#{{ and “talk to the hand”. *sobs into hands* i gave myself psychic damage and now like hatchiyack-

[aseriouscaseofmuses]

{{ Also, I looked up 90's American Slang because I remembered I had an idea to have my Trunks be Even Weirder Than He Already Is (and cause I'm a sucker for the Man Out of His Own Time/"a fish out of water" trope and OH GOD THE PSYCHIC DAMAGE-- i apologize for anyone who reads Future Trunks' dialogue and violently cringes or ages rapidly into dust

[starr234]

Fic: Once a Jedi Master

Spoilers I guess, but I mentioned in this post that I had some thoughts about that scene with Luke and the stupid Force ghost (trying to be vague here for people who haven’t seen it yet), plus I was feeling pretty crummy about Luke’s whole character arc in general.  So I rewrote the scene with the character I actually wanted Luke to be talking to as a way to make myself feel better about this whole thing.  I dashed this out quickly after work today and haven’t really proofread it or edited it in any real way, so apologies for any mistakes or clunkiness.  I just needed some catharsis.  

Luke Skywalker, once a Jedi Master and now nobody, marched steadily towards the tree and the ancient Jedi texts within.

It was time.  It had been time for ages, but he’d been too tired to anything before.  But now, with everything coming to a head faster than he could comprehend – the dark, the light, Rey From Nowhere, his nephew – it was time to end this once and for all. To leave the Jedi to the past, where they belonged.  To leave himself to the past, and let the past die.

He flicked his wrist and the torch ignited.

A voice from behind him stopped him in his tracks.  “Keep a safe distance after the fire starts.  That tree is overflowing with energy.  She’ll go sky high once the flames hit her.”

Luke spun around. A man stood a few steps down the path, roughly his age, with a careworn face and dark blonde hair streaked with grey – but tidier than Luke’s own – brushing the collar of his Jedi robes. The man – apparition, really, bathed in the blue glow of the Force as he was – shrugged apologetically.  “Speaking from experience, fire is not a pleasant way to go.”

Luke stepped closer, eyes narrowing in suspicion.  The face was almost familiar, although he was sure he’d never seen it before.  But the eyes –

He’d only looked on them once, but he would never forget those eyes.

“Father?”

Anakin Skywalker smiled, still looking apologetic, and nodded.

The torch dropped from Luke’s hand.  The flame sputtered out as it bounced down the pathway and right through Anakin, who watched it pass through him with far too much good humor for Luke’s taste.

In those first few years after the second Death Star, when they’d beaten back the Empire and rebuilt the Republic system by stem, he’d longed for the chance to speak to his father again.  People were looking to him as a Jedi hero and he’d had no idea what he was doing – still didn’t, really.  He’d needed guidance and as an orphan who’d had his father back for mere minutes before losing him again, Luke had wanted that guidance to come from his father.  He wanted to believe that they were still connected, that he wasn’t really gone.  That nobody you loved was ever really gone.  

And then later, as he’d sensed the darkness in Ben steadily rising, he’d so badly needed to talk to someone who had been through it, someone who had once been a boy struggling with unimaginable powers and uncontrollable anger and had been failed by the people who were supposed to protect him.  He didn’t understand what he was doing wrong and how he could help the child Leia had entrusted to him when the boy already seemed so hopelessly lost.

But his father had never come.  And now he was here and all of Luke’s forgotten dreams from his youth were coming true, and what was the point?  It was too late for his father to help him, too late for either of them to make any sort of a difference.

“What do you want, Father?”

“First, to stop you from dying in a massive explosion.”

“You’re not here to stop me from destroying the texts?”

Anakin smirked. “As you may have noticed, I was not particularly good at being a Jedi.  Those books have no value to you or to me.  If you wish to destroy them, do so.  All I ask is that you do it safely.”

Luke rolled his eyes.  “I’ll be fine.”  He started towards his father and the torch lying behind him.

“On second thought,” Anakin said, almost to himself.  He waved a hand absentmindedly towards the tree—

--and a bolt of lightning arced from the sky directly into its branches.

As far away as he was, the explosion was still strong enough to knock Luke off his feet.  He lay on his back for a moment, blinking up at the cloudless sky, then rolled onto an elbow and looked up at his father. “I guess you weren’t kidding about the tree going sky high.”

Anakin settled onto a boulder next to where Luke lay on the stone pathway.  “Indeed not.”

Luke pushed himself up to lean against the boulder with a groan.  “So, is that it?  You didn’t come here just to talk about fire safety, did you?”

“I thought,” Anakin said after a pause, “circumstances as they are, that you might need your father.”

Luke laughed harshly. “Is that what you thought?  It’s been thirty years.  What about all the other times I needed you?”

Anakin sighed, and for a split-second Luke was struck with how strange it must have been for his father to be able to breathe (and wondered simultaneously if Anakin was really breathing at all, if he even had a corporeal form or if this was just how Luke was seeing him in this moment).  “It is more difficult for me to come out of the Force into the physical world than it is for others, given my history.  I have felt when you’ve needed me and I wanted to come every time, but was never able to. But rest assured, my son, I have been watching you since I last laid eyes on you.  And I am very proud of you.”

“Why?” Luke said, his voice catching as he ran a hand through his tangled mop of hair.  “What could you possibly be proud of?  All I’ve done is fail.”

“So did I, Luke. I failed you, and I failed your sister, and I failed your mother.  And I failed myself.  You gave me the strength to do what I could to make things right.  I wanted to do the same for you, if I could.”

“But it’s too late.” Luke shook his head, his voice hollow. “I can’t make anything right, not anymore.”

“It’s never too late. All you can do is try.  That is what always made me so proud.  No matter what trials you faced, you never stopped trying and you never lost faith.  Until now.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Luke asked.  He felt shallow, like he would soon drift off into the Force until there was nothing left of him.  “What else is left to have faith in?”

Anakin stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back onto his elbows.  “You were right, you know.”

Luke blinked at the sudden change in subject.  “When?”

“When you told that girl – Rey From Nowhere – that the light and the energy don’t belong to the Jedi. You were right.  That light belongs to all of us.  It belonged to me even when I was shrouded in darkness, and it belongs to you even now.”  He sat up, leaned forward and placed a hand on Luke’s shoulder.  A shudder passed through Luke at the contact.  His father’s hand had no weight, but he could feel the touch – physically and psychically – all the same.  “You have borne the burden of your past alone for so long, Luke.  You don’t need to.  Let the light back in.  Let it lift you up and bear you back to those who love you.”

Luke bowed his head and closed his eyes, swallowing back the shame welling up in him.  “How can I go back?  How can I face Leia after what I did to her son?”

“Her son made his own choices, just as I did.  Understand your place in those choices, but never take responsibility for his actions. That said, you face Leia as you always have – as her brother.  She will forgive you, just as you forgave me.”

“And then?  What then?”

“Then you move forward, learn from your past and start again.  It’s what I would have done, if I’d had the chance.”

Luke reached up and put his hand on his shoulder, over his father’s.  “I wish you’d had the chance.”

He felt a hand squeeze his shoulder, for all that the hand resting there wasn’t real.  “I would have liked to have been there for you, instead of watching from afar.  I have many regrets, but that is chief among them.”

“If I stay here,” Luke said, choosing his words carefully.  “I think I won’t be here much longer.  The Force is so strong here, I can feel myself becoming porous.  Soon, it’s going to be so easy to just let go.”  He took a deep breath, closing his eyes against the sudden sting of tears.  “We could be together then, like you always wanted us to be.”

His father took his hand from Luke’s shoulder, stepped off the boulder and around Luke to kneel in front of him.  He took hold of Luke’s shoulders and looked at him with kind eyes.  “When you come through, I will be waiting for you.  I have always been, and I always will be. But Luke, my son, you cannot leave your sister to carry on alone.  She has lost her son and her husband and she thinks you lost as well.  She needs you, Luke.  She needs your light.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know,” his father said.  He smiled, gently.  “But you don’t need to be.  The Force will be there for you, if you’ll let it.”

“But—”

“Close your eyes, Luke.”

Luke did so, feeling like a novice.  Maybe, despite all the years behind him, he was still a novice.

“Reach out with your feelings.  And breathe. Just reach out, and breathe.”

And for the first time in years, Luke did.  His chest hitched with a sob as the Force flooded back into him.  It was filled with his past deeds and his regrets and pain and fears, but as he focused on his breath and the steady presence of his father in front of him, and the whisper soft presence of his sister across the galaxy, all of the hurt melted away and the Force sang to him, clean and bright.

It sang to welcome him home.

“Father,” he whispered.

“I am so proud of you, my son.”  His father’s voice sounded distant.  “Never forget that.”

Luke opened his eyes. His father was gone, but his warm glow was still there inside Luke – and Leia was getting brighter by the second. He couldn’t ignore that anymore, even if he’d wanted to.

Luke Skywalker, once a Jedi Master and now a brother on his way back home, stood and marched steadily towards the beach. If the Force was with him, he could repair whatever damage the water had done to his submerged x-wing and get out of here. And if it wasn’t, he’d have to call Chewie back to pick him up.  Either way, it was time to go.

Hang on, Leia, he sent.  I’m coming.

[the-happy-hellbrute]

SUIT LOG 4

This is the writeup of the second-to-last part of the first ‘arc’ of the Black Crusade campaign I’m playing in. Other players are @imkelborhal, @metalboxes, and @screamingatthevoid. The campaign is run by @why-things-are-terrible. They have made a few odds and ends about the campaign as well, so check them out!

BEGIN SUIT LOG 4

For a split second after Dreadbringer ignited the pool of fuel, I was back on Icarus. I saw reaching figures in the flames as they washed over me, and heard their screams in the roar of the fire.

Then, as quickly as it began, it was over.

I looked over the scene as the remaining fires died out. The thralls that had been assaulting us had been driven off by the flames, some killed or wounded by the conflagration, but most scattered due to the purifying aspect of the flame, anathema to the simpler followers of the plague god. Dreadbringer and I were mostly unharmed, our armor being more than capable of weathering a simple fuel fire. Siodell was somewhat burned, but her respiratory implants negated any effect of smoke inhalation, and her Mechanicum robes protected her with their fire resistant properties, a product of the common hazards of Martian engineering.

My main concern was Ser Aifric. While his carapace armor would have protected him somewhat, he still had a large amount of his body that was only covered by his fatigues or was entirely exposed. This, combined with having been soaked in fuel, made it likely that he would have severe, perhaps life-threatening, burns. I also suspected that his throat and lungs could have potentially been damaged by inhaling smoke or superheated air from the fire. I quickly went to look him over. If I had been examining him for triage, I would have tagged him for lowest priority, as he would be unlikely to survive without expending supplies that could be used on those with a better chance of recovery. However, with allies currently in short supply, I decided that I would do my best to stabilize him. My initial examination showed that he had gotten very lucky. The fuel appeared to have burned off very quickly, and the way he fell smothered any of his clothing that had ignited. However, Aifric still suffered severe burns to his upper and lower arms, as well as some lesser but still worrying burns to his calfs and thighs. Most worryingly was the fact that his fatigues had bonded to his skin in some places, but as I did not have the proper tools or sterile environment to treat that properly, I focused on treating the most immediately dangerous symptoms.

I washed out his burns the best I could with my power armor’s internal water supply, and then wrapped them in all the sterile antiseptic bandages that I had. I was worried about the possibility of infection, not only due to the non-sterile conditions, but also the nature of combat with Nurgle-aligned warriors. Unfortunately, the only antiseptic I had on-hand was pure alcohol for tool sterilization, which would further aggravate his burns, so I had to hope the bandages would be good enough. I then checked his breathing with my auto-senses, to see if his respiratory system had been compromised. I observed a rasp to his breathing, though he still appeared to be getting oxygen, so it was not an immediate concern. It was likely that he had inhaled smoke from the fire, and that had resulted in irritation to the tissue of his throat and lungs. Moving on, I then injected him with a small dose of stimm, to get him moving, and a dose of pain suppressant, so he would be able to function for the immediate future. Normally I would not mix a stimulant and an analgesic, but conditions required he be able to move under his own power, so I judged it worth the potential danger. Soon after, he began to awaken. I preformed a quick examination to ascertain if he was coherent. While he was in pain, he was alert and capable of movement, albeit slowly.

With the most pressing concern out of the way, I moved to speak with Dreadbringer. I began by briefly berating him for endangering everyone by igniting the fuel, but only receiving a curt response of “It was the most effective course of action,” I decided to move on. We then discussed how to proceed. I was in favor of continuing on in the direction our guide had indicated, as he had said that the wreck of the Explorator was very nearby, and it was likely that the scanning systems aboard would be able to locate the exotic particle traces that would indicate a concentration of psychic individuals. It also would contain the valuable medical equipment and supplies that the merchant had indicated was there, which I would now need to provide adequate treatment to Aifric. Dreadbringer was less sure. He started to argue that we should go back to the market in the hanger and get a new guide, but slowly trailed off and said that he had a better plan, which he did not elaborate on. He walked to the lift platform, and then casually stated something that sent me sprinting after him.

“Warsmith, the thralls fled in the direction of the child. Is he able to protect himself?”

I was on the elevator in an instant. The grind up to the next floor was an agonizing wait, though my suit chrono marked it as only two minutes at most. While Dreadbringer was still and stoic as ever on the ride up, I found myself pacing up and down the platform until eventually, the bell chimed, and the doors opened to the landing above.

I quickly scanned the room. The guide was still where we had laid him, but Telemachus was nowhere to be seen. In that moment, I felt the closest that I have ever felt to true fear since I was uplifted to the Astartes. I ran through the passageways of the hulk, desperately bellowing out for Telemachus. The search felt like hours, calling out to him constantly. Thoughts of the dangers he could be facing, things that could have happened, and what I should have done instead raced through my mind. Eventually, I heard sounds of crying. Rounding into a small dead end corridor, I finally found the child.

Telemachus was huddled with his knees gripped to his chest at the end of the hallway. Though he appeared unharmed, he was obviously in distress. I can deal with a gunshot wound with ease, set a broken leg in a matter of seconds, attach an augmetic with such skill that it was like the limb was never gone, but this? Being presented with my son in tears, I feel more helpless than I can ever remember.

I did not know what else to do besides walk to him and sit by his side. We spent a long time like this, simply being seated next to each other. Eventually, Telemachus’ sobs quieted, and he spoke to me. He told me how he had been worried by the sounds of fighting coming from below, but then when he heard the explosion and the silence that followed, he thought that I had been killed. The thought of this terrified the child, and he ran back through he hulk, terrified and distraught. 

I let the child speak, hoping that by talking it through that it would help him. When he finished, I said to him that he did not need to worry, that I was safe and at his side. This seemed to calm him somewhat, and he responded that he would learn to be stronger. He ended this by holding up his hand and stating the beginning of the immortal words of the Iron Warriors: “Iron Within.” I gently took his hand and guided him to his feet, responding “Iron Without.”

Telemachus seemed to recover from his momentary panic, and slowly began to stand straighter as we walked back to the freight platform. Though I was worried by the boy’s momentary lapse, his recovery showed he had strength. I knew he would continue to grow, and that he had the will to become the heir I am raising him to be. This was tested once again moments later.

As we approached the cargo lift, I began to hear a cracking sound, followed by low, wet squelching. I motioned for Telemachus to stay behind me, and drew my boltgun. I prepared for another engagement with the shambling thralls, and then entered the lift chamber. In the low light, I found a large figure hunched over the remains of our guide. The figure had cracked open the man’s skull into a bloody ruin. Hearing our approach, Dreadbringer looked over his shoulder from where he was crouched to face us. His helmet was on the deck to his side, allowing me to see the man’s face for the first time. It was a horrific ruin, part of his cheek missing, metal plating replacing part of his hairless skull. His skin was the color of ash, pulled tight and thin over his features. But the worst were his eyes. The irises were shattered, spreading out haphazardly into sclera the color of yellowed parchment, shot through with deep red veins. His face was caked in blood, and I could see pieces of half-chewed brain matter leaking through the rent in his cheek, making it grimly clear what his plan had been.

The Omophagea. One of the more bizarre organs implanted into an Astartes, it allows us to gain memories from eating the flesh of a sentient creature. Dreadbringer had decided that it was easier to devour the man’s brain than to wait and see if he would awaken.

I began to berate Dreadbringer for his impulsiveness, but quickly gave up. He quite clearly didn’t care about what I was saying, simply stating that he now had the necessary information and that was all that mattered. I felt it was pointless to press the issue further, so decided to just activate the elevator and rejoin the rest of the group. 

It seemed as though Telemachus took the situation surprisingly well, possibly because he has assisted me with surgery in the past. He did now try to avoid looking at Dreadbringer when at all possible though. Having seen what lies beneath his helm, I don’t entirely blame him.

I did a quick check on Ser Aifric once we regrouped with the the others, and once I confirmed he would be able to walk, we set out. We walked for around a half an hour, before we came to an impasse.

Due to the way that the ships making up the hulk had smashed together, some did not tend to be oriented the way that their designs intended. This was shown rather obviously when we came to a breach leading to the ship connecting the Rad-Hulk and the Explorator vessel. It was situated nose down, making what was once a simple passageway into a hundred meter drop. We spent some time trying to figure out a way to safely make it down the shaft. I rather quickly tired of complaints about lack of rope and thoughts of reactivating the gray-plating, and decided to make my own way down. I securely grabbed Telemachus, and then stepped off into the inverted hallway.

Now, I am not a suicidal fool, so I had more of a plan than “jump and hope that I land softly”. A split second into my fall, I thrust my hand into the side of the passageway and ripped down through the plating until it slowed my decent to a stop. It was around that moment when my action registered with the rest of the group and the confused cries arose. I called up that we were fine, and I had possibly left a path for the others to climb down with. I repeated the process of falling and ripping down through the plating a few more times before I was safely at the bottom. Dreadbringer imitated my process and landed soon after. Siodell carried down Aifric on her back while she used her servo-arm to do a form of crack climbing down the rents Dreadbringer and I created. This took a bit longer, but got them both down safely.

Having made it past that obstacle, it was a short walk to the second breach leading to the Explorator vessel. We found ourselves in what appeared to be a research deck, filled with broken cogitators and dust shrouded laboratories. Dreadbringer continued to guide us through the vessel. Soon, signs on the walls began to point us towards the medical bay. 

Eventually, we stumbled upon a large room filled with specimen tanks. There were several xenos species taking up residence in the stasis tanks, a half dissected ork in one, a Hormagaunt in another, and the strange long limbed form of a Hrud in another still. 

But what stood out among the various aliens was the nude form of a human woman. She had dark skin, and the tell-tale scarring of neural implants ringing her bald head. They looked relatively recent, though that was potentially misleading given the nature of stasis containment. After all, if a person was asked to judge Telemachus’s age by look alone they would reasonably say that he would be in the range of 10 standard years. However, he has spent decades in a stasis pod as an infant while I looked for a place to safely raise him, making his chronological age something close to 121 years old.

Needless to say, this piqued our curiosity. Before we moved on to the medical bay, we decided to find a way to open the stasis chamber holding her and find out just what made her so special.

END SUIT LOG 4

[thiscomickills]

CHAPTER 1 She squirms in the chair, trying to loosen the ropes, tears streaming down her terrified face. I just laugh. “I was a Boy Scout, babe. You’re in a Siberian Hitch-Transom Knot combo.” I turn on my best German accent. “Your resistance is futile.” She sobs harder. “You’re right. The German thing was hacky.” “Are you gonna rape me?” She gasps for a phlegmy breath. “What? Don’t flatter yourself, sweetie. Rape you? Sheesh. You see all this plastic all over the place? You think I cum that much? You’ve never watched Dexter? Rape you. Pfft. Hell no. I’m going to kill you.” I stretch, tear and fix some duct tape over her mouth before she can scream. Fuck. I’m low on duct tape again. “What’s your name again?” I fish her wallet out from her purse. “McKenzie. Of course it is. Fucking Millennial.” I grab the garden shears and squeeze the handles a couple of times for effect. You just can’t beat that metal-on-metal sound.  If you have just the right amount of torque on the springs, you can conjure the sound a sword makes when it’s slowly pulled from its sheath. That metallic ring. Now I can’t get the Game of Thrones theme out of my head. #ADD. She moans through her duct-taped mouth, her curly brown hair matted to her face with tears and sweat. “Now, you know I don’t want to do this. But, I have to. I told you to be good. But you weren’t, were you? I mean, look at this! See?“ I lift my sleeve and show her the claw marks she gave me when the back of her head smacked off the bathroom sink (I may have been holding her throat at the time). “I can’t have the cops find my DNA under your pretty nails, sweetie. And, I’m a comedian - not a surgeon. What that means is I don’t have the skill-set to remove just the nails, so I’m gonna have to take off your fingers.” She convulses, letting out a muted, duct-tape softened screech. I grab her index finger between the blades. “I mean, I could do this after you’re dead, but where’s the fun in that? Now then…Where is pointy, where is pointy?” SNIP! Her finger, once so adept at pointing, comes off cleanly in my gloved hand, spurting blood everywhere. “Here I am! Here I am!” I dance the finger about in front of her scarlet, glassy eyes. She is so fucking loud even with the duct tape. I never get that. It’s like scream-humming. I turn up the music on the motel’s cheap alarm clock.  MakeDamnSure by Taking Back Sunday. Nice. I was seriously thinking about some GOT pay-per-view when I got back to my hotel, but these tunes have my head back in the game. I hold her bloody finger in front of my pursed lips. “Shhh! Hahaha! Come on, McKenzie! I don’t usually do prop comedy, so consider yourself lucky. I mean, I can’t have you ‘finger’ me for this!” She hangs her head in defeat. I hate it when they don’t go down swinging. I almost feel bad for them. Takes the fun right the fuck out of it. McKenzie. This girl’s a joy vampire. Maybe a proper mind fuck will make it interesting again. “Do you want to know why you’re here?” She nods weakly, possibly thinking I’m some storybook villain, stalling with a sad tale that might elongate her life. I’m not. I’m a comedian. All about the short game here. “You sat in the front row of my show. You didn’t laugh once. You fucking Facebooked and Tindered the entire fucking time because the Comedy Caravan in backward-ass Louisville doesn’t take peoples’ damned phones, so some of this is on them, but do you know what that does to me? It makes me insecure. I’m giving myself to you. You’re a fucking stranger. I’m trying to relate. I’m trying to make you happy! To make you laugh! To connect, to reveal some human truths in a funny way, and you’re swiping left, with that little manicured index finger of yours, on pictures of douchebags like you’re some beauty queen who can judge people in a second. Fuck you! Oh,” – as if just noticing her index finger in my hand – “and fuck your little finger too! And on top of that, you sat so close to my stage, I was able to see you left less than a ten percent tip for your server, and that makes you a cunt, and cunts gotta go! Do you understand?” Her whole body trembles. I pretend to feel bad.  Have to keep the acting chops fresh. One can never really give up on that Hollywood career. “Hey, hey…c’mon. Don’t do that,” I say in my softest sympathetic tough guy voice – channeling some daytime soap I must have squirrelled away in my brain at some point. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I, I am. Look, do you feel like you maybe learned a valuable lesson today?” She raises her head, her eyes hopeful. Nods slowly. “If I let you go, do you promise you won’t say anything?” She nods like she’s got epilepsy. “Swear?” She’s a bobble head. “Okay. After all, you did agree to get a drink with me after the show. Fine. I’ll cut you loose. Let me get my scissors.” I look around; make a spectacle of myself (my specialty, if you must know). Lift up the alarm clock. Hmm. Not there. Check my pockets. Take off my left shoe, not in there either. Inside this bible? Zilch. She just hangs her head again, finally realizing that I was fucking with her. “Oh, but…look what I found.” A Louisville Slugger I stashed under the bed. “Not much to do in Ken-fucking-tucky. So, I toured the ol’ bat factory today. It was that or a bourbon tasting, and I had to keep my shit together for the show tonight. Just think. You’ll be one of my Greatest Hits.” I get into my stance. “Here’s the pitch!” I bring it around with everything I’ve got. The wood connects with her temple, and the fat part of that sturdy, all-American bat breaks off a good, satisfying, chunk of skull. “Foul ball!” In My Defense: I haven’t always been a killer. Obviously. I mean, at one point, I was shitting in my diaper, so wielding knives wasn’t exactly a thing I could do. That’s like saying “I don’t know how we lost, the game was so close at one point”. Of course it was, you idiot. Games start out at zero for both teams. Hang on, I need my notebook… Joke about how sports fans say they don’t get it when they lost cause it was so close at one point. Also, get more duct tape. Where was I? Oh yeah. Killing. Just saying it gets me all worked up. It’s like when you see a hot girl laying by the pool at your apartment complex and you have to go watch porn and wax the dolphin so you can focus. Anyway, I don’t think I’m a bad person. I don’t. I’m not. There’s just a monster inside me. And he’s the bad one. Mr. Hyde, my alter ego, my Id, Night Me, Murder Voltron, whatever he/it is, it’s there. I don’t know why, or how it got there, running the front office, but it’s alive and well, and I’ve just about given up trying to keep it down. Yeah, I’m part monster, but I’m also part human, so I have to rationalize all parts of me. I’ve thought about why I am this way. First off, I suffered a preponderance of head injuries at the hands of my older brother when I was a kid who unwisely demanded the top bunk. He’d start laughing at something, I’d hang my head down from the top to see what had him in stitches, he’d grab me by the scruff of my neck, yank me over the edge and I’d land on my head. I was such a sucker. I fell for it every time. Me crying in the kitchen in my PJ’s with an icepack on my forehead was a common sight. Knowing what we know with these suicidal NFL players, my self-diagnosis is that it must have knocked something (or possibly everything) loose. Second, I’m based out of L.A. Everyone there pretends everything’s going great. They always have some project, on the verge of “making it”, but if you ask me, they’re all self-made orphans chasing an impossible dream, leapfrogging from one lily pad of a project to the next, and just one SIG alert away from homicide themselves. But I think the biggest thing that shaped me was the decade I spent in the service industry before I finally started paying the bills with jokes. The service industry does a lot of damage to a person. Outwardly, it makes you subservient: opening doors, serving plates, clearing plates, taking orders, custom tailoring those orders, fulfilling needs, wants, letting people cut in front of you, being patient, smiling, cleaning puke, sending food back cause it wasn’t warm enough, enduring insults, pretending you don’t hear them talking about you and how short you are and you tell yourself that you’re not a duck in a shooting gallery, listening to them chew, and breathe and gulp and belch and pretending you like them; just basically getting psychically butt-fucked by these garbage human consumer strangers because they might give you a tip for eight plus hours a day, five nights a week. To this day, if a guy is washing his hands next to me I’ll hurry to dry my hands first so I can get some paper towels into his wet hands. That is real shit. I hate myself for it. I have conditioned myself to “be in service to”. To be second. To not Receive. That’s what happens to you on the outside. Fuck, I can taste the bile rising right now. I should really try that Kabbalah shit. But the red string. People would know… Inwardly, the industry makes you hate people. Restaurant workers; they’re not the only ones. Anyone dealing with the public in large enough quantities will eventually hate people if they have a brain in their heads. Why do you think cops rough people up, or flat out shoot them? Nurses and doctors abuse their patients? It’s no mystery. The general public sucks out loud. They come in and buy shit. They demand shit- unhappy with this/that; they make you dance like an organ grinder’s monkey. They’re not at work. They’re leisurely drinking. They have better clothes than you. You hear about their job, their vacation in Hawaii, how they’re closing on the second home, can they have some water, you hear the dumb shit guys say to hot girls, and even though it’s so mundane, you watch them leave together, and you’re stuck behind this literal and metaphorical bar, waiting till these people you’ve turned into retarded infants stumble home so you can clean up after all of them, count what little money they deemed you worthy of and go home yourself. All the while knowing some Neanderthal bro bore is balls-deep in some sugar walled beef sleeve. You find yourself secretly wishing you pass a drunk-driving accident on the way home that you hopefully contributed to, so there’s a few less of them. A culling of the cheap zombie-minded assholes who haunt your sleep. I never know if I’m making myself clear. Let me make sure. They are fucking awful gross rude meat skeletons stumbling around naked under their brand names trying to fuck and be fucked, but need to be drunk in order to connect and leave a swath of social destruction in their paths in the process. So, yeah, a decade builds up. I went from being a party-going extrovert to a self-isolating Hobbit (yes, that’s a short joke) forever cursed to quietly traffic in this jaded human taxonomy. I could only tolerate relating to people with the protection of some sort of barrier. First a bar. Now a stage. And I think the last thing you should know about me is that I try to only kill people who really should be killed. I really do. There’s a lot of two-legged colostomy bags out there, and I think the fact that society believes that we’re all supposed to tolerate them is a bigger crime than me taking out the proverbial trash. End of Disclaimer. I’m now buck-naked and rock hard as I wind butcher paper around her plastic-wrapped arms, and pack them into my empty suitcases. The layers of plastic and paper keep the Samsonites from leaking - and they look like cuts from the butcher shop in the X-Ray as long as you cut off at the joints, then in between the limbs. Sectioning each arm and leg into four wings and drumsticks suffices, and you have to split the hands and feet at least in half the long way. If you have the time, cleaving them into three is ideal. You never know if there’s a former hall monitor who’s still a virgin watching those screens. Oh, and I personally like to treat myself after a kill. After all that labor-intensive bone sawing, I save the breasts and ass for the end. It find it super enjoyable to carve ‘steaks’ out of those. I like to play around with them; try to really mimic the cuts I see at the grocery store. Obviously, I start with top rounds, move to sirloin, then to filets, rib eyes and I’m currently perfecting my New York Strip. It’s weird, because I’ve never considered myself artistic. Before I discovered an aptitude for carving human flesh into imitation beef steaks, I’d only really experimented with creating temporary art in a way only I could personally appreciate. I mean that literally. I started doing it when I was young, and I’m a little ashamed to admit I continue to do it to this day. Whenever a man urinates, it creates bubbles in the toilet water, and conversely, that stream in turn bursts those bubbles. I discovered if I whipped my bubble making pee shooter to and fro fast enough, I could use the shitter’s round shape as a globe and form my piss bubbles to create a bubbly map of North and South America. As I got better, I was able to use the rest of my pee stream to cut across the Atlantic and get going on the Iberian Peninsula. As my geographical knowledge and alcohol abuse escalated, I tackled Africa and the Sub Asian region. And, I’ll be even more honest. Once I learned men could do Kegels, I created a regimen and set upon my still-unrealized goal of mastering Southeast Asia. Between natural disasters, political power dynamics and the sheer urethral discipline it requires, I wonder if this endeavor is a folly of my yawning stupidity, or my personal Golden Fleece (intended) I will someday attain. I honestly don’t know. Once you break the seal and let the pee stream out, it’s so hard to squeeze it off to dot the toilet water’s ocean with a Sri Lanka. I do have self-awareness. I fully admit it’s a juvenile, yet fluid art form. Crickets, huh? Sometimes jokes are a numbers game. And there goes the shin. This girl got her calcium for sure. I always travel with empty luggage. Obviously, the Monster needs the space. No, I don’t keep the meaty bones as trophies. I’m not that sick. We’ll get there, just give me a minute. It comes down to the ‘evidence problem’. It’s an easy fix since I’m pretty basic with my fashion choices. The shitty towns we perform in usually have bargain basement stores and Wal-Marts, and it’s just safer to buy twenty dollar jeans and eight dollar shirts that I’m going to throw away anyway after the Monster has his way with me.  If fashion choices dictate fate, it really explains why I’m here. I give the room a quick sweep with a black light on luminol to see if I missed anything.  How do I have luminol? It’s amazing what you can get from drunken LA cops when you tell them you’re a writer working on a crime movie and offer them the promise of a consulting credit and fee when principal photography commences. Her head fucking spurted all over the ceiling. Thank God I lined that with sheeting. I fucking despise this part. The cleaning. Serial Killers get caught cause they’re sloppy, or if they don’t mix it up. You gotta keep it fresh. The MO, the victimology. It’s just like comedy. Look at Ron White. It’s the same set. Every time. “I got thrown out of a bar…” You gotta come up with new material to stay ahead of the game. We’ve all said it when it comes to dating: “So and so’s not my type.” It only proves that people do have a type, and because of that, serial killing and dating have a lot in common. Have you seen Reggie Bush’s girlfriends since Kim Kardashian? Three Words. Single Armenian Female. Scary, right?  The Yorkshire Ripper: always sex workers, always a hammer, knife and screwdriver. John Bunting: gays or pedophiles, always beating, toe crushing and strangulation. Herb Baumeister: gays and drowning. Ted Bundy: bludgeoning, strangling and necrophilia, and he went for cute girls. That one friend you have who only dates Asian chicks. Actually, once, I dated an Asian chick. We’d have sex but I’d be horny twenty minutes later. Hey Now! I could go on, but you get the point. They look for patterns. The key is to not have one. This is why I don’t worry. I’m pretty sure the FBI doesn’t have a profile for a murderer of the “People Who Fucking Suck” demographic. And, I’m not “the Husband” or the “Ex” or the “Co-Worker”.  I’m not “The Quiet Guy Next Door”. I’m a comic who performs on stage. In different cities. Good Christ, I open for Riley Rock, who, if it weren’t for a few movie and TV credits and his own short-lived TV show forever ago he’d be just as invisible as me. Riley Rock is the guy you see at the club and think, “Hey, isn’t that the guy from that show where he works with the dad sometimes?” Fuck him. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah. Cleaning. I wish I was the “Neat Monster” Dexter was, but that’s a work of fiction. I’m way too lazy. My apartment looks like a 10 year old with a job lives there. I have that crippling brand of OCD where everything’s a mess and I have trouble venturing outside. So, I prepare up front. Plastic, plastic, plastic! I can’t stress it enough. Saves so much time at the end. You just saw, wrap and go. This would be the greatest infomercial ever. Saw, Wrap and Go with the new…nah, that’s a shit premise. I work the saw rhythmically above the left knee. Fuck this bitch has some quads. Must be one of those cross-fit cunts. One more reason to have offed her.  My ass crack is sweaty. Keep on a-workin’. Eff you, I’m in the South. Lemme indulge.