#black hammer: spiral city

[omercifulheaves]

Black Hammer: Spiral City #1 Art by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo

[smashpages]

Black Hammer: Spiral City #1 (Dark Horse, November 2024) variant cover by Mike Mignola

[jkparkin]

Black Hammer: Spiral City #4 (Dark Horse, February 2025) variant cover by Cliff Chiang

[graphicpolicy]

SDCC 2024: Spiral City rises from the ashes of Jeff Lemire's Black Hammer: Spiral City

SDCC 2024: Spiral City rises from the ashes of Jeff Lemire's Black Hammer: Spiral City #comics #comicbooks #sdcc #sdcc2024 #comiccon

[found-family-tournament]

Found Family Tournament Round 1 Part 28 Group 140

Propaganda and further images under the cut

Rusties: Rodney Copperbottom, Lugnut/Lug, Fender Pinwheeler, Piper Pinwheeler, Diesel Springer, Crank Casey (& Wonderbot, Aunt Fanny, Cappy)

Protectors of Spiral City: Abraham Slamkowski/Abraham Slam, Mark Markz/Barbalien, Gail Gibbons/Golden Gail, Madame Dragonfly, TLK-E WLK-E/Talky Walky, Colonel Randall Weird (& Joseph Weber/Black Hammer)

Submissions are still open!

Rusties:

Within the societal structure of Robot City, there exists a social class referred to as Outmodes. Outmodes are robots whose parts are no longer being manufactured and, due to their economic status, cannot afford to purchase the newer, upgraded ones on the market. The fate of all outmodes is to be sweeped up, smelted down, and repurposed, when their old, broken bodies eventually fall apart. The Rusties are a ragtag group of outmodes living out of a boarding house. With the assistance of Rodney’s inventive prowess, they begin repairing other outmodes themselves. The film culminates in them fighting/defeating the evil robots responsible for the despicable treatment of outmodes.

Protectors of Spiral City:

A group of superheroes that once defended the sprawling metropolis of Spiral City. By killing the Anti-God, a malevolent cosmic being that threatened to destroy all of existence, they unwittingly upset the cosmic balance between good and evil. In order to prevent the universe from correcting itself and resurrecting the Anti-God, Spiral City’s heroes were forced to permanently exile themselves to another dimension. They now reside on a farm within the town of Rockwood, a timeless pocket dimension of sorts, where they attempt to pass themselves off as a (rather dysfunctional) family.

[geekcavepodcast]

"Black Hammer: Spiral City" Announced at Dark Horse

The next Black Hammer series from Dark Horse is Black Hammer: Spiral City from writer Jeff Lemire and artist Teddy Kristiansen. The comic will follow a new cast of characters struggling to survive in a chaotic world.

"Black Hammer: Spiral City picks up after The End, following the Second Cataclysm and the rearranging of the universe. Many of its lost heroes have returned, but there is no homecoming parade as anti-superhuman sentiment grows, fueled by recent events and stoked by Malcolm Gold, the former head of T.R.I.D.E.N.T, now running to become Spiral’s new mayor. Making matters worse, Spiral Asylum has shut down with many of its low-risk, mentally ill superhuman inmates being set loose into the streets." (Dark Horse)

Black Hammer: Spiral City #1 (of 7) goes on sale on November 13, 2024. The debut issue features a main cover by Teddy Kristiansen and variant covers by Mike Mignola, Matt Wagner, and Duncan Fegredo.

(Image via Dark Horse - Teddy Kristiansen's Cover of Black Hammer: Spiral City #1)

[thefreelanceangel]

"Seeing you like this is a rare treat."

Sweat soaked his hairline, a few streaks cutting through the soot on his face. Tiny black specks marred the leather apron, showing where sparks were flung up from his tapping hammer, and the acrid smells of the Goldsmiths' Guild rose even above the sweat-soaked cotton and leather he wore.

The dull edge of the barrel dug into the back of her thighs, adding another layer of ache on top of everything else she felt. Aetherical healing did quite a bit, but she'd not lingered long enough for them to finish up everything.

He reached up and cupped her face, leather glove hot against her skin, and carefully tipped her jaw up. "Look at me."

C'allie did.

"What happened? And why did you come here? To me?"

"Roronji."

His face hardened immediately. The fingertips against the side of her face tensed, pressing to her flesh, before he caught himself. "Was he going after you specifically?"

"Lyngnagl."

"...did you reach out to Mags?"

She rubbed her bare arms. Ul'dah wasn't known for a particularly cold climate, but the inner city didn't feel the desert sun in the same way. During the day, it became mildly warm. At night, it bordered on frigid if it wasn't on the ground level. Around them, the air felt too cold.

"She's dead," C'allie muttered.

"When?"

"A year back."

His thumb carefully moved over her cheekbone, pushing jagged locks of hair away from her skin. "Roronji?"

"Likely. Kadiar said a mining accident." C'allie's tail carefully moved, curling over her scraped knee. "He doesn't know anything."

"She didn't tell him?"

"No."

"You didn't tell them?"

Faces flicked through her mind. C'allie felt her left ear try to move when she winced, lopping against her hair. "No."

"Anything?"

"No. How could I?" She paused. "They know ... most of everything else. As much as is safe for them to know." She licked her dry lips. "They don't know about you."

He didn't say anything to that. How could he? The last time they'd come face to face, he'd shot her through the abdomen and she'd broken a blade off in his back. Mags and Lyngnagl'd both been alive, and in love. Roronji'd argued half the night about what they should do, only for that argument to spiral into what'd sent them all (bleeding) in separate directions. Who'd want to tell a family about that?

"Lyngnagl dead. Mags dead." He exhaled at last. "That explains why you came to me." C'allie's gaze shifted. His hand on her face exerted gentle pressure. "Look at me."

"If you'd taken this to Kugane," Osric Yar said calmly, "I likely would've helped Roronji hunt you down." His thumb ran lightly across her cheekbone before moving to her hanging ear. "Come. I'll tell the guild master I have a family emergency and we'll start piecing things together. Hm?"

[apocalypse-eyes]

Vermin (work in progress)

I.

My body is a rotten animal. My bicycle is left under the water. I haven't got to understand myself yet and I still came here to kill. I can pass through surfaces easily as my self is a semi-transparent layer. Dead water air and the stagnant sea. There was some paint on these hands when i found them.

The air is all saturated with smoke. I know you can see me when you look out your window. It doesn't really mean anything. Like peat soil, I'm standing in the way of the road. Cars look at me. And I forget what I'm supposed to do. Weren't you like this when you were still in your body? Some alcohol would change you, I can feel in this stomach now the way that you were. Your phone got destroyed in the water so there's no one else for now. The earth will tilt beneath us when I get sober. So you recover me. I found myself in dreams like you. The fallen trees in the forest that were incapable of decay. It's too late. The trees were all turned into ash, a fine white powder, while those grotesque tessellations of smoke replace their plumage.

The city used to be surrounded with trees. It was a part of the world. I don't know what these words still mean when I remember them. You take control at times I get too calm to follow death. Attached together, we're everything attached together. I can't really understand what you want except that missing a thumb like this is spiraling.

Your body is inconvenient. I went to your apartment when I found you and I pulled apart your strange collections. It seems you were in love, from the way that you didn't live in your room for a while. The plant there was dying. Its vines were all turning blond and brackish strands of hair, like pitiful handfuls can be clutched from a scalp. Your life was getting dismal with love.

I think that I came here to kill someone. There's signal interference. The pistol you kept in the closet, I took that out the first night and we walked around the city together. You start to understand yourself when it's losing connection. I was still damp from the fall. Still walking around there wrenched and bloody. You don't look them in the eye when there is smoke coming out of your clothes. Black smoke fills the sky at night and it turns back to white and red in the morning.

I keep walking home to your hole in the floor. The place you were disappearing. You're gone now, except those chemical reactions and you occasionally wake in the night. I need to keep drinking so I can stay in control of this terrible dream. You look at the ceiling or into the mess of green skeletons outside and keep thinking it won't be like this forever.

And everyone knows it's too late for pollution. You may as well eat the pigeons off the street. You may as well eat the rats and arthropods before the water rises. There's someone at the door. The window is broken so it's very cold in here. We talk in the surface of water that your face reflects and you try to explain yourself sometimes. I told you that we're going to kill. It doesn't seem to bother you much. It's just okay that we are going to kill someone. The world got to be like that while you were alive.

A clot of hair in the drain, that's how I describe it. I need to be inebriated to float back on the surface. The scraps of dead souls that can molder together. Spaces between, congealed tension and reconstitution. You understand it if you don't. No one thing or another. Those particles of smoke who pulled you out of the water when you died. It's not as simple as that. There isn't death.

You walk around with the body when I can't get numb anymore. He was at the grocery store again and it felt like falling under the water. The hammer from the wind that dragged you off the bridge. It was the grating in the middle that felt treacherous before. You get used to some things and then they kill you. I can't hate you like you wanted me to, and you can never want to be in love with me.

[waltwhitmansbeard]

"here. take this gun. don't pull the trigger unless it's absolutely necessary."

Can we get some sweet perc'ahlia, please? :D

here. take this gun. don't pull the trigger unless it's absolutely necessary. gonna set this one in gwtf since that's also my modern au, apparently.

The sound wakes Percy from a dead sleep, sends him shooting up from the pillow, eyes instantly wide and searching. It's pitch black in this apartment, black-out curtains drawn tight because it would take an act of the gods to get Vex to wake up with the sun. Even now, as his heart hammers a mile a minute, she's just barely stirring, still clearly in the clutches of sleep as she mumbles, "Percy darling?"

He heard it. A creaking, or maybe snapping? Something from the hall outside, he's sure. They're in a nice area of the city, all brick and marble, but that invites a different kind of danger, one where shiny things attract all manner of monsters in the dark.

He's just about to tell her what he'd heard when it happens again: a muffled bumping, just outside their door. That, at least, rouses her properly, gets her to sit up next to him. "What was that?"

He doesn't answer, because he doesn't know. Instead, he reaches into the stately nightstand beside the bed and pulls out his gun, the one she hates but he cannot go to sleep without. Her hand grips his shoulder. "Percival, don't."

Ignoring her still, he reaches back into the drawer and retrieves a second weapon, this one much smaller and less powerful. He twists around to press it into her hand. "Here. Take this gun."

Her eyes nearly pop out of her head. "In what world—"

"Don't pull the trigger unless it's absolutely necessary." This, he doesn't say, is why he wanted her trained, why he's been nagging her to go to the range with him sometimes, just so she's not a complete novice with the thing—but no, it's the archery classes she's been taking that are supposed to keep them safe.

He swings his legs out of bed and begins to pad out of the bedroom and into the living area, eyes scanning in the near total darkness. Nothing stirs, but as he approaches the front door, the sound grows louder, more insistent. He tightens his fingers around the grip of the gun. Behind him, Vex's shuffling gait pulls his attention—he'd really rather she stay back, keep hidden unless and until the worst happens—but he focuses on the task at hand. Silently as he can, he slips up to press his eye to the peephole.

Nothing.

The hallway is empty.

He turns back to Vex, who mouths, What is it? He shrugs. He undoes the chain and the deadbolt, and then slowly, so slowly, creaks open the door, the gun just at his side.

"WOOF!"

All the money in the world, and Percy never in a million years would have bet that the cause of all this worry is this, an enormous, shaggy, dark brown mutt panting happily in the hall, here on the fourth floor of their rather upscale building. Percy stares, gaping, at the dog, who boofs again.

"What the hell?" The door is wrenched open further as Vex strides up to get a look. Her squeal is nearly inaudible as she instantly falls to her knees, gun abandoned on the entry table. "Well look at you!"

There's a dog. A street dog, judging the matted fur and the stench, and Vex is letting it lick her face as if she's known the thing since it were a puppy. "Vex'ahlia..."

"Well move out of the way, Percival, and let him in!"

Things have spiraled out of his control so very, very quickly. Within seconds, Vex is inside on the couch with the dog, scratching behind his ears and ordering Percy to fill up a bowl with water for him. He obeys robotically, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that while he may have been fast asleep not five minutes ago, he is now a dog owner, whether he likes it or not.

"Vex'ahlia, he probably has fleas..." he attempts weakly, but Vex is already listing out all the things they'll need to do and get in the morning, like checking for a microchip and buying dog food and getting him to a groomer. Eventually, he leaves her to her whirlwind excitement, returning to the two firearms to their place in his nightstand drawer and crawling under the covers, resigning himself to whatever chaos awaits this house in the morning.

[thelustybraavosimaid]

INTO THE DEEP DARK

They gave no answer, only prodded him with the points of their spears. He had no choice but to descend. Down a twisting passageway he went, narrow steps carved from the living rock, down and down. I must go up, he told himself. Up, not down. Why am I going down? Below the earth his doom awaited, he knew with the certainty of dream; something dark and terrible lurked there, something that wanted him. Jaime tried to halt, but their spears prodded him on. (Jaime VI, ASoS)

--

"...And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of..." (Jon IV, AGoT)

ADMONISHMENT

"He was going to burn the city," Jaime said. "To leave Robert only ashes."

"He was your king," said Darry.

"You swore to keep him safe," said Whent.

"And the children, them as well," said Prince Lewyn.

Prince Rhaegar burned with a cold light, now white, now red, now dark. "I left my wife and children in your hands."

"I never thought he'd hurt them." Jaime's sword was burning less brightly now. "I was with the king..."

"Killing the king," said Ser Arthur.

"Cutting his throat," said Prince Lewyn.

"The king you had sworn to die for," said the White Bull. (Jaime VI, ASoS)

--

He dreamt he was back in Winterfell, limping past the stone kings on their thrones. Their grey granite eyes turned to follow him as he passed, and their grey granite fingers tightened on the hilts of the rusted swords upon their laps. You are no Stark, he could hear them mutter, in heavy granite voices. There is no place for you here. Go away. (Jon VIII, ASoS)

FEAR

No. Terror closed a hand about his throat. Then his sword went dark, and only Brienne's burned, as the ghosts came rushing in.

"No," he said, "no, no, no. Nooooooooo!"

--

I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream." (Jon IV, AGoT)

POUNDING HEARTS

Heart pounding, he jerked awake, and found himself in starry darkness amidst a grove of trees. He could taste bile in his mouth, and he was shivering with sweat, hot and cold at once. (Jaime VI, ASoS)

--

Last night he had dreamt the Winterfell dream again. He was wandering the empty castle, searching for his father, descending into the crypts. Only this time the dream had gone further than before. In the dark he'd heard the scrape of stone on stone. When he turned he saw that the vaults were opening, one after the other. As the dead kings came stumbling from their cold black graves, Jon had woken in pitch-dark, his heart hammering. Even when Ghost leapt up on the bed to nuzzle at his face, he could not shake his deep sense of terror. (Jon VII, AGoT)

[smashpages]

SDCC | Jeff Lemire + Teddy Kristiansen present a ‘new beginning’ in ‘Black Hammer: Spiral City’

The seven-issue miniseries set in a chaotic new world begins this fall.

[rockislandadultreads]

Notable First Novels of 2023

Bellies by Nicola Dinan

I wore a dress on the night I first met Ming.

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a magnetic young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom’s awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming’s orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he’s already mapped out their future together. But shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.

From London to Kuala Lumpur, New York to Cologne, we follow Tom and Ming as they face tectonic shifts in their relationship and friend circle in the wake of Ming’s transition. Through a spiral of unforeseen crises—some personal, some professional, some life-altering—Tom and Ming are forced to confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken since graduating, and each must answer the essential question: Is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.

The Unfortunates by J.K. Chukwu

Sahara is Not Okay. Entering her sophomore year at Elite University, she feels like a failure: her body is too curvy, her love life is nonexistent, her family is disappointed in her, her grades are terrible, and, well, the few Black classmates she has just keep dying. Sahara is close to giving up, herself: her depression is, as she says, her only “Life Partner.”

And this narrative—taking the form of an irreverent, piercing “thesis” to the university committee that will judge her—is meant to be a final unfurling of her singular, unforgettable voice before her own inevitable disappearance and death. But over the course of this wild sophomore year, and supported by her eccentric community of BIPOC women, Sahara will eventually find hope, answers, and an unexpected redemption.

[comiccrusaders]

SPIRAL CITY RISES FROM THE ASHES IN JEFF LEMIRE’S “BLACK HAMMER: SPIRAL CITY”! @DarkHorseComics #comics #comicbooks https://ow.ly/O8O050SI4Nm

[graphicpolicy]

Preview: Black Hammer: The End #6

Black Hammer: The End #6 preview. Hammers collide as Lucy Weber once again takes the mantle of Black Hammer to face off against an evil version of the Hammer putting all of Spiral City in jeopardy #comics #comicbooks

[clarchive]

[ tango dip ]   a kiss shared while one partner is dipped backward ( to Maven, from Vicente! )

The delicate, too tight ribbons of her pointe shoes cut into her ankles; they’ll leave bruises for days, tender reminders of her failures that decorate her. It makes her heart hammer in her chest; she is spiraling out of control, over and over again, wild blue eyes locked with themselves on the mirror across from her. It reflects the city lights in them; she hates it, she’s too exposed, anyone could look in. She pulls down each and every blind in front of the windows, pulling too hard –– they rattle on their moorings. She doesn’t care. It only leaves the door and that doesn’t have one. She leaves it because she has to.

A failed job. A revoked payment. A missed shot.

She missed a shot. Maven has had a spotless record since she was eighteen; it’s the very thing that got her the position that she once had among the Red Room. It’s what allows her to raise her pricing, off shore accounts thick with the cash that makes her mouth water and allows her to be able to afford small luxuries. And now she’s messed it up –– Maven does not miss, and yet she has. Because her brain is too distracted, is too full of human girl things that she shouldn’t be thinking of.

She shouldn’t be thinking of black hair that curls just right, facial hair that scratches against her thighs, eyes that are sincere and terrified all in one motion. She shouldn’t be thinking about lips on her own and that butterfly free fall in her chest and stomach when his hands touch her waist. She shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. Helping someone leave and become their own person is one thing. Developing feelings is another.

She is a weapon and weapons don’t love.

Her body is a spiral, a spinning top. She pushes herself up onto the pointe of her shoe as she moves, ignores the pain in her ankle and toes. She’s been at this for too long by now and will pay for it later. But she will spin as many times as it takes to drill it into her head, over and over again because she needs to learn. Self punishment is the only way to learn.

Her body is a tornado that has no end in sight. Her mind is clouded judgement that makes her teeth grind. And all of it makes her miss the sound of the door open, boots across the floor, her name being called. It’s not until hands are at her waist and forcefully stopping her that she realizes she’s not alone and she gasps, eyes wide and wild all at once.

She is a weapon and weapons do not miss the tell tale signs of someone entering their domain.

She is losing herself. She is losing her touch. Widows don’t lose that.

But no, she’s not a Widow anymore, is she? But those principles are dragged so deep into her veins that she cannot separate herself from them. Her tongue drags across the tops of her teeth, over her canine to feel the slight pain of it.     ❛   You have a death wish if you want to sneak up on me like that.    ❜   

Vincente just hums in response, noncommittal. They both know that if anyone knows how to dismantle her widow’s bite, it’s him. Just as she knows how to dismantle his talons.

He moves her, careful as their bodies sway. Her hands rest on his biceps as her mind tries to work itself up again, tries to punish punish punish. But he does something that no one else has before –– he silences it. His motions are careful and repetitive, like he knows that she’s not all there, like she is a wild thing in need of taming. It’s a dance that she knows vaguely; she’s used it at parties before, drink in hand and smile deadly, sharp, ready to pounce.

But then he dips her and her eyes widen; he doesn’t hesitate, his lips finding hers, and she feels the last bit of her self loathing drain away from her. It drains into the floor of the dance studio, her arm around his neck, his hands holding her waist and his lips working hers. It drains away as he coaxes a soft noise from her, his nose lightly nudging against her own. It drains away as he pulls her from her own self destruction and into the safety of his arms.

She is a weapon and weapons do not love. But she is a girl and she thinks that she may be in love.

[helenaheissner]

A Dream of Summer Rain (Chapter 2: A Remedy for the Aftermath of My Habits)

Available for purchase in its entirety as an ebook here:

They sat in the cramped church basement as rain hammered the ground outside. Lacy shared a table with Danny, while Drew, their teacher, stood at a podium beneath a broken clock and a golden crucifix, reading from a well-worn Bible. 

“Now class, who can tell me about the Tower of Babel?” Drew said. “Liam. Care to offer your take on this?”

Lacy jerked forward in her seat. 

“If you’re trying to run down the clock again, Liam, we’ve still a half-hour left. Tell us: why did God strike the Tower down?”

“Uh, He did it-”

“You, Liam.”

“W-what?” Lacy said. 

Drew leaned forward on his podium, smirking as darkness papered over the ceiling above. “It was your fault, Liam. You and your family. It’s always been you monsters.” His blue eyes morphed red, and his holy book caught fire. The fire spread to the podium, down onto the rug. 

Lacy leapt from her chair, and looked and saw she was all alone. None of the others had stayed with her, except for Drew. Horns sprouted from Drew’s forehead as his teeth sharpened to fangs. The fire, orange and red and golden, consumed everything in sight. Outside, rain assaulted the ground, flooded the world, shattered the windows to the church basement and poured in. But instead of quenching the fire, it fed it. The water burned in the hellfire furnace, and Lacy found herself drowning in a Lake of Fire. 

Above her hung a Star, shining blue, piercing through Hell, reaching for Lacy. Lacy reached up for it, but she closed her hand too slowly, and it slipped from her grasp and flew away. The fire grew and grew and grew all around her until a hand reached down from above. She clasped it, let it raise her up from damnation, and found that it belonged to… Herself. To another her. This one was all wrong though- carried herself like a man, dressed like a man in a three piece suit and tie, with eyes of an inverted pattern and pointed ears and a voice like a storm. No, not like a storm- it was a storm, wearing her face, a twisted force of destruction clad in her reflection and waiting to sweep her away. He kissed her cheek, and as she turned and ran he called, “be seeing you!”

She ran after him, ran until found a castle sculpted from a single sheet of pitch black metal standing beneath a moon quartered into the points of a diamond. Between the castle and the moons floated the remnants of a city that yearned to drift out into an endless sea of empty blackness and oblivion. Snow fell in a heavy torrent, and Lacy lumbered up to the front door with her greasy, hairy body and tore it off its hinges. She lumbered through its interior, and found it was a library: an endless maze of shelves that reached four hundred feet for the ceiling, each packed with tomes and volumes. Some were inked in English, and bore titles such as Necronomicon, Arcanum Unbound, and The Unabridged Histories of Magic. Others were in tongues she could recognize, or at least take a guess at-, Latin, Aramaic, Farsi, Igbo, Japanese, Russian. But others were in languages she had no idea of, of languages long forgotten to human memory, from the days of antiquity when the world itself was more… Malleable. 

She climbed the spiral staircase up to the very top of the castle, where she found a single, slim volume waiting for her at the final step: The King of Elfland’s Daughter. 

She’d seen this before. 

She stepped on it, then moved on. She dragged herself onto the roof of the castle, and she stood beneath the floating city and the four moons. The snow melted on her skin, and she drank in the cold. Hideous laughter bubbled up inside her and burst forth as she reached her hand towards the sky. From the center gap between the moons, her star descended from the heavens. It lowered itself slowly into Lacy’s outstretched hand, and she guided it into her heart. 

An agonizing blaze engulfed her insides. It consumed all that she was, and when it was done, all that was left was her hate and rage and resentment, and a world upon which to avenge herself. Behind her, the storm that wore her face laughed at her as she inched closer and closer to becoming him. He came forward, the thing she didn’t want to be, the man pretending to be her, the monster he wanted her to be, and they danced together and became one. 

“I’ve been so looking forward to this,” the Storm said with her mouth, she said with the Storm’s voice. She turned her sights to the east, where the island ended and the Sea of Glass stretched over the abyss. She smiled, and she set forth, baying for blood and order, lowering her soul deeper into the Lake of Fire with each step. 

***

Lacy woke up drenched in her own sweat. Again. She’d had the dream. Again. She went about her designated hour of self-loathing, again, and when it was over her stomach growled with such ferocity it forced her into the kitchen in search of food. A-fucking-gain. 

The kitchen was the largest part of the house. The hallway at the back of the house, which contained the doors to their respective bedrooms and the bathroom, emptied into the mouth of the living room, where their black couch, brown chair, glass coffee table, and plasma screen television resided in a cramped consortium. To the left of that was the kitchen, a tightly-compacted area wherein a black stove, a microwave, an oven, a fridge, and a wooden, rectangular kitchen table all gathered. Danny sat at the table eating his breakfast of maple sausage and hash browns, the aroma of cooking still pouring off of the skillet on the stove. He was a slender young man with light brown hair and blue eyes, standing at– as he quite insistently phrased it–just below average height. 

“My God,” Danny said. “She lives.”

Lacy grunted. 

“Morning to you too, sunshine. Make any sales?”

Lacy nodded, then held up five fingers.

“Good work!” Danny smiled. “I’m gonna head out soon. Same as usual for you today?”

Lacy nodded again.

“Good to hear, good to hear.”

“Anything…,” Lacy said, “Anything happening with you?”

“No, not really. Talked to Corporate this morning after blowing her off last night.” His thick eyebrows knitted tightly, and his mouth locked into a sneer. ‘Corporate’ was what he called his mother. Granted, she was part of the corporate office for Woodrow Knives, and she was their immediate boss. Lacy had met the woman a few dozen times growing up. She was… A bit of a bitch, frankly. Danny avoided talking to her when he could.   

“How’d that go?” Lacy asked. 

“The usual.” Which meant it had devolved into a shouting match. 

Lacy winced. She put her hand on her friend’s shoulder and said, “I’m sorry about that. I know how much she gets under your skin.”

His shoulders drooped, and he smiled sadly. “Thanks, Lace.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

She poured herself a small bowl of dry cereal and ate in silence, then said good-bye to her friend as he tied his tie and went off to work with his suitcases full of knives. Lacy sat there a while, listening to Danny’s truck as it drove further and further away. Finally, she got up and headed for her room, only for the spinning wheels and rumbling engine of an approaching car to catch her attention.

She opened the door as a police car pulled up in front of the bungalow. Two officers lumbered out. “Are you Liam O’Sullivan?” one of them asked. 

Lacy nodded.

“We have some unfortunate news about your parents.”

Lacy had always expected to hear one day that her father had killed her Mom and then, like the miserable coward he was, capped himself. Even still, Lacy’s heart sank into the acidic pit of her stomach as the cops explained that her parents had been murdered. It sank further when they showed her the pictures of her parents’ bodies, and she realized what had happened.

They’d been killed in the exact same manner Drew had been. Chests dug open, hearts torn out. Someone… Something had desecrated their remains. Something with fangs and claws.

The inside of Lacy’s skull became a pressure cooker of dissociation and anguish. The cops left, and once they were out of eyeshot, she got up, went into the woods, and beat a tree with a shovel while screaming at the top of her lungs. She did this for several hours, until her muscles throbbed and her voice was hoarse and the stench of sweat was thick on her body hair. She fell to her knees, she listened to the wind snake between the trees as she stared up at the sky through the viridescent canopy, and she wept. The clouds were thick and gray, and she wanted the rain to come to wash away her sin and filth, wash away the whole world until there was nothing left that could hurt her ever again. She ached with rage and despair, and as always, her star waited for her in the sky above. It clawed for her, desperate to get in, desperate to corrupt her, desperate to turn her into something she wasn’t. 

“And what are you, exactly?” Drew asked. 

Lacy blinked. Her head turned behind her, then in front of her, then up and down and side to side as she searched in vain for the source of the voice. She fell onto her back and looked up. “I dunno, Drew,” she said. “I really don’t.”

She half-expected to hear Drew’s voice again, for him to respond with a simple but cutting utterance of the word ‘bullshit’, but this was not so. She was left in that moment with only her own heartbeat and her Star looming above her. She was left in that moment with the simple, irrefutable fact that her parents were dead, and the same monsters who had killed her teacher, who had been trying to kill her for over a decade, were responsible.