Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
This Is Not a Love Song
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
“Ours is
a love that
swills the black
milk of twist
galaxies,”
the SF Poet Anan Muss had transom-entangled to his lover. Responding to its fifteen seconds of fame, critics responded: “What lovesick, cornball hack hasn’t thought-twittered something to that effect?”
The difference here being that Anan’s object of affection was none other than the lovely Dionysia, recently loosed from a marriage contract to King Ash–he who decimated planetary kingdoms remotely with a tap of his pinky fingernail-chip. As one of Dionysia’s comrade lovers of the arts, Anan once had the displeasure of meeting King Ash–obesely lounging on a mountain of oversized cushions amidst a cacophony of incense. King Ash sneered at Anan as the power-jaded king sneered at all of Dionysia’s thinly disguised “art-loving” friends to mask their night-emission desires.
Despite rumors to the contrary, Anan Muss never intentionally found a loophole in their marriage contract. In fact, being rather outmoded in sex transactions, he sought ways to patch the contract for Dionysia. Nonetheless, when Dionysia uncovered Ash’s harem secreted into a pit beneath the mountain of cushions, his first target was none other than Anan Muss. One tap of his royal pinky: Slitters zipped across the rolling desert on autobikes, arc-blades slapping their mighty thighs.
Trip-lights warned Anan of the intruders, which gave him time to scramble-translate himself to Jac-sun V, a sparsely populated planet full of jutting buttes, tumbleweeds, and sand–a land where few of the sane would choose to stay. Anan wrote Dionysia to come live with him in the wilds–a world where their swelling love could engorge the empty spaces. After sufficient time to show that she and she alone was in control, Dionysia wrote back, “You’ve got to be shitting,” and chose a sycophant, the intrepid Captain Skylark, who gave her extravagant if impoverishing gifts, but who had the physique of one who had valiantly survived a famine and now lived to eat at USA Steak Buffets.
To this day, Anan translates copies of himself back to the home planet–in the vain hope that she might find her way to love him–only to watch his copy get diced by a slitter’s arc-blade on pirated vid-feed.
Anan refuses to write sad SF love sonnets since truth and justice triumphed in the end. No one likes to spoil a happy climax.
Brisneyland by Night – Part Four
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
Most folk, Normal or Weyrd, are law-abiding. But there’s a market for everything: some tables demand the tenderest of flesh. It was a particular taste indulged in by the very few, a leftover from the past. Someone had to source and butcher that flesh.
Kinderfresser. All those fairytales and it turns out my father was the monster.
He got sloppy and didn’t take the hunt far enough from home. Grigor lasted precisely how long you think a child killer would in prison. The people he’d been supplying just faded into the background without trace, and the flow of child disappearances seemed to stop for a long, long time – at least, those connected to Brisneyland’s Weyrd.
Now, though, something was changing and there was a new product out there. Not child flesh, but something almost as bad. Wine made from children’s tears.
‘How many kids now?’ I asked.
‘About forty in the last few months.’
They were being sucked dry of all the tears they might ever cry, taking their ability to feel joy, compassion, pain, their ability to care, and ultimately their lives. Those tears were bottled and offered for sale very quietly by someone who disappeared too easily. All we had were stories from Weyrd who’d heard it from a friend of a friend – and a lot of missing children.
‘I’ll seek what I can find about that house,’ said Bella.
‘Houses generally don’t get registered under “super villain”.’
I was exhausted. I’d been awake for a long time.
‘Bela, I have to sleep. I’ve got nothing left.’
He nodded and rose, then he pushed me towards my bedroom. I lay down and felt him pulling my shoes off. There was a gentle kiss in the middle of my forehead and I thought I heard the front door snick shut, but wasn’t sure.
The knocking woke me. I felt sick and groggy. Swearing about Ziggi and drivers in general, I stumbled to the door.
There was a distinct lack of Ziggi. Lizzie’s mother stood there, pale and shaky against the late afternoon.
‘Mel. What?’ I managed. She looked at me with desperate hope and I just knew I was going to disappoint her.
‘Is Lizzie here? She said she was coming over to read with you.’
Little bugger.
Her voice rose, seeing my blank expression. ‘Is Lizzie here?!’