covfeandtv

[covfeandtv]

Echoed from a hidden wall, its not returned with spite,

The sound still has a tender note of sweetness,

By law the rendezvous insists itself outside of choice,

A price, it threats, for nixxing its appointment.

To use a sacred history to build a painted stage,

The exiled and the decorated entries,

Exposed in light to a-hundred eyes, but only seen by one,

A circus act of reconciliation.

The sum of all its notes will eventually be none,

It's safe to rest until the calculation,

Your voice will always harmonise the song that rides the wind,

The details of the stage will build a future.

[covfeandtv]

From the Sky

A forager alone in the bush searches fallen trunks before movement in the sky catches their attention. As if made of clouds, the faint traces of a leviathan from the void emerge beyond the horizon like titanic ribbons caught in the wind, stretching far across the soft summer scape. Its fins catch the atmosphere and glow a bright white, and the forager grips tightly against a tree, astounded. The serpantine whips of the beast are fast and violent, and circling it like orbiting satelites are skycrafts which flash lights of different colours and tempos to one another.

Onboard one of these crafts, an enraged pilot barks at a subordinate behind him while he fixes his sights on the beast and puts his body into the joystick to will his machine in tight and sudden maneuvres, darting to avoid catching debris and embers cascading from the beasts igniting fins. Miles of scaled surface run beneath him in fantastic waves as the leviathan struggles to gain altitude away from the grasp of its captor's gravitational pull. The subordinate plays desparate inputs into their terminal, barely maintaining the ships stability against the growing disturbances of the planets atmosphere. Shudders and groans from its old hull and strained joinings muffle the shouts between its two operators. The pilot glances between the beast and the crafts of his comrades as they swarm ahead, and the familiar darkness of space and its stars is fading as the oppressive light of atmosphere invades the backdrop of the leviathan. His eyes are insulted by it, and in his furious state this drives him madder. Heatshields around his craft threaten to finally give up as he follows the beast into the blue, when suddenly a new onboard alarm cuts through the din of warning sirens that had become meaningless noise: an alert from the United Bureau. The pilot kicks in anger and curses violently, and in gritted teeth thinks for a moment before giving up, shouting in a loud growl as he lets go of the joystick and throws his head back into the scruffy padding of his seat, hands clasped to his face. Outside of his windscreen, the crafts of his comrades also slow to auto-piloted courses. His subordinate behind him recieves communications from the Bureau and confirms reciept of their order to desist and retreat. Defeated, they watch as the prize that they had followed for so many years plunges into the depths of atmosphere ahead of them, pushing glorious waves through its clouds in the beasts wake, knowing that the spoils will once again go to those who havent earned them.

In high orbit, peacekeeprs aboard a United Bureau carrier have been watching the leviathans descent, and communications operators have been working to determine the language of the nomads chasing it, while managing contact with an approaching caravan of industrial resource collectors. Eager to scatter the nomads before the collectors arrive in orbit to avoid any heated conflict from less co-operative members, the ships captain gives stern words to the chief, and to the relief of officers listening in, it seems the chief agrees to disperse. While the leviathan skims off the planets air in bright flashes of light, the swarm turns and rockets back into the void. Moments after, confirmation is recieved as the collectors slow into orbit. Deeds and credentials are shared and double-checked as a final handshake with Bureau officials, and aquaintancy between captains of the two forces are closed with formal goodbyes. Fleets of frigates and gunships escort a barge that dwarfs the Bureau peacekeeper, and the Bureau staff are given leave from their stations to watch the industrial fleet move in.

The forager watches in frightened awe. The elation of this legend materialising in the sky beyond the mountains is compounded with fear as its form bursts with great flashes of light, dragging the heavens behind it. Its movements fall dim, and the whips of its flight go soft and weak, and it falls beyond the distant horizon, the sky burning in a trail behind it, and when it disappears from view, and the sky returns to the soft blue, figures in the sky indescernable to the forager make a slow and certain descent, approaching the fallen god.

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Walking hope from the shop, they see a tall ship moving slowly across the sky in the distance above the houses, flashing red and yellow beacons to announce itself to other sky users. Its dark vertical hull is a faded lilac through the afterglow of the day.

This old housing estate is quiet on this saturday evening. Windows are dark, some are lit with a phosphoresous yellow, some flicker with fire light. A few doorsteps are still populated by residents with neighbours getting the last of the days light before retiring for the night. Old street lamps stand along the footways bare of their bulbs. Most are naked of their access plates and are gutted of any wiring.

The nightwatchers are starting their shifts, coming down the middle of the road up ahead: three young men holding candle lanterns and clubs of various bodged builds in case of any oppertunistic outsiders or unlucky encounters with hungry animals. Theyre smoking and laughing, sharing news of their days since their last shift together. One is expecting a baby with his partner; another laments gambling losses to the amusement of his watchmates.

Smoke begins to rise from chimneys of aged houses still fit for homes. Gardens of particularly resourceful families rumble with generators complaining of long-stale oils and mismatched combustables.

The ship hangs over, bound leagues beyond where any of these folk could ever imagine, immaterial to each other.

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Bio-Mechanical Utility Exo-Suits

Known as Meta-Organs or Second Skins, Bio-Mechanical Utility Exo-Suits (BMUES) are artificial biological tools which are worn by the human user as a full-body suit, allowing them direct control over highly versitile bio-machinery. Its “skin” covers the human users body and, with assistance from non-biological mechanical and computational components, can change shape and function to the needs of its user.

For instance, a person wearing a BMUES may adapt their ankles and feet to better support long distance running by developing an exo-skeletal support and power system around relevant body parts out of organic matter, working in conjunction with the users own bio-mechanics as synchronous and co-operative organs. The user may then take on the form of something more resembling an animal in their relative limbs and organs if it may fascilitate their activity in ways more effective than their natural human bodies can allow. The user may adapt things like new eyes which move and position in ways to expand their point of view. As the BMUES “grows” around their own head, new apparatus communices directly with the user's brain to transmit relative input and output information, once again acting synchronous and co-operatively with the user's own organs as if they were one.

BMUES may also produce bio-mechanical organs which are unrecognisable in comparison to known organisms. For instance, one may use their BMUES while on a distant excursion through unsettled wilderness to provide for them a shelter for the night against the elements. Developers of BMUES have drafted programs which instruct the exo-suit to grow thin limbs from the user's back - limbs reminiscant most closely to the legs of a spider, or of the bones of a bats wings - which will encase the user in an egg shaped frame like cupped fingers, before the space between these limbs are webbed together by a fleshy tissue, which then toughens to encase the user in a safe, weatherproof egg. From inside, with the user sat in an upright foetal position, the BMUES may then anchor the hem of its encasing into the ground with tendrils acting as long roots to pin its canvas deep into the ground, ensuring it remains upright and undisturbed during high winds or investigation by wildlife. When secured, the BMUES may then fill the space inside its shell with sedatory gasses, putting the user to sleep. After a predetermined amount of time, adjusted by the user's personal computational device, the shell will open and retract back into the user, allowing them to wake up and continue their business, well rested for the upcoming day.

Maintaining ones BMUES is simple but demanding. While wearing a BMUES, a user must often consume 3 to 4 times their normal daily calorific intake in order to fuel its bio-machinery and provide it with compounds needed to operate, while still providing the user with their own dietary demands. Non-biological computing devices can monitor the nutritional input and expendature of the user and their BMUES as one singular organism, and adjust its use as required, such as managing fat reserves for either fuel or for tissue synthesis.

Some extra-human dietary supplements will be required also to provide for some of the functions of the BMUES. Materials such as mercury, francium, and copper, can be consumed with the help of pre-programmed oral and anal adaptations. It is very important that a user's BMUES is kept well nourished as a malnourished BMUES can severely harm its human user.

Extra-professional leisure use is strictly prohibited by the board, and users caught or suspected of using their BMUES for fetishised sexual activity will be banished.

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Vawlalla

Yeah me and the boys went to Vawlalluh for John's stag on the weekend, yeah it was wicked mate. Food was good, open bar, all included in the package, we got wankered mate yeah. Bit of a sausage fest tho, we couldnt even get a lap dance or nuffink for john, i fout wot kind of stag venue is this when u cant even get a lap dance. It was just all blokes, no birds. And they all looked miserable as fuck mate just giving us funny looks all night, like mate brighten up yeah, isnt this supposed to be like an eternal wicked party or summink, they all look proper miserable.

Nearly had a punch up too, Steve got lary cus you know wot Steve gets like after a few, and he squared up to this big schandi geezer cus he looked at him funny, and Steves givin it wotayuh lookin at u cunt and suddenly that Odun bloke sat in the big fuck-off chair at the end of the hall stands up, yknow the matey with the fuckin eye patch, and hes fucking massive mate stood there wiv his fuckin bear pelt, and hes got this massive fuckin spear, and im thinkin fuckin hell Steve wot av u done, this geezers gonna fucking murder us, but then one of the staff in the hi-vis goes up to Odun and takes him aside and talks to him and then he goes and sits back down, and so now Steve feels like the big bollocks and is taunting him like yeah Englands boys are here now you schandi cunt, ingerlund ingerlund ingerlund an' all that just gobbing off, and we're all laughing and all of Oduns mates have a face like funder. It was a proper laugh.

Piss easy to get there too, u just turn up at the fuckin myfical travel place fing, yknow where they used to have the Burger King up by the librey in town, and they sort you all out wiv like these fuckin toy axes and horned helmets and everyfing mate, which i fout was disappointing in the end cus they werent even fuckin wearing the horned hats when we got there but woteva, and then they take u into this room with the big black glass frame and matey lights it with this big burning torch, and then the frame fills up with this purple smoke stuff and when u walk through it youre there as if you just went through the front door. Yeah its fuckin mad mate, bit scary first time.

But yeah it was good. Better than last year when me and the missus went to Nervarna. She liked it but i just fout it wos fuckin borin. It was just a fuckin grassy field mate, in the fog. Like, to be fair 'n'at, it was like this weird pink fog and the air tasted really sweet and that was like, ok this is sumfing new, but after five minutes i was just bored. She liked it tho, she said she felt really peaceful n that. But Vawlalluh was much bettah. Reckon we might do Hevun next year for our anerversry.

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Sentinels were man-like creatures who could sometimes be found in the woodlands clutching at strange stone protusions from the ground which stood like large milestones in small clearings. They would look like regular men from afar, but closer up they would become more animal with the blue-grey colour of their skin, and the beastial hunch of their spine between their shoulders. More so would they come across as beasts from how they would shudder and chatter as they clutched to their stone with long, thin arms, embracing it it as widely as they could reach, and how the vast grasp of their boney hands and fingers would fiddle and grip on knobs and outcrops of the rock as if they were desparately trying not to fall away from it. Their expression, despite the frigid spasms snatching control of the rest of their body, would be still. While their body struggled against the strange stone as tightly and closely as it could, their gaze would remain fixed into the distance. Wild and thoughtless eyes, dull with cateracts, would look past the deep forest and into darkness, and an observer could look into them and see a quiet echo far back into a part of them that was perhaps once human. And this is how they would be, starved and weathered, until they would eventually die, still clung to their stone, until their bones would fall to the ground and disappear into the growing forest.

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Doom

Our home is doomed and has been since before we were put here. In our system, we share an irregularly crossed orbital path with a neighbouring planet; ours being a stable ring around our star and theirs being elliptical and rotating about the point, bringing them close to us in ways that were for the longest time difficult to predict.

The colonisers who bought us here thousands of years ago knew this, and almost wrote this site off as a candidate for settlement, but war drove them into the less attractive option. We came here simply to afford a rest stop for the warpath.

The millenia that were predicted for when our neighbour finally makes contact were more than enough time for this purpose. They settled and within a few hundred years the war was over and they left, leaving the camp escapees and the broken runaways with a perfectly habitable home to inherit. No one but the top knew that this planet's orbits were numbered, and how the abandonned undesirables had better independently develop interstellar travel quickly before their legacy came to an abrupt end.

It took centuries yet for the roving game chasers and the river settlers to come to their own understanding of the space outside of their sky, and the knowing of their doom only encouraged the destructive and the insidious to steal any chance that the peaceful had in moving toward a future where they would choose their own destiny. The closest thing to religion that they ever had was of the roaming doom cults who obeyed the looming god in the sky into brutalising the settled. Death was their obsession, and fear was all they knew.

Thousands of years later, little has changed. Where our ancestors watched with pained anticipation of the heavens for our judge to pass overhead unannounced, now we make a grim and punctual occassion of greeting him, and I fear more than anything that the screams of those offered will some day saturate the air so densely that he will hear us.

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Orc Hounds

Orcish hounds are no joke. They were bred to be aggressive to humans; opposite of how we bred our own. Even human dogs which are bred to be aggressive guards descend from human-domesticated canines. The fact that they were bred in the first place by humans mean that they were once pacified and befriended by us in their ancestry. But orcish hounds have not had this history with us. Orcish hounds only recognise orc as their friend, and since the earliest age of their friendship, they have been set upon us as threats. The very genesis of an orc and canine comradery was even born out of necessity of human colonialism. We starved the local inhabitants and fauna of the primitive orcish lands, forcing them together as desperate allies against a mutual threat. And this has been the backbone of their brotherhood for thousands of years, and now it could be said that the orcish hound hates humans even more so than the sapient and vengeful orc just through sheer galvanisation of instinct. If a humanoid has a soft, fleshy face, and small, unthreatening jaws, and eyes that dont glow a fierce red, then millennia of conditioning triggers in them an indomitable rage.

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Indirect Exposition

We sat in silence. I watched him stare into the past beyond his crossed-over boots. Moments of silence like this between newly met strangers such as us were comfortable these days, thanks to their familiarity. They always felt shared. The amen of the moment was in the sharp inhale that loaded his sigh, and as the present returned to him, he looked back up at me from under the low hem of his tuque, and as he uncrossed his legs and planted his boots to the ground to sit up, he rustled in the pockets of his coat for a half-pack of cigarettes. He offered me one and i lit us both. With a deep inhale, he gazed again in thought, looking up this time to the cieling. "I tell you what I don't miss, though," he said with a renewed tone and eyebrows raised in leu of a grin, "the traffic."

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Agent Blue

Agent Blue was first synthesised around 60 years ago in the labs of a newly-installed revolutionary state. Prevailing thought held axiomatic that the fatal flaws keeping utopia from blossom were attributes of the human instinct, such as greed and selfish ambition, and so the nation's top minds were tasked with figuring out a cure for this chronic human ill. The cure was Agent Blue: the ultimate medication for the troubles of man. Agent Blue reduced to near nothingness impulses in its subjects toward selfishness, any desire for individual gain or status, violence or any will to dominate others. It made its subjects placid, obedient, and only desiring to help and to provide. It made the perfect utopian citizen, and was to be the seed for a perfect world where no one would ever want or go without, or suffer or fear.

The roll-out of this program, however, didn't work out so simply. They aimed to make it a mandatory medication for each individual, and the idea was that it would soon influence enough of the population to shape the zeitgeist for a new enlightenment, where from it would be new thought and philosophy which would take the reins from the pill to drive forward the long term stability of utopia. But animal instinct, as it had since the beginning of life, prevailed, inflaming as the law of nature tends when constrained by artificial boundaries, in chaos and violence. The young state died, with as much blood and death as it was born, mere years old. Any remnants of the Agent Blue program burned in the flames of the capital, and in time it became an urban legend, hard to prove ever having existed, until it resurfaced half a century later in the hands of new hopefuls of the same creed.

This time, they weren't relying on a round of Agent Blue to pass the torch onto rhetoric and ideal. This time they meant to ensure that not a single person left in the country could escape its permanent influence. They spiked wells, rivers, reservoirs, piping, every single avenue and deliverance water they could possibly attack en masse, with potencies of Agent Blue only prohibited by their predecessors. Overnight, it made its way into the flesh of the nation and beyond, and by time the week was finished, everyone had been medicated. 

The rebels stood back and watched their creation, but instead of watching their countrymen emerge as fresh and virtuous workers of the community, they instead watched as any pride or dignity of their ancestors died as people withdrew from the outside and isolated, became depressed husks of human beings, and began to wither away as any drive for production seemed to disappear. They hadn't cured the human condition but instead poisoned it. And, unbeknownst to them, they had too poisoned the land. Agent Blue hung to water, even when it turned to vapour, and it would sit in soil and wait for rain to diffuse back into the water table. They had used the agent in quantities and strengths so high that it became parasitic in the land they had poisoned it with. And it would dilute further across the continent, outside of their nation's borders, and eventually even across the sea. In a manner less dramatic, yet equally certain, it would eventually doom our species to the same fate. Like an unidentifiable disease it spread, and nation by nation fell to its apathy, systems of government and social welfare dissolved and people watched it happen with barely a sigh. Instead of the upheaval and rage characteristic of a desperate people, it was instead expressed with silent and empty streets. Barely a decade later, we exist in what's left: an empty world which tells a story of tragedy with scars not so easy to see.

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A scene from War of the Worlds

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A shot from the film First Reformed, painted from reference (below)

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dover on a windy day

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A self-portrait

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Playing with cold blues

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Wales

Sharp and husky tones of high-pitched processed sound sang a clumsy, ominous tune as a small 8-bit boy named Fartknockr explored a subterranean maze of caves and rivers. Set to reach a mountain-top and face against champions to earn his own place among their ranks, he would fight through swathes of creatures and puzzle the cryptic obstacles of the underground: a test to his training and journey from the safety of home to the magical wilder world. He had heard of a legendary beast in these caves, one that would bow to only the greatest of masters, and one which he intended to capture, and-

“Jackie!”, snapped Jackie's mother, with panted breath as she struggled into the boot of their '91 Volvo estate car a suitcase too big for its space, “put that bloody Game-Thing down and come help your dad with the luggage!”

“It's all right, Bubs”, sighed Jackie's father, already about 90 percent done with their day after having only been awake for 10 of it, “I've got the rest.” With a groan he lumbered to the ground at the foot of their car the 6 bags he had dad-walked from the back door of their house, and having already jumped out of the car to assist, Jackie sighed as if it was in fact on his shoulders that the burden of this trip had been set to rest, and hopped back onto the back seats to resume with his adventure.

It would be a long drive to Wales from their home in Hampshire, and Jackie surely had his work cut out for him enduring such a journey. He needed to make good time on his training, preparing for the big fight, for he was a boy of 7, and boys of his age ought to be dealing with more grown-up endeavours than packing luggage or bickering over maps and routes.

* * * * * * * * * *

Early afternoon was passing as their great blue Swedish autobox was making its way through the West Country and towards the Welsh boarder. Jackie was fighting perilously against high-levelled ground-types and his brain ticked at the riddle of the ice caves as he for the first time encountered the concept of sliding box puzzles.

Up ahead in the cockpit, his parents seemed to fuss between directions being read on their cramped, unfolded road map, and in chit-chat over talk on the radio about the recent death of a royal princess. Jackie had heard of how she had died in a car crash in France back in August, and how his dad had explained that the drivers of her car had been drunk with alcohol, and although Jackie didn't really know what alcohol was or why it would make somebody want to crash their car, he was comforted in the knowledge that neither of his parents drank it, and so that their car journey would most likely be pretty safe.

The only thing that drew Jackie's attention away from his Gameboy the whole journey was the Severn Bridge. He had just been swimming across a body of water in search of the mystical creature from inside the caves when his mum sang back “Jackie, we're coming up to the bridge!”, and having barely even registered the call from over the immersion of his Game-Thing, his attention was quickly sapped back to reality as images of the dreaded Wobbly Bridge flashed through his mind like the tortured memory of a war veteran.

Coming up ahead, through the wind-shield of their carriage, was the largest suspension bridge that Jackie had ever seen in person. And the largest he had seen in picture, was in footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, otherwise known to Jackie as the Wobbly Bridge, which collapsed in 1940 after becoming drastically unstable and wobbling all over the place until it gave out. For whatever reason, this whole concept of a firm and sturdy bridge becoming wobbly like jelly and collapsing was enough to give Jackie nightmares, and made facing the Severn a challenge of nerves dwarfed only by his upcoming battle with the Elite Four. But, as any rational adult or engineering-inclined child could have told anyone with two ears and a brain between them, the Severn Bridge was remarkably un-wobbly, and their Volvo made it across elevated and in one piece. Jackie sighed a sigh of relief, and admitted to himself for a moment the braveness of his parents, who seemed to not so much as flinch at their crossing.

* * * * * * * *

A clear early-Autumn evening was drawing in as they entered town, now deep within the Welsh country. Jackie watched from his window people and cars and animals in fields as they passed, wondering what the strangers of Wales would be like. He wondered what kinds of food they ate, what sorts of animals they kept as pets, if they would say hello when they met you or just something else all together. The alien scripts of Cymraeg on their road signs, written in the native tongue of the Welsh for those who preferred to use it, had made Jackie feel like he was very, very far from home. He had seen Welsh flags here and there, upon which stood a huge, red dragon against a background of green and white, and his unsettled anxieties for this mysterious country were unsettled further when these sparked memories in his father of old tales about dragons in the steep Welsh hills. He passed these onto his son with the satisfaction any parent has for imparting onto their children magical and mysterious lores, but in the back where Jackie sat, a sense of excited wonderment was not brewing. It was instead a sense of fear. As he looked out of the window, out into the distant hills of the rural country, the evening's golden hour glowed fire from behind its hillocks and peaks, and Jackie thought that surely this was the light of the ancient dragon, setting ablaze to whatever it may be beyond with it's relentless, infernal will.

He would watch as they passed from village to village the distant horizons, images forming and evolving in his head of whatever hidden dark secret of these people could be lurking in their hills, and fears shook him of it coming anywhere near where they would be staying. The glow of the distant fires seemed so close, and those hill tops seemed to be just walking distance away. And as the evening grew lower, and the fire light flared brighter, it only felt as if Jackie and his family were moving straight into the lair of the beast.

* * * * *

By the time they arrived at their destination: a small and quaint semi-detached house in a somewhat affluent rural town which housed an old friend of his mother's and her family, the fire in the distance had settled. Jackie felt safer. As if the dragon had had its fill of destruction and people and had decided to settle in for the evening. Perhaps they would be safe for the night. And perhaps he could sleep safely and restfully.

After such a long day of travel, Jackie and his parents were all exhausted. His parents kept up nice pleasantries as they were greeted at their host's door, having been genuinely happy to see their old friends, but for Jackie, he just wanted to lay down and maybe have something to eat. Politeness had sidestepped him and the grown-ups seemed to give him a temporary pass out of empathy and endearment for his sulking tiredness, and he was generally excused from the usual expectations to stick around when in the company of guests or friends of the parents, and let to just do his own thing for the evening.

He tried to make some further progress on his game, but suddenly the reality of such a beast coming to life and endangering himself and the people he loved made the little 8-bit monsters seem a little trivial and childish to him. He watched out of the window of their guest bedroom as the sun finally set, bringing over a darkness in the distance which hid the unsettled and unlit hills from where behind the dragon's fire raged just a short time before, and this blinding Plutonian blanket had brewed within Jackie a sense of dread deep and sickening, as now the dragon could emerge enshrouded and he wouldn't even see it coming. It took him a long time to feel sleepy, and he hadn't even noticed himself dropping off, as the darkness of the night consumed him too.

* * * * * * * * *

Jackie was up early the next morning. His sleep had been disturbed by dreams of being chased by something dark and ominous which held no form but instilled in Jackie a fear like nothing else he had experienced in the land of the waking. Sprung up in his bed, his first thought was of the hills outside of this window, and he feared the fire to have returned. But there was nothing. Just the soft, light grey of an overcast morning. It seemed as if the whole world outside was asleep.

And what if it was? What if the dragon really was asleep? Perhaps it would only wake in the night time? Monsters always lurk in the darkness, after all.

Regardless, Jackie felt some relief. Although there wasn't much great reasoning to put to it, he felt inside that the danger had passed for now. But deep down he knew that the evening would return, and the dragon would awake again. And that they might not be so lucky as to not cross its path again. Or even the next night. But they were safe now.

Jackie had heard ahead of the hills in rural Wales, and had recently become pretty attached to an old skateboard given to him by an uncle, and so had convinced his parents to let him bring it along to play with on the slopes. They had agreed, on the condition that he wear his helmet and elbow pads, which seemed a fair deal to Jackie as he had managed to haggle it down from including those lame wrist guards too. “Dont complain to us if you sprain one of them,'' his father had warned. And Jackie had been assured that he wouldn't inflict on himself a scratch. And since the morning looked so still and devoid of people, he decided he could take his mind off of things with the skateboard.

He had quietly gotten himself dressed, aware that the grown-ups were still likely asleep, and half afraid that he might even get roped into some social event if he's seen before he leaves, and soon was ready to head downstairs, skateboard under his arm and dressed in his rough orange denim dungarees, his khaki green bomber jacket, and scratched grey skateboarding helmet, looking like some scrappy third Mario brother. He was taken by surprise a little though when in the hallway he noticed his Dad was up and lounging on the sofa, watching a bit of early morning TV, who spotted Jackie too as he appeared there in the doorway.

“You off out, Jack?”

Jackie nodded.

“Okay well.. just be back by dinner time, ok? And don't go far. Your mum is gonna want you back for a meal we're all having together. Okay?”

Jackie nodded.

“Okay.. go have fun, and don't go speeding down any big hills on that thing!” He called after Jackie, as Jackie had turned and left the moment his father had given the OK. No sooner had he finished talking had the front door clicked closed behind his son. He glanced over the TV out of the window, and rose to get a better look, to see where Jackie would go. Satisfied in seeing him hurry to the quiet residential road and sit himself down onto his skateboard to start rolling around, and secure in the trust he had for his son to be sensible and behave himself, he settled himself in his decision to let his son go play, and relaxed again on the sofa.

It was a chilly and crisp morning outside, and the fresh air of the country highlands bought with it its own sense of foreign mystery. Jackie liked to play fancies in his head of being in fantastical fictions of the games and films he enjoyed, and being somewhere so subtly different yet so familiar gave a perfect canvas for his make-believe. As if his usual play had been given a little refresher, a little bit of new material to work from. For some time he had rolled around down the shallow incline of the road outside of the house, but it wasn't long until this became stale and his thoughts became his activity again. And it wasn't long after that, yet, that the fears of the night before had come back to him. He was soon watching the hills in the distance, and with each passing hour his belief of the dragon being asleep was only bolstered.

It was as noon came, when he had thought of something. Something that he pondered on while back inside eating a bit of warm lunch after being called in by his mother. He realised that he had to go and see this beast for himself. That the only way he would be able to have any peace is if he could just confirm a few things. He wanted to see that the dragon was sleeping. He wanted to see how big it was. He wanted to know what he was dealing with. And that maybe, with any real surety over this threat, he might even be able to convince his parents to take him back home. He was sure that the thing slept. That it's belly was full and that it's lust for carnage had been settled in the evening before. But that he also didn't have much time left until it would wake again, and drive to satiate the hunger of a new day. And by the time he had made up his mind to take action, he didn't have any lunch left to stall him from it. With a quiet sigh, he hopped down from the table. And after a pleasant thank you to his mother, and a hug, he agreed with her to go safely, and as he left the kitchen he felt bad for having lied to her. He felt guilt even more so after he had subtly slipped to car with his back pack to pinch a blanket and torch out of the boot that his parents kept for emergencies, just incase he got caught out after dark.

Stood out in the street, looking out into the western hills where the dragon would soon wake, he felt a new courage and thirst for adventure. Skateboard held by the trucks, and eyes set to the woods behind the furthest houses, and after a glance back to the house, he set off.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Jackie was no stranger to forests. He spent a lot of time at home playing out in the unkempt recreational lands and unwanted plots behind the estate, and often doing so alone as his company was kept immersed inside his own fantasies. And within those fantasies, he was a very experienced adventurer. He knew the lay of the land, he knew the beasts and threats of the dank undergrowths and sagging burrows. He was a respected ranger and a feared adversary. But these lands were new and foreign. He couldn't expect with full confidence what may come to him, or what he may encounter. But this was just another trial on his own journey towards championship. And we was not going to be afraid. So in these unfamiliar woods, he took his steps a little more carefully, he checked his directions and locations a little more tentatively, and had some comfort in the pretty consistently uphill gradient in that if he did become lost, he just had to follow the hills back down.

It was perhaps an hour before he started to feel as if he was just chasing a ghost. He hadn't seen a single footprint, broken down tree, scorched grounds, nothing that could suggest the warpath of a dragon. And he had been climbing this wooded hill for perhaps an hour now, and in the gaps between the trees through which he could see the village back from the way he came, he could see that he was getting higher and higher into the hills. And the ground had been tapering off to a shallower and flatter level. And it would have been just behind these hills where just the night before he had seen a blazing inferno of destruction, but still noth-

He almost slipped into the pit below but managed to cling onto a tree before falling. Uncovered from within the thick and unkept growth, having been hidden by the sloped gradient and foliage, came a pit in the ground about the depth and breadth of a few houses. As if some huge chasm under the ground had opened up and the turf from above had tumbled down inside, bushes, trees and all, clogging the entry to... a cave.

Jackie's skin went ice cold. This was it. This was where it lived!

He stood and looked for a while, his courage leaving him as the childish fancy he had the safety to convince himself of really did now settle in, like it or not, as something real. He had come all this way, and now he was there. No more just thinking about it, no more telling himself what he should or will do. It was now time to actually do it. And from down in the pit, he felt as if he could feel the rumble of the great dragon's snores. And while this brought into his stomach that same sickening dread as he had felt the night before, it did at least confirm to him one thing: it was asleep. And so, with carefully placed steps, and holding onto whichever saplings or thickets of weeds that would hold his weight in one hand while clutching onto his skateboard in the other as if it were his shield under the other arm, he made his way down, slowly and steadily, into the pit.

Standing at the opening to the underground at the base of the pit, he could see nothing. Swinging his backpack off his shoulder and unzipping it part way, he scrambled out the big, yellow AA torch he had smuggled from his parents' car. Shining inside, he saw nothing but a long, dirty passage, leading only deeper underground. Driven by an insatiable mix of curiosity and duty, he took his first cautious steps inside.

* * * * * * * *

The light of the torch flicked in sways as he took clumsy steps down the rough, sodded passageway. It brought to life shadows and silhouettes which would put Jackie on edge, threatening to be the subject of his dread and fear before skittering away in the torchlight. His eyes were wide, his glances sharp and quick, his breaths quick and often disturbed. Through his whole being raged an excitement of its entire range of emotions. Fear, elation, flight. It was as if he was nearing some intense energy too strong for any human, and this only made his mind fit into its own lore proof of this dragon. But his thoughts were interrupted by a low, guttural rumble.

The snore of the dragon!

It must have been close. He felt it in his feet, through the ground. Somewhere close he would come out onto some unimaginably large and dark chasm, and from inside it would sleep the beast. And as he stepped further, he felt it stronger, and heard it louder, and was suddenly fighting urges to turn back and just run. Run all the way back to the village at the base of the hill. He looked backwards and shone his torch but the light only met a now distant darkness. He was in it, now.

And sure enough, he came to a widening of the passage. The ceiling tapered away, as did the walls, and ahead, the floor suddenly stopped. Into darkness. He approached slowly, afraid, shaking and clutching at his skateboard as if to swing it at anything that could jump out from the darkness to attack him. And he peered, beyond the bath, only into darkness, and into the rumble so deep that it shook the earth around him. And as he had approached closely, down in the blackness he shone his torch and the light captured something. Like a ridge, dotted with spines as long as trees, firm and solid and pointed. Like horns. And suddenly his courage had fled and left there just a boy; a boy who was stood facing a death so viscous and wild that nothing in any story or film or game could have prepared him to face. And as flight swept up in place of his abandoning bravery, so did his control over his voice and he let free a wail that was desperate and hysterical.

Dropping his torch and skateboard he turned and scrambled but tripped, and fell. And as he clawed at the dirt to push himself back up, he heard it move. It jarred the ground it lay in and dustings of dirt fell from the ceiling onto him. And the snore had sharply stirred into a growl. A low, commanding growl which froze Jackie in place. Too afraid to get up and run away, but too afraid to turn and face the subject of his dread and fear. He could feel it rise behind him, and heard the rising of its breath into something angry rather than confused. It knew he was there, the game was over. He turned over onto his back, propped up by his arms, sat in the dirt and chest heaving in deep and desperate breaths. His head was light, his hair drenched in sweat, and he watched as the dropped torch cast a spotlight in the rising reptilian face emerging from the unknown darkness. It had a head size of a bus, with jaws big enough to bite a hole in the side of a house, and eyes as evil and fiery as the devil, held at the end of a long, snake-like neck, plated with armoured scales like some medieval war machine. And from behind it came outstretched, two great sails of skin, unfolded from under boney arms like a ship's mast, and from their ends were hands large enough to pull trees from their roots, and it planted them, claws like great steeples dug into the earth, as it pulled itself up, roaring squeals of curiosity and frustration at the tiny boy on the ground.

Jackie was captured like the pious looking into the face of God. This beast held the power of the whole world, and it knew not mercy nor sympathy. It only knew destruction and fire and as it bucked its head backwards it screamed a deafening scream before letting loose from the depths of its lungs a fire which spewed like liquid against the roof of the chasm, and through it dropped molten rock, and from the fire came a light which illuminated the dragon in all of its form as it stood there on the ground beyond Jackie. He saw each deadly and hungry tooth in its mouth, he saw the veins in the skin of its wings, he saw those horned spines on its back, and he saw- wait.

He saw it's legs. It's two legs. And.. and the hands at the end of its wings like arms- wait a second!

“Oh fuck off mate!” shouted Jackie in a sudden disappointment, “you're not even a fucking dragon!”

The dragon stopped blowing fire like a suddenly quiet football fan whose team just took a goal mid-song. It swung it's great head round and snuffed a short growl.

“No, no, no” asserted Jackie, now picking himself up, and reaching down to grab his skateboard, “I thought you were a fucking dragon but you're just a sodding wyvern-”

The wyvern whined in protest.

“Nope! You're nuffin mate” he said with indifferent complaint as he took up his torch from the ground, shining it into the eyes of the wyvern like some bully tormenting a scruffy school kid. The wyvern winced. “I bet you can't even fucking speak can ya?!”

The wyvern hesitated for a moment, suddenly almost shy, before making what seemed like an attempt to vocalise something more than just a wordless gruff and predictably failing.

“Yeah that's what I thought,” grumbled Jackie, dusting himself off.

The dragon looked away, hurt.

“Fuckin' bitch-ass, two-leg-having mother fucker,” he muttered, “come near me or my family and I'll fucking 'av' ya, alright?!” And Jackie flipped off the wyvern, popped a sik kickflip, turned 360 degrees, and skote away.

[covfeandtv]

For a friends birthday card