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Men will see this and think hell yeah

unattributed AI image of cats getting ripped and playing Yugioh

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I hate twitter. Should start using this site more but I don’t know how lol

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In the process of writing a new story. Never easy or fun lol. Hope to have something posted here soon

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The Coven in the Woods, pt. 3

Standing in the center of a clearing that was supposedly created by the raging fire last night, Gordon was more reminded of a meteorite impact rather than a campfire gone awry. Trees bent backwards, all in a circle. Ash was still falling from the sky, a large pile of it had been scattered all about. Gordon looked at Patrick, who had closed his eyes, his head cocked straight upward. “What do you think happened?”

“They didn’t finish.” He opened his eyes again, and turned his head to his left. “I think that they were trying to make a doorway there.” He pointed at a peculiar set of trees that were half-burnt. “And they were… doing their thing. Then someone interrupted, and paid for it.”  

Gordon took another look at the soil. “Bare Feet…” The prints were clear, and small. “How many of them do you think there were?”

“A hundred? More? Who can say… It’s too bad we can’t see the bodies.”

“Well they had to have taken them down to the city. Let’s finish up whatever you planned on doing here.” Pat looked back at him. “What?” Gordon asked.

“I don’t know if I want to get… Him involved.”

Gordon sighed, and rolled his eyes. “Well, if you don’t want to then you don’t have to. Let's just get on with it.”

Pat furrowed his brow, and scratched his head. “Let’s just talk to him…” Patrick reached for a pouch he kept in his jacket pocket. Small and made of dark leather, like a coin purse. Pat pulled a pinch of sand out of it, and sprinkled it in the air. He watched intently as it floated in the wind. 

Gordon stared at him with his arms folded. “Any luck?” He asked sarcastically.

Pat looked back at him, frowning. “This way.” He thudded along with his heavy, irregular steps, and Gordon followed far behind. 

“Is this how it normally is for you?”

“Pretty much… I’ve gotten used to it. No one takes the job seriously… I don’t think he’s far.” Pat seemed especially nervous as he talked. Gordon had apparently been the first person to believe his stories when he paid the museum a visit. Most people would come in, ask some inane question about getting abducted by aliens and make the same old jokes about ‘probing.’ Gordon was the only person to come by, in all the time that it had been open, who was attentive when he spoke about his possessions and receptive to his ideas. All the same, this excursion would prove to be a great stretch of his friends’ imagination.

“What are we gonna do if he’s not here?”

Pat peered back at him over his shoulder to answer. “Oh, he’s here…” Gordon saw that he was sweating profusely.

The rain began as Pat pulled out another pinch of the dust, keeping it in the palm of his hand. It was a light, stinging sprinkle. The sunlight from the bright morning which greeted them in the clearing had almost completely disappeared behind the clouds and the treeline. “One o’clock… Already dark as night…” Godon remarked. 

“Here.” Pat stopped underneath a massive dead oak tree. Its thick branches stretched out, like a sickening star, in every imaginable direction. The withered, gray branches twisted together like a million hands intertwined for eternity. Pat lifted up his shirt, and pulled a short-handle folded shovel out of his pants. “We’ll take turns.” He said, crouching down and beginning to wildly tear at the soil.

“Okay, come on!” Gordon threw his  hands up in the air. “You Have to be kidding!”

Patrick didn’t speak, only staring at Gordon as he threw clump after clump of dirt over his shoulder. 

Gordon covered his face with his hand, and sat down on a stump. It felt like hours passed before the old man digging the hole collapsed, lying on his back and gasping for air. He had dug wisely, and had made it about three feet in depth. Gordon watched Pat get up, still completely out of breath, shakily trying to meekly raise another pile of dirt out of the hole.

“Fine.” Gordon said. “I’ll take a turn.” The weather had become much worse, puddles of muddy water were beginning to form at the bottom of the hole. Gordon could hardly breathe, but he imagined his arms as a set of pistons, his torso as a mighty engine, and he forced his body to shred the ground out of his way.

Then the smell hit him. Sweet like old beef left in the refrigerator too long, if it was hot and all around you. It hit his stomach like a freight train, and the perfect storm brought on by the mud and the incessant raindrops pelting his hat brought it all back to him, all at once.

“Jesus, Pat…” 

“I know… Let me take over.” Pat put his hand on Gordons’ shoulder. During the war, Pat was distant and aloof, the way that an officer should be. It was only on the way back home, standing on the deck of that old steamer, that he expressed how much he cared about his boys. He kept up with all one-hundred and three men who survived by regularly writing letters to each one of them.

Gordon sat back down on the stump. His mother taught him a trick when he was going to throw up, he would hum anything that came to mind. “John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave…” He sang. 

Patrick chuckled. “I’ve got him!” He hollered. Gordon got up, and looked down the hole. He checked his watch.

“Five hours.” Gordon said. “Do you know this guy? He’s been here too long to be-”

Pat raised the shovel over his head, and swung it down like an axe. He feverishly brought the weapon crashing down again and again, and before long he had cracked open a football-sized hole into the coffin. “Wake up!” He shouted, laughing hysterically. “I need to talk to you!”

Gordon felt the urge to drop down into the hole to stop him. It was certainly wrong to stand by and let someone defile a corpse, but Gordon couldn't move. Pat curled his fingers against the edge of the hole he had made in the rotten old wood, and yanked upwards with all of his might. He sent splinters flying all around him as he ripped nearly an entire quarter of the top panel right off the ill-made coffin. 

The body had decomposed significantly, but Gordon refused to look at it. He remembered a corpse of a Frenchman that he had seen back in the day. He had been completely buried underneath the mud somehow. All you could see was an arm, his wrist twisting up and backward. He watched a rat nibble at his fingers one night, and almost got himself killed when he tried to protect the mans’ hand from the pest.

Patrick began slapping the dead man in the cheek. “Come on… I wanna talk to you! I know you’re in there!” The rain stopped like a faucet being shut off. Gordon felt chills run up his spine.

“What did you do?” Gordon shouted. Patrick pulled himself out of the hole, ignoring Gordons’ question. 

A pale figure peeked its head out from behind a distant tree. “Come on! I want to get this over with.” Patrick cupped his hands and shouted at it. Gordon grabbed his arm.

“What the fuck is that?” He demanded.

“It’s okay…” Patrick said, quietly. The figure slowly walked towards them. It was something similar to the form of a bald, pale man. Featureless, like a skeleton with a thin layer of skin draped over it. It slunk towards them shyly, but refused to come close before speaking. 

“Too long, it’s been too long.” A low, quiet voice scratched out. 

“What happened last night?” Patrick spoke up.

The creature hid behind a tree. “Cheated.” The voice changed, it was now like an old womans’. “They owe me four for last night, four for last night and hundreds more, hundreds.” 

“Just tell me about last night.” Patrick insisted. The creature stood up from the bushes, and had changed into something more resembling a man, a prisoner perhaps. Bald, covered in tattoos, it was like the creature was growing into… Gordon didn’t want to think about what was happening, but he couldn’t close his eyes. He stared at the creature, at the twisted-up face. He wanted to vomit. 

“He’s mine… and they took him to the mine, but he’s mine, and they took him… mine”

“They run the whole town, don’t they?” The creature shrugged. 

“You will know where to go, you will feel it and will know. You will find what's' mine in the mine, he’s mine and I want them all back.” It made some kind of motion with its arms, like it was draping a blanket over its body, and a black robe appeared. It completely covered the creature, with no apparent way to see out of the hood. 

The voice had changed again, to that of a sad young woman. “Patrick…” it called out. “When will I see you again?” 

Pat looked like a deer in headlights. “We can talk later… After I finish this case?”

A mans’ voice, deep and authoritative. “You promise?”

“Yes, I do.”  

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The Coven in the Woods, Pt. 2

“Must've been one Hell of a dream…” Patrick O’hallerans’ voice was run ragged from the constant chain smoking he managed to keep up during their six hour ride. Not one second was spent without a lit one hanging from his mouth. His passenger had fallen asleep in his seat about ten minutes after the car had started. Patrick expected Gordon to start his deranged sleep talking as soon as they hit the highway, he could have set his watch to it.

“How close are we?” Gordon eventually managed to speak, rubbing his eyes and hoping that they were far enough away that he could get some more rest. Blinking away the tears from yawning, he took a moment to admire the sunrise. Instead of the typical baby blue, the sky this morning was a blend of oranges and purples.

“Ten minutes, maybe less… We definitely missed it, though.” Pat never kept his eyes on the road. He was trying to meet Gordons’ eye rather than focusing on the winding, run-down path walled by ancient pines. 

“Okay…” Just as he shut his eyes again, his driver hollered. First he violently jerked the wheel to the right, and then abruptly left so hard that Gordons’ head smacked against the window. “Hey! Pay attention to what you’re doing! Are you drunk already?” Gordon obnoxiously sniffed in his direction. “I can never tell… You always stink.” 

Pat ignored him, and kept his eyes on the road. “Only one cop car. We missed the whole show.”

“It’s fine. You said you have a contact?”

“Yeah, if I can find him.” Pat pulled up next to the car, and the two saw the man leaning on a tree. “Want me to do the talking?” Their eyes met for a moment. Gordon still thought he was drunk, but as far as he knew the cops in this town were all drinking this early too. 

“That’ll probably make it easier…” People who looked like Pat always had an easier time, especially around here, than people who looked like Gordon. “Just don’t be… Crazy”

Pat nodded, raising his eyebrow. “Crazy?” He smiled, “We’ll show him crazy.”

Gordon let Pat get out of the car first, and lit his first cigarette as he watched his partner walk up to the cop. It seemed to be going well, so he got out of the car too. The big cop immediately met him with a nasty stare.

“Who’s your friend, there?” A distinct Brooklyn accent spat out the words. ‘In a place like this?’ Gordon thought to himself. The cop was even wearing the type of cap that an officer from the city would be wearing, lacking the round wide-brimmed hat that Southern cops were typically seen in. 

“He’s my assistant… We served together, in the war you know? Well, not together, but… Well, anyways, where are the park rangers, son?”

“They was the first to leave.” He said, never taking his eyes off of Gordon. “We handled everything already.”

“What did you find?”

“Three bodies…” He drug into the ground with the tip of his shoe. “They probably got drunk… Started a fire that got too crazy. We have it all under control.”

“Can we go take a look?” Godrons’ deep voice seemed to boom loud enough that the birds hiding in the pines scattered as he spoke. 

The cop frowned. “What do I care? I’m done here.” He took his time to make his way back to his car, his eyes darting from Gordon to Pat, and then back again. Gordon ignored him, walking up to Pat and leading him up the hill.

“They left the car…” A brand-new Mercedes was sitting, the passenger door still wide open, off to the side of the road.

Gordon scoffed. “Something I’ve been seeing more of these days… They leave stuff lyin’ around so they can come pick it up later. No one makes a report on anything, and they just come by later to pick it all clean.” Patrick eventually began to take the lead, looking upwards in the trees. “Do you… Feel anything?”

“No… But I think I hear it.” He felt for the medallion hanging at his collarbone. “I doubt that they were able to finish.” Gordon loved the geography of West Virginia, but wished he could depopulate it of all the people who lived there.

The changing of the seasons reminded him of all the beautiful things his mother would tell him about God. It was like his hand had come down from heaven, and painted every leaf by hand so they could be maximally pleasant to the eyes of his favorite creation. 

However the people who lived here had never shown him anything except for scorn. Patrick had dragged him here after the war. ‘Fertile ground’ he had insisted. From the perspective of their fledgling business, it certainly was. Yet he found nothing to spend his money on except for run-down bars and dingy diners.

“Looks like they really stopped giving a shit today…” Pat mumbled. “Look here.” The footprints had all been muddled together. Perhaps a dozen officers had walked over one another's' tracks, had completely ruined the evidence left by whoever was the first to arrive, and had left paper coffee cups and cigarette butts strewn about. Patrick walked in circles, eyes locked onto the ground, around and around, looking for the original track or simply scrutinizing the sloppiness of the local police.

Gordon opened the door to the Mercedes, and began to search for any identification. Hardly anything had been left in or on the car except for the license plate. The drivers’ side tire had popped, and when he opened up the glovebox he found absolutely nothing. A small center console was also empty. He checked the trunk, even the engine compartment. No registration, insurance, owners manual or any piece of paper anywhere at all. 

He walked away from the car. Pat had wandered off, the cop finally drove away. Gordon looked around one last time, he tried to catch his breath. It was impossible. He couldn’t quite make it there, all the way to filling up his lungs to a satisfactory state. It was never enough, even when he was standing still. He found himself, for almost two minutes, standing completely still and staring off into space.  

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The Coven of the Woods, pt. 1

“A gold watch? So what?” Two clean-cut men were patiently waiting atop a foggy hill, surrounded by gargantuan trees.

“Well, it’s from him, and I suppose that’s worth it…”

“To quit smoking?” Both were drawing as much of the poison gas as possible while waiting. “Besides, you would have to be one of his best friends. He would only give you the watch if he’s annoyed by you in particular smoking in his presence. How do you suppose I go about getting close enough to him that- “

“It would be nice… that’s all.”

“So what, we don’t pay you enough? Save up for your own Rolex.” The gray-haired man held on to his ancient pocket watch, tapping his foot in frustration. “How much longer do we have to wait before we-“

“There, look.” About a quarter-mile down the road, the glow of a pair of headlights gently peeked through the branches. It was the first car to come down the road in hours.

The younger, shorter man pulled out his gun. 

“What are you doing?”

“What if it isn’t them?”

“Then you’re being even more stupid, put it away!” They stamped out their cigarettes, and hid themselves in the nearest bushes. 

As the squeaking of the breaks came to an end, one of the men in the car pressed on the horn for a half-second. A door swung open and the strangers could be heard shouting at one another. The men in the bushes gave each other a quick nod, and made their way towards the parked car.

“Shut up! Why are you making so much noise?” The old German tried to whisper and shout at the same time.

The strangers matched his tone, the first to speak was a tall German who barely understood English. “He doesn’t know where we are!”

An obnoxious southern drawl replied “Well we’re here, ain’t we?”

“No more fooling around.” The oldest German spoke up. “We have waited here long enough. Take us to the… camp. Whatever you call it.”

“But they’re havin’ their meetin’ right now, I-“

“You what?” The driver squeezed the Americans’ arm.

“I showed ya where it is… I can’t go up there, I-“

The old German poked the American in the chest violently, his voice taking on a disgusted tone as he remarked “You are an undercover homosexual, a member of an illegal terrorist organization, an elected representative who openly is addicted to drugs and to the solicitation of prostitution. I know everything about you, Herman, and I will tell the world all of it. I will send the photos to-“

“All right!” He shook his hands violently and began to panic. “All right I’ll show you, but we can’t let them see us.”

Now it was the old man who drew his gun, pointing it at the Southerners’ stomach. “You’ll do what I tell you. Get moving”

Shaking and quietly crying, he led the others towards the area he guessed was the spot where the bonfire would be held. Every time he took a quick glance back at the Germans, his eyes met the barrel, and it seemed like the one who was holding it would make a quick motion with it. ‘Eyes forward’ he was seeming to say.

At one point, the tall one lit a cigarette. Herman whipped his head around, and begged the man to put it out. “Be quiet!” The gun was brought to his temple, he turned and kept walking. 

The first sounds they could hear were something like a howling laughter. A scream rang out, the sound was like that of a wounded deer miles away. The Southerner tried to slow down, and the old German had enough.

He grabbed Hermans’ left wrist, and twisted it up and behind his body. The barrel of the gun pressed into his ribs. “No more joking around… get moving!” He had brought his lips right up to the man’s ears. After twisting his arm a little more, he pushed his victim to the ground when he let out a yelp. “Get up!”

They were close. Evidence of an active Coven were all around them, filling the air. Crying hysterical laughter, the distinctive sound of women singing and chanting and occasionally belting out blood-chilling shrieks of either joy or horror.

He pressed on, until he was stopped by a small cliff about eight feet in height. When the southerner reached it, he paused. His sheepish eyes stared at the old, veiny hand that tightly grasped the firearm pointed at him. 

One of them leapt up the ledge with ease, stretching his arm out to grab at the collar of the Southerner. He reluctantly climbed up, needing to be pushed by the pair beneath him in order to haul his body up and over the rocks. As soon as he could stand, he was shoved again, and told to make his way towards the fire. 

There was no mistaking it now, it was all around them. The noise drowned out their thoughts, and gradually the sounds of pleasure that could be heard before seemed to change into cries of pain and fear. 

Herman took slow, tentative steps. No one bothered to correct him. He could see the glow from a fire tall enough to pass as a burning house. He peeked over his shoulder, and the sharp face of the tall German was so close to his that he could see the beads of sweat dripping down his face in the darkness. 

He blinked away the tears, forcing himself to take in the unworldly sights as he forced his way through the brush. Perhaps a hundred women were present for the bonfire. He could see dozens of them laying on the ground, bodies twisted together like so many pretzels, sweating and writhing about like thousands of maggots gorging themselves on a corpse. Some of them ran in circles around the massive fire, jumping up and down and screaming. Others simply sat on their knees, staring directly upwards in a trance. The metallic smell of blood filled the air. 

A twig snapped, and each head instantly twisted about. What felt like a thousand pairs of eyes fell on the men hiding in the bushes. Only now could they see the twisted, inhuman faces. The pitch-black eyes, and the aura of fear which they could easily create. The men froze, and silently stood still as the women slowly approached them. Not a sound was heard for hours afterward.

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Hit a pretty bad wall for a while now. Gonna try to dog myself out of it to get something new done, but it will probably still be a bit before I get a new story done

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Working on a new short story, hoping it will be done soon

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We do almost everything in an old-fashioned way on the ship. When they built it they wanted things to be familiar, for people to get comfortable. The government also had the aim of encouraging people to go outside more than they had in the years before we left Earth, they said they wanted it to be “more like the twentieth century.” I don’t think it worked. We have bars and movie theaters like they did, but sometimes the only customers are robots. They find that kind of stuff quaint, I suppose.

Technically I’m not a cop. “Community Safety Officer” was the actual name of the job, since generalized police officers had been phased out in favor of unarmed civil servants with specialized tasks. I was armed, but only due to the recent uptick in violent anti-robotic activity over the last few months.

Last night I was reprimanded for allowing two of the robots to duel one another at the ball I was running security for. One of them had offended the other, and they were both brought an ancient flit lock pistol, firing at one another the way two rich people might have done five hundred years ago. Because no one’s life was taken, since the robot who lost would simply be replaced, I didn’t think it was necessary to charge the shooter with a crime. My overseer disagreed.

It was an enjoyable assignment. They organized a dance in an old attic they renovated to resemble that of an 18th century chateau. Cramped together, a hundred robots twirled in pairs. Many more mingled together, chatting and pretending to drink champagne. An ensemble band of twenty synthetic musicians played Tchaikovsky with mathematic efficiency. The tin men wore the deep green uniform of old Russian soldiers, the women adorned in white puffy dresses typical of the period.

I know that a lot of people get really worked up about the robots, but I can’t find any reason to be bothered by them. In fact, I enjoy their company quite a lot. Of course I find displays like this to be somewhat strange, but many of the robots have taken the time to remind me of an ancient human tradition called “historical reenactment” that was popular among some older people before we left Earth. Instead of plotting out a battle from American Civil War, they preferred to spend their free time indulging in the antiquated finery that we humans chose to give up a long time ago.

Besides, they provided everything for these occasions out of their own pockets. They paid my salary, stuffed my hands with tips, and usually went out of their way to hire humans to preform any task that they were available for. The only problem was that no human wanted to be a waiter, dishwasher or janitor anymore. Yet they still complained whenever they saw a robot hire another robot for a job.

The Biological League were the silliest bunch of people I’ve ever met. They were the ones who were supposedly “standing up for my rights as a worker” when they tried to shut down events like these. I remember the day they decided to shift away from that kind of talk. I was sitting in a bar, I was a lot more stupid when I was that age, and I was watching the trial of that bot who stabbed a man. Apparently the guy was trying to steal some clothes off of the robot. The robot said he was wearing new boots and that the man demanded he take them off.

The robot was a woodcarver who made toys and figurines and statues that were fairly popular. That day he accidentally kept a tool in his pocket from the shop, something that looked like an ice pick. This became the central thesis of the prosecution’s argument. “No robot does anything on accident. It is impossible for them. We submit that the defendant simply having this item in his possession is enough to prove premeditation.”

The defense objected that their expert witness, who had testified in a hearing I hadn’t seen on TV, “provided clear evidence that the current capabilities of the machines is much more impressive than what the prosecution claims. These modern marvels develop complex personalities based on their experiences with humans, and through the consumption of human culture. This process is so refined, that were it not for legislation that demands the robots retain their current appearance, they could not be distinguished from humans without blood testing or surgical examination.”

All in all, the robot was found not guilty due to self-defense. My reaction was astonishment, I remember shouting at the TV in the bar like it was a fucking sports game. It’s embarrassing to think about those days. Eventually the League rallied behind the family of the dead man. “No robot has the right to take the life of a human.” Became their new message. A general rollback of their rights, with the outward stated goal of “limiting the role the machines play in our lives.”

Not much changed with the case, however it did reaffirm the fact that robots were legally protected in the same way as humans. This wasn’t even fully true. They paid taxes at a rate nearly double that of humans and were banned from representing themselves in Congress or any job that was political in nature. They chose to be doctors, were banned from being lawyers, were forced to become accountants and bankers, and were randomly drafted to take breaks from their normal jobs in order to preform manual labor.

But they never complained. Not publicly, and not ever to me directly. Even when humans spied on them, it could never be proven that they had some kind of rebellious intent or animosity towards humans in any private conversations they recorded. I knew this instinctively, because if even one robot could be proven to be a genuine murderer, I would see it on the news every second of every day. The government might even get up off their asses and pass a law to do something about it.

Back then I believed a lot of the things that “pro-human” organizations said. But when I went to a job center for the first time, I realized it was all bullshit. Rather than “stealing our jobs”, the bratty little man at the center explained to me that I could have my entire education funded by the state if I promised to become a doctor. “Too many people are getting into the hospital or going to their personal doctor, and they keep complaining that the nurses and sometimes even the doctors are ‘being replaced’ by robots. We can promise over 1.25 million a year in salary for your first five years, and after that you can-“

The only thing I had any interest in back then was music. I asked him if he knew any jobs that I could get playing piano, and he shrugged his shoulders. Instead of replying, he handed me a thick brochure titled “Helping us Help You” and stood before saying “just holler if you need anything.” His smile really pissed me off for some reason.

I left without taking any job. I survived off of the checks they pay everyone because of “overproduction” brought on by the robots. It’s enough for no one to ever need to work, but people get restless. Some want to just make more money, I just wanted something to do. I tried finding somewhere to at least make a few bucks playing the piano but I just found myself getting nowhere. Composition wasn’t my thing, and I’ve never been able to concentrate on playing for hours straight.

Eventually I saw a poster that said something about “helping the community” and I looked into it. “Synthetic Patrol?” I asked the guy taking down my information. “What kind of trouble can they be up to? Armed? It says these guys have guns?”

He looked like a soldier from a 1950’s movie. “Yeah, they get guns, but it’s not what you think. See, the rich robots like doing a lot of fundraisers and other B.S. stuff that they want security for.”

“But it’s not like they’re worried about a fight breaking out, right? No drunk machines getting dragged from the open bar, and kicking and screaming and shit?” I felt hot all over when I laughed a little too hard at my own joke, and saw that the other guy wasn’t laughing at all.

“Um… no. Not like that.” He turned his computer monitor around. He had pulled up an article on the screen titled “Twenty Robots Shot at Music Festival, Only One Survives.”

“Why the would anyone do that?”

“You haven’t seen this shit?”

“I don’t really read the news.”

He made a smug look and said “well, you should.”

In my training, it was all about helping the community. Keeping them safe. I agreed with everything they said. Of course it was wrong for them to have to worry about getting shot in public. They might not be alive like you and me, but they don’t want to stop existing. They treat the idea of getting “killed” as though it’s a horrifying thing, and it’s not like they have their consciousness uploaded into a new body. When they get destroyed, that’s it. One bullet to the head or the chest, and they don’t exist anymore.

But I think I’m going to retire today. I was sitting next to a flower bed. Cigarettes are illegal so I have to be careful who sees me smoking. I had a scoped rifle, and all humans were strictly banned from entering the plaza. “Any Violators Will Be SHOT.” I thought the sign was enough.

No humans showed up, but some rat bastard planted a bomb. It went off as they were all listening to a speech from one of their union organizers. Two hundred and fifty of them died, and I failed them all.

I’m done writing about it for tonight. I’m out of vodka anyways.

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I have part 3 of my main project done. Editing is gonna be a nightmare

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My newest story is gonna be very long. Right now it’s looking like it’ll be at the low end of a novel (probably 50-70k words when it’s finished). The very first, roughest draft is probably halfway done.

Hoping to have this out next month or so

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The Scripture of the Word, First: 'All language is based on meat. Do not let the sophists fool you. '

-Sermon 27, The 36 Lessons of Vivec

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I made a twitter for updates on the progress of the project I’m working on, it’s definitely gonna take longer than I expected. @GutsGangg

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For anyone still interested in this page, I have not abandoned it. Without spoilers, I will say that the first stories I posted were intended to be connected in a series I will update in the future. For now I’ve been working on a larger, three-part short story set in a fantasy setting. I’m hoping to get the first part out by the end of the month.

Thanks for stopping by my page, hope you stick around to see what’s next for me here

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Dear [redacted],

I’m sorry for not writing to you sooner. I haven’t had the time or the supplies until now. I’ve gotten all of your letters and I hope this one can get to you in only a few days. You asked me how I liked Britain. I’m assuming you meant, how did I enjoy my time here before I had to come to the island? Well, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. The village they put me in was quiet, small and rather nice. It rained at every waking moment. I feel exceptionally gloomy here, without you and the kids it feels like years have passed already.

I have to put a lot of faith in our suits, and in Dr. Halligan. He was my boss’s boss, back when I worked for the University. I’m not sure if you met him before or not. I suppose that he has to trust me a lot too, because if I make any mistakes I’ll get him killed. I could easily understand how anxious he might be working with a guy as young as I am. I think that he respects me a lot for volunteering though. And now that we’ve worked together this long and this closely - having to rely on each other this much, I think he’s built up some kind of mutual respect towards me.

He and I live in a facility, quarantined from one another at all times, that basically feels like a lab that you have to live in. I’m trying to make it as homey as I can but it’s not much use. They didn’t let me bring any personal items with me onto the island and I obviously can’t have anything brought to me from the outside here. They actually did install a little library with a good number of books, and there is also a laptop here but it has pretty heavily restricted access to the internet. Honestly, I’m scared to look up any news about the whole situation because I know they’ll get rid of me the second they think I’ll go to the media or the Russians or whatever.

Honestly it’s more work than I’ve ever had to do before. We work 8 hour shifts, from 9am to 5pm, and we can only be outside of the facility for 30 minutes at a time. Bob runs off and does his own thing for his bit of time, but I have to go and document the decomposition of all 57 bodies every single day. Just getting good pictures of all 57 is difficult as hell, and they’ve really been on top of me when it comes to hitting my deadlines on the reports. I can tell you that if I get contaminated I’m going to hang myself. I won’t go through what these people have, and I definitely won’t bring one microbe of this back to you.

The suits are able to protect us, 100% of the time with 100% effectiveness, but if we stay outside for too long the gas gets the suits so contaminated that they can’t be used again and the process of sanitizing them becomes “unrealistically expensive”, as I was told. All of my notes are kept in a house in the middle of the tiny village, and I use a phone they gave me to send my pictures on to the computer. 30 minutes to check the bodies, 30 minutes to get back home and get clean, and to make sure your suit is in perfect shape, and back out for 30 more minutes. Then when I get back it usually takes me six hours to get all of the reports done.

There is going to be a cleanup someday, but no one is ever gonna be able to live here again. Nor will they want to, once everyone understands this gas and how stupid the human race was for making it. They told me it would be livable here again in a year’s time but I don’t believe it at all to tell you the truth. This gas seems to be more “sticky” than any I’ve ever heard of. It gat grow spores in your clothes and can spread them everywhere, and you can he infected for weeks before you show any symptoms.

It’s been very bright for the past few weeks, but unbelievably cold. I absolutely despise being outside, now. Gray rocks, nasty slushy rain, always overcast… being surrounded by the sea is nice though. I spend some time every morning just watching the waves crash against the rocks, and I imagine myself as an old lighthouse keeper. I do my best to keep my mind on better, less complicated times. I envision myself, bearded and old, living off of rationed supplies and spending all my free time just trying to keep sane. It’s just another daydream I use to keep my mind busy.

The cat they sent me is Russian, they said. Gray, with long fur. I named her Dasha. I admit, I talk to her when I’m quarantined in my room for the 16 hours a day I’m not working. You know how I am. So after all, you probably expect to hear that I’m still not sleeping. Every night I maybe fall asleep for about an hour, but it’s hard for me to say. I’ve done a lot of reading, like you recommended. The tablet you sent me has been put to extreme use. I have to get every book pre-approved , though. Somehow [redacted] made it on to the banned books list.

The part of this letter I’m dreading to write about the most is also probably what you want to hear about the most. The job isn’t fun at all, I tell you. It’s obvious that everyone died painfully. The bodies are skeletons now but I have had to document their decomposition with painstaking detail over all of this time. Re-visiting the same faces and watching them rot away. And the island is nothing but gray rocks and dead grass, and it rains every fucking day all day. It’s been difficult.

I’ve been trying to keep up my habits as normally as I did before I left home. I’ve got complete internet access, and I’m too scared to know what they’ll do if I look anything up about this place and what’s going on out there. I have been playing a lot of video games of course. I made progress with the city we built last winter, I hope you don’t mind. You can see what I’ve done if you log in to my account on the computer at home, the password should be saved. I know it’s hard, going from seeing one another every day and having phones to feeling like a couple from the 1950’s writing handwritten letters to each other, but there’s something nice about it too.

I’ve been promised compensation when I come back. I worry that I’ll come home sick from all this. Some unknown illness will take me 20 years from now or something. But as long as I don’t get anyone else infected, I don’t really care. The settlement I was promised in the case of my death is insane. You and the boys would be alright forever.

I do feel as though it’s my duty to be here. As far as I know, few people are as qualified as I am to do this. Bob is running an inspection on the site’s computer systems. One time he did tell me that the problem was inexplicable because “there were not supposed to be any computers there that were connected to the internet”, and he hasn’t found any evidence that there were. So whereas he’s stuck and getting more frustrated by the day, I just feel a gloomy sense of duty to keep on keeping on. What choice do I have? Without this level of documentation, we can’t properly convince the rest of the world to cut this shit out.

Worst of all though is the dread in my heart that tells me it won’t be enough. The pictures I’ve taken are too graphic for the public to see, and I’m positive that my testimony is going to be doubted and challenged. Half the country has already made up their minds about it, and I’m not stupid enough to think I can change the minds of stupid people.

Don’t believe anything you read or see until I get home and I can explain everything. Some of the stuff you’ll hear is definitely going to be true, but there’s a lot of speculation out there. I do believe it was the Russians but [many sentences redacted].

Lastly, I’ll tell you about the most sinister theory of all. I think that the government gave me this cat specifically so I would grow attached to it. So now that I have to rely on it for my own sanity, any minuscule mistake that I make in keeping myself decontaminated would result in her death a lot quicker than mine. That’s one piece of information I’m positive I’m allowed to tell you; the gas kills animals a lot quicker than it kills humans. They brought her here to be a canary in the coal mine. If she dies in screaming agony I have no way to help her, and then I have to sit here and wait until the microbes I forgot to kill with the sanitation process reach my brain and cause me to spasm until I die. I watch it happen every night in my dreams.

I’m sorry to worry you, I just need someone to understand what it’s like here, what I’m going through.

I love you [redacted], six more months and I’ll be back home.

P.S. Any updates about our crazy neighbor?

[gutsposting]

Sent to the New York Times, roughly 30 years after the trial

July 12

My  real name is unimportant, but you can call me Francis. I’m putting this in writing, hoping that my knowledge can be preserved and shared amongst others.

Every. Single. “Fact”. You. Learned. In. History. Class. Was. A. Lie.

The “microchip” was invented in [redacted] by the Soviet Union, and was very quickly adopted and abused by CIA ghouls, who knew how to use this invention much better that their Soviet counterparts.

The supernational government which actually runs the world realized from the moment of my birth the threat which I posed to them, and so I served, unfortunately, as patient zero for their twisted hypnopedia program.

You should not delude yourself that, because you may be reading this and may have been born before [redacted], that you are immune from the effects of this disastrous social experiment. All of you have been replaced with a sanitized version of yourselves. If you had not been replaced, you would be in a mental institution, a prison, or in self-solitude like I have been. For my own sanity, the time to keep the road to salvation locked up in my own mind is over. Mark this day on your calendar, because the day that you read and understand and believe this information is the day that your life begins to make sense.

If you have ever felt as though you are being watched, experienced minor auditory hallucinations, or have had so-called delusions of being stalked by numerous, random actors, know that your biological mind is not to blame.

Depending on a wide range of factors including your demographic information, your class, your position in society, your base level of intelligence, your likelihood to tend towards rebelliousness and billions more, your brain is either made up of (10% to a range exceeding 90%) a synthetic substance designed to perfectly mimic gray matter which is, in reality, an impossibly complex chain of microscopic machines which work in tandem to create an information matrix which you call your “personality” or “consciousness” or “self”.

The process is gradual, and obviously unnatural. Empty-headed zombie puppets of the system will enter your home at night using copied keys they are legally required to own, and will steal you away. Before you were ever born you were preprogrammed to lie back and accept their actions, to forget the process and to repress any potential memories of it. The system is so sophisticated that it has invented a defense mechanism against your recollections of these, sometimes nightly, occurrences; “alien abduction stories” are well-known, and  regarded as cooky conspiracies or fanciful hallucinations, but are in actuality a victim of indoctrination remembering the process of their own replacement in bits and pieces.

There is no escape, or even any hope for any of you buffoons. Tomorrow morning you’ll forget that you ever read this. If not that soon, then in a year’s time. You have been trained to block these concepts from your mind. 

The first time I ever realized that I am a true genius, and understood how I was seeing the world for what it was, I was about 12 years old standing in a grocery store. If you are intelligent, you can do it too. Just stand in the middle of any store and close your eyes. Listen to them, they are telling you exactly what they want you to do over the loudspeakers.

Not aliens or gods or hallucinations. The enlightened ones are giving you the illusory choice to opt out of their control, so that they can convince you that your are a free agent making these decisions on your own. Everything they do to you is a choice, something that you have chosen to do to yourself. They tell us our organs ate replaceable so that they can stop our mechanical hearts and warp our electronic minds.

They hate us so deeply that they make movies that mock us, they introduce into the public consciousness the concept that only animalistic insane people are spreading these kinds of ideas. They want you to believe that, standing on every street corner, is a man not worth listening to. In all likelihood, however, he has simply remembered the trauma that has been imposed upon him by our governments. 

January, the year [redacted], they kidnapped me with the intention of taking me to the moon. I was trying to see my sick mother in New York and they rerouted my flight to Denver while we were still in the air. When we were landing I could see the men in black suits like the secret service standing in a half-circle on the runway where the ladder was supposed to meet the ground. I hid in the bathroom long enough that the plane just took of again, and I ended up in Cincinnati. 

The moon landing of ‘69 is fake in the sense that, while they did land on the moon and televised it, they hid from the public the true intention of the program. Rather than a short, purely scientific venture into the great unknown, it was an international plot to create a supergovernment which would have its capital in the city of Luna on the moon itself. They want to keep me there forever because my brain is perfect.

I still do a lot of hitchhiking to keep away from them. Last time I did, I remember being in a hotel and having daydreams of sitting across the TV announcer and finally getting my chance to share all of this to the world. Later I tried building a computer that would hijack the waves and transmit my message onto every television in a certain area, but that went nowhere. I can sit and think this stuff up for days straight and no rest.

If you want to be like me, you have to stay vigilant at every single moment of your life. Even your dreams need to be centered around the system. For example, just take a look at your government issued identification and look for instances of the letter “C” or “L”, repeat numbers like “6” or “7” (which are by far the most lethal letters and numbers one can be given), and watch everyone all if the time from bank clerks to backroom cooks. 

I can bring everyone to the promised land if they would allow me to. But neither you nor I possess the ability to protest or to boycott. I’ve tried getting the genetic material of the machines out of my food, but it isn’t possible. Even if you grow a garden in your own backyard, they will come at night while you are sleeping and replace your vegetables with fake ones. It’s unavoidable.

But now I have everything that I need besides money. Send anything you can to the address on the envelope, it’s vitally important that I be given the resources to continue my research and to spread this literature as far and as wide as possible so we may all have a chance.

If you want to be saved, then begin to listen. If you want to be heard, then let me speak for you. I am not crazy, in fact I am the most sane man in the world. The one and only person truly prepared to face reality, and to say it like it is.

[gutsposting]

Found in a file labeled "Initial Incident"

Before you lies a visage of death. An unnaturally large man, rotted away and hollowed out. The organs are dust, the bones cracked and withering. The body is without flesh or form. You look inside the rib cage, upwards towards the heart. It lies still, incomplete.

A bubbling, boiling pool. Microbes Invisible to your eye. You perceive them within it, the organism begins to take form. The cells split, absorb smaller beings and feed off of their energy. The desire to consume others in order to survive is created, and evolution unfolds before your eyes. Millions of years flash past you, the writhing and the screaming. 

The heart flickers…

December the eighth, 1941. Tecumseh island, a rather peculiar place to begin with, received an unexpected visitor. Visitors here were always unusual. The island possessed a very difficult dock located in shallow waters infested by coral, and no air strip. With only about 385 inhabitants, those coming to the island were always expected. Always a welcome family member or old friend. 

Sometimes, roughly once every five or ten years, a British or Dutch family would leave one of their homelands’ colonial possessions in order to seek out a quieter life in the paradise of Polynesia. Demographically, the island was about half European, thirty percent African American and the rest being a mix between Polynesian natives or Japanese immigrants.

Today’s guest was especially noteworthy. A plane was seen at about 5:30am crashing downwards towards the sandbar located just a few hundred feet off the Northern coast of the island. 

A crowd formed without a word needing to be spoken. A well-known old widow began to cry out “Jackie’s out there! Jackie! Someone go check on her! Please! You there-“. A group of men, not knowing about the girl’s decision to swim out to the sandbar in order to go fishing, had already found a rowboat, oars, a rope and gathered up some weapons. Everyone seemed to ask for Sheriff Grady all at once.

They found him on the radio, with tears in his eyes. He was the first to tell everyone about the attack on Pearl Harbor that had occurred yesterday morning. It was very difficult to get in contact with anyone off of the island, and news traveled slowly. A few of the men in the crowd, ready to take on the stranger who had landed on their island, were Japanese. Trust was thrown out of the window right away, and they were quickly told not to leave the island, or even the town. 

Only one man, known throughout the town as Mr. Yoshi, was fluent in both Japanese and English. He was given the unfortunate task of translating all of the orders from the whites to the rest of the Japanese inhabitants. He had brought with him a baseball bat, and appeared ready to kill the man in the plane, but his weapon was swiftly confiscated. No one on the island wanted anything to do with any of the Japanese residents now, even those who were born on the island and lacked little known connection to Japan or their “native” culture.

Mr. Yoshi gave up his baseball bat, but was very clearly annoyed when Mr. Grady told the other men that he allowed to come along that “you can’t never trust them yellow bastards.” Grady told them how they held competitions in China over how many prisoners they could execute by beheading in a minute. How they’d pile up the heads to see who could make the biggest pile the fastest. By now, most people in the crowd were screaming and crying over the attack on Pearl. The rage growing within the town itself was growing in a way that everyone could physically feel, like magic.

Round spectacles hid a pair of sad old eyes. Yoshi wanted to rip the man in the plane to pieces. He wanted to show his friends that they were wrong for doubting him and the Japanese neighbors Yoshi had met here. Over time, he had been able to convince one or two people that he was here with good intentions.But there was nothing he could have done in order to make the whites trust him, war or no war.

Dan McGraw was the most vocal racist on the island. He demanded that Grady either arrest Yoshi, handcuff him, or leave him on the island while the rest of the men captured “the Jap” and brought him back for interrogation. Grady refused.

“Yoshi can understand him. And if the pilot isn’t Japanese then we won’t need a translator anyways. Nobody got a good look-“

The old woman was screaming again. She had found the small crowd of men on the shoreline surrounding a rowboat, and the cries of “Jackie! Jackie!” Whipped all the men up into a new frenzy. One of them started shouting about Nanking, started saying that the son-of-a-bitch would be raping the girl if they didn’t get there soon.

OSS later reported that the following men were on the boat that initially met the assailant; Sheriff Grady Brown, Dan McGraw, Yoshi (surname redacted), Bonnell Quaid, Lenny Callahan, and Jordan Freeman. Grady Brown was an oddity for the area because his father was a Black Frenchman, and his mother was a young Polynesian local. Nobody was entirely sure how he got his position, but even the white trash McGraws and Fosters tended to turn a blind eye towards having him as sheriff,  even after seeing him remove every vestige of segregation throughout the island.

Grady was the only one who owned any guns on the whole island. An M1911 that he said he had taken as a souvenir from “the war” was all most people knew about. Some people didn’t believe all of his fanciful stories about combat in France, but he did have enough pictures of himself in uniform to prove it. He also had a gun case in his office which held a shotgun and enough rounds for Grady to take out the whole town.

The men all crammed themselves onto the tiny boat. The Sheriff, sensing the tension in the air, took almost all of their weapons away. Only Freeman was allowed to keep his baseball bat, because he was middle-aged and Grady trusted him. The rest were told that they would help Grady deal with whoever was in the plane, assuming he was Japanese. Secretly, they were all wishing it was an American pilot knocked unconscious. 

Expecting the worst, Grady would stand back just a bit away while the rest of the men held him down so Grady could handcuff him. If he went for a gun, or the sword that they all imagined him carrying, Grady would shoot him, and call for the navy to come pick up the body and the plane. 

Yoshi politely requested that, if he wasn’t immediately hostile, they give him a chance to communicate with the man and allow him to come quietly. Grady obliged him, although the others grumbled. McGraw said “You probably have some kind of  plan you want to work out with him.”

“No, I want to see if he will surrender. He might come willingly … we don’t need to kill him”

“Japs don’t surrender.” Was the cold reply.

As they approached the sandbar, they could see the smoke from the wreck coming up above the treeline. Flames were licking here and there, only visible through the gaps in the palms. Jackie was standing on the beach apparently unharmed, shivering and waving her arms over her head. The Sheriff gave her a blanket, and asked what happened while he led her to the boat.

“I was just out fishin’” she began, “and then the plane just fell out of the sky. I didn’t wanna go near it for a while, but when I walked up to it I could see that the guy in there was dead or somethin’.” Grady told her to stay in the boat, and the men huddled together.

“ If he’s dead,” Grady began, “then this is as simple as can be. You and you pull him out, and then we call in the nearest ship and it’s out of our hands from there. If he’s breathing then I want you and Dan to pull him out of there while Freeman and I watch him for some kind of trick. And if he’s awake, Yoshi can try and reason with him.”

They all agreed. “We stick together.” Grady reiterated . “If we get to the plane and he isn’t in the cockpit, we get back on the boat and we leave. We don’t want to tangle with him now that he’s had time to set up a trap or a radio beacon or a who-knows-what.”

They approached the brush shoulder-to-shoulder, with Yoshi forced to stay a few paces behind and Quaid ordered to stay with the boat and the girl, creeping their way towards the wreck.

Still aflame, but not spreading fires or being too unmanageable to get near, the plane was very much unlike what Grady had expected it to be. He had read a story in the newspapers he got shipped to him that taught you how to spot a Japanese plane. Mostly he remembered the distinctive Mitsubishi Zero fighters that were the most common type seen in the war Japan was fighting in China. They were almost always painted white, with huge red suns painted on the wings and tail.

This plane was painted matte black, with no insignia or identifiable markings to be found. It was still powered by one propeller in the middle of the plane’s body, but was otherwise totally abnormal. Somehow you could tell that it wasn’t made from aluminum like most modern planes were.

The pilot was also dressed bizarrely. Covered head to toe in a black uniform devoid of badges, patches or symbols, more closely resembling a straight jacket than a flight suit. An odd looking gas mask, made up of a series of hard plates, covered his entire head and hid his features. He didn’t move as the men approached the plane, and Grady pulled his pistol from the holster . A shot rang off, and the pilot didn’t move.

The other men started to walk towards it, but Grady motioned for them to wait. He peered into the cockpit, looking for the dials and instruments one could expect to find on a plane like this, but couldn’t see any identifiable alphabet or symbols anywhere on the dashboard. Not even any numerals. “Yoshi!” He shouted, and waved for the man to come close.

“What is it?” The sweet old man asked, clearly terrified.

“What does this say?” He was almost screaming. Grady pointed at a set of characters engraved onto a small nickel plate that was riveted onto the dashboard. Yoshi pondered it for a moment, and then shakily replied “It isn’t Japanese, Chinese or Korean. I don’t even recognize it as Mongolian… I don’t know. I don’t recognize it.”

“Bullshit!” McGraw shouted. “Shut your fucking hick mouth!” Was Grady’s reply. 

“Is he alive?” Asked someone. Grady said he didn’t know. Swapping his pistol into his left hand, he reached for the pilot’s neck with his right. He tried to press down on the spot where he expected he could find a pulse, but he wasn’t able to find any kind of gap between the plates that made up the mask, and he couldn’t feel the skin underneath. He found what looked like a small latch or button on the faceplate, near where the end of the jawline would meet the neck.

He pressed it, and after a loud series of clicks, the faceplate jolted very slightly towards the left. Grady tugged at it, and it opened up like a door to reveal that the man was not Japanese at all. In fact, he barely even looked human.

The US Navy Communications Board had quickly gotten into contact with the local government, and in an emergency decided to reveal to Grady, after he signed several top-secret level NDA’s, their new invention. Their “wireless long-range telephone” could make a call to almost anywhere in the world without needing a landline connection on anyone’s end anywhere. They had dropped the unit in by parachute, with specific instructions for Grady, only about four hours after they apprehended the pilot.

“Yes sir.” Dan, sulking around a corner in the hallway while trying to open the shotgun case, was listening in on Grady as he was on the phone. “Well I took the camera apart like you asked… yes I did in fact… yes every reel he had with him was full of them… well I have them all laid out in front of me now. No, I don’t see anything significant about them. Just a bunch of crates.” The Sheriff shuffled his papers around, and was listening intently to the man on the other end of the line. Dan got back to fiddling with the lock.

“A serial number? Yes… let me see… N dash C dash one-one-seven… uh… the pictures are blurry I’m sorry… what was that?” Dan heard a click. For almost an hour now, he was listening to Yoshi and the pilot speaking to each other. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, but he knew that they were planning something.

Grady was trying to read off another of the serial numbers through his magnifying glass, when he heard Dan shout “Let go of him you piece of shit!” Grady sprinted for the holding cell downstairs, gun in hand. He burst into the room to see Dan pointing the shotgun at Yoshi and the pilot. The pilot was standing over Yoshi and throttling his neck with both hands, and Yoshi’s face was starting to turn purple. “Let him go right now!” Dan was shouting.

“Put the fucking gun down Dan! Right now!” The sheriff screamed, cocking his gun and pointing it at Dan’s back. Dan ignored him, and shouted again for the pilot to let Yoshi go.

Just barely, Yoshi asked again and again for Dan not to shoot, and tried to wave his hands back and forth. “Dan!” Grady shouted again.

Just like that, it was all over. Dan shot first, and Grady shot Dan in the back. The pilot’s grotesque, inhuman head was blown clean off, and a pellet slammed its way into Yoshi’s right spectacle, lodging into his brain and killing him over an excruciating two hours. Dan’s lung was hit, and the bullet traveled so fast it actually pulled a bit of his ling out of his body. He died the next day from infection on a Navy hospital boat.

Grady was charged with triple murder, and was found dead hanging in his cell on June 7, 1942. The OSS, which later evolved into the CIA, investigated the incident and buried the story in the decades to come. The Japanese residents of the island were evacuated onto the American mainland and sent to concentration camps for the remainder of the war. Some time later, every other resident was evacuated. 

The explanation given by the military was that the island was to be fortified, and that the island had been threatened by the Japanese. After the war, the American government compensated all of the residents of the island for their losses, claiming that nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll and other sites had somehow made Tecumseh island uninhabitable “for at least three hundred years.” Jackie died much later due to complications during childbirth. No one today remembers the incident except for a few gray old men in the upper echelons of the various US Intelligence agencies.