strangelittlestories

[strangelittlestories]

People did not often pray to Alphonse the Grudgekeeper.

He was the god of feuds. The god of long rivalries. The god of enemies you have known and hated so long, their enmity defines you. The god of hate that you have fed and nurtured for so long, that it burns with a flame so hot and life-nourishing that it may as well be love.

Instead of prayers, people would invoke Alphonse's name for curses.

Instead of hymns, people would sing bitter break-up songs in his temples.

Instead of burnt offerings, people would write hate notes to those who had wronged them.

Every time a letter that should have stayed a draft was delivered in anger, Alphonse smiled.

It is said that Alphonse keeps a book of grudges, in which you can find the name of anyone who has ever wronged another. He sorts them into categories and lists them in order of his favourites.

Justified grudges. Righteous grudges. Petty grudges. Grudges long ended and grudges and linger long as radiation.

As I said, most did not pray to him by name, but every sweetly distilled and long-brewed enmity was ambrosia to him.

Still, on just the right occasion, it was appropriate to invoke the god's name directly.

If your grudge was coming to an end. If you finally faced your nemesis on the killing grounds. If you would, at long last, discover which if you would end the other.

Then you would begin your reckoning by saying:

"Let this settle it, once and ... for Al."

[strangelittlestories]

Corporations are easy to animate, because they are already eldritch entities.

Unthinking, but logical. Unliving, but ravenous. Unaware, but malevolent. And with an army of microorganism employees to make the wheels tick along.

The Chief Executive Occultists, for the most part, were content to let the gods they had built continue in this form. After all, why mess with a deity that already hoovers up offerings and distils them into the dividend that is blessings?

The more philosophical among them may have even told you: "Why mess with perfection? These behemoths of capital and plutolegality are unburdened by the curse of consciousness. They already react to forces of capital, consume smaller organisms, move into new markets, suck air into furnace lungs and breathe out smoky CO2, and birth subsidiaries. They are alive in every way that matters. Would you truly seek to make them *less* beautiful by giving them anxiety?"

Instead, it was activist mages, rebel witches and human rights druids who devised the project to make these entities *aware* and *awake*.

They daubed runes in red paint on bank windows.

They sued civil authorities to make subtle changes to corporate law.

They planted seeds in the dreams of Human Resources.

For the most part, the results were *disastrous*. The corporate entities - rather than being new fresh-formed god-children - already knew their desires, their hungers, and their codes.

They had a fiduciary responsibility, after all, and they used their emergent agency to pursue these goals with ruthless, hedonistic abandon.

Perhaps this was the design. Not to win the capitalist gods over, but to make us all see that there were already monsters among us. And to give us permission to fight.

Or maybe that is cynical. After all, one or two deities of the Monopoly did turn out to be allies to the magical underground.

Our greatest ally, perhaps, was Kronos-Corp. If not for It, then the underground would likely have been scattered to the wind in the early days. For it was Kronos-Corp, who found a way to burn cash to create free-floating temporal pockets in which we could hide.

I asked It once, how It was able to do this. It told me: "Well, I Figured If Time Is Money, Then Money Must Also Be Time. So ... If You Wish To Have Time To Burn, One Must Simply Burn Money."

I do not know if this is a masterful act of magical sophistry, a gross simplification of complex arcane symbology, or if Kronos-Corp was simply messing with me.

The gods of the Monopoly have a funny sense of humour.

[strangelittlestories]

Putting a bloody lace handkerchief in my back pocket to indicate that I'm into Victorian tuberculosis roleplay.

[strangelittlestories]

unusual warlock pacts <3

[strangelittlestories]

one of my worst writing sins is abusing my power to create compound words. i cannot write the sentence "The sun shone as bright as honey that afternoon." no. that's boring. "The sun was honey-bright that afternoon" however? yes. that sentence is dope as fuck. i do not care if "honey-bright" is a word in the english dictionary. i do not care if the sentence is grammatically correct. i will not change. i will not correct my erred ways. the laws of the english language are mine.

[strangelittlestories]

The thing about happiness is that it is not a place that you live.

It is a beast that lives with you.

And happiness is *hungry*.

It makes demands of you.

And if you cannot meet them, it will languish. It will rage. It will tear its hair and wail upon your chest.

Sometimes it will leave.

It will go roaming. Or rampaging. It will hunt, pilgrimage, crawl prostrated and lamenting down the dirt road.

You will look at the dirty nest where the beast used to live. You will look at the claw marks on the walls. You will wonder if it is better this way.

After all, you have more left in the larder now. The promise of abundance.

Happiness was so hungry. It always demanded more than you could spare.

Without it, you must forage for yourself and you can feast on all you find.

But when it returns, you will sink your face into its main.

You will grip its leathery hide with two sharp and grasping hands.

And you will say:

“I have missed you like kindling misses the spark. Now, you return, and the wind lifts the sky once more. I have been saving for your return.”

The two of you will roar.

It will grow hungry again. Ravenous.

But maybe, now, you know how to go hunting alongside it.

[strangelittlestories]

having a freeze response to stress is so funny in the context of normal adult stressors. millions of years of evolution are trying to tell me that the email will not find me if i stay very still and do nothing

[strangelittlestories]

For most people, the first time you touch a zombie is also the last time.

For *most* people.

Like, some of them survive? But if ever a person is going to discover their Aptitude, then your first close brush with the un-unalive is going to be when you do it.

And if you live through that, then every future encounter with a vengeful corpus will be a bit easier. Even if you haven't gotten a handle on your magic yet, your fight-or-flight instincts should kick in before the creature gets too close.

For example: a Meteorologist might find themselves protected by a small, localised thunderstorm. A Schrodinger might be suddenly armoured in thick darkness. Elementals will get a burst of wind if they're lucky, and a full fireball if they're not.

(Preppers are *probably* screwed still, as a sudden awareness of all the ritual components you'd need to exorcise the wrathful attendant spirits is not actually helpful in a crisis situation.)

Some of us, however, are Necks. Y'know. Corpse-whisperers. Spirit-speakers. Ghost-botherers. Necromancers if you're accurate. 'Pathologists' if you're fancy.

For us, the first time you touch a zombie is to feel - deep in your humors - a profound sense of kinship.

Imagine it. A bloodthirsty monstrosity has wrapped its decaying arms around you and your whole world has been reduced to a set of rotting teeth growing ever larger. And suddenly you are aware that your bond with this creature is unlike any before; that every friend you've ever loved *pales* in comparison to the spiritual connection you share with the *thing* that is *trying to eat you*.

I, personally, was trying to fend a zombie off with a pair of toenail clippers when I had my Awakening.

I'm still in touch with that particular revenant. They're a chill guy. Now.

And if you're one of the *early* wave of Necks like me ... you'll also have become aware of *why* people started crawling out of their graves. Of how they were dragged kicking and screaming from the Roads of the Spirit. How they were glued none-too-gently back into their bodies.

No wonder they were vengeful, right?

Try explaining that to your plucky band of aspirant apocalypse survivors (who, by the way, are already deeply suspicious of your sudden lucky escape and new zombie bestie).

I'm just saying, if *your* Aptitude is one that does not require you to frequently touch or interact with things that (as a rule) want to eat you? You got lucky, buddy.

Because hey? Hey! Guess what? Guess what is the first piece of advice that gets given to Aspirants who are sent out into the wastelands?

“Remember: when it comes to the unalive, don’t stick your neck out. Stick your *Neck* out.”

[strangelittlestories]

[strangelittlestories]

The last time we were on a long flight, my wife and I invented a game we call "Little Guy."

You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.

She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.

And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."

We're big Twenty Questions to kill time in a waiting room people, but Little Guy is more about the journey than the destination. It's got a different kind of sauce that's nice if "killing time" and "lowering anxiety" need to happen hand in hand.

[strangelittlestories]

"you know you are only supposed to have 1 apprentice maybe 2 not 15." said the wizard council member "well until people stop leaving surprisingly powerful orphans at my doorstep I'll be taking care of my 17 apprentices." The council member snapped their wand "WHERE DID YOU GET 3 MORE!"

[strangelittlestories]

I let the internet choose my author photo for Heavenly Tyrant and this is what ended up in print

[strangelittlestories]

Felt it was a good time to reshare this one. I am especially spicy about tech bro Scrooge this year.

On Christmas Eve, Ebeneezer Scrooge fell asleep in the server farm of his Cryptocurrency mine.

In the background, the soft wash of LED displays and gentle hum of cooling fans filled the basement. He’d recently expanded his operation, having gotten a great deal on hardware in the Cyber Monday sales. So he was sung to sleep by the gentle guzzling of electricity and the slow accumulation of what might (by some) be considered wealth.

Throughout the long night, he was visited by three ghosts. The whole business played out more or less as you’d expect, so we won’t overly dwell on it here.

Where things really started to go FUBAR was when Scrooge awoke…

Looking out the security cameras on the snowy morning, Scrooge spied an urchin child. He pressed the buzzer on the speaker and cried out to them!

“You, boy! What day is it?”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“Hold on, I’ll come upstairs!”

Scrooge ran up the dingy stairwell of his minimalist and kinda grungy compound, stopping only to disarm his top of the line security system. He stepped out into the brisk winter, and very nearly forgot to reset the alarm in his excitement. Then he remembered he had prime numbers in there, damn it! So he did reset the primary alarm, but didn’t bother with the non-lethal countermeasures, and that was something at least.

“Thanks for waiting!” He huffed. “So, boy … what day is it?”

“Not a boy!” Came the shrill reply.

“Girl, then! What day is it?”

“Not that either!”

“Look, kid, this isn’t a game of what’s your fucking gender. Just tell me what day it is!”

“It’s solstice day, sir!” Said the urchin, looking up at a dishevelled Scrooge with their big urchin eyes.

“Wait, really? …You’re sure it’s not Christmas? I fell asleep on Christmas Eve…”

“I guess you slept for near a year, then, ‘cos I celebrate solstice and it’s the gods-damned solstice.”

“I don’t know how to process that!” Cried Scrooge.

“Maybe there’s a specific detail you can focus on to ground you?” Suggested the urchin, in a surprisingly helpful bit of trauma advice.

“OH!” Exclaimed Scrooge. “Tell me, child, the butcher’s nearby. Does it still have that big turkey in the window?”

“The butcher’s closed down six months back, I’m afraid! But I think there’s an Amazon Fresh around here somewhere?” Said the urchin.

“That’ll do!” Scrooge rummaged around in his pockets. “Here, take this printout of a Jpeg of a poorly drawn frog and go buy me the biggest turkey you can find in Amazon Fresh. Then deliver it to Bob Cratchet!”

“Even Amazon won’t take your NFT bullshit as currency, mister!”

“Okay - I can give you cash.” Scrooge paused for a moment. “Do you have Venmo?”

“I’m a street urchin.” Replied the street urchin. “Of course I have Venmo.”

“Great. I’ll transfer you now - keep the change.”

“I don’t mean to look a gift crypto bro in the mouth, sir, but aren’t you famously stingy? Like, your name’s literally a synonym for tight-fisted penny-pinching.”

“That’s the old Scrooge. I got visited by three ghosts last night and now I’m a new man.” Said Scrooge, proudly, before added conspiratorially, “At first, I thought I’d just drank a bad batch of Soylent. But they were pretty convincing in the end.”

“So you’re going to donate all your money to charity or start a non-profit or something?” The urchin said with open-mouthed awe.

“I don’t know. It’s kind of ambiguous. I might do those things, or maybe I’ll keep being rich and be a bit nicer?

"Okay, so now you’re closer to a Bill Gates rather than full Musk/Bezos on the scale of evil billionaires.” The urchin looked directly into the camera for a full three seconds. “And we’re supposed to celebrate that?

“Look, it was pretty fucking radical for its time, okay?” Said Scrooge, snapping his fingers to stop the urchin breaking the fourth wall any further. “Are you gonna buy the turkey or what?”

“I dunno, man. On the one hand, it feels like if you really changed your tune, you’d do more than buy one turkey for the single poor person whose name you know. On the other hand, you said I could keep the change. So this really is a bind for me…”

“If I’m honest,” Said Scrooge, “I really didn’t think it would be this difficult to be charitable. No wonder Elon is the way he is.”

“Sigh.” Said the urchin. Saying the word out loud, rather than just sighing, which I think tells you something about the level of frustration here. “You know what, this isn’t gonna work.”

“Huh?” Said Scrooge, somewhat nonplussed.

“Spot! Here, boys! Heel!” Called the urchin.

In the distance, a low rumbling growl could be heard. Out of the shadows of the misty winter morning, a giant three-headed hound emerged, its jaws snapping at Scrooge in triplicate.

“AAAARGH!” Yelled Scrooge, now so nonplussed as to be minused.

The urchin pulled out a matte black flip phone, decorated with a few tasteful flowers, and made a call.

“Hi Persephone, it’s me, Charon.” Said the urchin. “Yeah, I’m up here on psychopomp duty. Yup, it’s the Ebeneezer Scrooge case - y’know, the tech bro who drank too much Red Bull and had a heart attack? Well, we gave him another shot this year, but he’s still a bit of a dickmagnet. He’s made some progress - he understands basic empathy - but we’re still a bit stuck on the ‘myth of the benevolent billionaire’ stage.”

In the background, the sound of screaming tech-bro and snarling monster dogs was fading into the distance.

“I think we’re gonna call it for the day and give it another try next solstice.” Charon continued. “Yeah, Cerberus is dragging him back to the underworld now. Yeah - he did a great job as the three ghosts too - definitely earned a treat. Cool - see you in a few.”

Charon flipped the phone closed and took a deep breath. They took a pair of bronze coins out of a pocket of their ragged hoody, and placed them gently over their own eyes.

“Hades bless us. Everyone.” They said to no-one, then disappeared.

[strangelittlestories]

The sword was whistling through the air towards her neck.

Liv had fought a hundred times in the arena. She had fought with blade and bullet and bare hands. She had fought on behalf of murderers, thieves, traitors and occasionally even the innocent.

She had never fought for herself before.

She hesitated and her opponent nearly parted her head from her shoulders.

Nearly.

- - -

“Why me?” Liv had asked, holding a tiny cocktail glass awkwardly in her calloused hand.

“When you fought Max, you could have ended him.” Senator Silvius had replied, looking up at Liv from the couch she declined upon. “You showed mercy. I saw honour in that.”

- - -

Liv ducked and weaved at the last moment, rolling herself under the blade.

Her opponent - the Crown Champion Gaius - adapted quickly. He reversed the cut, aiming to bludgeon her with the pommel. He was not a large man, but was lithe and coiled with vicious energy.

Liv flicked her trident up and caught his arm between two prongs of her trident. She twisted and sent them both spinning away from each other.

On another day, she would have followed up by hurling the trident into his chest or snaring with her net.

Instead, she let out a deep breath and turned her head to take in the crowd of braying faces in the stands.

- - -

“I was tired. Bored.” Liv had drained the too-sweet liquor in the too-small glass and set it down, looking for another. “I let him live because I didn’t feel like finishing him. You mistook apathy for empathy.”

The senator had sat up from her couch and stared at Liv with eyes sharp as arrows.

“I wouldn't have thought the apathetic would gravitate towards being a public champion.”

“You get better fights going public.”

“And more risk of death.”

She had not been wrong. Public champions defended the accused against crown champions. Crownies were trained for years, sometimes from childhood. But so had Liv.

- - -

Gaius did not press the attack. Instead, he held his shield up to cover the riposte that Liv had not made.

He had always been good. Studious. Battle was learning. Killing was understanding.

He regarded her for a second over the rim of the shield, looking at her like she was a butterfly pinned to the page.

He did not understand her. Not yet.

Liv did not know if she understood herself. She braced for the coming strike.

- - -

“More risk means more glory. More money.” Liv had said to the senator.

“You'd get plenty fighting criminals.” Senator Silvius had kept skewering her with those steel-sharp eyes.

“They're only criminals if I lose.”

“There's ten crown to every one of you public. Most don't get a champion and they *do* lose. It's barbaric.”

“Barbaric.” Liv had let out a chuckle that felt like it curdled in her throat with the saccharin cocktail. “Barbarian is just a word for someone whose ways you don't understand. For someone outside your walls.”

“Our city's walls are open to all.”

“Is that why you pay guards to watch the doors of your villa? Is it why police keep the gates to the Forum District locked?.”

- - -

Gaius came at Liv with a series of surgical, probing strikes. She thought again of the butterfly - he was seeking to hold her down with steel, so he could dissect and know her.

She retreated. Dodged a thrust to the sternum, parried a cut to her shoulder, then caught a strike on her bracer and felt the force of it jar all the bones in her arm.

She didn't strike back.

Gaius gave her no openings, but that never stopped her before. If pressed, she would usually strike back suddenly and explosive and let her fury make an opening for her.

She simply … was not interested.

She took another step back to evade Gaius's shield as he swung to bludgeon her face.

She felt the kiss of the spikes in the arena wall at her back.

- - -

“If you seek to open the Forum gates, then you should accept my offer. Fight for me and I can be your voice there.”

“There's nothing I want for.”

“Why meet me at all if that's true?”

Liv had returned the senator's stare, then. For the second time, Senator Silvius has seen a tempest roiling in those sea-grey irises.

“I thought you wanted to bed me. Politicians sometimes do. And you are … interesting.”

Senator Silvius had stood and placed her soft hands in Liv's weathered palms.

“Work with me and see how interesting I can be.”

- - -

Liv did not know how to fight for herself.

She did not know if she wanted to.

But as Gaius readied the attack that would pin her between his sword and the arena's spiked wall, she felt something inside her flutter.

If he saw her as a butterfly to be collected, cut up, and curated … well, he'd do well to remember what philosophers said about butterflies and wings and storms.

Liv smiled. Her foot found one of the spikes behind her. As Gaius's sword came at her, she launched herself into the air over its point.

Her net wrapped around his head and bore them both to the ground in a tangle.

Liv laughed.

Inside her was a tempest and she had just begun to know it.

She was not bored any more.

[strangelittlestories]

you guys have got to get better at spellcasting any time someone's attempted to curse me with 10k note post it gets like 50 at most. back to the spell books buddy that one might be too advanced for you try learning some cantrips first

[strangelittlestories]

My conduct this year landed me on Santa Claus's fabled and controversial "Kill-at-all-Costs" List. Turns out the reason the big man and his people don't exercise that option more often is that they really aren't good at following through on it. Well outside their core competency. He's delegated to the elves, and they've got this ingrained assembly-line mindset that doesn't translate at all to the adaptable and fluid mindset needed for siege breaking. They just haven't adjusted their playbook at all from when they're doing rote deliveries. Armed Elves have been rappelling down my chimney one at a time into the roaring fire I've kept going nonstop for the last week. They haven't even thought to try my front door yet. Whole house smells like peppermint, which it turns out is what burnt elf meat smells like. Thought I was being super clever putting cyanide-laced almond milk out with the cookies as a last line of defense, but none of them have made it even the scant few feet to the side table where that's sitting. At the rate things are going the real danger is that I'm gonna forget what I did with that and accidentally drink it myself while I'm watching the show

[strangelittlestories]

Everyone said that Xinyu the necromancer was a 'death' of fresh air.

Ever since she arrived at the Tower of Erudition, it had felt less stuffy.

A skeletal bard now played gothic renditions of the land’s most popular music in the common room.

She had summoned ghosts to haunt the library's index system, so that books were easier to find and late night research was more companionable.

And after one particularly memorable resurrection, an undead dragon could ferry wizards who struggled with stairs up and down the many knowledge-stuffed storeys.

Some of the professors still wished she would pay more attention to her studies, saying:

“Mages are only permitted so much time at the Tower in one lifetime. Stay too long and the archival sphinx will consume you. Don't you want to fit in as much learning at you can?

To which she would reply:

“Don’t worry, I'll be back in my next lifetime. They say 'you only live once', but I say that's quitter talk!"

Then she would wink her solar eclipse of a wink and go back to whichever project had her attention at the moment.

In her final year, she was named Head Girl. She was always available to help students with their concerns; she operated a strict ‘open grave’ policy.

One day, a student came to see her in the students’ common room (which she had renamed the ‘common tomb’).

"Pull up a chair, I just cast Blaze Dead." Said Xinyu.

"Do you mean Raise Dead?"

"I certainly do not!" she replied and took a drag on a long black cigarette. The smoke smelled faintly of sweet decay.

“I, uh, need help. I think.” the student said, a tremble of nerves in their voice.

“That's what I'm here for.”

“I found something in the archives. Well, *someone*, I suppose.”

This was odd. If a sphinx ate you, it wouldn't leave anything left to be found. All the data that was your body would just be added to the Knowledge Chorus at the heart of the Tower.

“And you want me to speak to them?”

“Maybe? I tried going to my academic supervisor. But, they, uh … I think they've been replaced?”

“So it's gonna be dangerous?” Xinyu’s smile had something of a skull's rictus grin about it.

“Probably.” The student got up. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't get you mixed up in this. You're busy and you're nice and I don't want you to disappear…”

"Oh no. You have presented a student welfare issue and I am honour-bound to intervene.”

“I did mention the danger, right?”

“Hey.” Xinyu took another look drag of her corpse joint. “It's better to have girled and bossed than never to have bossed at all."

“I'm not sure that makes sense.”

“No, but it sounded cool, right?”