MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Six

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  For this first few, I’ve tried to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY SIX:  BEASTLY

TITLE:  LOVE FURIOUSLY

CHARACTERS:  Dave: a Bi-Curious Baseball Boy, Fever: a Shy Gay Kid / Horrible Monster.

PREMISE:  Dave is one of those bi dudes who has different things he likes in the respective genders to which he’s attracted.  He likes ladies smol and soft, men big and strong – and he hasn’t met a man yet that is hard enough to make him take a chance.  A new kid at school named Fever is a smol and soft dude who has a crush on Dave, but this must forever remain unrequited.  Until we find out where Fever gets his name…

THE HOOK:  Fever is so gentle because he repressed all his aggression into a creepy sub-compartment of his body, where it grows hotter and hotter, until he explodes into a giant burning demon.  Dave might be into it.

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Five

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  For this first few, I’ve tried to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY FIVE:  ELDRITCH

TITLE:  6 Words for Love

CHARACTERS:  Strider: a Nonbinary Computer Scientist, NCM 3.556.A: an Artificial Intelligence.

PREMISE:  Strider was a new model scientist, using tech that had gone past ones and zeros into a more abstract realm.  The early versions of this AI were trained to emulate more fully all the quirks and features of the human mind, to better understand both humans and machines.  But the project lead quickly realized the AI’s potential would be more fully realized if they created entirely novel “lobes” to the digital brain.  Scientists like Strider would theorize about different models of cognition and let the computers program themselves to emulate the theories.

THE HOOK:  NCM 3.556.A is less human than any version yet – a truly alien intelligence.  It has developed bizarre modes of thought that leave the theorists wondering what they created, or what created itself.  It seems to be trying to please Strider, to provide them “enrichment” like one would to a pet parrot, and the hapless enby takes this for love.  But then, what is love?  How many times must I reference Haddaway during this event?

 

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Four

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  For this first few, I’ve tried to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long.  You can see how the title is a little smaller than one would prefer, and lower in the composition than it should be – a good visual demonstration of the problem.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY FOUR:  OVERPOWERED

TITLE:  PANDORA ADORER

CHARACTERS:  Pandora: a Primeval Force of Nature, Christiane: a four-hundred-year-old kinda immortal lesbian.

PREMISE:  Pandora was an remnant of the divine creation of the world – a tool to generate the life that would fill the mortal realm.  If she opens her legs, monsters come out, and run riot upon the earth.  This wouldn’t be a problem, but she had a great weakness for falling in love, and wanting to bone the hell down.  She met the best lay ever in about 1650 in the Swiss Confederacy, Christiane, who should maybe be called Fistiane, if ya know what I’m sayin’.

THE HOOK:  Whenever she gets laid, manifold demons are unleashed upon the earth.  But the last thing that comes out of her is always something that will help kill those demons, if properly applied, be it a magic talisman or weapon or whatever.  This is the gift of hope.  Also, it’s the tool the lovers use to clean up after themselves, whenever they cave to their heart’s desires and get it on.  Lovers on Tuesday, monster hunters for months afterward.  Pandora’s box is overpowered, but it helps keep Christiane young.

 

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Three

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  For this first few, I’ve tried to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Probably won’t keep up the effort for long… The snowy owl on this one ended up with those lil feather “horns” that you see on other owl species, not so much in snowy owls…  whatever.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY THREE:  HYBRID

TITLE:  EMBRACE OF THE OWL BOY

CHARACTERS:  Jenny Fred: a Koyukon / Irish teen, Lemmy Reyes: a Filipino / Anglo / Koyukon teen and Owl’d Boy.

PREMISE:  Jenny is the coolest girl in school but she’s fallen for bad boy Lemmy.  Lemmy is not at all smart, and decides to steal the most expensive thing in town, to pay for their elopement, somewhere far away.  But the artifact is cursed, and he turns into a giant humanoid snowy owl -type thing.

THE HOOK:  Why must I be a teenager in love?  You know how these things go, when the genre was in its heyday.  An actor that will someday be more famous, like Michael Landon or Steve McQueen or Charles Bronson, he plays a teen that gets mutated into a monster.  The less famous girl who will one day become a tabloid footnote barbiturate OD, she is imperiled, and screams.  The authorities shoot boy as he runs away.  His body transforms back into a human shape, while she says something like, who are the real monsters?

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Two

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  For this first few, I’ve tried to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Probably won’t keep up the effort for long.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWO:  SHADOWY

TITLE:  A SHADOW OF LOVE

CHARACTERS:  Carla Butler: the Debutante, Lavonne Tipton: a The Shadow

PREMISE:  Some rich white dude found himself with the power to see what evil lurks in the hearts of mans, and sought to overcome the urgings of his own dark shadow by questing for justice.  He learned the skill to cloud men’s minds, and became something of a monster.  A monster for goodness, outside of society, fighting crime, forever misunderstood.

What he didn’t know was that being a The Shadow is kinda like vampirism.  He created a new category of creature – in himself – and ultimately passed the curse to one of his underworld associates.  Lavonne found herself seeing evil lurks and doing the mind clouding.  She came to feel that her life as a lady hustler was a disguise, an illusion, and that her true self was blasting on thugs with paired .45s.

While working the Case of the Sacred Scorpions, Lavonne encountered a lady of economic privilege, socially isolated due to being biracial in a place and time where that could be socially isolating.  Carla became fascinated, but her father was like, don’t even think about it, girl.

THE HOOK:  Too late, dad.  Carla was going to bag that Shadow, if she had to become a criminal to get her attention.  Forbidden hijinks ensue.

The Bestening

Planning on writing the best story in the world this march, for the audience of one husband.  Call this post “thinking out loud,” as I’ve been known to do on stories in the past.  I don’t know how many times I’ve done that in a blog post and had nothing come of it.  Let this one be different.

The majority of the stories he loves the most are in contemporary settings.  The grounding of recognizable reality makes the deviations from such easier to get with, makes magic feel more magical I suppose.  Gotta go contemporary.  Urban, suburban, rural?  It’s tempting when going contemporary to set it far enough back that cellphones were less universal, but I should really get with the times on this.  No narrative crutches.  People should have cellphones that don’t conveniently lose signal when bad guy is closing in.

Puts me in mind of what I was sayin’ about the soap opera bits in Twin Peaks.  I said the show within the show says something about the show, but it also invites you to become aware of yourself as watching a show.  It could make the proceedings feel false, but alternately, it could be the rope ladder that lets killer Bob climb out of your TV, become more real.  A cellphone in a story could create a bridge between maximal fakery and the mind of a reader.  Get got.

The Satoshi Kon movies and series in the big list tend to involve modern technology and media, as a springboard for shenanigans.  Gotta be careful to not go too creepypasta.  In general, that dude’s output was too gonzo for where I’m aiming to be, but there are some subtle vibes hiding in it.  The use of the real world as a foundation for surreal happenings, with a lot of depiction of the aspects of reality that don’t typically show up in our narratives – awkward insterstitial spaces and moments.

I remember how a critic who was disappointed by the lack of an overtly sensible narrative in Inland Empire said it was a “wagon train into Lynchistan” – something that can be a rewarding trip, but less powerful than your Mulholland Drives or Blue Velvets.  How did its surrealism compare with that of Eraserhead?  I dunno, been a minute since I’ve seen both.  Pretty sure I need to start it out feeling less precisely like a dream than either IE or EH.

I think about how in the things we like the most, there may be things we don’t like.  I asked my man what he liked least about Mulholland Drive and he said the scenes with side characters that had dubious relevance to the story.  Similar quibble on some other Lynch stuff, especially for the sillier stuff in Twin Peaks season 2, which may have been the influence of co-creator Mark Frost.

Just the same, I can’t help but remember how having different characters with their own lives does give you a lot more room to explore variations on your theme, and generally get more material out of your story.  Paranoia Agent, Uzumaki, and yeah, Twin Peaks, all made good use of large casts.

On the other other hand, this story is for my audience of one and the word has been handed down from god’s lips.  I may refrain.

On the other other other hand, maybe I can try to come up with a bunch of concepts for side characters and subplots that I don’t spend my word count on, just use to inform scenes that are only half-understood, and add to the surreal atmosphere.

A suburban environment, a lil PNW Gothique.  Everybody has their own personal demons, not everybody bothers to put on a brave face about it.  Black mold.  Al ColumbiaThompson’s Teeth.  Some kind of mystery shit is happening, and characters are compelled to walk that path.

This stuff almost always has miserable endings.  Hearts get broke.  Makes sense, but ehhhh  I dunno.  I don’t know.  I do not know.

At the end of Pulse, which is basically a ghostpocalypse, it seems like one character is getting away on a boat.  Surely the ghostpocalypse will catch you, but you have your moment.  Likewise Hellstar Remina – doomed survivors have a bleak moment of peace.  Wan joy.  Maybe that’ll be a fair compromise.

The other night I was realizing that I will always fundamentally be a baby, because I only ever think of baby scenarios.  Superheroes, action, SFF.  Genre fiction.  When David Lynch wrote a story, he was thinking about adult concerns – the kind of feelings you can’t cure by punching Green Goblin.  Even if I include an element of supernatural horror, which I surely will, it can’t be the point.  It’s gotta just be a vehicle for the big surreal expression, whatever that is.

Whose feelings am I expressing?  This may be something I can’t puzzle out in public.  It might be too personal.  And is it my person, or my audience’s?  I write something that reflects what I am aware of in his own feelings and struggles, and he sees something that agrees with him, is personally  moved… or finds it too painful to hang with.  I write to express some way I feel, he probably won’t relate or connect, because at the end of the day we are fundamentally different.  He is goth, I am a dork what falls in love with goths.

There’s a whole other branch of things I haven’t considered.  Almost all of these influential stories are personal or small in scope, but some do get apocalyptically colossal.  Or at least have a more grandiose scope, like Panorama Island.  Maybe I should go big.

Comments from my last article that I’m taking onboard, at least, having some version of in the background of the brain:  If powers appear, they could plausibly not be supernatural in nature.  Vast remote gothic mansion with series of vignettes or short scenarios.  Jazzlet won’t read this one.

The surreal thesis.  The big surreal expression.  What feeling am I trying to convey?  Should be something sad or huge, something we can’t escape…  Ya know, I think I’ve got it.  Again, personal.  Now, what kind of nonsense scenario would really pull that theme out and make it land like some Wile E. Coyote trap lands on Wile E. Coyote?  I continue avec mes pensamientos ahora im privat.

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day One

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  For this first one, I tried to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Probably won’t keep up the effort.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY ONE:  NAUTICAL

TITLE:  LAY HIM IN WATER LILIES

CHARACTERS:  Brother Crispian: the Exorcist, Childeric: the Faun

PREMISE:  A mysterious young dude is tempting all the men of the village into gay dalliances and then being entirely too forthright about the fact when asked.  There are hints he is a supernatural creature, up to no good.  Whatever the case, gotta put the inquisitional spurs to his pale hide.

THE HOOK:  The only way to cleanse the world of Childeric’s sin is to plant a knife in his body – representing each man he has made filthy, thus taking the sin back from them – and for him to be drowned in the river, beneath the water lilies.  So sayeth Father Auribrande.  But you really wanna put a knife in that, Brother Crispian?  Really?

The Best Story in the World

A perennial subject of discussion with my husband is that he experienced every piece of narrative art that was capable of inspiring him twenty years ago, and the time has passed, like David Lynch himself.  Now there is nothing for him but memories.  Well nerts to that, somebody oughtter make something he is capable of finding exciting and cool again.  I guess it’s got to be me.

Now I’ve tried this before.  When my dude was scoffing at the idea every story should follow nazi fan jojo campbell’s the hero’s journey™, he introduced me to some other ideas on story outlines, including a “gothic” one.  That was not about triumph, in the heroic sense (tho it wasn’t wildly removed from it either), so it fit the idea of a dark melodrama.  I took this and tried to make a story that followed it.

Thus was born Love and Torment, which languishes in about 70% done hell, with many other projects.  The problem with Liebe ist Qual is that I was still hot to make it something I can easily enjoy, so it was in a scifi / fantasy setting adjacent to Josefina y Blasfemia, lousy with super-powered fuckoes doing backflips around neon green space goblins.  (see also this story)  This is, suffice it to say, not goth enough.

He needs a serious story with believable but heightened emotions, that you cannot help but feel because they are earnest, not manipulative, and because they speak to a goth soul.  It can have supernatural stuff in it, but nothing you could imagine being reduced to a role-playing game rule system.  It should feel mysterious, ideally making you want to come to it, rather than being pushy with its narrative.  Gotta have gay dudes in it.  Mulholland Drive is one of his favorite movies ever but gaydies instead of gaydudes probably cost it some points.  In a perfect world it should have iconic stature, emblematizing itself as perfectly as the writing of Franz Kafka, or Angela Carter, or cetera.

It should have all of these things, which means suspending my ego and my desire for self-indulgence, to have a shot at tha brass ring – Best Story in the World, for at least this one guy.

I’m gonna aim to write something like that this March, for what it’s worth, but I got no strong ideas at the moment.  Anybody wanna chip in some notions?  The point of the Spooktober event is to show that ideas are cheap, and we should not have to be precious with them, but if you wanna keep it like the kaiser, fine, no advice for me.  I’ll get through on my own.  But could it be fun to help somebody write the best story that ever existed?

Some things he likes, as notions for inspiration:  Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Twin Peaks: Firewalk With Me, The Thing, Perfect Blue, Paprika, Paranoia Agent, Silent Hill Games in Order: 3, 2, 1, 4, and after that they are dead to him, Yume Nikki, Kafka’s Metamorphosis (tho he has Josef K’s dying words from The Trial tattooed on his arm) and A Hunger Artist, the goth music of The Cure, Bauhaus, and Joy Division (again with the tattoos), the movies of Kiyoshi Kurosawa like Pulse, Cure, and Sakebi, the comics of Suehiro Maruo (Laughing Vampire, Panorama Island), Al Columbia (The Biologic Show), Charles Burns (Black Hole), and Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Hellstar Remina), and some things less goth: Katamari Damacy, ’80s one hit wonders / fashion…  Maybe that’ll do for now.

If giving me suggestions for this project not so interesting, maybe just reflect in the comments on the things that are your faves of all time, and what they have in common, thematically, if anything.

Something else I wanted to mention but forgot and don’t feel like editing in:  This is similar in some respects to my notion of trying to write a christian romance.  While stories are almost invariably better if the material is something you’re super into, I still think it’s possible to make something great in a domain or circumstance where you’re not welcome, like Jewish musicians writing christmas songs.  What if I could write an amazing love story that would move hearts around the world, within the genre constraints of shit-fascist-moms-like?  Of course I like all of the things my husband likes, if differently sometimes from how he likes them, so this isn’t directly comparable.  But it’s still trying to work under a creative constraint: Don’t do something that tickles all my peccadilloes, do something for somebody else.

I won’t have as much fun as writing my usual whack shit, but it will feel very worth doing, very worth having done it.  Because my husband is not the only guy in the world who is criminally underserved by pop culture – this could work for anybody else out there who is like him, and feels the sadness of that.

JnBvtWoI II:V

For the love of hell, do not look at any news today.  In other sad things, David Lynch has passed away, and I had one thought on that.  And if you want to read this novel from the beginning, see this article, read it, and hit the next button until you see more entries.  Meanwhile…

PENCILS DOWN!!!

I did my best, but met neither goal.  I did not finish the story and did not make the word count.  Didn’t even make the humbler goal of finishing act two, because my outline sucked.  This last chapter was like pulling teeth, and was meandering anti-climactic guff.  So even though it isn’t midnight quite yet (close), I am calling it in.

37, 251 words, a few chapters shy of the halfway point in my outline.

In the astrocielo around Borland 1, spirits looked up from their meals, from their eternity of grime and desolation amid a god’s bones, to see an unusual sight.  An astronave arrived, looking like a giant spiked black iron cage, suspended by rods from a slim, gold, coffin-like shape, embossed with stylized wings.

The cage suddenly burst apart, leaving desperate terrible creatures clinging to the dangling remains of it.  The coffin casually sailed around the world then, raining beasts whenever their strength failed.  As they fell, their survival instincts kicked in, and they fled the astrocielo for physical space just before they hit the ground.

They were effectively scattered across an entire planet, most of them very far from the nearest prey.  But they had senses that defied the physics of the material, a sense of smell that could take them halfway around the world.  The hellhounds had the power to heal these physical bodies, but they would need to eat.  The hunt began.

Josefina had promised to let Mallor’s children spend time with Ombunculita, which she would have to supervise – and so that time was committed.  She changed her diaper and cleaned and groomed her, in the basin of the guest suite living room, while Darter taught Umbrifer to play an electrified string instrument on the couch.

Darter looked at her with affection just the wrong side of salacious, but quietly so.  Umbrifer could not distinguish human expressions quite keenly enough to detect it, but noticed some flavor of distraction.  “The chords, Darter.  That’s a new one for me.”

“Ugh, just feel it out.  Real close to a F major, except…”

Umbrifer played a sour note in response.  “Guess the band isn’t going to make it.  What are you thinking?”

“She’s singing something.”

Josefina was singing quietly to herself, barely enunciating most of the words, but the tune carried just far enough in the warm quiet room.

Darter said, “You know you’ve really got it when you can play by ear.  Let me.”  He took back the instrument, palm muted the strings while he felt it out, and then began to play in time with her song.

She stopped singing and looked at him, which meant Ombunculita looked at him as well.  They both smiled sweetly.

The dead boy felt his hidden eye throb.  Could she really like him?  He kept playing until she started to sing again.  Unfortunately, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t project, so the song remained so much quieter than the accompaniment.

Umbrifer said, “That’s a neat trick, friend.  I commend you.”

“Thank you.”

Ombunculita mouthed like she was singing, not even well enough to match the time or shapes of the words.  Josefina picked up her little arms and danced with her, still singing.

Umbrifer smiled weakly.  What a strange scene!  It thought again of what Josefina was infamous for, and whether there was any contradiction in who she was today.  No, it thought.  A person could be a sex weirdo at sex time, and a perfect charmer the rest of their life.

Josefina noticed the smile and returned it, which Darter noticed, making him skip a note, face terse until he sorted himself out.  Umbrifer was also distracted, worried that she was going to find it sexually appealing.  It turned its weird face around and bugged Darter about the misstep, taking the opportunity to shake up the scene.

Josefina took Ombunculita away, leaving them behind.

Darter said, “It’s your fault she left.  She didn’t like your face.”

“Maybe that was it.  Hey, how old were you when you died?”

“Um, like sixteen.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A year ago?”

“You’re still so young.  I’ve heard young humans are fools for love.”

“That’s all dead and gone, my friend.  Don’t worry about it.”

“I won’t.”

Blasfemia leaned against a water changing station in the middle of the village, trying to shake the sickness.  She’d been drinking too much; now she needed a sip to take the edge off every morning.  What a fool!  But not a lonely fool.  That seemed to be the norm for the village, especially among single youths.

Kabel was passing by and stopped to say hello.  The big lady had a way of discouraging other people, which was helpful.  Blasfemia wasn’t keen on getting mobbed.  She pantomimed the hangover, and made a production of getting her mobile out.

“Hey, Kabel.  Where can I get a little medicine at this hour?”

“Raise the wrist?”

“That’s the prescription.”

“If it’s just a little, I might have it.”

“It is,” she made praying hands around her mobile, “just a sip.”

Kabel produced a flask, and let Blasfemia wash her mouth with it.

“Do you think you’d be good to handle a gun today?”

“Hmm, yeah.  Why you ask?”

“We gotta save bullets, but we also gotta stay sharp, so there’s an allowance for practice.”

“What’s there to shoot?  Can’t imagine you want trouble with the Company.”

“Want’s got nothin’ to do with it, sometimes.”

“Alright.  What are we shooting at?”

It was a reasonable scheme to have Blasfemia to herself for a time – most of the others had burned their bullet allowance, but she still had some to spare.  She walked her past the end of the village proper, chatting lightly as they went.  They stopped at a disused algae field, only visible as odd lines in the snow, and a shack.

“So what kind of guns to you have?”

Kabel set her bundle down and unwrapped it.  There was only one gun inside.  Blasfemia had expected the blocky shape to be a case for the weapon, but it turned out to be the weapon itself.  It looked like a series of shiny silver blocks with slightly rounded edges, and the end had a very large opening.

“What the hell kind of bolt comes out of this thing?”

“Plasma.  The bullets flash to plasma in the chamber, and the pressure causes it to erupt from the front.  It’s not a very safe weapon to use, honestly.”

“What kinda risks are we talking?  They don’t explode in your hand, do they?”

“No, but when they miss, they can miss badly.  A misfire usually sends it down thirty-five or so degrees from where you were pointing it, so it’s good to keep that area clear.”

“So you can’t rest it on our cover unless you want a lap full of plasma?”

“Yeah.”

Blasfemia whistled.  “What do the bullets look like?”

Kabel had been wearing a utility harness and belt just covered in blocky pouches, and she took them off, laying them over a short length of ruined fence.  “I’ve got twenty-eight to spare.”

“Damn, girl.  You got the bombs.”

Kabel smiled bashfully and fidgeted with the belts.  “Um…  I’m really bad at this, but I have to ask…”

“What is it?”

“What the hell is that?”

Blasfemia spun to look in the direction Kabel had.  There was nothing – but a hint of tracks in the snow.

“I thought you didn’t have animals here.  Could it be a robot?”

They held their mobiles out in front of them almost like weapons, so they could keep an eye on the horizon and read each other’s words at the same time.  “Gotta be some Company shit.  It was headed to the village, and we’re all the way out here with the weapons.  I’m an asshole.”

“Call ’em up.  I’ll call my people.”

They both hit the mobiles, strapping on the bullets as they did, and at last were marching double-time back to Alish.  Running was unwise – running out of breath at the wrong moment a deadly mistake.  By the time they neared the village, they could see the big robots coming in from the other direction, and toughs in the street, brandishing identical plasma rifles.

Someone cried out from behind a building – they had found a victim.  There was no point going that way, because the toughs had found tracks, and were pointing this way and that, to coordinate closing in.  As they passed within line of sight to the body, Blasfemia shot a look that way.  Blood in the snow, but couldn’t make out anything specific.

The lines were converging on the area of the bugaster’s house.

Mallor and his wife Patria were relaxing in the master suite when the call came in.  Something that moved like an animal, heading toward the village.  They called their children’s mobiles, but were ignored.  It was likely no cause for concern – just brattiness, or forgetting to charge.  They couldn’t call Josefina because the technology of their mobiles was not even remotely compatible, so they split up, to check different parts of the grand house.  Snow began to fall, gliding off the grand domes, and the light from the heaters bloomed.

(note to future self: this is meandering too much, shoulda outlined much more specific.)

Patria met Umbrifer and Darter in the guest suite, where they had just gotten the call from Blasfemia, and were planning to ride out trouble in comfort.  She spat at them and marched away, which Umbrifer took as a threat to the hospitality they’d thus far received, and hustled after her to see if it could make nice.  Darter played a single sad chord and slumped, still bothered about the scene with Josefina.

Mallor found the children being entertained by Ombunculita in the downstairs parlor, Josefina taking a call from Blasfemia as she watched them.  She had a faraway look, not taking things too seriously?  She did agree easily to Mallor’s suggestion they all go upstairs.

Shortly, the whole family and most of the visitors were in the living room of the master suite, which had large window overlooking the village square.  They watched the gunners move through the streets.  Josefina pointed to Blasfemia, and Ombunculita pointed as well.

The village toughs had it cornered in the grand house’s back yard.  This was no garden though; it was a maze of utility sheds, storage, and machines used to support the house.  Someone called the bugaster to tell him, and they worked out a strategy.  Gunners would carefully aim their rifles so that there would be no crossfire, while covering every angle of egress from the garden.  More gunners would enter the house from the front and take up guard along any weak points where it might break in from outside.

But unless they wanted to wait however many hours for the thing to make a move, somebody would have to go into the maze to find it.

Meanwhile, Mallor and Josefina went to watch the back yard from the best window view.  Due to the thick walls, some windows were substantially recessed in them, and to get the best view, they had to crawl inside the frame, move up to the pane, and wait there.  Ombunculita put her little hands on the pane and looked, though she seemed more interested in the feel of the glass on her face.  Mallor was creeped out, but didn’t say anything about that.

“They say it killed a child, savagely.  I can imagine a killer robot, but not one that would treat a body that way.  How could it be a beast?”

“It must be from the spirit world, Bugaster.”  Josefina wouldn’t look him in the eye, but had the convenient excuse of watching for a sign of the thing.  “Many spirits are basically monsters.  Born from of all of our fears.”

“I’m aware there is a spirit world.  They all say the spirit of Borland 1 is dead.”

“I’ve seen it.  It is.”

“I’ve never heard of a spirit on Borland 1 itself.  It’s just not that kind of world, Mis Josefina.”

“Umbrifer shows that there is nothing to keep that from changing.”

As the people waited outside, Blasfemia grew impatient.  Kabel was going to share the gun at target practice, but there was no way to do that in this situation, and they had no guns to spare for her.  Rumors did the rounds on mobile chat.  It was definitely a monster of some kind, not a robot.  It killed this person, or that.  The things it had done to its victims.

Blasfemia stood up.  “If it’s just a monster, it doesn’t have a gun, so why hide under cover?  It’s surrounded, right?”

Kabel said, “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

“I’m gonna go.”

“With just your knives?”

“Yeah.  Make sure nobody shoots me.”  The fence wasn’t a barrier to much more than weak winds and snowdrifts, and she hopped it before anybody could stop her.

She made both tools into blades and kept one pointed forward and one backward as she stalked.  The natives had no experience with monsters, but Blasfemia had cut her teeth on them.

The polar regions of Corazon 2 had a weak boundary between the spirit and physical world, with “faerie paths” developing in any overgrown area from time to time.  When the more bestial sorts threatened livestock, one could try to overwhelm it with firepower, driving it back to the spirit world.  But it could potentially just come back.  Blasfemia’s talents were such that she could banish a spirit with physical harm, pin it to the material plane so that it could not escape, or just kill it outright.  It seemed like this one needed killing.

(note to future self: ooh, this is going so badly.  i swear.  wotta mess.)

“Here kitty kitty kitty!  Come and get it!”

She came out into a kill zone – an open walkway through the garden, where the thing could come at her from a half-dozen different directions.  Surprisingly, it did not opt for stealth.

In the window above, Ombunculita pointed to her, and the hellhound.

“By God,” Mallor said, “What is that thing?”

The hellhound was two meters at the shoulder, largely metallic in a way that reflected the landscape – now reflecting so much plastic and metal.  It really did look like a dog, but with more heavily built shoulders and head, and a front lip that split all the way to halfway up the snout.  It opened and closed the slit as it breathed, and the blood of its first victim trailed from its jaws.  It was definitely larger than anything Blasfemia had ever banished.

“Ooh, a doggy.  A little puppy doggy.  Come on.  Let’s go.”  She held the knives back, so that she could connect with the power of a swing – not sure how much it would take to penetrate that hide.

Behind her, looking down from the window, Josefina slapped a palm on the glass.  Two voices came to her, of Noise and Peace, saying “know thyself.”  A light bloomed from her eye, pushing her head back, blasting the air like the bleat of a huge antelope.

Mallor was shoved against the wall by the force, and when he opened his eyes, she had vanished, leaving only Ombunculita – whose eyes were glowing like twin suns, both palms on the glass.  He looked out the window and saw Josefina floating in the air, before she vanished and reappeared again, closer to the ground.

The hellhound snapped at Blasfemia, but before she could touch it, sank back to the snow, like a dog about to get hit with a shoe.  Josefina walked by, almost drifting like a ghost.

“Know peace,” she said, her voice echoing across dimensions.  She plucked the blinding star light from her temple and gently tossed it at the hound, where it landed like an anchor, pinning it to the ground by its jaw, burning its hide.

Blasfemia’s head snapped between that and the hellhound, not knowing what to make of it, but afraid the beast would shake off her power, not willing to take that chance.  She plunged a dagger into each eye, willing the creature’s death, forcing herself to think only of hatred as she did.

The emotion was key.  Her power was always intuitive, before she even understood that it was a power.  She knew that if she wanted something to die bad enough, while she was stabbing it, that was the end.

The hellhound shuddered, bleeding and burning far more than its wounds would suggest, until it shook apart, melting to nothing in the snow.

JnBvtWoI II:IV

For the love of hell, do not look at any news today.  In other sad things, David Lynch has passed away, and I had one thought on that.  And if you want to read this novel from the beginning, see this article, read it, and hit the next button until you see more entries.  Meanwhile…

The wave of destruction in the astrocielo had fully run its course, and the Celestial Hierarchy had formed ranks to restore order.  Usael was still spinning slowly, but not dangerously, and could be used as a base for the reestablished angelic host.  The spirit world of Dio 6 was already on a path to rebirth, restoration.  But what would that be without Michael in the sky?

Pontiff-Regent Michael spent his time learning as much as he needed to administer the state.  Primarily, it was the broad strokes about what the papacy even directly controlled, and which cardinal or official would be the best appointee to perform the duties for him.  But there were a few responsibilities that cold not be delegated.

He presided over one mass every day, and a high mass once every seven days.  This felt like a distraction from his most vital work, but it was also a moment of peace, an affirmation of his own faith, and he came to appreciate that – as much as the people were enthralled with having a high angel preach to them.

It also could be used as a way to get his thoughts out to the Stars of Weal, without having to specially record papal transmissions.  The news bureau could just use recordings of those masses, followed up with official statements from the College of Cardinals, clarifying any points that might be muddled.

They didn’t like having to clean up after a reckless speaker, but at least his principles lined up well with their needs.  This was about righting a grievous wrong, and restoring Heaven and the worlds to their proper order.

And this left him enough time to pursue his greatest interest – understanding the assassins.  If he could understand them, he would know how to prevent anything like that from happening in the future, and know how to most properly dispose of them – dispense the most perfect justice that he, as a lesser creature than God, could create.

There were so many odd lessons along the way.  What was a university?  What were the differing thoughts on politics, which would lead some students to radicalism?  How had he never noticed that heresies and dissenting ideas still existed, from his place in the stars?  Omniscience wasn’t what it used to be.

There was the parade.  Everyone the assassins had ever known was interviewed and interrogated exhaustively.  By the end of it all, he knew what ages they had graduated from potty-training, what breakfast foods they liked, and what words they spelled incorrectly on standardized tests.  Christina was always the most interesting to find out about, but the answers never added up to the person in his captivity.  How could one such as she have come from such simple origins?

And there was an irritant that kept coming up: the one that got away.  Investigation concluded that they had brought a fifth assassin with them to the Walled City – and that one had escaped the planet.  It was the murderous iconoclast they had broken out of prison on Corazon 2.  It was hard to get coherent statements from the assassins on her.  Xihuani seemed terrified of her, Zochino blamed her for tempting him into the assassination plot, Jorge associated her in his mind with the Mandate of Heaven but was unclear on why, and Christina was just unimpressed, thought of Blasfemia as a country bumpkin.

Christina’s opinion held the most weight with Michael, and he decided this Blasfemia must not have wielded the blade.  That could only have been Christina herself.  Yet Blasfemia was all the guard could talk about!  She had made some terrible display of herself on the tele, and tele carried more weight with the people than the life that was right in front of them.  Michael was terribly annoyed with it all.

God was, of course, on their side.  Exhaustive investigation had revealed she escaped in an astronave called the Leveret, and the College of Divination bent their best minds toward tracking that ship through time and space.  It would be found, and until then, all Michael had to do was wave off the pests when they came buzzing.

There was another issue shadowing his powerful mind.  Ever since the first day he had seen the assassins in the cathedral, he had not allowed himself to see them again.  The feeling that he had experienced that day, it had shaken him.  It was not the assassins that he feared, but the feeling itself.  Something within him would spark, would make him lose control of his psychic energy, and he did not know what would happen at that point.

At first it was just a sensible precaution, then it grew to be a great weight in his mind.  The only way to get over the fear was to just see them again – to have them brought before him, or to go to them in person – but what if the risk proved true?  At last, he realized that there was a way to handle that.  His power could be constrained by means other than his own willpower.  If he could simply limit his own power, the only consequences would be in his heart and mind.  Those he could surely handle.

And so Michael contrived a lamen to be worn upon his chest, beneath his cassock, imbued by powerful ideals with the enchantment to restrict his perceptions and powers to within his own corpus.  While wearing it, he could not extend his influence over others, which should prevent any damage to hapless bystanders, should his control slip.  The first time he tried it on, he was disappointed to find that everybody looked at him differently.  How much of their devotion came from his angelic aura?  He removed it, until next he was able to devise a way of limiting that talisman’s power over him.  A simple prayer strip could be adhered to it with consecrated wax, and easily removed when he wanted his powers suppressed.

Thus armored for spiritual battle, he went to face the one that inspired the most intense feelings in his young heart.  He flew to the hospital under the cover of night, that he would not draw a crowd there, and stole within.  The first guards that he encountered fell under his glamer and quickly took him precisely where he wanted to be.

Christina’s hospital cell was always dark.  The drugs destroyed her sense of time.  Was it day or night?  The only way to guess was how tired the attendants looked.  The window had been covered at first by simple screens, but those has since been replaced with a heavy sheet of metal carved to fit just right, bolted and welded in place so that none could get out any more than the light could get in.  The screens were still in the room, shielding various medical equipment from her eyes, glowing from wherever artificial lights touched them.  It was like being surrounded by flat ghosts.

At the door, something came over the paper doll string of guards.  Were they subtly changing, transforming?  No.  They were trembling. But their bodies stilled once more as they made way for a new arrival.

It was a pontiff!  So tall and young.  And winged?

“No.  No, no, no!  You can’t be an angel!  We killed you!”  With his powers gone, she was barely visible to him, beneath bandages and hair and tubes – she was just some thrashing pile of nothing.  Not right.

He approached her carefully, folding his wings back, arms low at his side.  “I am not the true Pontiff, though I hold his office until a proper man may be elevated.  It is true that you slew him, Christina, and his soul shall not be seen again until the End of Days.”

He could see her a little better then, leaning as close as he dared, lest his feelings return in power.  She was still slowly shaking her head, trembling.  Was it fear or disgust?  Michael felt ugly then.

Christina said, “Why are they hiring angels for this kind of gig now?  What are you, a church spirit?  Patron of the guards?  Where’d they dig you up, creep?”  Tears rolled down her cheeks.

He felt a stir of anger and stood to his full height.  “Know you that I am Michael, the Angel of God, a direct servant of your Almighty Lord.  Your sin brought me to land.  Your crime.  I merely respond to your invitation, fair Christina.”

She stopped shaking her head and looked at him with strange eyes, as if he was a dog with three heads.  “That can’t be true.  You’re up there, sleeping over the world, with your nasty dick out.”

“I walk the earth now!”  He clasped one hand over his heart and gestured desperately in the direction of the temple.  “I walk the marble tiles of that basilica, that has become the true pontiff’s sepulcher, because you made it thus!”  He came closer, not quite there, hands reaching like claws.  “Do you understand now, child?”

“Why?  Why couldn’t it be God?”

Michael remembered then her desire.  He remembered what she had done, when presented with the image of God Almighty –  reaching with fingers of unbridled malice for his sweet throat, closing hands around his neck even though they burn.  He again clutched at his heart, and knocked over screens with as sweep of the wing.

She asked, “Why are you such a drama queen?  You’re acting like a cheap tele star, bitch.”

Again, anger.  He flew to the bed and gripped the rails with his might hands, lowering his face until he could see her so close, so clearly.  His breath was hot on her cheeks.  “You mortals and your tele!  Can you not feel a thing?  Have you no heart in your chest, thou whore of the devil?!”

Christina had so often in life just reacted mindlessly to what was in front of her, used a disrespectful tongue that was faster than the leading edge of her mind.  But the reality of this monster was suddenly upon her, larger than life.  This was one of them – an angel.  It believed it was a servant of the creator of the Universe, did not realize that it was created or corrupted from its natural state by the beliefs of humans.  Essentially, it was an insane animal, with power to burn her to ash if it sneezed.

She smiled sheepishly.  “I believe.  I do.  Have mercy?  Please tell me that you have a heart!”

Michael could see her falsity, her contempt, her fear.  Why, oh why, did those poisonous traits lie behind a face so fair?  Even with all her makeup washed away, with black hair coming in beneath her heavenly white crown, countenance twisted with barely controlled mortal terror, with hatred, she was amazing.

Everything Michael had known as beauty before this, it was all statuary.  Marble edifice.  Light for light’s sake.  She was a creation divine, quickened flesh, tender and vivid, over pearly white bone.  Her eyes were the plain jelid orbs of a beast, rimmed in red, jagged black lashes like spider legs – but in that, somehow, a fascination he could scarcely comprehend.

His expression of anger softened.  He felt as if his face would fall from his body, rain down upon her, and his bones would just roll away, collapse at her feet.

And then he withdrew, like a frightened cat, fleeing the room.  On his way out the door, a feather came loose from his wings, and landed on the black and white tiles below.

The paper dolls folded back into their gate formation, and only by the sight of that feather could Christina know that what she had seen was not a dream.

EDIT TO ADD:

Michael flew to the palace, to the balcony, and to the relative privacy of his bedroom.  There he stopped in front of a full-length mirror, seeing himself as he seldom did.  What did this appearance inspire in Christina and why did he care?  He looked haunted.  It occurred to him that he didn’t know if the lamen was even working, and he pulled madly at the cassock until he could see it.  Yes, it was still there, slightly crusted with wax from the seal he had removed.

He reached for the chain, to remove it, but hesitated.  Was he in a good state to be without its protection?  Still, he felt he needed his powers just to focus on the matter at hand.  He called for a guard, and issued the order to have the palace cleared of anyone who might be susceptible to damage from his feelings.

The great angel meditated all through the night, putting his thoughts into order.  In the morning as he was headed to mass, a highly ranked guard brought him news.  The Leveret had been traced to a Heathen World, of course.  They had dared the Wall of Ice!  Fear makes the weak do strange things.

“What manner of security do we have at the Wall of Ice?  What forces?”

“The Wall is manned by few men.  More of autoesclavos, and many more of beasts.”

“Animals, in the astrocielo?”

“Monsters.  The Soldiers of Ice call them hellhounds.”

“Send these hellhounds to Borland 1, and let them know fear.  Watch for the Leveret to flee, and capture it if it does.  If it does not for a fortnight, send men to take this Blasfemia, and any who collaborate with her.”

“Yes, Pontiff-Regent.  It will be done.”