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Art Trade: Just One Command

Hey everybody! This stressed out individual is Dessian Tandor. He's a main character in the book I'm reading now, Just One Command. It's a sci-fi novel that's available on Amazon and was written by a fellow Our Tumblr Bookstore member, @meharker. I hope you'll check out her blog and the book! It's seriously so much fun. I've been loving it. To make things a bit easier, here's the Amazon link.

Come on...I bet you're curious why he's doing this ;)

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OC art swap with @meharker and her character Casey Cassandra (and Charles MK I ^^)

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The final book came out stunning ✨

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promises to keep

Lately I've been working on my main original storyverse, Sacred Darkness, and decided to do a little character writing exercise for two of its central characters, Caleb and Jack. The parts I've been writing have been from their first meeting, and I wanted to work out how they act around each other later on, when they're closer and more vitally important to each other. And also to work out Jack's voice, which is pretty distinct.

So yeah! Here's just under 2k words of vampire/Frankenstein monster platonic hurt/comfort drama.

***

Caleb woke up, which was a surprise.

It was mainly a surprise because he hadn’t expected to fall asleep. Without English soil somewhere underneath him, the most he could manage was an exhausted haze that just barely counted as consciousness, by virtue of not offering him any actual rest.

He remembered little, but strongly remembered not being able to move, and moving was required for retrieving his soil-stuffed pillow and finding somewhere safe to sleep.

But against all odds, he woke up to the familiar softness beneath his head, and the smell of dirt that smelled more like himself than the earth it came from.

The rest of him lay on hard, unforgiving pavement, but the resulting aches and bruises were nothing to the deeper pain of proper wounds. It hurt to move his arm to check them. It hurt more to prod at the hole in his abdomen that was still, unfortunately, a hole. It must have been night, because he could feel his own flesh shifting beneath his probing fingers, gradually pulling itself back together, one muscle fiber at a time.

Careful not to pull at the wound, Caleb lifted his head, forced his bleary eyes open, and looked around.

He was curled up on his side in a grimy alley. The only light he could see was the edge of a pale yellow pool that spilled from some out-of-sight street lamp. A huddled silhouette sat near the mouth of the alley, as motionless as a crouching predator lying in wait.

Caleb tensed at the sight, until his blurry vision cleared, and he saw the way the dim glow brushed the edge of the figure’s face, and the line of thick stitching that ran up the side of the jaw. It was only Jack, keeping watch while he slept.

He sat up instinctively—or tried, because the sudden movement sent pain lancing through his injured stomach. The edges of his vision turned black, and when he blinked, he was lying on his pillow again, and Jack was growling.

A soft breeze carried the scent of human into the alley—thick, fresh, and laced with alcohol. Moments later, the sound of voices reached his ears. There were two of them, maybe three; Caleb could only catch snatches of conversation.

“—some kinda fight went down—”

“—bodies?”

“Hope so. Bodies won’t fight you—”

Before long, the voices had come near enough to be heard more clearly, even over the rumble at the base of Jack’s throat.

“Just see if there’s any bodies, check their pockets, and get out before the cops show up.”

“What if they’re not dead yet?”

“You’ve got a knife. If anyone fights back, use it. Not like the coroner will know the difference.”

Caleb’s wound stubbornly refused to heal further, in spite of the night sky and the blood in his belly. Another cautious, probing look revealed why: the edges of the wound were burned black, slowing the healing process to such a painful crawl that he might as well be mortal. Someone must have blessed that knife before it went into him.

Jack’s growl rose in volume, vibrating through the air of the alley. Beyond it, the voices went silent.

“Just a stray dog,” one of them said eventually. “Keep going.”

The footsteps shuffled closer.

Jack poised like a spring. Without warning, the rumbling growl shattered into a short, shrieking roar that echoed against the walls like a gunshot. He lunged forward, dashing his claws against the pavement with a metallic crack that sent up sparks.

Caleb lunged on instinct, ready to fight or flee, anything that got them both away from the approaching scavengers. But his body betrayed him again, still infected with the lingering holiness that had laid him low. He blacked out again—only for a few seconds, he thought—but when he came to, the night was quiet again, and Jack had returned to his vigil. Caleb waited, but no voices or footsteps disturbed the silence.

The ache in his stomach had lessened, but he didn’t make the mistake of trying to sit up again. Instead he curled protectively around the wound, as he kept his eyes on Jack’s hunched form.

“Jack?”

There was no answer. The shape in front of him didn’t so much as twitch.

Caleb braced himself to speak louder, in case Jack hadn’t heard. “Jack?” he called again. “What happened? How long have we been here?” He paused, squinting at the alley again. The walls had no marks or signs to indicate what the buildings were. “Where are we?”

“Oh? And I should know?” Jack’s voice reached him in a rattling hiss, scraping its way out of a throat that was not made to accommodate words. “I am just meat that someone sewed together, no good for anything but hiding behind you, with all the big brains and good ideas. So nice you’re awake, now you can protect stupid me and my glass bones.”

Caleb stared at him, absorbing the sudden, strange tirade. “Are—are you mad at me?”

“Mad? With my empty skull with no brain in it? No.”

“Jack.”

“Go to sleep.” Jack growled deep in his throat again. “Or do I have no brain or brawn to watch for danger, too?”

“I—I don’t think you’re stupid,” Caleb said uncertainly. “Or weak. Is that what this is about?”

Jack snorted, unimpressed. “And? What worth is thinking if you do not listen?”

Caleb went quiet for a moment, still lost. The wound in his belly ached. “What happened?” he asked again. It came out softer this time. “I remember the hunters found us, but…”

After a moment, Jack’s stiff posture loosened. The shift gave no sign of relief, only resignation. “What always happens is what happened. Danger comes and you are always between it and everyone else.”

“Yeah, that’s where I’m best.”

“No!” It came out in another roar-bark, the same sound that sent the scavengers running, only shaped into a word. Jack spun around, claws scoring the pavement again. “Always! Always you do this! I am fast and I am strong and I can think and fight and you do not care!”

The pain in his stomach and the alarm at being shouted at by someone that didn’t do a lot of shouting made Caleb’s temper short. “I don’t care?” he shot back. “You think I cover your back because I don’t care?”

“About me, yes,” Jack said tightly. “About you, no.”

“That’s not what this is about,” Caleb protested. Jack’s lip curled. “It’s just numbers, I’ve got two hundred fifty years to your two—”

Jack hissed. “Oh. I am blind and new, so I am an infant. Not weak and stupid, you said. You just said.” The hiss became a sharp spit. “Cover my back? You cover everything—back, front, sides, up and down. Can’t trip without you falling down for me. One day you’ll mark a grave with my name and jump in. Won’t even see two hundred and fifty-one.”

“That’s not—” Caleb’s voice caught in his throat. He swallowed dryly. “That won’t happen.”

Jack was silent.

“This is just—it’s what I’m best at,” Caleb explained. “It’s what I can do better than anyone else. Things that would kill most people, I can just… sleep off.”

“And while you sleep?” Jack asked. “What if I needed you last hour? What if they came back, while you slept off another death I could have dodged if you let me?”

“You—” Caleb hesitated. “You’ve been doing alright…”

“If I am alright when you are asleep,” Jack said. “Then I am alright when you are awake.”

Caleb tucked his face into the crook of his arm, feigning exhaustion while he hunted for the words to argue. He couldn’t find any.

Slowly, the metallic click of Jack’s footsteps drew closer. After a few moments, the clicks became scraping, and Jack’s clothes rustled by Caleb’s ear. He sat down with a quiet huff, not quite touching Caleb, but close enough to feel the warmth of his body.

“No thank you,” Jack said after a moment.

The words were so sudden and out of place that Caleb looked up again, baffled. “What?”

Another rustle, and this time Jack did touch him. One of his claws tapped the side of Caleb’s stomach, near the wound—gently, a whisper of touch so light that the razor tip didn’t even catch on Caleb’s shirt. “For this. For a hole in you and not me. Not—” He hesitated, throat rattling as the words escaped him. “Not a favor. Didn’t ask. No. Thank. You.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Caleb told him. “That’s not why I protect you.”

“Didn’t protect me nothing,” Jack shot back, more gently this time. “Hurts still.”

“You’ll live,” said Caleb. “And so will I.”

Jack was quiet for a moment. “Why, then?”

“Hm?”

“Why protect me?”

Caleb buried his face in his arm again. What a question. Why protect him? Why do anything? Why eat, why sleep, why wake up and crawl back out of the dirt every day?

“Does it hurt you?” Jack asked. “When the knife hits me and not you?”

Caleb didn’t answer, which was an answer all on its own.

“Now I hurt like that, so you don’t have to,” said Jack. “And that is better?”

When Caleb levered himself up off the ground, the pull at his wound still hurt, but not enough to send him crashing back down. Instead he got up—faster than he should have, perhaps—and steadied himself shakily against the closest wall.

“We should find somewhere else,�� he said. “Less open.”

Jack retrieved the pillow gingerly, careful not to rip the fabric as he pressed it back into Caleb’s knapsack. Caleb reached for it, but Jack turned away and shouldered it himself. When Caleb pushed off the wall and stumbled, Jack nudged his way between him and an awkward fall.

For a moment, Caleb balked. Jack didn’t have his crutches with him, and the fusion of metal and flesh that made up his feet hurt him. The extra weight of a wounded vampire would only make it worse.

He was about to pull away when an image flashed in his mind—Jack curled around an injury, limping along in silent pain. The thought, and the rush of instinctive panic it brought, jarred him so badly he had to shake his head to clear it.

Beneath him, Jack held still and waited. Only when Caleb cautiously leaned on him did he begin leading the way out of the alley. Even with Jack’s support, every movement was sluggish and painful.

“Say that poem again?” Jack said, instead of I told you so. “With the horse in the snow.”

“Again?”

“I like it.”

Caleb nodded absently, and turned his tired mind away from hurt and fear in order to recall the words. “Whose woods these are, I think I know, His house is in the village though…”

This was not the area where the fight had taken place, Caleb realized absently, with the part of his brain not focused on memorized verses. Jack must have brought him here unconscious, alone and vulnerable to further attack. Already the first threads of purple sunrise were creeping across the sky—he’d been out the whole night on Jack’s watch, and come out of it without further injury.

Sunrise would bring weakness, a loss of strength, a haze of faux-mortality. Dead weight for Jack to bear, perhaps. If Jack realized this, he gave no sign of it. Caleb leaned against him and continued putting one foot in front of another.

Another mile or so, and then he could sleep somewhere softer, and get up only when the wound was gone.

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More tropes I fucking love: Things that make people incapable of lying, and how they circumvent that obstacle anyway. Fucking love magical languages where you cannot say words that aren't true, and people who can tell if you try. Like oooh fuck you promised that guy he'd be re-united with his wife but you didn't say he'll be joining her in death! Or promising someone they'll be treated like they treated someone else, but instead of the concrete thing they've done, they're getting betrayed like they betrayed others!

One of my stories featured a drug that as a side-effect renders a person incapable of lying. The protagonist - who is a known liar and whose survival depends on lies upon lies - consumes it. Terrified of losing the only thing that has ever protected him, he ends up pouring his whole life story to his only trusted friend, who has never actually heard the real truth of who and what he is. Both he himself and the reader figure that his gig is up, this guy is fucked now.

Then once he sobers up he finds out that besides rendering someone incapable of lying, the potion also removes one's ability to speak a foreign language. Being natively from somewhere else, he only learned the common tongue at around the age of ten. So despite of having consciously forgotten almost all of his old first language, he's capable of recalling and speaking it - and only it - while under the influence of this poison.

And so, while he was pouring out a massive confession that could get him killed in massive distress, talking to his beloved friend who is as close to him as he ever could have a brother, in front of an equally confused and horrified crowd, all they heard was a fucked-up guy babbling in a foreign language that none of them recognise, much less comprehend.

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“denied the catharsis of punishment” is an underappreciated but hugely effective narrative consequence imo 

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i love when a character has something terrible happen to them and as a result they see themself as, essentially if not literally, a ghost. and so that means they only can (and have to) do what ghosts do, ie get revenge and then cease to exist. easy as that. but then halfway through this ghost vengeance they realize hey actually i might still be a human person. with human needs. that’s incredibly inconvenient, considering how much i’ve invested in this whole ghost thing

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obsessed with villains who you just KNOW are aware deep down in their heart that they've done something unforgivable, but the only way to never admit that or face the guilt is to keep doing it over and over again until they don't feel guilty about that first time anymore

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Happy Mother’s Day! - or happy parental appreciation day 🌻💚

I know it’s not the same date all around the world but here we go :)

It’s as good as any day to give your loved ones a call ✨ have a fantastic Sunday 🐝

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I would like to nominate "You promised" "I know" as one of the most heartbreaking exchanges in the english language

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HAPPY APRIL 1st, i wrote a fic about the suez canal fiasco bc it's still the funniest thing that's ever happened. synopsis is "grumpy gods from different mythologies argue over whose job it is to unstick the goddamn boat"

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A short comic I made about my experiences as a seasonal worker, and the way places change you.

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I fuckin love that shit with the spores and the professor. I’m not necessarily asking for a sequel, I’d just love to see you write more “people’s minds falling to cosmic horrors” shit. sick fuckin stuff bro 👌

"We are but spiders to the eyes of gods," the antagonist rasped. "Clever and creative and necessary..." Their eyes were lost; too heartbroken for mania, too seething for hollowness. They smiled, a twisted thing. "Tiny, terrifying things to be stamped out and driven away by any means necessary."

The protagonist swallowed hard. They strained again, uselessly, against the web of ropes keeping them pinned. Trapped. Splayed upon the alter of something ancient.

The antagonist plucked up a knife, almost gently, examining the glint of it in the vast and endless moonlight.

"You are a faithful creature," the antagonist said. "You know we all must do the work of the gods."

"What you saw was not a god!"

The antagonist smiled, a trembling thing. "Perhaps not. We can conceive of gods. We can call them by name, even if we should know better than to cry out for their attention in the holy dark. But my god..." They shivered, fingers flexing around the knife. "Oh my god." They laughed. A giggle. A lunacy.

"You don't have to do this," the protagonist said. "You - if I'm insignificant - please -"

"-You should have stayed in your corner, as all good spiders do. You should have not have come into the light, where they had to look at your exquisite wretchedness. You scared them."

The antagonist moved closer.

They did not look changed from what the protagonist had come to find. It would have been better if they looked changed. Unrecognisable. Taken.

But they only looked lost, and small, and world-ending.

"I promise you," the antagonist said softly, as they pressed the sacrificial knife to the protagonist's throat, "that this is kindness."

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On the morning of the knife fight I was scheduled to lose, I washed myself in the ritual soap and dressed in soft, loose fitting clothes as was the custom. I would not break my fast until after the deed was done.

My second ferried me to the entry point at the North, where I declared my secret name to the gatekeeper and several acolytes in quick succession. They prepared me for the inner sanctum, infusing my veins with salt water and drawing intricate sigils on my chest. I bid farewell to my second, who would keep vigil outside. I remember very little after this, but when I awoke, I felt a great weight had been lifted from my chest.

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Anyway, the top surgery yesterday went great!