#sometimes you just get flensed

[payasita]

ain't nothin this puppet can't do!

[jess-the-reckless]

Started work on the beginning of the end. Have some Beelzebub.

Crowley waved away a fly that was buzzing next to her ear, and frowned. Curious, she wandered into the public toilets, to discover that Beelzebub – The Fallen Seraphim, Lord of the Flies, Prince of Decay, Noted Motivational Speaker – was in residence. Again.

Beelzebub was perched on the nearest throne, apparently deep in conversation with a horsefly. They clocked Crowley immediately, but it took them a minute, and Crowley knew this dance. She may have been retired, but in that moment she may as well have been once again summoned to the boss’s office for an infernal chewing out.

“What?” said Beelzebub, eventually.

“What?” said Crowley. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. What do you want, Crowley? I’m very busy.”

Beelzebub was not busy. Crowley had seen Beelzebub busy, and knew from long and post-traumatic experience that a busy Beelzebub was a much more horrible sight than this. No, Beelzebub looked different, and it wasn’t just because of their recent acquistion of a new head. When Beelzebub was on business they dressed for the occasion – extra buboes, clouds of flies, a third layer of rotting, dagger-like teeth – but there was none of that. Just a new baby-goth eyeliner look, and so many fishnets that they could have been mistaken for a sad punk human moping in a lavatory. The Lord of the Flies looked tired.

“Are you okay?” said Crowley. Beelzebub gave her a bowel-loosening look, but for some reason Crowley’s mouth kept going. Kept saying things. “You seem stressed. Angry.”

The look shifted to something less bowel-loosening, but still terrifying for its novelty. Apparently Aziraphale’s deadly compassion was contagious, thought Crowley, because it was the only explanation for why she was saying these appalling things to Beelzebub.

“Not that you don’t anyway…” she found herself babbling. “But…you know. More stressed and angry than usual.”

Beelzebub sighed. “You have no idea,” they said. “The fucking week I’ve had…”

Crowley, who would have been less surprised to find herself a smouldering grease stain on the toilet floor in that moment, wobbled from the sudden adrenaline crash. She steadied herself against a sink. “Oh?”

“We’re building a whole new circle. It’s a nightmare.”

“A whole new circle of Hell? How come?”

“Ugh, long story,” said Beelzebub, waving a fishnet-gloved hand. “You know Henry Kissinger? Well, we had a suite picked out for him. Own dungeon, hot and cold running pointy instruments, 24/7 violence, and psychological torture – you know the drill, right?”

“Executive lounge,” said Crowley. “Absolutely. Ninth Circle?”

“Yep. Only the very worst get to share a circle with Satan himself, but there’s the problem, you see.”

Crowley didn’t see. She shook her head.

“Boss doesn’t want Kissinger anywhere near him,” said Beelzebub. “Says he creeps him out. And we can’t put him on any of the upper circles, because it’s too cushy for the likes of him. Kissinger was a real big get for us.”

“Yeah, I remember,” said Crowley. “Lot of backroom deals about who would get to have a crack at him when he finally went.”

“Exactly. Hastur was very keen to go full fourteenth century on the bugger, but we just don’t have the facilities for that in the upper circles. I mean, we can gaslight and torment in all kinds of ways anywhere, but sometimes you need specific…equipment, you know? Especially when there’s flensing involved.”

“Oh yeah. That is a bugger to clean up.”

“I’d take any amount of cleaning over admin. You cannot imagine the levels of admin that go into this shit, Crowley.” A fat bluebottle zipped past Crowley’s ear, and Beezelbub greeted it with the same gooey expression Aziraphale reserved for babies and kittens. They held out a finger and the fly landed on it. “Thought I’d just come up here and…decompress, you know?” they said, gazing swoonily at the insect. “Have some fun. Hang out with friends…yes. Friends like you.”

Crowley said nothing. Hell was bad, obviously, but since when had it been so bad that Beelzebub’s idea of fun was hanging around a public toilet, babytalking and making kissyfaces at flies? Under normal circumstances she’d have asked Beelzebub to go for a drink, or at least handed over her hip-flask, but there had never been anything normal about her relationship with Beelzebub. The only worse boss/employee relationship she could think of off the top of her head was Aziraphale and Gabriel, which was maybe worse than Crowley and Beelzebub’s because Aziraphale had never expected her boss to try to set her on fire. Crowley had at least always had a heads-up in that direction: when your boss was Beezelbub and they set you on fire it just meant it was Tuesday.

[squishtar]

Scrabble

Sometimes we play Scrabble late into the night. I know it's kind of an old person game but we both really like it, and with two English majors it's pretty evenly matched. Eventually you get into a rhythm and you can just talk about anything. That night we were talking about Virginia Woolf; Orlando is both of our favorite novels. I don't remember most of the conversation, because I'd been trapped for a little while in this weird space where my focus would drift over her. She always clutches the tiles between her thumb and forefinger, rubbing the printed side like she can feel the slight ridge along the form of the letter. I make an unexpected play, and her lips purse in a tight smile; it takes her a second longer to open her mouth when it's her turn to talk.

Sometimes the words you make on the board seem to have a significance. A long night of Scrabble is a lot like playing with a Ouija board, in that respect. You might think the words on the board have a special significance, but really it's just your mind assigning additional significance to its own inane functions. Right then the words on the board were "LOUD", "FLENSED," and "SCRIMP".

I think she has a way about her where it's easy for you to feel close to her. Me especially. It's like, all this late night Scrabble and shit builds up, and suddenly she puts down a real nice play like "PORCINE" and smiles all smug and you're looking at her mouth instead of her hands or whatever and it's like damn, Sophie. I think I might love you. And if you're dumb enough you open your mouth to say it.

It's hard to imagine her saying it back. That's what keeps me from being stupid enough. I try to look away from her lips but she gets a different, more earnest smile on them, and then I have to wait until she starts talking.

She said, "I like what I have with you, y'know?"

And my heart started beating all fast, and I was all, I like it too. It's nice.

And she went on, "It's nice how...noncommittal this is. Like, we choose to care about each other. Incidentally or whatever. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It's a nice light comfort"

That sort of thing burns all the way down your throat, because I liked a whole different set of things, our regular games of Scrabble most of all. I took them as proof that we were committing to each other, even if it was tiny. Suddenly I craved a sickeningly heavy comfort, something so cloyingly domestic and committal that she would have no choice but to let me say the stupid shit so I could hear her say it back. I sort of wanted to cry. Instead I gave her a soft little smile and said, that's what I like too. And then I shut my goddamn mouth for the rest of our stupid game of Scrabble, and tried not to assign too much importance to words like "ROMANCE" and "MORIBUND" and shit, because the moment was obviously dead and if we're honest it had probably never been alive. But I wanted it to be.

[etirabys]

Content note: Body horror. Probably do not read if you get very sad about factory farming or animal abuse.

My mom gifted me one of her old handbags (somewhat against my wishes). It is leather, and the handle is an interesting leather/metal braid that splits off to go through the bag itself before rejoining. A perfunctory scan did not locate the seam where the leather must have been stitched to close the loop.

It occurred to me that it would be a fancy status symbol indeed to have a real leather or fur handbag with no seams.

That in a future with sufficiently advanced genetic engineering, a lineage derived from cows could be shaped such that, killed and flensed cleanly, the remaining skin would just be a seamless handbag.

These would be expensive. Of course. The cost of raising the animals is not cheap, but it is dwarfed by the R&D work for every new line. A myriad tweaks to the body plan are made – each iteration taking months – with no clear endpoint, because you never get an animal exactly like the original design. Irregularities are unavoidable, so compromises must be made. Every loop, inner compartment, flap, and side pocket must be derived from some newly distorted appendage. The (rarely achieved) ideal is that you scoop out all the insides, and without any further tightening or sewing, the skin naturally constitutes the designer bag. Sometimes they are given piercings a month in advance of their scheduled death, if metal is part of the design.

Counterfeits abound; socialites learn with their fingertips and nails to detect a truly seamless surface.

It’s not enough simply to get the genetics right – they have to be fattened the right amount, their skeletal growth mechanically constrained so that the final product has as little undesirable bulging as possible.

And they are still animals. They have little or no mobility, but they get bedsores if they are left alone. So they must be turned around. Neglected too much they die of stress, or live in such bad health that the leather has sores or the fur is lank. So part of the technicians’ job is to cuddle them, or lay them out in permitted ways so they can cuddle each other, and engage in some form of stunted play. Turnover is high; it’s an eerie job.

They make noises through their intricately flattened respiratory system and jaw.

The sense of something having gone wrong is so great that, tracing this process from beginning to end with clear understanding of the physical facts, one is still struck by a great confusion about what has occurred.

[fursasaida]

Her poems, too, were outsiders: essay-like, flensed of first-person pronouns, and littered with landmines, buried rhymes that could send you skyward. She was growing in popularity but nobody’s idea of a poetry professional—which was probably why Poetry magazine, in an act of inspired mischief, dispatched her to a creative writing conference. The resulting essay, “I Go to AWP,” is a classic of gonzo travel writing. Ryan attends panels, hankers after free keychains, eats with other poets, and generally recoils in horror.

Part of the pleasure of the piece, especially if you’re familiar with the poetry world, is experiencing an insular microclimate through alien eyes. What are “arcs,” Ryan wonders, and why should books of poems have them? Moreover, why do poets toss around the word “mentor” with such abandon? And what compels them to bounce, en masse, on fancy words like “transgressive” until “the springs pop out”? At every turn, the interloper dilates exquisitely. Here she is on that verb “workshop”:

In the old days before creative writing programs, a workshop was a place, often a basement, where you sawed or hammered, drilled or planed something. You could not simply workshop something. Now you can. You can take something you wrote by yourself to a group and get it workshopped. Sometimes it probably is a lot like getting it hammered. Other writers read your work, give their reactions, and make suggestions for change. A writer might bring a piece back for more workshopping later, even. I have to assume that the writer respects these other writers’ opinions, and that just scares the daylights out of me. It doesn’t matter if their opinions really are respectable; I just think the writer has given up way too much inside. Let’s not share. Really. Go off in your own direction way too far, get lost, test the metal of your work in your own acids. These are experiments you can perform down in that old kind of workshop, where Dad used to hide out from too many other people’s claims on him.

Screeds against creative writing programs are easy enough to write, but Ryan is too clever not to step around the pitfalls of the genre: the reactionary politics, the curmudgeonly (if inconveniently accurate) hunch that poetry can’t be taught.

“It doesn’t matter if their opinions really are respectable,” she concedes—point to the programs. But then she raises the hammer and nails the problem with the workshop: aspiring poets surrender their stubborn streaks at the door. She proceeds to reclaim—and refurbish—the metaphor, nudging out the crowd in favor of the cranky loner. “Let’s not share. Really.” It’s all so very deft. You barely notice she’s laying waste to a vast infrastructure.

Ryan started publishing poetry in the 1980s, and was writing in her mature style by the 1990s. But she didn’t publish many of her best essays until the aughts. A good number of them appeared in Poetry, under Christian Wiman’s editorship. They were charming and philosophical. They gave the impression of a master who had waited years to speak her mind; and of a mind that had required those years to mull its concerns: poetry, memory, time, Moore, Frost, Dickinson. The mind seemed calmly, irrefutably, itself. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, who had “given up way too much inside”—to workshops, to the online fracas, to the fiction of fellowship—here was a writer who had stayed steeped in her own acids.

[youngbloodbuzz]

as if shamefully flipping through a dirty magazine.

Hehe. Foreshadowing.

Dani curled up on herself, twisting just enough in the seat to pull her knees to her chest and wrap her arms around her legs, a thickness growing in her throat, the pressure building behind her eyes. She bit her lip hard to fight it off, desperately willing it away — the pain borne of being stripped away down to that old exposed nerve. Prodded at and scarred. A wound opened and healed over so many times, it was a wonder Dani remained so recognizable. 

Paaaaaaaain

Tucking away the memories and the tears, the lost pieces — all for something that didn’t exist anymore.

I hate you guys for real. I’m suing you for emotional damages.

Most people who lived here did so all their lives. Just like their parents had. And their parents before them. And even those who tried to venture away somehow found themselves wending back. Like a labyrinth with no exits. Like a glue trap that held one fast by the ankles.

Oof. As someone who grew up in a small town I felt this.

Jamie was at the door before Dani finally worked up the courage to blurt out, “Do you -? Do you want to grab a coffee sometime? With me?”

Brave Dani 🥺

"And then suddenly you were just -" Dani lifted her hand only to let it drop back to her side "- gone! No goodbye! No note! And I - I had to go on like everything was okay, when it wasn't. Nothing was okay. I wasn't okay.”

*I* am not okay 😭

"Jesus fucking Christ! I didn't send you a letter because I couldn't stand it!" Jamie yelled. "Because if it was going to end, then I wanted it over quickly! Put me out of my misery! Send you a letter? Then what?"

Ugh. Jamie’s hurting so much too. End their suffering (and mine) pls.

"I wouldn't have," Dani said finally, feeling raw, feeling flensed. "I'm still here. I've always been here."

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 nice lil twist on the “you’re still here” from the show. Pain.

Karen gave her a look. “Honey, you’re a teacher, what could possibly — “ she cut herself off when Dani’s stare hardened. Karen exhaled sharply, turning away to take another sip and stabbing out her smoke in an ashtray Dani had just cleaned. “Never mind.”

I want to smack Karen Clayton soooo hard. Just shut up. Please.

“Well, you have to start somewhere, yeah? A cup of tea’s a good enough place as any,” Jamie said, shrugging, her grin turning mischievous as she looked at Dani, “No matter how rancid.”

I just love that Dani can’t make tea. In every universe.

Jamie was already toeing off her boots as she offered Karen a wink.

YES! I love Jamie being cheeky. Let me live vicariously through her.

(part 3 of re-read)

all of us during this section lmao

and hey now! dani's getting better at making tea, she's making progress! gjkdajfasdfd

@romanimp

[corsairboon]

Blindspot

Corsa’ir woke up to the feeling of Katalin slapping him. She was speaking softly, plaintively. What was she saying? They were drugged…shot with tranq darts. Someone had been there at their home, watching them. Someone had been here, and… they did something? 

Something went off in his head as he was slapped awake, something new and unfamiliar. 

-CovEr YOur lEFt eYe--dO nOT ShOW aNYonE yoUR LEfT EYe--

Boon covered his eyes, groaning as he stirred awake. “W-what happened…?”

-aCt Like eVERytHIng iS nORmAL--nOTHiNG cAn beTRAy yOUr nEW pURpose-

Boon acted like everything was normal. He asked questions to Katalin of what happened, sitting his eyepatch over his left normally empty socket. Someone had been in their home, someone that Katalin had chased off. Boon sat and listened, collecting himself from a drug induced stupor. His mind raced as Katalin explained everything to him, but outwardly seemed to act like everything was just normal.

The night had gone on afterward, and Katalin had laid down to rest as the adrenaline of the intruder faded, passing off the strange interruption as a bizarre and unprofessional dump of free information for her and Boon to process. In truth, it was all a distraction. Boon stayed awake after Katalin, staring into their dresser mirror; more importantly, staring at his left eye.

It glowed ominously red, a white dot in the center where an iris would be. When Boon blinked, the glowing red machina eye blinked. It disturbed him, this new fake eye that he’d been saddled with. He reached up to it, fingers digging into his left socket to pull it out and finding pain. Pain overwhelming. Corsa’ir silently leaned over his dresser, gripping his stomach and feeling a wave of nausea and headache eat at him. 

-yOu dO nOT gET tO ReMOve tHE mORaL CoMPaSS aUgMENtaTioN tEsT dEvICE--nO oNe mAY kNOw aBoUT tHE tESt deVICe--CoVer yOUr LefT Eye--dO nOT ShOW anYONe yOUr LEfT eYE-

Boon groaned. Great, he thought. Corsa’ir turned toward the bed and Katalin, reaching an arm up. “Katalin I--” he began to whisper out. 

-yOu dO nOT gET tO ReMOve tHE mORaL CoMPaSS aUgMENtaTioN tEsT dEvICE--nO oNe mAY kNOw aBoUT tHE tESt deVICe--CoVer yOUr LefT Eye--dO nOT ShOW anYONe yOUr LEfT eYE-

Boon fell silent even before he spoke, his voice growing weak and parched for words. Lucky for the miqo’te, he was smart when it came to people trying to control him without it being outwardly noticable. Whatever this left eye was, it was controlling his ability to tell other people about it. Whatever this left eye was, it was speaking directly into his mind and somehow reacting to his thoughts even as they formed. What else could it do? Boon resolved to find out. 

The next day. 

While Katalin was at market during the day, Boon realized while sitting at home that he caught himself pondering over the value of grievously torturing people to find out where the eye came from. The more the day dragged on, the keeper realized he was indeed lacking in a sense of moral right and wrong. Not even his normal tepid but usually beneficial to others perspective, but absolutely neutral expression toward it. Therefore, Boon needed to understand just how far this new and immediate moral decay affected him. It was a matter not of how it would affect things, but of pure benefit to him, as thats all that mattered to him now.

While Katalin was still at the market during the day, Corsa’ir murdered 6 children who tricked him a few sennight earlier with a bag of wooden gil. He didn’t just kill them, he murdered them in cold and vicious matter for no other reason than he needed to test the limits of this augmentation. All six were tied to wooden chairs and those chairs kicked off a seldom visited pier. Boon watched all 6 children drown, kick and buck and scream as they drown. He felt nothing as the last breaths left them. Interesting. 

Another thing Corsa’ir had found was that when he went into the company estate, the stately ‘House of Mystery’ as it was called, was that the eye implant continued to work… that would be annoying to get around. It also meant there was no outgoing signal from it though he reasoned, meaning they weren’t listening in on him at all.

The next day. 

Boon had to resolve a plan after reflecting. So far, he was under a few specific orders. One was to act like everything was normal. He couldn’t defy that, but he also knew it would be beneficial for him to defy that. Another was that he had to cover his left eye. Not a problem as he always wore an eyepatch. In the interim, Corsa’ir found out he couldn’t allow a full body scan of himself. He also couldn’t communicate that anything was wrong. These were simple orders, but he’d have to think hard about how to circumvent them. For now? Boon had a meeting to go to. His eye had told him to. “So 52,” She said to him, and Boon just knew. He was a number now, and that number was 52. She was a miqo’te in rather plain clothes, a keeper like himself with a gray and ashy complexion. Bubbly in a pink jumper with a sunflower hat, her pigtails flitting and curling down her back. “Tell me, how is the implant working?”

Boon replied. “It's going well,” It was, he reckoned. “So far no one has noticed it's implanted nor have they questioned anything. It’s like I’m perfectly blending.” Because he was. Boon shrugged then, taking a bite of a reuben sandwich he’d ordered for himself for the meeting. “Gotta say, this is pretty amazing technology. I tried to pry it out but like, nope. Pain, lots of pain both physical and even emotional. How are you doing that?” Even without full control, Boon wanted to get as much information as he could. 

“Oh how cute, 52 wants to find out how he’s being controlled. Well sorry 52, that's not for me to know or to tell, I’m under the same restrictions as you.” The miqo’te girl bit into her cobb salad, picking at it randomly as the waiter at the Bismarck brought over a carafe of water. “How did 46 take the information I gave her? Did it distract her sufficiently?” 

Boon stared a moment dumbfounded behind his reuben bite. 46… ah, their term for Katalin. “Yeah, she thinks you were unprofessional and just appeared to dump information on us. I told her we’d check for bugs put around the house.” Another bite then, and Boon took a drink to cleanse his pallet. “But nobody checks behind this,” Boon tapped his eyepatch. “So it’s perfectly safe.”

The female miqo’te nodded, sipping her own water and diving back into her cobb salad. “Good. Oh, while you’re here… do you know how 46 got away from our underwater base? Our masters would like to know.”

Masters… that would be something that Boon would spit out with pure vitriol when he was forced to, but he knew he’d be forced to. Corsa’ir considered his options before responding, having all of seconds to do so. He was familiar with people forcing him to answer things, of being tricked and manipulated or mentally drawn to one thing or another. This wasn’t mind control though, it was mind pushing. Nothing compelled him to answer truthfully, but he wanted to… that bothered him. 

Then again…

“No,” He answered truthfully. In multiple respects, Boon really didn’t know how Calcifer, aka the House of Mystery worked. Moreover, he wasn’t there when Katalin had made her escape from them. Sure, she had told him how she got away but how was he to know if that was true? Boon had lied to Katalin, so why wouldnt Katalin sometimes lie to Boon? There were multiple work arounds for mind-swaying, and he would abuse them all. 

“A shame,” The girl miqo’te in the pink jumper said. “I guess we’ll just have to ask her when we bring her in.”

Interesting, they intended to bring her in. “Yeah?” All Boon said in reply. 

“You’re still intending to go to Thavnair right?” The girl miqo’te asked. 

Boon nodded, “Mmhm,” All Boon said in reply. 

“Good.” The miqo’te said.

The next day.

Corsa’ir stabbed an old woman who’d fleeced him on a tender 50,000 gil deal a few Moons back who had come to ask him for a loan. He hid the body in 11 different trash recepticles. 

The next day. 

Boon pondered if having his moral sense of right and wrong being stripped was so much of a bad thing. He pondered this while he flensed a middle-aged seadog who refused to give him information on ‘Faux’. The mysterious organization that had very recently stuck a fake eyeball in Boon’s normally empty eye socket was something of an interest to him lately. In the end, the seadog hadn’t talked. Maybe didn’t know anything either, but that didn’t matter to Corsa’ir. He at least had a pile of useless skin left after and another body to deposit in several locations. 

The next day. 

Corsa’ir realized he could fight against the moral compass eyeball programming that was interfering with his mind. It made him tired though, enormously tired to do so. He would have to use that strategically. Boon played cards with his friends that night, trying to think of the best way to sneak information to them about what was really happening, but each and every time he was stymied. Afterward, he had a long talk with Katalin about boat houses and getting away. His mind screamed more than a bit inwardly. How to communicate… 

The next day. 

One day away from their trip to Thavnair… they had a job to do that night, but so far it seemed like this group, Faux had no idea what Cirque really did. So far, it seemed that they knew nothing other than Cirque was a circus, and Boon was a rather easy mark test subject for their latest experiment. 

That night, Boon resolved to act. Every choice he made that counter-acted the eye made him more tired, and protecting someone other than him, if he reasoned his own mind well enough, tired him out. But at the same time, he was instructed by the mental programming of the eyeball to ‘act normally’. He could use this. 

Shield everyone and not himself. Shield Brandt from dying from giant flaming hands with weapons. Shield the target who could likely die and not have it impact Corsa’ir at all. Everything was about mental trickery, everything was about giving them a CHANCE to discover it. There was a critical flaw in the faux--- FAKE eyeball in Boon’s left eye. He wasn’t allowed to let people know about it, but if they discovered it on their own? Nothing told him there was follow-up programming to it, a critical flaw he could exploit. So shield them, fight the moral stripping at the cost of his exhaustion and the ramping overwhelming headache he was being put under.

Boon collapsed, unconscious at the end. His last thought, the one he dared have was ‘Now they’ll give me a scan back at our base of operation, now they’ll see’. No scan was done. 

After Boon awoke, he put an eyepatch on in the recuperation room, exhausted… the group was arguing about someone’s action. The eyeball went back to work, and Boon snapped. There was another option though, his last real shot. Don’t act like himself. It wasn’t exactly warning them, it was just him--

Headaches came hard and fast, but Boon persisted. He faltered sometimes that night, slipping into what felt like normal action but every chance he got, Boon tried and tried hard to act not like himself. His headaches grew…

Katalin had gotten so close… He tried so hard to spell it out for her without breaking the demands on him, the things that controlled him. Corsa’ir practically wanted to scream to her, ‘SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH ME’, but Katalin didn’t catch on…

The day of the Thavnair trip arrived, and Boon prepared.

[chrysalispen]

Prompt #16 - Jitter

cute/sweet fluff maybe this weekend when i have time <3

in the meantime, the prompts continue!

Aurelia returned from her drawing lesson in the garden to find the parlor and most of the staff within in a state of panicked disarray. L'haiya was shouting orders at the hapless maids, dust cloths were flying everywhere, and she could hear Cook banging in the kitchen. Blinking, she removed her hat and swiped a forearm across her sweaty brow as she passed from the sun porch into the parlor.

“…What in the seven hells?” the Garlean girl said aloud, forgetting that her governess was in earshot. 

But the Miqo'te didn’t react. She was too busy directing a pair of burly men to adjust the position of the piano.

“Over there, you lot! Put your backs into it.” One of L'haiya’s hands were braced on her hips, the other impatiently shoving her bright auburn hair out of her face as her tail twitched in agitation. It was the look she so often wore when lecturing Aurelia about some shortcoming or other. “Mind the Nagxian vase in the corner! That’s Fifth Astral, his lordship will have all our heads if it’s broken.”

“Elle, what’s going on? What’s all the commotion?”

The smaller woman seemed to see her charge for the first time. Aurelia was becoming quite tall, standing nearly a head over her caretaker already– although her height hardly made her intimidating. She was but fourteen summers, baby fat still lingering in her face and her curves still more a suggestion than a reality. Her sudden growth spurt over the last few moons had rendered the young Garlean lanky and awkward, and she had been the terror of the drawing room for months.

“Aurelia! Thank the Twelve.” L'haiya grasped her wrists. “You need to go upstairs and change. Your nicest afternoon dress. Quickly!”

“You’d think the Emperor himself were coming to visit us with all this drama,” she began with a smile, one that slowly faded when she saw the grim press of the woman's lips. “Wait. What?”

“You jest, girl, but the viceroy will be dining with us this evening. We received a missive while you were in your studies.”

Aurelia nearly choked. 

“Wh-why? He has a whole palace to-”

“Does it matter? Legatus van Baelsar has requested informal audience with your lord father and no one tells the Black Wolf his timing is poor.” L'haiya lifted one of her curls and studied it critically. “We’ll make you as presentable as we can under the circumstances. Go. Draw a bath and wash the sweat off you.”

=

She stared at her half-finished plate with growing consternation, fighting not to nibble on the ends of her hair in agitation.

The man at the end of the table was hardly the dashing figure she imagined most army officers to cut, but there was something imposing about him all the same. He complimented L'haiya on the meal (though that had surely been Cook’s doing) and spent most of his time engrossed in discussion with her father about mundane matters without the city walls, so at least his attention wasn't on her personally.

Well, Elle had said this was supposed to be a meeting with her father.

“Aurelia,” L'haiya whispered from behind her, “it’s rude to pick at your food in front of guests and Cook will be upset if you don’t eat.”

"Sorry," she mumbled. Everything smelled lovely but she was too jittery to taste much of it. Knowing that both Elle and her father would be cross with her if she didn't at least try, the girl reached slowly for her tableware.

“Have you thoughts on the matter to offer, Mistress Laskaris?”

Aurelia was thankful she had not picked up the fork because she knew she would have immediately dropped it from startlement. 

She looked up to find the full attention of piercing, hooded pale hazel-gold eyes – like a wolf’s – fixed on her face. The legatus’ expression was one of mild and polite interest at best, but she sensed both a keen intellect and a hardness under that surface, someone who was even more accustomed to command than Father and who was much, much better at reading people.

Especially children like herself.

With effort, she smiled and shook her head.

“I, ah–I’m afraid that adminis–administrative matters are not– I am not familiar with such, my lord.”

One of those heavy brows lifted, and she tensed, wondering if she had given offense.

“They do not interest you?”

“In all honesty, my lord, no. I am-” She hesitated. “I am studying botany. The- the flora of the Empire and its provinces.”

“I see. And do you much field work, young mistress?”

“Where I can,” she confessed. “I’ve a journal I keep for my drawings of all the plants I’ve encountered for myself, and all their effects.” She also had several pages of notes she’d taken from some of the older women in the aan quarters, old folk remedies using those same plants. She did not mention this, however, because Sazha was her willing accomplice, and L’haiya didn’t know she sometimes slipped out of the administrative district unattended. 

“A hobby, my lord,” her father said, his smile tight. She plunged on, ignoring what was clearly a warning look not to waste Legatus van Baelsar’s time.

“I’m… I wish to be a chirurgeon,” she explained, “and I am told the entrance examinations for most schools are very stringent. I find the study soothing but also very enlightening, and I assume it can only help to have knowledge of such matters for focused study.”

That unreadable look relaxed into a smile.

“Ah,” he said. “A well-spoken young lady. You’ve a budding medicus in your midst, Julian.”

“So it would appear, my lord,” her father answered, though Aurelia knew full well they had barely discussed aught of her personal interests. Medicine and botany did not interest her father any more than the training exercises of the cohorts interested her.  

“Once you enlist for your service, young mistress, perhaps I will become a more familiar face.”

With a polite smile, she inclined her chin respectfully as she’d been taught to do, and with naught more to say those keen eyes shifted focus back to her father. 

Aurelia had to bite back the sigh of relief when they did. Whatever test she suspected that was, she knew she’d passed it.

~*~

The Vault was freezing cold and she was alone, and despite being the so-called Warrior of Light, Aurelia wished that Alphinaud were here.

She was not unaccustomed to private audiences, and even if she had been there had been so many in the last year that most of the shyness had been flensed from her. The leaders of the Eorzean Alliance were just people, and some of them she even counted as friends.

Had counted as friends. Assuming she wasn’t on a fugitive’s list elsewhere, as well. But she hadn’t been so desperately nervous to meet a political figure since she was fourteen years old and had met the viceroy for the first time. A man whom, fifteen years later, had faced her in a duel and lost.

“Come on, come on,” the Garlean said softly. This was no time to be thinking about that.

It really wasn’t, because she didn’t know why she’d been summoned by the leader of Ishgard’s Church. That was the real difference. Every other time she’d responded to an official request for her time, she’d known well beforehand the reason. By the reactions of Haurchefant’s half-brothers a personal summons was supposedly a great honor, but she had misgivings aplenty.

Aurelia wasn’t as certain as they that the man would be well pleased.

Those were two of his personal honor guard she’d defeated in Tataru and Alphinaud’s trials, after all. She had no idea if trouncing those two awful men would be the final straw to get them all tossed out the front of the city gates in disgrace, or what the Archbishop wanted at all.

The door opened, and an elezen in the garb of a Temple Knight bowed deeply; the mythrite chain of his coif gave a little chime as the small metal links struck each other.

“His Holiness will see you now, Warrior of Light. Come.”

She nodded, and out of half-remembered habit more than anything else, smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from the front of her robes and followed. Eyes lingered upon her as she did, glances that were a mixture of curious and appreciative, as she passed into the deepest recesses of the Vault.

[greenxscarves]

?¿? + ardaka >w>

Send ?¿? + a character for two silly headcanons and a serious one

Ardaka has a drink named after him. The bar that created the drink is called the Golden Ratio and is one he and Iseu are familiar with. The bar owner created it after getting into an argument with Ardaka about specific flavour combinations. The argument lasted for an hour and the end drink does involve setting the drink on fire with a laser gun. It’s a bar special now. 

There is one salon that he will go to and trust with a full ‘cleanse’ ritual. It takes an entire day and it’s basically just his version of a spa-day, complete with detail claw care (including painting hiis claws after hearing one of his stories involving @impfiltration. They didn’t do it before because they didn’t think he’d want it/didn’t ask.) In exchange for this, he’ll occasionally do small jobs for them, since they’re located in a rather shady area. Also, sometimes he’ll go to them for some no-questions-asked brushing. Sometimes you just want your fur to be brushed, and they are extremely professional about it. Personally, I imagine he introduces Nena ( @vin-robles ) to it one day. Why? No clue but I love the mental image of him and Nena just sitting with the alien version of cucumbers on their eyes.

Due to the nature of the pharmacological industry, sometimes the ingredients for the medications Ardaka takes are unavailable or there is some other kink in the supply line. Usually, this isn’t a problem as being in such a large city, someone usually has a stockpile and it’s not hard to get at. Failing that, many pharmacists are skilled at compounding things that functions very similar chemically. Unfortunately, there was one instance where there was a derivative of dreian blood used and it make him nauseated to outright sick for the course he was provided. 

One of his masks is actually the flensed face of... someone. That... is a story he’s quite proud of. One of his previous alias’ was rumoured to have skinned his victims, either in whole or in part. 

[nabsthevulture]

Maceration Vs. Simmering

Maceration and Simmering are both bone cleaning methods that attract a lot of negative attention, Some deserved, some not. Despite their general similarities, there are some key differences between the two methods that really beg the question; Which is better? Neither! No one bone cleaning method is the ‘best’, it’s just all about what works for you! We’ll be comparing the two methods now, both their pros and cons, to maybe make it easier for someone down the line to choose between the two.

Depending on the tools you’re using, the space you’ll need will vary. For simmering, many people will use a crockpot. They keep good, consistent temperatures and can give you a flesh free skull in under 6 hours depending on the level of prep. A crockpot can sit just about anywhere and really doesn’t take up too much space. Other times people will lightly simmer skulls on the stove, which would give you the same result but may have a more damaging effect on the bone.

Maceration will have a bit more variance. Depending on what you’re cleaning, be it a skull or a skeleton, you’ll have to find a container big enough to house it. It’s easier and generally less of a worry when Maceration is done outside, so as long as you’ve got a safe place outside for it then you shouldn't have a problem space wise. If you’re doing it indoors, choose an out of the way spot in a room that offers decent ventilation if you need to air out. Once your space is figured out, the time it takes something to fully macerate depends on several factors; Temperatures, the animal itself, etc.. You could be looking at as little as a week, to as long as a 6+ Months.

When it comes down to it, simmering is a less time and space demanding method than Maceration generally can be.

Maceration shines when it comes to the level of prep you have to do to a specimen. You can throw a full carcass into maceration, and really only have to worry about the fur at a later date. A skinned carcass, including the organs, will rot down as intended with maceration. That being said, full carcasses do require larger containers. You can do as much prep work as desired, such as fully flensing down the bones and breaking the body up, pre soaking to remove oils and fats, whatever you’d like. That will help cut down the time and (honestly) the smell as well!

Simmering is best done to a skull or skeleton that has been prepped. As much meat removed as possible, debrained, eyes removed, jaws separated, and so forth. You don’t have to, per say, but fully prepping will cut down your times and will in turn protect the skull from having to be in prolonged heated conditions and lessen the chance of it soaking up a ton of grease. It’s different from maceration in the way that you will still have a lot of work to do on a skull that's not properly prepped, rather than just letting it all rot away in the water.

I’d personally give Maceration the card when it comes to the work you have to put in to achieve the same result.

Though you can use it for rotting specimens, it’s generally good to simmer fresh/semi-fresh skulls. Heating up a rotting specimen can drive liquefied fat and grease into the bone much faster than it would a fresher specimen, and will kick up one hell of an odor. Simmering can be used to clean full skeletons, partial skeletons, and skulls with relative ease, but the difficulty and unpleasantness rises with the decrease of freshness in your specimen.

Maceration can be used on all specimens with roughly the same results time after time. The decomp time may increase a little from an actively rotting specimen to a mummified specimen, but you’re going to end up with clean bones regardless.

Though it revolves around what kind of specimen you tend to work with, Maceration is the method that can clean any state of decomp with little change to how it normally works.

When it comes down to it, both methods are less than clean. Maceration is undoubtedly the nastier of the two, both with smell and mess. It’s to be expected, but often times it can quickly become overwhelming and a dreaded thing to deal with. I never suggest maceration to anyone sensitive to smells or with a weak stomach. It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how often people don’t think about it until it’s a problem! Disposing of maceration water is thankfully really the only bad part. Flushing it down the toilet is an option if you don’t mind your house smelling, or you can dig a decent sized hole outside and dump it in there. Make sure you keep the dirt from the hole handy so you can push it in to soak up the water. That’s the least offensive way I’ve found to get rid of rot water.

Simmering is more messy than it is smelly. If you don’t fully prep a specimen then you’ll have to deal with disposing of decent quantities of wet cooked muscle and fat. You can just throw it straight into a trash bag and then into a dumpster, but it can end up becoming a smell problem if it sits too long. If you’ve made sure you have all your bones/pieces out of the pot, then you can also just dump the whole thing into a strong garbage disposal or down the toilet. Chase it with a little bit of bleach and a brief spray or air freshener and you should be good to go. Just be careful to not clog any sinks or your toilet flushing simmer remnants; That will drastically raise the chance of a smell problem or even something worse like insect involvement.

Its safe to say that If you’re looking for a less messy method, simmering is probably the way you’d want to lean.

Simmering a bone for even a little too long can have some drastic effects. The bone can become chalky, brittle, or flaky and turn to mush over time. Having a bone exposed to prolonged simmering will also likely bake the grease right into the bone, which will make it increasingly difficult to remove and may not come out at all. People use this as those as their main reasons to bash simmering, but it’s all about making sure you keep your eye on it and pulling the skulls before any damage is done. Anything beyond 5-6 hours is really pushing it, and even then 4 is the ideal limit you want to be at.

Maceration has its own cons when it comes to bone condition. Often times during maceration, bones will turn different colors due to bacteria or random objects falling into the rot bucket. These are pretty easy to remedy for the most part. Gravewax (Adipocere) is a concern, though it won’t damage the bone or anything. It’s simply caused by long term exposure to ‘cold’ water, and can be scraped or scrubbed away with a toothbrush. Extremely long exposure to water may end up warping or weakening the bones, but generally speaking the bones would have to sit for much longer than they would take to fully macerate to begin with.

Simmering offers expediency at the cost of potentially damaging bone, while maceration may have a few ill side effects but nothing serious. It’s hard to really call a draw between the two, though as far as not doing irreparable damage to the bones, Maceration is the more giving method.

Maceration, despite its unpleasant nature, often times will produce totally ready bones. If you macerate in a hot place, bones will start to degrease while they’re rotting down, which means at the end of the day you may not have to do any degreasing at all. On the other hand, you will have to whiten bones if you want them brighter, and there’s a chance you’ll have to give them a deodorizing bath if the peroxide doesn't take the smell out initially. There’s also the fact that teeth like to fall out during maceration, so you’ll have to glue those back in yourself. If the bones have been in the water long, you may also be dealing with removing grave-wax.

Simmering doesn’t have as many variables as maceration, but it’s almost certain you will have a little work to do. It’s mostly in the degrease, as simmering can result in a heavier grease build up in the bone. With a strong degreaser you can make semi quick work of it, though. Beyond that is the whitening, but that’s based on personal preference. Sometimes, teeth will fall out during simmering, but they usually stick around where they’re supposed to be unless you force them out.

Neither method is guaranteed to offer you 100% ready to go bones. Maceration can also degrease bones, but you have smell, gravewax, and teeth to deal with. Simmering will result in a need to degrease, but you won’t have to deal with gravewax and teeth are more likely to stay put. It’s a toss up between the two!

Overall, Simmering is a fast and effective method that doesn’t take up too much space and can be done tidily. It’s got some cons, such as higher grease levels, possibly damaging bones, and not being as useful for different types of decomp. It’s a method for someone that wants to dominantly process inside and that wants to churn out clean specimens quickly.

Maceration on the other hand is a very effective method that can be used for practically any specimen no matter the prep, runs incredibly little chance at damaging bone, and doesn’t require too much work after the fact. Downsides are the smell, the possible wait times, and the space you need to macerate comfortably. This is the method for someone with space, time, and a strong stomach that needs to clean entire skeletons or large batches of skulls all at once.

There’s no clear winner between these two methods, since they both exhibit their own pros and cons. For that reason, they’re both winners! Maceration is a great bone cleaning method that requires little work and little involvement during the process. Simmering is great for those trying to clean skulls and bones quickly and efficiently without taking up too much space. One method may not work for someone, while the other could be their absolute dream method! It’s just a matter of opinion, and I urge you to try both methods and form your own.

If this guide was helpful and you wanna show some support, maybe Buy me a coffee? 

[adalwclf]

dreams, a handful of yards, and the elusiveness of time

Adalwolf is staring into an empty, gray sky. He hears no sound but the call of the marsh hawk in the distance. His lungs burn on the smell of blood, but nothing else hurts anymore except the cold stabbing his bare knuckles through the bailey’s cobble. He tries to sit up but can’t. He tries to turn his head but can’t. Everything feels like lead. He tries not to sink into the ground which seems more like the River Cairns now. He does anyway, and blackness takes him.

*

You never forget your first brush with death because it becomes the index by which you measure all other experiences of its class and magnitude. Adalwolf remembers that when he was seven, maybe eight, his father had taken him hunting along the banks of the River Cairns. Its dark, deceptive waters looked placid then as they do now and always, but any man over the age of fourteen will tell you that a calm river is like an honest Vygantine; they do not exist. At the time, though, Adalwolf was unbearded and unblooded and had yet to make bed with the violence of the natural world, his father having done the disservice of sheltering him from its bite.

The Bärvolk hunt on horseback as much as any southerner, but their forefathers were river people and today they hound their game by way of a skiff that he and his father had crafted of their own two hands the previous summer. It slices through the water with ease, very little need to tend her except to keep her nose forward. The morning is just at the crest of noon and there is a cool breeze drawing through the warm swale. His father watches the walls of switchgrass encircling them. Adalwolf inspects his bow. The craftsmanship is fine, its surface engraved with wolves, babes, babes carried off by wolves, the great bear at its center, and strange geometric figures he has not yet learned. Ada had whittled and strung the bow before gifting it to him, but he knew by Yana’s knowing smile that it had been she who etched it. He finds it hard to look away from the icons, his eyes wide with wonder.

As Björnard maneuvers the skiff through a riverbend, the nearby switchgrass twitches. A hare, previously supping water, now stands still on the shore. Adalwolf thinks it's strange how one creature can recognize the fear in another creature’s eyes. The switchgrass erupts and issues forth a lank flash of red from its great green curtain to maul the hare where it stands. The fox is the victor. Björnard gestures to Adalwolf, low and wild. Adalwolf stares.

The bow, you daft boy, bring the bow, he says. Adalwolf brings the bow, the bow and arrow, the flensing knife, the oar, the father trades him the bow for the oar and stands by. This is your kill, he says. It don’t need to suffer, boy, aim for the heart.

Adalwolf, even at his age, is no stranger to a bow. He has done this a few times before and knows the proper posture. He kneels near the skiff’s edge and takes aim. He stares grimly against the whipping wind, the way he imagines his father would look. He hopes his father is proud. His heart thrums like the wild hare and the tension in the bowstring is good: made for the young, but no less deadly. He is a pose of severity, but just a pose. He is not severe – not enough, not at heart – or he would have minded his shifting weight and the skiff’s cocking. He would have respected the deep and endless dark below, but he hadn’t, and now, with the boat beginning to tip, the water lurches up towards him.

The cold, thousand-strong arms of the Cairns, as jealous as fae, seize the boy and drag him down into their deepest shames. The river is cold year-round, and it cuts immediately to the bones; it strangles him. If there is a bottom to this beast, he never touches it as she sucks him through her hungering gullet. He holds his breath even as the chill makes him want to scream, makes his eyes burn and his skin feel like they’ve been set on fire. Light explodes around him through a watery film, just for a moment. He desperately draws breath. The Cairns drags him under again and he is tumbling through her void. And then, somewhere in that great, dark womb, he slips into something darker yet, and he is no longer afraid.

We are the sons of no country, his father says, somber, as he holds him by the fire, in a place out of time. He runs his fingers through his son’s hair and hums a low and resonant gwerz. A deluge of water pours from the hearth and drowns them.

*

Eyes open. A silhouette rises grim against a gray backdrop. Although he cannot hear him, he knows the silhouette is his uncle by the vibrations of his powerful voice. Don’t move, maybe if you don’t move, he’ll leave. Stare. Just keep staring. Don’t blink. Adalwolf blinks. Sound sucks back into the world as if through a funnel. An incoherent whistle at first. The marsh hawk calls again, accompanied by the noise of small things ferreting through the grass. The hollow, staccato of splitting wood echoes through the vacant air.

“How poor, we, to be cast with such a noose. Get on up, you boy,” his uncle says. Adalwolf opens his mouth but there’s only a wheeze. “You make truck with the devil? Then let us temper him with iron. Get on up, I said. Take the iron: show me what form of man you are.”

Adalwolf thinks he’s in the bailey, still, but Cyneard might have kicked him out of the gate by now. He feels embarrassed. He must look incompetent to the villagers or his family or to god. He wonders if his Völva is watching as he rolls over and coughs. There is an awful pain in his shoulder, and he thinks it might be broken. Adalwolf knows his uncle loves him, but something changed in him when Björnard died. He is thinking about his father and the pain in his shoulder when he begins to wail. The waters of the Cairns rise up around him again.

*

He doesn’t know when he got back to his feet, but Adalwolf is looking into deep, dark eyes. A formless phrase floats around inside his head, but he doesn’t know what it means, and Cyneard’s hand is covering his mouth, so it doesn’t matter. He is trying to quiet the boy’s wailing while hazarding looks over his shoulder. Do you want your mother to hear, hush now boy, hush. He tries to stop but doesn’t know where his mouth is – or his hands or head, even. He’s crawling up from somewhere far at the back of the deep tunnel that must be his eyes when sensation hurtles back into being. It takes every ounce of willpower in him to not only stop wailing, but also to manage a suppressed shriek. Too late, though: Kriemhild’s great voice vaults across the bailey:

“Unhand him, you miserable cur, or I will break your legs and send you crawling through the muskeg naked. Do you hear me? I said: unhand him, or gods help me, I will end you, brother.”

Adalwolf sees now that he had never been standing. He’s on his back while Cyneard is straddling his hips and looking at Kriemhild across the cobble. His hand leaves Adalwolf’s mouth and in that moment, thoughtless, Adalwolf sounds out that phrase in his head he’s heard only once before. It feels thick and clumsy and wrong on his tongue, but everything beneath his skin feels alive when it leaves him. Cyneard’s head snaps back to look down at him as if struck, his face a mask of bloodless horror as the boy grabs his uncle’s arm and carves coarse, uneven fingernails into the skin. Blood wells to the surface just as he strikes Adalwolf’s face. The young boy, weak with fatigue, succumbs to the darkness.

*

That evening, someone from the village with a steady eye and a small voice visits the family and tells them that there are wolves out in the marsh and to stay inside. As the evening gray sinks into night, Adalwolf is at the fire, nursing his shoulder-sling. The soreness is beginning to set in, but he knows the worst is yet to come. By way of horse or carrier pigeon, there is somewhere a courier carrying dark parcels. The morning sun will shine a new kind of pain across his body and he will be immobile for two, maybe three days. But this is only an afterthought. A fever dream has taken his uncle by the hand and now leads him down into a delirium that fills their great hall with yammering and cries. He has seen him in the back room, drenched in sweat, the bedding one acid-yellow wash of colour. There is an awful droning of flies. He hears the baying of the wolves, their blackened figures lit by starlight on distant hills. To keep him from hurting himself, Kriemhild eventually restrains Cyneard’s wrists and ankles by winding up old cloths and sheets into cords and tying them off to the bedposts. He says he sees eyes in the windows, in the dark corners of the room. He says a man is sitting at the foot of his bed and that his stare hurts. There is something wrong in the air. Adalwolf bundles up in furs to shut out the noise. Kriemhild is sobbing, holding her brother close as the nightmares deepen. The flies are screaming. Sometime, just beyond midnight, he falls still at last and all is quiet save him, and he is murmuring. He says: “The Shoemaker King comes with many crowns to this, His house.”

And then he sleeps – a deep, black, dreamless sleep that endures for three days. And when he wakes, he will never look at Adalwolf again.

[storyunrelated]

Short Stories

For a given value of ‘short’, seeing as how most people’s definition of a short story is about 5k up to 10k (roughly) while mine is lucky to reach two thousand. But! That’s variety for you, eh? We’re all different? Etc?

Anyway.

These are the ones I’ve put up on here. You’ll notice I don’t do that anymore. The reason – to myself at least – is the ever-lurking notion that one day I might parcel a bunch of these up together and do something fancy with them. Unlikely, but the thought keeps me up at night sometimes. If only because of the work that would be involved.

Speaking of which, I do sometimes also consider parceling up all of these ones into an e-book or something (the ‘Money for Old Rope’ collection I’ve mentioned previously).

This would require work too, as these below are peppered with typos and poor structure. This is because I don’t proofread.

Because I don’t CARE.

(I had to put them below this line because there’s a lot of them and I can’t in good conscience do that to your dashes. Of course, this now means that no-one will look but, you know, swings and roundabouts.)

Unwanted Advances – The logic of online pornographic robots is even more obtuse when they appear in real life, at your front door. Who’d be stupid enough to fall for that? 

An Interview With… - Something I wrote for a contest thingy with a local writing group. Didn’t win, obviously. It’s about an interview, obviously. Someone trying to make a big break in the blogosphere by talking with something they found in the garden. In a chasm. 

Just A Touch – For a refreshing change, believe what a conspiracy theorist believes for a little bit. Only recreationally, you understand. Just a taste. 

In The Loop – A very childish game, played with the very real possibility of horrible consequences should you fail. The thing behind you won’t do wonders for your concentration. 

Soothe Me – Sometimes, while doing horrible things for what they think is a good reason, a person might suffer a bout of introspection and wonder whether murder and horror is the right thing to be doing. Luckily, there’s usually someone on hand to explain why being a monster is fine.

Cupcake – There’s a hole in my bathroom wall and out of this hole extends an arm. Me and the arm are buddies, and a cupcake seems a good way of expressing this.

Checklist – What’s keeping you here?

Rollover – Even as your efforts come to nothing and you wither away to dust know that the trying will never stop.

Immovable Object – The next stage in unskippable advertisements (obviously the best form of advertisements) is something rather more difficult to ignore.

Oh What’s New? – Networking is very important! It’s all about who you know! So go in there and try to make some connections! What’s the worst that can happen? Really?

Get Hammered – You’re special, but special doesn’t fit. Don’t worry. You can be made to fit. (And later when you see someone else lauded for not fitting, don’t complain; no-one likes bitterness).

Open Platform – It’s important to let people speak their piece, but it’s equally important to recognise that what some people want to say is nothing but toxic.

Ga-Ga, Goo-Goo – The world is a scary place, isn’t it? So many bad things happening! All so complicated! No solutions without drawbacks! Problems on top of problems with no end in sight! Wouldn’t it be better if you could just divest yourself of responsibility and press yourself to the bosom of someone big and strong who’ll stroke your hair and tell you who’s to blame? Good news!

By The Book – Pick the beliefs that best reflect yours, rather than having to adjust your view to conform to something else – where’s the fun in that? Show me which book lets me hate the people I already hate and let’s get going!

Stay The Course – Support the tyrant to the hilt! Until they do something that directly impacts you, at which point you should bawl your lungs out about how unfair it is.

Old Songs – I thing I wrote out by hand (writing club, again) and then transposed. A man who can fix things by singing to them, obviously. Old songs have power, you see?

Sit Comfortably – What starts as an unusual job interview goes in an unforeseen direction. Specifically underground. Where there are spiders. More spiders, rather. (This story has a lot of spiders).

Things Are Grim – A dystopian broadcast to tell the populace something they already know for no good reason. You never know when an audience who doesn’t know how the future works might be watching, after all.

Tabula Rasa – The Book is very important, but you are not allowed to read it.

Reaper of Souls – A being of immense power watches over the city, guarding it from necromantic mischief. It also likes fanfiction and knows the importance of leaving feedback.

Out The Door – A man makes things and the two others that live with him have differing opinions on what he should do with them once they’re done. Do you improve them first, or do you move on? Ultimately, who even cares?

My Violent Heart – Using machines to turn people into soulless drones so they work without complaint seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Tinted – Goggles that allow you to see the world not as it is, but as you think it should be.

Sanded Down – You only have so much sand in your life and how you use it is very important. But using it is far more important than hoarding it. After all, even if you do something badly at least you’ve done something…

Misshapen – Looking at what everyone else is doing, it seems easy enough to replicate. Right? Right?

For Your Own Good – “Unhand that phallus!” and with that cry is the crime of male masturbation rudely interrupted. But it’s entirely altruistic – that’s spinal fluid, that is!

Flensed – Every month you’re renewed and every months you’re stripped to nothing once more. This horrible process happens without fail and it does not get any easier.

Southern Pole – How else should you define yourself except by how you are not like someone else?

Interloper – You don’t belong here.

Tannin Salon – The best tea in the world? Why, the nectar of the Teabeast of course! Getting it is a bit of a pain, naturally, but that’s all part of the allure!

Well Off – Someone’s been put at the bottom of the well, and someone at the top has a vested interest in this staying that way.

Machinegun Man – A long way from home, in the rain, only a gun for company.

Extra-Curricular – An ovoid in class provides answers the teacher cannot bear to hear.

Little Shop Of Sandwiches – A dusty, quiet little sandwich shop that sells lunchtime snacks the likes of which few have ever seen. The likes fewer still have eaten!

Start The Clock – The time between you starting a conversation and it all falling apart horribly because you’re an awkward mess is always smaller than you think. Clock’s ticking!

Rote – It might feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over (and over) again, but somehow from the outside everyone seems to think you’re all over the place.

Push On – Success can be yours! Look at all these other people! They succeeded. You can too! Just keep going! No matter how had it gets.

Excision – In the future, love is to be outlawed! No-one is really clear as to why, however.

Consult A Doctor – If you experience an erection that kills you, you should probably get that checked out.

Object of Disputation – A child tries to make something nice for their parents but everyone else has an opinion on what it actually is.

Catch Of The Slate Sea – A man on a cliff watches a big ship catch a big fish.

Faceless – We wear many faces in life, acquiring new ones as we grow and as we encounter those who dislike what faces we have already. It can be so hard to keep track of who you were to start with. Then again, were you ever anyone?

Slice And Dice – A man invents a superior method of killing that which is reluctant to die.

We Care A Lot – There are those that are paid to be professionally unpleasant in very public places. Eventually, machines displace all jobs held by persons – such unpleasant people aren’t as safe as they think.

Taste Test – Blended down, is there any real difference between these two people? A focus group shall decide!

Limit Break – Be nice enough and it’s inevitable

Three-Way – Just because what you believe also happens to be what’s best for society doesn’t mean you’re biased or myopic. You’re just sensible! It’s everyone else with the problem.

Better Than – How far would people go to avoid something horrible happening? Often, far enough that they’ll inflict something far worse and fail to see the irony. That’s irony! Is it? Maybe.

Infantalise – Casting men is easy! There’s no upper limit. Women (girls, sorry)? That’s another story! They get old so quickly! And who wants that? We have to go younger. Much, much younger. No, younger than that!

Material – Where do these journalists get these outlandish tales? Out of thin air, obviously.

Barred And Shuttered – Life is full of opportunities! Just not for you. A lifetime of closed doors. Have fun!

So Delicate. So Fragile – A man births an opinion! He’s surprised, but knows he must protect it from everything and everyone. Exposure is lethal to an opinion! It might become something else.

Mother Of Invention – Every new weapon invented is touted as the last one, the one horrible enough to turn mankind off war forever. Eventually that’s got to bear fruit. Surely.

All That’s Fit To Protect – Wrapped in lies, the truth of harm is simply deflected.

Abstinent Without Leave – What’s the best way of ensuring The Youth is not banging away like an outhouse door? Education, trust and respect? No! Ignorance!

Great Hunt – The girl is gorgeous and her father is unusual. A boy is invited to the house of the most popular, wonderful girl at school, though he knows not why. He also doesn’t know why all these other guys have been invited, either.

Nothing To Hide – If you’re not thinking anything bad then you won’t mind having your head smashed and your thoughts poked at, right?

The Perfect Model – The human body is disgusting but we’re forced to hang clothes on it so we must find the best example for this. Why must women insist on having MASS?

Lead Balloon – Trapped in an office a man yearns to run off with the nice lady from across the room. Does it end well? Take a guess.

Four Guys – The best burger you might ever encounter! But at what cost?

By His Own Hand – A man is desperate to leave a mark and to leave life on his own terms.

Somebody Cares – Someone trying to put a comforting, supportive voice into his head does it wrong and regrets his decision. His method of removing the voice might perhaps be going a bit far.

Restructure – Journalists are obsolete. We feed a monster now.

Magic Eye – What’s obvious to everyone is not so obvious to this one guy.

Rod For His Own Back – Watch what you say, or else you may find your words used against you.

Bad Boss – Not everyone is cut out to be an evil overlord.

La-La-La – If you ignore a problem like everyone’s legs turning invisible then it’ll probably just go away.

Inner Glow – Scooping out his insides and replacing them with hot coals.

You May Find This Relevant To Your Situation – Truffling for potatoes in a lake of shit.

The Door Opens and Let’s the Future In - Nigel mustn’t touch the door. The future is on the other side.

Writing Is The Wall - Waking up to find a huge wall has cut their bedroom in half. It says something, but they don’t see it. You will.

Hoops - Life is a series of hoops, and each one matters until you jump it, then you find out it didn’t.

Flat - A man finds out something about his partner he should have noticed before.

Secret Techniques - They make tea differently in this office.

Dancing in the Dark - Do what you enjoy, no matter the audience.

Close Observation - It’s nice to be watched, but it’s not happening.

Slug - The people who run the world are beaten to the punch.

We Have to Go Deeper - Layers of suffering lie beneath your feet, and further still beneath those.

Exegesis - Feel free to bring your own meaning to the book, but disagree with me at your peril. Your soul is at stake.

Square Cube - Weaponising physics to kill kaiju

Irresistible - A court-case segues into just raving about how poorly-handled sexual assault cases are. So, uh, enjoy that.

Smoke - Newspapers spew enough nonsense that it stops working.

The Dick Heard Around the World - A man sends a picture of his penis to a woman. It works too well.

Driving Home for Christmas - I look at the driver next to me. He’s just the same.

Hangers On - Saying the wrong thing can attract unwanted attention.

Bottled Up - A man in a cave puts stories in bottles. No-one cares.

Little Furnace - Curiosity burns bright in the human breast, which can end badly if mishandled.

Pecking Order - The worse a tenant you are, the higher you are placed in the building.

Waiting Around - There are those who sit and wait for opportunity to fall into their laps

Hazy - A man loses himself.

[johnnymundano]

The Theatre Bizarre (2011)

Directed by Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Jeremy Kasten, Tom Savini and Richard Stanley

Written by Scarlett Amaris, Douglas Buck, John Esposito, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Emiliano Ranzani and Richard Stanley

Music by Simon Boswell, Susan DiBona and Marquis Howell of Hobo Jazz

Country: United States

Language: English

Running Time: 114 minutes

CAST

Udo Kier as Peg Poett

Virginia Newcomb as Enola Penny

Kaniehtiio Horn as The Writer (segment 'Vision Stains')

Victoria Maurette as Karina (segment 'The Mother Of Toads')

Shane Woodward as Martin (segment 'The Mother Of Toads')

André Hennicke as Axel (segment 'I Love You')

Suzan Anbeh as Mo (segment 'I Love You')

James Gill as Donnie (segment 'Wet Dreams')

Tom Savini as Dr. Maurey (segment 'Wet Dreams')

Debbie Rochon as Carla (segment 'Wet Dreams')

Lena Kleine as The Mother (segment 'The Accident')

Mélodie Simard as The Daughter (segment 'The Accident')

Lindsay Goranson as Estelle (segment 'Sweets')

Guilford Adams as Greg (segment 'Sweets')

Framing Segments

Directed by Jeremy Kasten

Written by Zach Chassler

Cast:

Udo Kier as Peg Poett

Virginia Newcomb as Enola Penny

The Theatre Bizarre is a series of six shorts largely in hock to the grand-guignol tradition of naturalistic horror (i.e. proper ketchup, matey). I know this not because of any keen interest in French theatre but because the framing sequence is called ‘Theatre Guignol’, and it is into this terribly mysterious theatre that Enola Penny (Virginia Newcomb) dreamily wanders one decisive night. Each of the following sections is introduced by the indefatigable Udo Kier playing a big puppet (literally “grand guignol”) who becomes less puppet-like as the movie wears on and (cue wobbly theremin) Enola become less human. Which might be an artistic statement about desensitisation, but is definitely an excuse to watch Udo Kier popping robot-moves, which I think we can all agree is a good thing.

The Mother of Toads

Directed by Richard Stanley

Written by Richard Stanley, Scarlett Amaris and Emiliano Ranzani

Cast:

Catriona MacColl as Mere Antoinette

Shane Woodward as Martin

Victoria Maurette as Karina

Lisa Belle as The Naked Witch (as Lisa Crawford)

Amelie Salomon as The Monster

The Mother of Toads is apparently based on a Clark Ashton Smith story of the same name which I haven’t read, with a bit of HP Lovecraft chucked in. It features a pair of unpleasant young Americans holidaying in France, and I’m not dissing Americans there, this pair really are unlikable; Karina moans that everything is in French in France (quelle surprise!), while Martin is so anaesthetised by his own acumen he can barely push his smug words past the thicket of his trendy beard. They come unstuck when bargain hunting in a French market where a handsome older lady with a mesmerising accent saucily offers Martin a peek at her Necronomicon. Bundling Karina off to a spa Martin spends the day with the accommodating and increasingly ardent crone, drinking suspicious brews and fingering her dusty leaves. Things end badly. This was an agreeably silly creature feature with plenty of the old ugh! quotient, an endearing lack of logic and a pervading sense of encroaching doom. The humour leavening proceedings is clearly no accident; there’s an excellent joke when Martin attempts to extricate himself from a post-coital bed without waking his sleeping and somewhat slimy partner. Probably rings a few bells in the audience that bit. It’s just enjoyably daft, tongue-in-cheek stuff and a welcome reminder that Richard (Hardware (1990), Dust Devil (1992)) Stanley is still rocking his smart-trash groove.

I Love You

Directed by Buddy Giovinazzo

Written by Buddy Giovinazzo

Cast:

André Hennicke as Axel

Suzan Anbeh  as Mo

I Love You is a pretty tough watch and unusually it’s not because of the climactic gore. Axel wakes up in his bathroom disorientated and bloody; turns out he’s an insecure, self-destructive mess who has driven his lady Mo away. Mo returns to sever all ties and leave for good. What follows is an emotionally harrowing battle between two damaged people where words are weapons and the hurt is internal. As blood spattered as the despairing denouement may be the real horror is the extended verbal flensing Mo delivers to Martin, in which she destroys not only his present but also his past. And is she telling the truth? Or is it a desperate attempt to extricate herself from his unquenchable neediness? Like a fox gnawing its paw off to escape the trap? Sometimes uncertainty can be another level of horror. Buddy Giovinazzo delivers a classily acted, tautly suspenseful two-hander which leaves an emotional stain which persists for days.

Wet Dreams

Directed by Tom Savini

Written by John Esposito

Cast:

Debbie Rochon as Carla

Tom Savini as Dr. Maurey

James Gill as Donnie

Jodii Christianson as Maxine

Wet Dreams is directed by Tom Savini, who is legendary in horror for his SFX work and slightly less legendary for his acting, so there’s no excuse for doing an Elvis double take at the fact he’s given himself a role and that his segment is luridly gory. He’s no slouch at directing either, which is nice. The esteemed Mr. Savini plays a psychiatrist, the kind who drinks on the job and talks about raping his mum (i.e. a movie psychiatrist), treating Donnie, a preening jackass who likes smacking his wife, Carla, about and cheating on her. See, Donnie’s having recurring nightmares wherein his sexy dream fun times climax with him being tortured and castrated by his long-suffering wife, in a series of gruesomely humorous and visually explicit ways. Gentlemen viewers may never again think of a fry-up without skittishly crossing their legs. Serves Donnie right you might think, but by the end of the dream-within-a-dream misdirection and its gruesomely pre-code EC Comics twist finale you might think again. Ugh. I mean….ugh. I...Jesus. What could have just been a gratuitous mess of general dismemberment is deftly directed by the savant Savini, resulting in an amoral immorality tale. And need it be said that his skills in the SFX dept remain second to none? No, it need not. So pretend I didn’t say it.

The Accident

Directed by Douglas Buck

Written by Douglas Buck

Cast:

Lena Kleine as Mother

Mélodie Simard as Daughter

Jean-Paul Rivière as Old Biker

Bruno Décary as Young Biker

The Accident provides a brief respite from the onslaught of sensationalistic gore, a pit stop if you will. Even if you won’t, it definitely centres around a cute child asking her blasé mother questions about mortality, said questions raised in the tiny, inquiring mind after the witnessing of an accident earlier in the day involving a deer and a cocky motorcyclist. It’s a very restrained piece, very accomplished, and softer in tone than anything before or after it. There’s a touch of grue when the deer is finished off, but mostly the horror here is the complete horseshit parents come out with to calm their offspring with regards to the ultimately absurd nature of life and death, a subject which everyone spends a lot of time avoiding thinking about on a day to day basis and about which they would rather not be cross-examined about by a child at bedtime. As upsetting as the sight of the deer’s tongue lolling out of its bug eyed head was (very), it wasn’t as upsetting as realising all the lies you have to fill your kid with just so they can function in what we’ve all decided to call reality. Compared to all that, lying about Santa Claus is a minor misdemeanour.

Vision Stains

Directed by Karim Hussain

Written by Karim Hussain

Cast:

Kaniehtiio Horn as The Writer

Cynthia Wu-Maheux as Junkie Girl

Imogen Haworth as Pregnant Woman

Rachelle Glait  as Older Homeless Woman

Alex Ivanovici  as Junkie Man

I have a thing about eye trauma. Not a sexual thing, a “flinch and wave your hands about like you’re warding off invisible birds” thing. It’s a running joke in the Mundano family unit; if there’s some serious eye trauma afoot in the viewing choice, all eyes fall on the father figure as he  tenses for impact. Those similarly (dis)inclined should be warned that there is a seriously impressive amount of eye trauma in Vision Stains. It’s built in as the whole episode rests on the Horror Movie Science concept of people’s past lives flashing before their eyes at the point of death. So if you extract their eye juice as they die and inject it into your own eye you will get to live the edited highlights of another life. Obviously. That sounds about as appealing as it sounds scientifically feasible, but our serial killer heroine is well into it. She basically harvests the lives of the homeless to make up for her personal shortfall in dreams. Judging by the massive pile of notebooks in which she has written the details of all the lives she has nicked, its worked out quite well for her. But people, even dreamless serial killers who prey on the homeless,  are never satisfied, so she decides to take the next step and find out what happens before people have a life to flash in front of their eyes. The results are mixed. Ultimately you can’t help thinking it would have been a lot quicker and far easier on the homeless population if she’d just read Tbomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against the Human race. It’s all very silly but the po-faced approach suggests it is straining for some grandiose meaning; it fails. But it does feature a fantastic amount of eye trauma. Each to their own.

Sweets

Directed by David Gregory

Written by David Gregory

Cast:

Lindsay Goranson as Estelle

Guilford Adams as Greg

Lynn Lowry as Mikela Da Vinci

Jessica Remmers as Antonia

With Sweets, things close on a hilariously disgusting note. A deadpan Estelle and a semi-hysterical Greg talk about their dying relationship in the most banal clichés imaginable as they sit in what was once an apartment, but is now a kind of edible sty plastered with smushed up confectionery.  As trite nonsense falls from her lips Estelle slowly sucks a melting ice cream into her deadpan face. Greg flailing to rescue the dead relationship counters with the expected whiny responses, while spasmodically picking filthy sweets off the floor and ingesting them with all the automotive panache of the true addict. Their stale interactions are punctuated by a series of flashbacks  which parody cinema’s rote scenes of romance, with the pair swilling sweet shit like swilling sweet shit is going out of fashion. Luckily for Greg, Estelle hasn’t quite finished with him, unluckily for Greg he’s about to find out what that means. Sweets is pretty funny in its lip-smacking attack on love and addiction (and love as addiction), and is delightfully cartoonish in style; Estelle is often colour coordinated from hair to shoes with whatever sickly delicacy she is proffering. Of course all the comedy and caricature serve only to distract you while Sweets prepares a delightful gut punch of horror, before the management politely ask you to leave.

 TL;DR: The Theatre Bizarre: it’s worth a watch, but not if you’re squeamish.

[adalwclf78223]

Adalwolf is staring into an empty, gray sky. He hears no sound but the call of the marsh hawk in the distance. His lungs burn on the smell of blood, but nothing else hurts anymore except the cold stabbing his bare knuckles through the bailey’s cobble. He tries to sit up but can’t. He tries to turn his head but can’t. Everything feels like lead. He tries not to sink into the ground which seems more like the River Cairns now. He does anyway, and blackness takes him.

*

You never forget your first brush with death because it becomes the index by which you measure all other experiences of its class and magnitude. Adalwolf remembers that when he was seven, maybe eight, his father had taken him hunting along the banks of the River Cairns. Its dark, deceptive waters looked placid then as they do now and always, but any man over the age of fourteen will tell you that a calm river is like an honest Vygantine; they do not exist. At the time, though, Adalwolf was unbearded and unblooded and had yet to make bed with the violence of the natural world, his father having done the disservice of sheltering him from its bite.

The Bärvolk hunt on horseback as much as any southerner, but their forefathers were river people and today they hound their game by way of a skiff that he and his father had crafted of their own two hands the previous summer. It slices through the water with ease, very little need to tend her except to keep her nose forward. The morning is just at the crest of noon and there is a cool breeze drawing through the warm swale. His father watches the walls of switchgrass encircling them. Adalwolf inspects his bow. The craftsmanship is fine, its surface engraved with wolves, babes, babes carried off by wolves, the great bear at its center, and strange geometric figures he has not yet learned. Ada had whittled and strung the bow before gifting it to him, but he knew by Yana’s knowing smile that it had been she who etched it. He finds it hard to look away from the icons, his eyes wide with wonder.

As Björnard maneuvers the skiff through a riverbend, the nearby switchgrass twitches. A hare, previously supping water, now stands still on the shore. Adalwolf thinks it's strange how one creature can recognize the fear in another creature’s eyes. The switchgrass erupts and issues forth a lank flash of red from its great green curtain to maul the hare where it stands. The fox is the victor. Björnard gestures to Adalwolf, low and wild. Adalwolf stares.

The bow, you daft boy, bring the bow, he says. Adalwolf brings the bow, the bow and arrow, the flensing knife, the oar, the father trades him the bow for the oar and stands by. This is your kill, he says. It don’t need to suffer, boy, aim for the heart.

Adalwolf, even at his age, is no stranger to a bow. He has done this a few times before and knows the proper posture. He kneels near the skiff’s edge and takes aim. He stares grimly against the whipping wind, the way he imagines his father would look. He hopes his father is proud. His heart thrums like the wild hare and the tension in the bowstring is good: made for the young, but no less deadly. He is a pose of severity, but just a pose. He is not severe – not enough, not at heart – or he would have minded his shifting weight and the skiff’s cocking. He would have respected the deep and endless dark below, but he hadn’t, and now, with the boat beginning to tip, the water lurches up towards him.

The cold, thousand-strong arms of the Cairns, as jealous as fae, seize the boy and drag him down into their deepest shames. The river is cold year-round, and it cuts immediately to the bones; it strangles him. If there is a bottom to this beast, he never touches it as she sucks him through her hungering gullet. He holds his breath even as the chill makes him want to scream, makes his eyes burn and his skin feel like they’ve been set on fire. Light explodes around him through a watery film, just for a moment. He desperately draws breath. The Cairns drags him under again and he is tumbling through her void. And then, somewhere in that great, dark womb, he slips into something darker yet, and he is no longer afraid.

We are the sons of no country, his father says, somber, as he holds him by the fire, in a place out of time. He runs his fingers through his son’s hair and hums a low and resonant gwerz. A deluge of water pours from the hearth and drowns them.

*

Eyes open. A silhouette rises grim against a gray backdrop. Although he cannot hear him, he knows the silhouette is his uncle by the vibrations of his powerful voice. Don’t move, maybe if you don’t move, he’ll leave. Stare. Just keep staring. Don’t blink. Adalwolf blinks. Sound sucks back into the world as if through a funnel. An incoherent whistle at first. The marsh hawk calls again, accompanied by the noise of small things ferreting through the grass. The hollow, staccato of splitting wood echoes through the vacant air.

“How poor, we, to be cast with such a noose. Get on up, you boy,” his uncle says. Adalwolf opens his mouth but there’s only a wheeze. “You make truck with the devil? Then let us temper him with iron. Get on up, I said. Take the iron: show me what form of man you are.”

Adalwolf thinks he’s in the bailey, still, but Cyneard might have kicked him out of the gate by now. He feels embarrassed. He must look incompetent to the villagers or his family or to god. He wonders if his Völva is watching as he rolls over and coughs. There is an awful pain in his shoulder, and he thinks it might be broken. Adalwolf knows his uncle loves him, but something changed in him when Björnard died. He is thinking about his father and the pain in his shoulder when he begins to wail. The waters of the Cairns rise up around him again.

*

He doesn’t know when he got back to his feet, but Adalwolf is looking into deep, dark eyes. A formless phrase floats around inside his head, but he doesn’t know what it means, and Cyneard’s hand is covering his mouth, so it doesn’t matter. He is trying to quiet the boy’s wailing while hazarding looks over his shoulder. Do you want your mother to hear, hush now boy, hush. He tries to stop but doesn’t know where his mouth is – or his hands or head, even. He’s crawling up from somewhere far at the back of the deep tunnel that must be his eyes when sensation hurtles back into being. It takes every ounce of willpower in him to not only stop wailing, but also to manage a suppressed shriek. Too late, though: Kriemhild’s great voice vaults across the bailey:

“Unhand him, you miserable cur, or I will break your legs and send you crawling through the muskeg naked. Do you hear me? I said: unhand him, or gods help me, I will end you, brother.”

Adalwolf sees now that he had never been standing. He’s on his back while Cyneard is straddling his hips and looking at Kriemhild across the cobble. His hand leaves Adalwolf’s mouth and in that moment, thoughtless, Adalwolf sounds out that phrase in his head he’s heard only once before. It feels thick and clumsy and wrong on his tongue, but everything beneath his skin feels alive when it leaves him. Cyneard’s head snaps back to look down at him as if struck, his face a mask of bloodless horror as the boy grabs his uncle’s arm and carves coarse, uneven fingernails into the skin. Blood wells to the surface just as he strikes Adalwolf’s face. The young boy, weak with fatigue, succumbs to the darkness.

*

That evening, someone from the village with a steady eye and a small voice visits the family and tells them that there are wolves out in the marsh and to stay inside. As the evening gray sinks into night, Adalwolf is at the fire, nursing his shoulder-sling. The soreness is beginning to set in, but he knows the worst is yet to come. By way of horse or carrier pigeon, there is somewhere a courier carrying dark parcels. The morning sun will shine a new kind of pain across his body and he will be immobile for two, maybe three days. But this is only an afterthought. A fever dream has taken his uncle by the hand and now leads him down into a delirium that fills their great hall with yammering and cries. He has seen him in the back room, drenched in sweat, the bedding one acid-yellow wash of colour. There is an awful droning of flies. He hears the baying of the wolves, their blackened figures lit by starlight on distant hills. To keep him from hurting himself, Kriemhild eventually restrains Cyneard’s wrists and ankles by winding up old cloths and sheets into cords and tying them off to the bedposts. He says he sees eyes in the windows, in the dark corners of the room. He says a man is sitting at the foot of his bed and that his stare hurts. There is something wrong in the air. Adalwolf bundles up in furs to shut out the noise. Kriemhild is sobbing, holding her brother close as the nightmares deepen. The flies are screaming. Sometime, just beyond midnight, he falls still at last and all is quiet save him, and he is murmuring. He says: “The Shoemaker King comes with many crowns to this, His house.”

And then he sleeps – a deep, black, dreamless sleep that endures for three days. And when he wakes, he will never look at Adalwolf again.

[cool-ghoul]

#cool ghoul you should know that the term 'virtue signaling' extends to more than just an individual

Yo, @bastion-official​, you bring up a good point, and I was kinda bein’ a smug shithead about it. I have a Hot Take on it, but it’s not something I want to derail OP’s post with. So aiight, here’s my onion.

I know how signaling works as a sociological function, and it’s a pretty valuable identification of a phenomena that operates within society, mostly because it is everywhere. A lot of people weigh value based on the ethical impact of their actions, so we do it at each other all the time.

The problem arises when it is used in a derogatory context; which is the only use  I’ve seen for it outside of academia. And it is largely used, from my position, by people whose own ethical systems revolves around either misanthropy, or an amoral self-interest as the central or dominant factor in human behavior. That’s whatever-- people are sketch AF and it’s reasonable to be grumpy about it-- but when they use it to call out poseurs or ‘chickenshit centrists’ or SJWs or whatever,on a public forum -- the internet-- with the intent of inciting mockery or derision of that individual, that calling out virtue signalling is, itself, virtue signalling to people who see ‘virtue signalling’ itself as bad.

You can see how wanky this can become.

I could, and shit, do even criticize the Left of assuming the same thing by filtering the majority of their thought through a Marxist lens of class dynamics that invalidate the human factor present within systems that they are criticizing. Sometimes they’re right to do so, but just as often they get to flensing someone making their attempt at ‘Wokeness’ in good faith.

In larger contexts, say, organizations, like your Exxon example, yes, virtue signalling is, in that context, more often than not, a hollow gesture designed to increase desirability of the product by selling it as ‘ethical’ without actually altering what they’re doing to fix any of the problematic hangups associated with what they’re selling. It’s bullshit. Good materialist critique of the Spectacle.

But more often than not, it's used to target people, and assumes everybody who’s ‘trying to do the right thing’ is vapid and doing it for brownie points with their followers or ideological pulpit. I believe this is a dismissive stance to take. All of our praxes are shit, and flawed, and generally worthy of analysis and introspection so we can become better people, but to criticize people for not being totally self-contained messiahs of their ethos is, despite their efforts to try, is a grossly unreasonable thing to do.

We might as well ask why every Christian isn’t out there in a hair shirt begging for alms if they ‘believe in it so hard’. It’s disingenuous as shit.

My personal opinion on the terms’ usage as a callout or rebuttal is pointless at best, and utterly dismissive of other factors at play that may beget their behavior that are worthy of looking into. ...Which is pretty much what OP said but with like, several hundred more words.

[nabsthevulture]

Maceration Guide Revamp

There’s a lot of Uncertainty that floats around Maceration, and That’s okay! It’s not for everyone. It’s a space and time demanding method of bone cleaning, not to mention the intense odors that can be associated with it.

For this guide, we’ll be using a fresh rabbit carcass as our example c: Some tips and helpful info for less fresh critters will be following soon!

It’s important to first think of the drawbacks, such as the ones I mentioned above; Depending on what you’re macerating, you may need one large container or multiple containers to fit something say the size of a coyote. With something that large or in that quantity, you’re going to have an intense smell. Some maceration tubs smell worse than others, but you’re gonna have a smelly rot soup regardless.

Again, size plays a big factor in this, but you could be looking at a long term commitment if you want to macerate things. Temperature is key; The hotter the maceration tub, the faster the decomp. Winter is macerations worst nightmare, as it can halt all progress and can even freeze your buckets into a rot Popsicle. Temperatures above 85 should keep your maceration going strong!

Another factor is the aftermath; Where is the excess rot soup going? Can you dump it outside somewhere where it won’t bother people? Can you dig a sufficient hole that you can pour it out into? Can you pour it down the toilet without worrying about the smell? If you don’t have a place to get rid of the maceration water, don’t use maceration as your preferred method.

Just work through all these thought points before you decide anything. The last thing you want is to start macerating a big project like a coyote and then find out that you have nowhere to put it or nowhere to dispose of the rot soup!

Now not everything about Maceration is bad. If you live somewhere hot and have ample space, you could be rotting bodies down in a matter or days. It’s a very efficient way to clean bones, whether it be skulls or skeletons. If you have a tight sealing lid, then you won’t have to worry about open air odor or excessive flies until it’s time to check the bucket.

Maceration has its perks, but like I said at the beginning, it’s definitely not for everyone. Try it out if you can, form your own opinion on it! But if you’re not sure if you want to take that step, lean towards an alternative method of cleaning. Alternative methods include Burial, Crock potting, Nature cleaning, Bug cleaning, complete manual flensing, and so on. For the most part, these are all better than maceration in their own way.

With that out of the way, Let’s get into an easy way to start macerating.

First thing you need is your container. Great maceration containers are empty cat litter tubs, seal-able buckets (Like the ones from Home Depot), Sterilite tubs/Storage tubs, or really any container that’s got a good lid. If you don’t care either way, feel free to use open tubs or containers; The lids are really just for smell containing and keeping living critters out of your deads.

You can break down your carcasses to fit them into the container better, or you could go a different route and just strong arm it into the container without worrying about it. After some time, the body will break down and begin to collapse on its own. If you want to break the body down for convenience, just ‘quarter’ it(You’ll be cutting it into more than 4 pieces but you get what I mean). Legs come off, separate the rib cage from the lumbar/pelvis area, and then remove the neck and head. That way, you can tetris everything into the bucket easier. You can be more particular and separate the feet from the legs, and then break the legs down into the individual bones, but that’s extra work that you don’t necessarily have to put in. I personally like to remove the skull and clean it separate from the body to make sure I keep all teeth in one place.

With the skeleton/skull in your container, go ahead and fill it with enough water to cover a few inches over the specimen. Some water will evaporate, so the extra just ensures that the bones stay totally covered. This is where you’ll see some difference between a broken down and a whole body. Broken down skeletons will require less water since they take up less space in a container, making their containers lighter and easier to move. If you have to cover an intact body, it’s definitely going to be heavier and might cause some more problems.

You can add in things like soap, biological washing powder, ammonia, etc. if you’d like, but sometimes chemical components will halt bacteria and prolong your maceration process.

It comes down to multiple factors, like Size of the animal, temperature, and location to determine how long you’re going to be macerating. It could be as little as a week, or even upwards of a year until you see bones being fully clean. I personally had a pitbull skeleton in maceration for over a year due to bad timing. He went in during the winter and that threw the whole process out of sync. If you can, try to start your maceration projects in the spring of summer to avoid weather delays.

Once you’ve got your bones nice and flesh free, fish them out of your bucket/strain it for the little bones, and then move on to degreasing/whitening or whatever’s next! Make sure to dispose of your maceration water safely!

Here are the links to some of the other methods mentioned above; Burial / Crock Pot Cleaning / Bug Cleaning X X X / Rot Cage

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In case you want to check out the old Maceration guides, here’s Part 1 and Part 2!