drift and then with the incredible array of protective wards he managed to throw around the place before starting. He could see snakes coiled in the darkened corrners where the light did not reach, the places where John fervently wished his friends naked body would go so he would no longer have to look at it. Growling, he realizes that he may have to resort to “measures” to bring this to a close. Muttering a quick prayer John steps further into the room. That’s when the impossible starts. Snakes do not lunge through the air. Specifically, snakes do not go from a coiled to position to lunging through the air neck level. Their poison does not cause concrete to sizzle, and there is no god, snake or otherwise. And yet as he steps forward one snake flies through the air. Faster than an eye can follow, and certainly faster than a speeding snake, John’s right hand springs out and catches the snake by the head, keeping his thumb under its throat, he spins around simultaneously snapping its neck and using the snakes mouth to catch the other snake that is sprung from the other side. Coming back to his original position he tosses the tangled mass to the ground, and moves past it as the two corpses start to smoke. The next row of sigils looked much harder to by pass. These were no cheap parlor tricks that would cause snakes to do impossible things. This would require time to move through. If a normal person were to look at these things their minds would be blasted out of their skulls, turning them in to ever devoted thralls to the snake god, who has some ridiculously long unpronounceable name. If that somehow didn’t work there were a series of runes that would cause flesh to melt, and souls to be shredded. The whole place is starting to smell of jungle, and the ritual prayer has begun to pick up pace, with more than one meaningful gesture made twords the two girls in the corrner, two girls who are starting to be encroached upon by more snakes.
There are rules to be followed, many many rules. Rules that John himself made. Rules that causes all of the to take massive risks without a whole lot of reward. Rules that he chooses to live by, and is willing to die by. However, undoing the sigils within those rules will take time, those girls will be worse than dead, and honestly John himself is unsure that even he would be able to break them, “God damn you Winston” he mutters to himself. Winston. Even the name is something non descript it belongs to a boring man who needs to be at home in front of his tv dinner next to some woman who once loved him but now doesn’t really like him very much which children upstairs who resent him. Not on the floor naked with snakes forcing John to break the rules. Reaching into his pocket he pulls out his knife. It is old. Old like the ritual being preformed now. On the back of his left hand he makes a tiny cut, no more than a scratch really, he’s gotten worse shaving. The amount isn’t important, but the blood is. It is amazing how long it took him to disover that. He then takes a ring out of his pocket wipes it across the scratch and puts it back along with the knife. Then he claps them together, rubs them once, and in one fluid motion he slaps the floor. The only thing is his pockters are two knives, that ring, car keys, and a bill fold. He now wishes he brought hand sanitizer. There is a loud low “wumph” sound as the power from all the sigils suddenly disapaits, leaving John free to walk forwards, grab Winston by the ear, and slap him across the face. Rage fills his eyes, and he begins another chant, a different one, one that is not to be completed, thanks to the second slap. Then and there the sanity is restored, the light comes back on, and the crawling realization of what he’s done becomes etched across Winston’s face which grows pale, and once again his eyes become that of a man who knows shame. His knees give out and he sags against, John, and for a whole minute they stand there in the moonlight, like two dancers still around at last call in the back room at a leather bar, the quiet sobbing of the two girls providing the ambient music. Then Winston’s legs started to support him again and once he is able to stand under his own power he looks around with room with wonderment, “It certainly is amazing how far things can go isn’t it?” His voice has made the return to the shallow reedy thing that mumbles over most words causing most conversations with him to become a game of “fill in the blanks”. Stumbling a little bit he walks over to one of the dark corrners, whispering something inaudible. John hears a snake hiss quietly and slither off, though he sees none if it but miraculously Winston returns with his clothing. Sheepishly he dresses himself, putting his brown tweed suit back on, augmented by a pair of kackies, and some cheap shoes that try very hard to look expensive. The whole outfit gives him the remarkably accurate air of “down on his luck” used car salesmen. As they turn to leave Winston stops, “Erm John what about the women, we shouldn’t just leave them here”.
John paused and didn’t turn around right away. He didn’t want Winston to see that his face had blanched and that his composure which is at all times impeccable had slipped. Loosing composure is like running. It just doesn’t happen. Striding over to the two women they look up at him, eyes doe like, terror filled, in pain, “It would be best to kill him” he thinks to himself as he looks over at their bodies, riddled with tract marks, skin yellowed, their hair falling out. Ordinarily, he would be all business, can’t leave witnesses, people can not see what it is they do, not because of any great secret but because it changes you. It is like loosing your virginity, there is no going home once it happens. These girls though, no one would believe them, no one would help them, and even if they cleaned up their lives tomarrow they would be dead within ten years. The body can only take so much abuse. Reaching into his pocket the girls recoil and start to wimper, “They expect the knife” he thinks and just for a moment he fingers the handle and wishes upon a star. Then he grabs the billfold, removing $500 he looks down at them and says, “ Now look ordinarily I don’t really condone this sort of thing. But after what you’ve seen tonight I think you need it. Take the money and go live out the rest of your lives in peace”. Neither of them move, both of them still rooted to the spot. Shrugging John turns, collects Winston with a nod of his head, and the two of them walk out into the alley.
The roads in this part of the city are horrible, and while he can clearly feel where he needs to go, he soon realizes there is no clear path and that he will have to travel on foot if he is going to make it. Stepping out of his impeccable black Mercedes he leaves it behind unlocked, confident in the fact that no one would dare touch it, that his car, much like the ritual being preformed near by is a sacred thing that couldn’t possibly be understood without going a little mad first. Striding off into the alley he moves quickly, but never at a run. People like John don’t run, they never run. Running is what other people do for you, running is what happens when you don’t plan properly, running is only necessary when it has all fallen apart and it is your last resort, and while things at the moment are unusually bad, there is no reason to run. Not yet.
The area itself is bad. When people talk about “the wrong side of town” this is not the place they are talking about. The place they are talking about is a few blocks over. If those people knew this place excisted they would probably die. The buldings were mostly abandoned, now however, the have been converted into crack dens or worse. This is the place where people go when they have no where else to live, and options left. Human bodies line the streets, some by choice, others are those who just collapsed there under the weight of whatever chemical loadstones they have burdened their bodies with. None of the drains in the area seem to work right as a result there is at least a half inch of “water” sloshing over John combat boots. While he is fully aware that the chemical composition currently seeping into his socks is far more diverse than a combination of two parts hydrogen to one oxygen he chooses to believe that it is only water. The know the truth is go a little mad. Three piece suit and combat boots, the combination may look odd, but it will save him from having to burn the suit, hopefully, then as he looked over at the slime covered walls he acquiesced himself to the fact that his cloths are a lost cause.
Trudging down one alleyway, and through another he briefly relects on the fact that areas of power didn’t excist in this city before they showed up. Now that they all are here there are all sorts of hidden nooks and crannies where they can squeeze through and excercize control over the world around them. While striding through the muck he sees a man in front of him stumbling around, without thinking John shoves him out of the way, no bothering to slow his pace. He had somewhere to be after all. Continueing on he could hear the man stumble and fall, he could hear the splash, and he knew deep down within the depths of his heart that the water was deeper than half an inch. Turning quickly, he saw his fears realized. The man so out of it had landed face down and hadn’t moved. Sighning angerly John went back and flipped the man over. Moving on he couldn’t decide if he was doing him a favor or not but he pushed that thought out of his head. Thoughts like that were trouble. If you doubt why you should save one, then why should you save any of them. The nieghbors with their little cunt kids could use a trip to the bottom of this alley, and that asshole who always honks his horn instead of getting out of the car and just walking up to the door, or the UPS guy who refuses to leave the fucking package at the god damned door. NO, it is better to just press on ahead. There is a ritual to break up and if he doesn’t get there soon things will become unsually ugly. That isn’t much of a concern though John is close by.
Off down a side alley he can see where his quarry pushed through the ruined remains of a chain link fence to get to his chosen spot, a building that looks completely like every other building in the god damned area. As John stepped inside he saw him. Crawling around on the floor slick with flith, muttering to himself prayers to a thrice damned god, he frantically draws an elaborate series of runes and sigiles using the body of a snake who’s head has been removed, most likely bitten off in a fit of religious ecstasy. In the far corner of the room two women, no girls really, huddled in the corrner terrified, their uncomprehending eyes glazed overing in fear, urine freely flowing from between their legs. John couldn’t tell if they were to be part of the ritual or they just happened on him in the middle of, but he could see that whatever was left of their minds was breaking from the strain. He didn’t blame them, there are certain things people are just no meant to see and hear. Things that are better off lost from time, things that should of never of been recovered or brought back to this city. None of this is supposed to be happening. John isn’t supposed to be here. He is supposed to be at home, in a comfortable sweater, reading a book, and sipping on hot cocoa with little marshmellow in it. This isn’t supposed to be real and for just one moment he wished he could have the old days back again. This short of shit wouldn’t fly in the old days, no sir. This would be “Unacceptable”. Still it is 2010, the year the future starts and the year that everyone is allowed to get on with their lives, and most definatly the year where John’s friends stop coming to one of the worst slums in the nation to bite the heads of snakes so he can cast the spell that will bring forth the great and powerful snake god who will crush the universe in its coils and swallow everything whole. In a weird sort of way John can’t help but to find himself impressed. Nothing he’s ever done involved the universe, destruction or otherwise. He also doesn’t look like someone who would do this. His comb over has fallen to one side, leaving his bald head, glistening with sweat, to shine onto the moonlight like a beacon that his better angels choose to ignore in lieu of watching another rerun of Friends. He paunch, which rides the line between being pleasantly plump, and fat, hangs down from him as he contines to draw frantically. He looks like the sort of man you see when you go to visit acounting because you forgot to list all of your travel expenses, or maybe a professor of Buisness Management. He doesn’t look like the sort of man who can shake the world, and yet there he is crawling around on the floor naked driving two women insane with just his words, and possibly the cellulite on his ass. The haunted realization that this strange little man actually takes the time to shave his genitalia is what snaps John back into the moment. That realization will come up at the worst moments he just knows it, and this little farce has gone on long enough.
Thoughts snapping back into crystal clarity he realizes he underestimated the snake man’s strength and first with the mental drift and then with the incredible array of protective wards he managed to throw around the place before starting. He could see snakes coiled in the darkened corrners where the light did not reach, the places where John fervently wished his friends naked body would go so he would no longer have to look at it. Growling, he realizes that he may have to resort to “measures” to bring this to a close. Muttering a quick prayer John steps further into the room. That’s when the impossible starts. Snakes do not lunge through the air. Specifically, snakes do not go from a coiled to position to lunging through the air neck level. Their poison does not cause concrete to sizzle, and there is no god, snake or otherwise. And yet as he steps forward one snake flies through the air. Faster than an eye can follow, and certainly faster than a speeding snake, John’s right hand springs out and catches the snake by the head, keeping his thumb under its throat, he spins around simultaneously snapping its neck and using the snakes mouth to catch the other snake that is sprung from the other side. Coming back to his original position he tosses the tangled mass to the ground, and moves past it as the two corpses start to smoke. The next row of sigils looked much harder to by pass. These were no cheap parlor tricks that would cause snakes to do impossible things. This would require time to move through. If a normal person were to look at these things their minds would be blasted out of their skulls, turning them in to ever devoted thralls to the snake god, who has some ridiculously long unpronounceable name. If that somehow didn’t work there were a series of runes that would cause flesh to melt, and souls to be shredded. The whole place is starting to smell of jungle, and the ritual prayer has begun to pick up pace, with more than one meaningful gesture made twords the two girls in the corrner, two girls who are starting to be encroached upon by more snakes.
There are rules to be followed, many many rules. Rules that John himself made. Rules that causes all of the to take massive risks without a whole lot of reward. Rules that he chooses to live by, and is willing to die by. However, undoing the sigils within those rules will take time, those girls will be worse than dead, and honestly John himself is unsure that even he would be able to break them, “God damn you Winston” he mutters to himself. Winston. Even the name is something non descript it belongs to a boring man who needs to be at home in front of his tv dinner next to some woman who once loved him but now doesn’t really like him very much which children upstairs who resent him. Not on the floor naked with snakes forcing John to break the rules. Reaching into his pocket he pulls out his knife. It is old. Old like the ritual being preformed now. On the back of his left hand he makes a tiny cut, no more than a scratch really, he’s gotten worse shaving. The amount isn’t important, but the blood is. It is amazing how long it took him to disover that. He then takes a ring out of his pocket wipes it across the scratch and puts it back along with the knife. Then he claps them together, rubs them once, and in one fluid motion he slaps the floor. The only thing is his pockters are two knives, that ring, car keys, and a bill fold. He now wishes he brought hand sanitizer. There is a loud low “wumph” sound as the power from all the sigils suddenly disapaits, leaving John free to walk forwards, grab Winston by the ear, and slap him across the face. Rage fills his eyes, and he begins another chant, a different one, one that is not to be completed, thanks to the second slap. Then and there the sanity is restored, the light comes back on, and the crawling realization of what he’s done becomes etched across Winston’s face which grows pale, and once again his eyes become that of a man who knows shame. His knees give out and he sags against, John, and for a whole minute they stand there in the moonlight, like two dancers still around at last call in the back room at a leather bar, the quiet sobbing of the two girls providing the ambient music. Then Winston’s legs started to support him again and once he is able to stand under his own power he looks around with room with wonderment, “It certainly is amazing how far things can go isn’t it?” His voice has made the return to the shallow reedy thing that mumbles over most words causing most conversations with him to become a game of “fill in the blanks”. Stumbling a little bit he walks over to one of the dark corrners, whispering something inaudible. John hears a snake hiss quietly and slither off, though he sees none if it but miraculously Winston returns with his clothing. Sheepishly he dresses himself, putting his brown tweed suit back on, augmented by a pair of kackies, and some cheap shoes that try very hard to look expensive. The whole outfit gives him the remarkably accurate air of “down on his luck” used car salesmen. As they turn to leave Winston stops, “Erm John what about the women, we shouldn’t just leave them here”.
John paused and didn’t turn around right away. He didn’t want Winston to see that his face had blanched and that his composure which is at all times impeccable had slipped. Loosing composure is like running. It just doesn’t happen. Striding over to the two women they look up at him, eyes doe like, terror filled, in pain, “It would be best to kill him” he thinks to himself as he looks over at their bodies, riddled with tract marks, skin yellowed, their hair falling out. Ordinarily, he would be all business, can’t leave witnesses, people can not see what it is they do, not because of any great secret but because it changes you. It is like loosing your virginity, there is no going home once it happens. These girls though, no one would believe them, no one would help them, and even if they cleaned up their lives tomarrow they would be dead within ten years. The body can only take so much abuse. Reaching into his pocket the girls recoil and start to wimper, “They expect the knife” he thinks and just for a moment he fingers the handle and wishes upon a star. Then he grabs the billfold, removing $500 he looks down at them and says, “ Now look ordinarily I don’t really condone this sort of thing. But after what you’ve seen tonight I think you need it. Take the money and go live out the rest of your lives in peace”. Neither of them move, both of them still rooted to the spot. Shrugging John turns, collects Winston with a nod of his head, and the two of them walk out into the alley.
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